Page 48 of Six Days in Bombay

I was caught off guard. I hadn’t known where Edward worked, and I hadn’t expected the doctor to ask for help on my behalf. I’d given a lot of thought to tracing Mira’s journey from Prague toParis and Florence, but now that it was before me, I was seized with fear. Perhaps it was the coffee or the idea of going into the unknown, alone. All of a sudden, I wasn’t sure I was capable of making this trip by myself. With Dr. Stoddard, I’d been in safe and sure hands; he’d traveled around the world and could guide me around the ship and on to Istanbul. In an hour, I was about to continue the journey by myself on a train to cities I’d only imagined visiting. I could feel my courage dwindling. The lamb I’d just devoured sat heavy in my stomach.

I swallowed the bile in my throat. “Um. Prague. Paris. Florence.” I choked on the last word and reached for my water glass. My hand was shaking. The look between the doctor and his son didn’t escape my notice.

Edward picked up my coffee cup and emptied it into his own. He poured the dregs left in my cup onto my saucer. “Ahmed will foretell your journey. I’m sure it will be a happy one.” He waved to our waiter, whom he knew from previous visits to this café.

Ahmed came to our table with a smile to inspect my saucer. In halting English, he said, “Journey—away, away.” His smile disappeared and his dark eyebrows met in the middle of his forehead. “Family. Not good.” He looked sideways at Edward to see if he should continue.

The hair on my arms stood up as if it was a cold day even though it was warm outside. My journey was doomed? What had I taken on? Did I really want to do this? But where else could I go? My panic spiraled. I had no home. My mother wasn’t waiting for me. I had no nursing post to return to.

The doctor laughed off Ahmed’s coffee reading. He patted me on the shoulder and said, “Poppycock! Like those magicians at the Bombay docks. Edward, one man claimed to lift a stone with his eyes! Pure tosh I tell you! Let’s get you to your train, shall we, my girl, so you can continue your grand adventure?”

***

When I relinquished Dr. Stoddard’s care to his son at the Sirkeci Terminal, he looked at me through those thick glasses,his owl eyes dancing with mischief. “A little something to remember me by, my dear,” he said, putting a smooth piece of glass the size of a three pence coin in my palm. In the center was what looked like a blue eye with a black pupil. “To ward off evil.” He shrugged. “I don’t believe in fortune-telling, but it never hurts to hedge your bets, does it?” He took my hand in his warm one as if he wanted to lend me his courage. Oh, how I wanted to never let go. How I wanted to cling to his gentle presence and have him reassure me that all would be well always. Wasn’t that what fathers did? Fathers who loved you?

Edward paid one of the porters on the Arlberg Orient Express to take my trunk to my compartment. Then he helped me onto the train, which would take me directly to Prague. Before stepping back, he handed me a copy of the Baedeker’s guidebook. “Father thought you might need it, so I brought it with me today. Anywhere you go, your first stop should be the British Embassy. Whatever you need, you only have to mention my name at any British Embassy. I’ll make sure you get it.” His eyes held mine. The lovely tingling I’d felt in my body when he’d twirled me around the Grand Bazaar returned.

The doctor waved from the platform. “Godspeed. And mind the uniform. It’s very fetching on you, my girl.”

Long after he and Edward left, I found myself blushing.

PRAGUE

Chapter 9

With the money I’d earned from the gin rummy games on the Viceroy, I splurged on a sleeper car on the Arlberg Orient Express. Still, I needed to make my funds last, so instead of private accommodation, I was sharing the compartment with another passenger. The uniformed porter with the immaculate white gloves had placed my trunk on the overhead rack.

My fellow passenger was already settled in her seat by the time I arrived at my compartment. She was perhaps ten years older than me. Her pale green skirt suit and matching turban hat with a delicate veil were far more in keeping with the elegance of our car: the gleaming walnut veneer, the velvet curtains, the mohair upholstery.

“That is quite the handsome young man you have,” she said, pulling her cigarettes out of her clutch purse and pointing with her free hand toward the window.

“Oh, he—he’s not. He’s the son of my patient—well, former patient.” I was blubbering. The idea of Edward being mine was…preposterous. I heard Mira’s voice in my head:No, it’s not, Sona. He could be.

My fellow passenger laughed lightly and extended her gloved hand. “Agnes Kelmendi.”

I wasn’t used to shaking hands with women. It flustered meso much that I forgot to introduce myself. Instead, I did what I usually do with patients—ask questions. Where was she from? What was taking her to Belgrade? Would she go on to Prague from there, as I was doing?

“I’m coming from Albania to work in Belgrade on the new trade fair.” She lit her cigarette and shook the match until the flame disappeared. “I’m an interior designer.”

Here was another woman like Mira doing things I thought women only did in books or films! “How exciting that sounds. Do you often travel for work?”

She nodded. “Germany. France. My favorite is Italy. The food. Fashion. Art.” She took a drag of the cigarette, her face shrouded in smoke. “Have you been?”

I could only shake my head, embarrassed at my lack of sophistication. Would I ever be as comfortable as she seemed to be, traveling alone, undaunted by different customs, different languages?

She reached across and tapped my knee. “You must go.”

The porter brought the afternoon tea. I felt a sharp pang when I saw the silver tray with the tea things, petit fours and delicate sandwiches with the crusts trimmed off. For my birthdays, my mother had indulged me with a formal tea. When I was little, the tea had been nothing more than sugar water heated up, tiny cucumber sandwiches and scones with apricot jam. When I reached my teens, Mum began serving real Ceylon tea with sponge cakes and lemon tarts. I’d loved the care my mother took to make the day special. But on the night of my birthdays, on our shared bed, I would hear her trying to muffle her sobs. Without being told, I knew the date was a yearly reminder of what she and my father had brought into being and all that we had missed out on as a family.

Agnes broke into my reverie. She set her teacup down on the little table and waved a hand at my uniform. “Are you going somewhere to take care of another patient?”

“I’m actually on my way to deliver some paintings.” I suddenlywanted to show this worldly European woman Mira’s work. Surely, she would appreciate the paintings! I took a last bite of my watercress sandwich and pulled my trunk down from the overhead rack. A client of my mother’s had given that trunk to her. Battered tweed with two latching clasps and straps. It wasn’t heavy, just large and cumbersome. The train lurched slightly, and I lost my balance so that by the time I opened the trunk, my belongings were a tumbled mess. I had kept the brown wrapping paper around the rolled paintings so as not to damage them. I unwound the paper carefully and held upThe Acceptance. I looked to Agnes for her reaction. But she was looking instead at my luggage. My underthings, blouses, the pouch with my money—everything was in a jumble. My beat up trunk and its disorganized contents on such display was mortifying. I quickly shut the suitcase.

“You see the focus on the young woman being prepared for marriage?” I asked. “What Miss Novak noticed was that while the bride seems accepting of her fate, there is a quiet joy in serenity of the scene.”

“Yes, I see,” Agnes said. She took the painting from me and studied it. “Lovely brushwork too. You said Mira Novak is her name?”

“Was. Was her name.” I looked out the window. “She died recently.”

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