Page 50 of Six Days in Bombay

“Or could I have bought the trunk from someone with the initials C. R. S.? It could also be that I was married to a wretched man with those initials and I claimed the trunk in the divorce.” Her white teeth gleamed between pink lips. “Any one of those could be true. How are you to know?”

The train was slowing down. We were nearing Belgrade, where our sleeper car would be uncoupled and added to the train headed for Prague.

“I don’t understand,” I said. I felt as if I’d missed a part of the conversation and was having a hard time catching up.

“You will.” Agnes crushed her cigarette in the ashtray. She pulled on her gloves and gathered her clutch. The porter appearedat our cabin to take her luggage off the train. She cupped my chin in her hand and smiled. She seemed sad. I caught a whiff of her jasmine and sweet cigarette scent when she said, “You’re a sweet girl. The world is a big place. You’ll learn.”

I crossed our threshold and stood in the passageway to watch her walk away, high heels clacking, from the train to the platform, past the other passengers, until she was out of sight. What had she meant?

I was alone in the compartment and found myself missing Agnes’s company. Thoughts of what I’d left behind in India flooded my mind. The way the coconut trees swayed in the wind, making the sound of waves lapping against Juhu Beach. A mango so ripe I could squeeze the pulp through a hole at the top and let the sweetness explode in my mouth. Women with bindis on their foreheads, chatting on a doorstep, shelling peas. To stave off the nostalgia, I took out my notebook and wrote to my mother about the doctor, dancing with Edward (which had me tapping my feet), the Turkish delights at the Grand Bazaar, the emerald gown I wore to dinner. I put the notebook away when the porter arrived with afternoon tea.

I took my time over my cream tea, imagining Amit sitting by my side. I told him what I loved about being on the train, how we had to dress for dinner and my fellow passenger Agnes and our strange conversation about her trunk.

When the tray was removed, I spoke to Mira. “Mira,” I whispered, “I am here. In Europe. Can you believe it? I can hardly believe it myself. I’ll find your friends. I promise.”

At some point, I fell asleep and missed dinner altogether. Perhaps the porter didn’t want to wake me.

Sometime in the night, I’d pulled on the sweater Dr. Stoddard had made for me because I’d been cold and—although I hated to admit it—because it made me feel less lonely, as if the doctor were by my side. In the morning, I decided to leave it on over my nurse’s uniform. It was time to reorganize my trunk beforegetting off the train. I refolded my blouses and rewrapped Mira’s paintings. I realized I would need to change money to tip the porter, pay for a taxi and my lodging. The Baedeker’s Edward Stoddard had bought for me in Istanbul told me where to change money in Prague.

I picked up my cloth pouch where I kept my money. With my winnings from the gin rummy games, it had become bulkier and harder to snap closed. Now, it was thinner, lighter.

My hands trembled. I couldn’t get my shaking fingers to undo the snap. I took a moment to breathe slowly and calm my pounding heart. I tried the pouch again. This time it snapped open. I shook all the money out on my seat. I began counting. Oh, no! No, no, no, no. It was half of what I’d brought with me. I searched my trunk. Could the snap have opened inside and the money spilled out? I upended the trunk, letting everything I’d just folded and organized tumble onto the seat. I set the paintings aside—thank goodness they were still there! But even as I rummaged through my belongings, I knew the money wouldn’t be there. It wasn’t. I sank into the seat. Brought my head between my knees. I’d been careless. But…where would I have lost it? The trunk had been with me at all times since I left Istanbul. Except for the times I went to the dining car. That was when the porter entered our compartment to convert it into a sleeper every night. Surely, it couldn’t have been him? Porters were beyond reproach. Their integrity and discretion had to be carefully vetted by the train service. If porters stole from passengers, no one would take the train. No, it couldn’t have been my porter.

The only other person who had access to my trunk was Agnes. When was she alone with it? Yesterday, she begged off breakfast. I’d gone by myself. But…how could it be her? Surely, she had enough of her own money. What with her smart suit and expensive evening gown and that handsome luggage—something that would have taken a year’s salary for me to afford, provided Iskipped eating altogether. What was all that about how she’d come by the luggage? That maybe it wasn’t hers? Or that she wasn’t who she appeared to be? Was she really an interior designer? Was she really going to Belgrade to work on the fair?

The truth hit me like a punch to my stomach. I didn’t want to believe it. What a fool I’d been! So naive! Here I was pretending to be an adult when I was no more than a silly girl! All the while, she’d been sitting there with my money, laughing at me.

What could I do now? Tell the porter? What could he do? The train service wasn’t going to reimburse me. Tell the police? Belgrade was a big city, and Agnes could have easily disappeared into its bowels. Besides, that was probably not her name. I couldn’t go to the British Embassy. They had no responsibility in the matter and were under no obligation to give me my money back.

Slowly, I counted the remaining money. Agnes could have taken all of it, but she hadn’t. Had she only taken half because she pitied me? Pitied me for my wide-eyed ignorance? Anger coursed through me. Worse than losing the money was the image of her rifling through my trunk, feeling sorry for my meager belongings. Dr. Stoddard had warned me to be careful. As had Agnes.The world is a big place. You’ll learn.How embarrassing to be told in advance by a thief that she intended to rob you!

I blinked back my tears. I resisted the urge to quit. What did it matter if I never delivered these paintings? Jo and Paolo and Petra would never know that Mira had left something for them. Nothing said I had to do as Mira instructed. I could run back to Bombay and wait for Amit to find me another job. Then I heard Mira’s voice.How silly of us to have taken our eyes off the money, Sona! So what? It was a major setback, but what was done was done. We’re not going to let it ruin our adventure.She would have laughed it off. The loss was too raw for me to dismiss altogether, but I breathed a little easier. I needed to think about how to proceed. I had enough money to take the trains, but I would have to becareful about how much to spend on food and lodging. I could skip the taxis and take trams instead. Or walk. Miss a few meals.

I braced my arms on my thighs and pulled myself to standing. Mira had written,I know you will take care of these. As will Jo and Petra and Po, which meant the paintings needed to be given to their rightful inheritors. I couldn’t imagine what else she was trying to say. Here in Prague, I needed to find Petra and deliver Mira’s gift to her. I emptied my lungs of stale breath and shrugged off the self-pity.

Before getting off the train, I felt inside the pocket of my uniform for the amulet—the evil eye—Dr. Stoddard had given me. I took it out and left it on the table under the window.

***

I alighted from the Arlberg Orient Express at Praha hlavní nádraží in Prague. I was tired. My eyes were dry. And I was smarting from my foolishness, trusting a perfect stranger with my belongings and losing my money in the bargain. For the first time, I was far from my mother’s touch, far from our flat, far from India. What if I couldn’t find my way around Prague? What if I never found Petra? What if I ran out of money? It had been easy enough to win at cards on the Viceroy under Dr. Stoddard’s protective guidance, but there was no way I could conjure a card game here where I knew no one. I scolded myself. Was I planning to spend the rest of the journey obsessing about things I couldn’t undo? I squared my shoulders and walked toward the station exit.

Outside the station, I stood for a moment, taking in my surroundings. It made me a little dizzy to think how far I’d come. I had toyed with the idea of following in Mira’s footsteps, and here I was actually doing it. Was I perhaps standing on the very spot where Mira and her mother had stood, waiting for the chauffer to unload their trunks? This was the station where they would have started their journeys to Florence and Paris. I closed my eyes and took in a lungful, inhaling strong coffee, somethingakin to vinegar, smoky fumes from the trains, cigarettes and—cabbage? I opened my eyes. There was a man standing a few feet from me playing the accordion, a cigarette dangling from his mouth. He nodded. I nodded back.

I used my schoolgirl French—grateful to have won a place at the convent school in Calcutta—and pointed to the map in my Baedeker’s. He indicated which tram to take for the British Embassy. On the tram, I didn’t have the proper currency (hellers and koruna), but seeing my nurse’s uniform, the conductor forgave my ticket. It was Dr. Stoddard’s idea to wear my uniform throughout my journey; I would be visible when it mattered and invisible when it didn’t.

Mira had described her birth city perfectly. Preserved bridges, centuries old, gold-tipped spires adorning churches and cathedrals, majestic stone buildings where kings and their ministers had strategized about how to rule Bohemia. Sleek automobiles and trams moved along the same roads as the occasional horse-drawn carriage. Men and women in their tailored coats and Parisian shoes moved with ease around the history that surrounded them.

***

The British Embassy was as majestic a building as the ones I’d passed through Prague’s Old and New Towns. At reception—which was even grander, with enormous oil paintings, silk settees and gilded candle sconces—an Englishwoman with lovely clear skin called upstairs for a Mr. Peabody, a jolly civil servant with eyes that faced in different directions. He came down to the foyer to accompany me upstairs to his office. As we climbed the stairs, he said, “Mr. Stoddard was most insistent we help you with your first visit here.” He ushered me into his neat office. “Good chap, Stoddard. Runs that embassy in Istanbul. Rising star.”

This was news to me. Edward was so humble that I’d assumed he was merely one of the diplomatic staff.

“Mind you, they all want the Paris post. Currently, however, all eyes are on Spain and Germany. Franco. Hitler. Mussolini. Beastly business. And just north of us, there’s unrest with the Sudeten Germans.” He folded his hands across his desk. “But you’re not here for that, are you? Now then, is it a nursing position you’re after?”

“What?” Confused, I frowned. Then I realized he was referring to my pinafore and cap. “No, sir. I need help on two other fronts.”

I could tell by the set of his shoulders that my accent had thrown him. Given my last name and ochre eyes, he’d assumed I’d sound properly British. But I’d been raised by English-­speaking nuns in India, and while I didn’t have the heavily accented English most Indians did, I certainly didn’t have the public-school accent he must have been expecting.

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