Page 65 of Six Days in Bombay

“And some of those cornichons too,” Berthe added, looking at Josephine with a sheepish smile.

“Here,” Josephine said, as she pushed her glass of Campari toward the woman. She spoke gently, far from the stern voice she’d used when I first approached her. “Berthe, I’ve told you about giving your work away. You are too good. Your work is too precious.”

“Yes, but I needed my medicine. And Ricard needs it.” She looked down at her fingernails, bitten to the quick. She balled her hands into fists, I assumed, to keep from biting them again.

Josephine took Berthe’s pink hands in her own mahogany ones. Berthe had a fair complexion with freckles covering her face, her arms and her hands. “You don’t need it, Berthe. And you don’t need Ricard to keep you from painting. He makes your life so much harder—”

“But I do need it, Jo! And I need Ricard.” Berthe had tears in her eyes now. “If I stop the medicine, I can’t paint.”

“Do you really know that or are you just afraid that it might be true?”

The omelet arrived and Berthe attacked it with the fervor of the half-starved. In between bites, she said, “I know it. The one time I stopped, I had such a headache I couldn’t concentrate. Ricard had to get me some just so the pain would go away.” She turned large pale blue eyes on Josephine, who sighed.

“Alright. If you won’t stop, at least find me next time and let me sell the work for you so you can eat. I can get you more money than Louis Le Grande can. I want you to at least eat and stay strong.”

Berthe smiled, revealing two missing teeth along her lower gums. “You’re so good to me, Jo. Pardon me for forgetting.” She eyed the wrapped painting sitting on the table. “Can I have the money now?”

“I have to sell it first.”

“What if you advance the money to me now?”

“Will you give it to Ricard?”

“He takes care of me, Jo. You know that.”

“Then the answer is no.”

“What if I don’t give it to him?”

“Then you’d be lying, and the answer would still be no.”

“He’s my whole life.”

“Painting is your whole life. You’ve worked so hard for it.”

Berthe swept her plate clean with a piece of bread. “Alright then. Can I have a Pernod?”

Josephine nodded and signaled to the waiter, then dug another cheroot out of the packet in her clutch.

Berthe reminded me of patients who felt sorry for themselves. They protested loudly as if they were the injured party when they had caused their own problems to begin with. Like Mr. Mittal who hadn’t followed instructions about how to clean and dress his wound and had returned with a more severe infection only to blame us for not treating it properly.

Outside, we heard voices chanting, faint at first, then getting louder. Like the protests of the textile workers back in Bombay.

Patrons left their seats to look out the café entrance; Josephine and Berthe stayed put. I got to the front door in time to watch a procession parading down Boulevard Raspail with placards that readLes Riches Doivent Payer!

A well-heeled customer consulted his gold pocket watch and said to the woman he was with, “They don’t realize the danger they’re in. Another war is coming; you can be sure of it. It will take a lot more than these protests to stop it.”

“They have every right to protest.” This was a younger man in a white shirt, the first four buttons undone, and an open vest. “Look at how many are without work. Four years ago, these cafés were bursting with patrons. Now look. Only every fourth table is taken.”

My stomach roiled. I wondered if coming to Europe had been such a good idea when there seemed to be so much unrest brewingunder the surface in Prague, and now in Paris. I’d heard the conversations everywhere I went: there might be another bloody war like the one the world had just endured. The battle between the Nazis, the Fascists, and the rest of Europe and the Americas. As they had done in the last war, the British would send the Indian Army to fight on their behalf. A tiny country like Britain couldn’t wage war otherwise. Indian soldiers would lose lives senselessly in a war they neither instigated nor profited from. I could picture the casualties, the mutilations and the deaths overwhelming the hospitals back home. My legs started to shake at the image, and I had to hold on to a café table to steady myself.

I was a little weak-kneed when I settled in my seat again. The waiter brought me a glass filled with red liquid. When he saw me eyeing it suspiciously, he said, “You’ve never had a Campari before?”

I shook my head, feeling foolish. Would I never be as worldly as Mira or Josephine or Petra? Who did I think I was, sitting at a café in Paris, pretending to be an adult?

“It might be a little bitter for your taste. But it’s good to drink before dinner.” He grinned, revealing a gap between his two front teeth. On someone else, it might not have been charming, but on him it was.

Gingerly, I tried a sip. It was sweet, light and, as he’d said, a little bitter. But I liked it. I drank the whole thing in one gulp. Given what I’d just seen outside, I needed the relief it brought. I asked for another. I was beginning to enjoy myself, thinking,Look at me now, Mum. I’m taking risks. Doing things I’ve never done. Only, I wish you were doing them with me.

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