Page 21 of Six Days in Bombay

“Princezno, you know how your mother is. She’s worried sick about you, but she’s also hurt. You do nothing but disobey her. Like Filip. Like moving to India. She gets angry. It wreaks havoc with her nerves.”

“Papa, you moved to India first. Why is it so wrong for me to?” Mira sounded angry.

“Well…”

“So, she’s not coming?” Now her tone was petulant, a disappointed child. That surprised me. Whenever she’d mentioned her mother to me, she’d sounded indifferent, as if they’d been friends who had drifted apart.

“How can she,broucku? She’s taking the waters in Geneva. Once you’re well again, you and I can go visit her.” I heard his chair scrape the floor, as if he were inching closer to the bed. “Now, do you want to know about my project? Rabbi Abraham has rounded up three more philanthropists to help pay for the new synagogue. We just need a little more and we’ll start building. And this is the best part, Mira.”

I could hear the excitement in his voice.

“We are going to ask Ruby Myers to cut the ribbon!”

I heard Mira scoff. “Really, Father! Bollywood royalty? Is this an opening for a synagogue or a burlesque show?” There was a pause. Mira raised her voice. “Sona, is that you at the door?”

I stepped into the room. Mira extended her hand to me. I took it automatically. She looked better than she had earlier. Her eyes were bright. Her color had returned.

“This is myotec,” she said, pointing her chin at the older gentleman in the room.

Her father rose from his chair to greet me formally, his hat in his hands. He was a beefy man, around sixty, with a prominent nose and rosy cheeks. His beard was close-cropped, neat. His thinning hair was plastered to his head with pomade. He wore a woolen suit with a vest and a gold watch chain like many European gentlemen of his generation. When I was a little girl, accompanying my mother to the homes of wealthy ladies whose measurements she was taking, I saw men like him planted in plump armchairs, reading the newspaper.

Mira beamed at her father. “Papa, this is my favorite nurse, Sona. See how shiny my hair is? She washed it for me.” The last word had barely left her mouth when she clenched her jaw, squeezed her eyes shut.

“It’s an honor to meet you, Mr. Novak,” I said. “I’m sorry to curb your visit, but your daughter needs her rest now.”

“Of course, Nurse. I will be on my way.” He walked to Mira’s bed with his hat in his hands and kissed her forehead.“Brzo se uzdrav.”

After he left the room, I began to prepare the injection for her, but she stopped me. “I was only pretending. I didn’t want him here anymore. All he ever does is make excuses for my mother.”

“Oh.”

She picked up the sketch pad and charcoal lying next to her. “Papa kept bringing up Filip.” She tapped a stick of charcoal on her pad. “We grew up together, Filip and I. He was like an older brother. I half hoped we would grow into passion. But we didn’t. Filip let me be. After a while, that was fine.” She stopped a moment to look at me, then started drawing again. “Filip seemed to exhibit no particular ambition. No desire to do anything. Whereas I have always had loads of ambition. Mountains of it. My dreams are bigger than this room, Sona. Bigger than this hospital, bigger than all of India. I want so much. All the time.” She sighed. “Do you ever feel like that?”

“Yes.” I surprised myself. It was the first time I’d said it aloud.

That cheered her up. “I knew it. I wanted to hear you say it.” She began sketching in earnest. “For a time, I wondered if Filip was keeping the best parts of himself to himself instead of sharing them with me.” She turned those large dark eyes on me. “But what if it wasn’t that? What if there was no more to him? What if there was no there there? as Gertrude Stein might say. I’d assumed that the reason he didn’t practice medicine was because there was a greater Filip inside. He wanted extraordinary things for himself like I did. That’s what I told Mother. She wasn’t having any of it. ‘Marrying your first cousin! The scandal! Your children will be backward. Why couldn’t you have married a baron or a prince?’” Mira stabbed her pad with the charcoal. “I didn’t want to marry a baron or a prince. All I wanted was to paint. To be a painter. To be agreatpainter. That’s all. Why could she never understand? Why couldn’t she see me as I was? Not as she wanted me to be?” Mira threw up her hands, the charcoal stick flying out of her hand, landing on the floor, breaking in two. “And now, when I need her, she won’t come because I’ve disappointed her. I didn’t become the person she planned for me to be.”

Her cheeks reddened. I felt her frustration. Here she was, so full of feeling, full of wanting, full of the energy she wanted to express through her art. She wanted to be understood by people who should have known better. Who should have cared enough to. I sat on her bed, something I never would have done with another patient, and, for the first time, I reached for her hand, not caring if her blackened fingers dirtied mine. She looked at me, pain flooding those luminescent eyes of hers. Then she released my hand and wrapped her arms around my neck, holding me tight. She wept, huge choking sobs. I stroked her hair. She was so young and so frightened and so alone. How stubborn did her mother have to be to refuse to come to her? How involved in his own life did her father have to be to pay her only one visit? And what about her ghost of a husband? Where was he in allthis? He’d brought the paintings she’d asked for. He’d brought the sketchbook and charcoals. But where was his heart? His love?

I rocked her until she quieted. Then I helped her lay down on the pillows.

She declined the injection she was due, saying she didn’t need it. Perhaps this was an indication that she was on the mend. At least I wanted to think it. Because I was reluctant to bring up Dr. Mishra’s suggestion that she challenge Dr. Holbrook’s treatment. It wasn’t my place.

As I was leaving her room, I heard hushed voices in the hallway. I recognized Matron’s and Dr. Holbrook’s. Something about their muted exchange made me hang back in the doorway.

The house surgeon was saying, “…told you before. Horace isn’t buying from reputable British sources. Probably Indian. Probably adulterated—”

Matron’s deep voice cut in. “Horace wouldn’t. He’s been running the pharmacy for twenty years.”

“And he’s your brother-in-law. How will that look if she dies? I’m under enough pressure from Mishra as it is. Fix it, Matron. Or we’re both culpable.”

Matron mumbled something I didn’t catch.

“His system… Clipboard indeed!”

“…always worked before.”

“Has it? How do we know… All the deaths… Wish she’d never come here. Doesn’t even paint properly. Give me Constable any day. And we don’t know, do we, what she might have done to that baby. That type of woman…”

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