Page 1 of Six Days in Bombay

Mira winced as a spasm of pain shot through her. I put my palm on her forehead. Her skin was burning, like a jalebi fresh from a pot of boiling oil. I grabbed a cotton towel from a stack by her bedside, wet it in her water glass and pressed it to her forehead. Her brow relaxed. She let out a sigh.

“What about the baby?” she asked, her speech slurred.

I opened my mouth to tell her, then thought better of it. “Let me get the doctor for you, ma’am.”

Her eyes shot open, as if she realized what I was going to say. “Oh, no!” Her eyes filled. “We must tell Paolo.”

I blinked. According to her chart, her husband’s name was Filip. Was it the morphine speaking? “Paolo?” I asked cautiously.

“My love. Taught me how to paint portraits. Until I met him, I could only paint landscapes. After that, it was as if people were the only things I could paint.” She spoke breathlessly, as if she were trying to catch the words before they floated away. “And now, Whitney has him copying the masters, which is a pity. What a waste of his talent! People like hanging the fakes on their walls, hoping their guests won’t know the difference. Most people wouldn’t.” She gripped my hand. “I’ll have Filip bring my paintings.” Her mouth twisted. “Of course, I only have the four left.” Her English was inflected with something other than the speech of the Burra Sahib or the lilting way we Anglo-Indians spoke. It was softer, the hard sounds squashed down.

She groaned, loudly this time, squeezing my hand so hard it hurt. The morphine was wearing off. I glanced at the wall clock. Two more hours before her next dose.

I eased my hand out of hers, removed the compress from her forehead, now warmed from her skin, and immersed it in the water glass. When I replaced it on her brow, she seemed to relax a little. “You have a lovely smile.”

A blush crept up my neck. Once, one of my teachers in third form had said the same thing to me within my mother’s hearing. My mother had spat on the ground to ward off evil spirits who didn’t approve of vanity. Ever since, I’d been wary of compliments, worried they might cause my mother to fall on her knees and pray to Krishna for my safety.

“Talk to me. Please,” the painter pleaded as she clasped my hand once more, wanting me to keep her pain company. I looked at our joined hands, a study in opposites: hers blue-veined and pale, nails bitten to the quick, remnants of paint embedded in the fingerprint swirls, and mine the color of sand, scrubbed clean, slightly chapped at the fingertips. The warmth of her skin, slightly moist from the fever, was strangely comforting, the way my mother’s touch was. Mira Novak seemed to crave intimacy as intensely as most patients avoided it; they wanted only to reclaim their body—the one we poked and prodded—as soon as possible, shrugging off the memory of their convalescence.

***

They had brought Miss Novak to Wadia Hospital around eleven o’clock at night. She was feverish and agitated, cradling her stomach with her arms. The back of her skirt was soaked with blood. Her husband, a pale man with broad shoulders, said she’d been complaining of pain for a few days.

The husband hadn’t stayed. He left shortly after bringing her in.

When Dr. Holbrook, the house surgeon, finished tending to her—she’d needed a few stitches and quite a bit of morphine—Matron assigned me to nurse her. This was not unusual. Patients who were the least bit foreign were assigned either to me or to Rebecca, the other Anglo-Indian nurse on the night shift, because we spoke fluent English. In the daytime, Matron would assign another Eurasian nurse or take care of the patient herself.

“She may be here awhile,” Matron whispered, with a meaningful glance at me.

We’re a small hospital, and the patient had been given a private room. It did not escape my notice that she could have been taken to a larger hospital popular with the British but, apparently, there had been need for discretion. Even so, rumors ricocheted around the halls. This was no simple miscarriage. She had tried to do it herself. Her husband had done it. She had tried to take her own life. I paid no attention. It was enough to know that a woman needed our help; our job was to heal her.

Even before I read her chart, I knew who she was. Mira Novak. The painter. Famous, even here in Bombay. I’d seen her photo and read about her in the Bombay Chronicle . The article said she had studied painting at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenza in Italy when she was just fifteen, the youngest student ever admitted. Her Hindu mother, a woman of high caste, had accompanied her daughter from their home in Prague to Florence, and ultimately to Paris, to nurture Mira’s talent. Until the age of twenty, Mira had never once stepped foot in India. But when I looked at the images of her paintings in the article, I didn’t see Paris or Florence or any of the other faraway places I dreamed about visiting one day. I saw village women in saris, their skin much darker than mine or Mira’s. In her paintings, the women sat quietly, somberly, as they painted henna on each other’s hands or tended sheep in the hills or pasted cow dung on the walls of their homes. Why was a young woman of privilege obsessed with the ordinary, the poor? I wondered.

She was six years older than I was—twenty-nine by the date on her chart. To my mind, she was lovely. Smooth, unblemished skin. A brow line that angled toward hollowed cheekbones. Even though her eyes were closed, I could tell they were large, perhaps a little protuberant, but in a way that would be attractive in her face, dominating it, demanding the viewer’s gaze. Her nose, which ended in a slightly upturned tip, gave her an imperious look. That must have come from her royal bloodline. She wasn’t beautiful. My mother would have said she was striking, that her face had character.

***

Now she blinked, her eyes round, regarding me curiously, as if we hadn’t spoken a few minutes earlier. Her pupils were constricted, and she seemed disoriented.

“Mrs. Novak?” I waited for a flicker of recognition. “You are at Wadia Hospital, ma’am. In Bombay. You were brought in several hours ago.” I spoke quietly, in English accented with Hindi.

She frowned. She looked down at her torso, then back up at me. “Not Mrs.,” she said, “Miss Novak.”

“My apologies, ma’am.” I didn’t quite understand but I didn’t let it show. How could a woman be married and still carry her maiden name? Still, my job was not to question, and after what happened in Calcutta, I was wary of speaking what was on my mind. There, I wasn’t the only nurse whose breasts and behind were pinched by male patients, but I was the only one who had complained—often and loudly—which gave the Matron at the Catholic hospital a migraine and the license to banish me from her sight. I was a troublemaker, she said. Why hadn’t I just kept my mouth shut like the others?

But I wasn’t in Calcutta anymore. I was in Bombay. And I promised my mother things would be different here.

“How are you feeling, ma’am?”

She closed her eyes and laughed lightly. “I’ve been better, Nurse…” She let it hang, waiting for me to fill in the blank.

“Falstaff, ma’am.”

“And your first name?”

Warm honey spread through my limbs. Most patients didn’t bother with anything beyond Nurse or Sister . “It’s Sona,” I said shyly.

She opened her eyes. “Sona? Like…” She pointed to the tiny gold hoops on my earlobes.

I smiled. “Yes, ma’am. It means gold.” I could have told her that my mother had pierced my ears on the third month after my birth. Auspicious , the pundit had told her. She’d taken me to a goldsmith—a safer choice than the tailor. The jeweler had threaded a thin black cord through the holes with a gold needle and told her to bring me back in two weeks. If I’d been able to speak at that age, I would have told my mother not to bother with the expense. The tiny gold hoops he inserted when my mother brought me back cost her two months’ earnings.

But I said none of this to the new patient. I didn’t talk about my life with anyone except Indira. And even with her, I only revealed a little at a time, the way Gandhi spun thread on his charkha , adding only as much cotton to the spool as he needed.

Mira cried out, more sharply this time. My body jerked in response. It wouldn’t hurt to give her a smaller dose, would it? As soon as I did, Mira’s eyes closed. I watched the painter until she was breathing evenly. Then, I left the room to attend to my other charges.

***

I found Ralph Stoddard in his striped cotton pajamas reading the newspaper by the light of his bedside lamp. He had broken his left leg when he slipped on the floor of his bungalow. His servant had recently finished polishing it, but Dr. Stoddard hadn’t noticed. He’d been flicking through his mail, walking toward his study. A retired doctor, he was eighty, if a day. At his age, it was easy to break a bone or two.

“It’s three o’clock in the morning, Doctor,” I scolded.

He lowered a corner of the paper and regarded me through the thick lenses of his spectacles, which made him look like an owl. “I’ve broken my leg, Nurse. Not my ability to tell time.” A smile played about his lips—lips so thin they folded into his mouth. “Besides, with that racket—” he pointed with his chin toward his snoring roommate, Mr. Hassan “—who could catch a wink?” He went back to reading the paper. On the front page was more news about the Hindenburg disaster. Casualties continued to be found in Lakehurst, New Jersey, a place so far and exotic to me that I couldn’t ever imagine seeing it in person.

“It says here England has started an emergency 999 service.” He tapped the paper. “If India had one, I would have used it when I fell like a blasted domino in my house instead of waiting for Ramu to return from the shops.” He folded the paper and set it aside. “Fancy a game?” he asked hopefully.

I hesitated. We were short-staffed, and I had many patients to look after. But it had been three hours since my last break, and I could use a breather. Besides, Dr. Stoddard’s good humor was hard to resist. He was an insomniac who could always coax me into playing backgammon when I had a little time. At his insistence, his nephew Timothy had brought a game board from home, which Dr. Stoddard now kept on his bedside table.

I asked if we wouldn’t wake Mr. Hassan in the other bed. He raised his eyebrows and observed dryly, “Not even the Hindenburg disaster could rouse that man.”

When Dr. Stoddard had first asked me if I played, I’d said yes. There was a girl at school in Calcutta who’d tried to teach me. But the bell for the next class always rang before we could finish a game. She was a fast player; it took me forever to catch up.

“Smashing,” he’d said, his smile sly. On our first game, I noticed he moved his stone six wedges instead of the five on his dice. I let him. After all, I was there to help him pass the time, not challenge him. After the fifth time he made a fast move, he threw up his hands. “Dammit, woman, why are you letting me cheat?”

Too startled to speak, I stared at him.

He took off his glasses to clean them with the bottom edge of his pajama top. “I cheat. Can’t help myself. Need someone to tell me I’m a wanker.”

I was appalled. “I don’t think I’m allowed to say that, Doctor.”

“Who says?”

“Well… Matron would never…”

He leaned across the board and pushed his spectacles farther back on his nose so his eyes were magnified. “She’s not here then, is she? Unless she’s hiding behind the door.”

Automatically, I turned to look at the door to his room. When I turned around again, he had moved all his stones on his side of the board, effectively winning the game.

He gave me a charming smile. “Jolly bad luck for you. Another go, then?”

Tonight, as he set up the board, I turned my wrist to look at my watch. Mrs. Mehta was due for her pill in another half hour.

“Focus, Nurse. Focus,” the doctor said.

These days, the game went faster. Ever since I’d taken to calling him on the liberties he took with his stones, he’d stopped cheating. I scrutinized the board with a sharper eye and strategized my moves. Ralph Stoddard had made a competitor out of me.

Ten minutes into the game, I heard my name being called. I looked over my shoulder to see my friend Indira, a stack of folded sheets covering half her face. She worked the same shift I did and we often walked home together, but I hadn’t seen her since I clocked in at six this evening.

I excused myself and warned the doctor, “Do not move those stones while I’m gone. I have eyes in the back of my head.”

“Cross my heart and hope to die,” he said, “like a good Christian.” We both knew he was lying; he was an atheist.

***

I followed Indira down the hall. Perhaps she needed my help changing a bed. But she opened the door to the stockroom and said, “Lock the door.”

Puzzled, I did as she said.

Then she turned and lowered the stack of sheets that had obscured her face. There was a cut on her upper lip and a bruise on her cheek.

“Oh, Indira.” I rushed to my friend and took the sheets from her, setting them down on the bench in the middle of the room. “Let me see.” Gingerly, I touched her cheek where a red spot was starting to bloom. “Sit down,” I commanded. Like a child, she did as she was told and started to cry.

The stockroom consisted of a wall of shelves where sheets, towels and pillowcases were stacked. At the far end was a first-aid closet. The nurses’ lockers were on the opposite wall. (Doctors had their own changing room.) I loved the clean scent of this room: lavender, linen, rose water, a hint of antiseptic.

I hurried to the first-aid closet and removed the hypochlorite solution, antiseptic ointment and gauze. Back at the bench, I found Indira delicately trying to wipe away her tears, wincing when her hand touched the bruise.

As I cleaned the blood from her lip, I asked, “Balbir?”

She nodded.

I grit my teeth. It wasn’t the first time her husband had laid a hand on her. “The cheekbone isn’t shattered. Small comfort.” I dried the cut with gauze, cleaned it with the antiseptic and applied a little ointment. “Was it the same this time?”

“Hahn.” She dropped her voice a few registers, imitating her husband. “‘Three girls and no son! What is the matter with you?’” She switched to her normal speech. “As if I could do anything about it!” She was crying in earnest now, not bothering to wipe the tears.

“You’ll ruin all my good work, you know,” I said gently. I squatted in front of her and took her hands in mine.

She tried for a smile but the cut on her upper lip stopped her. “I know what you’re going to say, Sona.”

“And what’s that?” I released her and bit off a strip of gauze, which I used to pad the swelling below her eyes.

“That having a son is beyond my control. I’m a nurse, Sona! I know that. But he doesn’t believe it. You want me to leave him. You’ve never said it, but I know. And if I leave him, where am I going to go? His mother and father would throw me out of the house and keep the girls.” She sniffed. I gave her more gauze to blow her nose. “Can you imagine what their lives would be like? I can’t let that happen.”

I sighed. Short of treating her wounds, there seemed to be nothing I could do for her. Centuries of tradition had made daughters, wives, mothers dispensable. They either did what their men and their in-laws wanted or they paid an untenable price. To say my mother had been lucky never to have met her English in-laws was laughable. She’d suffered also. When she took up with my father, her family had cut her off as cleanly as an errant thread on a sari.

In my locker, I kept a compact. My mother used cedarwood, sesame seeds and costus root to blend a face powder that made her skin tone lighter. She’d always been proud of my fair skin, which Indians prized for its ability to attract suitable mates, but she still wanted me to use the powder. She also swore by Afghan Snow, a beauty cream endorsed by the king of Afghanistan. I refused to use either, but to appease her I accepted her gifts and kept them in my locker at work. Now, I lightly dusted Indira’s cheek and the top of her lip with the face powder.

Indira watched me. “Balbir wasn’t always like this. Until our second was born, he would bring me a laddoo from the vendor down the street or a sari he’d seen at the bazaar. I loved him then. That was before he started going to Mahalaxmi.” With the pressure of so many daughters and the dowries he would have to pay for their weddings, Indira’s husband had started trying his luck at the horse track. So far, he’d been losing.

I put my hand on hers. She had happy memories of her husband, and that was good. But those memories paled in comparison to what he’d become.

A knock at the door startled us. Indira and I both stood up. I looked a question at her, and she nodded, straightening her nurse’s apron. I unlocked and opened the door.

It was Rebecca, the other half-English nurse who worked at Wadia’s. Her eyes narrowed when she saw us. “Don’t you two have work to do?” She looked first at me, then at Indira behind me. I shielded Indira from Rebecca’s scrutiny.

I gave her my warmest smile. “How are you, Rebecca? Your parents keeping well?” When I first came to Wadia’s, I’d assumed she and I, because we shared a common heritage, would become friends. In the end, it was Indira and I who had become close. I wondered if it was because Matron assigned the patients who required the most sensitive handling to me, even though Rebecca had been at the hospital longer. And perhaps the rumors, which might have swayed Matron, were true. Supposedly, Rebecca had become involved with one of the married doctors, who had subsequently transferred to another city. I’d been the subject of rumors long enough— Sona’s father was an escaped convict who had to be sent back to England; he stole from the army before he left; he drugged her mother to bed her —to know they rubbed your skin raw, making it bleed on the inside. I had no desire to defend my father, but I also didn’t want Rebecca to assume I was one of the rumormongers. Sometimes, I brought her slices of toffee butter cake my mother had made or a pink peony from our garden to soften her, ease her into a friendship. So far, it hadn’t worked.

Rebecca assumed a strange smile, full of teeth and no feeling. “We’re all well, thank you. My sister is pregnant again. And your mother, Sona? How is she keeping? Not too lonely, I hope?”

I flinched. Rebecca still had both her parents. Her English mother had fallen in love with her Indian math teacher while she was at boarding school and married him. Rebecca had two siblings from that marriage—a real family—right here in Bombay. My father had abandoned my mother with two small children. It was something I confided to Rebecca when I first started working at Wadia. Then, she’d seemed friendly enough, gifting me a copy of Jane Eyre . Now, she was taking pleasure in reminding me that my mother had been deserted, and I regretted having been so indiscreet.

I felt my face grow warm, even as I answered, “She has her sewing.”

Rebecca stepped closer, close enough for me to see the acne scars on her cheeks. “Seamstress for hire,” she said, her head tilting in a gesture of concern. “Poor thing.” She put a sympathetic arm on my shoulder. It made me shudder, and I stepped back until her arm fell away.

“I need to stop at the pharmacy.” I excused myself, skirting around her to leave the stockroom.

Behind me, I heard Rebecca, her voice deceptively warm, say, “Did you fall down again, Indira?”

***

The hospital pharmacy was a small windowless room lined with shelves containing bottles of pills, herbs and liquids. It was staffed by a short, humorless man named Horace. Word had it that he was an Ayurvedic compounder long before the designation of pharmacist became official. Even without that title, Matron trusted him, having worked with him for twenty years. She also trusted us to sign out only the medication we needed when he left for lunch or for the day. Those of us on the night shift were used to recording which drugs we’d removed on behalf of which patients. I made a note on the clipboard attached to the door of his domain: Mrs. Mehta and Miss Novak.

My next stop was Mrs. Mehta’s room. A woman of forty-five, she was a regular at the hospital. Sometimes complaining of back pain, sometimes indigestion, sometimes migraines that needed immediate attention. I’d learned over time that she had a very trying father-in-law, who lived with the family, and found fault with everything she served for dinner or the way his shirts were ironed or the chai that was served too cold. The only way she found relief was to spend a few days in the hospital.

Her husband, a sweet cherubic man who ran a factory where they made earthen clay pots, was devoted to his wife but frightened of his father, who owned the factory. The Mehta family was well-known in society circles, which included many of Wadia Hospital’s patrons, so Matron looked the other way whenever his wife checked in.

As soon as I walked into her room, Mrs. Mehta, who was a light sleeper, raised herself to sitting. “I haven’t slept a wink. I’ve been making chai in my sleep over and over so it will be hot enough for His Highness.”

I smiled as I stacked pillows behind her back. “Why not make Bippi do it?” I’d become familiar with the family during Mrs. Mehta’s frequent stays and knew quite a lot about her household: her favorite servant’s name, her favorite food, her regret at being childless.

She brought the fingertips of one hand together up to her forehead, then let go as if she were sprinkling salt. “His Highness won’t accept tea from a servant. It has to be made with my hands, as clumsy as he says they are.”

I’d heard this before, of course. “I think they’re lovely hands, ma’am.”

Her expression brightened. She waved me over. We’d been through this before so I lowered my head without being asked. She placed her palms on my head to bless me. I didn’t believe in gods, Indian or Christian, but I appreciated the gesture for the goodwill she wished me. I returned her smile.

I’d brought a pill in a small cup, which I handed to her, along with a glass of water. She took her medicine like a good patient. Matron told me they were sugar pills.

Mrs. Mehta turned eager eyes in my direction. “I hear we have a world-famous patient visiting us.”

That made me laugh. Mrs. Mehta thought of hospital stays as vacation visits, which is what they were to her.

“I know she’s female. And India only has the one female painter everyone knows about.” She looked to me for confirmation.

I pressed my lips to keep from smiling.

“So it must be Mira Novak?”

“You know I can neither confirm nor deny.”

She nodded sagely. “‘ A rogue chowkidar can make the village bankrupt.’”

As troubled as Mrs. Mehta was about her situation at home, she had all the comforts I wished for my mother. A big house. A loving husband. A home full of servants. Enough saris to fill five armoires. Even with her limited resources, my mother had given me so much when she’d had so little. Would I ever be able to provide a life like Mrs. Mehta’s for my mother?

I shook my head. My dreams were cobwebs spun from gold. That’s what my mother would have said.

***