Page 15 of Six Days in Bombay

The five-story apartment building was adjacent to the Vltava River. Like many of the buildings I’d seen in Prague, the Hitzig home and this row of elite residences bore more of a resemblance to British architecture than Indian. Gone were the minarets. Gone were the bulbous domes. Gone was the red sandstone. These buildings were flat-faced, angular, far less decorated than Indian ones, with row upon row of windows. The only embellishments were Greek and Italian statues like the ones from my old schoolbooks. At the top of the Hitzig residence was a colorful fresco of a woman lying on a bed, half-clothed, playing a harp with angels in attendance. Their counterparts in India were statues carved from stone of naked men and women—usually in the process of making love—ornate belts, anklets and bracelets their only clothing. The fresco woman looked as if she were posing. The naked statues did not. I smiled: one point for India.

I steeled myself for what was to come next. Either this would be Mira’s Petra or I would have to start my search at the Minerva school they had attended as girls.

When I rang the buzzer to the right of the enormous wooden door, a primly dressed maid, her hair in a bun, answered. Her expression was polite even as I saw a flicker of alarm in her eyes at the sight of my pinafore and cap.

“I’m here to see Miss Hitzig,” I said in French, which Mr. Peabody had advised I use with the likes of the Hitzigs. My schoolgirl French would have to do.

She hesitated a fraction of a second before opening the door wider. I entered a marbled foyer. It was cooler inside the building than it was outside. The end of May in Bombay would be sweltering. In Prague, I shivered, glad I’d worn Dr. Stoddard’s sweater before leaving my lodging. Straight ahead was the entrance to a small courtyard at the back of the building. To the left was a staircase that encircled the narrow room and seemed to go up and up and up, like that story my mother used to read to me, Jack and the Beanstalk . I looked up. High in the center of the ceiling was a leaded glass window. To my right were enormous paintings in gold frames where important-looking white men silently passed judgment on visitors. I could hear the faint sound of music, reminding me of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik , the night music Mira had hummed to me.

The maid led me up four flights of stairs. Along the way were more gilt-framed paintings, potted palms and thick rugs under our feet. There was a door at every landing, which I assumed was the entrance to another part of the house. The music got louder the higher we went. Once we were on the top floor, I could see that the stained-glass window on the roof was much larger than it appeared from the ground floor.

The music was coming from the apartment on this floor. The maid made a little moue with her mouth, as if she’d tasted something rancid, and indicated that I would find Miss Petra behind the door. Then she made her way back down the stairs.

I knocked, but the music coming from the flat was so loud I was sure no one inside had heard me. I turned the doorknob, found it unlocked and opened the door slowly.

“Who are you?” Petra demanded. Even though I didn’t speak Czech, the tone of her voice told me what she was asking. She was peering at me from behind a large canvas on an easel. She looked exactly as Mira had described her. Red-gold hair falling in waves across her shoulders and down her back. A wide mouth. Freckles across her long nose. The kind of pale complexion that can barely tolerate an hour in the sun. She was so thin I could see her hip bones protruding through her silky hand--embroidered Chinese robe, left open to reveal a slip the color of a peach.

Unlike the cool of the stairwell, Petra’s flat was as hot as Bombay. It smelled stale, like the odor of unwashed bodies I knew so well from the hospital. The apartment was one large room that no one had bothered to finish. The walls were redbrick with white mortar. The floorboards were so old that there were now spaces between the wooden planks. Rough wood beams held up the ceiling. It looked like an attic of one of those colonial homes where I’d once attended an unwell servant.

I walked a few paces into the room. “Vous parlez francais?”

“For God sakes, shut the door!” she said in French.

I hurried to do her bidding. When I turned around, Petra was lighting a match to a cigarette. Through narrowed eyes, she considered her painting, turning her head this way and that. She picked up her brush and dabbed it gingerly on the canvas. Her eyes strayed to me, standing a few feet from her now. She seemed to remember she had a visitor.

“Alors?” she said, taking a drag from her cigarette. For the first time, she regarded me seriously, looking me up and down. She frowned. “Is someone sick?”

I looked down at myself. The uniform again! “No—no. I’ve come to give you something.” I gestured to the canvas bag I was carrying.

“I can barely hear you, you know.” Before I could repeat myself, she turned to the bed behind her, a rumpled hillock of white sheets. A few of the pillows were scattered on the floor.

Petra said, “Káva!” to the bed. The hillock moved, then stopped.

“Now,” she said.

This time, a young man’s arm, then a leg, followed by a torso, emerged. He was naked. He stretched and yawned, his stomach muscles contracting. Then he shook his head as if to wake himself and headed to a makeshift kitchen, which consisted of a counter with a two-burner cooktop, a small sink and a wall cabinet.

I’d seen naked men and women in the course of my work, but never outside of it.

Dirty-blond hair hung over his eyes. I watched the muscles of his back move as he lifted the coffee jar, poured the beans into a coffee grinder. Then he reached for the tap to fill the most unusual coffee maker I’d ever seen—a stainless steel globe with a green plastic handle. He filled the funnel with ground coffee, plugged in the cord. His buttock muscles tensed as he walked to the radio near the bed and turned the knob. Suddenly, silence. I followed his walk back to bed.

Petra said, “Pretty, isn’t he?” She smiled through a smoky exhale. I blushed, embarrassed to be caught staring. I turned to Petra, who had returned to her canvas. “It’s about Miss Novak. Your old schoolmate.”

She blinked. “Mira?”

I loosened my grip on the canvas bag. “I’m sorry I bring sad news. Miss Novak was recently treated at the Wadia Hospital in Bombay, where I work. She died three weeks ago—quite suddenly.” I watched her reaction. At the hospital, some people had fainted on the spot when I told them a patient had died.

Petra’s mouth was somewhere between a grimace and a smile. “Mira? My Mira? But she can’t be more than twenty-nine? Same age as me. She’s too young. Are you sure you have the right Mira?”

“You’ve known each other since you were little girls. You went to Minerva Gymnasium together? She called you ovce ?”

Petra’s brush dripped yellow paint onto the floor. She looked down at the splat, which was rapidly creating a star pattern on the wood. Only then did I notice paint splotches scattered all over the floorboards. I doubt the maid ever came in here. Perhaps she wasn’t allowed.

Petra’s hand shook as she set the paintbrush on her palette. She pulled her robe closed and crossed her arms over her chest as if she were suddenly cold. She seemed to be in shock. I waited for her questions.

“How? And how do you know?” she finally said.

“My name is Sona Falstaff. I was the night nurse in charge of her care in Bombay. She was admitted for a miscarriage. She underwent minor surgery and appeared to be recovering, but after six days…nothing could be done.” I didn’t want to tell her about the morphine, the accusation leveled against me, the gossip circulating in the halls about a possible abortion or the aspersions cast on Mira’s flamboyant lifestyle.

Her forehead creased. “She was pregnant?”

I nodded.

“But she never cared for babies. Told me she’d rather die than break open her body that way.” Her cigarette had burned down enough to scorch her finger. She dropped the stub on the floor and blew on her finger to cool it. I realized that the blackened spots on the old hardwood weren’t paint; she was in the habit of dropping cigarettes wherever she seemed to be standing.

“So what happened?” She was rocking back and forth on her heels, her arms clasped around her thin frame. I saw the glint of tears in her eyes.

I chose my words carefully. “Everything was done that could be done. I know no more.”

“Then what are you doing here?” Her tone was hostile. She wiped at her eyes with the flat of her hand.

I’d seen it before. The transition from shock to anger. I knew it wasn’t personal, so I never took it that way.

“I wondered if you’d talk to me about her. I only knew her for six days. You knew her from girlhood.”

“But I hadn’t seen her in—oh—six years. When she married Filip. No, wait. I saw her two years ago when she came to exhibit her work at the National Gallery. They organized a retrospective in her honor.” Petra pushed her hair back behind her ears. “She left Prague when she was fifteen to go to Florence. A few years later, her father moved the family to India.”

“So I heard.”

Petra opened her mouth, then looked over at the bed, where her male companion seemed to have fallen asleep again. She turned to her canvas with a critical eye. She’d been painting him, lying in bed, his leg uncovered, his head turned away from the viewer. She raised her voice to address him. “Looks like I’m out of charcoal paint, Henrich. I need to go out and get more.” She sat on the bed and started pulling on short boots over her bare feet.

The boy—I saw now that he couldn’t have been more than sixteen or seventeen—raised his head, pointed to the coffeepot and said something in Czech. He sounded irritated. I was sure it had something to do with the fact that the coffee was ready and she was the one who had made him get out of bed for it.

Petra blew him a kiss and walked briskly to the door. She was still in her slip and Chinese robe.

I stood dumbly in the middle of her flat, canvas bag over my shoulder, while she opened the door and went through it. What had just happened? Was I meant to follow her?

She’d almost shut the door behind her when she stopped herself, stuck her head through the opening and gestured with her chin that I should follow.

***

Out in the street, Petra walked quickly, her robe fluttering around her. I had to jog to catch up. Most people we saw on the street were wearing suit jackets or light coats. I was comfortable in my mohair sweater over my uniform. Petra seemed neither to feel the cold out here or the stifling heat of her apartment.

Two middle-aged women with shopping bags were coming toward us, their hands encased in gloves. Each wore a jacket and skirt tailored for their figures. They looked disapprovingly at Petra’s far more casual attire, but she seemed not to notice.

She kept her voice low as she said, “It’s difficult now. You don’t know who’s listening. Which side they’re on. It’s best to keep personal business to yourself.” We turned left at the corner and kept walking along the Vltava. “There’s talk of another war. We don’t want Hitler anywhere near here but with talk of a Munich Agreement, it’s a possibility. Henrich—” she pointed back at her building “—is German-Czech. But we don’t talk about which side he’s on. I don’t want to know.” She crossed her arms over her flat chest. “Peace is fragile.”

We had walked two long blocks from her building when she entered what looked like a coffeehouse with the sign Kavarna Slavia. Across the street was a massive renaissance building four or five stories high. It looked as grand as the Royal Opera House in Bombay. Petra saw me looking and said, “The National Theater.”

The café walls were lined in rich red-dark mahogany. The white marble floor and the tall windows overlooking the street brought in more than enough light for a cheerful effect. The smell of coffee and pastries reminded me that I hadn’t eaten since my cream tea on the train the previous day.

It was three o’clock in the afternoon. The café was a cacophony of people chatting, glasses clinking, a man playing jazz on the piano. Every now and then staccato laughter burst through the din. Petra said hello to a great many people. There were older men in close-cropped beards who wore elaborate costumes, like the Shakespeare plays I had been to in India. Petra kissed their cheeks. She didn’t introduce me. Several young women and men called out to her to join them. She smiled and waved them off, settling for a small round table with two chairs. As soon as we sat down, she pulled a silver case out of her robe and lit a cigarette.

“Was it Filip’s?”

For a moment, I was confused by her question. “Oh, you mean the baby?” Before I could answer, she asked another.

“Was it painful for her?”

I hesitated. It was against code to discuss a patient’s medical details. “She was suffering,” I said simply. Given the heavy dose of morphine I had to administer every four hours, it was hard to tell how much pain she was in when so much would have been dulled by the medication.

There was a glass ashtray on every table, and the room was thick with smoke. Petra twirled her cigarette on the rim of the ashtray. She seemed somber now, less brusque. Her eyelashes were wet. I sensed that underneath her bold manner was a woman not fully in control of her feelings. I looked away, my eye resting on a painting of a gentleman in conversation with what looked like a female genie. Or was it a ghost?

“The green fairy,” Petra said. I turned to see her pointing to the painting. “He’s drinking absinthe. Makes you see things that aren’t there.”

A waiter in a white shirt, black vest and black pleated trousers carrying a small round tray approached our table. He greeted Petra with a smile, and they exchanged pleasantries in Czech. She said something and I caught the word kafe . I hoped she wasn’t ordering coffee for me. I was used to tea heavily tempered with milk. Two days ago when I’d been served Turkish coffee, my stomach had protested.

Petra took a deep drag of her cigarette. “Where was Filip all this time?”

“Her husband brought her to the hospital. I saw him two times after that. He might have visited on other occasions, but I didn’t see him. I do the night shift.”

She blew smoke from the side of her mouth. “Did her father come to see her at the hospital? Did her mother?”

“Her father came. Her mother couldn’t make it.” I decided it was better to be vague than misrepresent the situation.

Petra scoffed. “Mira’s mother didn’t like her husband paying attention to his own daughter. It’s why she was always taking Mira off to Paris and Florence and Rome. And when the three of them were together, Mrs. Novak pretended to be weak and helpless so her husband would be forced to think only about his wife. But even in death?” She shook her head, blew smoke from her mouth. “On the first day of school, all Czech children bring a small bouquet of flowers for the teacher. Mira’s mother would forget to prepare one. Mira was embarrassed to come to class empty-handed, so she found ways to miss the first day of school. One time, I made my mother send me with two bouquets so I could give one to Mira, but she was too proud to take it.” Petra wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.

I remember the painter telling me she’d been raised by governesses, which meant she wouldn’t have had as much contact with her mother as I had had with mine. So perhaps a motherless existence was normal in the world she and Petra had been born into. Still, Mira had cried when she learned her mother wouldn’t come to sit at her bedside. From everything Mira had told me and what Petra was telling me now, Mira’s mother didn’t deserve her daughter’s affection. She must have made the painter think she was unlovable. It angered me. Wasn’t that how my father made me feel when he couldn’t love me enough to stay in India?

“The irony is that her father was too busy to pay either of them any mind,” Petra was saying. “He’d become obsessed with building that synagogue in Bombay. He felt at home in India. Her parents have a house in Bombay, but they’re usually somewhere else. On a tiger shoot or visiting a physic garden or taking the waters somewhere.”

Petra’s eyes had welled up. She sniffed. I reached in my pocket for a handkerchief, but an old gentleman got there before me. He was one of the people Petra had nodded hello to when we entered the café. He’d been sitting alone at a corner table. He was a dapper sort: flower in his buttonhole, handkerchief in his breast pocket. His suit was a little loose on him, as if he had shrunken inside it, but made of quality material. Having a seamstress for a mother had taught me the difference between choice and cheap fabrics.

The gentleman had his hat in his hand. Petra looked up at him and touched his arm. She spoke in Czech. He patted her shoulder, leaving his hand there for a long moment. Then, he offered me a smile before placing the hat on his head. He walked to the café entrance a little shakily.

Petra watched him go. “My grandfather—my děde?ek . He lives in the apartment below mine. My parents have the first floor. It’s been our family home for two hundred years.” She gathered her copper-colored hair from the back of her head and pulled it down her left shoulder. “I think he likes me more than my parents do. He comes to this café even though it’s a place for artists and writers and actors. Tradition forced him to run the glassworks factory like his father before him and like my father now, but I think my děde?ek would have loved being a playwright.”

The waiter delivered a coffee to Petra and a hot chocolate with a large mound of whipped cream and a sliver-thin wafer for me. He set a bowl of sugar cubes, a small jug of milk and two pastries on the small marble table. After giving us our cloth napkins and utensils, he left quietly. I was touched that Petra thought to order something other than coffee for me. She smiled when she saw me examining my drink. I was wondering whether to spoon the cream into my mouth first or try to drink the hot chocolate through it.

“Mira loved the hot chocolate here.” Petra poured milk in her coffee and stirred.

I took a bite of the crumbly pastry, surprised at the creamy center. I was used to my mother’s bread pudding and Indian katli and burfi , which were dense, heavier sweets. The Czech pastry hit my empty stomach with such a rush that I had to stop chewing for a few seconds. “You said the Novaks left Prague—what—ten years ago?”

Petra took a sip of her coffee. “Mira’s father—like mine—is Jewish. He didn’t feel safe after the big war. Being so close to Germany rattled him—he rattled easily. No country in Europe felt safe. And since his wife was Indian…” She lifted her shoulder in an elegant shrug and lit another cigarette. “Her mother took it hard. She didn’t want to go back to India. Loved the European lifestyle. French couture. Italian cuisine. The freedom. She used Mira’s painting as an excuse to travel all over Europe.”

I wiped crumbs from my lips with the cloth napkin. “Did Miss Novak enjoy that?”

“Oh, she welcomed the absences from school. For Mira, painting was the only education she needed. She much preferred painting all day in a studio to sitting in class with a chemistry book. Art was her air. Do you know what I mean? It allowed her to breathe.”

Petra had barely touched her pastry. Now she broke off a flaky bit and chewed it.

“I remember one time our history teacher told us to write an essay about what influence the Habsburg dynasty had on Europe. Mira brought in a large painting three times the size of this coffee table. She’d painted an abstract piece with all these wild colors. The teacher said, ‘What’s this?’ ‘Inbreeding,’ she said.” Petra laughed. It was a hoarse sound, a smoker’s laugh. “The teacher didn’t know what to make of it. But Mira was completely serious. In her mind, she had done the assignment.”

When Petra laughed, I could imagine her with Mira, two young girls doubled over, giggling. I wished I’d been a part of their friendship, their shared experiences.

Mira’s friend rotated her cup on her saucer. Smoke from her cigarette swirled up to the ceiling. I noticed she’d drained her coffee while my hot chocolate sat, cooling. I’d eaten all the whipped cream. I took a sip.

“She was a real talent, Mira was. I have skill. But I have to work hard at it. Mira only had to be shown a certain style and she picked it up right away. Realism. Cubism. Impressionism. Post-Impressionism. Surrealism. So easily.” She stubbed out her cigarette in the ashtray. “Like the style just crawled up her arm into the fingers holding her brush.”

Was it resentment or admiration I heard in Petra’s voice?

She studied me with her green-brown eyes, a hint of wariness in them. “Why have you come all this way to tell me? Couldn’t you have written?”

“I didn’t have your address. Or your last name. Mira had given me hints. She told me you’d been at Minerva together. I would have gone there to find you if the British Embassy hadn’t been able to help me. Luckily, your family is well-known here.”

A young man with a goatee and round tortoiseshell glasses set his satchel down on the table next to us. He greeted Petra in Czech. She didn’t seem pleased to see him. Her response included a lilt of her chin to indicate me. Was she saying I was a friend? Did she say anything to him about Mira’s death?

In French, she said, “This is Pavel. He teaches history at Charles University.”

Pavel smiled. He was one of those who smiles easily and often—like Edward Stoddard. He shook my hand. “Bonjour.” His hand was slightly sweaty. “I’m an associate professor. Not full professor yet.” His deference was charming. He gestured for the waiter to take his order. To me, he said, “Where are you from?”

“India. Bombay.”

The young man grinned. “But that’s fantastic. You’ve come all this way to see Petra? How do you know each other?”

Petra cut him off in Czech and stood up, gathering her silver cigarette case. I stood up too, not knowing what I was meant to do.

Pavel said to me, “Are you coming to Petra’s exhibit tonight? It’s going to be a big splash.”

“She’s not interested.” Petra’s reply was curt.

“But I am,” I said. “Perhaps there will be others there who knew Miss Novak.”

“Mira?” Pavel’s face lit up. “We all know Mira. She’s so famous now. And we’re all famous by extension. Isn’t that so, Petra?”

Petra narrowed her eyes and pursed her lips. Just then, another one of Petra’s friends came in. She kissed the woman on her cheek and turned to me. “Well, thanks for coming.” She was dismissing me?

Pavel said to Petra, “That’s it? This woman has come all the way from India—” He turned to me. “We all know about Monsieur Gandhi. We admire what he’s doing. India deserves her freedom.” He turned to Petra again. “And you’re leaving her here?”

I looked from Petra to Pavel and back again, as if I were watching a badminton game.

The other young woman, who had gone up to the bar to order her coffee, now returned, looking from Petra’s darkened face to Pavel’s confused one. “What’s going on?” She eased herself onto a chair at Pavel’s table and opened a fresh pack of cigarettes.

Pavel spoke rapidly in Czech. Petra rolled her eyes and walked to the door. I stood, watching her leave the café, wondering what had just happened.

Now Pavel switched to French. “She speaks French, Martina. She knows Mira.”

Martina expressed the same enthusiasm Pavel had upon hearing Mira’s name. She said, “You know Mira? She’s brilliant. I always wanted to paint like her, but my talent lies more in photography. I like taking pictures of people.”

I didn’t want to dampen their spirits, but I did want to explain why I was in Prague. I told them what had happened to Mira. Pavel’s face was halfway to a smile before he realized I was serious. He reached for Martina’s cigarette carton and matches. Martina’s face was frozen, aghast.

“Comment?” they both said at once and then looked at each other. “Wasn’t it just two years ago she was here for that retrospective? She’s too young. And healthy.”

I hadn’t been invited to sit at their table, but I pulled up a chair anyway. The waiter appeared with their orders and left as quietly as he had come.

Pavel cleared his throat. “We all went to the same schools. Did things together. But Mira and Petra—” He stole a look at his companion. “They were very close. Petra worshipped the ground Mira walked on. And more than that. She had a thing for Mira. Mira just laughed it off, but for Petra it was a big deal. Then Paolo came along.” He smiled and so did Martina.

My ears were ringing. This was Mira’s Paolo.

With a raspy chuckle, Martina brought the fingers of one hand together and said in an exaggerated Italian accent, “Pa-o-lo!” She continued in French, “Mira couldn’t stop talking about him. She must have been—oh—fifteen? When she went to Florence to study with him—”

Pavel almost choked while taking a sip of his coffee. “Her mother went to Florence to study Paolo and dragged Mira along. Her mother was crazy about him.” He and Martina shared a laugh.

This was not news to me. Mira had told me of her mother’s infatuation with Paolo. Was that why Mira had made a play for him as well? To get back at her mother for her inattention, her jealousies?

The café had maintained a steady stream of customers going in and out, friends greeting friends. Sitting with Pavel and Martina, I could almost pretend this was how I lived my life. As if I spent afternoons gabbing with friends, drinking hot chocolate, munching on pastries. Gossiping about people we had in common. My actual existence seemed so staid. Home. Hospital. Home. Market. Home. Without my job and without my mother, was that even my life anymore?

The waiter came around and Pavel ordered in Czech. Martina said something to him, pointing to his stomach. Pavel gave her a sideways look as if to say, Leave me alone about my eating.

“Did Miss Novak enjoy studying with Paolo?” I asked.

They laughed again, Martina leaning against Pavel. “She enjoyed studying Paolo.” Her laugh turned into a cough. I recognized the signs of a chain-smoker.

When she recovered, Martina cleared her throat and said, “She could talk of nothing else. She was completely—” She asked Pavel something in Czech.

He said, “Smitten.”

“Smitten!” Martina said, holding her cigarette aloft.

“Did he love her back?” It was bold of me to ask, but I wanted to know. Mira hadn’t given me a clue either way. She’d only talked about how she would always love Paolo whether they were together or not.

Martina made a face. She turned to Pavel. “As much as he loved anybody, I suppose. We never met him. Only heard about him.”

Pavel sat back in his chair and shrugged.

“What about her husband, Filip?” I asked.

They looked at each other. Martina smoked. Pavel drank his coffee. Finally, Pavel said, “Filip was safe. He didn’t demand anything from her. Mira was daring. Adventurous. Her parents wanted her to marry and stop creating scandal with men and women. She was very free. So Filip stepped in. I don’t know if she asked him to do that or if it was a gallant gesture on his part. They got married, but Mira still had her affairs. Filip looked the other way and that seemed to suit them both.”

“He wasn’t jealous?”

“Filip?” Martina shook her head. “I don’t believe so.” She looked at Pavel. “He’s what? Ten years older than us?” She turned to me. “We all know him, but not well. I don’t think it’s possible to know him. He’s very quiet. He’s always there, hovering in the background. I always wondered what Mira saw in him.”

I thought about how Filip was an invisible ghost at the hospital. There but not there. Mira had said she’d never been in love with him, that she’d never properly been in love with anyone.

“He was her first cousin, you know,” Pavel said.

“So she said,” I said. “Were they planning on having children?” I had to ask because of Mira’s cryptic remark about the baby being Paolo’s.

“Mira?” Martina smiled. “Not in the least. She never wanted children. I’ve known her since she was this high.” Martina indicated the level of the bistro table. “Not once did she ever say any different.”

Unless they asked, I wasn’t about to tell them Mira had arrived at the hospital presenting a miscarriage. But I felt an aching sadness. For Mira. For the loss of her talent. For the cavalier way news of her death was being received by the two people in front of me.

I excused myself and started to get up. That was when I realized I still had the canvas bag my hostess had loaned me. I’d forgotten to give The Waiting to Petra.

“There will be more friends of Mira’s at the exhibition tonight. Petra’s big show. Why don’t you come?” Pavel wrote the address on the napkin. “Where are you staying?”

I gave him the address and he told me which tram to take to the gallery.

I decided to walk to my lodgings. It seemed as if I’d been sitting for days. And as long as I was in Prague, I wanted to take in as much of this world as I could. After all, I might never pass this way again. Meandering through New Town, I caught a whiff of sizzling meat and freshly baked bread, scented soaps and dusty stone. I sidestepped trams and horse droppings. Down the wide boulevard facing Wenceslas Square, I admired elegant women’s couture through shop windows. A woman walked out of the Bata shoe store with her children carrying several shopping bags. At a leather goods shop, I decided to buy a belt with a small purse in which to carry my money. Back on the boulevard, a barbershop poster promoted the benefits of well-groomed beards. I stopped to look at an ad in a pharmacy window, which promised a lush cleavage and the secrets of looking younger. I smiled at these claims—outrageous, so similar to Bombay adverts, yet still appealing.

Finally, I made my way to Old Town Square. My Baedeker’s encouraged a stop at the Astronomical Clock, a favorite tourist spot. It told Old Bohemian time, Babylonian time, German time and Sidereal time, not to mention the journey of the sun and moon across the constellations. Everywhere I went, I wondered if Mira had stood in that same spot, what she’d been doing there, what she’d been thinking and whom she’d been with. If I closed my eyes and pictured her face, imagining her singular linseed smell, I could almost feel her next to me.

Finally, I arrived at my lodging. I wanted to bathe and change out of my uniform. I had just enough time to dash off a quick response to Dr. Stoddard before going to the exhibition hall.

Dear Dr. Stoddard,

I never thought I would miss our steamship casino. You’ve turned me into a gambler. Next time we meet you’ll have to teach me a new game, preferably one where you have a chance of winning against me. (This is where you groan at my arrogance.)

I arrived in Prague safely and am now settled in a lovely apartment overlooking the Vltava River. The food is every bit as delicious as you predicted, especially the Beef Tenderloin with Cream Sauce. I didn’t let them skimp on the sauce!

The city is so beautiful and so different from Istanbul or Bombay or Calcutta. Everywhere I look, there are church spires and cobblestone streets and a golden fog that envelops everything. It makes me think of Mister Rochester at Thornfield Hall and how Jane Eyre felt seeing his house for the first time. (Pay no mind. I’m being a silly schoolgirl with her schoolgirl fantasies.)

Thanks to you (and Edward), the embassy helped me find Petra, Mira’s girlhood friend. She was so forthcoming about Mira’s life here. It seemed idyllic. Petra introduced me to other friends of Mira’s, who were able to enlighten me further. Tonight, they’ve invited me to an exhibition Petra has organized of her own work. So I must dash.

Lovely to hear from you.

Yours humbly,

Sona Falstaff

I hated lying to him. But if I were to tell him the truth—there had been no beef tenderloin, Petra had not been particularly friendly—he might worry. His health was fragile; I couldn’t do that to him. Still, I wished I could confide in someone about my dwindling funds. Keeping it to myself was giving me a bellyache, which was why I had to—very reluctantly—turn down the meal my hostess offered. I smiled at her, gesturing with my watch that I needed to leave.

It was a fine May night, mild, requiring nothing but a sweater. I took the tram to the Manes Exhibition Hall, a functional monochromatic building so unlike the Gothic or Renaissance or Art Nouveau architecture of the city. Manes was partly on the waterfront and partly on the Vltava. Jazz, the kind heard at the British clubs in Bombay, blared from the open windows and doors. There seemed to be no one at the entrance taking tickets or monitoring the event. I walked into a brightly lit space with high ceilings. It was so crowded that the waiters had to hold trays of canapés above their heads to snake through the exhibition space. The Czechs looked British but they dressed better, like the French. The young women wore impossibly long chiffon scarves around their necks, the ends of which reached their behinds. They wore shapeless sheaths cut from expensive silks or pleated trousers with satin tops. A few men had goatees like Pavel. Others had long hair to their ears or shoulders. Many wore colorful suspenders as an accessory. I felt underdressed in my sweater, homemade tweed skirt and cotton blouse, but no one took notice of me. I was invisible once again, and that suited me just fine.

I caught snatches of French conversation as I walked through the maze, looking for Petra and Pavel.

“More villas are going up at Baba Colony. They’re so modern…”

“I can’t say I’ve read it, but everyone is talking about it. Before her book came out, were you aware that Gertrude Stein…?”

“I heard they’re cracking down on the plays at the Liberated Theater…”

“Swing is never going to be the rage that jazz is…”

“I know! Czechoslovakia’s first airport. My father has already reserved a seat…”

When the crowd parted enough for me to catch a glimpse of Petra’s exhibit, I gasped. There was a painting of Mira reading. Mira bathing. Mira looking out a window.

A tap on my shoulder made me jump.

“You made it,” Pavel said. “Come. I’ll introduce you. You’ve met Martina.” The woman from the café smiled at me and raised her cocktail glass. Next was a man in a beret and an impressive satin cape. His name was Emil. Then came Gerta, whose blond ringlets bounced every time she moved. Everyone had a glass of something in their hands—champagne, red wine, scotch, absinthe. Emil plucked a glass with orange liquid from a passing waiter’s tray and handed it to me.

I thanked him and took a sip. It was sweet and strong. I tried not to make a face and resolved to put it down somewhere the first chance I got. Scanning the paintings around the room, I said, “It’s all…”

Pavel said, “About Mira?”

I nodded.

“I told you Petra was obsessed with Mira. Couldn’t get over the fact that Mira had other lovers. Petra had been half-hoping Mira would be here tonight. She’d invited her. A reconciliation of sorts.”

“Had they fallen out?”

Gerta laughed. “Mira was tired of the adulation. People do get tired of being on a pedestal you know. Of course, I wouldn’t know…not yet anyway.” She laughed good-naturedly. “You realize that with Mira’s death, Petra’s paintings have just shot up in value?”

It bothered me when anyone talked of profiting from death. I waved the glass in my hand. “Petra never mentioned that she was putting an exhibit together about her paintings of Mira. When I arrived at her apartment this morning, she was painting—”

Martina raised a tweezed eyebrow. “A young boy? Beautiful, brown-blond hair?”

I nodded.

“Henrich. All the painters use him. Mainly speaks German. Answers to káva .” Pavel’s group laughed.

“What do you think?” Pavel and I were both startled by Petra’s voice. She was wearing the same silk gown as she had this morning (didn’t she have any other clothes?) but now her hair was in braids. She had a satin pink boa wrapped around her neck and glitter on her eyelids. She looked quite ethereal.

“I call it my farewell to Mira.”

I frowned. “But surely you couldn’t have known about—about her passing before today?”

Petra looked as if I’d struck her. Her face was ashen. She turned away, parting the crowd, which quickly closed the gap. I lost track of her. Had she known of Mira’s death before I arrived? How? It had been three weeks since her passing. I hadn’t seen any notices in the paper about the death of the renowned painter. So how did Petra find out? Did she produce these canvases because she knew Mira had died? If she knew, why did she act so surprised when I told her?

The cocktail had given me a headache. I left shortly afterward, saying my goodbyes to Pavel and his group. I knew I wouldn’t be able to give Mira’s painting to Petra this evening. I would have to manage it tomorrow before leaving for Paris.

***