Page 19 of Six Days in Bombay

Inside, La Rotonde was all red velvet booths and warm wood paneling and white tablecloths and bright yellow lamps with fringed shades—a little like the shades in Bombay’s Chinese district. Sophisticated and humble at the same time, La Rotonde looked like the kind of place that I imagined Bombay’s fashionable set frequented, listening to jazz and drinking cocktails every evening. The aroma of coffee and alcohol mingled in the air.

On the walls, someone had tacked hundreds of pencil drawings and cartoons—there was even a small sculpture of a cat, stretching.

Josephine took a booth at the back with a clear view of the front door. I sat at a table nearby but behind a pillar, out of her line of sight. Like Kavarna Slavia in Prague, the waiter who approached her table wore black pants and a white shirt with a black bow tie. The ensemble was overlaid with the largest white apron I’d ever seen.

“Bonjour, Henri.”

“Bonjour, mademoiselle. Vous voulez …”

Josephine ordered something I didn’t catch.

When he came to ask for my order, I asked for the same thing she’d ordered.

“Campari,” he said. “Bien.”

He was about to leave when I asked, “Why do they leave their drawings here, the artists?” I asked.

The waiter followed my gaze. “Patrons who can’t afford to pay, do. When they come back with the money, we give their artwork back to them. In the case of some painters—like Picasso—the owner would rather have the art than the money,” he said dryly. “Dealers like Josephine—” he indicated her with a discreet tilt of his head “—often see sketches here from the artists they represent, but they choose to leave them up. It’s good publicity.”

“Jo! Désolée, désolée! ” a plump woman in a loose dress, frizzy hair tumbling out of a floppy hat, ran up to Josephine. Her cheeks were flat. Her jowls had fallen into her neck. She might have been thirty or forty or fifty. It was hard to tell.

She kissed the art dealer on both cheeks. Josephine accepted the greeting, turning her cheek this way and that, but didn’t smile.

“Berthe.”

“Thank you so much for rescuing my painting. You know how cheap Louis is, Jo!”

I understood then that Berthe was the painter whose work Josephine had bought at the flea market.

“Have you eaten today?” Josephine asked Berthe after she sat down. Josephine called for Henri to bring an omelet with salad.

“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 read Les 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 brewing under 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.

Josephine and Berthe were arguing about a commission Berthe still needed to paint.

After my third Campari, I needed to use the WC. I asked the waiter where it was, and he pointed to the stairs. I wound my way behind Josephine’s booth a little unsteadily. It felt good, like my limbs were so loose my body could fold into itself. The image made me smile. I held on to the banister as I made my way down the stairs. When I opened the door to the WC, someone pushed me from behind so hard I fell against the sink, hitting my head on the mirror above. A man was pressing against my body. I smelled beer and the woody scent of a cigarette. The rim of the sink was putting so much pressure on my stomach, bile rose to my throat. I felt clumsy hands pushing my skirt up around my hips. It had happened so fast I hadn’t thought to scream. Then I realized I couldn’t. He had his meaty hand clamped around my mouth and nose. I couldn’t breathe. I gnawed at his hand until I found skin I could bite. He screamed, “Guenon!” I tried to use my right hand to punch him in the ribs. But his body was too close and my fist landed on his back without impact. He caught my arm and bent it upward. The pain brought tears to my eyes. I bit him harder. All at once, I felt his body lift off my back. I fell forward and braced my arms on either side of the sink. I rested my head against the mirror, breathing hard.

“?a va?”

I turned to see Josephine. Behind her, a man stumbled out the door, holding on to his hand, and headed for the stairs. Josephine’s back was to the overhead light. I couldn’t see her expression. Three glasses of Campari shot up my gullet and I turned to the sink in time to vomit. I didn’t realize I was crying. Snot was running down my nose. The blue sweater the doctor had knit for me was soaked. Was it water or vomit?

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” I cried, feeling humiliated. “Why am I here? In Paris?”

“Wash your face.”

I turned on the tap and splashed water on my face. There was a small towel on a wall hook, which a hundred hands had wiped. Josephine reached around me to give me her handkerchief. I wiped my face.

She gripped my arm and led me out of the WC.

I stopped. “I have to pee.” I was five years old again, needing my mother to hold my hand.

She said, “Go.”

Before I came back out, she handed me her suit coat and told me to take my stained sweater and blouse off.

She walked me to her booth and helped me sit down. Berthe had disappeared. She’d taken the wrapped painting with her.

“Merde!” Josephine let out a sigh of frustration. She shook her head. She called the waiter over. I was too tired to understand their rapid French.

When he left, she gave me her glass of water. I drained it in one swallow. “You have to take it easy with the Campari.” She asked Henri for another glass of water.

I should have known better. Hadn’t I made a fool of myself on the Viceroy in front of Dr. Stoddard with a few too many glasses of port? I felt so idiotic I couldn’t look at her. “Where did he go?”

“He ran.” She lit a cheroot with her gold lighter and blew out smoke. “I haven’t seen him here before. There was a time when I knew almost everyone here. But so many—painters like Gris, Matisse—and writers—Hemingway, Fitzgerald—they’ve left Paris. The cafés used to be so crowded the tables spilled out onto the streets. Now, it feels more like a ghost town.” She tapped her slim cigar on the ashtray.

“The ones who are left are the surrealists. Like the men outside. The one with the battered nose is Fernand Léger.” She exhaled smoke through the side of her mouth to direct it away from me. “Next to him, Marcel DuChamp. The third is Man Ray. They call him Manny. The one at the other table is Louis Aragon. More of a writer and a collector of art. Each of them is a genius in his own way. Then there’s Picasso—he’s still here. He’s a little of everything: a surrealist, a cubist, a futurist, a pioneer.”

Henri returned with a clean tablecloth, the same as the ones that were draped over each table. Josephine instructed me to wrap my damp clothing in it.

“I’m sorry,” was all I could say.

Josephine regarded me through the smoke. “What’s your name?”

“Sona Falstaff.”

“Falstaff as in Shakespeare?”

I cocked my head, stumped. It felt as if water was sloshing to one side in my brain. I’d never given any thought to my father’s surname.

“You shouldn’t be here. You’re too young to be by yourself.”

It was what I’d been feeling but hearing her say it was embarrassing. “I’m twenty-three.” I could hear my voice, sounding all of twelve years old.

Henri brought another glass of water and Jo pushed it toward me. “My point.”

I took a sip. Then another. “Miss Novak told me you only represent female artists.”

She inspected her cheroot and dropped more ashes into the ashtray. “I’m not ready to talk about her. But if you’re asking why I don’t have male artists in my stable, I would ask you, don’t you think men have had enough of a head start?” She pulled the ashtray closer to her, let me consider her remark.

“They’re special, artists are. Like children. Very talented children. But they need love. They need to be told they are doing work that people need to see. That they are important.”

“You sound like a mother.” I didn’t know if Josephine was married or had children.

“I suppose I am a mother of sorts. To Berthe, whom you met. Chana Orloff. Sonia Delaunay. Germaine Richier. More importantly, I’m their guardian. I protect them from bad news. I bring opportunities to them. I hold on to their money for them when I know they can’t do it for themselves.”

“You love them?”

She plucked a piece of tobacco from her tongue. “I do. If I could do what they do, I would. But you see, I don’t have the talent. I know how to massage it, but I don’t have it.” She signaled for two cups of coffee. “I’ll tell you this though. I would rather spend time with any of my artists—even those who drink too much or gamble—than the people who come to my sister’s Friday evening salons. They talk a good game about equality, and how everyone must have the same earning power and so on. But in the end, they’re just talking to their boeuf bourguignon and champagne. The artists? They’re doing something. They’re saying something important in the process.”

Henri brought the coffees. He talked to her in French so rapidly that I couldn’t catch it with my rudimentary skill. Josephine answered him just as rapidly. He laughed and went to take an order at another table.

She smiled at me. “He asked if you were related to me.”

For the second time today, my skin color had been called out. “Your gallery neighbor, Monsieur Maillot, asked me that too.”

“You’re an attractive woman. The French love the exotic. The mysterious. Josephine Baker. Kiki de Montparnasse. Fujita, that artist from Japan, because he has a quirky look. The French eat it up.”

I wondered what my mother would think of being called exotic. In a land of Indians, she had hardly stood out. Here in Paris, would she spit at the ground, warning the evil spirits away, or would she be pleasantly surprised, taking in the compliment? I found myself chuckling.

Josephine grinned at my reaction, her even teeth on display. She crushed her dwindling cheroot in the ashtray and drained her coffee.

She began gathering her pack of smokes, her gloves and her clutch. “How many days will you stay in Paris?”

I thought about it, about my remaining funds. “I will probably leave the day after tomorrow.”

“Where are you staying?”

I told her.

She regarded me with somber eyes, pupils dark like the bottom of a well. “I’m probably going to regret this.” She sighed. “Meet me at the Musée d’Art Moderne tomorrow at eleven o’clock. It’s far enough from the Expo that you won’t be swallowed by the crowd. And do be careful. People are crafty. If they can, they will take advantage of you.” She slid out of the booth.

Her remark reminded me, as I’m sure she intended it to, of what had happened in the bathroom earlier. My eyes watered. It felt like I was being reprimanded. Or was Jo mothering me the way she mothered her clients, the way my mother had, protecting me, making sure I was safe? When would I no longer need that protection? Had Josephine ever needed it? She seemed like someone who catapulted from childhood to adulthood, skipping the insecurity in between. Maybe I was teetering on that edge. On one side, a woman who sheltered behind the front lines, and on the other side, one who marched into battle. Josephine was in the second camp. So was Mira. Which side would I end up on?