Page 21 of Six Days in Bombay

Chapter 11

I arrived at Florence’s Santa Maria Novella train station on a Monday. I’d slept the whole way from Paris. The conversation with Amit had left me drained. I hadn’t been able to come up with the right response—if there was one. What if I’d said I would wait for him to complete his mission? Who knew how long it would take? How would India react to one of their own consorting with the other side?

I used to be able to do double shifts at the hospital without tiring. Now, I was as exhausted as I’d ever been, sitting on a train for thirteen hours. I’d saved money staying at Madame Renaud’s but I still had to be careful. Skipping the expense of a sleeping compartment, I slept sitting up the entire trip to Florence. My neck was stiff. My legs felt like rubber. I had a headache.

As I stepped onto the train station platform, I was surprised by its pristine simplicity. Unlike the train stations in Prague and Paris, the architecture of SMN bordered on severe. The gleaming travertine floor with alternating bands of red and white marble looked as if no one had ever walked on it. Men and women passed through unadorned entrances and exits. Even the signage— Uscita , Tabacchi , Giornali —was a simple typeface. The New India Assurance Building in Bombay was similarly plain, built as it was from reinforced concrete, but at least it boasted bas relief sculptures of sari-clad women and turbaned men. The Florence train station was so spare it felt as if someone had forgotten to complete it.

A young boy in knickers called out headlines from the newspaper he was waving about. I slowed to look at the paper, Corriere della Sera . From the photo and a few words similar enough to French, I gathered that a woman had been fatally stabbed on a train and that she was involved with the resistance movement. Underground uprisings seemed to be everywhere—in Bombay, Prague, Paris and now Florence. Could Agnes have been a spy or a collaborator? I wouldn’t be here long enough to find out. Once I found Paolo, I was going back to Bombay.

My stomach gurgled. I’d only had a cup of tea and toast on the train. The British Embassy was twenty-five minutes away by foot, but I couldn’t muster the energy to walk there. I wanted simply to find a cheap pensione where I could drop off my trunk and then find someplace to eat.

Across the street from the station, the entire wall of a building was covered with a poster: Credere, Obedire, Combattere . In the center was a middle-aged man in a military uniform and shiny black boots, his mouth open as if he were making a speech, one arm extended. I recognized Mussolini from the newspapers. In Paris, café patrons had talked about him. Did you hear he wants to join forces with Hitler? The bottom of the poster read Federazione dei Fasci di Combattimeno . It didn’t take a knowledge of Italian to understand the Fascist doctrine. As I had in the parts of Europe I’d seen so far, I felt a watchfulness among the people. As if everyone were looking over their shoulder for the enemy.

I waited for a tram and a horse carriage to pass before crossing the street. If I followed the Baedeker map along Via degli Avelli, I would be in a big piazza flanked by Santa Maria Novella church. It was a popular tourist area, so I hoped I could find a cheap hotel nearby.

In a narrow alley to my left, I spotted a pensione sign. I looked up at the narrow building. The contrast between the austere train station I’d just left and the Renaissance building in front of me was jarring. I followed the arrow to the top of the stairs, lugging my trunk, which seemed to get heavier with each city. The building smelled musty, like a chest that hadn’t been opened in decades. At the top was a pitted wooden desk, empty except for a large ledger and what appeared to be a photo album (I could see a few photos peeking out that hadn’t been glued yet). As if by magic, an old woman in a loose black dress emerged from a curtain behind the desk. She was wiping her hands on the apron tied at her waist.

“ Buongiorno , signora,” she said. Her eyes darted swiftly to my ring finger. She corrected herself. “Signorina.”

One of the advantages of being a nurse in a hospital were the different nationalities we encountered. I’d been able to pick up a few pleasantries in several languages: good day , hello , yes , no , excuse me , please.

“Buongiorno. On parle francais?”

She gave me a small smile and shrugged. Her eyes were the color of acorns. The wrinkles fanning from them were those of a woman who had lived a long life.

I held up one finger and made a gesture to indicate I was sleeping in a bed. She laughed, revealing a missing tooth along her upper gum. From what I could gather, she then asked me how many nights I intended to stay. I wondered how many days it would take to find Paolo. I had no idea, but I held up three fingers.

The woman nodded. She opened the ledger and turned it around to face me. In the list of names down the first column, I saw ones that appeared to be French, Spanish, Dutch and En-glish. I was used to presenting my passport and visas everywhere by now, and I fished in my bag for them.

When she noticed my address, she asked, “Dall’India?”

I was writing my name in the ledger. “Si.” I looked up and smiled at her.

“Péro…” She flipped a few pages in the ledger and pointed to a name: Raji Murty . Then she mimed putting on a sari by turning around and around and flinging a phantom pallu over her left shoulder. When she’d stopped, she pointed to my skirt. I burst into laughter when I realized she was asking me why I wasn’t in a sari, like her former guest. The eyes of the old woman crinkled in amusement.

It was too difficult to explain why I had a British passport instead of an Indian one. I simply shrugged. She shrugged in return, then gave me a key and pointed down the hall and then up.

I pointed to my stomach and mimed eating food.

“Ah,” she said. She pulled aside the curtain behind her to reveal a tiny dining room. There were three tables, one of which was occupied by a woman my age. She was eating.

The old woman rattled off something in Italian. The woman at the table looked up and saw me. She said in English, “Lunch is included. She’s inviting you to sit at a table.” She was an American.

I walked into the room to shake the diner’s hand and introduce myself. Her handshake was limp. “Taylor,” she said. She was eating what looked to be creamy rice. My mouth watered.

“I’ll just get settled in and join you later.” It was hard for me to contain my excitement at meeting a fellow traveler with whom I could speak English. Trying to communicate in languages other than my own was exhausting. I hurried along to the next floor and to my room. I knew it would be monastic, and the room did not disappoint. There was a cross on one wall with a single bed underneath it. The quilt was old but clean. There was a wooden chair against a table. What touched me was the single daisy that had been placed in a tiny vase on the table. It was something my mother would do—and had done on countless occasions. Like the time I’d passed my entrance to nursing school or when I’d sewn my first dress or when I won a medal in sixth form for the hundred-meter race. I was suddenly consumed by homesickness. For my mother. For her flowers. Her kindness.

“Hello, Mum,” I whispered.

When I returned to the dining room, Taylor had disappeared, and the Signora was waiting to serve me a big bowl of bean soup with potatoes and tomatoes, greens of some sort, country bread and a generous helping of garlic cloves. My hostess grated a wedge of what looked like dry cheese into my bowl. The soup wasn’t dal, but it was hearty and satisfying.

Dessert was an apple. The signora sat at the table across from me and sliced an apple. She offered me a slice, before taking one for herself. The apple was remarkably sweet, the kind we sometimes got in Bombay from the Himalayas. We ate in companionable silence.

***

The only lead I had for Paolo was that he had taught Mira at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze, which was located on Via Ricasoli. With my Baedeker’s in hand, I ventured out on foot. The air was warm, almost eighty degrees, weather I was used to in Bombay, and I was grateful for my half-sleeve linen shirt. Cyclists, horse-drawn carriages, automobiles and pedestrians vied for purchase on the cobblestone roads. Everywhere I turned, there was a poster with Mussolini’s image. As much as I tried to ignore them, the words credere , obediere , combattere turned into an unsolicited mantra with each step I took.

I passed several bakeries, a butcher shop where a skinned pig hung from the ceiling and a café where the patrons stood at a bar sipping cappuccinos.

After a time, I stopped in front of an Italianate building (at least that’s what my tenth form teacher Mrs. Norton, who was married to an architect, would have called it). The facade was a beautifully proportioned arcade. Two female students with satchels hanging from their shoulders and canvases under their arms entered the building through enormous wooden doors. I followed them, finding myself in a foyer of sorts.

To my left was a wide, quite beautiful, stone stairway leading to the upper floors. Directly in front of me was a rectangular courtyard, flanked by classrooms where students were painting or drawing or sculpting. To my right was an open window beyond which was a counter. A woman sat behind the counter with her back to me talking to a younger, quite pregnant woman who was sitting at a large table. The table was laid out with two plates of what looked like pillows of dough topped with a red sauce and a basket of bread. Steam rose from the plates. The two women were talking animatedly in Italian and I managed to catch the words for soup, olive oil and salt. An argument about cooking?

“ Buongiorno , signora,” I said, imitating my pensione landlady.

The woman turned around in her chair to face me. She looked to be about fifty. Her eyes were watery, but she wasn’t crying. Her mouth was pursed but not in a flirtatious way; she seemed to have been born with that expression. She was wearing eyeglasses low on her nose. Now she lowered her chin so she could see me above the rim of the glasses. “Si?”

“Do you speak French or English, per favore ?”

There was a pause, and I feared I might have insulted her somehow. After a few seconds, she said in French, “Madame, we have students from all over the world. We can speak in En-glish if you wish.”

I smiled. “Thank you. I’m looking for an instructor named Paolo.”

“There is no one here by that name, signora .”

“Perhaps he taught here a while ago?” I calculated swiftly. “Around 1924 or ’25?”

She pushed the glasses up her nose, as if she were closing a door.

“Please, signora . I have traveled all the way from India to find him.”

Something in her relented. Her forehead relaxed.

“Do you have a surname?”

I hesitated. What kind of fool arrives in a city without the full name of the person they’re looking for? Why hadn’t Mira made this easier? “He would have taught a young artist by the name of Mira Novak.”

She said nothing, but I could tell by the lift of her eyebrows that something had registered.

The pregnant woman at the table snapped her fingers. In broken English, she said, “She speaks of that lothario! Paolo…” She batted the back of one hand against the other, as if she were willing her memory to cooperate. “Paolo, Paolo…beautiful face… Paolo Puccini!” She smiled triumphantly.

The woman at the counter shot furious Italian at her friend. Something about why she was interfering. Why wasn’t she at home serving her husband? Her lunch companion wasn’t offended. Instead, she laughed. If I understood her correctly, she said, “Why do you think I’m not there?”

The administrator turned to me again with a frown. “My niece! Coming to office so pregnant. Always eating. She is eating for three, we are told.” She sighed. “But she is right. Unfortunately—or fortunately, Mr. Puccini no longer works here.” She took off her glasses and splayed her hands.

“Do you know where I could find him?”

Once again, the pregnant woman spoke. I caught “Borgo San Frediano” in the long string of Italian words between the women.

My watery-eyed friend shrugged her shoulders and straightened some papers on the counter.

I waited. Finally, she said, “We have a very strict policy, you understand. Paolo became friendly with female students.” She dropped her chin and lowered her voice. “Although the ragazze also were a little too friendly with him. In Paolo’s case, it was Miss Novak—and la mama .” She looked at me with resignation. “ Che fiasco! This we could not tolerate.”

The younger woman at the table whispered loudly, “The mama was innamorata with Paolo.” She shook her head.

The older woman was watching my reaction. Seeing none, she said, “ Va bene . You can find him…”

She turned to consult her friend, who repeated, “Borgo San Frediano.”

The pregnant niece rubbed her enormous belly. “Everyone falls in love with Paolo. You did too, didn’t you, Zia Maria?” she teased. I nodded to the women and turned to go.

I had barely walked two steps away from the window before the older woman began scolding her niece, something about how she should stay out of other people’s business. The younger woman’s laughter ricocheted around the stone walls of the school.

***