Page 23 of Six Days in Bombay

The next morning, I found the statue at Cascine Park on the other side of the Arno. The park ran over three miles along the length of the river. I walked through forests of maple trees, oaks, elms and pines. It was peaceful here, a few Florentines strolling among the meadows, talking quietly.

Paolo was late so I read the inscription on the statue, which stated that the Indian Prince Rajaram II was taken ill during his European tour and died in Florence. He was cremated, his ashes spread in the Arno, against the wishes of the Catholic Church, which did not want the remains of a heathen—even a royal one—polluting the river.

“Now you can see why Mira liked it here.” I turned to find him pointing at the prince’s effigy. “It reminded her of India, this statue. She admired the defiance of convention, which, if you know—knew—Mira, was what made her special. She didn’t care for rules.”

He was right. Mira would have appreciated the nod to disobedience just as she appreciated the way Indians were defying the British in their own quiet way. I regarded him as he surveyed the Arno. Paolo had understood Mira.

He was dressed in another white shirt splotched with paint, sleeves rolled up to his elbows (or was it the same shirt from the day before?). I tried not to stare at the dark hair on his forearms, so much like Amit’s. I had the ridiculous urge to smooth the strands across his skin. A man and a woman passed us. Both turned around to smile at him. He even attracted the attention of men.

We walked along the gardens. “This is where Mira and I came to sketch and paint. The only place her mother wouldn’t intrude.” He paused. “I cared about her deeply, you understand?”

That surprised me. Mira’s friends had only spoken of her love of Paolo, not his feelings for her.

He stopped to face me. “I have no money of my own. I couldn’t be with a woman who needed me to support her.” His eyes implored me to understand.

“But Mira came from wealth,” I said.

“Her parents were wealthy, but her mother cut Mira off as soon as she and I…”

Ah, the strange triangle between Mira, her mother and Paolo.

Paolo looked away. He pulled on his face with the flat of his palm. “It was complicated. Her mother was very persistent. She wanted an exclusive relationship—just her and me—which I did not. At the time.” He glanced at me quickly to see if I’d caught the implication. I had. His habitual pattern was to fall in bed with one woman after another. When he met the one who could support him—Whitney—he married her. But I could see why his wife was still wary. With a gorgeous husband like him, she would have to keep an eye out for predators.

I was carrying the rolled-up painting of Man in Abundance . “Mira left this for you.”

He took it from me. “I always liked this one. It was one of the first things I taught her, this brushwork of Cézanne’s. When she learned it, she asked me to sit for her.” His smile carried memories.

“Do you think your wife will let you hang it?”

He grinned. “I think this one will go in my studio.”

“Mira also left paintings for Josephine Benoit in Paris, and for Petra Hitzig in Prague. Do any of those names sound familiar?”

“Yes, of course. She talked about them.”

“I understand you two were in touch even after she married Filip Bartos?”

“Anytime she came to Italy, we saw each other. Mira was Mira. She was fun. She was lively. I don’t think she and Filip were suited to one another as a couple. She’d wanted to provoke her mother, as she always did, by marrying someone her mother didn’t approve of. Mira was bored of Filip within a year of marriage.”

We walked along the ornate stone fence surrounding the monument of the prince. Irises of every color bloomed around us. Daises and lilies and hyacinths lined the paths. I caught a whiff of sweet peas. On the other side of the river, Florence gave off an ochre glow. It was that light that reminded me of India. Or maybe it was the pace of the people. They seemed in less of a hurry, ready to make time for a friend or to merely watch people from a park bench.

I stopped to admire the peacock finials and bas-reliefs on the roof over the statue. It was the heat of his body more than his breath that told me Paolo had come to stand behind me. I turned around. He was so close our arms touched. Was I, in this moment, trying to live Mira’s life? If Paolo weren’t married, would I have made a play for him?

“If I’d ever fallen in love with a woman, it would have been her.” He looked wistful. “And even now, I still hear her. Feel her. Smell her. She was so full of life. She wanted to experience it all. But she also wanted to experience it with everyone she came into contact with.” He plucked a daisy and pulled at its petals. “You may think me a Romeo, but Mira was herself a Juliet. She experimented with everyone. To see what it was like.” He laughed lightly.

I nodded. “By all accounts—Petra’s, Josephine’s—you were the one she cared about most. You were different.” I paused. “You were a prize. She captured you when other women couldn’t.” I worried I was speaking too freely, but I couldn’t stop. “Perhaps you were too much alike? Both of you so sure of how easily you could seduce. The power must have been intoxicating.”

Paolo looked amused. “It was certainly exciting for her to come between her mother and me. Veena and I met at an art exhibition in Venice. She pursued me.” He threw the now dismantled daisy on the ground. “Mira always wanted her mother’s attention—any way she could get it. She saw that coming between us would get her noticed. It did. Her mother was furious and went back to Prague. Mira stayed, but she lost her inheritance.”

He studied me for a moment. “Did she tell you about the first time she got pregnant?” Did I imagine the look of guilt on his face?

“The first time?”

“She ran to Prague and to Filip. He was her savior. If she got into trouble, he rescued her. Filip had a medical degree by then, but he never practiced. I’ve been wondering if that first operation—it was done at home, not in a hospital—had something to do with her miscarriage.”

Mira had had an abortion years before the miscarriage? The news would have shocked me a month earlier, but now I considered it as a nurse. I’d seen the dangers of performing such a procedure at home when the women presented themselves at the hospital. Lack of sterilization, improper tools—any number of things could compromise the procedure. Poor Mira.

We began walking again, the pea gravel under our feet crunching with each step. I said, “I was put in charge of her for the evening shift. Her husband brought her in. Naturally, I assumed the baby was his.”

“Well, Miss Falstaff, this may be difficult to understand, but I do want a baby with Whitney, and when she couldn’t conceive, we decided together that I should approach Mira. She was only too happy to comply—we were paying her handsomely—but she said we must keep it from Filip for as long as possible. She wanted time to break it to him gently.”

“By breaking it to him gently, do you mean…”

“Yes.”

“That you were impregnating her?”

“Yes.”

“And your wife agreed to that?”

He hesitated. “Not at first. But we had few options.” He paused. “Mira and I spent a week in a hotel in Milan—away from Florence—”

“And your wife.”

“ Certo . Mira returned to India and we waited. A month later, she called with the news. Whitney and I were ecstatic. The pregnancy was progressing nicely. Mira was healthy. And the baby would look like me. If his skin was a little more olive, that would be fine. I am Italian after all. It would have been perfect.” He sighed. “How exactly did Mira die?”

I hedged. “An overdose of morphine.”

Paolo looked alarmed. “How?”

Oh, what was the use in keeping the truth at bay? “There was a vial of morphine left in the room. I was blamed for the oversight, but, Mr. Puccini, I swear to you I did not cause her death.” I willed him to believe me.

His eyebrows knitted together. “So then, what could have happened?”

I debated whether I should share my suspicions. “I can speculate, but none of it is verifiable.”

He pinched his nose. “Wait. How did she end up in the hospital in the first place? Mira was having my baby. I’d like to know. I’m going to have to explain it to Whitney anyway, and I may as well have all the facts.”

I chose my words carefully. “Well, I’m not sure I know much more. Her husband said she’d been complaining of abdominal pain and a severe headache for a few days. She started bleeding but waited hours before she asked to be taken to the hospital. When she arrived, it was obvious she’d had a miscarriage, and she was in a lot of distress.”

His forehead was lined with worry. “Did she suffer terribly?”

I hesitated. “She remained in considerable pain even after she lost the baby.”

Paolo thought for a moment. He said, “Neither Mira nor Filip wanted children. She always said she wasn’t going to have any.”

“What changed her mind? Why did she say yes to you and your wife?”

Paolo rubbed his neck with his palm. “Well, the money we were giving her would have allowed her to paint for a whole year without selling one painting. Her paintings sold but there was never enough money once her parents cut her off. Filip didn’t work, but he liked good clothes and wine and nice places to live.”

Was Mira the kind of person to whom this would have seemed a reasonable bargain? If she were with me now, I would ask her if having a baby for her former lover’s wife was worth the money? What about her dignity? Her pride? Or was I judging her too harshly as I’d done with Dr. Stoddard? As I’d done with her when she confided her regrets. She and Paolo and Petra and Josephine lived in a world so different from my own. With a different morality. How could I impose my beliefs on them?

Talking to her friends made me question how well I really knew Mira. There seemed to be many different Miras. I had known several versions of her. Mira the painter. Mira the patient. Mira the lover. As I had with Dr. Stoddard, I questioned whether we could know anyone completely. Things are never as they seem , Agnes had said. I kept having to learn that lesson again and again.

We walked from one end of Florence to the other; the city was surprisingly compact. Paolo revealed small details about Mira, laughing at her observations about the Italians. He took me to the Uffizi Gallery, where he insisted the best art in the world was displayed. Michelangelo, Botticelli, Giotto, da Vinci. With a wink to the guard, Paolo led me to the Vasari Corridor, the secret passageway the Medici family used to go to the Pitti Palace unobserved. Dr. Stoddard had urged me to see it. Paolo said it was Mira’s favorite place for a hurried tryst, right between the Rembrandt and Velazquez. The soft pillows of his lips parted in a smile that was both joyful and sad. He was going to miss her.

She had loved him, and he had loved her, of that I was sure now. But love didn’t mean a lifetime of togetherness, did it?

When I returned to my lodgings—so much more humble than Madame Renaud’s—my hostess patted me on the shoulder. She seemed to sense I was troubled. And tired. She stretched an arm toward the curtain. I went through it and sat at the small scarred table. She brought a bowl of pasta and a hunk of dense bread. The pasta smelled heavenly. It was smothered in a light cream sauce with what I thought were mushrooms. She pointed to the pasta and said, “Tartufi.”

“ Tartufi?” I said.

“ Si , si , signorina. Tartufi .” She pointed again. She imitated pigs snorting, digging in the earth. I had no idea what she was trying to tell me, but her explanation made me laugh, which made her laugh too. Something in my chest loosened, and I felt good for the first time that day.

***

As I lay in my bed that night, I talked to my mother. I did it, Mum. I did what Mira asked of me. I traveled thousands of miles to places I’ve never been, ate food I’ve never heard of, walked through cities and gardens and down alleys I wouldn’t have ventured to find the three people she cared about most. At times, I was frightened out of my mind. At times, I was lonely. There were surprises, some of which delighted me (Edward, Amit), some of which scarred me (Agnes, the man in La Rotonde). It was like the Ferris wheel you took me on when I was six. The higher we went, the more the fear—and the thrill—gripped me. At the top, you pointed to the buildings and parks and lakes I’d only ever seen on a map. And when we got to the bottom, I wanted more than anything to go back up again. Well, I want to do that when I get back to Bombay. This time, I won’t keep to myself. I’ll let people see who I am, make an effort to learn who they are. I’ll do things I haven’t done before. Things you and I could have been doing all along. Like picnicking along the Queen’s Necklace. Taking in an afternoon matinee at the Regal. Flying kites at Chowpatty Beach. I’m thinking of finding a private position, taking care of someone like Dr. Stoddard. I’m sure Edward, who is the kindest of men (you would love him, Mum!), will help me with that. And there’s Amit. I’m sorry I kept my feelings for him from you. I just wanted some time alone with them. But I think you guessed them anyway. There wasn’t much I could hide from you.

I found myself smiling, picturing my mother as she listened to my plans.

Then, an image of Dr. Stoddard came unbidden. Go see your father .

But that was an impossible request! Why should I go see him? To me, he would always be a deserter and a philanderer. Ralph Stoddard thought my father hadn’t had the courage to face me. Would going to England confirm that? What about his En-glish family? How would they react when I showed up, claiming him as my father? Would they be shocked? Angry? Would they throw me out of their house, call me a liar or money-grubber or fantasist?

And if I didn’t confront my father, would I be a coward too? Here I was in Europe, half a day from him, and I finally had the chance to tell him what I thought of him. Was I scared to do so? Or was I worried that when I came face-to-face with him, I would lose my resolve to pummel his chest and throw myself in his arms instead? I wanted to go on hating him. It was the one sure, steady thing in my life. I didn’t want to let go of it. But who knew when I might return to Europe once I was back in Bombay? This was my chance. Should I take it?

Tomorrow, I planned to leave for India via Algiers by train and then by ship. I’d been to a travel agency. The woman there had helped me determine the least expensive route. I had just enough money left to pay for it. But something made me hesitate.

To go or not to go. It was the most important decision I’d had to make in my young life.