Page 4 of Six Days in Bombay

Chapter 3

That evening, Matron found me as I was changing into my uniform. She asked me to come see her when I was done. I assumed it was because she wanted me to cover Indira’s patients. Perhaps my friend had called in sick again?

Matron’s office looked like a monk’s sanctuary. There was a large wooden cross on the wall behind her desk. A smaller one hung next to a Jesus statue on one wall. Every paper on her desk was neatly arranged. There were no stray items or medical apparatus or even a wayward pencil anywhere. I wouldn’t have been surprised if the file cabinets had organized themselves. She’d been trained in the Florence Nightingale School and followed its tenets of obedience, discipline and strict adherence to protocols.

She was sitting behind her desk, writing. Matron was a large-boned Englishwoman with ramrod posture and a dark birthmark on one cheek that resembled a cross. When she saw me, she indicated the plain wooden seat in front of her desk. Laying her pen down, she took off her gold-rimmed spectacles. I waited for her to start; it was customary. We both sat for a few moments looking at each other. Her uniform was spotless, crisply ironed. It was this attention to detail and her management of the nursing staff with perfect precision that commanded the respect of the hospital’s doctors.

“I’ve heard troubling news,” she said.

My heartbeat quickened. “About Indira? Is she alright, Matron?”

She played with the earpieces of her eyeglasses. “It’s about you.”

My heartbeat quickened. I sat up straighter in the chair. What had I done? Had I been negligent in my duties with a patient?

“Yesterday, you and Rebecca assisted in a critical situation. With one Mr. Hassan.”

I nodded. “Yes, a heart attack.”

She tilted her head. “Dr. Holbrook begs to differ with Dr. Mishra on that. In any case, you compromised the health of the patient by jostling Nurse Trivedi’s hand, which at the time was holding a syringe loaded with morphine.” She folded her hands, one on top of the other, on her desk.

My mouth opened. I clamped it shut. Anger, hot, molten and swift, shot up my spine. This was what Rebecca had threatened. When I tell Matron no doubt she’ll take your side… Instead of getting credit for a job well done, which I hadn’t even sought, I was being held accountable for an imaginary failure. I wanted to shout: A man’s life was saved! But I forced myself to count to ten, as my mother had taught me. I could not lose another opportunity to set a little aside for a bigger flat for Mum and me. I waited for Matron to continue.

“It is my responsibility at this hospital to ensure the well--being of our patients while they’re in my nursing care. Your action yesterday might have resulted in a fatality, which would have meant I’d been derelict in my duties as the guardian of our patients. You are a good nurse. Efficient. Well-liked by the patients. Reliable. What happened?”

My hands had gone cold. I folded them, one on top of the other. I was taking time to gather my thoughts, carefully choosing my words. “It was fortunate, Matron, that Rebecc—Nurse Trivedi and I were able to support one another in a crisis situation.” I paused. “She is an excellent nurse. All would have been well had Mr. Hassan not elbowed her while she was administering the injection. The needle was headed for his lungs.” I looked down at my hands, as if they could tell me what to say next. “Which would have been disastrous.” I met her eye again, imploring her to understand what I wouldn’t say out loud. That Rebecca had been about to make a costly mistake, and I stopped it from happening.

Matron frowned. “I see.” She unclasped her hands, steepled her fingers. “As to the other point…”

There was more ?

“It’s come to my attention that you’ve been fraternizing excessively with patients. A little of that is acceptable, but you have responsibilities that would leave you little time for socializing.”

My breath caught in my throat. Rebecca again. I wanted to tell Matron that I never spent time chatting if I hadn’t already taken care of my work. Was she implying that I’d forgotten someone’s medication? Neglected to bathe patients or change their gowns? Forgotten to record their vitals on their charts? I always double-checked my work. I kept my patients’ bedding clean, the air in their rooms fresh. While nurses like Rebecca spread gossip like cream butter on toast, I rolled bandages and organized the stockroom supplies. I was never late and never left early. If, after I’d completed my work, I tried to put patients at ease, what was the harm in it? They were with us in distress. Surely, they needed our support in all ways?

I swallowed the words I didn’t utter out loud. All I said was, “If I am derelict in my duties, I would welcome the opportunity to be corrected.”

She pursed her lip. “The problem is that as a nurse, if you become involved with patients, it affects your work, your judgment. You may be the best of nurses—and I think you are, your patients speak highly of you—but if those you work with mistrust your judgment, there is a problem. A complaint like this one is something I have to pay attention to. I am going to authorize the deduction of two days’ pay from your check.” She looked away then, as if it was something she was reluctant to do.

Two days’ pay? I needed that money. Every rupee counted if I was going to save up enough to give Mum a better place to live. To buy her the clothes in velvet and satin she usually made for others. The heat I felt behind my eyes was a warning of tears to come. Why did this keep happening to me? I wanted to tell Matron, I hadn’t been the troublemaker . What had I ever done to Rebecca to make her hate me so?

Matron put her spectacles back on her nose. “Do you have any questions?”

I shook my head. The meeting was over.

***

My talk with Matron had rattled me. I ran to the stockroom where I pushed a fist in my mouth to stifle my scream. I tried not to think of what had happened in Calcutta. Ever since I was old enough to go by myself, I’d been delivering my mother’s sewing projects all over the city. Sometimes it was the chowkidar who tried it. Sometimes a servant. Sometimes the husband groped me. When it started happening during my nurse training, I’d had enough. My body was my own; why did men think it belonged to them as well? It had been different here in Bombay, at the smaller Wadia Hospital. Perhaps because I was older and didn’t look as vulnerable. Now, however, I had a new problem. Rebecca was determined to make my life difficult. And Matron, a stickler for discipline, would be inclined to listen to her.

When I felt calmer, I smoothed my uniform, re-pinned my nurse’s cap and went to see Mira. She’d been complaining of pain in her abdomen again and I was told to give her low doses of morphine at shorter intervals. Now, the first thing I noticed was that her color was off. Paler than usual. She had dark circles under those large eyes. As I walked into the room, I saw Dr. Mishra at the sink, washing his hands.

Mira addressed the wall behind me. “Oh, Filip, don’t go just yet. You have to meet Sona. Remember? I’ve been telling you all about her.”

I turned around to see a gentleman in an ivory three-piece suit to the left of the door. He practically blended into the wall. He was slightly shorter than Dr. Mishra but more sturdily built. His hair was almost a white-blond, another reason he disappeared into the white wall. I’d been thinking of Mira’s husband as a ghost, and here he was in the flesh. He was smoking a pipe. He turned to me and nodded, his expression pleasant but vacant.

Mira extended her hand for me to take. “Filip was a dear to bring me four of my favorite paintings. Well, all my paintings are my favorites, but these are especially important to me. Now, Amit and I were having the most frightful row, Sona.” She called Dr. Mishra by his first name?

The young doctor was standing by the bed now. He smiled, the dimple on his chin getting deeper. “Well, really… I would hardly call it a row. A preference perhaps.” He looked to Filip for confirmation. Mira’s husband nodded with a smile. He didn’t seem to mind that Dr. Mishra stood within kissing distance of his wife while he stood at the edge of the room, like a distant relative or a porter.

“Which of the paintings do you prefer, Sona?” Mira lifted her chin toward the wall opposite her bed.

I turned around. Four paintings leaned against the wall. Each was somber in color—cinnamon, caramel, coffee, walnut. They were different in subject matter. I let go of her hand and stepped closer to inspect them. In the one closest to me, five figures sat on the ground, preparing a woman with the fairest complexion for a wedding. The darkest woman among them was fixing her hair. The woman opposite the bride held a container of white powder in the process of making the intended’s face even brighter. The bride’s hands were painted with henna. Two children, equally as dark as the hairdresser, watched the scene.

My eyes strayed to the second canvas, one with a cinnamon background. Five youths sat in a semicircle with a fifth, the smallest, facing away from them. Each only wore a dhoti . A white thread stretched from the left shoulder of the young men across their chest to their right hip. The three oldest boys had gathered their hair in a topknot. I’d seen ascetic Brahmins like these quietly praying for the welfare of others or studying scriptures along the Queen’s Necklace, beside the Back Bay. Only the forehead of the middle figure, the fairest, was painted with long tilaks . He must have been their teacher.

Behind me, Mira said in a whisper, “Those markings on the forehead fascinate me.”

I turned around to see Dr. Mishra, his arms folded across his chest, lean toward her, as if they were alone in a museum discussing an exhibit. “Did you know, Mira, that they represent Lord Narayana and Lakshmi?” He called her by her first name too? When had they become friends? Did Mira hold Dr. Mishra’s hand when I wasn’t around? A wave of jealousy, something I rarely felt, surprised me. I blushed, ashamed of myself. Why shouldn’t they have a right to friendship? I’d seen doctors bond with their patients, so why would this be unusual? Didn’t I too favor some patients over others?

I looked for Filip, but he was gone. I remembered the nurses referring to him as the invisible husband, and now I could see why. No one acknowledged his leaving. It was as if he hadn’t been there in the first place.

The doctor and Mira continued talking in low voices. I’d seen them like this before as I went about closing the drapes, refreshing her water jug, getting her morphine shot ready. They talked about her art, places she had studied, the paintings he had seen in Madrid or Padua or Amsterdam. They mentioned music from the many countries they had visited—how it differed and how it was similar. They lived in a world so foreign to me, filled with memories they could pluck, like cards from a deck. I felt a twinge of envy. If I’d been born under different circumstances or if my father hadn’t deserted us or if he’d taken us to England with him, I too could participate in their conversations, casually dropping the name of the latest opera I’d seen in London or how the river Wein in Vienna glows at sunset or whether I preferred Donatello’s David to Michelangelo’s. We would have made a pretty threesome. All of us in our twenties. The gifted painter, the handsome doctor, the enigmatic nurse. What a fantasist I was!

I forced myself to ignore them and to study the third painting. Three girls, their black hair parted down the middle, heads covered in dupattas of various colors, gazed forlornly at the ground. I felt their quiet resignation, their surrender to a fate not of their making. One of them could have been Indira.

The fourth painting was unlike the rest. A dark-haired man in a white shirt, his expression somber, staring at nothing in particular. In his arms were three apples. Even with his long nose and pointed chin, there was something appealing about him. It was a sensuous painting, faintly erotic. The background was subtle shades of ochre.

I scanned the paintings one more time. I turned to face Mira, who was explaining something to the doctor, her hands animated. Should I interrupt them?

Dr. Mishra noticed me first. He looked away and scratched his cheek. Mira’s eyes shifted to me. “Well?”

“The first one.”

Mira clasped her hands in front of her chest. “ The Acceptance . This series is my latest. It’s that flat dimension of Giotto’s—and of course Gauguin’s—I was after. There isn’t a lot of detail in the figures. See how the bride’s hands are red with henna but there is no specific design? I want the observer’s imagination to work here. Each observer will create something different.” Her face came alive when she spoke of painting, of the nuances that differentiated one painter’s style from another’s. “People might say—and have said—a child could paint these. But you’d be surprised how difficult it is to paint simply. Just look at Picasso.”

Perhaps my jealousy made me bold enough to say, “Which was your favorite, Dr. Mishra?” It wasn’t often that I addressed the doctor for anything other than a medical matter. If it surprised him, he didn’t show it.

“The three young women. I’ve seen that look on the faces of girls who deliver babies at too young an age.”

The painter put her hand on his arm, smiling up at him. “Exactly.”

Dr. Mishra stood straighter. “I don’t often get to talk paintings, but I do need to talk medicine now and again.” He said to Mira, serious now, “Let Nurse Falstaff know how you’re feeling. I’ve increased your dosage, which should help. I am a little concerned about the lingering pain. Has Dr. Holbrook been to see you?”

Mira shook her head and reached out a hand for him to clasp. “You will come see me before you leave tonight?”

He didn’t take her hand but patted her forearm. “I make no promises.” He smiled first at her, then at me. He tipped his head slightly, his gray eyes lingering on mine a moment, sending a jolt through me. My legs felt unsteady. My breath sped up. When he’d left the room, I shook my head to cast off the strange feeling.

Mira was looking at me with a crafty smile. “Quite the catch, isn’t he?”

“Is he?” I didn’t want to pursue this line of conversation. After the proposal from Mohan’s father, I was wary of entertaining any entanglements. I took the thermometer from my nurse’s apron and unscrewed the cap. She held her mouth open long enough for me to insert it under her tongue. I could feel her watching me as I went about the room, cracking open the window to let out the stale air.

Behind me, Mira said, “100.5. A little high.”

I turned and took the thermometer from her. “How is the pain?” I shook the thermometer to clear the reading and noted the temperature on her chart.

“Tolerable as long as I keep my mind off it.” She shifted her body, clearly uncomfortable in the bed. I had a feeling she was downplaying her suffering in the doctor’s presence.

“Stay please.” She kept her voice light, but I heard the plea.

I hesitated. Would Matron be watching my every move now? Would she send Rebecca to spy on me to see if I was fraternizing too much with Mira? I looked at the wall clock and calculated how many patients I needed to check up on in the next hour. I could spend perhaps ten more minutes with Mira.

I pointed to the fourth canvas. “He’s different from the rest.”

She laughed. It was a husky sound, as if she’d been a smoker all her life. “That is Paolo. He took me to see Giotto’s work in Florence—those large murals packed with people in voluminous robes. I loved it. And tried to imitate it.” She held an index finger in the air as if she were making a point. “Paolo always said if you could imitate the greats, you could become a great painter. I imitated Giotto’s style but instead of religious figures, I painted people on the streets of Florence, lining up to see the inside of the Duomo. Or buying apples at the San Lorenzo Market. Those were some of Jo’s—Josephine’s—favorites. She sold so many of them. She wanted me to do more like them but set them at the flower market or the Gare de Lyon in Paris.” She stopped, as if picturing the paintings. “I was only eighteen you know when I got to Paris. I wanted to stay with Paolo in Florence, but he said I would be throwing a wonderful opportunity away if I didn’t go.” She sighed. Perhaps she was picturing him. If he looked anything like the painting, I could see why.

“Did you like Paris?” I would have loved to go, but it was an impossible dream.

She spread her arms wide. “Oh, Sona! It was most incredible. That’s where I first saw the Impressionists. I tried my hand at Gauguin’s style. I fell in love with Cézanne’s apples. And Degas’s ballet dancers. It was fabulous when Petra joined me in Paris. She would sit for me. For hours. She was a great model. She’s the one with the long hair in Two Women . The painting that got me into the Salon.” She paused. “She wanted to be a painter too. Maybe because I was one. She wanted to do everything I did. Petra’s technique was good, but her work lacked…a focus, a central idea.” Mira flushed, looking embarrassed. “I’m afraid I was too harsh with her. Critical. Impatient. In those days, I could be heartless. I told her she should give up painting. That she’d never be any good.” She released a wistful sigh. “I can still see her face, the way her eyelids drooped and her mouth went slack. She thought I walked above the clouds, and there I was, squashing her like a flea.” She looked down at her hands, playing with the sheet. “I don’t know why I did that. And I wished to God I hadn’t.”

She hadn’t been this miserable asking about her baby that first day. In fact, she hadn’t mentioned the baby since. I’d never nursed a mother who seemed so indifferent to birth and death. Mira was far more passionate about painting than the child she’d been carrying.

Mira shook her head, as if shaking off her melancholy and plastered a smile on her face. “You liked that one of Po but you didn’t say so when Dr. Mishra was here.”

My cheeks were on fire. I didn’t realize she’d noticed. I said, “Dr. Mishra might think me…”

Mira laughed. “Wanton? Longing for a man? Sona, don’t you know it’s alright to be all those things and still be who you are? Look at me. I’m all those things—wanton, outspoken, depraved, craving everything and wanting more. I couldn’t be an artist if I couldn’t show those feelings on canvas. Or in person!”

I found myself wondering what would happen if I told people what I thought? Mrs. Mehta, tell your father-in-law to stop being such a tosser! The very idea! But it emboldened me to ask Mira, “Why do you choose to paint such somber women? As if they take no pleasure in their lives. Don’t village women experience joy as well?”

Her eyes were dancing when she said, “I would put it to you, dear Sona, that there is joy in the stillness of my paintings. The serenity of the Indian people—so unlike Europeans who seem obsessed with what the future holds—soothes me. Even as the women roll chapattis. Even as the dhobis slap wet cloth against the rocks. Even as the henna artist draws on the hands of a betrothed, there is joy. And warmth. And tranquility. Of the likes I haven’t found in Europe. I needed to come to India to find it.”

She narrowed her eyes and pursed her lips. “You’re half Indian like me, aren’t you?” It was part answer, part question.

Ah, there it was. The thing that separated me from those who had a right to belong in this country. If they didn’t say it to my face, they said it behind my back. They were either curious or disdainful. I let go of her hand and began straightening the sheet on my side of her bed. “My mother is Indian.” I didn’t tell her I hated my last name. I didn’t tell her I hadn’t seen my father since the age of three. I didn’t tell her I wished him dead. I didn’t tell her that if it weren’t for him, my mother’s life would have been so much better.

She watched me as I tucked the sheet, a little too forcefully, around the bottom corners of the bed. “My mother is from Lucknow. My father is Czech. I’ve been both Indian and European for so long that I’m not sure which side is more me.”

There was a major difference between us, even in our half-half heritage, however. She considered her otherness a source of pride. She flaunted it, like a peacock’s train. It made her special. It made her an artist. A painter. I, on the other hand, wore my otherness like a scratchy blouse that I couldn’t wait to take off at the end of the day.

I looked at my watch, realizing I was late attending to the pregnant patient who had taken Mrs. Mehta’s place now that Mr. Mehta had taken his wife home.

I excused myself, thanking Mira for sharing her work with me. When I’d first met her, I’d thought Mira’s ways were too big for the world I inhabited. But like breath, my life seemed to expand whenever I was around her.

***