“I’m sorry I brought shame upon the family,” Nita said humbly.
She was sorry for that. Reputation was everything, and she had tarnished her family’s with her actions. Had there been another way, she would have done it, but in their culture, these things were intertwined and impossible to separate.
“We raised you better than this!” her papa yelled into the phone.
Softly, Nita said, “You tried to . . . you really did. I’m sorry,” and then hung up.
She tinkered with her gold bangles, which she still wore every day. They were one of the last good memories she would have of her family because she suspected that was the last time she would ever speak to her parents. She was now truly on her own, to rise or fall on her own merit.
September 3, 1998
Dear Rajiv,
The truth is I thought it would be easy to walk away. Every day I think about Sophie and wonder what she thinks about her mummy being gone. What that must be like for a young child. But she is your daughter. Always has been. She is strong. Not weak like me.
My parents told me that you came here to find me. They also told me to come back and behave like a proper girl. I can’t live that lie, and I think you know that. Rajiv, you cannot come here again. It is smaller than Ahmedabad, but it is still a big city. You will not find me. You are wasting time that you should be spending with Sophie. She needs you, especially now. You have always been her whole world. That’s why I knew it was okay for me to go, but you . . . if she ever lost you . . . I cannot even think about it. You are free now. You are both free.
Nita
Her heart sank when she dropped off the thin blue airmail envelope at the post office that evening. She wondered how long it would take to reach Ahmedabad. She pictured Rajiv reading it at the dining table in their home. He was a stoic man, but she sensed that he would have emotion coursing through him. But she felt she had done the right thing. For all of them.
By her third week, her funds were running low. She had managed to pick up some shifts at her hostel when someone was on holiday or sick. The owners of Le Canard Volant—the nickname by which the hostel was commonly referred to—had been immigrants themselves and looked the other way in situations like hers in which the person had no work permit. Hostel travelers tended to speak English as their common tongue, and that was something she knew quite well. But the work was not steady and was not sufficient to keep her going. Art supplies, and everything else, were more expensive here than in India, or at least seemed that way after she converted the prices back to rupees.
After yet another shop owner told her she needed fluent French to apply, she was not sure what to do next. For the first time in her life, she worried about whether she would have a roof over her head and food in her belly. Cecile had made several comments about her late payments and seemed like she would be thrilled to throw Nita out if she were late again. In her dream country, she had more in common with the servants who had waited on her than the wealthy class into which she was born. She empathized with the many lower-caste people who had floated in and out of her life and wondered how difficult it must have been to live with this type of uncertainty every day. She’d been spoiled and sheltered and was starting to realize just how much.
Dejected, she picked up a takeaway sandwich du fromage and began her usual walk along the bouquinistes stalls of the Seine. The breeze near the river picked up, and she tightened her shawl around her shoulders. With all her concerns about money, she hadn’t yet had time to truly focus on her painting and wondered when she would have produced enough to rent such a stall and fill it with her work. The irony was that she would have spent more time on her craft had she stayed in India because there she had nothing else to worry about, given that the servants managed day-to-day life.
She bit into the baguette as she walked along the south side of the Seine, letting the crumbs from the crusty bread scatter along her path, the occasional pigeon swooping down behind her to pick them up. She had gone past the handsome stall owner’s space several times over the past couple weeks, but to her disappointment it had been closed, a large padlock signifying that the owner would not be returning shortly.
As she neared it that day, she saw it was open. Before she could get close enough to see if the man was there, she heard someone behind her.
“You’ve come back to claim your prize.”
She didn’t need to turn around to recognize the voice.
7
SOPHIE
2019
Sitting on the terrace of a small café just a few blocks from their hotel, Sophie scrunches her nose at the unfamiliar items on the menu, unable to tell which are without meat or fish or eggs. She studies the items, trying to find something safe, as she doesn’t want to further burden her newfound companions by being a picky eater.
“Do you eat nonveg?” Saumil Uncle asks her.
She shakes her head.
“Okay, we will tell them to make three veg plates.” He beckons a waiter to their table.
Sophie sinks into her wicker chair, grateful. She is famished after her long journey and ready to eat anything that was not once alive and able to move on its own.
Their plates arrive, and Sophie is surprised by how much she enjoys the vegetables, coated in butter instead of ghee and seasoned with salt, pepper, and herbs rather than turmeric, cumin, and red chili powder like her fois taught her to make in preparation for her wedding to Kiran.
As she savors the vegetables, she wonders what explanation was given to him. That she ran away? That she will return? Will her fois now speak about her the way she had overheard them speak about Nita? Kiran seemed nice enough during the single afternoon when they met. He had an average height and body, with the classic broad shoulders and skinny legs so common on Gujarati men. His hair was cut shorter, in a more Western way, but that made sense given the time he and his family had spent living in England. He wore glasses that at first appeared too large for his face, but as Sophie looked closer, she realized it was the style and was likely another trend he had picked up from his time in the West. His Gujarati was accented, if she listened closely, probably another remnant from his life outside of India. But despite his time away, he seemed to understand the customs and conventions of the local culture, which was a relief to her. But even if he hadn’t, Sophie didn’t feel like she’d had much choice in the matter when she agreed to marry him. It was time to move forward into that phase of her life, and Kiran was the one her fois had chosen for her, so that basically settled the matter.
She had been seated between Vaishali Foi and Sharmila Foi on one sofa, and he between his parents on the other. They had never shared a private word during the two hours that their relatives sipped chai and crunched on nasta while discussing their respective family trees. Kiran’s gaze was fixed on the marble floor. He occasionally stole glances at her and smiled shyly. His hands were clasped together, and his right knee bounced slightly, revealing his nerves. Sophie remained stoic, demure. She had lost her papa five days earlier, and nothing seemed important. Not this man. Not her marriage. And not her future. She’d wondered if Kiran had known just how recently she’d lost Papa before coming that day and suspected he had. Everyone knew everything in Ahmedabad. That’s why it is such a shock to her that the entire city had managed to keep this conspiracy about Nita from her for over twenty years. It must have been the gossip of the town when it happened, and somehow Sophie had been none the wiser.