He handed her the bag of pastries, and her face lit up. The sweets in France were a different story. She loved how the chocolate here tasted so deep and rich and luscious, a perfect complement to the buttery flakiness of the pastries. It was very different from the brightly colored mithai in India made with food coloring, milk powder, cornstarch, and oil. She pulled out a pain au chocolat, the flaky layers already falling from her fingers to the ground. The light, airy exterior surrounding the dense, rich chocolate center was much more pleasing to her palate than the wine.
“You do smile.” His blue eyes shimmered as the late-afternoon sunlight bounced off his face.
She paused, midchew.
“You always look so serious,” he continued. “It’s intriguing. What makes you so serious?”
Thoughts began whipping around in her mind: That I’m away from home. That I left my family. That I don’t have any money or a real place to live.
She shrugged noncommittally and swallowed her bite. “You ask a lot of questions.”
“Is that not how one has a conversation?” He squinted as the sunlight fell across his face.
“I suppose so . . . it’s just different where I used to live. People only spoke on the surface.”
“That doesn’t seem to be a very exciting way to live. It’s always what’s below the surface that’s interesting.”
He eyed her body, and she felt like he could see through her clothes to her skin. It made her tingle with electricity.
9
SOPHIE
2019
Sophie squeals, and her hand flies to her chest to feel her heart beating. She whips around, then realizes it was only Saumil Uncle who had touched her shoulder. The receptionist looks up from his book for a moment but then goes back to it after glancing at them.
“I didn’t mean to startle you,” Saumil Uncle says.
“No, it’s okay,” she says, catching her breath. “I was hoping not to wake anyone. I’m sorry if I troubled you as I left the room.”
He peers behind her, trying to see what is on the screen, the way she’s seen countless uncles do back in India. She knows uncles have no respect for the privacy of others if personal information is presented to them, so she positions herself in a way that blocks the monitor from his view.
“I could not sleep with the jet lag, so I thought I would research some of the places I want to see tomorrow,” she says.
Uncle raises an eyebrow but lets her comment pass. “There is much to discover in Paris.”
“Yes, I know,” she says, her hand still covering her chest as she tries to calm her pulse. The quickness is from more than the fright she got. She has an existing address that matches with the old letter! She feels the adrenaline surge through her because she hopes that by revealing the past, this city will unlock her future.
The next morning Uncle and Auntie say they are feeling groggy and promise to show Sophie around the city later that afternoon.
“Old age,” Auntie jokes, her legs cracking as she stretches them in front of her. “Take advantage of your youth!”
Sophie does not mind because she is eager to find Le Canard Volant and see if there is anything left of Nita there, and that is something she must do in private. She is pleased that the hostel is only a thirty-minute walk from where they are staying.
There is a chill in the air as she crosses the bridge over the Seine. Fortunately, it is at her back and not blowing into her face, but she knows Anjali Auntie is right that she needs to get a warm coat. The thin jacket she brought with her is no match for the late-fall weather in Paris. Sophie follows the map that the receptionist had given her and notices she must cross two bridges because she is passing over an island that sits in the middle of the river. She looks around her and sees more bridges, each ornately constructed yet each one unique. The bluish-green water ripples beneath them, responding to the breeze. She hears bells to her right and sees the back of a large structure with two majestic towers looming in the distance. The part nearest her is blocked off by a temporary wall, but above its height she sees a blackened and burned building with scaffolding surrounding it for refurbishment. According to her map, it is a church: Notre-Dame. It looks so different from the Hindu temples she is used to visiting. After fully crossing the river, she finds the street she is searching for. She turns right and quickly walks until she sees the vertically scribed black sign bolted onto a narrow building face with white script letters saying L’H?TEL CANARD VOLANT with a single white star beneath them, and assumes this is the right place.
She pauses for a moment, staring up at it, knowing Nita must have stood in the exact same spot. The sign looks new, or at least not more than twenty years old, so Sophie suspects parts of the view have changed, but she wants to believe she now shares a moment in common with Nita. As a child that was what she had always wished for, that she was doing the exact same thing her mummy had once done. In the months after she was told Nita had died, when Papa was at work, she would sneak into his room and sit at the vanity where Nita brushed her hair each morning and night. Sophie would take her brush, look into the mirror, and count to 101 in her head, as she’d seen her mummy do so many times. Now, she realizes that Nita could have been sitting on that stool for Sophie’s entire life and just chose to be away from her. She feels anger rising in her. She has never been an angry person, but she feels it growing in her the more she sits with the lies she has been told. But for now, she pushes it down with the rest of her unprocessed emotions and focuses on the hope that she may find answers.
The windows of the hostel are covered in a black film, some of it cracked and peeling at the edges. Sophie pushes the heavy door, and, as it swings shut behind her, the low lamplight in the reception area eclipses the natural light that had snuck in while the door was open. Sophie’s eyes adjust to the dimness. This is a room in which time stands still because one would never know if it were day or night outside its four walls.
Inside, there is a reception desk. A petite woman with chin-length dark hair speckled with gray who looks to be in her fifties sits behind it, holding her mobile phone so close to her face that she’s almost cross-eyed. She taps the screen with her manicured pink fingernails. Sophie can’t help but feel disappointed even though she should not have expected Nita to be sitting in this hostel, waiting for her long-lost daughter to appear. Still, some part of her thought maybe it was possible that she would see Nita when she pushed open that door, and that hope is dashed as she sees the white woman at the counter.
The woman puts down her phone as Sophie approaches. “Vous avez une réservation?”
Sophie looks at her blankly, finally registering what the woman must be asking based on the context. “Do you speak English?” she says.
The woman sighs and nods even though her expression suggests she is annoyed by the question.
Sophie pulls out a picture of Nita that was taken the year before she left. She is dressed in an ornate blue sari studded with white beads for a Diwali party. A radiant smile adorns her face, and it is still hard for Sophie to imagine how a woman who smiles like that could be willing to leave her life, her husband, her daughter.
“I realize this is very strange, but do you happen to know this woman? She would look older now, but she stayed here twenty-two years ago.” She holds out the photo.