“No, I think it’s time I get back to what I came to Paris to do in the first place.”
Simon looked at her painting behind him. “I understand why you feel that way. But you have a friend no matter what you do.”
Nita embraced him tightly as she said goodbye. “Americans hug,” he’d said to her as their friendship had developed, but the act had always seemed too intimate. She had struggled even getting used to giving and receiving bisous, but today she clung to him like the life raft he had truly been for her.
35
SOPHIE
2019
The next morning, the Saint-Paul metro station is teeming with people rushing to their jobs or errands, but Sophie has no trouble spotting Manoj leaning against the wall of a clothing boutique just north of the stairway leading underground to the station. There are several lanes of cars heading west as she waits for the light to change so she can cross the street to meet him.
They awkwardly say hello, and then he takes the scrap of paper on which she has written the address and starts walking away from the metro station. Sophie quickly follows. Within a few minutes they arrive in front of the address on Rue Elzévir. A turquoise set of double doors greets them with a panel to the left with buzzers for the apartments. Sophie looks back at the address on the paper and doesn’t see an apartment number.
“I’m not sure which one,” she says to Manoj.
The names on the call box are no help to her because the only one she would recognize would be Shah, and it is obviously not there.
He leans past her and buzzes the first name before Sophie can put out a hand to stop him. “We start with one until someone lets us in, no? This is how deliveries get made.”
It is as good a plan as any other. It is not until the third apartment Manoj tries that someone responds. He asks to be let in, and the next sound is of an electric buzzer allowing them to push through the heavy doors and enter a dark hallway. There are ten mailboxes against the wall for the residents. It appears there are only two units per floor. They make their way up the first narrow flight of winding stairs, and Manoj continues walking to the next floor.
“Why not try these doors?” Sophie gestures toward the two apartments on the first floor.
“Those were the two that didn’t answer just now. The buzzers go in order of the apartments.” He continues up to the second floor.
She realizes how useful his help is and is grateful he’s offered to lend it to her. She would never have been aware of these local norms.
At the second-floor landing, there is a young man peering through a slightly cracked open door. Manoj begins speaking to him in French, and Sophie is unable to follow the conversation. Manoj thanks him, and the man closes the door.
“He said he’s only lived in the apartment for a few months and said we might want to check with the woman upstairs, who’s lived here since the war.”
Sophie knows this news is not promising but tries not to let her spirit fully deflate. Her feet are heavy as she climbs the next flight of stairs. “Bhagwan na nasib huse,” Papa would have said to her. It is God’s will.
Manoj knocks on one of the doors on the fourth floor. They hear some shuffling behind it and then silence. Manoj knocks again. More shuffling, closer this time.
“Madam,” he calls politely. “Pourrions-nous vous parler un instant?” Could we speak with you for a moment?
“Non, merci,” comes back a scratchy voice.
“S’il vous pla?t. C’est important.”
They hear a slow cranking of metal as the occupant turns the key in the door. Finally, it cracks open and an old, slight woman with white hair and a hunched back peers out at them.
“Que voulez-vous?” What do you want?
Manoj begins explaining to her in French and gestures over his shoulder to Sophie. She smiles softly at the woman, trying to seem innocent.
“Have you got a picture to show her?” Manoj whispers to Sophie.
The woman wags her finger. “J’en ai pas besoin.” I don’t need it. To Sophie, she says in English, “The woman looks like you, isn’t that right?”
Sophie nods.
“She was a troublemaker, that one!” The woman speaks quite forcefully for someone her size and age. She must be in her eighties. “Always carrying on at wee hours of the night, and so many strangers going in and out of the building. Good riddance to have them gone! It’s much quieter ever since!”
The woman has no idea she’s already answered the question that Sophie cares most about: Nita is no longer living in this building.
“Do you know where they went?” she asks.
“I do not care. Bad rubbish, I say!”
Sophie is shocked to hear someone speak of Nita this way. Sophie’s memories are of the prim and proper woman who would be the consummate hostess to Papa’s business clients, paint quietly near the window, and methodically brush her hair each night. What could Nita have possibly done to this old woman to warrant such ire?
“Madam, please. It’s important,” Manoj says. “If there is anything you can remember to help us find her, we would be very grateful.”
“I am not getting involved in this,” she says and closes the door hard. Then they hear the metallic sound of the gears turning in the lock. The conversation is over.
“I’m sorry that woman wasn’t more help,” Manoj says to a somber Sophie as they descend the stairs.
Sophie stops at the third-floor landing and stares at the door, trying to picture Nita living there with a man who is not Rajiv. It is incomprehensible, and yet she knows it is the truth. She pictures Nita climbing the same winding staircase, her hand holding the same banister the same way Sophie is now. Tries to imagine the man she is with, but he has no face in Sophie’s mind. The building is a far cry from their home in Ahmedabad. What would make Nita choose this life over the lavish one she had back in India?
“Are you okay?” Manoj asks her.
She shakes her head to bring herself back to the present.
“Fine,” she says. “Just disappointed.”
“I know you really wanted to find her.” He leads her down the remaining stairs and steers her away from the building and back toward the metro. “Maybe you still can. Have you got any other addresses for her?”
Sophie shakes her head. She is out of leads. Perhaps after a couple days the woman they just spoke to will be in a better mood and Sophie will be able to try and speak with her again. Or maybe she can ask Cecile to try and remember something else. She cannot have traveled all the way and come this far to turn back now.
36
NITA
1999
Her fingers trembled as she slid the key into the lock to Mathieu’s apartment. She had never confronted someone in this manner and was ill prepared to do so. Part of her expected to find him straddling that horrible girl from two days earlier again. Another part of her expected him to be passed out from whatever drug du jour he’d ingested. What she hadn’t expected to find was a freshly showered, clean-shaven, somber-looking man sitting at the bistro table in their recently cleaned apartment, the chemical smell of lemon solvent still in the air.
Mathieu looked like he had been expecting her and stood as she entered.
He smiled gratefully. “You came back.”