The Direction of the Wind: A Novel(3)
Sophie had convinced her fois to let her stay alone in the bungalow for one final night before moving into Vaishali Foi’s home until her wedding the week after, and then into her husband’s family home, where she will spend the rest of her life among the strangers who will become her new family. She has never been alone in the bungalow she grew up in. There were always servants or Papa or another relative, but now the servants have been dismissed, and her fois are in their own homes tending to their own children and grandchildren after having spent the majority of the last week and a half dealing with Rajiv’s passing.
The night is eerie as Sophie moves through the bungalow. The windows are open, and Sophie inhales the smells that waft in, letting them linger around her. Jasmine that blooms just outside the living room and releases the sweetest scent at night, the smell of fire and charcoal from the street vendor who roasts cashews with black pepper at his tiny cart, and lemon from the water the servants use to mop the floors. She will never smell this combination again. She will never smell home again.
Sophie hears a pack of dogs nearby, rickshas and scooters tooting their horns as they swerve through the streets, and firecrackers off in the distance. There must be a wedding somewhere, she thinks, knowing that October is the start of the wedding season in Ahmedabad. Her heart feels so broken and empty that she cannot contemplate celebrating anything. She cannot fathom that in a week she will be part of a wedding herself and embark on the most unknown chapter of her life. Who will greet her on the mandap? One of her fuas?
She glides across the cool marble floor and brushes her fingers along the ornately carved wooden dining room chairs. Last month, she and Papa were sitting in those chairs, going over the wedding schedule for this year. With so many weddings, each spanning a week or more, they strategized about which events to attend for which couple. They considered which families would have the best food and planned to go during mealtimes for those. They talked through which ones were all the way across town, requiring them to navigate hours of Ahmedabadi traffic, and came up with polite excuses. Of the nineteen weddings on the calendar between late October and the middle of December, before the auspicious period ended, none of those weddings were meant to be Sophie’s. Until now. Papa’s passing had made her Wedding Number Twenty for this season among their family and social circle.
She slowly climbs the marble staircase and pauses outside of Papa’s bedroom. Her fois had left the door open, his bed littered with piles of clothing, evidence of their efforts to pack his belongings. Having spent today removing all the valuables and transporting them to the safes in their homes, tomorrow they will ask the servants to finish what remains.
She moves into the closet room and tugs on a door, wanting to smell Papa’s shirts one last time. Memorize the scent. So she never forgets, the way she forgot the smell of her mummy. She knew it as a child, but it faded so many years ago despite how much she tried to conjure it, and she doesn’t want that to happen again. She has a set of house keys fastened to the waistband of her panjabi, and she finds the right one and begins to unlock the wardrobe doors, opening them all. She touches Papa’s button-down shirts and slacks, some still folded and wrapped in thick brown paper bundled together with twine from the cleaners. The paper crinkles as she unties the twine and exposes the shirts. She buries her face in the starched cotton and inhales deeply, knowing that unmistakable smell of Papa that lingers even after the clothes are washed. His shoes are lined up along the bottom. Everything in its place. Just as he had taught her. She smiles as she pulls open the drawers. His watches and rings are now gone, tucked away in his sisters’ safes; only the red velvet lining remains, and she imagines the items that used to be there.
In the very back of one drawer, she sees a box covered with dust. Her fois must have forgotten to look that far back. Wanting to make sure all Papa’s treasured possessions are preserved, she removes it. It is the size of a shoebox but is ornately decorated, like her fancy jewelry boxes that are wrapped in cloth and adorned with colorful stones.
She lifts the lid, expecting to find watches or cuff links, but is surprised to see a stack of thin blue onionskin airmail letters. Papa used to send this type of letter to their distant relatives in America or Australia, and they would send the same back. Par avion, the envelopes say. By plane, she thinks, remembering the only bit of French Papa had let her learn.
The Gujarati lettering on them is a feminine scrawl. She knows these are private but is unable to resist the temptation to share in whatever memories her stoic papa had cherished enough to save all these years. She doesn’t see a return address or sender name on the outside of the first one and opens it. It is addressed to Rajiv. Without reading the body, she quickly moves to the signature and sees her mummy’s name scribbled at the bottom. An icy chill sweeps through her body. She turns back to the postmark on the letter and sees March 23, 2000. She freezes.
Sophie’s eighth birthday. A year and a half after her mummy had died.
Then she sees the postmark from Paris, France.
She collapses to the floor, the letter falling from her fingers as if she has been burned by it. She had not misheard her fois. Her dead mummy is alive.
2
NITA
1998
Nita Shah stared at her packed suitcase, the tough navy-blue fabric frayed at the edges. Visible signs of a life outside of Ahmedabad. She had longed for such a life, but the wear on the bag was not from hers. It was one of the many things she had inherited with her marriage to Rajiv. His finance work allowed him to travel to Europe. At thirty years old, Nita had never left India but had dreamed of going to Europe, a place she had experienced only through the pages of books. She’d begged Rajiv to take her with him on his trips after they married. Being able to accompany him on his business travel was one of the primary reasons she had agreed to marry him after her parents had suggested the match. But she’d become pregnant soon after their honeymoon, and once they’d had Sophie, Rajiv worried that she needed to be older to be left without both parents. Nita knew his overprotective nature would never allow him to feel comfortable until Sophie was herself married and out of their home. She knew she would never get to France unless she devised her own plan. Today, she would finally execute it.