we would all end up in the gutter. But he was genuinely worried about Nina. What if she fell sick in India with one of those diseases people got there? âYes, and if she does something silly again?â Susie said. âYou can hardly expect Otto to go running after her, not with hisââ and she tapped her chest to indicate his heart condition. I myself was ambivalent about her proposed trip. I did want her to see the place that meant so much to me, but what if she didnât like it, found it abhorrent as others had? Nevertheless, I persuaded Otto with promises to take good care of her until finally he wrote out a checkââwith a heavy heart,â he said as he did so, while shielding the figure from Susie, who was craning forward anxiously to see it.
I realized that this time my stay in India would be very different. Instead of living with Somnathâs family, I joinedNina in her suite in an enormous Moghul-style hotel. It was built of sandstone like the Red Fort, though in salmon pink and with great domes stuck on at every available corner. Inside, it had marble walls and crystal chandeliers and bearers tall as maharajas in turbans and scarlet cummerbunds. Reproductions of Persian and Moghul miniatures lined the corridors, with the same scenes of princes hunting tigers woven into the carpets that lay thick as moss in the suites and staterooms and were beginning to smell from the damp that had seeped in during the rainy season. Nina only left her airconditioned rooms to go shoppingâuntil she discovered that it was not necessary to go out at all, because the hotel had its own shops of precious merchandise. Moreover, the bearers were always ready to introduce salesmen into her suite; they came like magicians with humble cloth bundles out of which they poured torrents of silk and jewels on to her carpets.
My Indian familyâI thought of Somnath and his family as my ownâwere very excited to hear that this time I had come with my mother, and of course I had to bring her to see them. This was not a success, though everyone pretended it was. To reach their house, it was necessary to turn off the main thoroughfare and, leaving the car behind, to walk through a series of intertwining alleys. I had been here so often that everyone had gotten used to me; but Europeans and Americans were rare enough to attract attention, and of course someone like Nina was a sensation. Everyone stared and commented; children came running from all directions, and the more daring touched her clothes (she was in a black and white moiré outfit) and related to the others what they had felt. So even before we had made our way up the narrow staircase that it was no oneâs particular business to keep clean, Nina had set her face in a fixed smile; and thisnever relaxed throughout her visit. Somnathâs wife and old mother and sisters and sisters-in-law and a few neighbors were all in their best saris, which were the same colors as the sweets they had set out. They also brought platters of fritters fried in mustard oil and milky tea in crockery cups they had borrowed to supplement their own meager stock. Nina, fortified with her fixed smile and super-gracious manner, accepted everything like a ceremonial offering and merely touched it with her fingertips. Afterward she said what fun it had been and so colorful, but from then on she stayed exclusively in the hotel; and Somnathâs family thanked me for bringing her and praised her beauty and graciousness but neither she nor they suggested a second visit.
When her funds were exhausted, Nina returned to New York, and I moved back to Somnathâs for a few days before setting off on one of my long bus and train journeys across India, this time to Vinaynagar. It was there that Ottoâs telegram reached me and I set off immediately for New York where he met me at the airport and took me home to where Nina was dying. I didnât reproach him for not calling