| |
Anjali came home one night after work and Pearl was gone.
Her ten square meters suddenly felt empty. Dinner would be too solitary.
She peeled off her office clothes and climbed into jeans and a T-shirt. All of a sudden she was overcome with suspicion. Had Pearl taken anything? Anjali checked the drawer where she kept her favorite earrings. She had never counted them, but they all appeared to be there.
You shouldn’t have suspected your friend, she thought. But she came off the street, of course I suspect her.
Anjali went for a walk, keeping an eye out for Pearl. A circuit through Jardin de Luxembourg helped calm her a little. When she was hungry, she went to Rue Saint André des Arts, a narrow street near the Seine lined with small eateries. Once again, she had a cheese crêpe. As usual, the cook spilled some cheese out of the crêpe directly onto the hot griddle, making a lacy edging. The toasted cheese melted in her mouth.
She went to Shakespeare & Company just as the bells of Notre Dame celebrated six in the evening with five minutes of melodic clamor. She stepped inside the bookstore, with its series of small rooms lined floor to ceiling with books. Individuals stood with books open in their hands, blocking the narrow passageways. A sign painted on the riser of a step between rooms said, “Live for Humanity.”
Anjali thought ruefully that she had tried to. When she was writing her screenplays or taking care of Pearl, that’s what she was trying to do. She guessed that Pearl had returned to the streets. She caught sight of a title on the spine of a book: The Freedom of Man.
What was freedom?
Take herself for instance, under pressure from her family to marry, maybe getting only a few months of freedom in Paris, most likely to return and take up the responsibilities and limitations of a wife and mother in India. And look at Pearl, here in the West, free to do whatever she wanted and yet a slave to alcohol.
Anjali had written down thoughts and impressions while living with Pearl. They were safely stored in her laptop in a document named “Dal” in a folder named “Recipes.” Not likely to be found. Now that Pearl was gone, she could move the document to her “Screenplays” folder, where it could be mined for ideas. Anjali could feel a screenplay about a lost girl brewing. She was excited about this new idea.
But that wasn’t the main reason to help Pearl, Anjali urged herself. Trying to help a fellow human being, that was the real motivation. At least I hope so.
And I hope she went back to her parents, Anjali thought. As for me, I’m not really ready to do that. Maybe I’ve sprouted the wings that everyone was so afraid of.
