September 1998. Interesting, thinks Lola, how rage and delight can live side by side in her. Rage at Max, delight in their child. Indira’s teaching has had something of a civilising effect on her. Now when she thinks of Max she tries to consider his actions more calmly, more objectively than before. But no matter how hard she tries, the enormity of his behaviour still hits her like a two-tonne safe dropped from a tall building. How could he say what he said, do what he did, be as he was with her when he was, as far as she knew, being the same with Lula Mae Flowers? Even the woman’s name was a joke. That he should get Lula Mae pregnant while doing the same to her, Lola! How did his mind work, that he could do that? As if she, Lola, were no one special. She who had given him her whole heart, her unconditional love, by the seven stars of Ursa Major and the Hale-Bopp comet. Would the hurt and the anger ever go away or would they grow with time to fill her soul with blackness?
But even while she thinks this her hands, calmer and more peaceful, draw from the sarod the notes of Indira’s ‘Smriti’. Lola’s voice rises in her to join the sarod. The good moments she remembers, are they truly false or falsely true? Do they flicker like flecks of gold in the bed of time’s river? Gold then and gold now? Sifting these grains of the past tires her. The music is coming through her as it had come through Indira. She is the vessel only. The music is more than she is. Noah is crooning softly. The music is coming through him as well.