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They went back to Kochi in September. It was monsoon: that long, loud, warm rain that falls like applause. Their house was just as she had left it: the kitchen with thread on the floor, the radio…
They went back to Kochi in September.
It was monsoon: that long, loud, warm rain that falls like applause. Their house was just as she had left it: the kitchen with thread on the floor, the radio, the cat, so old now that it walked as if on borrowed legs. Her mother settled her into her old room and she lay in the narrow bed and listened to the water on the tin roof, and for the first time in a year she slept without waking.
She did not play. Nobody asked her to. In the mornings she helped her mother with the sewing, hemming blouses, learning to thread a needle with the left hand, slowly, watching the third finger. It did what it was told if she did not hurry it. If she did not care.
At the end of the month, a neighbour's child knocked and asked if she would show her how to hold a violin. Anika was about to say no. Then the girl, perhaps six, looked up at her and said, "Is it true you played in Germany?"
"Yes," said Anika, slowly. "A long time ago."