Lakshmi switched her gaze between the two of them, not fully tracking the exchange in Spanish.
The clerk jumped to the last page of notes. “The analyst who processed your case contacted your last place of employment, and they declared under oath that your professional skills were, I quote, irreplaceable. Also, you are listed as having a minor child in Mahisūru.”
“Well, she’s here! She’s traveling with me!”
“I also see a note from the provincial director of the Travel Authority, explicitly forbidding you from leaving India.”
“Where’s the provincial director? May I speak to him?”
“You’d need to go the provincial capital.”
“But that’s Mahisūru, exactly where I don’t want to be! I don’t want to be anywhere in India!”
“I said I’m sorry. It’s beyond anything I can do.” He moved the folder aside, wordlessly marking the issue closed.
“There must be some procedure, some way—”
Lakshmi grabbed his arm and made him look at her. “He doesn’t have the authority to help us,” she said in Kannada.
A touch of finality in her voice pulled him out of his rage. “Where do we go now?” he asked, knowing it was an empty question.
She began a shrug, but was too tired for even a gesture of defeat. “Somewhere else. I don’t know. We’re doing nothing here.”
“Señorita Hiriyanna Rukkamma,” called the clerk. “Your travel permit has been approved.”
All three adults stared at him with alarmed disbelief. “What are you talking about?” asked Lakshmi. Her Spanish was imperfect, but it apparently had done the job.
“Am I going on an airship?” asked Rukkamma.
“Not without us.” Lakshmi snatched the folder from the clerk’s hands. “This has to be a mistake.”
“Let me see,” said the professor. The folder spread precariously taut between his hands and his wife’s, and they failed to agree on which pages to consult, until they gave up trying to make sense of anything, turned to the clerk, and switched back to Spanish. “What does this mean?”
The clerk extended a hand that stayed open until the professor understood the gesture and gave him back the folder. “Let me see… there are no contrary statements from Church authorities, or employers, or family members… no uncollected debts… no criminal history… no dependent offspring—”
“Of course she’s got none of that!” exclaimed the professor. “She’s eleven!”
“She can’t be legally old enough to travel alone,” added Lakshmi.
The clerk opened his mouth and closed it at once. Rukkamma’s parents knew exactly what he’d been about to say. By Indian tradition, Rukkamma was well beyond old enough to marry. It was true that the more affluent families saw less of a need to hurry and marry their daughters, and professor Hiriyanna was absolutely opposed to the practice, but he could see the clerk’s unstated point. Too many girls left India expressly to move in with husbands in Seville or Barcelona they hadn’t even met in person. It was a regrettable custom that the Church didn’t bother to condemn. If her application had been processed separately from her parents’, it stood to reason that certain assumptions had been made about the purpose of her trip.
“We’re all going together,” explained the professor. “You can’t issue travel papers to her and not to us.”
His wife saw an opportunity in the middle of the confusion. “You haven’t checked my folder. Was my application approved? My name is Hiriyanna Lakshmidevamma.” She caught the professor’s dismayed look and whispered in Nihali, “There may yet be a way to save her from the chaos that’s coming if I go with her. You can join us later.”
The proposal made him conjure horrific scenarios in his head. “I can’t let the two of you spend weeks in an airship without me to take care of you.”
“How about three of us?” said Sagunabai. “If we’re all together, we’ll take care of each other, no matter where we go.”
“That’s… actually not a bad idea,” said Lakshmi. “If we plan—”
“Señora Hiriyanna Lakshmidevamma is not authorized to travel,” announced the clerk, drowning the breath of hope she’d briefly enjoyed.
“That does it,” said the professor, turning away to leave the queue. “We’re done here.”
Lakshmi stopped him and asked the clerk, “Can we submit our applications again?”
“Yes, of course.”
“How long would it take?”
“It should take about the same, roughly two weeks. Though I recommend you send all the applications together, so the office can understand your plans.”
Lakshmi made an effort to not claw at his throat. “But that’s what we did. It’s not our fault that the mail separated our envelopes.”
“Then I don’t know what else to tell you.”
“I do,” said Sagunabai. The professor and his wife noticed her again and stood in silence, ignoring the annoyed grunts from the back of the queue. “Just let the girl travel with me.”
“No, that’s not an option,” he protested. “We don’t need to do something so irresponsible.”
“Stop talking in Spanish. What did she say?” asked Lakshmi.
“She wants Rukkamma to go with her,” he translated. “But we’re going to apply again, so we can all travel together. We’ll wait another two weeks and get our permits.” He repeated the same to Sagunabai in Marathi.
“In two weeks,” said Sagunabai, “more people will have the same reasons for wanting to leave, and this queue will be ten times longer. The colonial government will start creating more restrictions for travel permits. Rukkamma’s chance is now.”
The clerk interjected, “Please make up your mind away from the queue and let other people have their turn.”
“This is our turn,” said Rukkamma. The professor made a mental note of pride in her first usage of Spanish.
“Are you saying you want to do this?” he asked. “I mean, Sagunabai is a good friend of mine, but it won’t be the same. We don’t know how long we’re going to be made to wait for another permit; there’s no telling how long we will be separated.”
Lakshmi addressed Sagunabai in Nihali. “Your offer is most generous. I only consent to having my heart broken in this way because I know how much Hiriyanna trusts you. If you can keep my daughter safe, then I beg of you: take her far. There’s more war coming, and I want her out of it.”
“I am humbled. Be assured that I intend to make every effort to protect her. But I must remind you that I can only travel between Iberian colonies.”
“Then go to Japan. Santiago. The Oregón Free State. Get as far as you can.”
Her fierceness stirred the professor’s apprehensions. “Aren’t we rushing with this decision?”
“Sagunabai is right,” said his wife. “There may not be another time for her.”
“Excuse me,” said the clerk. “Either I stamp the señorita’s papers or you need to leave the queue.”
Rukkamma took her papers from her father’s hands, walked to the desk, and presented them.
The clerk made the necessary notes in his ledger. “I’m giving you provisional booking on an airship to Mozambique. Routes via the Philippines are not the safest these days. You’ll be departing tonight, and once you’ve landed, you can decide where you want to go from there.”
“What’s the colonial language in Mozambique?” asked Sagunabai.
The clerk closed his eyes to remember. “The current governor is Catalan, so that’ll be the preferred one. But the locals still use Portuguese.”
Sagunabai nodded. “Rukkamma, can you speak Catalan?”
“I’ll manage.”
Finally, they left the queue and sought a quiet place to calm down. The professor was surprised at the ease with which his wife had jumped to accept Sagunabai’s proposal, and while he could see the sense in that plan, he also felt as if an essential organ were being removed from him. “Rukkamma, take this suitcase. Read the books. That’s the only weapon we have. We must be smarter than them.”