I nearly died of heart failure. "My God! The girl's on the train, she's my responsibility," I thought. "All the luggage is with her; my passport is there." I had hardly any money with me. I couldn't speak a word of Italian. The train was gone. I felt absolutely helpless.
I sat down on the platform and began to cry. In despair, I said to Baba, "What are you doing to me? She's in my charge and now she's gone, along with the luggage and money. I'm stranded. I can't speak Italian. Now whom should I approach?"
After about ten or fifteen minutes of this hell, this agony, the train suddenly came back. The damn thing was just shunting to take off some compartment or carriage or the other!
Later, we had to change trains three or four times in the middle of the bloody night. I was swearing at Chanji throughout.
After showing her around Paris, Adi Jr. took Eileen by train to Marseilles, put her on a ship bound for India, and met up with Baba in London. Eileen Nettleton never saw Baba again.
Meanwhile, back in Venice on Tuesday morning, 5 April 1932, Baba went sightseeing to St. Mark's Square and toured a palace full of art, exquisitely carved furniture and fixtures and embroidered curtains.1 Back at the hotel, Beheram and Adi Sr. sang for Enid to the accompaniment of sitar and harmonium they had brought. Baba expertly beat out a rhythm on tablas.
In the afternoon the group rode in the famous gondolas down the Grand Canal. Beheram, who often photographed Baba, had brought his camera and took a few snapshots. At night they went to see a Buster Keaton film.
Baba left Venice for Milan by train on the morning of the 6th, and Enid accompanied the group.
When the train stopped at the Milan station at midday, Mrs. Cunes of Genoa, who had met Baba the previous year, came to receive them with her son. She told Baba, "I shall never in my life forget this great day. I would not have missed this for anything in the world!" After a hurried ride around the city in taxis, and to Enid's office to pick up his mail, Baba and the mandali continued on by train at 3:40 that afternoon.
They were met at Dover at midday on the 7th by Kitty, her brother Ernest, and Quentin.2 Baba suddenly changed his itinerary of continuing to London by train.
Footnotes
- 1.This was most likely the Doge's Palace.
- 2.According to newspaper accounts of his arrival, Baba's entry into England was delayed, as "the New Messiah had considerable difficulties with port authorities on account of his eight-year vow of silence." (New York Times, 8 April 1932, pg. 7.)