by Abha Dawesar
The first thing that Prem noticed was an symbol, set in a circle the size of a Susan B. Anthony dollar coin, emblazoned on Maya’s T-shirt, in the middle of her chest, just to the right of where her heart was.
“It is you!” Maya’s face exploded into a smile.
“A pleasure to meet you, miss,” Prem said, formally putting out his hand to shake hers. Her grip was firm.
“My name is Maya. I didn’t think there was any chance it would really be you.” She had gone red.
“May I suggest a cup of coffee? There is a quiet French café not far from here,” Prem said, showing her down the aisle with an after-you gesture.
“Great! It’ll put me right in the mood for my trip.”
“You’re going to France?”
“Yes, I won a fellowship.” Was she talking too soon? Showing off too much?
“Congratulations! Which one?”
“Oh! The Paris Fiction Fellowship.” Without having to stare, Prem saw the flush that filled Maya’s face, neck, and ears with crimson ink.
“Congrats! Do you speak French.”
Maya nodded.
As they stepped out of the bookstore, the guard at the door tipped his hat to them.
“Such a coincidence. I’m likely to be in Paris all summer myself. I have a good friend there, and we try to catch up often.”
Maya didn’t want to ask if he meant Pascal Boutin and sound like a good student who had been doing all her reading for office hours with the professor. She was suddenly aware that her quadriceps and hamstrings, which shook only when she lunged and leaned in yoga, were full of tremors. They walked in silence for a block. At first Prem strolled comfortably but not slowly, taking in the presence of the petite girl beside him; beneath her snug T-shirt he could make out the shape of her back. After a block Prem slowed his pace. He had already noticed the mouth, the smile, the eyes, and the way they all conspired to make her face dance when she spoke. He wished to prolong the sweet agony of wanting to sit in front of her and treat himself to the sheer pleasure of watching beauty, trying to hold it in his thrall.
Maya’s hands were shaking with nervousness, though she smiled her most charming smile and was sure her expressions were arranged gracefully on her face. At the don’t-walk sign she teetered forward in nevousness. Prem reached out for her hand and tugged her.
There were no other customers that spring afternoon, and the waiter seated them right away on a small corner table and made himself scarce.
“I’m sorry to be less than articulate, Mr. Rustum. I was sure it was a prank.” Maya looked at the table when she said his name but then looked up directly into his eyes.
“Why, I was sure it was a prank myself! I was sure I’d find myself captured on tape by some overzealous film students!”
“So you hoped to provoke the paparazzi by responding to my ad.”
“Young lady, you were trying to provoke me. Me, an elderly heart patient with one foot in the grave and another perpetually in my mouth. You owe me some explanations.” Prem tapped the table lightly when he said owe.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Rustum. I meant no disrespect,” Maya said immediately. Her nervousness was now on top heat.
“I was teasing, dear.”
Maya reached for her glass of cold water. The waiter had unobtrusively filled their glasses. The water cooled her down. She could feel her ears burning and wanted to touch the surface of the glass to them. Prem watched her silently; she was not yet at ease with him, but she was clearly bright. A bit on the reverential side, but to meet someone who wasn’t, he’d have to go looking for a different type of woman, one who didn’t read books.
“How did you find my ad, Mr. Rustum? I didn’t think you surfed the Net.”
“Not too many questions, young lady. Tell me what you’ll work on in Paris.”
“I’m writing a story about India. I don’t know if it’s possible to be an outsider like me and really write about India, but I’m going to try.”
“Well, the bigger question is whether it’s in your kismet, isn’t it?” Rustum said, his eyes twinkling.
“The last time I checked in with a kismet spokesperson, he said I was going to get rich within the month.”
“Are you sure he was competent? Where was this?”
“In the temple in Madurai. The soothsayer used a magnifying glass to read my lines.”
“Fraud! Let me have a look.” Rustum pulled out his glasses and put them on before bringing his left hand over the table, palm open. Taking his cue, Maya placed hers in front of him. He took it in his hand and used his right index finger to trace the lines of her palm.
In his somewhat Westernized pre-university days Prem had learned that this was the quickest, least sleazy, and most sensuous way of establishing body contact with a female without fear of recrimination. And unlike the other young men of his time, who used the palmistry trick to take hold of a fair hand and then deliver overtly dubious predictions, Prem had bothered to do his reading.
Without letting go of Maya’s hand, he adjusted his bifocals with his right hand and rubbed his right palm over her open palm as if to smooth the creases. Flirting with this girl was coming so naturally to Prem, he wondered if he’d really been in hibernation for a decade. The memory of women, of sensuality, made its way to the forefront of his brain as if he’d never given it a break.
“Let’s see, your Mount of Venus here. Hmm! Good. Creativity, some restlessness. Not bad for a writer, not bad at all.” Maya’s Mount of Venus was fleshy and soft. Prem let the flesh of his own fingertips run over it again.
“Peacock’s Eye on your Mercury!” He furrowed his eyebrows to take a closer look.
In the squeeze of his hand and the soothing rub of his fingers, Maya felt herself relax. It was the same sensation as putting her head to one side after she had done a series of backbends. One of the yoga instructors at YogaNow! had said that backbends soothed the parasympathetic nervous system.
“Is the Peacock Eye winking?” she asked.
Prem looked up from Maya’s hand. “Mademoiselle, this is serious business. We’re talking about your future here.”
“I am serious. Why haven’t you ever written about palmistry in your books?”
“It’s a hobby.” Prem cleared his throat, then in a graver tone added, “The Peacock Eye shows an amalgamation of intensity and talent. And there is nothing better for a writer than to have it on the Mercury finger.”
“Do you believe these lines really hold the truth?”
“Come now,” Prem said, squeezing her hand before releasing it.
“But then why read palmistry books?” Maya was frowning at her hand, trying to see what Prem had seen.
“For aesthetic interest. I like hands.” He grabbed her hand again across the table. “For instance, you have a waisted phalange here.” He pinched the joint of her thumb between his index right finger and thumb.
“Does that mean something too?”
“A hand-reader will tell you that every whorl, loop, and mark means something. The angle your thumb makes where it joins your hand, for instance, points to musical harmony rather than manual dexterity.” Rustum pressed into the soft pad of skin on Maya’s palm with his thumb as he spoke.
“Your hands are more beautiful in real life than on TV.”
“When did you see mine on TV?”
Maya told Prem about the Boutin documentary and about the letter she had almost written him from India.
“I am an unremitting admirer of yours, Mr. Rustum, and I would have been crushed to seem like a Judith Q to you.”
“Judith Q does not have a Peacock Eye, and you can tell so from her letters.”
“So she is based on a real person. A single real person?” Maya felt as if she were making an undignified demand on Rustum or asking him for a trade secret.
“Yes and no. The letters are not ones she wrote me.”
Maya was afraid to inquire further after his injunction against too many questions. They bantered ab
out their favorite haunts in Paris, the Maillol and Rodin Museums, and the merits of Pierre Hermé’s macarons over those of La Durée.
“Maybe we can go to the museums together when we’re both there. Pascal isn’t usually up for it, and I don’t like going alone.”
“Yes, that would be lovely.”
“How will I get in touch with you?”
“I’m staying for the first few days with a family friend. I’ll give you that number.”
“I’ll give you mine, but you have to promise me that you’ll keep it to yourself.”
“Of course, Mr. Rustum. You can trust me.”
“I don’t just mean the number. I’m a very private person, and if you tell anyone about this meeting, I’m afraid…” he left his thought hanging.
“Mr. Rustum, I won’t tell anyone about this if you don’t want me to. I know my father would be thrilled if he knew that we had met, but I won’t even tell him. It’s a promise.”
Rustum brought out a thick gold-nibbed fountain pen from the breast pocket of his jacket and unscrewed it. Maya shuffled in her bag for the small notepad she always carried around. Prem’s hand moved rapidly, and Maya tried imagining the curvature of his Ss and the crossings of his Ts as she heard the sound of the nib on paper.
“I didn’t know you were left-handed,” she said, when he handed back her notebook. Prem had written in block letters, often joining several letters in haste, as if he hadn’t lifted his pen up from the paper between letters.
“When are you getting there?” he asked.
“Next Wednesday.”
“I believe I fly in on Friday,” Rustum said, raising his arms in a would-you-believe-that gesture.
As soon as they stepped out on the sidewalk from the café, a black car drew up.
“Come, let me give you a ride.”
“Thanks, but I can walk.”
“Why this formality?”
“All right, then.” Maya slid into the back of the sedan. At the next red light she and Rustum both stared at a department store window advertising suits for children. A photograph of two boys, one around seven and the other ten, was on display in the window. The photograph was several times the size of real boys that age. They were in seersucker pinstripe suits and bow ties.
“At that age I just loved Navroze the Parsi New Year because I got to wear my tie and suit. My father was excommunicated after he married my mother, a Hindu. We observed the day as a special day, and my father always wore his dagli that day, but my sister and I wore Western clothes.”
“Did it make you feel important?”
“Did it! One of my first memories of life is of dressing up like this. My older sister Meher kissed me on my cheek that day and said I looked very handsome. It was the first time she was really nice to me.”
Maya looked at Prem’s face while he spoke, trying to pick out facts from the inflection of his voice but not succeeding.
“I’ll get off on Forty-second,” Maya said.
“In Paris then. A bientôt.”
Rustum removed his glasses carelessly with one hand before he reached to give Maya a goodbye kiss on each cheek. The driver waited till she was on the sidewalk and the car door firmly shut before he drove off. Prem’s mouth wore a droopy half-smile for the entire ride back.
Back in her studio Maya proceeded to dance around the apartment. Johnson had invited her over to his house for an early dinner. Still dancing on her way to a quick shower, Maya removed her T-shirt and flung it across the room chanting “Prem Rustum is my friend.” As she pulled down her pants and kicked off her shoes, she hopped to pick up By the Thread and turned it to see his photograph. After she’d seen Prem in real life, the photograph had come alive. I’ve finally met you, I’ve finally met you. Maya moved toward the bathroom jumping up and down in the nude.
“I’ve been thinking about your impending trip,” Johnson said as he served her salad on his kitchen table.
“You have? What have you thought?”
“I can visit Paris for a week. Would that work?”
“I’d love to see you. I guess I’m not sure how my writing will be going.”
“I promise I’ll let you work. Three months just seem like such a long time.”
“I’m not expecting you not to meet other women,” Maya said.
“Maya, I’ve not felt so attracted to someone in ages. It’s a shame we only just met.”
“I know.” Maya put her hand on Johnson’s. She wanted to tell him about her meeting with Prem. She was bursting to tell him, tell anybody about it. But she remembered Prem saying that he didn’t want her to talk about it and felt her body get tight—she was sure something bad would happen if she did. She withdrew her hand from Johnson’s.
“What are you going to do over the summer?” Maya asked.
“I’ll polish up my short stories and try to place some in magazines. I’ll cultivate Prem Rustum.” Johnson laughed.
“What’s funny?”
“I just said that as if he were a plant or something. I used to despise all the social climbers at Harvard, but I just said I wanted to cultivate my all-time hero.”
“One cultivates and fosters culture, art, friendship—it’s not all that terrible.” Maya tried changing the subject of their discussion.
“I’ll introduce you to him when you come back.”
Maya let the remark go.
“What’s the matter? It’s not like I just asked for a commission fee. Don’t you want to meet him?” Johnson nudged Maya.
Maya shrugged. “I’m just tense about packing and leaving for three months.”
“You need a massage.”
After dinner Johnson pulled her to his bedroom and pushed her down at the shoulders so she was seated on his bed. He pulled off her T-shirt and shoes.
“Turn over onto your stomach.”
As Johnson kneaded her shoulders, Maya relaxed. Lying face down with her eyes closed, she no longer needed to chain her mind, which wanted to be back with Rustum. It had been a sunny day with the first hint of warmth. Maya did not just remember but felt again exactly how she had felt in Prem’s presence, like a very young flower receiving the first rays of the vernal sun and opening up to the world.
p a r t i i
I preserved the solitude of those first books. I carried it with me. I’ve always carried my writing with me wherever I go. Paris. Trouville. New York.
—MARGUERITE DURAS, WRITING
Prem had taken two sleeping pills and fallen asleep on his comfortable bed in first class. The next thing he knew, the female flight attendant was shaking him. He heard his name.
“Mr. Rustum, welcome to Paris.”
“Thank you, miss.”
Prem sat up. Despite having slept like a log, he felt a bit gray.
“Are you all right, Mr. Rustum?” The attendant pulled up the backrest to vertical and the footrest too.
“I’m exhausted.”
“Let me get you some water,” she said, walking away.
“You must be dehydrated because you didn’t drink anything all these hours on the flight,” she said, returning a minute later with two glasses, one of orange juice and another of water.
“Thanks, you’re kind.” Prem took both glasses from her hands.
He drained them one after the other and then went to the restroom. His hair was disheveled, and he looked much older than he remembered ever having looked. He patted down his hair and went back to his seat.
At the airport exit the driver from the car service took over Prem’s luggage cart and led him to the car.
“It’s nice to be back in Paris,” Prem said to the chauffeur.
“Not the worst summer! It’s supposed to be fresh the next few days. Not too hot.”
Prem acknowledged him with a sound from his throat and shut his eyes. He nodded off for a while. When he opened them again, they were already driving on the boulevard St-Germain-des-Prés.
“Can you drive past the church before turning to my stree
t?”
“It’s a diversion, but sure, why not?”
The driver continued straight instead of turning in at rue du Bac. Prem saw the Café de Flore and Les Deux Magots whiz past and then the church. The church never failed to remind him of his first visit to Paris. The visit to escape New York and Vedika. The driver had turned in at Odéon and was driving back to rue du Cherche-Midi. Soon they were at the discreet fully serviced apartment in an old Parisian building where Prem usually stayed on his trips. The driver brought Prem’s bags up to the apartment, gave him a smart salute, and left.
The exhaustion from his trip had fallen away. The air was cool, and the sun felt good. Paris was perfect. It was the way he remembered it in his mind. Prem decided to wait for the evening to sleep so that he could adjust to the time difference. He freshened up before phoning Pascal, then walked to the Église St-Germaindes-Prés. It was dark inside and almost cold. Prem sat on a bench in the back. Vedika was everywhere.
The past was like a load that got heavier with each year. The burden of Meher, Angie, and Vedika had not reduced, but new weights had been added. The two French teenagers had affected him. The blue paint in the church with its benign vegetable-dye hue and small golden stars belonged to the realm where time stood still.
Like an old river at the end of its journey grown sluggish with accumulated debris, Prem’s experience with women had clogged his memory. Yet despite the multitude of women who had come after Vedika, each filling his head with one more layer of experience, the Église St-Germain-des-Prés brought back the bitterness of Vedika as if she were just on the surface. He had come to Paris to get over his love for her and to avoid the Bedis without arousing Harry’s suspicions. It was on this first trip that Pascal had become a real friend. They had met before in New York on two occasions, but no bond had formed there. Prem got up from the bench and left the church to meet Pascal at their usual café nearby.
