by Abha Dawesar
“So tell me why this sudden trip? When I spoke to you a week ago, you said you were feeling too old even to be certain you would make it here this summer,” Pascal asked kissing him on both cheeks.
“I followed your advice with the Internet, I found a twenty-five-year-old girl, I followed her to Paris. C’est tout.”
Pascal whistled. “You are back in action, mon vieux.”
“I don’t know about that. She doesn’t know that I had no concrete plan to come to Paris. I’ve only met her once in New York.”
“But she knows you are here?”
“As soon as she told me she was coming here, I said I was too. I have to call her.”
“What is she doing here? Is she French?”
“No, she’s American. She won the Paris Fiction Fellowship. You were right about the Internet. I searched for someone looking for Prem Rustum, and there she was! Incredible!”
“See, I told you. Paris prize, not bad. So this girl has talent. What is her name?”
“Maya.”
They sipped their cafés and looked at the women walking their poodles on the boulevard. Almost all the women were wearing skirts. Prem and Pascal looked away from each other every now and then when someone caught their eye. Prem felt as if Paris had taken a good ten years off his life—he felt physically energetic and mentally alive.
“I’m feeling nostalgic today. I thought of Vedika in the cab from Roissy.”
“I spoke to my first wife. She’s not well. She’s got cancer,” Pascal said in response.
“I’m sorry to hear that. I always liked Irène.”
“It’s getting nearer and nearer, this death business.”
“I really want this girl or some girl like her,” Prem said.
“There’s no reason you won’t get her. When you decide to seduce, there is no stopping you. I saw you in action with Julie and Valérie.”
“I didn’t have to work too hard with them. But I really don’t want to seduce Maya. I want honest love without calculation and without my fame playing a role.”
“Your love won’t be any less true just because your approach is intelligent.”
“Yes, it will. I want, for once, the thing I never had except with Vedika and Meher.”
“Those were both destructive for you.”
“They went wrong, that’s all.”
“Even if you don’t use your charms, your fame can hardly be ignored. Least of all by a young writer just starting out in life.”
“I want her to come to me when she feels it. I want her to feel it strongly. I want to feel it strongly. And not because she’s young and beautiful but because of something more. The beauty and the youth are a hurdle to knowing the interior, just as fame is a hurdle.”
“A very sweet hurdle.”
Prem came back to his apartment and called some friends to say he was in town.
On her arrival Maya made straight for boulevard St-Germain and sat with a first ritual coffee on the terrasse of Les Deux Magots to meditate on the novel she was there to write. Fifty years ago Parisian writers had sat around on the same block gestating their œuvres; today a group of Filipino tourists, scattered across the tables to her left, played musical chairs to snap pictures with the awning of the café as a backdrop.
Prem had told Maya he was going to be staying on rue du Cherche-Midi when he got into town. After her coffee Maya walked to the Carrefour de la Croix Rouge to check out his street. She slowed her steps as she walked past Poilâne. The breads and flaky pastries in the window beckoned her in.
“Je viens, je viens,” she started. She had been engrossed in her own thoughts, and without enough concentration, her French had just unraveled.
“Yes, you come here. Now you are here. What would you like?” A young man who had been examining the flour section on the right side of the shop turned around and asked her. The lady at the cash register smiled at the man and then at Maya.
Maya ordered a pain au chocolat, recovering.
“I’ll have the same thing,” the man said to the attendant.
Before Maya could object, the man paid and grabbed both their pains aux chocolats.
“Why don’t we get some coffee for these?” he said to Maya, striding out of the shop.
“Because I don’t know you,” Maya said mildly. She wasn’t really objecting—he seemed charming enough.
“But you’ll never know me if we don’t talk.”
He walked rapidly on the street, and Maya had to look up to see his face since he was very tall. She noticed that he was carrying a book under his arm, an English book.
“What are you reading?” she asked.
“Carnovsky. Do you know this book?”
Maya nodded.
“Are you American?” he asked.
“Yes. Are you from Paris?”
“No. I’m from Puy-de-Dôme.”
“Ah! I think Georges Bataille is buried there, I’m not sure.”
“Would you like to go on a pilgrimage to his grave?”
“Why don’t we begin with Oscar Wilde at Père Lachaise?”
“Let’s sit here and plan our itinerary,” he said, choosing a café next to the Furla store.
“I’m here for three months,” Maya said flirtatiously.
“Just the right amount of time to get to know someone, but not enough to get tired of them. I am Jean-Pierre, by the way.”
“I am Maya.”
“Deux cafés, s’il vous plaît,” he ordered when the waiter came to them.
“You could have asked me what I wanted,” Maya said pleasantly.
“I am so sorry. What did you want?” he asked.
She wanted a decaf, and he went inside to change the order. Maya looked at his book. Jean-Pierre had used a ticket from the Rodin Museum to mark his page. Had Prem meant it when he had told her he would take her there? If he didn’t call her in a week, she would ring him.
“What are you doing in Paris?” Jean-Pierre was back.
“I’m writing.”
“I had this feeling that you were a writer,” Jean-Pierre said, leaning forward.
“Why?”
“Who else walks around carrying a fountain pen poking out of the bag?”
Maya looked at her synthetic courier-style bag. She pushed the pen in farther.
“What do you write?” he asked.
“I am trying to write a novel about a white hippie in India. What do you do?”
“I am trying to write a screenplay.”
“I assume the film will be in French.”
“Yes. But India sounds much more interesting. Have you gone there many times?”
“My parents took me there often. They were both sort of hippies. They had real jobs, but when we would go to India for a few months, they would be hippies. Part-time hippies.”
The waiter placed their drinks on the table. Jean-Pierre sipped his.
“You’re not using that sugar?” Maya asked.
“Here.” He passed her his packet.
Maya unwrapped the sugar cube and held it in her coffee, watching it turn brown as the coffee rose up its white crystalline structure. The sugar crumbled quickly.
“Are you alone in Paris?”
Maya nodded.
“So am I,” he volunteered.
They sipped their coffee in silence for a few seconds.
“We almost forgot the pains aux chocolats,” Jean-Pierre exclaimed, unwrapping one from its thin paper wrapping. Maya picked up the other.
“What is the story of your film?”
“There will be three short stories that will intersect. Each will feature a couple who are first very intensely involved and then leave each other. They never see each other again, but the influence of the other person is forever evident in their lives.”
The waiter put their bill on the table.
Maya reached for her purse, saying, “I’m getting this.” She rummaged for a few seconds for her small change purse and counted out her change. Jean-Pierr
e tore the bill in half and asked for her pen. He wrote his number on the back of one piece and handed it to her.
“Let me give you mine,” she said, writing hers on the other.
Maya stood tapping her foot as she listened to the jazz quartet in front of the Église St-Germain-des-Prés. Prem had called her earlier in the week to fix the rendezvous.
“I am so delighted to hear from you, Mr. Rustum. How are you?”
“Just dandy. And yourself, mademoiselle?”
“Très bien.”
“Are you getting a lot of writing done?”
“Some. I haven’t found an apartment yet, so that eats up a few hours every day.”
“Will you let me distract you this weekend anyway?”
“Of course.”
“There’s a concert of Indian music on Saturday in the fourteenth.”
Now the jazz quartet had finished playing and was trying to hawk a CD. Prem had been watching Maya for a few minutes. He hadn’t wanted to interrupt her before the music stopped. He now approached her from behind, feeling stealthy.
“Are you waiting for someone?”
“Vous,” she replied, smiling, as she planted kisses on his cheeks.
They hailed a taxi.
“What has been happening with you?”
“I found an apartment in Montmartre and moved. I’ve never met the propriétaire. We arranged the deal over our cell phones, and I got the key from a friend of hers.”
Jean-Pierre had driven down in his rickety van that morning and helped transport her two bags and some books to the new flat.
“Is it a nice place?”
“It’s full of light in the mornings and has a very pleasing view of the rooftops. I’ll invite you to dinner one evening. I’d love to cook for you.”
“I love to be cooked for.”
“I think that cooking for someone is no different from listening to music or looking at art with someone. There is a moment when you are able to transcend the usual boundaries that are imposed by the fact that we are all separate human beings with separate bodies. I want to return a bit of the pleasure I’ve had from reading your books.”
The cab had reached the beginning of the Villa Seurat, which was their destination.
“We’ll continue this discussion some other time,” Prem said, opening the door of the cab. Maya jumped out from her side. They found the address on Prem’s invitation card and looked skeptically at the door.
“It looks like someone’s house,” Maya said.
“It probably is.” Prem held the door open for her.
Two Frenchmen in Indian clothes welcomed them with a bonjour.
“Do we remove our shoes?” Prem asked.
“Yes, the seating inside is Indian style,” one of the ushers replied.
Maya and Prem left their shoes at the entrance and walked into the room. Balinese puppets dotted the wall. In the center a small stage had been set up on a raised platform. Most of the audience were to sit on the floor on Indian cushions.
“I’m too old for that,” Prem said, pointing to the carpet. He took one of the few chairs that lined the wall.
“Come here,” he said, patting the chair next to his.
“I don’t mind sitting on the floor,” Maya said. There were seven people in the room already, most of them older than her. Maya didn’t want to hog the chairs.
“Sit with me.”
Maya sat beside him and looked around the room. A bookcase lined the far corner, several of its shelves taken with oversize art books. From where she sat she read off the spines: Balthus, Schiele, Utrillo, Guston, Pollock, and John Currin.
“Do you know Currin? He’s quite young.”
Prem shook his head. Maya walked over to the bookshelf and pulled at the book. Prem followed her and hunched over the book as she opened it.
“I saw his work at the Serpentine in London when I visited my brother.”
“He’s got his own distinct style down already,” Prem said.
“Let me show you my favorite,” Maya said, flipping to the index in the back of the book. She scanned the painting titles with a frown on her face.
“Here we go. The Pink Tree,” she said, turning to the page.
“Can I flip through it?”
She handed the book to Prem.
“You might have chosen the one I would have picked.”
“The point at which it diverges from reality is exactly where it becomes true. It’s so strange. By being so unreal, it creates reality.”
Prem nodded to Maya and traced the weak left calf and the stomach of the figure on the right with his finger before handing the book to Maya.
“That’s true about books too, isn’t it? I’ve always felt it when I write,” Prem said.
Maya closed the book and looked at Prem questioningly. Since she met him, she had been wondering where the diversions occurred in his books. To know the man behind the writer, she needed to know just how far he had leaped.
“Let’s take our seats,” he said.
“There is no one in contemporary art who has achieved such form as far as figurative painting goes,” Maya said, her tone impassioned.
“Have you heard of Lucien Freud?” Prem asked, raising an eyebrow.
“That eyebrow gives you away.”
“What does it give away?”
“That you know just how patronizing you can be,” she said, smiling.
“I concede you have a point about Currin.”
Prem raised his head to examine the relatively low ceiling.
“This will be like listening to chamber music. I’ve never been to something so intimate,” Maya said, looking up.
Several people who had walked in recognized Prem and folded their hands in namaste at him across the room. Prem made no move to speak to anyone. At exactly half past eight three musicians walked into the room, namasted the audience, and bowed their heads. They all wore stiffly starched, impeccably white dhotis and silk kurtas. After touching the base of the platform with their right hands and bringing this hand to their heads in a respectful gesture, they sat down cross-legged on the stage. From her seat Maya had a partial view of the vocalist and a full view of the mridangam player. The mridangam was wrapped in a magenta velvet cloth with a yellow satin border. The percussionist wound a blue blanket from his right ankle all the way to the middle of his calf before pulling the mridangam to rest on it.
The vocalist was the first to notice Prem once they had settled on the stage. He tapped the violinist on the knee and raised his eyebrows to the mridangam player before looking in Prem’s direction. The musicians now folded their hands in namaste and smiled at Prem. Prem smiled back and raised his hand a little. The official acknowledgment from the stage caused a new set of heads to turn in their direction. Maya lowered her head a little.
“The first piece is in Raga Bhairavi,” the vocalist announced.
“I hope you enjoy this. We can leave if you don’t,” Prem whispered to Maya, bringing his mouth close to her ear. Maya could immediately sense eyes looking at her. When she raised her head to look at the stage, women on the other side of the room smiled at her.
Prem closed his eyes when they started up. The chairs were arranged in a single row at an angle to the wall, and Maya could see his Adam’s apple jutting out. The bones of his knees formed a visible outline under his pants. She closed her eyes, but with the complex vocalizations and the intermittent sound of the mridangam, she soon became too curious not to watch.
The vocalist slapped his right hand on his thigh to keep his beat. Sometimes he beat with the back of his hand, and sometimes used his palm. Maya tried to count at what interval he used the back of his hand, in order to decode the complex rhythm, but she couldn’t keep pace. His left hand moved in front of his chest and in the space above his head continually as he yanked his voice backward and forward and bounced it up and down. Watching his hand move made the music easier to understand. The music was a river flowing in a rush as it curved along i
ts course, a furious Seine turning under the Pont de l’Alma on a stormy night. At other times the music was like a kite flying over a large green meadow on a calm and sunny weekend morning, but then, with ease, the chanteur pulled it and pushed it away, only to cuff it again into a tight embrace. The violin played with the chanteur and sometimes trailed after him, like a puppy following a bouncing ball without letting it out of sight. The sounds coming out of the musician’s mouth sounded like syllables. For over an hour the chanteur vocalized the syllables Da da da ni dani da. They stretched like elastic bands into unthinkable shapes and forms. They transformed into fluids of different viscosity, one moment as thick as honey, and then bubbly like champagne.
He ended the concert with two short pieces: songs sung in a super-express style, with foreign words pouring out of his lips quickly, the oscillations in his voice dampening. Some people in the audience were now slapping their own thighs, just like the chanteur, keeping beat as well. One or two even hummed with him.
Prem had thought about the opposite of music a long time ago when he had written his music book. What was the opposite of music? Silence. Noise. Disharmony. Cacophony. People talked about how music was like mathematics. At which point was it not mathematics? At the point when you took away the mathematics from the music or when you added to it? Music was the opposite of all these things, and yet it was other things, positive things. Prem wrote small, almost minute variations around each thing that was and was not like music, and then he enlarged these variations. Some chapters of the book had the incessant rhythm of a triple congo, and other chapters sounded like monophonic songs of South Indian classical music. His text was pegged to a sheet that resembled enormous diagrams of some machine. When he worked on Raga, he had charted every single beat in his paragraphs with such detail in a visual map that the blueprint itself was as thick as the manuscript. The sheets were laid out flat and glued to one another in the margins. It got hard to roll or fold the enormous collage of sheets. He started to leave it lying around in the study, but he had to move it to the living room when pages were added. It expanded so much that he could step into the living room only in his socks lest it tear. Thereafter, every page of every book Prem had ever written was produced this way. Laboriously, with weeks of thought behind each idea. He chiseled individual sentences until they were fifty-seven facet diamonds. The end goal was simple, even simplistic: hide the labor. The musical tempos—largo, adagio, andante, allegretto, presto—disguised, the reader slid along the pages as if he were listening to Mozart and gliding on a well-polished wooden floor.
