by Abha Dawesar
Pascal and Prem were opposites in many ways. Their physiques would have suggested contrary personalities. Pascal, short, round, and bald, was savvy and confident with women. Prem, tall, handsome, and regal, was still in his core in constant need of reassurance about everything except his writing. His looks, his sexuality, his desirability he carried as complexes on his sleeve. He remembered a different him only before Meher had married. Her decision to marry had left him permanently damaged. The hundreds of women who had kept his bed warm in his lifetime had not made a difference.
“You’re my little brother. I have to have a man.” That was how Meher had squelched his innermost self effectively and, it was beginning to seem certain now, forever. By the time of her death, he had known she had said this only to help him get over her, in the hope that he would hate her. But it was too late. The psychic damage had already burned his ego to a crisp. At seventy-five, with Meher long dead, he had not yet recovered. When Meher had died, after the months of initial grief he had thought he would be liberated. He was liberated only from the angst of knowing she was there and he couldn’t have her. The person he was had already been formed—or deformed, he thought correcting himself.
Maya had awakened in the morning and found only dark gray clouds in the sky. The light had been so flat that from the window it was impossible to tell the time of day. When she turned to her side to look at the table clock, she found her neighbor from the floor below looking up at her. They smiled and then waved to each other. Maya got out of bed and threw open her window. The neighbor stretched herself in bed and pushed open hers. As she extended her arm, her cover fell off and revealed her breasts.
“Coucou,” the neighbor said.
“Un café?” Maya offered.
“Volontiers.” The girl disappeared from the window.
Maya got the coffee going in the kitchen and brushed her teeth. As she rinsed her mouth, the bell rang. They greeted each other with a kiss.
“I’m Nadine,” the neighbor said.
Nadine spoke rapidly and posed a thousand questions. Maya answered them as she poured coffee for them in the kitchen. She felt she could tell Nadine anything: Yes, the boy with her from time to time was French. No, she wasn’t in love. In fact, she might break up soon. She couldn’t stop thinking about a writer in his seventies but didn’t know what to do. She was so paralyzed she couldn’t even write. Her fellowship was going to go to waste. Did Nadine want some milk in the coffee?
“Noir.”
Nadine said she wasn’t a lesbian. Not yet. Her white girlfriend was the first woman she had ever slept with, and it was too early to say if they were in love. Nadine was a contemporary dancer. Sometimes she worked in clubs as a hostess. There were all kinds of exercises that dancers did to get ready for the stage. Maya needed an exercise for her writing.
“Jean-Pierre said that after the paralysis and the influence, there comes a stage when I need approval. He thinks if I can get the old writer’s approval, I will be free to write again.”
“I am reading the memoir of a love affair between a young woman and an old woman. The two women wrote it together. You need to do something like that with your old writer.”
“I don’t know him well enough to suggest something like that. I wouldn’t be able to write a word in front of him anyway.”
“It doesn’t have to be writing. You need to create something with him. What do you do in New York? I mean for a living.”
“I freelance as an editor and translator for two scientific magazines.”
“Do you like the work?”
“Yes. Sometimes I find myself thinking in scientific terms about my life. It’s the opposite of the way writers think. I keep thinking that Prem has inseminated my brain. That my book will be a baby and he is the father. Everyone says that about books, but I think of it in a very technical way. You know they’ve created mice for the laboratory that have human cells inside them?”
“I don’t think you should think about mice. But the baby idea is good.”
“I want to show him a part of Paris that he hasn’t seen. I’m doing a photo project on the streets—maybe I can involve him in that.”
“I have to go now, but we should meet again.”
Maya handed Nadine a pen and paper to write the name of the lovechild of the two women, Élula Perrin and Louna Borca, the lovebook.
Prem and Maya strolled through the back streets of the quartier after they’d finished with the two private galleries on rue de la Seine that they had agreed to see.
“I have to stop at La Hune for a minute, and then I must take the metro back home.”
“I’ll come with you. I’d like to browse around myself. What are you looking for?”
“I finally spoke to the woman on the floor below me, and she recommended this book to me to help me get over my writer’s block.”
Prem and Maya walked into the bookstore. Prem veered to the section on the left, while Maya went to the information desk to ask after the book.
“Mon vieux, what are you doing here?”
Prem greeted Pascal and raised his eyebrows in Maya’s direction. Her back was toward them. Pascal stared at her.
“Stop looking like that.”
“Only if we can get a drink. All of us.”
“We have to ask her. I don’t think she’s free.”
“Irène just came back from the doctor. The tests are showing the worst now.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m going to quickly buy this new edition of Artaud. Will you wait?”
Prem nodded. Maya was pulling something out from one of the shelves. He walked to the cashier’s desk as she headed there with the book.
“What’s this book called?” Prem asked.
“Un amour, deux femmes.”
“Clever wordplay! By the way, Pascal is here. He wants to have a drink with us.”
Maya handed the book to the cashier and pulled out her purse. Jean-Pierre had called earlier to say he had bought tickets to a show at a theater near the Place des Abbesses.
“Unfortunately, I have to go.”
Pascal lined up behind Maya.
The cashier put the book in a plastic bag for Maya and then turned to Pascal.
“Bonjour, Monsieur Boutin.”
“You didn’t recognize Monsieur Rustum? You have his books everywhere.”
The cashier immediately looked at Rustum and smiled. “I’m so sorry. I know your books, but I’ve never seen your photo.”
Rustum nodded pleasantly. As they all stepped out, he hissed in a low voice so that Maya ahead of them could not hear, “That was totally unnecessary.”
“I have to put up with it all the time.”
“That doesn’t mean I should.”
Pascal stepped up near Maya and said, “Alors, where should we go?”
Prem introduced them to each other. Pascal gave Maya a kiss on each cheek.
“I am so sorry I have to leave. I would have loved to have a drink.”
“Next time then!” Pascal said.
The men raised their hands to wave as she walked away in the direction of the metro.
“Le Vieux Colombier? I haven’t gone there in a while,” Pascal suggested.
They crossed the boulevard St-Germain and headed down rue de Rennes.
“She is cute. And hot.”
“I guess so.”
“You guess so! Mon œil! You followed her all the way to Paris.”
“There are a lot of pretty babes around. We’ve become friends.”
“Friends? Friendship happens between you and me. Between old men. Between young men. Between women who are sick of their stupid husbands. Between women who are no longer beautiful and men who are no longer young like Irène and me. Friendship doesn’t happen between geriatric authors and aspiring ones.”
“What are you trying to say?”
“She’s going to make a lousy friend but a great lover. Friendship requires equals. A woman who is one-third your age ca
nnot be your equal.”
“And what am I going to give her as a lover? She has that insipid Adonis already.”
“You’re going to give her the same thing you give her in conversation—your wisdom, your experience, your comfort with this world, which you understand much better than she does because you’ve lived here fifty years longer.”
“We’ll see. What did Irène’s doctor say?”
“Irène is sick. Very sick.”
Roger Johnson lay awake in his bed, unable to sleep. He was feeling at an all-time low about his work. Prem’s agent had said no. He needed reassurance. He wanted a true friend in this treacherous literary life, where one’s future was uncertain until someone decided you were worth betting on. But there had been no news from Maya for several days. Today he had gone through the short e-mails she had sent him from Paris, each hinting at the increasing gulf between them. It could only mean that she had found someone.
Apart from a few stray episodes at parties, Johnson had had a dry run for a year. Maya, when she arrived, had been perfect, from what he’d seen. He liked her body. He liked her brain. And now she had disappeared. He didn’t want her to break all ties. At the moment he was lonely in every sense, desperate for a friend. He found a story he had written that was different in style from the story he had sent Prem’s agent. He sent it to Maya, asking her what she thought. Did someone like him stand a chance in hell in a universe of Boutins and Rustums?
Homi called Prem early in the morning. The election results had been out for a few days, and there was pandemonium. A couple of stray voices from the ousted party had said they would resign their memberships in the upper house of parliament if Sonia Gandhi became the prime minister.
“And what is the nation saying?” Prem asked.
“The media says these people are fascist and racist.”
Prem laughed. He had distanced himself from Indian politics after Grinding India. But Homi was passionate about it and launched into a diatribe on the phone.
“Out of one billion people we cannot find even one of our own capable of holding the premier office of our land? We need an Italian? It’s shameful!” Homi railed.
“What does Ratan think?”
“He asked me whether the Italians would let an Indian woman become the prime minister of their country.”
“Can I talk to him?”
“Sure, I’ll put him on.”
“Hello, Grandpa.”
“Ratan, my young man, how are you doing?”
“I’m fine. I found out a lot of things today.”
“You did? What did you find out?”
“It has to do with the elections in India.”
“Tell me.” Prem pictured Ratan on the phone, his small hand gripping the receiver.
“Grandpa, do you think an Indian-born naturized citizen of America can become the American president.” Ratan let out the word naturized after some trouble.
“You have to be born in America, according to their constitution.”
“That’s correct. And what about England? No. And Germany? No. And France? No. And Iceland? No. And Pakistan? No.”
“Is this what you learned?”
“Yes. Daddy says that these elections have even taught him.”
“What have they taught him?”
“He says the media is opportunic.” Media! Opportunistic! Prem tried to remember what he had been doing and thinking at Ratan’s age. He and Meher shared the same bed, and she would ask him to run his small palms over her bare body till she fell asleep. She insisted they not get out of their clothes until their parents had shut off the light and left them alone.
“Grandpa, can you hear me?” Ratan was screeching.
“Yes, yes. Why is the media opportunistic?”
“The media is opportunic because they show news which is not important in place of news that is very important just because of the money their sponsors give them.” Ratan enunciated each word as if he were in a declamation contest at school reciting a poem.
“What news have they been showing?” An image of Meher was still dancing close to Prem’s consciousness. He pressed the receiver to his ear.
“Yesterday I counted that they showed Laloo Yadav fourteen times in the news during the day saying the same thing again and again. Do you know why?”
“Why?”
“Because Laloo Yadav is the darling of the media. He brings in advertisements.”
Ratan’s darling evoked an image of Meher just weeks before her marriage. You’ll always be my darling. My darling brother, she’d said.
“What was he saying?” Prem asked, trying to come back to the conversation.
“He wants to teach a lesson to the last government. He wants revenge.”
“What do you think about all this, Ratan?”
“I am going to become Prime Minister of India and set everything right.”
“Can I speak to Daddy?”
Homi came back on the phone.
“What are you telling the kid?” Prem demanded.
“I didn’t say anything, I promise. He asked question after question, and you know how he is. He won’t let slipshod answers go by unnoticed.”
“You’ve indoctrinated him.”
“Even Ratan can see from all the testimonials for Laloo on TV that well-respected members of the intelligentsia are now kowtowing to a thug convicted for corruption.”
“That’s democracy for you. It is the government of the masses.”
“But he hasn’t done anything for his masses in Bihar. It remains lawless and utterly benighted. I don’t understand why they support him.”
“He’s one of them—that’s why they support him.”
“And the media!”
“What has the media done now?”
“The media shows Laloo making his inane comments all day long every half-hour. Ratan was not making that up—he actually counted the number of times that clip was shown during the day, and we only had the TV on for a few hours.”
“So the media is unimaginative and lazy, they repeat the same clips all day long. And the politicians are still choosing their bedfellows based on psephology, not philosophy. What’s new? It’s not worth getting your blood pressure up.”
“It’s vicious. When the president of India speaks, they don’t show him for more than a second. For once we have someone truly dignified saying things that make sense, but the media prefers to show a convict talking about revenge in that crude way of his.”
“Homi, you’re getting too worked up. Do I need to remind you that it’s no good for your health?”
“I’m raising my son here. If he were listening to President Abdul Kalam’s speeches, he would grow up with a deep belief in education and with high ideals.”
“Shut off the TV.”
“It’s not just the TV. Even the papers don’t publish his speeches. We should really move to America. Ratan will soon lose faith in the process, but it isn’t too late yet.”
“You know you can always come. But I must clear up one misperception. Nothing is any different there. You’ll be moving to a nation that was much more interested in getting to the truth about Clinton’s cigar and where Monica put it than about Bush’s decision to go to war with two countries.”
Homi groaned audibly on the phone.
“What should I do?”
“Cultivate his interest in other things, like that Meccano set you so loved as a child.”
“You’re right. But enough of this! When do we see you?”
“You know India is too hot for me in the summer.”
“Will you spend the winter with us?”
“I think so. There are some personal things—” Prem ended his sentence abruptly. He had never really spoken to Homi about his personal life, and Homi had never asked.
“You simply have to come.”
“I wanted to say that you should consider coming to Paris for a short holiday.”
“Ratan would love to see you. He says good mor
ning to your photo every day. I don’t think I can get a lot of time off work at the moment. I’ll try to take a week off.”
“He should outgrow that,” Prem mumbled, his voice cracking.
“Here, say ’bye to him.”
“Grandpa, I love you.”
“Me too, darling. I love you.”
“I want to become more famous than you when I grow up.”
“You will. Now promise me you won’t watch more than one hour of TV and you’ll read one book every week.”
“Is that how you became famous?”
“No, but without it I wouldn’t have become famous.”
“I promise. Only one hour of TV and one book a week.” Prem imagined Ratan speaking into the phone with his eyes shut tight so that he would remember.
“’Bye. Now give it back to Daddy.”
“Deepika says hello to you,” Homi said.
“Deepika will fall in love with this city.”
Homi listed all the pills that Prem was supposed to take one by one and put down the phone only after Prem had answered in the affirmative to each one.
As Prem dressed for his rendezvous with Maya, he wondered if he should have been the one checking on Homi’s health instead. Homi had married only at the age of forty-six and was now fifty-six, diabetic, and not in the best of shape.
Maya had insisted on a sightseeing trip to certain parts of Paris—the seventeenth, the nineteenth, the twentieth—that Prem had never explored in any depth.
“I am not interested in lining up with the tourists. I’m too old for it.”
“We’re not lining up anywhere. We are just going to take a cab to the nineteenth and walk around for half an hour and then get a coffee somewhere. I want to photograph some of the street signs there.”
“Are you still on to the street names? What’s with you and the streets?”
“They are all interesting even if they are not all achingly beautiful. Where else do you find rue de Bellechasse: street of the beautiful hunt, or rue des Blancs-Manteaux: street of the white coats? Which other city has streets named Nijinski, Freud, and García Lorca?”
