by Abha Dawesar
“But they weren’t in the books.”
“Not obviously. But some bit of the relationship was allowed to germinate inside the book, and usually it didn’t go beyond one book. I don’t know how else to explain it. Maybe that is making it too complicated. In truth we all have only so much love to give. I ran out of the little I had left after Vedika. She was the last one.”
“What exactly are you hoping for with Maya? How are you even sure she can deliver what none of these other women managed to deliver?”
“I’m different. I’m not trying to write any books. If I write one, then I’ll write one. I think the choice is between life and literature, and I’m tired and I’m going to choose life.”
“You’d be better off choosing someone who is not a writer then, n’est-ce pas?”
“You think she’ll do to me what I’ve been doing to everyone?”
“No. You’re a special case. I doubt she’s so warped. But you’d do well to remember that she came to you through your writing. She was first a fan and then a friend.”
“Exactly what I’ve been worrying about. For her I’m probably first a world-class writer and then me.”
“Oh! That idiotic choice again between you and you. If we condensed you to your basic, what will be left, my friend? Not the lover, certainly not. But the writer. Voilà!”
“Even our own friendship is based on this. On our writing.”
“Of course. It always has been. As a writer, one is on the exterior of experience, one is watching. And that’s what we have in common. It gives us an honesty that is contrary to a certain kind of living because it demands falsification. Even when we falsify and fictionalize, we’re perpetually doing it in service of some truth.”
“With age even my relativistic French friend has started talking about truth.”
“I said some truth, not the truth.”
“Nonetheless a greater admission than before. I’ve been keeping track.”
“Is that what got you the prize? The truth?”
“Possibly.”
“Do you really think your writing is better than mine? Put your hand on your heart and say it,” Pascal said passionately.
“It’s so different. We don’t write alike.”
“Cut that out. Tell me what you really think.”
Prem was silent. He knew the answer. Many people knew the answer, including Edward. He felt mildly irritated at Edward for not having done his job as Pascal’s agent.
“Do you realize you were scared witless about Irène and about yourself in Paris when you said you needed to make this trip?”
“I was pretty scared.”
“It wasn’t about sex—you realize that.”
“Of course I do. But the answer lay in sex. In face of terror all one can do is affirm, and sex is a form of affirmation.”
“And writing is affirmation, and all art is affirmation.”
“Your point being?” Pascal asked.
“Next time don’t fuck. Write.”
“What are you getting at?”
“Face the terror—that’s the only way.”
Pascal was quiet. Reflective. He turned over the spoon in his empty coffee cup.
“Bastard. You really think you deserved it and I don’t?”
“I’m not talking about the prize. We all know it’s a crapshoot. There are mixed motivations, luck—it depends on the year. I’m talking about something much more profound: your writing.
“You still haven’t written the best book within you. It’s crouching inside, hiding from all the terror. The day you write it, you will surpass anything anyone has ever expected. I know this because I know you better than most people, and I see that fear, and I see that your talent has never been applied to it. You’ve written from the surfaces, from where it’s pleasant. You’ve challenged yourself intellectually, no one can deny that. But you haven’t let the beast inside go uncaged. Even if a fraction of that primordial fuel were harnessed into your writing, you will stun yourself with the result.”
“Are you making this up to make me feel better?”
“You know it’s true. Why are you asking me?”
“Does anyone else think so too?”
“Edward possibly. But you should do it fast. It gets hard to sustain a novel as one gets older. You don’t have infinite time left. And in any case if you write it, I want to be around to read it. It would be stupid if I was gone.”
“It’s very odd you said that. I’ve thought once or twice that I really want to win the prize while Irène and you are still around. I wanted Pedro around too. And I don’t think it’s sheer rivalry, my wanting to show you that I too can win it.”
“You want the people who count, the ones in your life, to know. I thought of Meher and wished she could have known. I thought of my parents. One realizes how old one has become when most of the people who matter are gone.”
“If we continue this discussion, Cary will have to suck me off before our afternoon trip. Let’s go find her and save ourselves from this old-man depression.”
“I hope her scent has worn off.”
“You didn’t like that floral bouquet? I gave it to her as a present.”
“It’s way too strong. I’ll sneeze to death in the car.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll tell her not to use it again.”
They found Cary at the hotel and drove to the château at Fougères. The soothing dark gray stone structure was surrounded by a moat. After a walk around the château, they ate galettes and crêpes with a jug of cider, then headed for a tour of the small town with its twisty streets. Pascal spoke to Cary about the major French writers from Chateaubriand to Balzac and Hugo who had passed through Fougères. She took notes. Prem ambled along, lost in his own world, reading the plaques the city had put up quoting various literary greats.
They headed back to Mont-Saint-Michel for dinner. The next morning when Prem came down to the lobby for his coffee, Pascal told him that Cary was staying on for the grosse marée over the weekend, when the Mont would turn into an island again. He was relieved. He had been half afraid they would end up driving the rest of their trip with her. In another day and age he wouldn’t have minded, but time with Pascal suddenly felt precious. Who knew when they would have this time again? One slip in the bathroom, and he could be bedridden for months. Or something could happen to Pascal. Those arteries had been working overtime for years through several extra millimeters of grease.
The small country roads going east were pretty. Every village they passed looked straight out of a Rohmer film. Prem severely regretted not having asked Maya to come along, almost forgetting that their tiff was what prompted him to make the trip.
As they passed through a small town, Prem noticed a poster for an exhibition.
“A flower show in this fairy-tale town!”
“You like flowers, don’t you?”
“Yes. I just don’t like flower scents.”
“Let’s check it out.” Pascal swung the car into the parking lot of the Naturoscope and dropped Prem off at the entrance by the glass doors.
“Just orchids?” Prem asked the woman at the ticket counter.
She nodded and smiled, saying, “You speak perfect French, Mr. Rustum. I wouldn’t have guessed.”
Pascal followed him in.
“Why, we have two celebrities here! What a big day for us!”
Within a few seconds someone had arrived with a digital camera. Prem and Pascal found themselves posing with the woman at the front desk.
“We also have a tropical forest here for a butterfly exhibit. Would you mind coming inside and letting us take a few pictures? That way it can go into the newspaper tomorrow and get us some visitors for the weekend.”
They humored her. Pascal broke into an effusive sweat in the tropical forest. Prem felt a bit warm himself. They stood still and smiled. Butterflies came and sat on them. Pascal was about to brush one off.
“Don’t—it’s more authentic,” Prem whispered. De
spite himself, he was enjoying this.
The orchids were at their normal temperatures. They were the only ones in the room.
Prem took a long time with each plant. The exquisite vulvas of the flowers were enchanting, astonishing. Pascal was rooted in front of an odd plant with a deep Venus flytrap–like mouth. Prem came up to him and examined it too.
“You found the gem,” Prem observed.
“Everything, she’s got everything. Vagin, bouton, poils!” Pascal took his little finger and stuck it inside the pregnant mouth of the flower. Prem glanced around the room quickly. He felt he was abetting in the rape of a minor. There was an indecency to Pascal’s gesture that was worse than the usual public display of affection one saw between young couples.
“Are you finished yet? We’re going to get caught,” he whispered.
“It’s just a flower.”
“Not for you. Not for me.”
“Touch it—it’s remarkable,” Pascal said, removing his finger.
Prem let his finger slide over the bulging pregnant cup, a receptacle. On each side it had a leaf that fell down like a curly ribbon. The superior petal was perfectly symmetrical and small, and the clitoris of the orchid was glistening, pointed in that round way that a woman’s clitoris does when in a state of excitation. The flower sent a jolt through Prem. Things that were extremely delicate and beautiful had always aroused a tumultuous desire in him: a tumult from which a desire for life seemed to gush out unrestrained.
“Let’s get out of here, please.”
“Are you trembling?” Pascal asked, laughing.
“No, but I will if we keep this up.”
They stepped out of the exhibit room. The lady at the cash register gave them each a copy of the photo taken earlier and asked them to autograph another one she had printed on glossy paper. She stuck the signed photo with tape on the glass door of the main entrance.
“I hope that exhibition room is not under surveillance,” Pascal said as they drove away.
“You’ve got a reputation as a sick fuck already, but what about me? Everyone thinks I’m so decent because I don’t write about cocks and cunts.”
They burst out laughing.
“Finally, the sexiest moments on this trip had nothing to do with my getting laid. That woman we saw on the highway and these flowers were the erotic highlights.”
“Poor Cary. I feel bad for her.”
“I feel sorrier for your girls!”
“That was a long time ago. That chapter closed some fifteen years back.”
“The mere passage of time has undone your sins, has it?”
“The word mere would be better applied to my sins than to the passage of time.”
“I think we should drive by Étretat. It’s not too far from here. And you’ll see what the passage of time can do to the surface of the earth.”
“I’ve seen what it’s done to my surfaces.”
“You’ve not been there, have you?”
“No.”
“I leave you no choice. Les falaises sont magnifiques.”
They went back to the car.
“You’re driving—what choice do I have? As long as we are back in Paris by tomorrow and I can take my Maya to dinner.”
“We’ll be back tonight by nine, even if the traffic is bad.”
At Étretat, Pascal and Prem walked on the pebbly beach and looked at the giant rock formations of the alabaster coast. People were walking up the cliffs, and Prem could make out their silhouettes from below.
“That climb is not for us. There is no question of trying,” Pascal said when he saw Prem look up.
“Actually I can still feel all the exercise from yesterday in my bones.”
Prem scanned the sea. It was a gray-blue color that matched Pascal’s eyes. The pebbles in various shades of pale and dark gray, matched his eyes as well. It gave Prem an idea. He used his walking stick to move the pebbles on the shore around and to examine the shells that had washed up. Finally he found what he had been looking for: a flat light-brown piece of marine life, possibly the well-eroded half of an oyster shell. He picked it up and examined it. It seemed to be of the same light-brown tinge as Maya’s eyes, and it even had occasional green flecks, as her eyes did on sunny days. He wasn’t sure the green on the shell would remain after a thorough wash—it could be just an encrusted piece of seaweed—but he put it in his pocket and followed Pascal to the café by the seawall.
“I just wanted you to see the two elephant tusks dipping into the bay that have inspired Gide, Monet, Maupassant, and Courbet, to name only a few of our greats.”
“There are two Monets of this scene in the Orsay. Frankly I didn’t care much for them. Courbet’s painting of Étretat after the storm is the one that captures its true spirit.”
“I went to Orsay with Irène after a long time. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. At the end of the afternoon I finally figured out that she had suggested it because she knew it would cheer me up. And she used the fact that now she could ask me to do anything and I would do it.”
“You’re still stubbornly committed to only seeing art naïf?”
“Was. Irène made me realize I couldn’t undo what I was educated with. My tastes have changed since the last time I was in Orsay. I found myself drawn to genre paintings—artist in his atelier, artist and his model, portraits of artists by other artists.”
“Maya was excited by Manet’s portrait of Zola.”
“Have you seen the portraits réciproques that Bazille and Renoir did of each other? Renoir’s shows Bazille at work, while Bazille captures Renoir in a reflective mood.”
“Les portraits réciproques. One showing the other how he sees him.”
“More than that, he shows him who he really is. Friendship is what makes the painful truths about oneself tolerable.” Pascal’s bulbous nose had turned color, a sentimental color.
“The acceptance of a fellow artist. Your friendship, my friend. Yours.”
They sipped their coffees in silence together, watching the majestic cliffs on either side that bordered the semicircular bay. Then they hit the autoroute and drove all the way to Paris listening to Beethoven.
Maya took the metro to the thirteenth and walked the long stretch of road toward the Bibliothèque Nationale, where the restau rant was located. Prem was already seated inside. He looked at Maya’s brutally chopped hair and kissed her on her cheeks.
“Is this a new fashion?”
“I know I butchered it.”
The waitress had given him a table beside the large collection of tommes. Maya leaned on the glass window that separated her from a huge chunk of Tomme de Savoie.
“Are you ready for this?” Prem asked Maya.
“I haven’t yet heard such unfettered praise from you about anything. I hope I haven’t been set up for a disappointment.”
Prem had asked Pascal to call the fromager to make a booking on his behalf and to ensure that Maya and he got the most of his time. After taking them through their choice of vertical or horizontal sampling, Chérif proceeded to recommend a plate of Corsican cheese. Both Maya and Prem chose Chérif’s vertical Corsican plate, which promised a progression of sensations from the very mild to the very strong. Chérif recommended a complementary Corsican wine from Calvi—sometimes masculine, and sometimes feminine, always untamed, was how he described the wine.
A young woman, possibly no more than twenty-two, walked in and sat down by herself at a table in direct view of Prem. She spoke in low tones to the waitress who served her. Prem was beginning to see Pascal’s point: to see a girl walk in alone for a gastronomic experience was no less exciting than seeing one on the bus reading a book.
Chérif presented them their plates and lectured in high French about the numerous papillae in the mouth that allow for the exhaustive possibilities of taste.
“The wine should be sipped slowly so that the oxygen of your breath can air it for you. The antipasti on your plate will absorb the richness of the cheese.
The confiture will reduce the acidity of the stronger cheeses when they reach your stomach.”
Maya listened to Chérif without taking her eyes off him. He spoke flawlessly and fluently, as if he had reflected his whole life on the philosophy of cheese. Prem looked at Maya and then at Chérif; when Chérif spoke, it was with the zeal of an evangelist.
“Cut each cheese in half, and commence with the mildest cheese.” Chérif pointed to the mild goat cheese. “Then move on to this aged cheese, made with a mix of cow and sheep’s milk. This one covered with herbs from the bush should follow it. Always end with the most intense one.”
“So I should begin at the six’o’clock position and continue counterclockwise?”
“Yes. At some point you will reach a state where words are no longer needed or sufficient. You will be in pure experience. That is the goal. A moment of gastronomic orgasm.”
Maya smiled.
“And what should I do?” Prem asked, looking at his plate.
“The same. Everything I told her is true for you too. Food sets into motion a complex biochemical process that is common to all humanity, though it remains intensely personal.”
Maya regarded her plate with concentration.
Prem raised his glass and held it. Maya raised hers.
“To you,” Prem said.
“Tchin.” Maya clinked her glass with Prem’s.
“Bon appétit. I’m diving in.” Maya cut a piece of the mild chèvre and popped it into her mouth with her knife.
Prem watched her. He had not brought her here hoping to share the same digestive process but rather to look at her face and the expressions that flickered over it. He had brought her to the Maître Fromager to watch her in a moment of profound enjoyment or possibly ecstasy that he had previously not seen.
When he removed his eyes from Maya and put a slice of the same cheese in his mouth, Prem forgot her for an instant. He felt the fluid spread of the white substance on his tongue. When he returned to his surroundings, she was staring at him intently.
“You weren’t here. I could see.”
“No, I wasn’t.”
“We could never be on the same page so precisely with a book.”
