by Abha Dawesar
“I don’t know what is more marvelously sick—your libido being a slave to your literature or your literature retiring to entertain you privately in the pages of your diary.”
“None of it is sick if it can give me what I want.”
“And what is your agenda, Mister I-don’t-believe-in-manipulation?”
“All the artifice in the world colluding to take me to a point beyond artifice. I want something with Maya that is beyond all my past experiences with love, beyond my fame and success. Just pure feeling. I want us to be pure stomachs eating cheese!”
“Chérif has seduced you, and there I was afraid he would snatch her away from under your nose. But you’re being naïf. What is pure feeling? She’s a hot little number who doesn’t just read but also writes.”
“I’m not denying that. I just want to step out of myself and experience her totally.”
“Before this weekend with Irène, I wouldn’t have understood that. I think I have a vague idea of what you are saying. It’s a naïve idea.”
“If I can’t be naïf now, when will I start?”
Prem went home and opened the envelope Maya had given him. There was a rough sketch of two people kissing.
I saw these two figures yesterday placed on an island in the Bois de Boulogne. Even from across the lake I could see that the energy in their bodies was very extreme. Somehow I felt that it was a single sculpture even though it was not a single piece. The island is inaccessible by foot, but when I had the chance to hop across it on a boat I couldn’t. I knew I wanted to see it with you.
He opened his journal and this time addressed it directly to Maya instead of her vulva. He couldn’t escape the women of his past, not even Angie. But he didn’t need to put Maya through his past. He wanted the five hundred hours in whatever shape or form they came. With or without art. With or without food. With books. Without books. Without language. With French or without English.
Maya emerged from the metro at Abbesses to a message from Jean-Pierre on her cell phone. He had bought some girolles in the market and was cooking. They ate and watched a Claude Chabrol film on video before going to bed. Maya was almost glad for the contact with Jean-Pierre. Gentle, considerate enough, it soothed something in the middle of her chest that hurt when she said goodbye to Prem.
Her relationship with Prem had remained cerebral, and Maya often had the sensation of floating in and out of pages and words when she was with him. Of being a cloud. With Jean-Pierre she had little doubt she was flesh. She was only flesh. They had sex, and he discharged with a moan, yelling I am going to finish. Maya lay awake thinking of Prem. But what could a man of seventy-five give her by way of his body? More important, what could he take from hers? He had probably risen above needs of the flesh by now. Jean-Pierre turned in his sleep and embraced her. His armpits smelled like the humid towels in his bathroom. Maya turned her back to his body.
In the morning Jean-Pierre had his head to the side, the hair under his arm glistening with sweat. His porous white skin and muscles were the texture of gravel. The idea of further physical contact with him was abhorrent. The room was hot and stifling, her throat parched. Maya washed her face.
“You’re leaving so soon?” Jean-Pierre stretched in bed, waking up.
“Yes, I have to. See you later.”
Maya left abruptly and ran down the one flight of stairs to the ground floor, slowing only once she was on the street. The upslope of the road between his house and hers felt sharper than usual. The breeze blowing on rue des Martyrs gave her gooseflesh on the arms.
Jean-Pierre, who had been a pleasant distraction, was now a burden. The conversations were turning tedious, the phone calls to say hello were a terrible chore. Maya could anticipate the dread these simple acts would cause her, were in fact already causing her. She hadn’t and couldn’t imagine the graphic act of sex with Prem. But she imagined routinely that they were close, naked—metaphorically speaking. And that kind of closeness forcibly implied sex. She just couldn’t go on as if the idea hadn’t crossed her mind, even if he said it hadn’t crossed his.
Back home she showered and stared out at the common courtyard she shared with the rest of the inhabitants of the building. A black cat with green eyes purred on the ledge of one of the apartments. Her phone rang.
“Am I disturbing you?” It was Prem.
“No. You couldn’t disturb me if you tried.”
“I’m thinking of going to the Rodin Museum. Want to come?”
“I can be there in half an hour.”
The ride on the metro passed as if someone else were making the journey. Maya jumped out at Solferino and walked to the museum. The government buildings along the way stilled her restlessness. There was no better antidote to the tremulous longings of the breast than the State and its evident presence everywhere. The first time she visited the Rodin Museum with a friend, she’d insisted they also go to the Invalides since it was so close.
“But you can’t mix the two. It’s criminal,” he objected.
With her arguments—limited time, leaving Paris in a week, Napoleon too is France—Maya prevailed, only to her immediate regret. The militaristic statues dotting the inside of the Invalides, the gargantuan tombs of war heroes in over the top black-, white-, and pink-veined marble, the hideous gold leaf superimposed over n’importe quoi, were suffocating. Everything delicate, precise, and profoundly individual that had been evoked within her by the works of Rodin and Camille Claudel was assaulted just five hundred meters later by the grand vision of empire: a vision where the State and not the nation (a nation of people, a nation of Rodins) was paramount.
Prem was waiting at the entrance on rue de Varenne. He had a red silk scarf around his neck. He had written another five pages about the possibilities inherent in Maya’s anatomy, fusing the images easily from the previous ones in his life. It had made him miss her. He could transport himself into the world of his memories at the snap of a finger, but these memories didn’t come with her voice. He wanted to observe her closely, so that when she wasn’t there, he could re-create her with greater accuracy and fullness in his mind.
“You’re looking very handsome,” Maya said, kissing him.
“So are you.” It was a tongue-in-cheek comment on the male cargo pants she was wearing. His phone call had rendered her so impatient that she had left without changing out of her work pants. She usually wrote in her cargo pants because she could carry her sharpener, pencils, and small notebook in its pockets to the café.
They took in the rooms on the ground floor. Maya circled Camille Claudel’s jade sculptures, her lips quivering. Prem and Maya hovered over different statues, deliberated over different angles, but moved at the same pace from one room to the next. Prem sat for a few minutes after they were finished with the ground floor.
The rooms upstairs were priceless for Prem. Is she going to feel the same tactile need I do for the toes and asses, hands and spines, necks and spinal columns of the statues?
Prems reflections were short lived. Even before he was finished with the first room, he felt his body covered with a peculiar sensation. If it had been stronger and less pleasant, it would have been an itch. In the next room, at the first glimpse of the naked woman holding one foot in her hand, her origine du monde open to the world, Prem’s sex in his pants was less fleshy than the bronze statues in the room. Maya was closely observing an old woman titled La misère. It was hard to focus on her and not on his own condition.
“Look, her body is sagging. Such sheer genius to use a substance as hard as metal to convey the softness of old flesh folding over itself like this.” Prem looked at Maya’s hand as she pointed through the glass cabinet at the woman beyond. He wanted the hand to move toward him and discharge him as a lightning rod takes the electricity from the sky.
“What do you think?” Maya’s hand was really moving, and he could see it would come to rest on his shoulder. He stepped aside to another statue. If she touched him, he was sure he would come in his pa
nts.
Prem maintained a good deal of distance from Maya. Had Pascal crushed some slow-release Viagra tablets into the truffle sauce? Neither the colossal head of Balzac nor the staid Victor Hugo alleviated Prem’s condition. Rodin’s Balzacs got fatter and fatter from one statue to the next. Prem thought alarmingly of Pascal; he should have said something when Pascal served himself a third helping of the lamb. As they moved past the room of public monuments and went to the marbles and plasters, Prem could anticipate he was in for worse. There it was, the bearded old man kissing the young gamine, L’homme et sa pensée. Prem felt a new surge of testosterone. The glass case was thoroughly insufficient in protecting him from whatever emanated from the work in plaster. He was at maximum tumescence.
Prem, priapus, pensée, penis, pastel, patisserie, panna cotta, palate, papille, peach, pool, petal, poppy, pajama, pillow, pen, palette, paint, paper, priapic, prem. I should really excuse myself to the bathroom and take care of this.
“We still have to see the rooms on the ground floor to the side.”
Prem nodded. They walked down the stairs and into the rooms they had missed. When they were finished with the inside, they walked around the neatly groomed garden. Prem was sure everyone could see his erection through his pants, everyone but Maya, who he had been careful to keep to his side all the time.
They walked around the statue of Ugolino, reflected in the still water beneath it. Past the hedge that provided the statue with a backdrop was a garden with easy chairs. Maya stretched herself on one and tapped the one beside her for Prem to come sit. From her low perspective he would be compromised. He maneuvered himself and stood behind her easy chair. Luckily the sun disappeared behind clouds, and it got cold.
“Brr.”
“Why don’t we go back to my place?” Prem suggested.
“Yes, some hot tea.” Maya sprang up from the chair.
In front of the museum someone dismounted from a taxi. Prem directed Maya in and followed. He folded his arms and leaned forward, giving instructions to the driver.
“Are you okay? Do you have a stomachache?” Maya asked, concerned.
“I’m fine.”
The seven-minute ride was interminable. Is something wrong with me? I need to call a doctor.
In the apartment he excused himself immediately. In the bathroom he pulled down his pants. There it was, accusing him, pointing straight up to the ceiling. Prem closed his eyes and tried to think of Maya. He could tell it wasn’t going to work. Even the image of Angie turning herself into a whore for a multitude of lowlifes was going to do nothing.
Please God! One by one they came streaming in, St. Jean-Baptiste, Sisyphus, La misère, Vertumne et Pomone, Eve, La fatigue, and eventually as the molten metal from his insides poured out, Le penseur.
Relieved, human again, laughing at the absurdity of his life at seventy-five, Prem removed the silk scarf around his neck and washed his face before joining Maya in the living room. She had put on some music and was staring out the window.
“You’re not in a mood to dance? Ça va pas?”
“I’m feeling moody.”
“And what is your caprice today, my young lady?”
“I don’t want you to misunderstand me. It’s difficult. I feel strange saying this.”
Prem inclined his head in Maya’s direction. “Out with it.”
“Can I hug you? That night after dinner was just not enough.” Maya smiled so that she didn’t seem too serious.
“Of course.” He stepped forward, determined to be less awkward this time.
She rose from her chair and, holding him by the hand, led him to the loveseat in the corner and sat down. They hugged while sitting. He stroked her hair. He had to twist himself a little to do it. He was afraid he couldn’t remain in that position for much longer.
“Are you uncomfortable? We can go to your bed. I promise not to molest you,” Maya said.
Prem laughed.
“I’m serious. I’m not trying to get into your pants.”
“That’s what’s so sad,” Prem joked, getting up.
He led her to his room by the hand. She kicked off her shoes and got onto the bed. It took Prem a minute to unlace his shoes and lie down. He held her tightly at first, but then his grip relaxed and they lay side to side, his left arm hooked under her neck and his hand gently caressing the top of her arm.
“Thank you,” Maya said.
“There is nothing to thank me for.”
“I wanted to be nearer you. I need some form of physical contact with you.”
Prem was quiet. But his hands were talking, and he knew that Maya could not have any doubt that he wanted to touch her.
Maya clasped Prem’s right hand in her left and raised them both up into the air.
“Your hands are beautiful. Just so, so beautiful. When you read my hand in New York, I felt like grabbing your hands and not letting them go.”
“Gosh! It feels like long ago.”
“We’ve crossed the ocean and time zones. We’ve climbed over the mountain of time, over weeks and months. But now I want to pause it. I don’t want my momentum with my writing to change. I don’t want this feeling with you to change.”
“It’s almost time for you to go back, isn’t it?”
“Yes, another few weeks.”
“What will you do with Jean-Pierre? He doesn’t want to follow you to New York?”
“It’s over, but I haven’t told him yet. I can’t sleep with him. It’s too false.”
“You weren’t so tentative about him earlier. At least you didn’t sound it.”
“I wasn’t. I woke up and didn’t want to be there. I saw him and wanted to leave.”
“Are you always so cold? Do you just switch on and off?” Prem put his hand in the air and moved it up and down as if he was turning a light on and off.
“Well, it’s happened before—change, I mean. Sudden change.”
“Your love stops dead in its tracks?”
“No. It wasn’t love. It isn’t love. I never thought it was love.”
“I think it’s time to get you out of this bed if I don’t want to be seduced.”
“I’m going to the Bibliothèque Nationale to watch some tapes. Do you need anything?”
“No. What are you watching?”
“An old Jean Renoir film called La fleuve. He shot it in India.”
“I saw it a few years after it was released. I saw it with Vedika.”
“Who is Vedika?”
“An ex-lover.”
Maya slipped her shoes on. She left Prem’s building skipping. She was still skipping after she turned off to rue d’Assas.
Prem called his médecin for an appointment to find out if it was normal for a septuagenarian to turn into an erotoman.
Maya wanted to hear Nadine’s story about her old man.
“Nadine, Nadine, t’es là?” she called, aware that all the apartments around the courtyard could probably hear her.
Nadine opened her window and waved.
“Come up,” Maya said.
Nadine was dressed in very high-cut denim shorts that barely covered her bum. Maya would never have been able to get away with wearing them.
“You’re looking drop-dead gorgeous.”
“A lifetime of training in ballet,” Nadine said as she stood on the tips of her toes.
“Your formula works! I wrote ten pages. Now you have to tell me about your man.”
“Did you see yours again?”
The phone rang.
“Yes, I did,” Maya said to Nadine as she picked up her phone.
“You’re not alone?” It was Jean-Pierre.
Maya mouthed mon petit ami to Nadine.
“The neighbor came up.”
“The girl?” Jean-Pierre’s voice was excited.
“Yes.”
“What are you doing?”
“We’re drinking coffee.”
“I’m coming to have coffee with you,” he said, hanging up. He used t
he plural vous.
“Jean-Pierre is on his way. I don’t want to deal with him. He thinks we’re doing it.”
Nadine laughed. “I’m going to leave before he arrives.”
“But what am I going to do with him?” Maya sank into her chair and put her head in her hand.
“Tell him the truth if you don’t want him. It’s always the easiest thing to do.”
“He won’t believe me.”
“When he sees your eyes talking about the old writer, he’ll believe you. Come to my apartment after he’s finished if you want to talk.” Nadine rose and kissed Maya goodbye.
Maya took a quick shower and washed the used coffee cups.
“Where’s your neighbor?” Jean-Pierre asked as soon as he walked in.
“She left.”
“Did you sleep with her last night?”
“No.”
Despite her negative reply Jean-Pierre moved in closer. She stepped away.
“What’s the matter?” He was aroused.
“I can’t be with you anymore.”
“What happened? What did I do?”
“You didn’t do anything. I’m in love with Prem.”
Jean-Pierre laughed. “You’re not serious. Do you want to sleep with him?”
“I don’t know. But there’s only one logical conclusion to this kind of longing.” Maya pressed her belly to show what kind of longing.
“He doesn’t bother me. I thought we had something together. Don’t we have something together?” He grabbed her hands.
“I’m sorry, I don’t feel that way.”
“Did you ever?”
“I didn’t rule it out when I met you,” Maya sighed.
“When did you rule it out?”
“That day in Bois de Boulogne maybe.” She winced.
“When you didn’t want to get on the boat? You wanted to go with him? C’est ça?” He spat out the C’est ça.
“Sorry.”
“Did you go with him already?”
“Not yet.”
“If I tell you not to? Never to?”
“I’m sorry, they are beautiful.”
“But I took you there because they are special to me.”
