by Abha Dawesar
“Daddy said that when people die, they don’t go away.”
“That’s right. You’ll know even when you win the Nobel Prize, one day when you grow up, that I am watching you and am proud of you.”
“I’ll try to win it when I’m young so that you’re still alive. You won it only when you were seventy.”
Where love made most people dreamy and distracted, Maya experienced a sense of discipline. Her emotional existence was taken care of in a single sweep, when Prem’s lips first touched her mouth. In the few weeks left of the Paris Fiction Fellowship she still had most of her book to write, but it was suddenly easy. Waking at seven in the morning, she worked from eight to noon and then again from one to six.
Nadine waved at Maya late one afternoon as she was taking a small break from her work to look at the roofs. Maya asked her up for a cup of coffee.
“Salut,” Nadine said as she kissed Maya on the cheeks.
“How are you?”
“I just broke up with my girlfriend.”
“I’m sorry. Was it difficult?”
“It was too easy.”
Maya chuckled. She remembered the humidity trapped between Jean-Pierre’s body and his sheets and how it had intensified that particular animal smell of his. It had been easy.
“My girlfriend asked me this week if we could live together,” Nadine said. “It seemed like not such a bad idea because I did feel attached to her. But I was eating dinner with some friends yesterday and met someone.”
“Did anything happen?”
“No. But I wanted something to happen. If I was living with my girlfriend, it could never happen. I think of the restrictions that the life of a couple imposes on you, and I feel suffocated.” Nadine gripped her throat tightly to show just how suffocated.
“Why did nothing happen with the person you met last night?”
“I wasn’t sure if she wanted it. We spoke a lot, and we laughed. She had long hands, much longer than mine.” Nadine raised her hand to show Maya her own fingers.
“Yes, yours are pretty long. How old is she?”
“My age, our age. At some point when no one else at the table was listening, she told me that she liked being sodomized, and I couldn’t get that out of my head. I thought of it the rest of the evening even when we talked about other things.”
Maya looked at Nadine’s hands again. How would she sodomize this other woman?
“At the end of the dinner I said I was delighted to have met her, but what I really wanted was to ask her to come back with me.”
“I am with the vieil écrivain,” Maya said. “I spoke to him the day after we talked.”
“Es-tu heureuse?”
Nadine drew out her question languorously, her heureuse saturated with a sense of luxury. It was a luxury to be so happy.
“Oui,” Maya replied.
“Do you think my decision makes sense? Do I make sense?” Nadine asked anxiously.
“Your fear of losing your freedom?”
“Yes. But also that after Clara used the word sodomy, I can’t get it out of my head.”
Maya laughed.
“I’m serious. My relationship with my girlfriend has unraveled due to the force of that one word, that one idea. Isn’t that how all you writers work? You take a word and spin a whole universe around it.”
“I guess one could.” I can do that with the word Prem. She broke from her reverie and asked, “Is enculation a word, or can one only use enculer in French?”
“Enculation is no word.”
“I’d want to write a book in French just to make enculation a word.”
Nadine shrugged. “That would be like saying sodomation in English.”
“No. Sodomation doesn’t work. Enculation would work.”
Nadine grabbed Maya’s hand and looked at it.
“All night I wanted to compare the size of her hands to mine.” Nadine placed her palm against Maya’s. Maya repositioned her palm, ensuring that the baselines of their palms were aligned. Their hands were the same size.
“More nerve endings from our hands and face reach our sensory cortex than from other parts of our body,” Maya said. “We sense much more from hands than their surface area suggests.”
“I always knew hands were important. Are you seeing your writer today?”
“No, his family is here from India.”
“Do you want to go to a movie?”
Maya found her Pariscope, and they browsed the movie listings, eventually choosing something at the local cinema at the Place de Clichy for convenience. After the movie they went to Au Rendez-vous des Amis for a drink.
“You know, Clara doesn’t live far from here.”
“Why don’t you call her?”
“You think so?”
“Of course.”
Nadine called the long-fingered sodomy-loving Clara, who said yes.
“Do you want me to leave?”
“You have to stay! You heard what I told her on the phone, didn’t you? I said I was here with an American friend who’s a writer. She’s also a writer.”
“Go ahead—use me as bait.”
Nadine smiled and fluttered her eyelashes at Maya teasingly.
Clara walked into the bar. Her skin had a fresh, tanned look. They rose from their table and kissed her in greeting. Maya eyed her hands. They were quite beautiful. She missed Prem’s hands. She hadn’t seen him for three full days.
Clara’s phone rang. She fumbled through her purse but couldn’t seem to find it.
“Zut,” she let out, as she tossed half her bag out onto the table in a hurry. Prem’s Sisters in the Louvre fell out. The French version. Maya picked it up.
“C’est lui,” she said, holding up the book.
Nadine turned it over to read the back.
Clara was finished with the phone and organized her bag.
“She’s the girl in love with the old writer. It’s him,” Nadine said to Clara. Then she turned to Maya. “I told her yesterday at dinner about you.”
“He’s really famous,” Clara said.
Maya nodded and excused herself. When she came back, Nadine and Clara were holding hands. They decided not to order a second round of drinks and to head home instead.
“Are you liking Sisters in the Louvre?” Maya asked.
“I love it.” Clara and Nadine were walking with their arms linked.
“I’m reading it for the second time, and I really love it too,” Maya said.
“What kind of person is he?” Clara asked.
“He’s—” Maya hesitated. “I’m blind about him. I don’t know.”
Clara laughed and reached out with her free hand for Maya’s shoulder. As they descended the steps on rue Paul Albert, all three took their steps together, half-hopping.
Maya kissed them goodnight on the third-floor landing and climbed up the next flight. After shutting off her light, she looked out the window to see the girls making love.
In the morning she awoke with a start. She’d been waiting for Prem in her dream, and since he hadn’t come back, she’d awakened. She called him.
“I was frightened so I called you. I had a bad dream.”
“My grandson and I just got back with croissants. Tell me your dream.”
“We were both in the shower, you were behind me. I moved my bum close to you, and you sighed. I could feel your sex. Then you went to get something. I waited. And waited. And waited. But you never came back. I got very cold standing in the shower.”
“I think this means I’ve kept you waiting for too long. You need to feel my sex.”
“Prem, I’m missing you.”
“How much?”
“Very badly.”
“We’re eating dinner at the Café de l’Industrie on Wednesday. Do you want to join us?”
“I’d love to.”
“My grandson will be there. I don’t want him to think anything.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll be very discreet.”
Prem en
couraged Homi and Deepika to leave Ratan with him daily so that they could explore Paris. One afternoon he called Valérie and asked her if she wanted to meet him with her kids so that Ratan could amuse himself. They arranged to meet at Musée Zadkine.
Valérie arrived with an enormous bag of drawing sheets and crayons. They led the kids to one of the rooms in the museum.
“Now all of you must choose one statue—it doesn’t have to be the same one—and draw it.” Valérie handed them each a sheet. They immediately sat down cross-legged on the floor. She opened the box of crayons and placed it near the kids.
“Now, be nice and share the crayons. Can we leave you here alone?”
They nodded.
“Come, let’s go into the garden,” she said, looping her arm through Prem’s.
“That’s a good idea. They keep busy, and we get to talk.”
“He’s your nephew’s son?”
“Yes. How come your kids speak English?”
“They go to a bilingual school.”
“And how are you doing?”
“I married a solid guy. He’s not very imaginative, but he’s a good father.”
“Have you had the customary first affair after marriage yet?”
“I hope it never happens, but I can’t say. In ten years it might, but right now I’m too busy with the kids. I still find it interesting with him. And you?”
“I followed a young woman from New York to Paris. I’m not the same as I was ten years ago. I feel old and not a little shriveled. Desiccated.” Prem laughed.
Valérie touched his face and smiled.
“You still look very good. Enough to put a sixty-year-old to shame.”
“I wonder how long it can last. How long she can sustain her feelings.”
“I’m sure she’s much more in love with you than you think. Your work is very seductive. When I read your books, I still think of you. One can’t help it.”
“There are practically no erotic scenes in any of my books.”
“It’s your entire approach, your understanding of women, that is erotic. Do you know how much publicity you got last year when Technolore was translated? Every woman between twenty and sixty in the metro was gripping your novel more tightly than the handrail. One day I counted all the people on a terrasse in Beaubourg who were reading books; ten out of twelve were reading one of yours. C’était hallucinant!”
For years he’d followed Pascal’s easy policy of not asking too many questions and making the most of the situation. But with Maya every bone in his body rebelled at the thought that she might be there because of his status. For his writing yes, for his status no.
“So it was my fame?”
“I asked myself that. I think Julie and I would never have approached you if you weren’t famous, but it was only the initial reason. I really did love you that summer, and I fell in love only when we were in Parrain’s house.”
“Your abrupt departure was very difficult for me.”
“It hurt me to leave that last time we saw you, but Julie’s hold over me was very powerful. I couldn’t say no to her for anything at that time.”
“So you were in love with her.”
“Oui.”
Through the glass door from where they had stepped out, Prem saw Ratan’s head lift up from his drawing.
“Should we check on the kids?”
“I loved being taken to a museum and being asked to draw the sculptures when I was young,” Valérie said, pushing the door open.
Valérie’s two kids continued drawing. Ratan was bending his head over Valérie’s daughter’s drawing and holding her hand in his as she applied the pencil.
Valérie clapped lightly.
The kids all held up their drawings. The renditions of Zadkine’s angular abstract faces were angular and abstract, outlined in colors a lot more imaginative than the original sculptures. All three kids had drawn butterflies and flowers around the main drawing.
“Why don’t you color the inside of the drawing?” Valérie suggested to Ratan, since the other two had not yet finished sketching. He nodded and got back to his sheet.
Valérie and Prem stepped out onto the porch again.
“Is it common for kids to imagine butterflies everywhere?” Prem asked.
“I think flowers and butterflies are the first things they learn to draw in school, so when they have to draw something new, they start with something they already know. It’s just like a warm-up.”
“Or like foreplay.” Prem gave Valérie an open desirous look. She blushed.
“We liked your tenderness, Julie and I. We talked a lot about you that year.”
“Is your husband tender?”
“Yes, I need it. I couldn’t marry someone who was like an animal in bed. I had one lover like that. It lost its appeal very fast.”
Valérie and Prem looked into the room once more. Ratan had finished. He was holding Lulu’s hand again. She smiled at him. Ratan gave the little girl a kiss on the cheek.
“Maman, il est si gentil,” Lulu said, looking up at her mother.
Lulu’s brother continued drawing, closed up in his own world.
Valérie collected the crayons and put them into her bag. She rolled Ratan’s drawing and tied it with a pretty ribbon, then handed it to him.
Back on rue d’Assas they said goodbye.
“Did you enjoy drawing?” Prem asked Ratan.
“I made the drawing as a gift to someone.”
Prem waited expectantly, but Ratan didn’t go on.
“Who will you give it to?” he finally asked. He would frame it and hang it next to his bed back in New Jersey.
“To Irène Aunty. Will we see her again?” Ratan asked.
Despite the fact that he was indeed touched by his grandson’s kindness, Prem felt a momentary sensation of acute jealousy. He bent a little and picked Ratan up in his arms, something he barely had the strength to do for more than a few seconds.
“Grandpa, Daddy said I am too heavy for you.”
Prem squeezed Ratan next to his chest and kissed him on the cheek.
“I love you, my darling boy. I love you.”
He let Ratan slide down his body.
“We can ask Pascal if we can meet Irène again. I think she’ll be very happy to get this gift from you.”
“Yes, I think so too,” Ratan said happily.
Homi and Deepika returned late from their sightseeing trip to Fontainebleau and arrived at the Café de l’Industrie after the others—Prem, Pascal, Maya, and Ratan—were already seated. Ratan was so absorbed with Maya that he waved hello to his parents without going over. Introductions were informal.
“Prem was telling me your sightseeing schedule. Versailles, Fontainebleau, and Giverny all in a week is very ambitious,” Pascal said.
“And since he’s been taking care of Ratan in the evenings, we even managed the Moulin Rouge one night,” Deepika said.
“Do you like Paris?” Pascal looked at Homi.
“I like it. But my wife adores it.” Homi put his arm around Deepika.
“I was asking Maya about her favorite places in Paris. She’s here from New York. It’s nice to see that this city still draws young talent from other parts of the world,” Pascal said.
“What do you do, Maya?” Deepika asked.
“I’m writing my first novel.”
“Is it set in Paris?” Homi asked.
“No. It’s set in India. I already have all my notes. I’m putting it together.”
“You’ve been to India?” Deepika asked.
“Yes, many times. Prem said you live in Delhi. Whereabouts do you live?”
“In Greater Kailash,” Homi said.
“I stayed in Def Col for a few days, but I spent most of my time in the south.”
“It’s your turn,” Ratan said, demanding Maya’s attention.
“Sorry,” she said, turning to him. They were playing tictac-toe.
“Young man, do you remember what Descartes said?”
Pascal asked.
“‘Je pense, donc je suis. I think therefore I am.’” Ratan spoke with his eyes on the game.
“Where did you learn that?” Maya asked Ratan.
“Pascal Uncle wrote it for me.”
“Did Pascal tell you about Pascal’s bet?”
“Another Pascal? What is the bet?” Ratan was immediately curious.
“Tu penses il va comprendre?” Pascal asked from across the table.
“What did he just say?” Ratan asked Maya.
“Ask him directly,” Maya said, looking at Pascal.
“I asked her if she thought you’d understand. Even I don’t understand this other Pascal’s bet too well.” He laughed.
Maya drew rows and columns and wrote out the God-exists, God-doesn’t-exist scenario for Ratan. He had no trouble with the concept.
“I like Pascal more than Descartes and Rousseau.” He smiled at Maya, then whizzed off to the other end of the table to show his parents the matrix.
Homi and Deepika turned their attention to their son. Pascal asked Maya something. Maya felt Prem’s hand running along her leg, then under her skirt. She momentarily forgot the question Pascal had posed. Pascal realized what was happening and waited.
Ratan now made his way to his grandfather with the paper. Prem lifted his hand from Maya’s thigh.
“Sorry,” said Maya to Pascal, nervously playing with her hair.
“I was asking if you have a good sense of where each chapter is going.”
“I think I do, but it’s my first attempt at writing a novel. I don’t know if my approach is quite optimal.” She wanted to tell Pascal how Prem’s writing was infiltrating everywhere inside her own. Maybe he would understand.
“My method refined between my second and third novels, and since then it’s not changed all that much.”
“I wrote my undergraduate thesis on your work,” Maya said.
“Prem never told me that.”
“I may not have mentioned it,” Maya said.
Pascal winked at her.
Their food arrived, and two waiters bustled about the table.
“Maya is an Indian name,” Ratan said as he took his seat next to Maya again.
“My father loves India. That’s why he decided to call me Maya.”
