French Lover

by Nasrin, Taslima

  ‘Ethics be damned! Please prescribe it—I will give her the injection,’ Nila shouted at the doctor.

  The doctor was wallowing in his ethics and wouldn’t prescribe morphine. Suddenly Nila felt the Western debate over euthanasia was worth looking into. Earlier, she’d thought it was cruel. But today she felt just as someone had the right to live, they should have the right to die. This was also a human right. What was the point of living if all you could look forward to was misery?

  Before he left, the doctor said, ‘Why are you getting so excited! The illness isn’t sudden; it was festering for a long time. It was just a boil in her intestine at first and that was haemorrhaging. It could have been operated quite easily. But because it was allowed to grow, it turned into cancer. This is the problem with patients’ families. They don’t begin treatment on time and when it is too late they throw their weight around.’

  In the evening the car dropped Nikhil home and went to the hospital to pick up Anirban. He came home and Nila said, ‘Tell Ramkiran to wait; I’ll go out.’

  ‘Where?’

  Nila didn’t answer. She told Nikhil to carry Molina into the car. Anirban stopped Nikhil. ‘Have you also gone mad, like her?’

  Nikhil agreed with him, this was truly crazy. To go to the riverside with a person who couldn’t walk or stand, who had no strength in her arms and legs!

  ‘Are you going to kill her even before she dies.’

  Nikhil pulled her into the balcony and shouted at her. ‘What is wrong with you? Why are you acting like this? You can see Ma’s condition. Dragging her around at this time just doesn’t make sense.’

  Nila stood there silently.

  Nikhil sighed, ‘God knows what happened to Ma suddenly.’ Molina was screaming in pain. She could hear those pitiful cries from the balcony. But she couldn’t bring herself to face that ghastly pain, to look on that face crumpled in agony. She gripped the grills on the balcony tightly—she wouldn’t go anywhere; she’d stand there and spare herself the sight of all this pain. But she went and as she looked back, she saw Anirban sitting on the sofa in his comfortable clothes, the newspaper on his lap, his eyes fixed on the TV, watching the nubile heroine’s undulating hips.

  Nila switched off the TV, sat down in front of Anirban and said, ‘Yesterday I spoke to you of regrets. Well, do you regret anything?’ Anirban took off his glasses. It was the keen eyes again, ‘Why should I?’

  ‘You should because you never paid attention to Ma’s health. For ten years Ma was bleeding from time to time and you said it was piles, didn’t you? Now you know it wasn’t that. When she had stomach aches, you said it’s nothing, she was just acting up. Actually she wanted to just take the day off, isn’t that what you said? You said she was complaining unnecessarily to get your attention. Now you know the truth. Don’t you have regrets? When you sit here alone, don’t you ever feel sorry, feel that you could have prevented this disease if you had treated her instead of ignoring it. You were a professor of gastroenterology, and still are. Don’t you feel sorry that although you are a doctor and Ma relied on you, she’s dying without treatment because you never spared her a second glance? You do regret, right?’

  ‘But she is being treated. We tried chemotherapy too.’ Anirban’s voice rose.

  ‘Rubbish! Chemotherapy is no treatment. You have caused this cancer and now you try chemotherapy to fool people and make them believe she is being treated! When she needed it, there was no treatment. You know that too. Do you have any regrets?’ Nila’s voice held fury, her eyes rained hatred.

  ‘I sent an oncologist today as well.’

  ‘That’s mere pretence, to show people that you’re getting her treated by great doctors.’

  Anirban looked at Nikhil for support, ‘What is this girl blabbering! He is the finest oncologist in the city . . .’

  ‘Fuck your oncologist.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Fuck yourself.’

  Nila wept. She brought the house down.

  Nila fell asleep weeping. She woke up to Molina’s screams and Anirban’s snores. While one howled with unbearable pain, in another room the other slept peacefully. They had lived under the same roof for forty long years. Stillness, there was a stifling stillness within. Nila was scared; scared to touch Molina. Under the whirring fan, Molina’s feet were cold as ice even though it was summer. Oh, why wasn’t Molina born as a foreign dog?

  In the morning the sunflower bloomed. ‘Chitra, make some tea for Nila.’

  Chitra slept on the floor of the room, on a mat. She rolled it up and went to get the tea. Molina said to Nila, ‘Shut the door and come near me.’

  Nila shut the door.

  ‘Take the keys from under my pillow and open my almirah.’ Molina’s voice was as faint as someone speaking from the moon. Nila opened the almirah.

  ‘There are some papers in the right hand drawer. Bring them here.’

  Nila brought the papers.

  Molina said, ‘Keep these with you. They are yours.’

  Nila opened them and found a cheque for twenty lakhs made out to her.

  She was startled to see such a huge amount on the cheque.

  ‘Mother, why are you giving me so much money?’ Nila saw the tears rolling from Molina’s eyes and wetting the pillow. She wiped them and said, ‘I will get you treated with this money, Ma, you will get well. You’ll walk and sing like before.’

  The voice from the moon came again, ‘Stay in the country. Don’t go abroad.’

  There was chaos in the house. Nikhil told her there was a call from Paris, from a girl called Danielle. She was arriving tonight in Calcutta. Anirban had gone to the market to buy good fish and meat for their foreign guest. Two of his friends were coming to lunch too and at night there’d be some relatives for dinner. The pressure would be too much on Chitra. So they sent word and fetched Chitra’s mother and aunt. Nila observed the festivities in the house from a distance. She watched Nikhil running around. ‘What will your foreign guest like to drink? Is it okay if we don’t serve French wine? I can arrange for Indian wine.’

  Nila’s voice shook, ‘Dada, please sit beside Ma, talk to her a little.’

  Nikhil said, ‘The doctors have said she’ll live for another two months.’

  ‘I am scared, dada.’

  Nikhil went to the airport in the evening and brought Danielle home. There were lots of relatives gathered in the house. They had all come to see Molina. After the dinner party, Anirban went and felt Molina’s pulse. After that, he started whispering with Molina’s brother and brother-in-law about the crematorium, arrangements, money, etc.

  The words fell on Nila’s ears like burning logs of fire and she burned alone.

  Danielle touched Nila’s burning shoulders and whispered in her ears, ‘I’ve come to you from so far away, and you don’t seem to be happy to see me.’

  Nila didn’t answer.

  Sleeping arrangements for Danielle were made on Nila’s bed. It was as natural for Nila’s woman-friend to sleep on her bed as it was for the sun to rise in the east and for Molina to suffer pain. Chitra made the bed with two extra pillows. Before they went up, Anirban and Nikhil talked to Danielle for a long time about the French Revolution and French perfumes.

  Nila sat by Molina’s bed, alone. After midnight Danielle came into the room as silently as a cat and said, ‘Come, let’s go to bed.’

  ‘You go and sleep. I’ll sit here.’

  ‘You are very tired, Nila. You need some rest. If you make yourself sick like this, you’ll never be able to help her. Your family will be fussing over you. Get some sleep tonight and come back here in the morning,’ Danielle whispered.

  Nila realized the house was filling up with whispers.

  Danielle dragged Nila’s tired body upstairs.

  All night long, Danielle’s thirsty tongue played on Nila’s motionless body. Suddenly Nila’s deadwood body was flooded with life. Like a skilled painter Danielle painted her dreams on Nila’s body.

  Wh
en Nila was drowning in orgasmic tremors, when the first rays of the sun were kissing her long black tresses, Nila heard Chitra’s scream and turned into stone.

  Danielle left. She had never seen a Hindu death ceremony before. This was a new experience for her.

  Nila didn’t leave the bed. Nikhil came and called her. Chitra came and said, ‘Didi, aunty was restless and called out “Nila, Nila”. That’s what woke me up. Then I called her again and again. But she didn’t answer. She didn’t open her eyes.’

  After Chitra left, Nila got out of the bed, naked. She locked and bolted the door. All day long there were sounds—some knocked, some pushed, some requested her to come and see her mother’s face one last time, some commanded. Manjusha, Molina’s brothers and sisters and for some reason, even Anirban came to call her. But Nila didn’t open the door for any of them. She stared at the golden sun outside the window. The sounds of the streets, of the death rituals, didn’t reach her at all.

  At night Chitra’s tenuous weeping tore through the stifling stillness of the house. But there was no sigh ripping Nila apart and no tears burned her eyes.

  Nila had wanted to sprinkle rose water on Molina’s sorrows as if they’d doze off to the sweet smell, somewhere on the streets of Calcutta. If she had gently lifted the sorrows and left them on the terrace at night, perhaps they’d have forgotten to be sad and played with the moonbeams. These sorrows had never left Molina’s side, not even when she went for a bath. It was as if they were bosom buddies and without them Molina would be helpless, vulnerable. The people in the house were relieved to surrender Molina into the hands of the sorrows; they’d call them in, offer them a seat and some tea. Nila had wanted to take them away secretly, and set them afloat in the Ganga one day. They’d float like hyacinths, like bits of straw, like dead snakes and go far, far away. Not one of Nila’s wishes had come true. Today the sorrows went all the way to the burning ghat with Molina.

  Thus We Float Away

  Danielle went back to Paris, after wilting under the dust, pollution, traffic jams and violent honking, and eating snacks off the roadside and falling ill, chatting with Monique Claude Mathew in her Park Street flat on two days and watching Nikhil perform his mother’s last rites. Danielle had tried to knock on the boulder. ‘Regrets? You may not have returned from Paris and Molina would have had to go without seeing you. Why are you feeling guilty? It doesn’t help anyone. Never think that way. Do you want to be a stagnant pond?’

  But the boulder didn’t budge or speak. Nila threw away Danielle’s words on the rubbish heap nearby and said, ‘You have troubled me enough. Now go away.’

  This one phrase should have been enough for Danielle to go back to Paris without a backward glance. But she stopped at the door, left a piece of paper with Monique Mathew’s address on the table and said she was Nicole’s friend, a very nice person. If Nila ever needed to, she could look her up.

  The nights sank in deeper silences. No one moaned in the house, Chitra didn’t weep any more. She had cleared out Molina’s bed. The pillows and linen from Molina’s room had been cleaned. Anirban wanted to see patients in that room. He’d set it up with chairs, tables and an examination table. The sun vanished from the window. Nila stared at the darkness, her eyes focused on the moonless sky. On one such night Nikhil came and sat beside her, stroked her back comfortingly and said, ‘You are not the only one. We are all feeling sad. But we can’t bring back Ma. Life has to go on. That’s how it is. Reality can be very harsh, but we have to accept it.’

  Nila began to speak in a trance. ‘We had a mother; she used to feed us, put us to bed, never let us get dirty, never let us feel any hurt. People called her dark and plain, we did too. We called her silly and naïve. She felt sad but it didn’t matter to us. Nothing about her mattered to us. We thought she was mother, not another human being. Mother means the one who doesn’t have a life of her own, who shouldn’t have one. If she screams in agony, we said, that’s nothing, just your imagination. When she dies, we just cremate her and think we have done our duty. That she no longer exists, doesn’t matter to us.’

  ‘Don’t talk rubbish. Come and have dinner.’

  Both Anirban and Nikhil took three days off. Those three days there would be just rice and boiled vegetables cooked in the house. After that they would call the priest and Nila would have to perform her mother’s last rites. Nikhil’s duty extended for a whole month. He had wrapped a piece of unstitched cloth around his waist, another on his body and carried a cloth to sit on. He would eat only boiled vegetables and rice and yogurt with flat rice. For a month Nikhil would carry his sorrow thus. For Nila, the sorrow wasn’t for a month but for three days. She was married and had gone into another family. Now she didn’t have so many duties towards her mother. Anirban also maintained the rules faithfully. He was already drawing up the guest list for Molina’s death ceremony at the end of the month. After that both Anirban and Nikhil would get busy; they would leave the memories behind and move forward. Neither of them saw the point in looking back and wallowing in misery. It was Nila alone who stood between life and death, asking questions.

  Nila entered Molina’s room sometimes and called out, ‘Ma’ absently. Then she realized, the room was empty and a lonely lamp burnt in the middle of it. She felt like resting with her head on Molina’s breast, as she had after Sushanta left. Chitra came and lifted her up from there.

  ‘Chitra, what did Ma want to say?’

  ‘How can I say that, didi?’

  ‘Did she want some water? Or the painkillers?’

  ‘I don’t know, didi.’

  ‘Did she want to hug me close? Was she scared?’

  ‘I don’t know how people feel at the time of dying, what they want to say! Only those who have died know that, didi.’

  Molina’s absence was tearing Nila apart. Everything felt like dust and ashes. Nila wanted to be gone, like Molina.

  There were many ways of going and visiting Monique Mathew wasn’t one of them. But Nila went to her house anyway.

  Monique was the same age as Molina, but she was healthy and alive. Her finger-and toe-nails were painted neatly, she wore mascara in her eyes and make-up on her face, lipstick on her lips and her brown hair was dyed blonde; she wore a filmy dress that showed off her breasts. Monique quickly made them some tea and talked as they drank it, ‘Do you know the meaning of life? Douglas Adams said life begins at forty-two; I think he was wrong: life begins at forty-seven.’ Monique shook her breasts and laughed. Nila wasn’t amused.

  Monique was a lively and vigorous person. She had married a Bengali man much younger than her. Now they were divorced and she was moving to Delhi. She used to teach French in the Alliance Française. Now she had got a job at the French embassy and she would have to leave Calcutta. But she simply couldn’t bring herself to leave her house in Calcutta.

  ‘Nila, there is no city like Calcutta! If you want a city to live in, it is Calcutta.’

  Nila sighed.

  Monique asked her, ‘So, are you going back to Paris?’

  ‘No.’

  Two German Shepherds walked around the room arrogantly—Lullu and Bhullu. Bengali names for foreign dogs! They were named by Monique’s ex-husband. Monique cuddled them a little and then sent them out to the garden to play.

  ‘They are my life. I have lived with many men and I find it infinitely more satisfying to stay with pets. Trust is a big thing. Men break your trust, but dogs don’t. Do you have any pets?’

  ‘No.’

  Nila sat there with her sad face and aloof eyes. She wore a white cotton sari, her hair was dishevelled, her skin chapped and the paint on her nails was chipped.

  Monique stared at her long and hard and then said, ‘You make me feel as if you are eternal, you will never die!’

  Nila showed no interest in hearing an explanation of this ‘feeling’. But Monique continued, ‘You have become so depressed because you saw someone die in front of your eyes, that you’ve forgotten man is one species among many other
s. In this universe, man lives on a planet in one solar system among many in one galaxy among many others. You are like a dot, even smaller. Can you feel your existence anywhere in this vast system? Or your mother’s? That mud-eating tortoise lives longer than man. That is nature and we cannot conquer it. We come and we go; thus we float away. Man’s life is over in a blink of an eye. Just think, for billions of years so many things live and die on this planet. Once the dinosaurs ruled, and now they are no more. One day man will no longer exist; man’s history will vanish in the deep dark hole of the past. We are nothing, nobody on the face of this vastness . . .’ Monique’s green eyes were lost. But they brightened up instantly, ‘Do you believe in rebirth?’

  Nila shook her head, she didn’t believe.

  ‘Those who believe in it have one comfort, if they couldn’t do something in this birth, they can do it in the next. But if you believe in just one life, then don’t waste time. Each one has his own life and time flies swiftly. You must take all you get. You must be selfish, Nila, there is no other way. Seize it, have your fill.’

  Monique spoke nineteen to the dozen. Nila knew it was easy to say many wonderful things, sitting with your feet up on the sofa in an air-conditioned room, watching the trusted dogs play in the soft sunlight out in the garden.

  Suddenly Nila spoke out of context. ‘Monique, is your mother still alive?’

  ‘Yes. She is ninety-one and she lives in a village in Toulouse.’

  ‘Who lives with her?’

  ‘She lives alone.’

  ‘Alone?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why don’t you go and live with her?’

  ‘I don’t have the time. Mother also doesn’t want her children bothering her. Each to his own, Nila. No one wants to give up their independence. We go to visit Mother once a year for Christmas. But even that isn’t possible every year.’

  ‘Your mother can do everything on her own? Cook?’

  ‘She can, still. When she can’t do it anymore, she’ll go into the government home for the aged. There will be people there to look after her.’