French Lover

by Nasrin, Taslima

  ‘Yes. I am due for promotion here.’

  ‘But there are no signs of it yet, right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The man fished out a pack of cards from his shirt pocket. He shuffled them and placed them face down on the table. Benoir had to pick up one. His hands trembled as he picked out the six of spades. He held out the card to Jean Jacques and the lights went off. The room lay in silence. Benoir’s breathing was the only sound in it.

  Nila said, ‘What is all this. Let’s go.’

  Benoir gripped her hand tightly and said, ‘Shhh.’

  This time a different light, neither red nor green, came on. It wasn’t over Benoir’s head but at Jean Jacques’ feet, between the cracks in the wooden floor. The room was full of the scent of incense. Nila felt very uncomfortable.

  Benoir wiped the sweat off his brow and looked a little calmer.

  Jean Jacques looked him in the eye keenly and said, ‘This evening, take one kilo of corn and scatter it in some woods. Two weeks later do the same with two kilos of corn. Are you thinking a wood in Paris will do? No, that won’t do; you’ll have to go outside the city.’

  Benoir gave the man two thousand francs and came out of the place. Once at the stairs, Nila burst into laughter.

  ‘Why are you laughing?’

  ‘You went to an astrologer?’

  Benoir took the stairs quickly with Nila close on his heels.

  ‘Why were you giggling over there?’ Benoir was irritated.

  Nila hid her smile and said, ‘You believe in all this?’

  ‘Of course.’ Benoir was solemn.

  Nila laughed, ‘You are joking.’

  ‘No Nila. Many people have seen this man and they’ve had results.’

  ‘You believe that if you scatter corn to the winds, you won’t get sacked from Alcatel?’

  ‘Perhaps.’ Benoir began to walk.

  Nila barred his way and asked again, ‘You are going to do this?’

  Benoir sidestepped her. ‘Sure.’

  Nila stood there as her scarf came loose and fell off her neck. Suddenly she realized that Benoir had walked on ahead. She ran up to him, took his hand and asked, ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Come, I’ll show you the Panthéon.’

  ‘Fine. I thought you were off to scatter corn.’

  Benoir didn’t answer. But he said, ‘You are so careless!’ when a man shouted ‘Mademoiselle, mademoiselle,’ and ran after her with her scarf held between two fingers.

  Panthéon! In 1744, when Louis XV escaped death narrowly, he was so glad to be alive that he decided to build a church for Sainte Geneviève. The French architect Jacques Germain started the work twenty years later, in the neo-classical style and it took twenty-five years to complete the church. The revolutionists left this one intact and made it the Panthéon, where famous Frenchmen would be laid to rest. They dug up the graves of Victor Hugo, Emile Zola, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Madame and Pierre Curie. Napoleon declared it a church again in 1806. The Panthéon had to wait another eighty years to be a pantheon again. From the dome a huge pendulum dangled, to which the French physicist Leo Foucault had pointed to indicate that the earth moved in its orbit.

  Nila stood beside Madame Curie’s coffin and said, ‘This is the pride of Poland, not France.’

  Benoir said she was the pride of France because she had lived here and it didn’t matter where she was born.

  Nila spoke slowly. ‘I live here. If I were to make a great discovery, would I be called a pride of France?’

  Benoir didn’t answer.

  Nila said instead, ‘Yes, I would. But until then, I’ll be an Indian, poor, starving, pauper, an immigrant here to destroy French culture.’

  Nila laughed loudly. Benoir warned her that it wasn’t allowed to laugh so loudly here.

  Loud, mock sobs: ‘Is it okay to cry here?’

  ‘No.’

  Nila stood before Voltaire’s statue and said, ‘Does that coffin hold Voltaire’s remains?’

  Benoir laughed. ‘It’ll be a few bones by now.’

  Nila also laughed. ‘That’s true. But you know what I feel? I feel there’s nothing of Voltaire here.’

  ‘Of course there is.’

  ‘But as far as I know, Christian fundamentalists stole his body, and dumped it in the rubbish heap. Of course, they preserved the heart in the bibliothèque and the brain was auctioned many times over and has disappeared since.’

  Benoir laughed her story off.

  They came out of the Panthéon and he said, ‘I don’t think Voltaire was all that great.’

  He didn’t go into why he thought that way, but he felt Descartes was really something. He reeled off stories about Descartes’s amazing mathematical prowess and his geometric theories. Nila still mused about Voltaire.

  ‘Cogito ergo sum.’ Benoir repeated it twice.

  ‘What’s that?’ Nila asked.

  ‘Descartes’s famous Latin phrase.’

  Nila didn’t know it. Benoir explained, ‘I think therefore I am.’

  Nila said, ‘Descartes believed in God, didn’t he?’

  Benoir regurgitated, ‘Everything in this universe is created by God. The human mind is like Him, it thinks. Man has form and God does not. Man dies, his brain stops thinking and God is eternal, His thoughts remain and He doesn’t depend on the creator for his existence.’

  Benoir’s eyes went heavenward. He loosened his grip on Nila’s hand and asked, ‘Don’t you believe in God?’

  Nila laughed and said, ‘I believe in François Marie Arouet.’

  ‘Who is that?’

  ‘A Frenchman, born in Paris.’

  ‘Are you in love with him?’

  Nila laughed, ‘Yes, for a long time.’

  ‘What does he look like?’

  ‘Handsome, slim, lithe body.’

  ‘Have you slept with him?’

  ‘No, not yet.’ Nila slipped her fingers into his.

  Benoir asked, ‘Is he older or younger than me?’

  ‘Older,’ she thought for a moment, ‘Not much, about two hundred and eighty-five years older than you.’

  Benoir laughed. Nila joined him.

  ‘So, why do you believe in him?’ He was eager to know.

  ‘Many reasons. François suffered a lot in his lifetime. He critiqued the French government in his poetry and the government imprisoned him in the Bastille for eleven months. After his release, he began to write. Then once, he insulted someone, a powerful man in society. He had to be punished for it. Either the prison, or exile. François opted for exile. He went to a neighbouring country, I won’t say which one. He lived there for thirty years and came back to Paris and wrote a book in praise of that country. It was an old enemy of France . . .’

  ‘I know, England. Who is this man? Dreyfus? Alfred Dreyfus?’

  ‘If you were two hundred and eighty-five years younger than Dreyfus, you wouldn’t be born yet. And England doesn’t have an island, a penal one, where Dreyfus lived. Anyway, the French government wouldn’t take it. François was to be punished yet again. He went into exile again. This time he didn’t go too far from France. At least he didn’t cross an ocean.’

  ‘Did he go to Belgium?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Italy?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Spain?’

  ‘No. He wrote many books in his exile, against ignorance and for reason. When he returned home at the age of eighty-three, he received a grand welcome. He died in Paris. But he couldn’t be buried in a church because he was quite pronouncedly against religion. Eventually he was interned in an abbey of Chopin. He was brought back to Paris towards the end of the eighteenth century, with great honour of course.’

  Nila noticed that Benoir’s attention had wandered. He pointed to a fairly large building and said, ‘Look at that building, it is my school, École normale supérieur. It’s the most famous school in France and it’s a great honour to study here. If you can get in here, you’d receive ninety thousand f
rancs a year. I got it too. Many people have studied here and gone on to take the Nobel Prize. Have you heard of Louis Pasteur?’

  Nila nodded.

  ‘Michel Foucault? Jean Paul Sartre? Romain Rolland? Henri Bergsson?’

  Nila had heard of them too.

  ‘They were all graduates of this school.’ Benoir pulled her towards him. He looked very contented.

  Benior wore a light green T-shirt and khaki shorts. Clothes were all the better if they were shorter in summer. Nila wore a short skirt, with half her thighs exposed, and a tight black top. She wore high heels and still felt short. Nila was always conscious of her slight paunch. But Benoir told her it looked good on women. These days women were so keen to reduce any flab, that they fell sick and didn’t have any breasts or thighs to speak of. His words gave her courage. Now she could wear such short clothes and go out quite comfortably. Nila noticed that French men looked at women’s heels and legs more often, if at all. Indian men would gaze at the breasts first. Women’s legs, however smooth and pretty, were not attractive to Indian men. Nila found it very strange. In India Nila was considered too thin and in Paris she was seen as quite a healthy woman. In fact Catherine had told her she could reduce a few pounds.

  They had lunch at a brasserie in Quartier Latar. Nila asked for a salad.

  ‘What’s the matter, do you want to be like those anaemic women?’

  It wasn’t entirely untrue. She had seen obese women in the streets. Most of them, Nila noticed, were alone. Perhaps one day Benoir would say, ‘You’ve put on so much weight!’ Nila was sure Pascale weighed at least five kilos less than her.

  She had her salad and said, ‘You have studied in such a good, modern school and you believe in the occult? The man is a fake.’

  ‘Don’t label someone without knowing anything, Nila. How did he know my age, Pascale’s name and about Jacqueline’s illness?’

  ‘He must have found out.’

  ‘No. The sister of a friend of my colleague’s brother went to see him. My colleague never went there. He just got the address for me. And his brother or his friend don’t know me from Adam.’

  ‘They must have given your name at the time of taking the appointment. So the man must have gathered information from your name.’

  ‘There must be a few thousand Benoir Duponts in Paris. Jean Jacques isn’t even from here. Didn’t you notice, he spoke French with the Marseilles accent?’ Benoir corrected her.

  ‘They have informers, don’t you know that? Those people find out everything about the people who come there. And speaking with an accent is no problem at all.’

  Benoir shook his head, unconvinced. After leaving the restaurant, he surprised Nila by buying one kilo of ground corn, going to the Bois de Bologne outside Paris, and scattering it in the woods.

  At home, Nila headed for the foamy bathtub, to get rid of the day’s surprises. Benoir joined her. There were two glasses of wine placed on the corner of the tub. The lights were switched off and the magic candles were lit. They soaked in the soft glow and sipped the wine. Benoir poured some liquid soap on the handtowel and brushed it over Nila’s body. Nila began to enjoy it and the day’s events that were bothering her, began to recede into the background. Her body lay hidden by the foamy bubbles and only the cherries peeked out. Benoir leaned forward to lick the cherries, but they dipped down. His tongue and the cherries played hide and seek. Benoir’s body rose in response. It touched Nila all over, her breathing became shallower. He picked up her feet from the water and gazed at them in wonder—the smooth brown legs. Benoir’s body rose and fell on Nila’s body, keeping time with Beethoven’s music, until the demonic sound of the mobile pierced the tranquil haven.

  Benoir left at eleven in the night. As he left he delivered the last surprise: he wasn’t coming back the next day or for the next ten days, for that matter. He was going to the Riviera with his wife and daughter, for a holiday, to sunbathe. What was Nila supposed to do here? She could think about him, think how much she loved him, think that wherever he was, Nila was always in his heart.

  When Nila had shut the door, the windows, switched off the lights and the Beethoven, drowned herself in the silence and listened to her own sighs, there was a knock on the door.

  Benoir had come back from the foot of the stairs to ask her a question.

  ‘Who was that François of yours?’

  ‘Voltaire.’

  Love inThis Foreign Land

  Benoir returned from his holiday and took Nila out. They went to the Versailles gardens. In the beautiful garden on two thousand acres, designed by La Notre, she sat down beside the grand canal, face towards the palace, half wet from the fountains.

  ‘Would you like to see the palace? The Sun King’s room, Queen Marie Thérèse’s room?’

  Nila broke off a stalk of grass, bit it and asked, ‘Why did the king and queen have separate bedrooms?’

  Benoir said, ‘It’s a huge palace. No point crowding into one room.’

  Nila touched the grass to his lips and said, ‘Or was it because your Louis spent his time with his three mistresses?’

  Benoir kissed Nila and said, ‘Our Louis also married his mistress.’

  Nila lay sprawled on the grass, looked up at the sky and said, ‘After marrying her, he must have given that wife a separate bedroom too.’

  ‘Drop it. Now do you want to go inside the palace?’ Benoir rushed her.

  Nila still lay there and said, ‘Forget it. I shudder when I see all that glittering, shimmering wealth.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘I feel like a poor, distressed subject, like I’m being whipped by the kings, for no reason.’

  Benoir leaned on his elbows, lay back and said, ‘Let me at least show you the Hall of Mirrors, famous for the Versailles Treaty.’

  Nila took his left hand in hers and touched the fingers to her cheek. The gold ring on his ring finger, the symbol of his bond with Pascale, touched her cheek.

  ‘What’s the point of seeing that room? The Versailles Treaty didn’t bring any peace. On the contrary it paved the way for another world war.’

  Benoir sat up and said, ‘Don’t talk rubbish. Just say you don’t feel like getting up from here.’

  Nila’s hair blew in the wind. It covered her face, her breasts. She sat up, swiftly wound her hand through it and tied it into a bun as she said she wanted to go to number twelve, Rue de Châtiere instead.

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘It’s not a palace. It’s a hovel where a poet once lived. A great poet.’

  ‘What is his name?’

  ‘Madhusudan Dutta.’

  ‘What kind of a name is that? It’s not a French name?’

  ‘Neither is Oscar Wilde, or Gertrude Stein or Henrik Ibsen. Do you find these names strange?’ she asked. Then she said, ‘No you don’t. Madhusudan Dutta was a Bengali.’

  ‘Oh, so that’s it. A Bengali.’

  Benoir heaved a sigh of relief. Not knowing a Bengali poet’s name and not knowing the name of a tiny insect in the Amazon was the same. It didn’t really matter. Why should he know of Madhusudan, one of the greatest poets of Bengali literature? Instead he knew of Sai Baba, Deepak Chopra, Swami Prabhupada!

  Although Benoir showed no interest in Madhusudan, Nila told him his story: Madhusudan was the son of a zamindar and he felt terribly drawn to European art and culture from a very young age. He wore European clothes, wrote poetry in English, converted to Christianity. He hated his own race so much that he said, ‘God has sent the Anglo-Saxons to this world to save the Hindus, to civilize them and to convert them.’ When he was in Madras, he married Henrietta, French girl. His father threw him out. Madhusudan came to England and became a lawyer. He spent his days in great hardship here in Versailles. Friends sent money from Calcutta to keep him going. At first he was happy in France because here he wasn’t called a damn nigger, like in England. Instead, if he saluted the French emperor and empress, they saluted back. Gradually his dream of becoming a great write
r in a European language dwindled, his infatuation waned. He remembered his past, the banyan tree by the river, the legends and tales, epics of ancient India. When he was in Versailles, he wrote some sonnets, inspired by Petrarch, the Italian poet. Petrarch and Madhusudan had a few things in common: Petrarch’s father too was a lawyer and he made his son become one, but Petrarch gave it all up and dived into the world of art and letters. Madhusudan was the same. The difference was that Madhusudan didn’t write sonnets only about his lover. He and Baudelaire also shared some traits: they were both bohemians and given to liquor and other addictive pleasures. Madhusudan went back to Calcutta from Versailles and thank god for that or Bengali literature would have been deprived of some of its grandest poetry. Nila stood in front of the house at number twelve, Rue de Châtiere and looked at the stone slab:

  LE POÈTE INDIEN

  MICHAEL MADHUSUDAN DUTTA

  (1824–1873)

  À DEMEURE DANS CETTE MAISON DE 1863 A 1865 ET Y A

  COMPOSÉ EN BENGALI DES SONNETS ET DES FABLES

  She went down on her knees and touched a bit of the dust to her brow. Benoir laughed, ‘Why did you do that?’

  ‘I saluted Madhusudan.’

  ‘Was that to Madhusudan or the soil of France?’

  ‘I did it because Madhusudan had once walked upon this soil.’ Nila walked indifferently as she answered.

  ‘But since then so many others have walked upon it, so many Louis, Phillipe, Valerie . . .’

  Nila took the words from his mouth and said, ‘So many Benoir, Pascale, Jacqueline . . .’

  She changed the subject and said, ‘So how was your holiday?’

  Benoir didn’t answer. He sighed when he got into the car, and said, ‘You have changed a lot, Nila.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘You always walked holding my hand. Today you didn’t.’

  Nila denied his allegation and reminded him that she took his hand as they sat in the Versailles gardens and she had noticed how snugly the gold ring fit his lovely white finger.

  Benoir’s voice was faint, ‘Nila, you are fooling me.’

  How can I fool you, I am weak, poor, common and feeble!