French Lover (19 page)

Benoir leaned forward, saw himself in Nila’s eyes and said, ‘Was it a crime?’

‘You kissed me.’

Benoir laughed, ‘You didn’t resist.’

Nila pulled the menu towards herself and hid her face. He pulled it aside and looked into her eyes, ‘Did you?’

She laughed and lowered her eyes, her chin with the mole on it.

‘I have taken my kiss, how does it matter to anyone else?’

Nila had seen men and women kissing on the streets, in parks, in the metro all the time and gradually it had become something like the maple leaves or apples hanging from trees. But if it came on her, it was something else. Of course it was different, if the man happened to be blonde and handsome and the kiss a French kiss.

‘What will you have? Foie gras?’

‘What is that?’

‘Duck’s liver. Ducks are fed very well and then their liver is taken out to make this delicacy.’

Nila’s appetite died when she heard this description.

‘Then how about a salad—mozzarella and tomatoes?’

‘Cottage cheese? I don’t like it.’

‘So what will you have?’

‘Is there any fish? I come from a coastal land.’

‘There’re some sea fish.’

‘No, those aren’t good. How about river fish?’

Benoir glanced at the menu and shook his head, no.

‘Do you want an entrecôte? But you can’t have this either.’

‘Why not? I have had it once.’

‘But isn’t the cow sacred to you?’

Nila hid a smile and said, ‘I’ll go for the entrecôte.’

‘You are not religious?’

‘My religion is private.’

Benoir wiggled his brows and said, ‘So your private religion allows you to eat beef?’

Nila was grave as she said, ‘It’s not forbidden to eat beef in the Hindu religion. In the Vedic age we all ate beef. Then the Brahmins introduced certain restrictions to differentiate themselves and they gave up beef. Slowly, the castes below them also followed suit. That’s how it became a status symbol not to eat beef and it became a custom.’

Benoir said, ‘But here it is a status symbol to
eat
beef.’

Nila’s voice held false disbelief, ‘There’s a class system here too? So the French Revolution couldn’t get rid of it? It couldn’t merge the poor with the rich?’

Benoir wasn’t interested in the revolution. He was interested in Bordeaux. He asked for a whole bottle.

As they ate, Nila told him that she wasn’t staying with her girlfriend, but at Rue de Rivoli.

‘Quite a posh area. Is it a French household?’

‘No.’ Nila waited for Benoir to ask her whose house it was. But she realized he had no curiosity about it. So she herself said, ‘It’s an Indian’s house.’ Benoir’s eyes were suddenly round with surprise.

‘Why is it so strange for an Indian to live in a posh area?’

‘No, that’s not what I meant.’

He didn’t specify what he meant. Instead he raised his glass of Bordeaux and said ‘Santè.’

Nila also said, ‘Santè.’

The names of the famous writers and artists who had once dined at the Closerie des Lilas were written on the tablecloth under their plates: Baudelaire, Ezra Pound, Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, George Orwell, Samuel Beckett. Nila glanced through the list and she was overwhelmed. ‘Is this the place that was frequented by Lenin and Trotsky?’

Benoir looked around him and said, ‘I don’t think so.’

Nila pondered for a while and said, ‘I think this is the place where Hemingway sat on the terrace and finished his
The Sun also Rises
in six weeks. He lived close by. Picasso also came here with his poet friend, Epolleniere.

‘Picasso!’ Benoir’s eyes lit up.

‘Yes, Picasso. But I don’t understand about Hemingway—he lived like a pauper in a dank room with no hot water. He had no money to buy firewood and heat the room. The house had no toilets. He used a bucket. But he always went to the cafés and restaurants and drank café au lait at the Café aux Amateurs in Place Saint Michel. He even bet on horses. How did he do all this? A little strange, isn’t it?’

Nila looked at Benoir. He was staring at her as he chewed on his rum steak. Nila’s eyes saw the tinkling of glasses, the drunken screams and fresh words, prose, poetry. At the turn of the century, when America introduced prohibition, many writers came to Paris, drank themselves silly and hollered all night long at these restaurants, spouted words which had genius in them. The scene was fixed in Nila’s mind and her eyes were unfocused. She came back to herself with the sound of Benoir gulping down his Bordeaux. ‘Look at Hemingway’s situation. He always ran short of money when he went to buy food. Of course, books too. He always borrowed books from the bookstores. He even described the marvellous experience of seeing Cezanne’s paintings on an empty stomach. Once I went into a Dali museum on an empty stomach. My head was spinning. If there had been a tree in sight I would have hung from its branches like Dali’s clocks. I had to come out and eat at one of those touristy places in Montmartre first. Then I went in again. I guess it’ll be the same if I tried it with Cezanne.’

The wine was over. Benoir refilled both the glasses. Nila finished half the glass in one gulp and continued, ‘But Benoir, Hemingway said something really valuable: staying in Paris was never in vain. Whatever you gave to Paris, the city paid you back in full. Of course, those were the old days. Paris was like that in those days and Hemingway and others may have been poor, but they were happy. Now it’s different. If you don’t have loads of money, you’d be on the streets.’ Did Nila’s eyes feel wet? Of course they did. No, actually she must have sprinkled too much pepper on her entrecôte. Benoir eyes or ears weren’t burning, he wasn’t blushing, though the tip of his nose was a little reddish from drinking too much Bordeaux.

Benoir asked her, ‘Why did you leave your girlfriend’s place, Nila?’

Nila didn’t answer. She felt it was a good thing, in a way. Thanks to Danielle’s relationship with Natalie, Nila was free of that voracious tongue every night. It hung in front of her eyes. She pushed it aside and said, ‘Can you have sex with someone without loving her?’

Benoir said, ‘That depends.’

‘On?’

‘On the circumstances and . . .’

‘And what?’

‘Emotions, etc. etc.’ Nila heard his unclear mutter, lifted her face and said, ‘I can’t.’

The soft breeze of love made Nila prattle. ‘I don’t know when love suddenly engulfed me like this. When I’m walking, talking to someone, sitting alone, sleeping or waking, I can sense very clearly that I love someone.’

‘You didn’t eat your entrecôte.’

‘I tried, but for one thing, I’m not used to such bland food, for another I am not used to eating beef.’

‘And you are not used to eating gods! Ha, ha, ha.’

Nila smiled.

‘There’re no gods in ice creams. I’m sure you can have that?’

As she ate her ice cream, Nila told him her plans, of renting a house and getting a job. She had always wanted to be independent.

‘Where will you rent?’

‘I haven’t decided yet. But I believe it’s not easy—some rich person has to be a guarantor?’

Benoir said, ‘Rent a place close to mine. That’ll be great.’

Benoir reached for her hands and began to stroke her delicate fingers. ‘How well these men can make love,’ Nila thought.

The waiter placed the bill in front of Benoir. Nila snatched it away. He protested violently. ‘What are you doing? I’ll pay. I have invited you.’

‘So what?’

She kept eight hundred and fifty francs on the table and said, ‘Just because I am from a poor country doesn’t make me a pauper.’

Benoir didn’t stop her and said, ‘All right, the next one is on me.’

Nila was sure the waiter had placed the bill before Benoir because he felt she wasn’t capable of paying: black and a woman at that. She felt a sense of pride when she paid.

But the pride came with a price. With that in place, Nila could very easily place her lips on Benoir’s pink ones.

They left the restaurant and went to Benoir’s apartment in Rue de Rennes for coffee as usual. There was the same ‘no coffee for me, tea please’ scene.

‘And if I don’t have tea, can I give you something else? Will it quench your thirst for tea? Just try it.’ Benoir played some music, filled the glass with red wine, sipped it and slowly came towards Nila, one step at a time. ‘
When you want it, when you need it, you will always have the best of me, I can’t help it, believe me . . .
’

He laid her on the bed and tore her clothes off. Then a long kiss on the lips, sucking the red from it as if the honey was only in that red. Without taking his lips from hers, he took off all his clothes as well. Nila closed her eyes shyly and pulled a cover on herself. Benoir pulled it aside. Now Nila had her arms akimbo on her breasts. Benoir pulled them away, gazed at her in wonder and his voice shook, ‘Nila, you are beautiful.’

Nila turned on her side, trying to hide as she said, ‘What is so beautiful about me?’

‘Your colour.’ Benoir’s voice was thick with emotion.

Nila said, ‘Colour? But it isn’t white.’

‘That’s what makes it so beautiful.’

Suddenly Mithu’s face came to her mind. Poor Mithu, if only you could see how I am being loved for my dark skin. Poor Mithu, perhaps someone may have come along in your life too, if only you’d waited. Poor Mithu, you went away without seeing this amazingly beautiful side of life, poor Mithu . . .

‘Your colour is beautiful, your skin so smooth; your hair is so black, so deep, dark black. Your breasts—I have never seen such breasts, like a pair of melons. You’ll drive me crazy.’ He poured drops of wine on her breasts and began to lick it up. ‘The wine tastes better.’

‘Really?’

‘Really.’

Then he poured the rest of the wine on Nila’s stomach, thighs and drank it. Nila sank her fingers into his golden hair, on his shaven cheeks, reddish nose tip, lips, chin and all over his face. Benoir sang with Bryan Adams, ‘
I may not always know what’s right, but I know I want you here tonight, gonna make this moment last for all your life, oh yeah this is love, and it really means so much, I can tell from every touch . . .
’

At first a feather touch on her breasts. Then the beak-like nose kissed them and Benoir’s tongue licked them. The nipples woke up slowly and he watched without blinking. Lips came down on the aroused nipples, kissed them lightly and when they were fully aroused, a reckless Benoir grazed them with his tongue as if they held some immortal fluid and said they were his cherries. Nila felt he was no Benoir; this was her Apollo loving his Aphrodite deeply, intimately.

Benoir moved lower as he kissed Nila’s breasts and stomach. Her thighs were tightly pressed. He prised them apart with his hands and said, ‘Let me taste you Nila, let me taste you.’

‘No.’

‘Why?’

‘It’s disgusting.’

‘How lovely is your soft, downy fur. I know there’s nectar beneath. Please let me drink it.’ Slowly he prised apart her thighs. Nila covered her eyes in shame. Benoir soaked the lips with his
tongue and went deeper in search of more overflowing rivers. In the dim candlelight he looked like a deep sea diver. He began to suck her dry like a blind maniac as if he had come upon a fountain of life and if he didn’t drink it all, he would die.

Benoir whispered, ‘Nila, open your eyes, look at me. Touch me. Kiss me.’

Nila opened her eyes and was shocked: a huge penis throbbed in front of her, like the flames of a bonfire. She shut her eyes in fear and shame. She had only ever been touched by two male organs in her whole life. Sushanta’s she hadn’t even looked at for shame and Kishan’s, when her glance fell on it once by chance, was the size of a little finger or the tail of a rat. If his penis was an anthill, Benoir’s was the Himalaya in comparison. Finally Nila touched the Himalaya. Her fingers curled around it, her hand trembled. Benoir brought the blazing flame, the huge giant near her lips for her to kiss it.

‘Why do you lie so passively? Yesterday was the same. Open your eyes, watch, feel and have fun. Touch it, suck it, take it between your breasts, wake me, play with me.’

Nila was used to lying flat and passive. She thought that was the rule of the game, the woman would lie with her eyes shut and the man would climb on her body and take his pleasure. If the woman got anything out of it, well and good. If not, too bad!

Benoir didn’t heave his body on to hers. He levered himself up on two hands and stayed suspended. His massive giant went on wetting its toes at the edge of her ocean. Nila was restless. She was consumed by a thirst. When she overflowed, the giant ran away to the shore. Her ocean wanted him and he wouldn’t come near. What kind of a game was this? Nila opened her eyes and found Benoir laughing. She clung to him and drew him towards her.

Benoir whispered, ‘Tell me what you want.’ The faint light lit up his beautiful face. Nila had never seen so much beauty so close at hand. She trembled with love.

‘Say what you want.’

Nila blushed in shame, she couldn’t say it. Her head tilted to the right and so did Benoir’s; hers tilted to the left and his followed suit.

‘You can’t wait, right?’

She couldn’t but she had no way of telling him—she had never learnt to say it, wasn’t used to saying it. Modesty covered her in a cloak.

Benoir smiled sweetly, mischievously, as he watched Nila bursting, parched. Suddenly, without warning, the Himalaya penetrated her shores and entered her deep waters. Nila shrieked and her body arched like a bow.

Benoir, or Apollo, wreaked havoc as he said, you are a virgin, untouched, except by me, me and only me!

He lifted her legs on his chest and raised a storm, kissed her feet and charged with a destructive madness. The storm whipped up, faster and faster, the storm gods laughed within and without. Nila’s body was wracked with pleasure, the sharp, shooting pleasure of lightning flashes.

Suddenly Benoir lifted Nila from her supine position and sat her on his lap, laid down his tired arms and lay back.

‘Have you ever ridden on horseback?’

No, Nila hadn’t. She sat there, still and unmoving. Benoir lifted her with his hands and brought her down again, taught her how to ride, asked her to gallop fast, whispered into her ears to ride like an expert. He drew her to him, held her breasts with both his hands and got drunk on his cherries.