French Lover (26 page)

She wafted in the warm breeze, walked into the nearest bookstore and looked for
Fleur du Mal
. The glass display case showed off Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Paul Eluard, Paul Valerie. She leaned forward, opened the shelf and asked, ‘Why are they locked inside?’

‘It’s the Poetry Week.’ The shopkeeper was indifferent.

‘Isn’t every week, every day meant for poetry?’

He smiled, ‘The days of poetry are numbered, mademoiselle.’

Nila had never felt that in Calcutta. Every day, every minute was for poetry. It was the poet who grabbed everyone’s attention on the stage, whom every person on the streets saluted and whom everyone gave a second glance. Every youth wrote poetry, whether they fell in love or not, whether it rained or not. A drunken lout would be forgiven all his sins if he was a poet. Some said there were more poets in Calcutta than crows. When Nila fell in love with Sushanta, she also wrote poetry. She had thought France was the home of poetry, but here they had to declare a week especially for it, to sell poetry books
and print them. Nila clicked her tongue and felt sorry for the country. As she returned home with the book clasped to her heart, she wished Molina would open the door to her, sit her down and feed her her favourite dishes. She’d fan her gently, brush aside the stray hairs on her brow and say, ‘Eat up, you’ve grown so thin. It’s been ages since you ate my cooking.’ Nila’s mouth watered. She walked home in a stupor and knocked on the door. No one waited for Nila. She had to let herself in. As she called, ‘Ma, Ma,’ the sound of her own voice startled her.

Nila was in a trance, in Malabar, and the room was bathed in a dim glow. Sushanta, bathed and clean-smelling like an Epicurean husband, reached for her aroused nipples. Drowning in languorous pleasure, Nila acquiesced to their lovemaking. Sushanta lay spent and tired after an orgasm.

The clouds parted and Nila’s illusion shattered; the piercing eyes of the wolf tore her to bits. She shivered, cold. When she tried to draw up the sheets at her feet, they were snatched away by the wolf, as if her fingers were being snatched away by a maniac. Nila screamed. It was Sunil in front of her eyes.

‘You have a high fever; don’t cover up.’

Slowly she buried her head in the pillow and spoke feebly, ‘What are you doing here?’

Sunil laughed his peculiar laugh.

Nila lay in a foetal position, tense, as she heard him say, ‘Do you keep in touch with Kishan? He has spoken to the lawyers about a divorce.’

Sunil spewed out many more words that fell randomly around the foetus; he wasn’t getting along with Chaitali and so he was quite upset these days. They slept in the same bed, but scarcely touched. Chaitali could understand that this was no way for a man to live. He paused and then continued in his thin voice, ‘Actually it was a mistake marrying her; she is very different. She is angry that I have stood guarantee for this house and she doesn’t want me to look for a job for you. She says I shouldn’t neglect them so much and shouldn’t pay so much attention to you; all this jabbering all day long . . . Ouf . . .’

There was a sound at the door. Quickly Sunil got dressed, threw a sheet over the foetus and opened the door to Benoir. A warm hand touched the foetus. Meanwhile Sunil waved goodbye and walked
out casually. He kept Nikhil’s letter from Calcutta on the table.

Benoir had brought her a gift, all wrapped up, and a single red rose.

Nila’s voice came from a great distance, ‘That man raped me.’

Benoir gathered Nila, all the heat in her to his bosom and burst into sobs. She wiped away his tears and said, ‘I don’t know, perhaps I wanted it . . . I wasn’t thinking straight.’

‘But I know, you were just angry with me.’

Benoir’s voice was brimming with emotion as he said, ‘I am beside you now and I won’t let anyone touch you. I’ll give you everything, everything.’

‘Really? Promise?’ She looked dishevelled, as if she’d weathered a sandstorm and needed help, begged for it.

Benoir promised her he’d never leave her.

When she untied the ribbon and unwrapped the package, out came all the books of Baudelaire’s poetry. Nila’s chapped, burning lips were drenched with kisses. She wanted to drown, to plunge into deeper waters. But Benoir said, ‘Get well first.’

Nila took his hand and placed it on her brow; she wanted it to stay there, wanted him to say how high her fever was. Nila wanted Benoir to fuss over her the way Molina had when she had had fever, to put a cold poultice on her brow, to wrap a towel around her neck, bring her to the edge of the bed and pour cold water on her head. Nila wanted him to bring a bunch of grapes and sit on her bed and feed them to her one by one.

Benoir took his hand away from her forehead and asked, ‘Are you feeling ill?’

Nila said she was fine. She quelled her wishes and asked, ‘Do I have a very high fever?’

‘I don’t know. Do you want to check? Let me get the thermometer for you.’

He brought it from the bathroom and came towards her. Nila instinctively opened her mouth. He gaped at her open mouth and handed her the instrument with a smile that said, with this I lay my life at your feet. Nila noted the smile, put the thermometer in her
mouth and gulped down the desires that almost popped out of her mouth at the same time.

The same night Benoir went and packed two suitcases and came back to Nila. She meant everything to him and this was his final decision.

‘What about that other relationship?’

He said he’d wind it up slowly.

She didn’t want to ask him how slowly. Benoir coming away to her like this made Nila tremble more than her fever did; she trembled with joy. It was obvious that Benoir loved her. She had nothing more to ask of him. Nila lay on his chest and closed her eyes in deep satisfaction. It had been worth it to have spent so much on this house. She had dreamed of living in it with Benoir and now the dream was close at hand. Her days of uncertainty were over. Nila could walk with her head held high now. Kishan’s meanness, Sunil’s pity, could all be discarded in one fell sweep. She had Benoir. He was hers and she wasn’t his mistress. So what if he didn’t bathe her head or feed her grapes, he loved her—this was the Western way of loving—bringing her the thermometer was no less than doing all that.

Benoir cooked some meat from a can, heated the contents and poured it on a plate. He sliced up the baguette, lay the table with silverware, poured them some wine and called Nila when it was ready. She looked at his smiling face in the candlelight. She found the lamb smelly and didn’t feel like eating it although Benoir licked his fingers with apparent enjoyment. Nila agreed with him and picked at her food, because she didn’t want to disappoint this new, domesticated Benoir.

Benoir talked about his childhood. Nila was absorbed in the stories. When he was six, he had gone to Italy with his parents by rail. They’d walked on the crowded streets of Rome. There had been a festival. A small boy stood leaning against a pillar and he had pulled Benoir’s hand and said, ‘Come, let’s go to see the fireworks.’ Benoir hadn’t gone, but later he always felt he should have. He saw the fireworks from a distance and felt sorry he didn’t go.

The next night he talked of his childhood again and told her the same stories.

Living together often meant hearing the same stories again and again and it gave her some sort of pleasure too, hearing about his childhood and adolescence. He told her about when he was praised by his teachers, when he hit a friend on the nose and confessed to the priest at the church in Orléans. His younger sister, Valerie, wasn’t as good at her studies as he was and so was always jealous of him; when they were children she often tore up his books and buried them in the ground. Even now she envied him. She was married and had a child, who, she claimed, was better behaved than Jacqueline.

At night Benoir came to bed, naked. He frowned at Nila, fully clothed. ‘How can you sleep with so many clothes on?’

‘I can. I am not used to sleeping in the buff like you.’

Suddenly Nila felt it was a hint and Benoir wanted to fondle her naked body. But he held her close and told her the story of Saint Exupéry’s little prince well until midnight and his penis hung limp on his tranquil body. The next night he told her stories of a fox and a tiger. When the story ended, he went and stood at the window.

Nila asked, ‘What’s the matter?’

‘Nothing.’

‘There must be something.’

Without taking his eyes off the window, he said, ‘Jacqueline must be missing me a lot.’

‘Why don’t you go there and meet her tomorrow?’

He came back from the window, kissed Nila with bright eyes and said, ‘Really? Can I?’

‘Sure. If you feel like it, why shouldn’t you?’

‘That’s true,’ he said, ‘Why shouldn’t I?’

Nila’s fever shot up in the night and she moaned all night long. The next morning, when the fever subsided, she asked Benoir to fetch her some amoxycillin from the pharmacy nearby. No, that wasn’t possible unless the doctor prescribed it. Nila went into the kitchen after Benoir left for work and found he had washed and left the place spic and span. She spent the whole day looking at the clock, waiting for him to come back home. As she waited, Danielle called.

Despite the fever, Nila couldn’t contain her excitement. She told her about Benoir coming to her for good. She repeated again and
again that she was no mistress.

‘Come home some time, Danielle, see how happy I am.’

Danielle had no interest in coming to witness Nila’s joy.

‘At least come to see me because I am ill? It could be typhoid.’

‘There’s no typhoid in this country; it must be something else. What’s the point of coming now, when you are sick? Get well and I’ll come one day to chat with you.’

Nila came to her senses. This wasn’t India where people dropped in on you when you were sick. Get well, get lively, overflow with life and I’ll come and drink some off you. And if you fall sick and die, I’ll come to your funeral in a black dress, drink to you and dance a little. That’s it.

Nila finished talking to her and opened the envelope that Sunil had left. She read Anirban’s letter first: ‘I suppose you can guess what I am feeling when Kishan told me everything. I am sure you are doing whatever you fancy in that foreign land, but one day you will come to your senses and then it’ll be too late. Many of your compatriots have shared your fate. So please change your ways when there is still time. If you do not want to resolve things with Kishan, come back home immediately. There is still time to mend your ways, come back to India and live a life that won’t have so many people point fingers at you.’ Nikhil’s letter was quite the same.

At seven Benoir called to tell her that he had gone to Rue de Rennes from his office. He was taking Pascale and Jacqueline out to dinner. He’d reach them back home, tell Jacqueline some stories, put her to bed and then come back.

Benoir returned home with a happy face. He had a happy little puppy with him, that looked like the stray puppies of Calcutta. There were two dogs in that house and he had brought the one that was more attached to him. The dog saw Nila, barked and jumped up on the bed. She raised her hand and said, ‘Take it off the bed; it’s messing up my bed.’ Benoir came running, ‘What are you doing.’ He hugged Wanda close, held up one of her paws towards Nila and said, ‘Shake my lover’s hand, Wanda.’ Nila welcomed the third member of her home.

Wanda was not a puppy. She was just small in size. These dogs were more expensive than the bigger dogs. Benoir undressed and came to bed like every other night, as he described in detail what were Wanda’s favourite foods, when she went out, what she liked doing and when she woke up. He kissed her and said, ‘Jacqueline didn’t want to let me go. I have told her about you. She wants to meet you.’

Benoir kissed her again, smiled and said, ‘Do you know what else she has said?’

‘What?’

‘She said she wants a brother.’ Benoir’s eyes were brimming with feeling, ‘Won’t you give her one?’

He placed Nila’s hand on his erect penis and said, ‘Let’s sow the seeds of dreams today.’

Nila was about to ask, ‘Whose dreams? Yours? Mine? Or Jacqueline’s?’ But she didn’t because she was scared he’d say, ‘Shame on you; you are so narrow-minded. You are jealous of a six year old?’

But she touched the erect penis and didn’t feel a wave of awareness. Her nipples didn’t rise to her lover’s touch or his kisses. Benoir said, ‘Get well and then we’ll do it.’

Nila was afraid to leave Benoir unsatisfied. If her body was the only attraction for him, then she wanted him to enjoy her and still love her. Nila held out her body for his gratification. Benoir sowed the seeds of Jacqueline’s dreams in it. Wanda jumped up on the bed and watched her master propagate.

He hid his face in her breasts and said, ‘Sorry, I came early.’

‘No, that’s okay.’

‘You are not upset?’

‘Why?’

‘Because you didn’t come?’

Nila smiled sweetly, ‘It’s just one day, it doesn’t matter.’

Benoir sat with a guilty look on his face until late in the night because Nila didn’t have an orgasm and he explained over and over, ‘Actually I’ve had a stressful week at work; probably that’s the reason, or because I have gone without it for a long time.’

The last statement brought relief to Nila. At least, she thought,
he didn’t make love to Pascale after putting Jacqueline to bed. She was also taken aback to see a man so conscious of his partner’s sexual gratification. In India she had never heard of such an awareness. When she had sex for the first time with Sushanta, her lover, he had never asked her if she had felt the same exciting thrill that he had. Most people in India believed sex was mainly for the man and all that the woman would get out of it was children.

After three days of fever, Benoir took her to the doctor. He prescribed medicines for her and when Nila came home with the medicines, she saw the bottle was etched with trees and plants. Benoir explained that these were herbal medicines. These days no one, except fools, had any chemicals. People usually went for herbal treatment. Nila’s head started throbbing, not with the fever but with this revelation. In Calcutta she had seen the illiterate, uneducated people have these medicines, those who went to quacks, got cheated and died painfully. Nila, the champion of logic and reason in the Western world, was amazed to see that here people were looking elsewhere for succour; the eyes of the educated upper classes were turned towards the dark, irrational. She threw away those bottles when Benoir wasn’t looking. Nila’s fever subsided on its own in seven days.

Once she was better, Nila turned her attention to her new home. She cooked all day long, showered, dressed and waited for Benoir, her eyes and mind stuck on the clock. Then Benoir called to tell her that Pascale had invited him and he was going to her place for dinner—Nila shouldn’t wait for him.

‘But I have cooked many things for you.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me earlier! Now I have promised Pascale and I’ll have to go.’

Nila had to agree. After all, Pascale was his wife and she had more rights to Benoir’s time than Nila.

Nila drifted around the house, alone. Benoir had arranged the computer table to his liking with a few files and two framed photographs of Pascale and Jacqueline. Nila picked up Pascale’s photo and looked at it closely. She didn’t find her plain from any angle at all:
red hair, shapely pink lips, sharp nose, high cheekbones, green eyes—Nila saw no reason for Benoir not to love this beautiful woman.

All day long Wanda had screamed the house down. Her master came home late, picked her up and crooned to her, ‘Oh sweetheart, oh my pet.’

Nila wasn’t asleep, but she pretended to sleep.