by Abha Dawesar
Judith Q had written that she had bought his book and flown to Paris to read the book in situ. She had read it from start to finish in the Louvre and even written him the letter from there. She had written that all these decades after his first book he had not lost his magic. To that letter he had almost been tempted to reply, but then he let it go.
“Somebody did that once.”
“A fan?”
“Yes a fan.”
“So I guess it won’t be a very original experience.”
“Come now, Maya. Since when have you started thinking this way?”
p a r t i v
Be drunk, always. Nothing else matters; this is our sole concern. To ease the pain as Time’s burden weighs down upon your shoulders and crushes you to earth, you must be drunk without respite. Drunk with what? With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you please. But be drunk.
—CHARLES BAUDELAIRE, ENIVREZ-VOUS
Accomplishments pleasant days horror nights Vegetations Couplings eternal music Motions Adorations divine regret Worlds self-mirroring mirroring us I have drunk you without being slaked
—GUILLAUME APOLLINAIRE, VENDÉMIAIRE
Maya stood outside Le Grenier à Pain on rue des Abbesses to buy herself a croissant. It was Sunday morning, and the entire neighborhood was in the line ahead of her. Behind her an old Arab looked at the plant by the door and touched a little plastic bird perched on it.
“C’est mignon,” he said, smiling with genuine happiness, his eyes gathering in wrinkles. The plastic bird had blue and yellow wings, which the old man stroked. Then he remarked, “Il a des fruits.” He examined the tiny fruits, real ones, hanging everywhere from the plant. It seemed like some kind of an orange tree, possibly kumquat.
The patisserie windows were replete with a range of specialty cakes and tarts to provide for the high flow of customers on Sunday. The colors of the pear and rhubarb pies and the golden ribbons decorating the cakes took Maya back to the pastels in the Musée d’Orsay. Everything in the store was glistening, soft, jellylike, moist, rich, and luscious—the old man behind her was Prem—and the mille-feuille vanille (never called a napoleon in France), with its layers of crisp flaky pastry and sublime yellow vanilla-infused cream, was dying for a lick.
The woman at the counter looked expectantly at Maya.
Maya ordered a croissant and paid with a series of niceties: merci, bonne journée, au revoir. She exited the shop feeling light-headed, wanting to share a dessert with Prem, and then threw a last rapacious, lascivious look at the window display from outside. The smooth-brushed texture of custard sat in harmony with the wrinkled skins of baked figs and mirabelles; each gâteau had perfectly serrated sides to complement the frictionless surface of its face.
Maya punched the code to her heavy building door. As she crossed the courtyard, she touched the back of her neck, at first unselfconsciously and then a second time, aware that Prem had touched her there in front of the Degas. Had he cast a spell on her? She was hypnotized by him, by life, by the city of Paris itself. Intoxicated. Every corner of the city was criminally beautiful. How would she ever leave?
Maya worked through the afternoon until Jean-Pierre called suggesting a picnic at La Villette, a movie under the open sky. He picked her up from her apartment, and they went to the nearby Champion to pick up olives, bread, and cheese.
The grass in the park was moist, and the sky did not fade into darkness till ten-thirty. The film began only at eleven. Jean-Pierre rubbed Maya’s back and hugged her close as the night got cold. When they took the metro to Pigalle, he climbed up the hill with her.
“Thank you for walking me back,” Maya said. She was standing on the second of her building steps and from that height could look him directly in the eye for a change.
He reached forward and kissed her lips. His lips were soft, and his kisses tender. They stood at the threshold of her building for five minutes, kissing.
“I should let you go to sleep,” he said finally, releasing her.
Maya and Jean-Pierre saw each other every night for the next few nights. And each night he made his way closer to her. The very next day he spent the night in her flat. The one after that he spent the night again, and this time only in his caleçon. The third night, as they were getting into bed, Jean-Pierre glanced into the window on the floor below and stared. Maya pulled herself higher on her bed to see what he was looking at. From Maya’s window two sets of depilated legs were visible, and a red lamp glowed in the room.
“They are two girls,” Jean-Pierre whispered.
“Seems like it,” Maya said. The girl who had wished Maya bon yoga lived in that apartment.
Even as Maya and Jean-Pierre watched, the limbs on the bed started to move, and the bodies drew close. They were grinding against each other.
“Enough. It’s not right,” Maya said, pulling Jean-Pierre back to her bed with her hand. He joined her and came close to her himself. Aroused.
“No, not yet,” Maya said, turning her back on him and drawing his arms over her.
They woke up to a clear blue sky. Jean-Pierre left after a quick coffee. Maya surveyed her living room. She felt at ease in the apartment. Anne’s apartment. She had never met Anne and wondered sometimes about her, what Anne did for a living, whether Anne had a boyfriend, if Anne was pretty. Maya liked the round dining table—it was large enough for two people to sit and eat comfortably. The kitchen was fully equipped. She called Prem.
“I want to have you over for dinner to thank you for taking me to the museum.”
It was the season for asparagus. She would cook him her father’s special recipe for risotto with asparagus.
Prem arrived in the evening with a bouquet of burnt pink orchids. When Maya spotted him in the courtyard below, she went down the stairs to greet him and carried them. He was out of breath by the time they were on the second landing, but he insisted they keep climbing up.
From the kitchen Maya had ferreted out decent china, wineglasses, side plates, white metal dessert spoons, flatware, and real cloth napkins. She served them both melon and some Martini Blanc to start.
“This apartment is quite charming. Very Parisian.” Prem looked around. The apartment across the courtyard was illuminated and, like Maya’s, had no curtains. Beyond the green plants by the windows he could make out an old couple sitting in white clothes. He felt he was looking into a chawl in Bombay in the evening, when husbands had just returned from work and drank cups of tea while sitting around in their white banians.
“Do you know anyone living in this building? Do you have friends in Paris?”
“I’ll tell you over the risotto, which is delicate and must be eaten soon.”
Maya cleared the table and brought out the main course. Cutting the asparagus stalks on her plate in two, she told him, “I picked up a boy in the bakery on the very street where you live just the day you landed in Paris.”
“Tell me more.”
She recounted everything in that special Maya way, her eyes lighting up, her lips dancing in half-smiles, her hands flying everywhere. Prem stopped listening and concentrated on the aesthetic spectacle of Mayaspeak, trying not to hear the actual words.
“I’ve been speaking for so long. I got carried away,” she finally said.
“I like hearing you talk.” Prem finished dinner and put his fork and knife neatly to the side.
“I feel so close to you. It is truly absurd, our friendship.”
“What’s so absurd?”
“I remember how famous you are, and it feels strange. I haven’t told anyone about you, but I know that Jean-Pierre would love to meet you. He sang your praise before when we were talking about writers.”
“Is he a writer too?” First Johnson and then this guy J-P. What is with the J’s?
“He’s trying to write a screenplay.”
Prem nodded.
“Are we ready for dessert?” Maya removed the fork and knife from her plate as she put his plate on top of hers.
&n
bsp; Prem looked outside the window carelessly and noticed the old man in the window across staring at them. He’s probably my age.
“Are we turning salty today?” Maya looked quizzically at Prem for his failure to respond with his usual enthusiasm for sugar.
“What’s for dessert?” He could not manage a smile.
“Panna cotta with a light dash of limoncello.”
“Bring it on.”
“What’s the matter? You don’t seem yourself. Ça va pas?”
“Si,” Prem protested.
Prem collected himself while Maya took a few minutes to organize dessert. He paced about the living room and looked outside distractedly. He had lured devoted mothers and wives from their duties in his time. He had to think strategically. But right now all he could feel was a dullness in his chest.
“Tan-ta-tan,” Maya pronounced a drumroll as she walked into the room with a tray.
There were webs of crisp caramel over the scoop of panna cotta.
“Wow!” At least this effort was for him alone.
“Voilà! I hope you like it.” She placed a plate in front of him with a small spoon and one in front of herself.
“So when do I get to see your garçon?”
“Mon gars? Is it okay for him to come to the concert with us later this week?”
“Your young concert to which you want to take me?”
“Yes.”
“Can he still get a ticket? Otherwise you can take him instead of me.”
“No way! I want you to hear this guy’s music.”
“Why?”
“The same reason you wanted me to see Degas and I wanted to cook risotto.”
“Is it the same reason your dessert looks so scintillating?”
“I was in the patisserie on Sunday, when the orgy of dessert left me euphoric. I wanted so much for you to see everything in the display and sort of experienced it for you since you weren’t there. I wanted to try to recast the experience for you, though it’s not the same because you only get one small dessert.”
Prem smiled.
“Why are you giving me such a smirk?”
“I’m not smirking, I’m touched. Though the enterprise is flawed. It was a mistake to show you Degas. As Pascal says, experience and consciousness are entirely subjective. Look at the evidence. We could both put the same jalapeño pepper in our mouths, and the result could be completely different: anguish for you and joy for me.”
On the spot Maya was unable to come up with a counterexample that ran deeper, but she was sure he was wrong. Or else all experience was totally imaginary, subjective, interpretive—and there was no difference between thinking of Prem at the patisserie and having him here beside her. Did he not intend to hypnotize me in front of the Degas? And the burning awareness running through me for entire minutes in the museum—was that, too, imagined?
Maya cleared the table, and Prem looked outside the window again.
“Have you met the old couple who lives across from you?”
“No. Would you like a tisane?”
“Yes.”
“You can also look into another girl’s bedroom if you go to my bedroom. She doesn’t have curtains, and she might be in bed with another woman.”
“Do you look often?”
“I try to give her some privacy. But she’s one floor below and sleeps on a mattress on the floor, so I can see everything except her head from my bed.”
Prem opened the door to her bedroom and looked at the window. A dark-skinned girl was sprawled on the mattress in her boxer shorts. She had a remote control in her hand, and from the ambient glow in the room he could tell the television was on.
“She’s watching TV,” he reported back to Maya.
“If you open my window, I bet you’ll hear it too. She usually has her window open.”
Prem walked back to the dining room, and Maya followed him with two cups.
“Dinner was delicious. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. I wanted you to see where I live even though it’s not much compared to your lodgings.”
“No, it’s nice. And this way, when you talk, I can immediately imagine your surroundings.” Instead of imagining you about to step into a bathtub in a Degas.
In bed that night Prem spent a few seconds being the old voisin in his white underthings as he watched Maya brush her teeth and hair. Prem had let his hand slide against the satin pajamas on her bed when he had been in her room. To his surprise they had the same gleam as the crisp strands of caramel she had used to garnish the dessert.
“Voilà, here we go!” Maya said to Prem as the musicians came onto the stage. Café de la Danse resounded with applause.
V. Guru’s vocalist was covered in a long shiny dupatta the likes of which Prem had long associated with Hindi films. It looked like a silver bedspread and reflected all the spotlights on the ceiling. As soon as the music started up, Maya looked with concern at Prem’s face. She was afraid he would find it too loud, too rhythmic, unintelligent. She leaned into his ear just as the lighting in the hall went dimmer and said, “Tell me if you hate it.”
Prem nodded. Then he removed his glasses, folded them, and put them in his pocket. Maya was sitting between Prem and Jean-Pierre.
Prem listened to the Bangladeshi singer onstage. She had opened her mouth so wide, he thought it would tear. She sang from her throat, her chest, her stomach, with the wisdom of a fifty-year-old woman though she could have been no more than twenty-five. Her sounds were so deep that they flushed Prem’s distress. Jean-Pierre was really just the boy next door. Prem assumed girls found him good looking. His face was symmetrical, without any flaws, without any character. He had spoken to Pascal earlier in the day about it.
“If you want, I am sure you’ll be able to lay him open in ten minutes as someone less than you in every way. Don’t do it. Girls don’t like that. Be nice to him. She’ll see his flaws herself,” Pascal had said.
But Pascal had failed to remind him of the ways of the French and the ways of youth everywhere. When Prem cracked open his eyes, he could feel movement in the corner without having to turn. Jean-Pierre was running those hands all over the inside of her wrists and her forearms. Why didn’t I make a pass at her before it was too late?
Just put the idea in her head—she’ll do the rest, Pascal had said. But Prem’s age and the numerals seven and five came into his mind. Jean-Pierre in this poetically cruel karmic world was bound to be twenty-five—one-third his age. Prem turned himself slightly so as not to have to see Jean-Pierre’s hands.
The Bengali girl had gone offstage, and V. Guru was dazzling the audience with his ambidextrous playing, arms crossed at the elbows in an X—the right hand playing a tabla on his left side, the left hand banging a drum on his right. Onomatopoeia gurgled out of his throat into a mike that was fixed to his head.
Prem looked to see if the music had captivated Maya. Jean-Pierre was banging his fingers on Maya’s knee to keep the beat.
Maya noticed Prem and lurched to whisper, “Are you liking it?”
Her hand hung in the air in front of him like a question. Without thinking, Prem grabbed it in his and replied, “It’s great. So energetic!” Then he let the hand go.
He couldn’t be sure, but he thought he saw Maya bring her head down for a second as if closing herself in before returning her attention to Jean-Pierre.
Maya watched the concert with a focus that only rhythm could induce; an immediate vortex of sound pulled her in its churn; she was reduced to a small particle, acted upon by the force of the beat. She felt as if she were all rhythm in that theater with its sides painted black and a Parisian wall serving as the backdrop of the stage. The singers and their instruments, their faces, the play of the spotlights on their shiny clothes, the patches of sweat where V. Guru’s oversize kurta stuck to his body, and the yellow exposed brick wall were all part of the rhythm. Jean-Pierre’s tapping on her knee, her collarbone, and her hands brought the stage wall and the music close to her and
put it right inside her body. As if making love, Jean-Pierre put all of that music and the rhythm inside her with his tapping.
The concert ended, and the audience brought the roof down, thumping their feet on the wooden floor to the resounding chant of Encore! Encore!
Maya looked at Prem’s knee and saw it bouncing too. She put her hand lightly on it to see if he was actually tapping the floor like the rambunctious young audience.
“You liked it that much, eh?”
“Yes, his music is rather young, but I’m in my second childhood myself.”
The musicians filed back onstage.
“This encore piece is the jewel of the evening, if it is what I think it is,” Maya said to Prem. Then she leaned away, no doubt telling Jean-Pierre that and some other things.
The Bangladeshi belle in her glittering silver dupatta was even more endearing than before. Prem was getting quite fond of her. She told the audience to la la la after her, provoking them with a come-hither flick of her hand and très bien when they got it right. People lit their lighters and swayed. V. Guru interrupted this mesmerizing communal experience with humorous instructions on how to follow the complex beats he was going to throw out to the audience. He said he would scat with the usual Indian sounds of ta ta dha dha mixed with some French ones. When he got off the mike and gave back the stage to the girl, she continued as if nothing had happened, the audience putty in her hands. Maybe I should go talk to her after the show, Prem thought to himself.
But when the concert ended, Prem followed Maya out and proposed dinner. He wanted to prolong the moments with her and to reduce the amount of time Jean-Pierre would have to get up to mischief.
After dinner Jean-Pierre took Maya back home. As they lay on the couch in his living room, he caressed her ass as if all of her were her ass. His light touch was almost ticklish but felt increasingly sensual as it was repeated. Maya felt her body melt away. He made love to her greedily and with a force that she had not thought him capable of when he had been caressing her. In the morning he fetched croissants for breakfast.