by Abha Dawesar
“It’s Maya. How are you?” Her blood felt thick and congealed. Her internal inquietude belonged to the same domain as sex, melancholy, and doom.
“How are you doing, miss?” Prem’s mood was different. His voice was light.
“I was just thinking of you.”
“And what were you thinking of me?”
“It’s pouring where I am, and I was wondering if thunderstorms make you feel restless. If they make you crave hot tea and pakoras.”
“I can’t organize pakoras, but if you make it here, I’ll figure out something for the hot tea. Maybe a croque-monsieur?”
“J’arrive,” Maya said, hanging up. In four economical movements she let her cargo pants fall and pulled on a skirt. Paris made her want to dress pretty, like a Parisian. She slipped into her delicate white sandals and made for the mirror to have a last look. Her hair was sticking up as though electric impulses were running through it. Maya found a taxi almost immediately at Place des Abbesses.
“I’ve brewed some tea. The café is sending croques.” Prem was sprightly.
“I didn’t know they delivered.”
“They don’t. But I’m there every day and I said something about my health, so they’re doing the favor this one time.”
“I want to watch the rain.”
“Let us.” Prem went to the window and threw it open. Fury had given way to a patter. They stood together and looked at the sky. The clouds directly overhead were still dark, but the edges of the horizon were almost white.
“I wanted to see the rain with you,” Maya said, taking his hand in hers for a second. She let it go almost immediately.
“I wanted to see you, despite your plucked chicken look,” Prem said, putting his hand on her shoulder. He let it stay.
Maya didn’t trust herself to speak. She wanted only to feel the weight and warmth of the hand on her shoulder.
“Did you write today? I wrote,” Prem said.
“I did too. What did you write?”
The doorbell rang.
“I’m finished with fiction. I started a journal.” Prem walked away to answer the ring.
“They’re here.” Prem took them to the kitchen to find plates. Maya followed him in. As he unwrapped them from the tinfoil, Maya tore one off with her hand and ate a bite.
“I hope you don’t mind my using my hands.”
“No.” Prem tore off a piece as well and then put the teakettle on to boil. They remained in the kitchen eating over the tinfoil. When the water boiled, Prem brewed some tea.
“This is really rich. I can’t eat anymore,” Maya said.
“Let’s go back to the living room with the tea.”
Prem sat down at an armchair, his cup of tea beside him. The living room was large and felt less intimate than the kitchen.
Maya took another chair. We are separated by the sides of the armchairs (velvet), the floor (wooden, slatted, almost Caillebotte), several cubic meters of space.
“What are you thinking?”
“That you are suddenly very far from me.”
“I’m two feet away,” Prem said matter-of-factly. It was a good idea to write about all the things I wanted from her. If I hadn’t, I’d be sitting here with a phallus the size of the Eiffel Tower.
“And what are you thinking?” Maya asked, smiling wickedly.
“Absolutely not something I can share with you.”
“I’ve become friends with the girl on the floor below. Her name is Nadine.”
“I remember the old couple across the courtyard from you. They were both sitting around in white underthings while we ate dinner.”
“They stare into my apartment all the time. And they’ve become pretty shameless about it too now.”
The conversation came to an abrupt end. Prem was Maya’s neighbor again. First he watched her as she lay in bed, and then he transformed into the man from across the courtyard standing in the window and jerking off. Any second now he was afraid his anatomy would embarrass him.
Maya couldn’t think of how to start a new conversation. Prem seemed somehow stiff and distant. She looked around the room, caught sight of a stack of CDs, went over, and squatted by the pile. It was mostly Indian classical music, the people on the cover all resembling the young men Prem and she had heard at the Villa Seurat.
“You don’t have anything less heavy? Like Bollywood.”
“There’s something in a pile in the drawer just behind there,” Prem said, pointing.
“Hmm. Let’s see. Not bad. Ah. Okay.” Maya kept up her commentary as she pushed AR Rehman into the CD player.
“Turn it up, let’s dance,” Prem said, all of a sudden rising up.
Maya turned up the music and stood standing by the stereo.
“Come on, girlie,” Prem said, grabbing her hand.
Think Valérie. Think Julie. You could do it then, you can do it now. It’s just a dance.
Prem moved rhythmically but slower than the music, at half its speed. Now and then he held Maya’s hand to give her a twirl. Then he let go of her as she danced beside him.
“‘Mustafa, Mustafa,’” she was mouthing with the music.
“You know this?”
“I heard it everywhere in India when I was there. It played in every bus and train station. In the marriages on the street. When I was in Delhi, there were fourteen thousand marriages on one single day!”
“The stars were aligned correctly.”
The next song was slower. Prem came closer and held her, swayed with her. She rested her head comfortably on his shoulder and touched his arm with her hand. They stayed like that for the whole duration of the song.
“My tea is going to be frozen,” Maya said.
“I can make you another cup.”
“No, no, don’t.” She gulped it down as if she didn’t want to miss the next song. Prem watched her head as she threw it back. The muscles of her throat moved as the fluid went down her throat. Maya brushed the back of her hand over her mouth to dry it and started dancing again to the fast, catchy tune that was playing.
She grabbed Prem this time and spun him. She passed under his arm. She made them both spin simultaneously. Prem was soon tired and stood by one side of the room. She moved faster as the song reached a crescendo, coming to a stop only when the song ended.
The sky had cleared, and the late afternoon sun was drowning the city in its glow.
“We should go for a walk,” Maya said, leaning out the window.
“I have to go to dinner, but I’ll take a short walk with you.”
“Let’s go.” Maya carried the teacups and plates to the kitchen.
“Leave them. The maid will do them in the morning,” Prem called after her.
“Before we leave, I have something for you.”
“And I have something for you,” Prem replied, going to his study, where he had put the flat brown shell from Étretat.
Maya handed him an envelope.
“Here. All the way from Étretat. It goes with your eyes. Let me see.” He pressed the shell against her neck, where it would sit if it were hung from a necklace.
Maya blushed. Prem had never said anything about her eyes before. She put her hand over his for a second and pressed it into her collarbone before taking the shell from it.
They left his apartment and walked out onto rue du Cherche-Midi. Maya skipped a little, then looped her arm through Prem’s. She whistled.
“You seem happy.”
“I am. I’m the happiest.” She turned to him and kissed his cheek.
“That’s nice,” he said, smiling, feeling his own heart filling with her high spirits.
Prem walked Maya to the metro at rue du Bac and took a cab to Pascal’s.
“You look happy, mon vieux,” Pascal said as he opened the door in his apron and kissed Prem on the cheeks. His slight stubble tickled Prem.
Ella Fitzgerald was slithering out of the stereo in Pascal’s living room. Prem grabbed Pascal’s hand and danced toward the
living room, crooning, “I’m the happiest.”
Prem fell into the plush leather sofa pulling Pascal into it with him.
“You’re going to be even happier when you put what I’ve made in there.” Pascal pressed his hand onto Prem’s stomach and then his own.
“What is it?”
“Lamb with truffles to go with the nineteen eighty-two Château La Tour Haut-Brion I just acquired.”
“I just ate half a croque, but I’m hungry again,” Prem said.
“Hop! I have to finish in the kitchen. Stay here.” Pascal pushed his right arm into the sofa armrest to use his legs and arms to carry the weight of his stomach.
“I’ll come with you.” Prem was swiftly on his feet.
Pascal’s kitchen was fragrant with the smell of lavender.
“Did you bring it from the countryside?” Prem pointed to a bush that sat in a gigantic glass vase.
“Yes. I brought home-pressed olive oil from Cavalier’s estate, mirabelles and fresh mint from Irène’s, jam from my cousin’s house—and a change of ideas for myself.”
“All in a day?”
“I told you, life on a timer.”
“What kind of change?”
“I’m going to address the critics and take them head-on in my next book.”
“Go on.” Prem was curious. Usually any mention of critic, criticism, critical, critique, the Latin criticus, or the Greek root kirtikos put Pascal in the foulest of moods.
“For the last fifteen years they’ve accused me of writing similar books that treat the same subject, yet not one of them steps up to analyze why each book outsells the other. If I’m merely repeating myself, I wouldn’t be so enormously successful. They focus on finding a formula for my work; they treat it like genre fiction, except the genre is Pascalien.”
Prem nodded. He was familiar with this train of thought.
“Well, I’m going to take the bull by its horns. I’m going to address the question the critics don’t ask and can’t answer. I’m going to apply the full logic of their critique to my work and turn it around to present it as my critique of theirs!”
“How are you planning to do this? Essays?”
Pascal pulled the lamb from the oven and tested it with a knife.
“A novel. And just like the rest of my novels, it will be about a famous writer, me. I’m going to use elements of the plot I already used in the other novels but recast them.”
“If I follow, you’re going to pull out sections of previous work and build a new story with the same scenes.”
“Yes!”
“The same pages?”
“No. The same scenes, but I’ll rewrite them, keeping only the essentials. Pedro would’ve loved this idea.”
“I haven’t spoken to Laura for two months. Do you know how she is doing?”
“I spoke to her yesterday when I was with Irène. I can’t believe she’s still living in that dismal gray city that she complained about every day when he was alive.”
“She doesn’t want to leave the house where they lived. She doesn’t want to leave him just because he’s dead. That’s what she told me,” Prem said sadly. He had had an irrational desire to stay on in the house where Meher had died, even though it was her husband’s house.
“He’s dead! He’s free! He’ll move to Granada with her. That’s what Irène and I tried to tell her yesterday.”
“I’ll call her this week. I’ve neglected Laura.”
“The only one of us three who had a real family life, a wife, kids, is the one who dies the earliest. If I were dead, really very few people would miss me,” Pascal said.
“Arrête! Is that lamb ready yet?”
“The wine has respired for an hour. Do you want to pour two glasses? I’m just going to toss a tomato salad.”
Prem poured out two glasses from the vintage Bordeaux, whistling.
“You haven’t told me what happened to make you so cheerful.”
“Nothing has happened. I don’t know if it ever will. But right now I don’t need anything.”
“I was thinking about what you said about loving someone without the element of artifice that seduction introduces. I’ve been thinking a lot about love because of Irène. I don’t want Irène to die, but I think my reasons are selfish. She loves me. She’s the only woman who really loved me, not for my fame, not for this hôtel particulier, not because I seduced her, but for me. And I don’t want her to die because I don’t want to lose the only person who has loved me so totally. My motive has nothing to do with my loving her. I love that she loves me. The knowledge of this egoism is too much sometimes.”
Pascal was tossing the small quartered tomatoes with olive oil. Prem brought his hand just above the tie of Pascal’s apron and squeezed his thick red neck.
“You’re being harsh on yourself,” he said. Then he wore Pascal’s kitchen gloves and carried the lamb to the dining table.
Pascal followed him with the tomato salad. In his other hand he carried a side of truffle sauce. He served them the salad before sitting down.
“Why not start?”
Prem picked up his fork.
“Oh! I forgot the apron.” Pascal got up, untying the apron as he walked toward the kitchen. Prem waited, holding the fork and knife in his hand.
Pascal walked back and took his seat. “Bon appétit! I want to make Irène feel better. She’s afraid, and I am too.”
“How much time have the doctors given her?”
“They think they can extend it out for several months, maybe even a year. But the diagnosis changes every few days.”
“When I went to see Meher toward the end, they had given her one month. If one discounted the hours she would spend sleeping, she had less than five hundred hours to live. I’ve never been so greedy about time. I counted every second of the five hundred hours. I still remember that is one-point-eight million seconds. One-point-eight million seconds too few, they were. I put all my energy in trying to live those five hundred hours fully with her, to make her live them.”
“If I slept again with Irène, I think it would give her a lot of pleasure.”
“Do it.”
“I can’t. I don’t love her enough.”
“Since when has that stopped you?”
Prem cut into the lamb and poured some of the sauce over it. Pascal’s talent in the kitchen was extraordinary. He wanted Maya and Pascal to eat each other’s food.
“You’re misunderstanding me. I don’t have any physical desire for her, and I don’t love her enough to be able to overcome the hurdle.”
Could one ever think of loss unselfishly? If Maya had thought of his death, it was because he put her in a good mood, he was an instrument no more or less than Irène was for Pascal. For that matter, when he had lost Meher, hadn’t he suffered because someone who mattered to him had gone?
“You’re silent. You won’t react to that?”
“It’s called a mercy fuck back in America.”
Pascal laughed. They ate quietly for a few minutes, each in silent conversation with their dead and dying.
“This is really good.”
“Have some more.”
“I’ll have some more of the tomato salad. It smells heavenly.”
“Cavalier’s olive oil is superb. I ate lunch with him when I went to pick it up. Valérie was there with her kids, and I told her you were in town. She said she’d like to see you. Are you tempted?”
“Yes, I’m tempted. I was thinking of her the other day. How does she look?”
“Very good. She has two kids now, but she’s still got her youth.”
“I think all the time of the past. I’m drowning in my memories. Maya has triggered something in me.”
“That’s never happened to me.” Pascal frowned. He helped himself to some more lamb.
“When you fall in love, you never think of all the other times you were in love?”
“No. Do you always compare like this?”
“I don’t compare
them. I just remember the range of feelings from the past.”
“Maya has to be every woman you already loved in order to fulfill you. Poor girl.”
“She doesn’t have to be anyone.”
“Of course she does. She has to be more than just Meher or just Vedika. Your mind has mixed them all together and distilled all your love sentiments into a single essence.”
Love sentiments into a single essence! Where had Pascal learned such English? From the first time they had met, he had presented such jewels on a regular basis. Pedro had been even more excessive. After Pedro had moved to the English-speaking world, even though he continued writing in Spanish, his language had taken off. Every verb and gerund was perfumed with the scent of Spanish. When Pedro had died three years ago, Prem’s first thought, preceding the sadness, was Thank God it’s not Pascal. I’m much closer to Pascal.
“I’m afraid I’m just turning into a sentimental old man.”
“Write something unsentimental to get out of it. Sentimentality is the worst disease.”
“I am writing!”
“You are? You told me you weren’t writing.”
“That was before your day in the countryside. I’m also responding to my critics.”
“Which critics?”
Prem ignored the sardonic nature of the comment.
“The usual criticism that I don’t write about sex. This is only sex. Pure sex.”
Pascal whistled. “I can’t wait to read it.”
“It’s not for publication. It’s my journal. After fifty years of writing, I am finally keeping a journal. Writing only for myself.”
“And you’re writing about sex in your journal?” Pascal roared with laughter.
“What’s so funny?”
“We use sex to sell everything now, but you’re making it deliciously private. It’s the ultimate subversive act. No one even knows of your subversion!”
“That’s a flattering idea, but it’s just my daily dose of Viagra.”
Pascal roared with laughter again, slapping the table with his hand. “You’re really writing for your dick?”
“I don’t know if I’m writing for it, but it’s certainly grateful to me.”