Silent Winds, Dry Seas

by Vinod Busjeet

  So I turn’d to the Garden of Love,

  That so many sweet flowers bore.

  And I saw it was filled with graves,

  And tomb-stones where flowers should be:

  And Priests in black gowns were walking their rounds,

  And binding with briars my joys & desires.

  —William Blake, “The Garden of Love”

  By the time I earned my first teacher’s paycheck and could afford my first sexual experience, Rekha’s had gone out of business. Some said Rekha had moved upscale and had become a procuress for politicians and wealthy businessmen. Others claimed that the police had closed the place because she had dared charge a police inspector, who was visiting from another town, for tasting the charms of one of her newer girls. Cousin Shankar dismissed these as unfounded rumors. “She’s just tired and wants a less complicated life.”

  Five years earlier, I had turned down Shankar’s invitation to join him at Rekha’s. He thought a visit there would hasten my recovery from my nervous breakdown and invigorate me. “Parents want you to deny your body; if those old trees could castrate you and graft your balls back on your wedding day, they would,” he said.

  In those five years I had longings. There were one or two girls I saw on my daily bus rides home who stirred dreams of romance. But how could I approach them? A conversation on the bus or at the bus stop would soon reach the ears of the girl’s parents or brothers—who would waste no time in teaching me a lesson. Or they would contact my parents, who’d do the thrashing for them. I knew from my female cousins that the girls had yearnings, too. They faced a harsher reality than us boys: it wasn’t uncommon for parents to withdraw their daughters from school if they were suspected of having a boyfriend.

  Now, when I told Shankar I was ready for sex, he proposed we check out the loka behind the Majestic Cinema, in Port Louis, a stone’s throw from the Jardin de la Compagnie des Indes. Every adult around us who mentioned the place had condemned it as worthy of damnation. My father, who never talked to me about sex, had warned me much earlier, the first time I went alone to the capital to watch the horse races: he had heard of prostitutes from the loka drugging the son of a leading politician with potions the day before he sat for his A-levels.

  We arrived in the capital in the late afternoon, after two sweaty hours on the road, with a bus change in Curepipe. To cool down, we sat for a while in the Jardin de la Compagnie under the watchful eyes of Rémy Ollier and Adrien d’Epinay, the former a staunch defender of the descendants of slaves, the latter the leading champion of the Franco-Mauritian anti-abolitionists. The discordance of having these two within yards of each other didn’t occur to me then, and I didn’t question why my country celebrated the memory of an advocate of slavery in such a peaceful garden. What I saw were two statues contemplating what I was about to do. We let our bodies relax to the sound of water jetting out of the fountains, in the shade of the banyan trees, with their languorous tresses. Though we were in the city center, we were protected from its noises and smells.

  Half an hour later, we walked to the Majestic Cinema. On my left, sunset shone a coppery light on the yellow walls of the Natural History Museum and caressed the leaves of the tall palm trees with a shimmer.

  Behind the cinema, a different world awaited us. The alley was lined with wooden shacks with low doors and dark curtains. I imagined they all shared a courtyard at the back. I heard groaning and laughter.

  A woman came out of one shack, wearing a rather ordinary blue skirt and white blouse, not the figure-enhancing clothes that I associated with women who work in a loka. Her garb had seen better days.

  “Vini mo garson,” she said.

  I didn’t respond to her request to come in. I recoiled at the strong smell of cigarette emanating from her bright red lips.

  “Vini mo garson, pas per,” she said. She must have sensed my anxiety, for now she was asking me not to be afraid. She stepped forward, grabbed my arm, and tried to drag me inside. I pulled back and was surprised at her strength. It all happened so fast. Shankar darted towards her and yanked her hands off my arm.

  We hastened back to the Jardin de la Compagnie. I was perspiring.

  “That was a narrow escape,” I told Shankar. “What a pitiful woman!”

  “She’s desperate for clients. Rekha’s was classier,” Shankar said.

  The incident disquieted me for many days, but the stirrings of conscience were not vigorous enough to chase away the craving for sex.

  A month later, in the late afternoon, Shankar showed up in a car with a friend at the steering wheel. “We’re going to find some fine women in the city,” his friend said. Since this guy had a car, I reckoned he must be acquainted with a better class of women.

  When we arrived in Port Louis, Shankar’s friend drove past the Police Line Barracks and towards the Civil Hospital. He stopped by a few retail shops along the way and asked the guys sipping rum at the bar if they knew a Jean-Philippe. Nobody claimed to know him. Their faces gave away that they did know but didn’t trust us. A few minutes later, we reached a street corner where an elderly couple sat at their doorsteps enjoying the evening breeze. Shankar’s friend asked them about Jean-Philippe. Their faces were blank, and the man frowned. “Why don’t you go back to your neighborhood?”

  We drove away.

  “Maybe the Creoles here think we’re Muslims,” I said. “Creoles and Muslims were killing each other in this city two years ago. Let’s go back.”

  I was uncomfortable, fearful even, and wanted to return to Mahébourg. We were in another ward of Port Louis that I didn’t recognize; at some point Shankar’s friend had negotiated two women for the three of us.

  Guided by the two women, we drove to a wooded area outside the city, then walked down a ravine. The warm breeze intensified the grassy and woody scents. I was nervous and thought, What if this is a trap? What if their brothers or husbands are hiding behind the trees, ready to rob us or slice us with sabers? There was no conversation; we didn’t even ask each other’s names. I could hear the crackling of the grasshoppers and the rustling of the leaves.

  By the time we reached the bottom of the ravine, no stranger had materialized. I felt reassured. Since I was the virgin, Shankar and his friend gave me first choice. Both women were young, dark, with shiny skin and frizzy hair. Their makeup was subdued, nonexistent almost; it seemed like they had left home in the middle of some chore like ironing clothes or sweeping the floor. One wore Bien-Être lavender eau de cologne; the other the Bien-Être natural cologne. I knew because Bien-Être was a popular brand on the island. I selected the woman who, in the moonlight, appeared the friendliest, the warmest. The one with the lavender cologne.

  Down on the grass, she lifted her skirt and took off her panties. The moon shone on her thighs and on her pubic hair, which glistened. I kissed her; she turned her lips away. I fumbled with the buttons of her blouse and she firmly warded off my hands. She went straight to my erect penis and took it in her hands. Why she inserted it inside her with such verve but denied me the taste of her lips and breasts baffled me. No kiss, no foreplay, just my member hitting a moist membrane, followed by a thrusting of her hips, and an ejaculation. Neither of us moaned as in the films. No singing bells rang in my ears. Here I was with a young woman on the slopes of a ravine, under a moonlit sky with scintillating stars, the stuff of romantic poetry, and yet the sex, my first, was most unpoetic.

  When I returned home, my mother was at the door. I had an uneasy intimation that she had been waiting for me, waiting to detect the smell of grass, soil, and lavender that clung to my messed-up clothes. I was relieved when all she said was “You’re late, Vishnu. I’ll make you some warm milk.”

  * * *

  —

  Two or three weeks later, around Easter, I heard a bizarre conversation in the staff room of the Mauritius College Secondary School, where I had taken
a temporary teaching job after completing my A-levels; I expected that within a year I would secure a scholarship to attend university overseas.

  “How often do you have sex?”

  “Twice a week, on average.”

  “That’s all? You’ve been married only a year. I thought it takes longer for the fire to die out.”

  “By the time you get home from work, you’re exhausted, no energy left. You do it on the weekends.”

  A moment of awkward silence.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “You haven’t noticed the strain in my walk? I’ve been to the doctor for pain in my testicles. He advised sex.”

  The married man burst into laughter. “You have the monk’s disease, caused by backing up of sperm. We’re all monks on this island until we get married. Unless you’re white or Creole—then you can have a girlfriend.” A graduate of St. Andrews who had previously told us how he and his classmates prevailed over the Scottish cold with booze and sex, he continued, “Masturbate more often or have your parents arrange a marriage. With your University of London degree, you’re a good catch. Your parents-in-law may even throw a new car or a beach bungalow into the bargain.” He walked out of the teachers’ staff room and hurried to the end of the hallway, to the classroom where his students were waiting.

  Kumar, the other teacher in the staff room, had been silent. He rose from the sofa where he had been sipping his tea. “You should never ask someone about his sex life in public. Next you’ll be asking him if his wife was a virgin when they met.” He patted the shoulders of the man with the monk’s disease and smiled. “I have the solution for you. Come with me this Saturday.”

  He then gave me a wink.

  Kumar confounded the stereotype of a smallish subservient Hindu. Standing at more than six feet, in a country where the average male was five feet six, with military shoulders and deportment, he was the scion of one of the few low-caste Hindus who were landed gentry. With more than four hundred acres of land, at least twenty rental houses and a fleet of a dozen cars and lorries to their name, his clan commanded respect, even of the sugar estate whites.

  Of the four teachers in the staff room that day, I was the youngest, and the only one who was not a university graduate and had not traveled overseas. As a novice in teaching as well as life experience, I didn’t feel I belonged to this informal club of graduates. But Kumar’s wink changed that; I read his gesture as an invitation to join.

  Kumar had already helped me a few days earlier, with a teaching tip. Quite a few of the students played truant on Thursday and Friday afternoons and flocked to the Novelty Cinema, which was separated from the school by a bamboo hedge. “You can’t change these kids’ behavior; that’s probably the only pleasure they have in their life. Incorporate the movies in your English composition classes. Have them write about their favorite film scenes instead of some boring topic like overpopulation or a picnic under the filao trees.”

  The day after the wink, I told Kumar about my night in the ravine. He laughed but quickly switched to a serious tone, as if to punish himself for laughing. “Women who do it for money often avoid kissing, for fear of getting emotional. But the ones with experience know how to handle a kiss.” He had guessed why I approached him. He asked me to meet him at his home in Quatre Bornes on Saturday. “I’ll rent a beach bungalow for the day.”

  On Saturday, after lunch and tea at his house, we went to Port Louis in his Citroën DS21. Once in the capital, he drove straight to the Rex Cinema and, from his driver’s seat, asked for Tamby. Everyone on the steps in front of the cinema—the old guys playing dominoes, the seller of sweets and samosas, the loiterers—seemed to know the man. They hollered his name and he showed up in minutes. He was dressed like a civil servant in the colonial days, on his way to work in the summer—beige cotton pants, white shirt, brown tie and dress shoes. He waved to Kumar and got into the car.

  “Tamby, you should get a phone. Your business will boom.”

  “Mr. Kumar, I’m no aristocrat. You know very well it takes more than a year to get a phone line.”

  “At least put your name on the waiting list. I’ll call my friends at the Ministry of Telecom to speed things up.”

  Tamby shook his head. “Okay. But I prefer you help me with a more important matter. It’s about my son. He needs private tuition. He failed all his exams.”

  “Send him to me on Sunday afternoons. I’ll coach him in maths and physics. No charge.”

  “I’ll bring him to you. What woman do you want today? The one you had last week isn’t available right now.” Tamby sneezed and continued, “By the way, she said you treated her nicely.”

  “Today we need someone special for my young friend here.”

  “His first time?”

  “You could say that.”

  I turned my head to Tamby in the back seat, his legs spread wide as one would at home on a sofa. Against his dark South Indian skin, his teeth gleamed yellow as he smiled and extended his hand.

  “Vishnu,” I said as I shook it.

  A few minutes later, around three, we made four stops in the outskirts of the capital. At each, Tamby got out of the car, knocked, and went inside a house, then came out with a woman who stood at the gate for a few minutes, waiting for Kumar’s approval. The houses were not humble abodes. They looked like homes of middle-class Mauritian families—shopkeepers, schoolteachers, nurses, policemen—with yards where kids were shouting, boys spinning tops or kicking soccer balls, and girls playing hopscotch. Kumar asked for my opinion each time, and we agreed on the women from the first and fourth houses Tamby took us to.

  He introduced them as they joined us in the car. “Hey, mister, the leather smells new; it’s a fancy car,” said Gauri, with light brown skin, big eyes and long black hair tied in a ponytail. Next came Yasmin, fair with almond-shaped eyes and sporting what we at the time called a Mireille Mathieu haircut, short hair shaped like a bowl around the face and tapering to an oval at the nape of the neck.

  We dropped Tamby back at Rex. I moved to the back seat next to Yasmin, and Gauri took the front passenger seat. We drove on to Pointe aux Sables, twenty minutes away. On the way, Gauri was loquacious. She talked about the cars she liked (“expensive ones I’ll never be able to afford: Jaguar, Rover, and your Citroën,” she told Kumar), the men she disliked (“those with oily hair and mustaches” and “those who are rough in bed”), and her dream (going to France and “getting married to a Frenchman who won’t care about my past”). Kumar responded with positive, optimistic remarks: “Don’t underestimate yourself. You may get a Jaguar one day.” “Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”

  Yasmin was quiet. I tried to coax her into conversation by asking about her likes and dislikes, but she answered in monosyllables. Maybe a broken heart, I said to myself. A husband who left her. She was beautiful, taller, and more arresting in her looks than Gauri. She had sensual lips, and her tight blue dress revealed a small waist and medium-size breasts and hips. She wore a pendant with Arabic calligraphy, which I assumed was the holy phrase “Allahu akbar.”

  “Nice campement, mister. You have good taste,” said Gauri as we entered the bungalow in Pointe aux Sables. For sure it was well-appointed for the occasion: two bedrooms, king beds with fresh linens, hot showers, which were a luxury to me, and a bar stocked with whisky, rum, Coke, and lemonade.

  Gauri and Yasmin went to the showers. “I bring my own,” Gauri said as she took a Lux soap bar out of her handbag.

  “Go with Gauri; she’ll be more fun!” Kumar said, as if he were a grand expert.

  When Gauri returned, the ponytail was gone. She swirled her flowing hair like a playful stallion flinging his mane, wiggled her derrière, and rubbed it against my crotch. I noticed Ganesh, the Hindu elephant god, on her neck pendant. He looked playful: the god of auspicious events, the remover of obstacles, was smiling! What followed
was a dream come true, a dream I fancy would have been realized years earlier had I been in America or Europe and had a girlfriend: exhilarating sex that left me with a memory that has never waltzed away. We started slowly, with a kiss on the lips, a flick of the tongue on the neck and nipples, and she was pure joy and wild abandon. Whenever I allow myself to think of Gauri, the scent of her body sails through my mind, carrying with it echoes of a rose garden in the sunlight.

  Kumar warned me not to get too involved. “Gauri is nice, but she can trap you,” he said—exactly the word Auntie Ranee had used in Madame Lolo a few years earlier to describe Karan’s woman. “You’ve read too many Romantic writers. Too much Zola and his Nana.” I smiled at his lumping Zola the naturalist with the Romantics.

  On Saturdays over the next few months, unless we had a wedding or funeral to attend, we would meet Tamby in front of the Rex. His filles de joie hailed from all communities except the white community, and all religions—Hindu, Muslim, Catholic. There were poor women and middle-class ones, some with little education, but most with five or more years of secondary school. Some hurried home after the sex, some stayed for food, drinks, and conversation.

  Every weekend, Kumar drove the women and me to rental campements by the beach on different parts of the island. Belle Mare, Grand Baie, Trou aux Biches, Tamarin, Le Morne, Cap Malheureux, Baie du Tombeau. Over these beach towns and villages, not yet frequented by tourists in designer swimwear or snorkeling gear, hovered a faint bouquet of delicious sin.

  In the car, Kumar spoke glowingly about Calcutta, where he’d studied, and how he crisscrossed India. Around the time I heard of my French scholarship award, in June, I sensed a growing restlessness in him. “It’s so quiet here. I miss the noise of Indian cities, I even miss the dust,” he said one Saturday. The following week, in the staff room, he was more prolix: “You have no idea what it is to hang out at the College Street Coffee House in Calcutta, and who you can run into there. Satyajit Ray, Aparna Sen. You can discuss poetry, movies, world politics. Life is so small here, Vishnu.”