French Lover (14 page)

Danielle said, ‘These are rules created by the men.’

Nila said, ‘In that case I’ll never be able to give birth to a child.’

Danielle was about to sip her coffee when she stopped and said, ‘How many more children are needed in this world? There’re enough. Besides, what’s the point of bringing more children into this world of patriarchy and imbalance?’

‘One day there will be no imbalance. We will all be equal.’ Nila looked into the distance dreamily.

Danielle said, ‘That’s then . . . and for sex, the day women say they don’t need men, will be the day men finally lose. Not before that.’

Nila sipped her cold tea. In this city people dawdled over one cup of tea or coffee in the cafés and spent a few hours chatting. Outside the cafés these same people rushed to and fro claiming to be very
busy, frothing at the mouth. Nila often felt the people in Calcutta were far busier, in the truest sense, but they didn’t talk about it so much. Here people had the whole weekend off, when they lazed around, read the newspaper and wiped the sweat off their brows. They knew nothing of hard work. If only they saw the rickshaw-pullers or the porters in Calcutta. The definition of hard work was different here.

For Nila hard work was when someone lifted heavy sacks of sand on their head from dawn till dusk, walked two miles and reached it to the construction site. One day Danielle had said, ‘I’ve worked very hard.’

Nila asked, ‘What kind of work?’

‘I’ve read two books and written reviews for them.’

‘Tell me about the hard work.’

‘That’s the hard work.’

Nila was surprised, ‘
That
is what you call hard work?’

‘Yes.’

‘But reading is the most pleasurable activity. What kind of books?’

‘Fiction.’

‘Wow, that’s fun.’

‘But I may not want to read that book for fun.’

‘Hm. How many pages did you write?’

‘Two.’

‘If only I had such a job,’ Nila said to herself.

She was drawn to Danielle and also repelled by her. Danielle’s words had logic and also lacked it. Nila swayed between liking and dislike. Whatever Danielle said, Nila couldn’t tear her eyes away from handsome men. She wanted a man to tell her he loved her. She wanted him to kiss her and make love to her ecstatically. But Nila’s wishing didn’t make it any more real. She noticed that no handsome man gave her a second glance. In Calcutta she turned heads. Here, even the idlers didn’t bother to whistle when she passed by; it was as if she was nobody, a strange piece of flesh whom they’d all like to avoid. Back home she was beautiful. But that beauty was of no value here. Danielle valued it; Danielle’s body may be as beautiful as a Rodin sculpture, but her face lacked grace and her voice was harsh.
Nila could weave no dreams around Danielle. Did she know that? Nila believed she didn’t.

Danielle finished her coffee and said, ‘Penny for them, Nila.’

She didn’t say what she was thinking about. But she asked Danielle if she could lend her some money.

‘How much?’

‘Say around five thousand francs?’

‘Are you out of your mind? What will you do with that money?’

‘I’ll go to Calcutta.’

‘Why?’

‘Mother is ill.’

‘Oh, that Sunil has stuffed your head with all this rubbish. Go on, go to Calcutta and see how they trap you there.’ Danielle was really irritated.

‘My mother is ill and I’ll go to see her, that’s all.’

‘Will you go and treat her? Are there no doctors or hospitals in your country?’

‘There are, but I still want to go and see her.’

‘There’s no point in going now. You should go when she’s cremated.’

‘It’s not about cremation, it’s about nursing her.’

‘Aren’t there any nurses to do that? You’ve mentioned there are many servants in your house.’

‘They are all there. But I will go.’

‘Go ahead. But I don’t have the money.’

‘Can you borrow it from someone?’

‘No one will lend so much money.’

Nila sank her head into the lap of silence. Her tea was long finished.

‘If you go now and come back, will you go again for her cremation?’ Danielle tried to soften her coarse voice and asked.

Nila gritted her teeth, her jaws were set as she said, ‘Don’t keep on about cremation, Danielle. My mother isn’t so ill that she will die.’

‘Then why do you want to go?’

‘Because she is my mother . . .’

Danielle made a face and broke in on her, ‘My mother, my father, my brother, rubbish.’

Nila paid no heed to it and said, ‘My heart tells me it’s more serious than a common cold—it’s something else.’

Danielle threw the change for her coffee on the table and pushed the chair back noisily. She held up her middle finger at Nila, slapped her left elbow with her right hand. Danielle was bursting with anger as she strode out of the café screaming, ‘La familia, la familia!’

Before she left for Calcutta, Nila went to two places: the first was Sandani and the second to a psychiatrist. Rita Cixous wanted to interview her in the gardens of Basilique de Sandani. Serge Santos’s house was in that garden. Sandani was now a crowded suburb where very few white people lived. It was mostly inhabited by blacks and browns, the uneducated and the jobless, and the crime rate was high.

Nila looked at the brightly painted houses and wondered how they defined poverty. She saw the cars standing in front of the houses and asked, ‘Who do these belong to?’ They belonged to the ‘poor’ because they couldn’t afford to buy new models of expensive cars. Nila’s eyes had seen the slums of Calcutta and for those eyes, no other kind of poverty would ever match up. She had seen millions of refugees, homeless, hungry, half-clad, suffering with no treatment in sight. But that man who just came out of that house after a full meal, who got into his car and shook his head in time to the music as he drove off—he was no poor man.

Rita pressed a button, unlocked the gate and drove into the huge garden. It was more like a field. Gravestones were strewn around. Ann l’Or sat on one of them, drinking coffee. Rafael and Benjamin, Ann’s sons, were playing around.

There was a round of kisses. Danielle exclaimed over the house at the foot of the Basilique. It was wonderful to get a house like that. Well, they wouldn’t have got it if Serge wasn’t the bishop at the Basilique.

Two other men had come with Rita; one held a camera and the other a microphone. Nila was scared; she had never faced a camera before. She didn’t know what Rita would ask her. Her palms were sweating, and drops stood out on her nose.

Rita said, ‘Would you like to powder your nose?’

Nila wiped it with the back of her hand and said, ‘No, it’s okay. I haven’t brought any powder with me anyway.’

Rita blushed with embarrassment.

Danielle brought her mouth close to Nila’s ear and muttered, ‘Powdering your nose doesn’t mean that literally. It means going to the toilet, peeing or shitting.’

‘Why couldn’t she ask me that then?’

‘No, that’s shameful.’

‘Shameful?’

Nila could never understand what construed as shame in this society. It wasn’t even summer yet and the girls walked around half-dressed. Clothes were a problem.

Before she came in front of the camera, the cameraman said, ‘It’d be good if she powdered her face.’ This time it was real powder. Ann l’Or took her in to dab powder on her face. Nila saw the perfectly arranged home and said, ‘Have you been married for long?’

‘Oh but we are not married.’

‘So what is Serge to you?’

‘He’s my lover.’

‘You live together?’

‘Sure. We have been together for the last six years.’

Nila looked into the mirror and brushed powder on her face. Today she had worn a sari on Rita’s request; dressed in a sari and a bindi, she looked the complete Bengali girl. In her mind Nila swiftly went to Calcutta and came back.

Two chairs were placed in the field. Rita checked if Nila’s face and the Basilique in the background, the famous landmark of France where all monarchs were buried, were seen clearly through the lens. Now, they sat face to face and the questions began. ‘Tell me, Nila, that symbol you have tattooed on your forehead is a mark to indicate that you are married, right?’

‘No.’

Rita was flustered, but she sported a pitying smile as she waited for Nila’s explanation of why not.

‘This is not a mark of marriage. Most women wear bindis even before marriage, because it looks good.’

‘Isn’t it a permanent mark on your forehead?’

Nila laughed and took the felt bindi off. ‘See, it comes off. Here now, gone next.’

Cut.

Rita didn’t like the bindi magic. She’d have been happier if a permanent, red marriage mark was tattooed onto Nila’s forehead. She glanced at the written sheet of questions on her lap and asked Nila the next one, ‘You are from India and you have come from so far away to Paris, to live with your husband, haven’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ve heard that you have left your husband. Will you tell us why?’

‘Because I don’t get along with him.’

‘But why not?’

‘We are two different kinds of people.’

‘But your husband is also Indian. Why do you call him different.’

‘We don’t think the same way.’

‘I’ve heard that your husband tortured you. Tell us what he did to you.’

‘He’s not really done anything that’ll qualify as torture.’

‘Your husband beat you—what did he use, whip, sticks or his belt . . .?’

‘My husband has never laid a finger on me.’

Cut.

Rita raised her hand and stopped the camera. She came up to Nila, knelt down in front of her and said, ‘Perhaps you didn’t understand my question, Nila.’

Nila was in an awkward position. Rita noticed her discomfort and shouted for some water. Ann l’Or ran and got a glass of water. Nila wasn’t thirsty, but she had to drink it and she kept half of it at hand for later.

The camera was aimed at Nila. Rita started again. ‘You must be in touch with other Indian women like you here who have also left their husbands. What kinds of torture did their husbands inflict on them?’

Nila replied innocently, ‘I don’t know anyone like that.’ Cut.

This time Rita went up to Danielle. She sat on a gravestone and conferred with Danielle for a long time; then she came back with a smile plastered on her face and said, ‘You’re looking very pretty in a sari. I have seen you in Western clothes more often, but I think the sari suits you best.’

Rita’s next question, ‘I’ve heard of the custom of sati in your land. So when your husband dies, you’ll have to jump into his pyre, right?’

‘That is an ancient custom and it was banned in the last century.’

‘It’s customary to pierce the girls’ clitoris in India. So what percentage of girls have this done to them?’

‘That is not an Indian custom.’

‘Tell us more about your married life—you had to do all the housework, right?’

‘Yes.’

‘What did you do?’

‘Cook, clean, do the laundry and the dishes.’

‘Which of the chores at home did your husband do?’

‘Nothing much.’

‘Did your husband ever cook?’

‘No.’

‘Clean the house?’

‘No.’

‘What did he do when he came back from work?’

‘Watch TV, drink . . .’

Rita nodded, ‘And? What else did he do?’

‘What else? He ate and slept.’

‘Both of you contributed to the household income, right?’

‘No. I didn’t. My husband paid the bills.’

‘But your husband didn’t want you to work.’

‘No.’

‘So your husband kept you locked in, didn’t he?’

‘He didn’t want me to go out. But he didn’t really lock me in. I had a set of keys as well.’

‘Your husband has retained all your gold jewellery, right?’

‘No, he hasn’t. I forgot all of it and left it behind.’

‘Didn’t your husband pressurize you to maintain purdah and cover your head?’

‘No. That happens in orthodox Muslim families, not in Hindu households.’

‘Your husband didn’t let you eat fish and meat. He forced you to eat according to his wishes, didn’t he?’

‘That’s true. He was vegetarian and he wanted his house free of meat.’

‘But if you disobeyed him what did he do—beat you up?’

‘No, he’s never beaten me.’

‘Did he abuse you?’

‘No.’

Then what did he do?’

‘He’d be upset.’

Cut.

When they left Sandani, Danielle said, ‘You seem to have a lot of sympathy for Kishan.’

Nila said, ‘What should I have said? What would have proved that I don’t have any sympathy for him?’

Danielle shrugged, ‘Forget it.’

‘What is this documentary on?’

‘About women and how they are exploited.’

Nila had more questions. ‘Which women? Any woman, even French women?’

‘I’ve already told you that, it’s foreign women.’

‘Foreign? German, Swiss, Belgian?’

‘They don’t come to live in France. It’s about those who come here to stay.’

‘So it’s women from Rwanda, Mali, Somalia, India, Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan, right?’

Danielle was silent for a long time. The metro was unbearably crowded and as they jostled around, Danielle said, ‘You don’t know about the custom of clipping the clitoris? It happens everywhere, even in France this atrocity is being perpetrated in the name of culture. You seem to support it.’

Nila spoke vigorously, ‘Why should I support it? But I spoke the truth—it doesn’t exist in India.’

‘Maybe it doesn’t, but other things do. You could have spoken about those. This was the best platform to let the world know how women are deprived and discriminated against in the Third World. Normally you speak of so many issues.’

Nila said, ‘I answered the questions that she asked.’

‘To tell you the truth, Rita isn’t very happy with your interview.’

Nila wanted to ask when and if at all she’d get the five hundred francs. But she held her tongue. Sometimes that was the best thing to do.

‘Why are you so quiet?’ Danielle’s vexed brown eyes were on Nila’s.

‘What should I say, you haven’t asked anything.’

‘Your interview is over, now come back to earth, be normal.’

Nila laughed, just for the heck of it. She decided if Danielle asked her why she laughed, she’d say for no reason. And if she said only mad women laugh for no reason, Nila would say she was crazy.

From the Basilique Sandani they reached the Concorde. From there they’d have to take line number one and go to Charles de Gaulle Etoille. But the metro wasn’t running in that direction. It wasn’t running from either Concorde or Etoille. Danielle and Nila came up to the surface. They would have to catch a bus. They waited at the Concorde bus-stop. Buses were coming, but they wouldn’t stop because there was no room in them. Some people at the bus-stop said it was because the metro had stopped. Danielle was trying to thumb down a taxi, but none of them stopped. Nila felt as though she was back in India. In a way she was relieved to see buses or trains running late. Here, where even the taxis were punctual, Nila felt stifled with the perfection. This chaos made her breathe freely again.

Very soon the police arrived and surrounded the Concorde metro station. Danielle asked one of them, ‘What is the matter?’

‘Nothing much. Two suicides.’

‘Reason?’

‘Same as usual. Spring.’

Nila’s jaw dropped. Danielle shoved a pile of facts into that open mouth.

Spring was the season of suicides. Two youths had jumped on to the tracks. They wanted to die and so they did. It happened every spring. People killed themselves under the rail tracks.

Nila wanted to know, ‘Why do people feel like killing themselves at springtime?’

As far as she knew, the people of the West were happy when spring came.

Danielle said, ‘Those who are lonely, who don’t have a partner, they kill themselves at this time. In the spring your loneliness taunts you because it tells you that summer is here; summer, which is the time of joy, of loving and enjoying life. All summer long lovers walk hand in hand, have fun and those who are alone feel even lonelier when they see so many happy couples. The distress drives them to suicide in spring, even before summer arrives.’

Nila didn’t understand.

‘Of course you wouldn’t understand. What would you know of someone else’s misery?’

Danielle’s gibe didn’t affect Nila. She grew pensive as they walked towards Equadore. She thought of those two youths lying on the rail tracks, their brains all over the place and their bones crushed to powder.

They killed themselves just because they didn’t have a lover, because they wouldn’t be able to enjoy the next months! Nila wondered if she’d do the same for the lack of a partner. She wouldn’t. Love was not the only joy in life. There was so much more: listening to the sound of falling leaves, floating with a transient cloud, reading an entire book of verses in one long evening, so many ways of fulfilling life.

‘Nila, learn to understand people, to appreciate their concerns.’

The throng of patients at the clinic in Equadore made Nila quite nervous. She wanted to know what ailed all these people. Some were reading journals, some talking to their neighbour in low whispers, and some others were dozing. Nicole had come here to rid herself of
the agony of her cat not peeing. Danielle came because she wanted to get over her misery at Nila’s impending departure to Calcutta. Nila assumed that the man who dozed was probably there because he hadn’t slept well a few nights and the one who spoke in whispers was probably there because he normally spoke too loudly. The sixteen-year-old girl who sat gazing out the window, Nila was sure, had come because she was having trouble with her lover. The people of the First World couldn’t have their minds in a less-than-perfect condition. It had to be a hundred per cent fit. The body may well be a little weak, but the mind had to be in the pink of health.

Danielle took about two hours at the clinic. She tottered out like a drunken Catholic would from a confession box. She walked towards the door and didn’t glance at Nila, who had to wade through the crowd and get her attention. Danielle tore herself from Nila’s arms, which held her, and said, ‘Leave me alone.’

Nila didn’t leave her alone. She wasn’t used to leaving someone alone if they were upset. If she was ever upset, Molina would stroke her back, wipe her tears and all that love took care of the sorrow. Nila had never needed to see a shrink.

Nila held Danielle’s chin, turned her to face her and said, ‘Why did you have to go to a doctor? If I am the reason, talk to me, tell me what’s on your mind. You love me, don’t you? So talk to me!’

Danielle screamed, ‘I’ve told you, just leave me alone.’

‘You’re upset and if you’re alone, it’ll get worse. It wasn’t so bad before you went in to see the doctor.’ Nila hugged Danielle again. Danielle tore out of her arms and went and sat on a bench. Nila sat down beside her and placed a hand on her shoulder very gently and said, ‘It’s such a lovely city, so pretty; everyone has food to eat, a roof over their head and clothes to wear and security. Why then do they run to psychiatrists?’