French Lover
Authors: Taslima Nasrin
FRENCH LOVER
a novel
Translated from the Bengali by Sreejata Guha
PENGUIN BOOKS
From Gare du Nord to Gare d’Austerlitz
Je t’aime, Je t’aime, Je t’aime
I stamp your name on the sky, on the wind, in the water and on grass—Liberté
FRENCH LOVER
Taslima Nasrin, an award-wining writer and human rights activist, is known for her powerful writings on the oppression of women and her criticism of religious fundamentalism. Taslima was born in Mymensingh in Bangladesh in 1962. She started writing at the age of fourteen and was acclaimed as a major writer in Dhaka in her late twenties. Her writings also became popular across the border in West Bengal and she won the prestigious Ananda Purashkar in 1992 and again in 2000. After being forced to leave Bangladesh in 1994, Taslima has lived in India, Europe and the USA. She has written more than thirty books, including poetry, essays, novels and memoirs. Her works have been translated in over twenty Indian and European languages.
The girl, with chapped lips, draped in a red silk sari with gold on her ears, nose and hands, got off the aeroplane gazing at the white people, stumbling on the moving staircase; she walked in the direction of the moving crowd, amidst the chatter and the buzz. The crowd stopped at one point, forming an impromptu queue—a huge boa constrictor—a little like the one that forms in front of the ration-shop when they give rice at a throwaway price. The girl tried to pass by the tail and sidle towards the middle of the boa. But the others shouted, you there in the red sari, go to the tail. The girl wet her chapped lips and went towards the tail, right at the end, all the way to the back, the place for the destitute. The boa slithered ahead with great speed. Only the tail got stuck in the thorny bushes.
With a smudged bindi on her forehead and sindoor smeared in her hair, the girl came face to face with a Black and a White. She passed the Black and moved towards the White, ignoring the dark new moon for the bright, white moonshine. The Black called, girl, you there, this way. Red Sari, hard of hearing, just stood before the White, graciously smiling. She could pass for the goddess Durga, couldn’t she? But the White didn’t care about goddesses. Without raising his eyes, he pointed to the Black. Red Sari was not short sighted. Two steps to the left would bring her before the Black. She didn’t feel like taking those steps.
Black was bucktoothed. The girl smarted.
‘Passport,’ the booming voice came from the cavernous depths of Bucktooth.
The girl held up the dark blue passport, just as she had seen the people from the head and the middle of the boa do. Bucktooth swooped down on it and swallowed the prey: an Indian mouse in a black eagle’s talons. Bucktooth had got hold of a great treasure. The
girl noticed that he seemed to drool as he eyed his prey.
‘Ticket.’
No dangling prey this time, the girl placed the two-page ticket in his black paws—Dumdum–Charles de Gaulle–Dumdum—22nd February–21st March 1999.
The mouse went under the scanning machine once, twice, thrice.
Boom: What have you come here for?
Chapped lips moved: To be with my husband.
Boom: In which hotel will you stay?
Red Sari had come from her father’s hotel to her husband’s. Life would pass between one hotel and the other.
Boom: What’s the address?
A tiny square of paper passed into his hands: 112, Rue du Foubaud Sandani, Paris 75010.
Boom: How much money do you have?
Two hundred dollars went into his paws.
Any more?
Her hand groped eagerly in the bag and from the bottom of it, along with some dry flowers, two buttons, the skin of a peanut and a half-eaten orange, she dug out twelve hundred and twenty-five rupees.
Bucktooth scratched his bushy eyebrows with two fingers and asked smoothly, ‘What is that?’
The girl sighed and said, ‘This is money.’
‘Money?’
‘Yes, money. The currency of India.’ Her voice was stern.
Bucktooth had never seen money like that before. The White glanced at the money and crinkled his nose as if a handful of excreta was suddenly placed before him. There was a new boa forming behind the girl, growing longer by the minute, thrashing impatiently. If the red nuisance wasn’t standing there, it would have cleared the fence long ago. The girl too felt she was a nuisance.
The White twitched his chin, wagged his white finger and said, ‘You there, Red Sari, go and stand in that corner.’
The nuisance was flushed out, into the corner.
The new boa moved briskly, now the head and now the tail. Not a single passport went through the scanning machine. No one had to
dig out money from their bags. No one was sent to a corner—the girl was the only one. She felt the corner was like a cage in the zoo. Everyone looked at her through the invisible cage as they walked past—they saw a strange animal with black eyes, dark hair and dark skin. The girl kept her eyes, the guilty ones, on the ground.
When Bucktooth leaned towards the White and laughed as he said goodbye to the last swish of the boa’s tail, the girl stepped across the line, one step at a time and spoke apologetically to the White, ‘Everyone has gone. May I go now?’
The White head began to sway. She couldn’t understand what this meant: that she couldn’t go or the White was suddenly in the throes of an irresistible melody and couldn’t keep himself from swaying to it.
Black saw White swaying his head and came out of the glass cubicle.
Boom: Walk.
Black came to a stop before a room, this one encased in steel walls. Red Sari was right behind him. Inside the room there were two white men in blue uniforms sitting on two chairs. One was elderly and the other younger. Black handed the loot and treasures to the older man and walked out. The younger man was laughing, but as his eyes fell on the girl he gulped his laughter and hung an expression akin to being in the throes of labour-pain in its place.
The older one looked impotent and there were no signs of labour-pains on his face. It looked like steel and if you knocked on it, you would certainly break your bones if not lose your fingers.
In halting English, the older one asked, ‘Do you know French?’
‘No.’
‘What do you know?’
‘English.’
‘That won’t do.’
Surprise shook the girl like a pendulum as she stood leaning on the steel walls. She had no idea that there could be a place in this world where English wouldn’t work. In Calcutta the knowledge of English separated the civilized from the barbarians. She had always
assumed that civilized people, in any country, always spoke fluent English.
The older one barked, ‘What is your own language?’
Her voice was feeble, ‘Bangla.’
‘Bangla won’t do.’ The girl was prepared for this statement. But then he took her by surprise and said, ‘We’ll have to arrange for an interpreter.’
The interpreter would shoot questions at the girl. If the answers were satisfactory the panel of judges would declare in favour of freedom or else . . . it was back to wherever you came from.
Two pairs of eyes, Steel-face’s and Labour-pain’s, travelled from the girl’s head to her toes. Steel-face closed his eyes and indicated that she should sit on a chair in the corner. Silk sari, smudged bindi, chapped lips went and sat in the corner. There were three chairs there. On the one that was closest to the wall, a very dark man sat wearing a light green robe. He had a head full of matted hair. The girl left one chair empty between them and sat on the third one.
The man craned his giraffe-neck and asked in a rasping voice, ‘I’m from Senegal, and you?’
The girl’s eyes remained fixed on the steel walls. The crow wouldn’t stop crowing, ‘Where are you from?’
Her eyes still fixed on the wall, the cold reply bounced off it, ‘I am not from Senegal.’
A tiny sparrow of pride quickly took its place on her left shoulder because she was not from Senegal. The girl held her left shoulder stiff. She sat still and looked from the corner of her eyes: at the ugly feet of the Crow, there was an equally ugly, purple sack. He opened the sack, brought out a dirty bottle, leaned his head back and tilted its contents into the open jaws of a hippo. Half a bottle of water went into it. Giraffe-neck looked at Girl again and asked, ‘Want some water?’
‘No.’
‘Is your passport fake as well?’
‘No.’ Her voice was rude.
‘Are you from China?’
‘No.’
‘Oh, I know—from Pakistan.’
The girl rose, her sparrow was still on her shoulder. She leaned on the wall and continued to stare at it. Another white man entered the room and the girl’s beseeching eyes turned to him. He took the chair next to the Senegalese. The girl let the sparrow fly off and came to sit contentedly beside the white man, away from Giraffe-neck. The white man’s greasy clothes were giving off the acrid smell of urine.
She was blissfully nonchalant about it as she asked, ‘Where are you from?’
‘Russia.’
‘Why have they stopped you?’
The man grinned and flashed his yellow teeth, ‘Moscow.’
‘Oh, so you live in Moscow?’
The man nodded.
‘D’you know, once my uncle had gone to Moscow. I believe it’s a beautiful city. My brother will probably go there next year for a holiday.’
Yellow-teeth smiled.
The smell of urine assaulted the girl’s nose again.
‘I am from India. Have you ever been there?’
The man nodded.
The girl came closer to the nasty smell, ‘Really! Which cities have you been to? Did you see Calcutta?’
The man answered, ‘Paris.’
‘Oh, you have been to Paris before? This is my first time.’
The girl didn’t expect an answer, but it came anyway: Moscow.
Now the girl shut her mouth and her nose. She could guess what the answer to her third question would be.
Question: Do you know how long we’ll have to wait here? Answer: Vladimir Alexandrovich Stanislavsky.
Meanwhile Steel-face and Labour-pains were jabbering away heartily in French. She wasn’t able to decipher a single syllable. After an hour and thirty-five minutes, the younger man in blue uniform turned his chair to face the three offenders. He pointed to her and spoke in crisp English, ‘You will have to go back to your own country,
do you understand?’ His face was now cleared of labour-pains and the extra wrinkles on his forehead were gone too.
The girl stood up nervously, ‘You said something about an interpreter—where is he?’
‘Can’t be found.’
As the girl was waiting to get back her passport, ticket and other treasures, the older man in blue uniform entered with another white man. This one was chewing gum and his eyes travelled over Nila, from head to toe.
‘Name?’
‘Whose?’
‘Yours.’
‘Nilanjana Mandal.’
‘Reason for coming here?’
‘To live my life.’
‘With?’
‘With my husband.’
‘Husband’s name?’
‘Kishanlal.’
‘Age?’
‘I’m not sure. He must be ten years older than me.’
‘How old are you?’
‘Twenty-seven.’
‘How long has he been here?’
Nilanjana scratched her neck and said, ‘Probably about fifteen years.’
‘You are not sure?’
‘No.’
‘Is he a French citizen?’
‘So I’ve heard.’
‘What does he do?’
‘I’ve heard he has a business.’
‘You’ve heard—you are not sure? Who has said that he is your husband?’ A spark of disbelief lingered on the corner of his lips.
Nila looked around her and answered in nervous, humble tones, ‘I say so. We were married a month ago.’
‘But you don’t have the same last names,’ the disbelief flies off the lips and settles on his eyes.
Nila gulped, ‘That’s not the same because . . .’
‘Because?’
‘I have deliberately not taken his name.’
Nila’s heart was beating fast. Her dear husband had never told her that if their last names were not the same it would be disastrous. He had said, ‘Keep the name and address handy, and the marriage certificate with you. They won’t be needed, but just in case. It’s a legitimate passport, legitimate visa—there’s nothing to fear.’
Although no one asked for it, Nila groped in her bag and pulled out the long sheet of paper. ‘Here, this is our marriage certificate.’
‘Whose marriage certificate?’ Steel-face asked.
Nila handed the paper to Steel-face and said, ‘Mine and Kishanlal’s.’
He glanced at the paper, but didn’t touch it. Instead the younger one snatched it away. The one with the chewing gum spoke rapidly with the younger one for some time and went out of the room, swaying his hips. Steel-face’s eyes followed the swaying hips. She looked at the younger one expectantly—how much longer would she have to wait? The man’s senseless expression gave her neither hope nor despair. Nila began to feel her life would be spent thus waiting in the room, surrounded forever by walls of steel. Impatient and restless, she paced the floor. She could do anything now to leave that corner, even if it meant going back to Calcutta.
She stepped up to the younger one hesitantly after a while and asked, ‘Where shall I collect my suitcases? Have you decided which flight I’ll take for my return?’
He didn’t answer, as if she hadn’t asked a question or as if, Nila wasn’t someone who had the right to ask questions.
‘My husband was supposed to receive me—he is waiting outside. Is it possible to have him brought here?’
The man now simply opened a small box carefully, picked up a pinch of tobacco, pulled his upper lip with his left hand and tucked it in; his nostrils and upper lip were puffed up. There was silence. Stanislavsky snored. The Senegalese squatted and reached for that
dirty bottle again: the hippo’s jaws opened and soon the water vanished down it.
Nila was consumed by thirst and hunger. The whirring sound in her ears was from the spinning of her head. She longed desperately for a shoulder to rest her head on. Stanislavsky’s head kept drooping on to her shoulders like a tennis ball. The acrid smell was going through her nose to her head. She felt like picking up his head very gently and throwing it somewhere. It would merely hit the walls of steel. Nila now wondered, why did she marry Kishanlal, whom she didn’t even know very well. But Calcutta had been tormenting her and if she hadn’t left that city, she would have surely died. Yet she could have left it without getting married. She could have gone to Delhi, Mumbai or somewhere far away, where the sound or the smell of Sushanta’s name wouldn’t even touch her.
‘Can someone give me a glass of water,’ Nila asked herself. Then she answered her own question, ‘No, we cannot give you a glass of water.’
Nila wasn’t used to sitting or standing in one place for so long. She hadn’t even waited so long for Sushanta, ever. Whenever they had to meet somewhere, Sushanta would be there first. Her head was spinning faster. It wasn’t just the spinning—she felt as if a heavy burden, Sushanta himself—was suddenly placed on her head again.
When the head was about to snap from the spinning, suddenly the Senegalese was released. He picked up his purple sack, flashed a smile and a cough in her direction and was off. Nila had a vicious desire to grab the man by the robe, drag him back into that room and be off with the sparrow on her shoulder.