Amber Dusk - An Excerpt from the Novel

Rishi dived low, grabbing Fenella’s waist, almost using her like a shield, as a roasted duck flapped dangerously close overhead, going in the direction of Loos. All the projectiles were being hurled at that target behind the sofa but because it was hidden it was impossible to assess the effects of this fusillade. Rishi noticed that the `FAD’ had disappeared. But his red carnations were all over the room. A small man with a crutch were tearing these gleefully and throwing the petals all around while the art school students had stuck the flowers in their hair. Someone was loudly counting out the number of glasses being broken …cinq…six…sept…Lamb chop!…huit…neuf…Carafe!…dix. ..onze…douze…At one point Rishi thought he saw a man trying to set fire to the curtains.While the missiles flew over them the pony-tailed man and two others, on all fours, carefully closed in on the sofa. One was Pierot, now violent with frustration, and the other was Gascoigne. They crawled close to where Loos was hiding but he was quick on his feet, and, throwing his other boot at some china on the mantelpiece, he dashed for the door and out onto the stairs. The group of three followed, one arming himself on the way with someone’s silk umbrella with Tintin prints, and another wrenching out the telephone shower from the bathroom. Water began to gush out from the damaged pipe. Gascoigne’s hall would soon be flooded.The deep thundering voice of Loos could be heard shouting followed by cries of pain and mad footsteps. ‘Oh Mon Dieu!’ cried a shrill feminine voice from the floor below followed by the heavy sound of something rolling down the stairs. Then there were more shouts and cursing. It seemed at one point that the whole building had come out on the stairs.Gascoigne’s ship was rocked to the core. This old house on rue Cafarelli had been called The Ship for long and Gascoigne’s ship - navire de Gascoigne - a place expansive as a ship’s deck and with a pleasant breeze of poets chatter and photographers clicking talk about cameras and reciprocity failure, about depth of fields and the hum of writer’s discussing women with musicians was all so pleasant, like gentle breeze.But what hard wind had Loos raised today, Rishi thought; that so rolled and pitched this vessel of merry hashish-smoking voyagers? Working for art. Working for food and shelter, and this pleasure of quite civilly - apparently like law-abiding citizens - doing something that was always a protest, a shout in a library, a secret extravagant living that was tax-free, a balloon on the skies above Paris, a cocooned caprice that seldom attracted chastisement.A young black man was trying to restore the failing confidence of the sailors by playing on his harmonica. But no, it would not work. Tonight was too much for them and people began to leave.Fenella asked Rishi and Daniel if they would like to join her for a drink, `to forget the bad part of the evening.’ Daniel said he would like to but he had to feed his cats and it would be too late.'I am sorry but maybe tomorrow we could meet in the evening,' he added apologetically. 'But if Rishi is going with you, you have to put him in a good taxi or drop him home. He is still new to Paris and wouldn't like to get lost. Would you my friend?' He smiled delicately his hands in his pockets, slightly bending his head forward. Then he vanished before them in the darkness.`He is a marvellous person,’ Fenella said and Rishi could not disagree. Yet just now and, once in a while, he would remember that deadly weapon he had accidentally discovered in Daniel’s apartment. Today, perchance, he had found out that Daniel was carrying the blowpipe under his jacket. The weapon was hanging from a shoulder strap and Rishi had seen it when Daniel helped him with the snail-grippers at the bistro. That’s why, today, he never took his jacket off, Rishi pondered. Nodding his head to Fenella’s comment he tried to think of a simple explanation, but none appeared.They were out on the street. The ship was again slipping back to fair wind as they walked out. Most lights in the flats had gone out and the angry noises, clapping and music of the second floor flat had dissolved into the quiet humming of life behind closed windows. From a ground level flat, a faint music could be heard. Someone was playing Debussy's La Mer and the sweet music rolled into the quiet street and spread slowly towards the islands of silence all around.`I had borrowed a friend’s car. Parked it somewhere here,’ Fenella said in a slurry voice, walking drunkenly along the row of automobiles parked along the street. She stopped beside a small white Peugeot. They got in. Till now, when he was comfortably beside her inside the warm car, Rishi could not help thinking of Loos crouching in one of the clumps of dark shadows and ready to throw a dangerous projectile to hurt him and Fenella. But nothing of that sort happened.Only as Fenella has pulled out into the wide road the sky broke into scary laughter flashing its white teeth on its dark face, like the face of Djibo at the party, the man who had made the last effort with the harmonica.The roll of thunder echoed and strengthened itself all over the city and came back to them in waves - satisfying sounds, old like the old earth. The big RATP buses with the huge rear view mirrors - like fairytale characters with long ears - slid by smoothly on the soaked streets with swish sounds. Small rain had begun and through the rolled up windows, Paris suddenly presented a different and enchanting face.Instinctively he looked at Fenella driving the old hatchback and she just then turned and looked at him. Their little car was a small safe submarine in the stormy seas of life happening outside - in the cafés, inside the air-conditioned hearts of the fairy-tale characters, beneath the transparent passenger sheds where the late-nighters waited. It was a cosy caravan, a small shellfish-pleasant retreat from the crashing skies, the maddening drops; they looked more anarchic from within their steel and glass retreat. Like fifty thongs they lashed above their heads and all around.Strange pleasure to be thus protected, while the world outside soaked and changed before your eyes. Received its chastisement. The night rain fell across the car windows, clouding out the view, and the big lights and dancing lasers outside dissolved in slippery blobs of illumination, plum puddings restless to be eaten. Fenella’s sharp face and light eyes hung in the pondering warmth of the car as at the edge of a precipice, something should happen now, and the windshield wiper carelessly kept time. Rain drummed on the roof.The plane trees on the Seine and the big statues in the parks and squares - Anne of Austria in the Luxembourg and Henri IV at the place des Vosges – quietly enjoyed the rain, getting drenched and secretly dancing with mirth. The city was one with the heavens, from the merry greens of the Bois de Boulogne in the east to the huge well laid out parc de la Villette in the west, from the old le Bourget airport and the workers colonies in the north down to the far reaches of the Montparnasse, there was a communion with the elements, a joyous stigmatisation. And in this ceremony the saint was Paris and the stigmata would be the fresh leaves of plane and ash, and the washed look of the streets the next morning, until the dust and rankle of industriousness would again transfer it to a place in the world.He stole a look at her legs guiding the machine, pressing on the accelerator, as their silvery boat nipped through the scenes of chastisement and reward, agony and ecstasy. Aviation kerosene, sin the shade of a baby’s eyes. He remembered how he had held her waist at the Ship and wanted then, to hold her again. Sturdily, with the grip of a dead man. And he felt warm and excited. Secret formulas turned keys in his brains, pressed switches all over his body and he was shivering. He inhaled deeply the scent of her hair. In the unsure darkness, red sometimes looked orange.As if hearing his thoughts she said, `I go dancing, such nights.’

Copyright 2007, Rajat Chaudhuri, All rights reserved.