FOR DREAMERS
The Second Life
Josephine was coming from the leeward side and Bernard De Jaham lived on the wayward side of the island. She had taken a hiatus to complete her Nursing training in France, where Bernard’s ex-wife lived with their son.
The Jaham family had bought the title after the capital of Martinique, St. Pierre, was annihilated by the eruption of Mont Pelee in 1902. Till then, the Jaham family had belonged to the working class of France. They had purchased sugar plantations and then eased into the roles of racists, starvers, and exploiters ascribed to the minority of the island. When Josephine had completed her high school, she had been given the choice of continuing her education from anywhere in the world. Instead, she had chosen to, stay in Martinique, enrol at the only university of the island and work part-time at a local store as a sales-girl to fund her education.
It was beyond Bernard that one, so fortunate, would want to squander her chances at greatness by doing menial jobs, speaking Creole instead of French, and learning English to watch Hollywood movies, instead of delving into the cultured, sophisticated pursuits fitting of a young girl of her stature.
Josephine paid a customary visit to her father the next day. She told him about her mother and brother and informed him that she is trying to find a job as a nurse. For many days after that Bernard couldn’t meet her and when he called her, her standard reply was that she was busy looking for a job.
One day Bernard tracked her down. She was coming out of a bar with some Tamil friends when Bernard’s car stopped in front of her. Josephine took a step back when she saw her father emerge out of the back seat of the black sedan.
‘Why are you doing this, mon cheri’? Bernard opened the door a little more. ‘Get in the car and come home with me. I want to talk with you’.
Josephine’s eyes widened and then were cast down. It was good that only her Tamil friends were with her at the moment, accustomed to the idea of their parents affronting them like this.
Bernard was already in the car when Josephine bid adieu to her friends. She got in and the air inside felt stiffer than ever, even nauseous. Bernard seemed younger than usual with his stiff shoulders. He turned towards Josephine and his collar rustled like a leaf does when a cricket jumps out of it.
‘Why are you doing this’? he said.
‘I am doing what’?
He made a motion of his hands as if scattering seeds in a field. ‘Floundering your life, like this’.
‘You cannot steer my boat all my life, Papa. I am thirty- five already and I have seen my share of the world. I know what to do with my life’, Josephine said, gritting her teeth.
Bernard went silent and remained so till they reached home. The pressure on the car suspensions eased when Bernard got out and more so when Josephine alighted.
The Grock-Grock sound could be heard from somewhere in the plantation as Josephine entered the Villa trailing Bernard. She noticed her father had the house renovated, with the crimson interior giving way to a more sombre look. The modern paintings that adorned the walls of the parlour before her mother departed were replaced by antique art-pieces.
They got inside the living room. A black maid served them coffee and Josephine looked around in search of familiarity in the house she had grown up. The only familiar thing in the room was her father’s face and instead of the familiar love for her, she found that his eyes reminded her of a lake right before thawing. She was reminded of her mother’s grey eyes, which Henry inherited. She had got her mother’s features except for the blue eyes that she got from her father.
Grey eyes are much warmer, she thought, taking a sip from her cup.
Bernard removed his toupee and coat and the maid appeared again to take them with her. Bernard instructed her to close the door between the parlour and the living room, which she did.
Father and daughter drank their coffees in silence, with Bernard’s shoulders drooped a little, not to their usual place but down from their car ride home. After finishing his coffee, Bernard went to the French window overlooking the pond on the estate. The blinds were drawn for the afternoon which Bernard opened to let the dying sun in. He sat on a beach chair and beckoned Josephine to come near him.
Josephine removed her shoes and slumped on a chair in front of her father’s chair with the coffee cup still in her hands, though long empty. Like a deer, her eyes were transfixed on her father, this being his turf. Deer go into a stupor when the light from the hunter’s jeep falls on their eyes, which makes the hunting easy. Bam! A single shot, and it’s done.
She looked towards the window once from the corner of her eyes. The sun was nowhere as blinding as the demeanour on her father’s face. The sand in her toes took her back to her childhood and she found another piece of familiarity in the house, assuring her that she was still her father’s daughter.
The sandpit was made by Bernard for Josephine to play in by the side of the pool, her little private beach. She let out a sigh, her blue eyes twinkled and she placed one of her legs over the other under her floral frock. She removed her sunglasses and put them on a tripod along with the empty cup of coffee. No gun was produced by the hunter; it was not a hunter after all. Maybe, it was a tourist who got waylaid.
She cleared her throat and said, ‘Papa, um, you worry too much for me. You’ll have to let go someday’.
‘My pride and my family’s pride are at stake, mon cheri’. Bernard took Josephine’s hand in his. ‘We are not like the others’.
‘I think you should not let the past bind us, at least not me’.
‘What will happen of my estate when I am gone, with your brother vowing not to come back here’?
‘He never vowed on such a thing. He just said that his life in Paris is all he has for now. You know, his girlfriend gave birth to their first child last summer’.
‘Oh! He must be busy taking care of the two kids from her previous marriage too. Are they going to marry anytime soon’? Bernard said with his characteristic sneer.
‘Nobody wants to marry nowadays’, said Josephine taking her hands out of Bernard’s hands. Her palms were sweltering.
‘What about you’?
‘I have had my share of relationships and I want to take a break from dating for a while’.
Josephine got up, kissed her father and said, ‘I will be around, so you can call me anytime you feel like talking. Till then, I will be living my second life’.
By the time Josephine reached her place in Fort de France, the sky was overcast. She parked her car in the porch of the rented house, which she had taken up after coming up from France. As she entered, the pitter- patter of the rain started. Banana leaves in the front garden started getting rid of the dirt accumulated on them.
She went to the washroom first and after cleaning the dirt of the day, put on some lotion and came into her room, drying herself with a pink towel which she threw on a side table after the purpose of it was solved. Her big hips clapped as she landed on her chest in front of the laptop on her bed.
The icon of the simulation was on the desktop itself. She had gotten introduced to the virtual reality simulation website through an advertisement while looking for something to masturbate to. It had been almost two years since she made her account on the website and only her close friends knew about it as she kept them apprised of the wonders she was experiencing inside the sim. After getting accustomed to the working of the world inside the sim, she had decided that it was far better than the traditional ways of dating. She had heard that some of the members even got married after living inside the Sim as couples for years.
Unlike a lot of others, she had joined any herds and considered herself a lone wolf looking for meeting interesting people, which were plenty in there, and for satisfying her hidden sexual desires. Her favourite destination for hanging out was at a club where she could smoke weed with a virtual hookah.
When she got there, the bartender, Rastabari, told her that a new person had come today and after wandering through the magic-mushroom area, he has now gone into the cabin, right beside the bar.
‘What’s so special about him that you mention him’, she typed.
‘His information bar says that he is looking for a French girl. I was reminded of you’.
‘How does he look’?
‘Same as every noob. Remember the bluish checkered shirt which every new avatar gets to start with? Anyways, as you can see he is still inside the cabin’, Rastabari’s message appeared on Josephine’s screen and he was seen slowly making his way towards the dancing area of the club where some regulars had already converged for the day’s clubbing.
Rastabari’s long locks reminded her of Naga monks of India. She had read that the Rastafarian look, so much part of the Caribbean identity around Martinique, was largely influenced by the Indian monks that came to the West Indies, along with the indentured labourers on the sugar plantations.
She decided to read the bio of the new entrant to the second life world. It said, ‘Looking for a French girl with whom I can grow up with’.
What a bore, she thought as her avatar rapidly ascended the wooden steps of the cabin with her hips swaying in her shorts.
The small cabin consisted of a single room that accommodated a double-bed, a medium-sized couch— enough to seat three, and two chairs near the window overlooking the club. The man, Rastabari was talking about, was sitting on one of the chairs, looking at the bar from where the discotheque lights were illuminating and concealing his face in quick succession.
‘Hey, I am Cynthia,’ she typed in the private conversation tab of the man.
She didn’t get any reply.
Maybe he is AFK, the bar says his name is Mirage, Josephine thought and let her avatar sprawl on the bed.
Today she was wearing blue shorts and a loose purple shirt with the shirt ends tied in a knot just below the sumptuous breasts of her avatar. She had spent quite an ample amount of Linds, the virtual currency of the Sim, to get the desired look. And, it had paid off well since most people she met complimented her looks and various garments she donned.
The music from the bar was groovy and she could see the dancers swaying on the beats of Blondie, one of her favourite artists.
A message appeared on Josephine’s chat bar, ‘Sorry, I was away. Hi!’
The man moved towards the bed and lay beside her. Josephine’s cat leapt on the bed and sprawled on her hips.
Josephine typed, ‘So? Rastabari tells me you are looking for a French girl’.
‘Yes’.
‘Here I am. Tell me’.
‘How do I know, you are one? The first girl I met here said that too and when we were finished, she told me that she was a thirteen year old from Egypt in real life. Male or female, she didn’t care to tell’.
‘Haha. This happens a lot here. You’ll get used to it in no time. It looks like you are looking for love’.
‘That’s not the case. I am learning French, so I thought it will be good to have someone to practice it with’.
‘You specifically mentioned a French girl’.
‘I feel girls make great conversation-buddies’. ‘Fair enough. Come on, let’s dance’.
‘How do you do that’?
‘Let me send you something. Click on it and you can dance wherever you want’.
They got to naked dancing within the next five minutes after Josephine showed the man how to do it.
‘What is your name in RL, mirage’.
‘I am Nikhil Sodha from Pakistan. Nick for short’. ‘I am Josephine from Martinique’.
‘Josephine. As in the first wife of Napoleon, is it’? ‘LOL. Yeah right. Would you like to fuck’?
‘I have a free penis only and I don’t know how to purchase one that seems more real’.
‘I will help. Do you have some Linds’?
‘Yes, I do. A man who said he is from the USA gifted me some and some more I got dancing in a gay club’.
‘Do you have a feminine side to you? Haha’.
‘Nope. I don’t think the guy from the USA had it either. He just gave them to me in exchange for listening to his haikus’.
‘I never warmed up to haikus. Let’s go shopping then’.
They got to fucking in the next ten minutes after Josephine helped Nick find a perfect penis that was circumcised and oozed cum.
Josephine let the cat out and fingered herself as the two avatars made love to each other inside the cabin, Blondie playing in the background.
Rastabari knows what to play when, thought Josephine.
Josephine still had some time before her evening ritual of bathing again and lighting an incense stick, a habit learned from a Buddhist friend in Paris. She decided to stay a while longer than her usual time inside the sim. She had one other place, apart from the club, where she liked to hang out.
It was a campsite inside the jungle. The crock-crock of the frogs there reminded her of the Grock-Grock of the Goj blan birds in Martinique, an alarm call usually induced by Mongoose attacks. But, the continuous crackle of the burning wood soothed her and provided her respite, despite the crock-crock. Not many people came there and she wanted to hear Nick’s voice.
They got there, seated themselves on one of the wooden logs arranged around the fire and turned their audio interfaces on. The avatars hugged each other, kissed and Cynthia snuggled into Mirage’s broad chest.
‘Tell me something about you’, she said.
‘Well, I am leeching on my family’s property right now but I want to get out of here and do something on my own’, Nick’s voice crackled aligning itself with the crackling of the fire.
‘Wait. Let me keep my phone away. It’s interfering with the signals coming from another corner of the world’. She got up, kept her phone away, and draped her big figure in a white sheet. ‘Where do you want to go? France’?
‘France is the place that I think will fit my idea of an open society that we lack here in my country. I have lived there for some time’.
‘Muslims are not welcome in France, you know, at least, not by society. It’s better to live among your people even if you are bound by unnecessary rules’.
‘How do you know, I am a Muslim’? ‘Didn’t you say you were from Pakistan’?
‘Not all Pakistanis are Muslims. My family is Hindu and I am an atheist, like a lot of people in France’. He continued, ‘You know what castes are?’
‘Yes, they are like classes but ascribed on birth and they last a lifetime as opposed to classes’.
‘Classes also last a lifetime in most cases. My family belongs to a Rajput clan, the warrior caste’.
‘Kha-ja-pyut’?
‘Yes, right. r-a-j-p-u-t’ he laughed. ‘We decided to stay back after the partition because of the immense land- holdings we have here and because we felt this country is as much ours as it is others’. I am not complaining though because money is religion and money is caste. It always has been’.
‘So, you stay among people who are hostile to you but you shut them up with your affluence’?
‘You can say that. My family provides jobs to a lot of Muslims here. We have some political clout too which is enough to secure our place at the top of the Pakistani society’.
‘It means we have a lot in common’.
‘Like what, apart from how desperate we are that we are inside this sim to make friends’?
‘I need to make dinner now and then go to bed. I will see you tomorrow afternoon, during my lunch hours. It’s 7 PM here. You research Beke in Martinique and you will get to know, what we have in common’.
‘I knew there is something that attracted us to each other’.
Josephine was now dry as a desert, back to its normal state after a brief spell of rain.
They got to exchanging messages on phone within the next week. Apart from working on Nick’s French, all they talked about was their formative years.
Like a fast-growing vine, the love between them too was also growing. On some days the tendrils reached their childhood memories, holding on to them till the lovers saw the influence of long-gone aristocratic traditions on their formative years. Some days they reached their most dreaded emotions, the loathsome and humiliating feelings of each and then spread to the dark crevices of their relationships with their respective families.
Josephine got to talking about him with her friends within the next month.
Her afternoon breaks, a major portion of her waking hours in the evening, and the weekends started to remain reserved for Nick in the next six months. Even Bernard didn’t see her among her coterie of friends in and around the cafes and bars.
‘When are you planning on coming down to Martinique’? Josephine asked Nick during one of her weekend calls.
‘I don’t know how I will be able to adjust myself there’?
‘You will do perfectly fine, silly. You know some of my friends already and the weather here will suit you just fine’.
‘I have already told my family that I want them to invest some money in a plantation somewhere in the Caribbean. That’s all they know right now’.
‘Great. Though it’s hard to find a suitable property on sale I can pull some strings. I can ask my father. It’s a big decision that you are making. So, take your time’.
‘No, I am ready. I have never felt anything like this before. Will you be okay marrying someone like me? I mean, I know that you are not comfortable with your Beke identity and now you got someone from the same kind of background’.
‘I just know that I love you and you are not like the others’.
Nest day Josephine told Bernard everything. ‘What about your nursing career’?
‘That’s not a big deal. Most of my clients are Beke. Nick says he doesn’t have a problem with me working as a nurse. He is not like others, I told you already’, she said and shuffled in her chair.
After Josephine was gone, Bernard picked up his phone and called up his accountant.
‘Do you remember that small plantation that was up for sale a few days back’?
‘Yes, I do. It’s still available’.
‘All right. Pay half the amount and tell the owner to make the papers in Josephine’s name’.
‘I will do that. Anything else, Monsier Jaham’?
‘Yes. A brown girl will come to your office in the afternoon right after lunch hours. Pay her five-thousand Euros and put this under miscellaneous expenses. Don’t let anyone else know of this transaction’.
The next call went to Pakistan.
‘I have arranged for everything. I will tell Josephine that I have paid half the price as a wedding gift’.
‘Thank you so much, Bernard. You have lifted a heavy load from my heart. I agreed to Nick’s request of shifting to France but I was dead worried that he will get into the grips of some low-born French until I remembered my college buddy’.
‘I would have preferred someone Beke as my son-in- law but Nick will do too. After all, he is your son, my friend’.
‘We should be thankful to Rastabari or whatever his name is. I have sent him some money, enough to delete his account from the sim’.
‘And, what about Nick’s friend, who suggested to join the sim and go meet Rastabari’?
‘Oh, him? I just asked him to do that one day when he was drunk’.
‘Pay him and ask him to remain mum. This way we will be able to tie the last remaining loose end’.
‘He was drunk when I asked him to do that. He has this habit of making notes of to-do things in his drunken state lest he forgets about them when he sobers up. He didn’t write who told him to do that. He would have treated it as a note to himself, which he often does’.
‘It’s all done then. We have finally turned our friendship into a relationship as promised during our college days’, Bernard said and cut the call.
Outside a Mongoose attacked and Bernard heard the Grock-Grock and then the sound of the cracking of the eggs in the mongoose’s mouth.