The word slave takes Paul back to their first meeting. Nalini was lounging at a café terrace. He was writing at the next table, his eyes fixed stubbornly on nothing, waiting for inspiration to deign to sit beside him.
She had approached him with barely feigned deference. Paul had noticed the way she played with maybes and silences. She seemed to be searching for something she could not yet name. Neither could he.
He had just turned thirty. He had completed his studies and his articling, then spent two years working at a law firm. He had not disliked the law. It was professional certainty he could not endure. Every argument summoned another, every position its opposite. Paul knew how to persuade without believing.
Paul kept returning to the same table in the same café. Still young, he could already see himself adopting habits that aged and numbed him. Perhaps he still had time to pull himself together, but he allowed himself to dismiss the warnings issued by a mind he nevertheless considered intelligent. For writers who write in cafés resemble buoys far more than real ships.
Since then, he had been writing—or said he was writing. He accumulated beginnings. Only his body made progress. His muscles obeyed exertion and never asked what he thought.
The day after their first meeting, which had consisted solely of an exchange of pleasant banalities, Nalini found him in the same place. She spoke at length about her life and what she thought of it. Paul sensed that she was leaving much unsaid, like an iceberg drifting through calm but treacherous water.
He listened, grateful for the diversion, intrigued by her slow, graceful gestures, which seemed to herald an upheaval. His intuition was not misplaced: the ice did indeed begin to tilt.
She fell silent, seeming to make a fragile but necessary decision. After a brief moment of discomfort, she asked him to help her. It was not the right word, she told him at once, but since no other presented itself, she continued.
She wanted a man who would ask no questions more insistent than his caresses. She could afford to pay.
Paul had not expected this and remained stoic at first. She seemed to regain her courage, certain now of what she desired.
“I am a wealthy woman. We will remain free to know one another without compromising ourselves. You will soon understand why I am doing this.”
Intrigued, Paul finally smiled. She grew bolder.
“You receive me, you wash me or we talk, you fuck me, you get paid. If you have mistresses or stallions, I don’t want to know.”
“To have mistresses, you have to be married…”
“And stallions?”
“Stallions don’t matter. They’re brothers…”
She smiled back at him. Paul took the smile as an acknowledgement of a boundary: she could rent his body, but not everything that lived inside it.
They continued their conversation in a bar. Beyond her fortune, Nalini possessed undeniable charm and a history that moved Paul.
Yet neither her charm nor the money attracted him most. In her offer, everything had been decided: a role, a schedule, a price. Nothing to defend, no conclusion to invent.
No doubt helped by the alcohol he had consumed, he accepted the offer and took her hand. She stiffened at his touch, then her resistance faded.
The weeks disappeared, then the months. One evening a week for two years.