‘Nocturne Pondicherry’: In these translated short stories, night is an enabler and invader

Ari Gautier’s Nocturne Pondicherry, translated from French by Roopam Singh, is a collection of seven short stories set in the coastal town of Pondicherry: “Viji”, “Mani Enna”, “The Exile”, “Malarvizhi”, “The Golden Cage”, “Marguerite” and “The Postman, the Madman and the Drunk”. Woven around the people on the margins, these stories try to pick the extraordinary from the ordinary.

Dark is the night

In Nocturne Pondicherry, night is the author’s ally. It is an enabler, an invader, an impostor, an interloper, an interlocutor, and sometimes an enemy. Night is greed. Night is revenge. Night is love and disgust. Night is longing and a curse. Night is all things beautiful and repulsion too. Night discriminates but it dotes too. Night is the hero as well as the anti-hero. The night acts as a catalyst, bringing the twist that either ends the story or the character. Sometimes the entire action is set at night and in others, only two words a character says would bring the storm of consequences the next morning.

And since the night is a culprit, the moon of Pondicherry shares some blame too. It’s not resplendent or majestic. It’s cowardly and shameful: “A cowardly moon, completely disgusted by so much abjection, hid behind the clouds.” And the same is the case with stars: “Like vulgar lights on a morbid scene, the stars stopped shining one by one, plunging into a universe of obscure anguish.”

The first story of Nocturne Pondicherry is also its most accomplished, most detailed and most moving story. In “Viji”, the reader feels violated again and again. Starting with things as insignificant as a lascivious movie poster and a hopelessly broken sandal that even a shoemaker refuses to touch (“Why are you so adamant about keeping them?”) the story ends at what could be the largest stake for the protagonist. Viji was fifteen years old when she was thrown into prostitution by her mother. The first person to rape her – “Sub-Inspector of police of Odiansalai who, tired of the dirty money coming from the racket, settled for young and innocent flesh. In this land, the worst criminals were the ones who were supposed to fight crime.”

The mother is least bothered with Viji’s distress or even protecting her daughter. When the cop asks her to pimp out Viji, she is neither offended nor surprised. Viji finds her mother's reaction more than surprising. For a long time, she has known that this would happen someday. Murugan, a morose-looking young auto-rickshaw driver acts as her pimp. When he takes Viji to clients, her mother tells him this: “Bring her back as soon as she has finished, all right? No walk in the park and eating sundal. You think I don’t understand your game? If you think I’ll marry my girl to you, you must be dreaming! My Viji is a queen! Do you think I'll get her married to an auto-rickshaw driver?”

Viji simply can’t continue with this vilifying existence. She feels dirty. When she comes back in the evening, she spends hours under the shower, scrubbing herself clean of the dirty human misery. No soap or shampoo can’t get rid of the dirt in her heart.

Viji’s siblings are often jealous of her. They ask their mother why she is the one who dresses well and wears make-up. “Why don’t we get nice clothes like her?” When Viji decides to elope with Murugan, she is raked with guilt over the fate of her little sisters. What will happen to them? Is it fair to leave them behind? How would they live without money that Viji brings? She promises herself she will pull them out of this horrible existence as soon as she could. Her decision to elope with Murugan is based upon the fact that he too speaks the language of silence. When he takes her hands in his to prove his sincerity, she’s overwhelmed. Nobody had ever touched her so gently before. “The young girl was not used to such gallantry.” She thought she knew men well. Since her teenage years, she has been tolerating their dirty bodies, alcoholic breath, their violent and gauche advances. With Murugan, she feels different.

Love and unlove stories

In “Mani Enna”, a corrupt cop finds a dead body upon the beach. “Torn from the garland, scattered on the naked rock, the jasmine flowers looked like glistening tears from that deadly night.” The cop had had an argument with the victim last night. As the story peels itself, it unearths a terrible yet ordinarily familiar level of debauchery. The author here once again puts flashlight upon corrupt cops: the people who are supposed to protect the weaker sections are the ones taking undue advantage of them. The story also veers a little towards an old woman who spends her whole life bringing up her daughter but is abandoned by the same girl when she gets a job and moves to a respectable position and household. Her daughter when discovers her son is a gay, leaves him with his grandmother.

In “The Exile”, Lourdenadin is sent France by his father after selling his farmland. Lourdenadin, in the twilight of his life, wishes to come back to Pondicherry but will his French children and wife let him? The story shows the struggle of a man who sells everything to go to France in search of a better life and then buys it back so that he can spend his last days in the land he was born.

“Malarvizhi” is about a doomed love story. It shows caste-based discrimination through the mirror of a love/horror story. In trying times, what humans can convince themselves to do is beyond their own wildest imaginations. This one is a strange mixture of love, horror and disgust.

“The Golden Cage” is another love story where a girl gives solace to a homeless man and falls in love with him later. This story feels rushed and the twist at the end feels concocted entirely for the shock value. It could have gone in a different direction. Same is the case with “Marguerite” which reaches its point after wandering aimlessly here, there and everywhere. And when it does reach its point, it has lost its edge as well as the steam.

In “The Postman, the Madman and the Drunkard”, a postman Pattabhiram, on his last day of the service, wanders down the lanes of Pondicherry to deliver a letter that was left undelivered because nobody could find the address.

Roopam Singh has translated this collection of stories that also have words in French, Tamil and Sanskrit. The translation is fluid and powerful, especially in the first and the last story. Since a glossary has been provided at the end, italicising some words could have been avoided.

Nocturne Pondicherry, Ari Gautier, translated from the French by Roopam Singh, Hachette India.