Martinique comes and goes in feverish fits—predictable, regular, like malarial fever. Mount Pelée erupted at the turn of the century—not this one, the previous one. A tourist guide tells you that one man miraculously survived, miraculous because he was locked in prison. When the town and 30,000 inhabitants perished, this man survived and if you ask how, the tourist guide throws his arms up in the air, his palms facing upwards, his lips curled into an I-don’t-know. The thick, stone walls look indestructible. The prison cell is mostly underground, save for about 3 feet of one wall that peer above, and there, above the ground, is one tiny, humane window. Four thick bars, like bouncers, negotiate the entry and exit of fresh air, sunlight, and the noises of the everyday world outside.  Despite all this, the prisoner survived. You imagine the 19-year-old, blue-black, strapping man, whose sinewed, muscular, and marvellous torso is quivering behind suspenders. The tourist guide then offers, with a smile, that the prisoner had “an abundance of rum” and that’s why he did not perish.   You are mildly amused. But that’s about it.

        Martinique happened all of a sudden. You were 22, finishing a master’s degree in Bern and Christmas was upon you. You could have done one of three things for the holiday— go back home to Indore; stay in Bern; or you could use your savings to travel. The last time you went home, you suffered through incessant homophobic jokes from your father. The idea of enduring that again made you sick. And worse was the idea of being smothered by the unconditional, apolitical, non-nuanced love that your mother was bound to shower on you. Meanwhile, Bern was getting too cold for comfort. And so it was that you found yourself in the warmer Mediterranean.

***

        In Barcelona, at the reception of an international youth hostel tucked into a narrow, meandering road off the main street of Las Ramblas, you notice the tall, blonde man sitting in the lounge, reading an old, leather-bound diary. You know it’s old because the leather is bent around the edges, resembling the hide it originally came from. But before you can determine anything more, the receptionist says, “That’s it! You are checked in. Enjoy your stay! And do enjoy this gorgeous city.”

        You go up to your dorm. Of the six bunk beds, four are taken. You have only two bottom ones to choose from.

        That evening, you take a stroll down Las Ramblas. You go up one side to where the road meets the sea and you return on the other side. You sit at a roadside eatery that has chairs in the middle of Las Ramblas and eat an early dinner. A tall, black man, more brown than black, is sitting at a table opposite you. He smiles. You smile in return. He comes up to you, draws up a chair, and asks you something in Spanish. You say, “No Español.” He clicks his tongue, leans in, puts his hand on your knee and asks, “Want to spend the night with me?” You shake your head. After all these years of loving men, you still can not catch on to a come-on.

        When you return to the hostel, the tall, blonde man is sitting at a table near the reception, once again engrossed in his diary. You have the time to look him over. He has a beautiful nose, long, and sharp, with a smooth uninterrupted slope. His hair is thick and curly and falls over his eyebrows like heavy curtains on a window. His lips are wide and plush. And his taut, jeaned ass that you briefly glimpse when he puts one leg over the other and shifts his weight from one cheek to another invites you to unplumbed pleasures.

        You head to your dorm since he seems too engrossed for conversation. Two beds, one on top of the other, are occupied by two women. Both look sun-kissed and at least one is gorgeous. They smile and nod at you as you enter. They are in deep conversation in a language you don’t understand. The chatter of the girls continues well into the wee hours of the morning. You cannot sleep. At some point, deep in the night, the tall, blonde man walks into your dorm and places his jacket on the bunk bed above yours, with a proprietary air.

        The next morning as you brush your teeth, the tall, blonde guy comes into the shared bathroom and says, “ No dormir!” with a roll of his eyes.

        “Sorry. No Español”

        “Oh! Pardonne-moi! No sleep. The two Portuguese girls. Talking all night.” his hands flew in wild gestures. 

        You smile and nod. As you finish and move towards the door, he puts his right hand forward to say, “Hullo! I am Camille.”

        “Hi! I am Vidyut.”

        “ De L’Inde?”

        You know enough French to know L’Inde is India. So you nod. But you say you live in Bern.

        “I live in Paris now. But I am from a village small just outside Paris”.

        “Oh, that’s nice. Here for tourism?”

        “Yes. First time outside France.”

        You wouldn’t put him past 20.

        When you get back to the dorm, he is all ready, wearing yesterday’s jeans and a fresh button-up shirt.

        “What are your plans? I am thinking to go to Park Güell. You want to join me?”

        You didn’t have much of a plan. So you decide to tag along. You spend the morning at the park.  At the entrance, you stare at Gaudi’s ceramic structures, tiny cottages that look like they were made of cake, topped with white icing. You touch the stone to make sure it is not real. You then stroll through the park.  You do it all, together. Your face and his shoulder often find themselves next to each other. And more than once you feel the need to run your lips over the curve of his ear.

        He tells you that he studies art in Paris. You tell him you study engineering in Bern and that this was your last semester. If you don’t land a job, you have no choice but to head back home. Home–Indore–India. A place where you cannot ask a man on the street if he will sleep with you, you mutter to yourself. Camille looks at you. You tell him about the man hitting on you on Las Ramblas the previous day. You tell him how you have never had much gaydar.

Once you are done at the park, you decide to walk back to your hostel. It is nearly 5 km, but the weather is pleasant. On the way, nearer the hostel, you stop at a supermarket and buy some bread, lettuce, olives, tomatoes, cheese, and oranges. The cashier is a tiny old woman and when you ask her something about the weight of the oranges, she snaps, “No Inglés”.  You go back to your silence; Camille does the talking.

        You spend an hour in the shared kitchen in the youth hostel to make yourselves sandwiches for lunch. You talk more. He tells you about his village where his parents now live and his current life in Paris. He tells you about the boyfriend he just broke up with. You tell him about your escape to Switzerland. In Bern, you tell him, you learned all about many-textured sex—sex that is not always furtive, guilty, hurried, and almost always conducted in dirty places.

        That night, you find the girls in the dorm have left and so have the two other dorm mates, the ones you hadn’t set eyes on at all. Camille asks the receptionist if any others were due to check in to your dorm. As he asks this, he looks at you. She says, “Not tonight. But tomorrow, four people are expected. That would be post-lunch, though. You have the room to yourselves until then.”

        That night, Camille latches the dorm door from the inside and sits next to you on your bed. You both lean on the wall behind the bed, your thighs are casually touching each other, and your fingers interlock. Camille says with a smile, “You don’t worry. My gaydar is working fine.” You can smell him. You don’t know if it’s cologne or pheromones. Either way, you are in. He puts his arm around you and you turn your lips up towards his face. Your lips touch urgently. You grab hold of his head, your palms pushing his head further into yours. Camille places his hands on your cloth-layered crotch.  He starts unbuttoning his shirt with the hand that is free of crotch and says, nay, commands, “Remove your clozes!” the sudden Frenchness of ‘clozes’ in otherwise ‘good English’ takes you by pleasant surprise. “Clothes”, you correct but do his bidding, all the same.

        The youth hostel bed is shaky and narrow. It creaks with your sexual efforts. “Let’s go down to the floor,” you suggest. Camille nods. He places one leg gingerly on the ground. You take a clumsy tumble onto the floor, landing on all fours. He smiles and as you attempt to get up, he keeps you down with a strong hand on your back and whispers in your ear, “Stay!” He slides down. You feel his tongue graze your buttocks and tingles flow through your body in incessant waves.

        The next morning, you decide to go on your own to the Sagrada Familia. Camille has already seen it. When you return you see him, once again, deeply engrossed in his diary. You go up to him. He senses your shadow and looks up. Before you can say anything he asks, “You like to visit La Martinique?”

        “Shall we go get a bite to eat for lunch and discuss this?”

        You are seated in a restaurant and eating some Fish and Chips. Camille has ordered some steak with mashed potatoes and grilled vegetables.

        “Where the fuck is Martinique?”

        “In France.”

        Where in France?”

        “In the Caribbean.”

        “So not in France?

        “No no. Not in continental France. But it is France. It is French Overseas Territory.”

        “Ah! So can I enter with my Swiss Resident Permit?”

        He looks surprised. You have seen that look before, on the faces of other Western Europeans, Australians, and Americans, the sudden dawning that borders are opaque and concrete for some. And then he says, “I think. But we will check.”

        “Ok, I am in!”

        His face breaks into a smile.

        When you return to the hostel, Camille asks the girl at the reception if he could use her computer for a bit. She obliges.

      “So budget?” he asked. You realize that he is already checking out tickets and accommodation.

        “Je ne sais pas. What have we got?” You are non-commital. After almost two years in Western Europe, you have finally come to terms with the expenses here. What were prices like in Caribbean Europe, though? How did flying across the ocean affect your pocket? Was it as expensive as flying back home to Indore? You are happy with your savings up until now. Thrifty living in Bern had helped and yet you were not sure you had enough to go on a trip across the ocean.

        Camille said, “A friend said to me about Air BnB where he stayed. He said we can rent a car and drive to tourist sites. You have a driver’s license, yes?”

        “Yes!”

        “Good. Because public transport is not very good there. Only, we cannot drink much rum if we are driving.”

        “That’s fine. I am not much of a drinker”

        “No no! You want to drink in Martinique! It’s famous for varieties of rum.”

        He continued “Tomorrow evening tickets from Paris are 300 Euros. But we have to get to Paris first. Tickets are around 20 Euros on Ryan Air. That good for you?”

        “Yes”  your concern about expenses seems to have been fleeting.

***

        The next day, Camille and you are sitting at the Paris Orly Airport, waiting to board an Air France flight. You have never been on a flight, a 9-hour one at that, where you can freely feel up the man sitting next to you. The idea sends a shiver down your spine.

        At Martinique Aimé Césaire International Airport, you go to the loo. When you come out, you find Camille at the luggage belt staring down at his diary. As you approach, Camille looks up, points to a sign and says, “Let us go rent a car!”

        Camille is in the driver’s seat and you are beside him.

        “What is that book you keep reading?”

        “It’s my grand grand father’s diary.”

        “Your grandfather’s father’s or grandfather’s grandfather’s?”

        “Grandfather’s father’s. What’s that called in English?”

        “Great-grandfather.”

        The AirBnB is a 20-minute drive from the airport, in La Marin in the south of the island. Camille takes the wheel. You have relinquished control. It is unlike you. Maybe, you are starting to fall for Camille. The last time you felt this way was with your best friend, Darshan, in school. But that ended when Darshan softly and firmly told you he was into women and not men. You held out a little longer until you saw Darshan at his wedding, wearing a mundu, looking beautiful and mesmerized by his wife. Since then there has been sex, but nothing that made you feel that way.

        The AirBnB is a spacious one-bedroom apartment whose balcony overlooks a tiny swimming pool in a large apartment complex. You can’t look into anybody’s apartment. Nobody can look into yours.

        Camille goes for a shower. You lie on the bed, your mobile held at eye level, so you can do a quick search on Google to find out what Aimé Césaire is. Watching Martinique from the window of your car has made you feel that you are not in Europe anymore. It is the bougainvillea that catch your attention, at first. Hosts of them, pink, white, and purple, growing everywhere. And then the hibiscus, red, yellow, and pink. They are there in manicured gardens as well as in wild, unkempt spaces. It reminds you of home. The weather is lovely, warmer than Paris, warmer than Bern, and warmer even than Barcelona. A cool sea breeze is a constant companion.

        People too are different than those on the streets of western Europe—not as many white as brown and black.  Although, after some consideration, you realize that you don’t know if the brown people are in fact black and the black people are in fact brown. There is more filth on the roads than in Europe; less than in India. Angry graffiti prominently mentions Emmanuel Macron amongst a host of French words whose meanings you don’t know. You know it is angry because Camille tells you. “They don’t like the president in this island.”

        Camille has showered and it’s your turn. Once you are done, both of you set out to the nearest supermarket. The internet is patchy but you find it in certain spots around the apartment. That’s how you find your moorings in this mulatto place— sometimes Europe, sometimes India—sometimes colonizer, sometimes colony. 

        At the supermarket, you move slowly through the aisles. Not very different from Europe, you notice. The same things are available in Switzerland, France, and Spain. Continental France, you correct yourself in your mind.

        But the produce aisle is different. You find Camille scratching his chin staring at a mountain of Guava. You come up to his side and he asks, “What is this?”

        You look surprised, “It’s guava. Don’t you know guava?”

        He shakes his head.

        “Wow! It’s only like the best fruit ever. Here, let’s get some.”

        You choose some, a couple of yellow ripe ones and a couple of green ones.

        “The green ones we can cut up and put some salt and red chilli powder. That’s how we eat them in India. The yellow ones we can just sink our teeth into.”

        “Like you on my shoulder?” Camille says with a naughty side-eye.

        Back home with the groceries, you put the milk, eggs, and yoghurt in the fridge. And you immediately sit down to eat your yellow guava. Camille stares at his, looking at it from all sides, smelling it. You hand him a knife and say, “Here, cut it open in the middle”. He cuts it in half, half expecting some resistance like one would from the core of a mango. Inside is pink flesh. You say, “In India, we get two kinds of guavas. The ones with pink flesh inside and the ones with off-white flesh inside. I don’t think there’s much of a difference in taste though.”

        He touches the inside of the guava. You watch him play with one of the seeds. He looks at you, a little sexily, before sinking his teeth into the guava. His eyes widen. “This is delicious.”

        “I told you!”

        Something shifts then.

        That night, the mechanics in bed change. You spoon him, for a long time, all the while sucking at his shoulder, ear, and neck. Then you turn him around to face you. You have a go at his nipples. When the right one is pert with your touch, you transfer attention to the limp left one. You take a long breath in and swallow the left nipple and pull. Camille winces and in one swift move, pushes you below him and gets on top. He slides down to your penis, and begins the glorious work of taking you in his mouth.

        Later, as both of you lie in bed, you can hear Camille scratching his thigh. You put on the bedside lamp to examine his thigh. There, sitting atop one of the plateau-peaks of an archipelago of mosquito bites is a large mosquito. You don’t hesitate, you slap and kill the mosquito. The red remnants of its last extractive adventure leave its body, along with its life.

        The next day, after a breakfast of banana, toast, eggs, cold cuts, lettuce, cucumber, tomatoes, and coffee,  you visit the banana museum. Your lunch is a variety of preparations of banana, some you have tasted in Darshan’s house, but these have French or Creole names. In the afternoon, you both decide to stay in and read. Camille is reading his diary once again. His face contorted ugly in concentration. You are reading the Lonely Planet book, “The Caribbean Islands,” that you bought at the airport, the Aimé Césaire airport, the Aimé Césaire you now know is not a ‘What?’ but a ‘Who?’ You see the map of the Caribbean, the large islands of Dominica and Santa Lucia are at the north and south of Martinique. And further north is the even larger island of Guadeloupe. There is a sense of deja vu. The islands make a pattern you have seen before.

        “How are your mosquito bites?”

        “They are fine. But now I see one is sitting on my other leg.”

***

        You make dinner. And while the two of you eat, Camille says, “We go to Saint-Pierre tomorrow. It will be the whole day. There’s a beach. We can relax in the evening, see the sunset, and drive back home.”

        Home! Is this what you have with him? A home?

        That night, you remove your clothes and lie atop the naked Camille. You slide down and find the archipelago of mosquito bites. You know they are there only because the outlines remain and the redness. The mounds have disappeared. You lick and kiss and bite. Camille is quiet and still. You work hard this time. Finally, you turn, your face at his penis, your legs splayed across his chest, so that your penis may persuade his lips.

        Next morning, you pack into your car. Camille says you will take turns driving the one hour and fifteen minutes to Saint-Pierre. He will drive first and then you. Camille is relaxed and he keeps looking out of the window at the beautiful Martinique landscape. When you reach Saint-Pierre you realise that he never gave you the wheel. You mentally decide to take over on the way back.

        The town of Saint-Pierre is like one of those European towns that has been forced to look and feel like history. Google has told you that it used to be known as the “Paris of the Caribbean”. There is a toy train that will take you through the different touristy sites. While you wait for the train, a tourist guide accosts the two of you. Camille, in French, even before consulting you, has engaged his services. Soon, the three of you find yourselves staring at the stone structure of the prison that had housed that blue-black man.

        At one point, your tourist guide shows you a breath-taking view of Mount Pelée. You both stare at the magnificence of this seemingly innocuous mountain.  It’s been 5 minutes of staring and you are done. But Camille looks transfixed. He sits down and stares for another 15 minutes, while you walk around making sure to not stray too far. When Camille gets up he addresses the guide,  “Merci beaucoup, Pierre! La visite est-elle termine?” No. He has one last stop in mind. You follow him into a juice shop that offers freshly squeezed tropical fruit juices. You choose a sweet lime one and Camille chooses the guava. The storekeeper and your guide are enjoying a fun banter that you don’t understand. But at one point your guide points towards you and tells the storekeeper, “India!” The storekeeper looks surprised. He goes to the back of the store and emerges with a ravaged, leatherbound passport. He opens it to the photo page and points towards an old picture. The guide says, “That is his great-grandfather who came to Martinique in the 1920s from Madras in India. He initially came to Trinidad and Tobago as an indentured labourer,  but ended up here sometime in the late 20s.” You hold the passport and flip to see the dates of the visas. The passport is issued by the Empire of British India, Empire Des Indes Britanniques. The store owner tells your guide something and he translates, “He says you don’t look Indian. You are too white.”

        You both walk to your car, take out your beach bag and head to the beach. You had bought a book at the supermarket, the only English book on display. Even though the cover had a man holding a woman as she was about to fall. He was shirtless.

        You open your book lying on your towel and Camille opens his diary. The story bores you. But you continue. There’s nothing much to do. You watch the sea, the ships in the distance, a couple of sail boats nearer the coast, and a sun that is yet to dip. And now and then, you glance over at Camille. Now, he has his back towards you as he lies on his side, reading.

        “Does your great-grandfather write well?”

        “Huh hun!”

        “What is so interesting in that diary?” you want to ask but don’t.

        Is Camille as into you as you are into him? You wonder.

        You turn away from Camille, grumpy. For sure, the diary seems more important than you.

        When the sun dips, you pack your bags and head out. You decide to dine in Saint-Pierre.  You find a restaurant boasting local seafood and a great view.

        Camille’s silence continues. The quiet penetrates the bedroom, leaving you with the burden to arouse. You muddle through.

***

        The next day you visit the rum museum. It is housed in a colonial-era plantation house and exhibits old-time distilleries. At 11:30 you catch the tour of the facility. Someone tells you how rum is made. But Camille is interested in the end of the tour where there is an abundance of rum. The idea is to drink up as much as you can and then roam the streets until the alcohol dissipates and you can drive home.

        Surprisingly, there is a banana rum that you take a fancy to. You do taste a variety of rums, some with infusions of pineapple, others with passion fruit, a few with guava, and some with sapota. But the Banana rum, a tropical, sweet rum is what you fall in love with. You buy yourself a bottle to take back to Bern. You drink more than you should.  

      Camille has taken to the sapota-infused rum. You look at him, “Ah! Chikku. It’s another fruit I really like.”

        “Was it in the supermarket?”

        You think back and are not sure. But you did see it at the juice shop in Saint-Pierre.

        You notice that Camille is more cheerful, more like his old garrulous, Barcelona self. You are happy. Maybe it is the alcohol. Very happily tipsy, you decide to have something to eat at the restaurant. Camille eats a steak while you pick at your lobster.

        Camille begins to talk.

        “ You know the man that escaped the volcano?”

        You nod. “The one that escaped due to “an abundance of rum”?” you provide the air quotes.

        “Well, that is not the reason why.”

        “Obviously, not! I don’t think rum has such life-saving properties.”

        “ No. I mean I know how he escaped.”

        Your eyes widen. You take your eyes off the rum and look at him, expecting more.

        “That man is my ancestor.”

        “Oh ! How so?” you ask.

        “He was my great-grandfather’s uncle’s lover.”

        You nod as you sip your drink.

        “Your great-grandfather’s uncle is your ancestor. Not sure  his lover counts as one.”

        Camille clicks his tongue in impatience. He puts his hand into his pocket and fishes out the diary. He looks for a page and then reads it aloud. He reads through two pages and looks up with a glint in his eyes. But that changes as soon as he spies the incomprehension in your eyes. He seems to have forgotten that you don’t know French.

        He sighs. Keeps the diary on the table. Takes a long swig of his rum. And then looks around, as if he has run out of things to talk about. You are disappointed with yourself for not knowing French.

        “Maybe you can translate into English what it says” you venture tentatively.

        He looks at you for a moment and then nods, resignedly.

        “My great-grandfather, Henri, was around 20 years old, or maybe less, when he visited his uncle Martin in Saint-Pierre in 1919. This is his diary from that time.”

        “Oh wow! He came here from continental France.”

        Camille nods. “ Yes. He came here looking for work. But he was not successful so he went back home in 1922.”

        “ How interesting!  You are making the same journey in 2017. Just short of a hundred years after your great-grandfather’s journey.”

        “ Yes. I wanted to come ever since I found this diary. And in his entries in 1919, he tells of how his uncle Martin lived around 5 miles outside Saint-Pierre. He had lived there for a long time and was a young 22-year-old in 1902, working in a sugarcane factory. He had met Cyparis there.”

        “Who is Cyparis?”

        “The name of the miracle man who survived.”

        He continues, “Henri says that Martin referred to Cyparis as his love. But nothing more. Martin told Henri that it was the politics that had killed 30,000 people, not Mount Pelée.”

        He takes a swig of his rum and a moment to taste it. “An election was about to happen in Martinique. And these elections would be combatted over the body of a black foncé man—a black dark man, tall and massively built—a man accused of murder.” 

        “In this case though, it would be the body of both a black man and a homosexual.”

        Camille nods unsmiling and takes a deep sip of his drink.

        “Do you think he was really a homosexual?” you ask.

        “That’s what my great-grandfather says.”

        “No. I mean. Martin probably was. But are we sure Cyparis was not forced into it or persuaded perhaps for it must have been important to keep white friends close?”

        A sudden shock crosses Camille’s face. Both of you are immersed in silence. Camille is the one to break it.

        “I had not thought of this. He was illtreated in prison, I know. Henri says this. Henri says Martin spoke of him affectionately. But Henri only met Cyparis once. He went with Martin to the circus in which Cyparis was the main ‘event’.” Camille said with air-quotes.

        “You know, once he escaped he joined the circus. Henri gives details of that meeting, of how lovingly Cyparis and Martin hug, of how they talk about this and that, about how their conversation jumps from intimate life events to politics. Henri does not suggest that either of them loved the other less.”

        You nod. You think about Henri and his biases. It is obvious Camille is thinking about it too, his brows furrowed into an ugly visage.

        “Did you notice how Martin and Cyparis are 22 and 19, not very different from us?”

        Camille nods with a smile.  “I did think of it many times. It’s a similarity.”

        Again, silence.

        “Did you know Cyparis died when he was 55, of Malaria?” Camille breaks the silence.

        You shake your head.

        “He died of a little mosquito bite, you know like the ones on my leg.” He smiles.

        “How are your mosquito bites?”

        He stretches out his leg and hitches up his pants, “Not bad but will only be better with some tongue therapy.”

        You gape at him.

        He sighs, smiles, stands up, brings his chair nearer you, sits down, reaches out for your hand, interlocks your fingers with his and folds your forearm into his elbow.

        You gasp and look around.

        Martinique comes and goes in feverish fits— fits of despair, fits of love. Martinique comes and goes in feverish fits. You were with him when you were there.