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That afternoon, Anjali had her interview with Marjorie on her péniche. She went alone. Aasha was a great friend, but so happy to be going home and getting married. She seemed to have no questions, no doubts, and Anjali didn’t necessarily want to plant any in her mind. But her own was full of them, and full of unanswerable questions—can I be happy without a traditional life of marriage, home, and children? Do I have the talent to make it in the movie industry? She couldn’t talk about any of it with Aasha.
A nice breeze was traveling up the Seine and the water was choppy as usual.
“Bonjour!” Marjorie greeted her from the cockpit. “Do come aboard! I’ve tidied up the place, so everything is shipshape.”
Anjali stepped tentatively on the metal gangplank, which felt quite steady under her feet for a moment. Then it began to bob violently. Anjali hung on to its rail. A bateau mouche had swept by and made the river wilder than usual.
“Steady on,” Marjorie called. “Don’t mind the bouncing. You’ll be quite fine.”
The gangway calmed down. Anjali finished the walk up it, hanging onto the handrails on both sides. She stepped into the cockpit, which had a beautiful wooden deck, which glowed in a mellow way with good care, and wooden benches built in. Sitting down quickly, she looked around. Study the horizon, she thought. I’ve heard that’s what you do when you’re on the water.
Feeling a bit more secure, Anjali smiled at her host. The breeze ruffled Marjorie’s stiff gray-ish blonde frizz as she sat on a cushion. Anjali examined her surroundings. The cockpit was covered by a white canvas tarp, stretched over the boom above her head and tied down at each of the four corners to handrails. It protected the cockpit from the sun but allowed people to enjoy the full effect of being on the river, with the water glinting in the sun.
“I was hoping that you could meet my husband and get your nautical questions answered,” Marjorie said. “But he couldn’t be here. He’s the pilot and navigator. I manage the lines—you know, the ropes—and do the cooking.” She laughed. “We’re so traditional, it’s funny.”
To Anjali, what this woman was doing, living on a barge in Paris, didn’t seem at all traditional. She got out her laptop and prepared to take notes.
“First let me take you on a quick tour of the cabin and below decks,” Marjorie said.
So Anjali got out a pen and notebook, put her camera on its string around her neck, and followed Marjorie through a small wooden door with an etched glass panel set in it.
“This barge was built in Holland one hundred years ago,” Marjorie said. “It’s full of nice touches like etched glass windows and carved paneling. The hull is steel. It’s actually double-hulled and has a shallow draft so we can go almost anywhere.”
“Was this originally a workboat?” Anjali asked.
“Yes, we think it was used to transport vegetables to market. And maybe even cows! The draft is so shallow, we can nose in to the banks of rivers and canals. The cattle could practically step off onto the grass and start to munch!”
They paused in the main cabin, the walls wood-lined except for a row of windows that ran along the right and left sides. Starboard and port, Anjali corrected herself.
Part of the cabin was taken up by a wooden table that stood in the midst of three built-in benches on three sides. The benches were covered with cushions and pillows in a sunflower motif.
“That table can be lowered and covered with cushions to make a double bed,” Marjorie said. “Every square inch of space on a boat is used at least two different ways.”
A blue velvet easy chair stood opposite the banquette. “That’s my husband’s chair, when we aren’t sitting out in the cockpit enjoying the outdoors.”
“My father has a chair like that,” Anjali said, missing home with a flash of pain.
“Traditional male sort of thing, I should think,” Marjorie said. “Here’s the galley.”
Anjali assumed that meant kitchen, since Marjorie was pointing to a tiny space with a stove, an oven, a refrigerator the same size as hers, and a sink.
“This boat has more counter space and appliances than my chambre de bonne on top of a six-story house,” Anjali said.
“Oh, I love my galley! Everything is right to hand. Don’t even have to take a footstep hardly. I’m cooking all the time in here.”
Marjorie then took two steps down, toward the bow, and Anjali followed her.
“Here’s the first stateroom.”
It was taken up entirely by a double bed, except for a narrow path to a closet. Wood shelves and cabinets were attached to the walls above the bed on three sides.
“It’s very cozy,” Anjali said.
“We love it,” Marjorie said.
“Here’s the second and third staterooms,” and Marjorie opened wooden doors to two smaller bedrooms.
“And here’s the head.” She opened the door to a tiny bathroom.
“We take showers by pulling this plastic curtain around us,” she said, pointing to the tracks for the curtain on the ceiling. “It’s not a life of luxury accommodation, but once you get used to it, it’s a really great life.”
“What do you love so much about living on a péniche?” Anjali asked as they headed by mutual consent back towards the cockpit.
“First, would you fancy a glass of wine? It’s a lovely white from the Saumur region, and it’s been chilling.”
Anjali couldn’t think of anything that would make her happier than a glass of wine in the cockpit of a péniche on the Seine, particularly with this gracious host.
“We relax so deeply on this boat,” Marjorie said, carrying their drinks to the stern. They both sat on the cushions that softened the wooden lockers that they were laid across.
“It’s given us twelve years of relaxation and incredible adventure, both, exploring the canals and rivers of France. Did you know that the patrimoine fluvial, the interconnected river and canal patrimony, of France has more than five thousand kilometers of inland waterways? We explore the Champagne, Burgundy, and Sancere regions. We’ve been up and down the Loire, the Saone, the Rhone, the Rhine, the Seine, the Marne and the Doubs. We can even barge to Holland, Germany, Luxemburg, and Belgium by river if we want. And we stay from September to June in Paris.”
“Sounds wonderful.” Anjali prayed she’d keep talking, reveal more. Stuff that readers would latch onto. And Marjorie did.
“This boat cost 150,000 euros. For that amount of money, you couldn’t touch an apartment in Paris. The only thing you could buy would be on the outskirts, beyond walking distance to the Metro line. All you’d get there would be a bed and a two-burner hotplate.”
Like the room I rent from Madame de Denichen, Anjali thought.
“Here we are, tied up within walking distance of Notre Dame and the Louvre. The monthly dock fee is probably about the same as your rent for a chambre de bonne.”
“Yes, that’s fabulous. So’s your location.”
They paused to look around at the river, the passing boats, the strollers on the quai.
After the pause, Anjali asked, “What’s it like cooking in your tiny space? I cook in one, too. I’m always challenged. When the cutting board is full of chopped onions and I need room to chop some carrots, where do I put the onions? They end up in a bowl on the floor, I’m afraid.
“Oh, I’ve gotten good at cooking in my efficient space. And even if it’s a little too small at times, I remind myself: We can cruise through France! We stop at an incredibly picturesque village, and our biggest problem might be: we’re out of cheese! We need more wine! The croissant shop is closed!
“And the people we’ve met. People of every nationality who are a little offbeat, willing to live this adventurous way of life. Willing to help, any time of day or night. Instant camaraderie, everywhere we go.”
Anjali took notes just as fast as she could. Everything sounded so good. There just had to be a toad in this garden.
“What’s the downside of living on a péniche?”
Marjorie paused and looked thoughtful. “When you go to a fabulous Paris flea market, you can’t buy a thing. There’s nowhere to put it. And when you need to get your hands on something that you’ve stowed under the banquette—” she motioned toward the cabin— “it’s a Chinese puzzle to move this and move that so you can get to that other thing.”
Anjali thought, there had to be more negatives. Steel hull. Cold water.
“How is it in winter?”
“Yes, and that too. We run a heater in the cabin around the clock, and wear two layers of socks. But as I said, we have Paris at our feet for the price of dockage—seven hundred euros a month. That includes utilities. You can’t beat that.”
Since Anjali was paying six hundred euros a month for her narrow little place under the eaves, where she had to live and work in one room and had nowhere to sit outside, yes, that did sound like a good price.
She sipped her wine and watched a bateau mouche glide by. A few seconds later, its wake bumped the péniche. She turned to look at the quai. Weren’t those people walking by looking at her with just a touch of envy?
A couple holding hands strolled by. They looked so content, so together. Marriage was a good thing. See what marriage had done for Marjorie? She was on a fabulous adventure that she might not have done alone.
Anjali wanted to discuss the decision she had to make about Ravi with someone. She hadn’t known Marjorie long. She knew enough, though, from interviewing people for other articles and screenplays she’d written, that sometimes you could have a deeper conversation with a stranger.
“Marjorie, I hope you don’t mind my asking...”
“Sure, dear, ask to your heart’s content.”
“Well, what’s your take on marriage? My parents have picked someone out for me back in Mumbai. Should I marry him?”
“All I can tell you is my experience,” Marjorie said. “I was married before to a controlling bastard who hardly left me room to breathe. We ended up divorced—my decision. I just couldn’t go on. Simply could not bear it. Divorce stinks in the biggest way. So stressful. I’ve read it knocks five years off your life. Choose very wisely.”
“My parents chose Ravi from lots of potential partners. The whole family—all my aunties—searched and made suggestions. But I’m not sure. Part of me says I’m a writer. I want to write great screenplays, novels, everything. He’s in banking—well, worse, he’s in technology in banking. He plays tennis. All the time. My parents see something in him, but I’m not sure what that is. I do like him. Part of me says, hey, we could have kids. I’d have a family. His aunties, my aunties—a great big family. A great big traditional family.”
“Are you saying ‘controlling family,’ my dear?”
“It seems that way. But I don’t want to break my parents’ hearts.”
“Could you write with all that big family around?”
“I think it would be difficult. I can barely find time to do it now, working fulltime. I would work until the first baby came along. From what I hear, babies don’t allow time for writing, either.”
“You might have to postpone writing for a while, at least until the child got a little bigger. Maybe four or five months or so. When they take two naps a day and sleep steadily, you’ll have chances to write.”
“I’d like to have children. That’s part of being a woman, right?”
“It’s great. And then they break your heart. Over and over, as they make decisions you can foresee won’t turn out well.”
“How will a decision to marry Ravi turn out? I know you can’t answer that.”
“Does he respect your writing? Does he show an interest?”
“Some.”
“Enough?”
“That’s my big question, really.”
“Your dreams are important, dear. Find people who support you in pursuing them.”
Anjali sat, silent. Boat traffic went by as she considered just how supportive Ravi was. Marjorie’s hair flopped in a breeze to the other side of her head, which brought Anjali back. “I shall have to see...”
She changed the topic. “Your second husband. Was this boating life his idea or yours?”
“I was poking around online one day, and I don’t remember how it happened exactly, but I stumbled upon an ad for a péniche and within six months we were in France shopping for one...”
So Marjorie had precipitated the adventure, she mused. Did Ravi have this kind of adventurousness in him?
The breeze ruffled Anjali’s short, layered hair. What did she want? A marriage but an untraditional lifestyle, in Paris or New York or Rome or aboard a boat? What did life hold for her? Any adventure at all? Was marriage to Ravi, an apartment in Mumbai, and children all she hoped for?
She swallowed the last big gulp of wine in her glass and thanked Marjorie. How did one put oneself in the way of Marjorie’s sort of adventure? Was it destiny, and one had no control? Or did God have some sort of benevolent plan that would satisfy her longings? Or at least most of them?
“...and now we’ve been doing this for twelve years. I feel that I’ll always love it, I’ll never get tired of it.”
“That’s really wonderful,” Anjali said, sorry to have missed Marjorie’s comment but not willing to show that she had missed it by asking her to repeat herself. She sensed that the end of the interview was at hand. All things come to a close eventually.
“Thanks, Marjorie. I’d better get on. Thanks for the tour. It’s a beautiful boat. Enjoy it in good health.”
“If you have any questions for me, feel free to call.”
“I will. I appreciate it.”
Anjali stood and braced herself as the deck moved again. Was it the wine, or wind, or water?
