Title: India
Author: Opie
Disclaimer: The idea of Moulin Rouge! belongs to the incredible Baz Luhrmann and his staff. I am eternally indebted to him. And after I am done emotionally scarring his characters, I will place them neatly back on the shelf where they belong.
Warnings: Rape, "disturbing images".
Author's Notes: I can't explain what I write. It just happened.
She thought sometimes of leaving. She could pack up a few items - actually she couldn;tm but in her fantasies, she always did - and walk out the door. It wasn't as if they owned her. They hadn't had to pay money for her like some of the girls. She'd paid all her debts, gained from room and board and dress fees; she'd been free, walked in one day when she couldn't take whoring on the streets anymore. They couldn't stop her, not legally. She was free from the top of her head to the soles of her feet to the tips of her fingers. She was her own person.
Technically, she was her own person. But if she packed up, she'd be broke. She had nowhere else to go. She owned not a stitch of her own clothing; not a dress, not a slip, not a single shoe was her own. If she wanted to leave, she'd have to do so naked, or be accused of stealing. Maybe. She didn't know if Zidler would likely get her arrested for it or make the clothes a gift. Maybe for Satine they'd have been a gift, but not for her. She was too catty for that.
Her mother had been Basque. She'd been kidnapped by people who thought she was Spanish royalty, then abandoned in the streets of Paris when they realized that she wasn't who they'd thought. She'd lived and died a whore, because no one could understand a single word she said. Though she eventually learned a little French, it was so difficult to understand her through her thick accent that most people didn't bother with her. She'd named her child Nini because it was a sound she could make that other people could interpret.
Nini didn't know who her father was. He was some man from the street, like any other. Possibly insane or an addict or just greasy and homeless and in need of a little love. He may even have been the man who killed her mother when she was ten, high on absinthe and unable to pay for a little love. He'd had sex with her mother, as Nini lay in the tiny, grimy room next to her mother's bedroom, fingers stuffed in her ears, curled in a ball against the cold of winter in Paris. She'd closed out the moaning, then the arguing, then the screaming. She'd sat there dreaming of some place warm, like India, and cups of tea, and a small fire. She'd taken her mind away to a golden palace, with a family that loved her.
She hadn't noticed anything until the man came in and ripped her up from her tiny cot. He flung her onto the floor, and she hit the cold stones hard. She bit her lip to keep from crying as he undid his belt buckle again. He used the thin leather strap to keep her hands out of the way; he was scrawny and short, and even so, he had no trouble keeping a tiny ten year old in line as he had his way with her. She tried to scream once, in terror and anger, and he cuffed her brutally, tossing her head to one side like that of a rag doll. Her head hit the frozen stones of their floor hard, and she'd passed out, lying there limply until well into the next day.
She'd gone to find her mother, and found the older woman hunched in a ball on the floor. Her scraps of clothing barely covered her nude, bloated and blue body. The dribbles of blood that came from her nose and her split lip had crusted into dark brown and red rivulets on her white face. Her throat was swollen and bruised where the man had throttled her, and her fat thighs looked like ham. Nini hadn't needed to touch her to know that she was dead.
She left the tiny shack, and began whoring on her own. It wasn't hard; there were more than enough perverts in Paris who liked girls young enough to be their granddaughters. And she found that she could take her mind away enough to simply moan every once in a while - or shriek, if they liked to think of it as rape. She wasn't paid well, but she could lie there and think of the loving family and the cups of tea in the golden palace in India.
Slowly, precariously, she made it to adulthood. She was scrawny when she arrived at the Moulin Rouge, but quick-witted and determined to survive. No one was going to stop her from making all the money she could and survivng as best as she knew how. She was sixteen now, and had whored on her own for six years. She'd lived her whole life on the streets, and knew how to make deals and how to survive on less food than any of these pampered concubines had thought possible. She was willing to do anything, and soon the other Diamond Dogs learned to tell difficult customers that if they wanted a girl to do this, a girl to do that, they could talk to Nini.
They were cruel to her at first. "Nini doesn't have any standards," they'd say to one another. Or, to her face, "What was it like, drinking men's urine for money? I heard you used to enjoy it." She curse at them in Basque, the only decent thing she'd ever learned from her mother, and they'd call her a witch. "Did you hear Nini screaming at me the other day?" They'd whisper, when they thought she wasn't paying attention. "I found a pimple behind my ear this morning - I bet it's her fault!"
That was five years ago. She'd begun drinking too much absinthe shortly after, and for three years had fallen into a sort of trance. Absinthe was easy enough to get, cheap, and took her mind away. She'd dance, and she'd take clients as she had before. But if you'd asked her her favorite color, or what she would like for dinner, she wouldn't have been able to tell you. She was a machine for three years, surviving only because she was high. She spent her dreams on absinthe dreaming of India, where she could smoke opium and drink tea, and where a handsome prince - who had replaced the loving family - would take her as his wife, but never ask to sleep with her.
She thought of India all the time. It was her first thought in the morning, as she rolled over and contemplated getting out of bed. When they rehearsed during the day, she thought of the golden palace, where other people would dance for her. As she drank the absinthe, she'd think of inahling opium, and at mealtimes, dark Indian tea would replace the watery milk they gave her. When a man lay grunting and straining above her, her little moans were directed at the handsome prince. She lived in a dreamworld, and hoped fervently never to leave. She rarely spoke, and soon the other girls took no notice of her, except when she was held up as an example of how to dance correctly or at night, when they combed one another's hair.
Dance was the only thing Nini truly enjoyed. She learned it extremely quickly - all kinds of dance. She could waltz and can can and anything else anyone asked of her. She was not especially pretty, being still far too skinny - she wasn't fragile like Satine, she was too bony for that - and her eyes too big. They were huge, dark eyes, almost black in her pale face. The absinthe made her features more exaggerated, and the enormous black eyes looked so heavy against her white skin. Her body was scrawny, though she ate as much as any other girl, and she had to wear taller shoes because she was so short. Her hair was long and black and silky, and it was her one vanity. It was the kind of hair men would kill to touch, like satin or jewels in different lights.
The day she awoke from her trance - after three years of it -had been a year ago. It had been the day the Argentinean had arrived.
She didn't love him, not exactly. She had long since given up on being able to love anyone. She had trid long ago, to love her mother, and not succeeded because her mother had not wanted to love her. She'd tried to love men on the street, but they'd wanted only to use her and then move on. She tried loving the other girls at the Moulin Rouge, but there was too much competition for love. She'd fallen in love with the handsome prince in her mind, and she wanted him and only him. She knew, deep in her heart, that someday he'd take her away to India. He'd find her, then whisk her away.
And one day, he'd arrived. He hadn't been quite what she'd expected; a little too tall, his beard too thick, his accent a little strange. But he was the first foreigner Nini had ever encountered, and she was entranced by him. He'd stood, aloof, at the edge of the dance floor, and simply watched. And it was like a switch was flipped in her mind. Suddenly, the last three years were gone, and she had only this moment. Her Indian prince had arrived, and if he noticed her, he'd love her. He'd take her with him, away across the seas, to the desert. They'd drink tea and together they'd live among golden latticework like Satine's elephant.
She was so caught up in watching him that she didn't even notice him watching her. She didn't realize they were dancing together until it happened, and then it was so sudden and wonderful that she couldn't stop it had she wanted to. She didn't know the steps, but he knew exactly what he was doing, and she learned them easily as they went, without even trying. At the end, she stood, breathless, looking at him and blinking like a small girl who'd just found out what sex was.
He had to be a good fifteen years older than her, and now that she looked at him more closely, he was Spanish, not Indian. He had a beard, dark hair, olive skin. Eyes the color of molasses, fringed with thick black lashes. Heavy dark eyebrows, like two caterpillars, hung over his eyelids. He spoke with a thick accent, but it was still easier to understand him than it had been to understand her own mother.
"In my country," he said, "we call that dance the tango." His voice was a little ragged, a deep bass, but like raw silk. "I did not know anyone in Paris knew it."
She remembered to breathe, and took a huge lungful of air that caused her to cough momentarily. "I don't," Nini contradicted when she'd once more caught her breath. They stood apart, like children caught at playing some game they did not understand the sexual connotations of. His arms were at his sides, and hers floated about uselessly. She didn't know what to do with them, and finally settled with lowering them to her sides, in a vague imitation of him.
"Then you learn fast," he replied after a moment. She was painfully aware of the distance between them. "I will teach you more, if you'd like." She responded that she would.
It was only natural that they become lovers. The first few times he paid, but after that she stopped insisting that he do so. She didn't have a room to herself like some girls - she hadn't risen that far yet - but most of the other girls she roomed with had lovers, so no one minded leaving when she brought him in.
They made love the way they danced. It was hot and fast and left them both aching for each other. She longed to have his arms about her, and when they were together, she forgot about whoring and about Zidler and the Moulin Rouge. When they were together, she forgot about the Indian prince. He was all she really needed to be complete. They would dance and make love and when she awoke, she'd wake him and send him away.
He brought her tea one day, and it jolted her out of her second trance. As she sat awake afterwards, staring out the window, she thought again of India. She glanced at his beautiful, naked form as he slept beside her. She stole a single cigarette from his pocket and smoked it slowly, looking down at Paris. Her room was all hers now, and very high up. She was naked, staring out of the window at the streets below. In the dawn light, few people bustled about. He awoke and came to stand behind her, wrapping his arms around her. She sucked in some more smoke and blew it out. She stubbed the cigarette, hard, into her wrist.
He caught her hand and pulled it away, but the damage was done, the burn harsh and red on her white wrist. It flamed there like a pair of lips on pale skin, lipstick smudged at the end of the night. He scolded her for her carelessness even as he pulled his trousers on.
"Do you love me?" She asked.
"That's not important," he said, wrestling with his suspenders. He had to be gone in the next few minutes, before Madam Zidler came to wake her and found a man there.
"Of course it is," she told him. Her voice cracked as she continued, "Everyone loves someone. It's a natural thing to do. If you don't, there's something wrong with you."
"All right then," he muttered, stuffing his wallet into his pocket. "I love you." He walked over to her, his stride heavy on the wood floor. He put his hands on her shoulders and forced her eyes to meet his. "Are you happy now?"
"Yes," she murmered moodily, looking away. "Very." He left.
She didn't love him. She was obsessed with him, rather. It had begun the moment she saw them, climaxed when they began to dance, and every day, her obsession built. She would have climbed moutains for him, would have sold herself to the devil himself if he asked her to. Whenever he was around, she became more vocal, trying to show off the cleverness they both knew she had. Most of the time, he enjoyed her sharp tongue, played mind games with her to see which could outwit the other.
But Satine ruined it all. After she died, he came to her room one last time. They made love, then sat under the dirty sheets in her mahogany bed. The mattress squeaked as he moved. She'd never noticed that before. They both smoked cigarettes, and she sipped a cup of the tea he'd bought her. It wasn't great tea, but then, she'd never had tea before, and like the Argentinean and the Indian prince, the tea couldn't possibly live up to the tea she'd imagined.
"You didn't have to be so mean to them, Nini," he told her. "They were foolish, but they were both younger than we are. Impressionable. Still learning," he took a drag off his cigarette. "You were heartless."
Something in the way he said it bothered her. "Well, perhaps I am a heartless woman," she told him.
"Perhaps you are," he said, climbing out of the bed and picking his clothing up off the floor. And in that moment, in his swift, easy movement, she knew the truth. She wrapped the blankets around her - it was winter again, and cold, even with the fireplace in her room.
"You lied when you said you loved me." He didn't reply, simply continued dressing methodically. "Answer me," she screamed, flinging the teacup at him. It smashed on the wall behind him, the tea making a dark stain on the cracked yellowing paint. The tiny pieces of white and red china fell to the floor, making small clinking noises as they hit the heavily polished wood.
"I did love you, when I first saw you. Before I knew what you are," he spat, as if he hated her. He looked at her, and his gaze was heavy with the venom. "But I could never love a prostitute." And again, he left, stepping gingerly over the crushed pieces of china on the floor, the small puddle of tea that was collecting there.
She lay in the darkness. A few lights lit the room through her window. She'd already contemplated jumping out of it, or shooting herself with the small silver gun she knew Zidler kept in his office. She'd thought about slitting her wrists with a knife from the kitchen, or maybe hanging herself with her bedsheets - they still smelled of him, of their nights together.
Instead, she lowered the cigarette to her too-red lips, and inhaled. She removed it, exhaled, and watched the smoke blow up towards the ceiling. India would be warm this time of year. They'd welcome a woman with her kind of complexion - India was so dusty, everyone had to have terrible skin. She'd drink tea and get high on opium. She'd wear a beautiful red sari and bathe every day. She'd find her Indian prince and they'd live in a golden palace together.
But she would not love him.
Finis.