On the outskirts of the French town of Menton lies a pretty, tidy little hill village called Gorbio. At the very edge of the village live Mary and her grandfather, Duke. The house had stood empty: everyone in the village knew nobody had lived there for 20 years. The owner died about 22 years ago, after which his son kept a caretaker for two years. The caretaker once had a fever for about two weeks and then went home, and no one had seen the owner's son come since. The house had been abandoned ever since.

One morning Mary and Duke moved in. They cleaned the house and began arranging it beautifully, hanging lovely pictures on the walls, with many large vases and charming, colourful curtains. But there was very little light: neither Mary nor Duke liked light much. To the one or two curious villagers who came to meet them, Duke explained that they had come with the permission of the owner's son, who lives in America. After that the villagers lost interest.

Mary is a Black girl of about sixteen or seventeen, with a bright dusky complexion, thick black curly hair and large black eyes that draw attention easily. Two days after arriving in Gorbio she took a job at a bar in Menton, and went to work neatly dressed and made up. She chatted and laughed with everyone, but she grew especially friendly with the white young men of 22 to 25 who harassed her or other Black girls, and invited them home for coffee.

Lately Mary had been making a rose garden behind the house. So far she had planted only three plants. Each had a single large rose and no other branch, and no thorns.

Then a strange incident happened in Gorbio. Harris, a 23-year-old visiting a family in the village, teased Mary as she went to work one day in an attractive short skirt and sleeveless top; a couple of village youths saw it. Instead of getting angry, Mary invited Harris home for coffee the next day. From the evening of that day, Harris could not be found.

Mary and Duke both liked to eat fish fry, juice and beer, and never ate cooked food, but cake, coffee and chocolate were always ready for guests. Every weekend one of Mary's friends would come. She usually preferred one guest at a time, but one day Floyd and Frank came together. "Grandpa, both are very special guests," Mary told Duke. "Give them plenty of cake, fruit and beer." Leaving Floyd chatting with Duke, she took Frank to see the garden, and Frank was enchanted. There were now 25 plants in the garden, one of them black. That night Duke asked how many days she would stay off work: after one guest she stayed away three days, and today two had come. Mary said five days.

So time passed in work, friendships and entertaining guests. One day Duke noted that there were now sixty plants in her garden and asked how many more she would plant. "Why, are you restless to go back?" Mary laughed. "Once there are a hundred plants, we will open the garden to everyone in the village and leave one night." Duke asked whether she had been to see her mother and little brother. With tears in her eyes, Mary said her mother had grown sicker, and Maurice, her little brother, might have to be given to missionaries or an orphan centre. Duke asked for the address, saying he would go one day as a passer-by and buy them many things. Mary's face lit up.

One day, as Mary was returning from work, two white youths on a motorbike set upon her. A young man named Sheron stepped in, protected her and saw her to the bus, asking only whether she could manage alone. She smiled sweetly and said of course, and they exchanged visiting cards.

Sheron worked as manager of a department store called Blue Angel, two kilometres from Mary's bar. One day he came to see her, and she was delighted. She offered him vodka, but he smiled and said, "Only beer." He invited her for coffee, and they met several times. Mary liked his courtesy, his modesty and the way he looked after her.

Her interest in befriending drunken, harassing white youths and inviting them home for coffee faded. Instead she began dressing more gently and modestly and lining her eyes with kohl. When Duke teased her about going back, she grew angry and said she was not thinking about any of that now.

Back from the hospital, Sheron's mother, Lucy, cooked all his favourite dishes, laying out rillettes, gougeres, escargots and ratatouille, and bought him a polo shirt, a wallet and a watch. It was his 24th birthday. Over dinner mother and son shared the week's news, from Lucy's patients to the sick son of her colleague, Sister Brownia. Sheron told his mother about Mary. Lucy wanted to see her picture, but Sheron had none to show.

Mary brought two more guests and showed them the rose garden too. After that she stayed home for ten days, unwilling to go anywhere, gripped by a sense of helplessness. Sheron went to her bar twice and was told she had not come for ten days. He got her address and came to the house one evening. Mary ran and hugged him and took him to Duke. "Grandpa, this is Sheron. He is my very good friend, a very good man." Asked whether he was a good friend or a special one, she said good and close, and asked Duke to serve him cake, fruit, chocolate, fish fry and good beer. When Duke asked whether she would show her friend the rose garden, she said no: Duke should show him.

After that they met again and again. Sheron took Mary to coffee shops and gave her small presents; she gave him wallets, perfume and fine pens. They wandered through parks and along the river. When he suggested surprising his mother at the hospital, Mary said she was not dressed well enough and would go another day in a long skirt and full-sleeved top.

Duke asked what she would do if Sheron wanted to marry her. "Let that happen first, then I will think," Mary said. "Now Sheron is a very good friend."

Meeting Mary became Sheron's daily habit. One day he asked how she felt about him. Teasing, she asked, "As what? As my little sister's husband?" "Cut out the words little sister and answer," he said. "You are without doubt a very good man," she said, her eyes filling with tears, and told him he had wounded her with love. He promised never to hurt her, and she laid her head on his shoulder.

Mary then stayed away from work for two days, and Sheron was very worried. On the third day she came to see him, saying she had been a little unwell. He took her to dinner at a small restaurant, where they ordered carrot soup, fish fry, beer and potato fries.

There Sheron told her about his life. He was his mother's only son. His father was a drinker and gambler, handsome and charming, and women liked him, but he treated Sheron's mother cruelly. She loved him and put up with everything, hoping he would change as their son grew up, but when Sheron was ten his father married another woman and left, and his mother broke down when he divorced her. A friend of hers, Uncle Jim, helped and encouraged her and became attached to her, but he had a lovely two-year-old daughter. Not wanting to bring her own pain into another person's life, she refused to marry him, and as a Catholic she did not believe in a relationship outside marriage. Since then she had lived for her son. When he turned 18 she made him promise not to have a sexual relationship with any girl without marriage or a lifelong vow before a priest. That was why he had never gone further than kissing Mary. He wanted to live with Mary and his mother until his mother's death, and his mother had asked him to bring Mary to meet her the day after next.

Mary asked why his mother would accept a Black girl as her son's wife. Sheron said he had told his mother about her, including that she was Black, and his mother had said the black snake of racism must never strike her. "Why is the world not like you?" Mary said, tearfully.

At home Mary did not say a word to Duke. After long thought she decided that, come what may, she would meet Sheron's mother, whom she badly wanted to see.

On the appointed day Mary went in a long skirt, full-sleeved top, earrings and kohl. Lucy had prepared at least 25 dishes; Mary ate only juice and fish fry. Lucy asked who else lived with her, and Mary said only her grandfather. Lucy asked whether she would agree to walk beside her son on the long road of his life. Mary said it was her great fortune, calling Sheron an enlightened and worthy man. Lucy slipped a purple diamond ring onto Mary's finger, saying her mother-in-law had given it to her, and Mary should give it to her own son's wife.

Now Mary was lost in thought. Should she leave without telling Sheron? Then he might hate Black women as deceivers for the rest of his life. Should she make him hate her instead? She turned to Duke, who told her to face the truth, for truth brings freedom.

Sheron was overjoyed, shopping for Mary every day. They went together to order a gown, along with a pearl necklace and a gold bracelet, Mary with tears in her eyes and a smile on her lips.

"No, I can't go on. This won't do. I will finish my mission instead," Mary told herself. She went to dance in Menton's busiest casino, where gamblers played fierce games, in a red bikini, red lipstick and black shorts. A gambler, Maurice Robert, jeered at her with a racist insult and asked her price for a night. She smiled suggestively, said it was free, with coffee, beer and cake, and invited him to her house. When he reached for her, she stepped back.

Searching everywhere for her, Sheron came to her workplace just as she walked in with Robert, and her appearance baffled him. Robert told him to mind his own business, saying she was his girlfriend. Sheron told him to ask the purple ring on her hand who he was. Robert seized Sheron by the collar, but Mary pushed his hand away and said Sheron's mother had given her the ring, and told Robert to go. Robert left, threatening her with the same insult, and Mary laughed with a fierce, contemptuous look.

When Sheron asked what was going on, Mary promised to tell him everything in the park the next afternoon. Sheron spent a sleepless night wondering whether she loved someone else. Towards dawn he dreamed of Mary holding a lovely baby girl, with Lucy smiling beside her, and woke to his mother's touch on his forehead.

In the park, Mary took his hand and said everything she was about to say was true. One night, she said, she had been cycling home alone at 11pm when, not far from the church, six white youths blocked her path, whistling and making obscene remarks. They began dragging her and tearing her clothes. She begged them to let her go home, telling them her mother had breast cancer and her brother was only seven. Beating her, they told her she should be pleased, and said Black people had made this beautiful world dirty. The six raped her, then strangled her and left her dead.

Early the next morning a sister from the church, Sister Fuji, found her and contacted her workplace through her office ID card; the department store where she worked informed her mother and brother. She was buried with the help of the church father. Asked whether she would file a case, her mother said, "Whom would I suspect? Would it bring my daughter back?" That night her little brother screamed all night, asking who would buy him chocolate now that his father and Mary were both gone. Her mother could not even cry aloud; she held the boy and wept silently, saying God is there and will look after them.

Unable to bear that weeping, Mary asked God for permission to return to earth for a while and for a special power: to take revenge on racist white young men. Whenever they came to rape her, she would coil round them as a snake and turn them into rose plants. God sent an angel who planted countless snake embryos in her womb. That, she said, was why she had taken bar jobs. Whenever she found a racist white youth, she brought him home and lured him behind the house. When he tried to have sex with her, countless small snakes emerged; when he tried to flee in fright, she became a huge snake, coiled around him and bit his ear, and he turned into a rose plant.

In tears, Sheron asked whether she had found any of the men who raped her. She reminded him of the two black roses he had seen in the garden with Duke: those two had raped her.

They sat silent for a while. Mary asked whether he now feared or hated her. He said no, but there was one thing he wanted to know, and she said she knew what it was.

Weeping, she told him that until she met him she had been convinced most white people hated Black people. His modesty, his respect for her and his wish to marry her despite her being Black had made her love him. Though only a spirit, she was seventeen and had never known love or family life while alive, so she had longed for them. She had thought of returning to heaven without telling him, but that would have made him hate Black people and would have deceived him, and she never wanted to hurt him. She had also thought of disappearing and entering the woman he married, but then she could not be the mother of his child, and besides, she had promised God she would return. Sheron said he would take responsibility for her little brother and look after her mother as long as she lived, and asked what she wanted. Throwing herself into his arms, Mary said she did not want to return to heaven but to stay somewhere in this world as a tree, a flower, a river or a mountain, where he could come with his wife and children and she could watch them.

Sheron went with Mary to speak to the father at the church. Having heard everything, the father called Mary inside and asked what he could do for her. The plea put to him was this: tell God she did not want to return to heaven, but to become a lake of sweet drinking water beside Rosemary Park, water that would awaken love and desire in couples, so that pure human lives would be born on earth, free of racism and communalism, who would fearlessly love all people, children, the old, flowers and birds. The father told them to come back the next day, as he would pray to God late into the night.

The next day the father embraced them both, kissed their foreheads and said, "My sweet children." Mary, crying, asked for God's will. The father said he had dreamed that God had consented to her wish, but the innocent must be freed from her rose garden. He would know them by smelling the roses.

In the garden the father found that the two black roses gave off a strange stench, and an orange rose also smelled, but the rest did not. He told Sheron to hold Mary close; touching the tears that came to her eyes would turn the others back into people. The two foul-smelling black roses remained as a sign of racist murder on earth, and the orange rose as a sign of racial hatred.

The father then took them into a corner of Rosemary Park and told Sheron to embrace Mary and kiss her deeply while he blessed her with her hand; she would depart joyfully and a lake of sweet water would spring up. Before the embrace, Mary took off the purple ring and gave it to Sheron, saying she was leaving with joy and gratitude, or rather being born as a fountain, and he must not grieve. Sheron looked at the father, who nodded that he should take the ring.

The following Sunday the whole town flocked to see the newly created fountain. The mayor of Menton invited the father to open it to the public. The father said the fountain was God's special grace, and since they had recently lost a lively teenage girl named Mary, it should be named Mary, with a statue of her beside it. Some time later a smiling statue of Mary appeared, a purple ring on the ring finger of her right hand.

Source: Jagonews24. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.