"And you have not been in Villianur?"
"No."
"Or Bahur?"
I shook my head. He shook his and stared at me suspiciously. Perhaps I had committed some crime there.
"Then how did you learn it?"
"I learnt it in England."
That I was undoubtedly speaking the unhappy truth would have been obvious to any Frenchman. But to Pondicherry what I said was so obviously a gross and almost foolish piece of fiction that he shook his head disdainfully. And yet why should I lie? He spoke so rapidly that I could not follow him.
"If you speak so fast I cannot understand," I said.
"Ah, then," he replied hopefully, "it is a long time since you were there. Perhaps you were very young then?"
I once more insisted that I had never been at Pondicherry, or even in any part of India. All I said convinced him the more that I was not speaking the truth.