The Lowland

  It was the middle of the day, the sun directly overhead. A bright blue sky, transparent clouds. A time of day lacking mystery, only an assertion of the day itself. As if the sky were not meant to darken, the day not meant to end.

  On the plane time had been irrelevant but also the only thing that mattered; it was time, not space, she’d been aware of traveling through. She’d sat among so many passengers, captive, awaiting their destinations. Most of them, like Gauri, freed in an atmosphere not their own.

  For a few minutes Subhash turned on the car radio, listening to a man report local news, the weather forecast. She’d had an English education, she’d studied at Presidency, and yet she could barely understand the broadcast.

  Eventually she saw horses grazing, cows standing still. Homes with glass windows shut tight to block out the cold. Walls low enough to step over, forming boundaries, made of large and small stones.

  They reached a traffic light swaying on a wire. While they were stopped, he pointed left. She saw a wooden tower, rising like an internal staircase to a nonexistent building. Over the tops of pine trees, in the distance, at last, was a thin dark line. The sea.

  My campus is that way, he said.

  She looked at the flat gray road, with two ongoing stripes painted down the middle. This was the place where she could put things behind her. Where her child would be born, ignorant and safe.

  She thought Subhash would turn left, where he told her his campus was located. But when the light turned green, and he pushed the gearshift forward, they turned right.

  The apartment was on the ground floor, facing the front: a little grass, a pathway, then a strip of asphalt. On the other side of the asphalt was a row of matching apartment buildings, low and long and faced with bricks. The two of them were posed like barracks. At the end of the road was the lot where Subhash parked his car and took out the garbage. A smaller building in the lot was where one did the laundry.

  The main doors were almost always left open, held in place by large rocks. The locks on the apartment doors were flimsy, little buttons on knobs instead of padlocks and bolts. But she was in a place where no one was afraid to walk about, where drunken students stumbled laughing down a hill, back to their dormitories at all hours of the night. At the top of the hill was the campus police station. But there were no curfews or lockdowns. Students came and went and did as they pleased.

  The neighbors were other graduate student couples, a few families with young children. They seemed not to notice her. She heard only a door shutting, or the muffled ring of someone else’s telephone, or footsteps going up the stairs.

  Subhash gave her the bedroom and told her he would sleep on the sofa, which unfolded and became a bed. Through the closed door she listened to his morning routine. The beeps of his alarm clock, the exhaust fan in the bathroom. When the fan was switched off she heard a gentle swishing of water, a razor blade scraping his face.

  No one came to prepare the tea, to make the beds, to sweep or dust the rooms. On the stove he cooked breakfast on a coil that reddened at a button’s touch. Oatmeal and hot milk.

  When it was finished she heard the spoon methodically scraping the bottom of the pan, then the water he immediately ran to make it easier to clean. The clink of the spoon against the bowl, and at the same time, in a separate pan, the rattle of the egg he boiled and took away for his lunch.

  She was thankful for his independence, and at the same time she was bewildered. Udayan had wanted a revolution, but at home he’d expected to be served; his only contribution to his meals was to sit and wait for Gauri or her mother-in-law to put a plate before him.

  Subhash acknowledged her independence also. He left her with a few dollars, the telephone number to his department written on a slip of paper. A key to the mailbox, and a second key to the door. A few minutes later came the sound she waited for before getting up: the chain on the inside of the apartment, like an ugly broken bit of a necklace, sliding open, and then the door shutting firmly behind him.

  In a way it had been another flaunting of convention, perhaps something Udayan might have admired. When she’d eloped with Udayan, she’d felt audacious. Agreeing to be Subhash’s wife, to flee to America with him, a decision at once calculated and impulsive, felt even more extreme.

  And yet, with Udayan gone, anything seemed possible. The ligaments that had held her life together were no longer there. Their absence made it possible to couple herself, however prematurely, however desperately, with Subhash. She’d wanted to leave Tollygunge. To forget everything her life had been. And he had handed her the possibility. In the back of her mind she told herself she could come one day to love him, out of gratitude if nothing else.

  Her in-laws had accused Gauri, as she knew they would, of disgracing their family. Her mother-in-law had lashed out, telling her she’d never been worthy of Udayan. That perhaps he would still be alive, if he’d married another sort of girl.

  They had accused Subhash also, of wrongly taking Udayan’s place. But in the end, after denouncing both of them, they had not forbidden it. They had not said no. Perhaps they appreciated, as Gauri did, that they would no longer have to be responsible for her, that they would be free from one another. And so, though in one way she’d burrowed even more deeply into their family, in another way she’d secured her release.

  Again it had been a registry wedding, again in winter. Manash had come. Her in-laws, the rest of the family on her side, had refused. The party had opposed it, too. Like her in-laws, they expected her to honor Udayan’s memory, his martyrdom. Not knowing she was carrying Udayan’s child, Gauri not wanting anyone to know this, they had cut their ties with her. They had deemed her second marriage unchaste.

  She had married Subhash as a means of staying connected to Udayan. But even as she was going through with it she knew that it was useless, just as it was useless to save a single earring when the other half of the pair was lost.

  She’d worn an ordinary printed silk sari, with only her wristwatch and a simple chain. Put up her hair by herself. It was the first time she’d left the neighborhood, the first time since the shopping expedition with her mother-in-law that she was surrounded, invigorated by the city’s energy.

  The second time, there was no lunch afterward. No cotton quilt like the one under which she and Udayan had first lain as husband and wife, in the house in Chetla, the coolness of that evening driving them into each other’s arms, the modesty that had checked her desire quickly giving way.

  After the registration Subhash took her to apply for her passport, and then to the American consulate for her visa. The person in charge of the application congratulated them, assuming that they were happy.

  I spent my summers in Rhode Island when I was a kid, he said, after learning where Subhash lived. His grandfather had taught literature at Brown University, which was also in Rhode Island. He talked to Subhash about the beaches.

  You’ll love it there, he said to Gauri. He would try to speed up Gauri’s application. He wished them all the best.

  A few days later Subhash was gone. Again she was alone with her in-laws. Again they lived with her without speaking to her, already acting as if she were not there.

  On the evening of her flight, Manash came to accompany her to the airport and see her off. She bent down before her in-laws and took the dust from their feet. They were waiting for her to go. She stepped through the swinging wooden doors of the courtyard, over the open drain, into a taxi that Manash had called from the corner.

  She left Tollygunge, where she had never felt welcome, where she had gone only for Udayan. The furniture that belonged to her, the teak bedroom set, would stand unused in the small square room with strong morning light, the room where they had unwittingly made their child.

  Her final glimpse of Calcutta was of the city late at night. They sped past the darkened campus where she had studied, the shuttered bookstalls, the families who slept shrouded during those hours on the streets. She left behind the deserted intersecti
on below her grandparents’ flat.

  As they approached the airport, fog began to accumulate on VIP Road, turning impenetrable. The driver slowed down, then stopped, unable to continue. They seemed to be enveloped in the thick smoke of a raging fire, but there was no heat, only the mist of condensation that trapped them.

  This was death, Gauri thought; this vapor, insubstantial but un-yielding, drawing everything to a halt. She was certain this was what Udayan saw now, what he experienced.

  She began to panic, thinking she would never get out. Inch by inch they moved on, the driver pressing on his horn to avoid a collision, until finally the lights of the airport came into view. She hugged Manash and kissed him, saying she would miss him, only him, and then she gathered together her things and presented her documents and boarded the plane.

  No policeman or soldier stopped her. No one questioned her about Udayan. No one gave her trouble for having been his wife. The fog lifted, the plane was cleared for takeoff. No one prevented her from rising above the city, into a black sky without stars.

  The calendar on the kitchen wall showed a photograph of a rocky island, with space for a lighthouse and nothing more. She saw something called St. Patrick’s Day. The twentieth of March, what would have been Udayan’s twenty-seventh birthday, was officially the first day of spring.

  But the cold in Rhode Island was still severe in the mornings, the windowpanes like sheets of ice when she touched them, milky with frost.

  One Saturday, Subhash took her shopping. Music played in a large, brightly lit store. No one offered to help them, or seemed to care if they spent money or not. He bought her a coat, a pair of boots. Thick socks, a woolen scarf, a cap and gloves.

  But these things were not used. Apart from that one trip to the department store, she did not venture out. She stayed indoors, resting, reading the campus paper Subhash brought home with him each day, sometimes turning on the television to watch its insipid shows. Young women interviewing bachelors who wanted to date them. A husband and wife, pretending to bicker, then singing romantic songs.

  He suggested things she could do that were nearby: a movie at the campus film hall, a lecture by a famous anthropologist, an international craft fair at the student union. He mentioned the better newspapers one could read at the library, the miscellaneous items the bookstore sold. There were a few more Indians on campus than when he’d first arrived. Some women, wives of other graduate students, she might befriend. When you’re ready, he would say.

  Unlike Udayan’s, Subhash’s comings and goings were predictable. He came home every evening at the same time. On the occasions she called him at his lab, to say that they had run out of milk or bread, he picked up the phone. He had taught himself to cook dinner so she didn’t interfere. He would leave out the ingredients in the morning, icy packets from the freezer that slowly melted and revealed their contents during the course of the day.

  The cooking smells no longer bothered her as they did in Calcutta, but she said they did, because this provided an excuse to remain in the bedroom. For though she waited all day for Subhash to come back to the apartment, feeling uneasy when he wasn’t there, once he did, she avoided him. Afraid, now that they were married, of getting to know him, of their two lives combining, turning close.

  Eventually he would knock, saying her name to summon her to the table. It would all be ready: two plates, two glasses of water, two mounds of soft rice accompanied by whatever he had made.

  While they ate they watched Walter Cronkite at his desk, reporting the nightly news. It was always the news of America, of America’s concerns and activities. The bombs that they were dropping on Hanoi, the shuttle they were hoping to launch into space. Campaigns for the presidential election that would be held later in the year.

  She learned the names of the candidates: Muskie, McCloskey, McGovern. The two parties, Democratic and Republican. There was news of Richard Nixon, who had visited China the month before, shaking hands with Mao for the whole world to see. There was nothing about Calcutta. What had consumed the city, what had altered the course of her life and shattered it, was not reported here.

  One morning, setting down the book she was reading and turning her head to the window, she saw the sky, gray and lusterless. It was raining. It fell steadily, drearily. All day she stayed in, but for the first time she felt confined.

  In the afternoon, after the rain ended, she put on her winter coat over her sari, her boots, her hat and gloves. She walked along the damp sidewalk, up the hill, turning by the student union. She saw students going in and out, men in jeans and jackets, women in dark tights and short wool coats, smoking, speaking to one another.

  She crossed the quadrangle, past the lampposts with their rounded white bulbs on iron poles. It was milder than she expected, the gloves and hat unnecessary, the air fresh after the rain.

  On the other side of the campus she entered a little grocery store next to the post office. Among the sticks of butter and cartons of eggs she found something called cream cheese, which came in a silver wrapping, looking like a bar of soap. She bought it, thinking it might be chocolate, breaking the five-dollar bill Subhash left for her each day, filling the deep pocket of her coat with the change.

  Inside the wrapper was something dense, cold, slightly sour. She broke it into pieces and ate it on its own, standing in the parking lot of the grocery. Not knowing it was intended to be spread on a cracker or bread, savoring the unexpected taste and texture of it in her mouth, licking the paper clean.

  She began to explore other parts of the campus, wandering in and out of various departmental buildings, grouped around the quadrangle: the school of pharmacy, foreign languages, political science and history. The buildings had names: Washburn, Roosevelt, Edwards. Anyone could walk in.

  She found classrooms and the offices of professors lining the halls. Bulletin boards announcing upcoming lectures and conferences, display cases with books that professors at the university had published. There was no guard preventing her, questioning her. No armed soldiers sitting on sandbags, as they had for months outside the main building at Presidency.

  The day Robert McNamara had visited Calcutta, a year after the Naxalbari uprising, communist protesters at the airport forced him to take a helicopter into the center of the city. They would not let his car pass. She’d been on her campus that day. As the helicopter was flying over College Street, students had hurled stones from the roof of one of the campus buildings. They had locked the vice-chancellor of Calcutta University into his office. She’d seen trams being burned.

  One day she found the philosophy department. She came upon a large lecture hall with rows of descending seats. The doors were still open as students continued filing in. She took a seat at the very back, high enough so that she was looking down at the top of the professor’s head. Close enough to the door so that she could slip out if she needed to. But after her long walk, feeling heavy, she was grateful to sit down.

  Peering at the syllabus of the student next to her, she saw that it was an undergraduate course, an introduction to ancient Western philosophy. Heraclitus, Parmenides, Plato, Aristotle. Though most of the material was familiar, she sat for the full class period. She listened to a description of Plato’s doctrine of recollection, in which learning was an act of rediscovery, knowledge a form of remembering.

  The professor was dressed casually, in a sweater and jeans. He smoked cigarettes as he lectured. He had a thick brown moustache, long hair like many of the male students. He had not bothered to call the roll.

  Students around her were also smoking, or knitting. A few had their eyes closed. There was a couple at the back, with their legs pressed together, the boy’s arm draped around the girl’s waist, stroking the material of her sweater. But Gauri found herself paying attention. Eventually, wanting to take notes, she searched in her bag for a sheet of paper and a pen. Finding no paper, she wrote her notes in the margins of the campus newspaper she’d been carrying around. Later, on a pad she found in th
e apartment, she copied over what she’d written.

  Surreptitiously, twice a week, she began attending the class. She wrote down the titles of the texts on the reading list and went to the library, borrowing Subhash’s card to check out a few books.

  She’d intended to remain anonymous, to go unnoticed. But one day while she was immersed in the lecture, her hand shot up. The professor was speaking about Aristotle’s rules of formal logic, about the syllogisms used to distinguish a valid thought from an invalid one.

  What about dialectical reasoning? One that acknowledged change and contradiction, as opposed to an established reality? Did Aristotle allow for that?

  He did. But no one paid much attention to those concepts until Hegel, the professor said.

  He’d replied as if Gauri were any legitimate member of the class. And spontaneously he altered the course of the lecture, building on her question, accommodating the point she’d made.

  She made a little routine of it, following the wave of students after the class let out to eat her lunch at the cafeteria of the student union, ordering French fries at the grill, bread and butter and tea, sometimes treating herself to a dish of ice cream.

  At one end of the cafeteria, presiding over the space, a giant clock was built into the brick wall. There were no numbers, no second hand, just pieces of metal superimposed onto the surface, the giant hour and minute hands joining and separating throughout the day.

  She kept to herself. She was Subhash’s wife instead of Udayan’s. Even in Rhode Island, even on the campus where no one knew her, she was prepared for someone to question her, to condemn her for what she’d done.

  Still, she liked spending time in the company of people who ignored but surrounded her. Who went to the terrace to unwind and talk and smoke in the sun, or who gathered indoors, in the lounges and game rooms, watching television, or playing pool. It was almost like being in a city again.

  The lounge of the women’s bathroom was an oasis: a vast private space carpeted in white, with mirrored columns, and sofas to sit on, even to lie down on, with standing ashtrays in between. It was like a waiting room in a train station, or the reception area of a hotel, larger and more accommodating than the apartment where she and Subhash lived. Here she sometimes sat, resting, leafing through the campus newspaper, observing the American women who came to touch up their lipstick or lean over to draw a brush through their hair.