The Lowland

  At noon she went back to the nursery school to fetch Bela, a duty that was always hers, never Subhash’s. He had a postdoc in New Bedford, nearly fifty miles away. It was understood that he left the house at a certain hour, and returned at a certain hour, and that Gauri was responsible for Bela all the hours in between.

  She would find Bela sitting in her cubby, an enclosure that looked to Gauri like a tiny upright coffin. Her jacket on, waiting, lined up with her classmates. She did not rush into Gauri’s arms like some of the other children, seeking praise for the crinkled paintings they’d made, the leaves they’d gathered and glued onto sheets of paper. She walked over, her pace measured, asking what Gauri would make her for lunch, sometimes asking why Subhash hadn’t come. Reports of her activities at school, details that overflowed from the mouths of her classmates as soon as they saw their parents, were kept to herself.

  Together they returned to their apartment building. In the lobby Gauri unlocked the mailbox labeled Mitra that she and Subhash shared.

  In Calcutta the names were painted onto wooden boxes with the careful strokes of a fine brush. But here they were hastily scribbled, one or two of the scuffed metal doors left blank. She pulled out the bills, an issue of a scientific journal that Subhash subscribed to. Coupons from a grocery store.

  There was seldom anything addressed to her. Only an occasional letter from Manash. She resisted reading them, given what they reminded her of. Manash and Udayan, studying together in her grandparents’ flat, and Udayan and Gauri, getting to know one another as a result. A time she’d crushed between her fingertips, leaving no substance, only a protective residue on the skin.

  From Manash, also from international papers that came to the library, she received some news. At first she tried to picture what might be happening. But the pieces were too fragmentary. The blood of too many, dissolving the very stain.

  Kanu Sanyal was alive but in prison. Charu Majumdar had been arrested in his hideout, put into the lockup at Lal Bazar. He had died in police custody in Calcutta, the same summer Bela was born.

  So many of Udayan’s comrades were still being tortured in prisons. Siddhartha Shankar Ray, the current chief minister in Calcutta, was backed by Congress. He was refusing to hold enquiries on those who had died.

  News of the movement had by now attracted the attention of some prominent intellectuals in the West. Simone de Beauvoir and Noam Chomsky had sent a letter to Nehru’s daughter, demanding the prisoners’ release. But in the face of rising protest, against corruption, against failed government policies, Indira Gandhi had declared the Emergency. Censoring the press, so that what was happening was not being told.

  Even now, part of Gauri continued to expect some news from Udayan. For him to acknowledge Bela, and the family they might have been. At the very least to acknowledge that their lives, aware of him, unaware of him, had gone on.

  Chapter 5

  It had been two years since he’d written and defended his thesis, an analysis of eutrophication in the Narrow River. Nineteen seventy-six, the year of America’s bicentennial. Seven years since he’d first arrived.

  In almost five years he had not returned to Calcutta. Though his parents wrote now of wanting to meet Bela, Subhash told them that she was too young to make such a long journey, and that the pressures of his work were too great. He sent pictures from time to time, and he still sent his parents money, now that his father had retired. He sensed that they had softened, but he was not ready to face them again. In this matter, he and Gauri were allied.

  But his motivation was his own. He didn’t want to be around the only other people in the world who knew that he was not Bela’s father. They would remind him of his place, they would regard him as her uncle, they would never acknowledge that he was anything more.

  He was finishing up his postdoc in New Bedford. He’d been invited to participate in an environmental inventory. In the evenings, to earn some extra money, he taught a chemistry class at a community college in Providence.

  He’d considered moving to southern Massachusetts to be closer to his work. But his fellowship would end soon, and he’d already found a larger apartment in Rhode Island, one that was still walking distance from the main campus. There was the possibility of a lab in Narragansett hiring him. Now that Bela was attending the university nursery school, now that life there had become familiar to him, it felt simpler to stay.

  It took him about an hour to return, driving past the mills and factories in Fall River, past Tiverton, crossing the series of bridges over the bay. He crossed to the mainland, then another ten minutes or so to the quiet leafy complex, behind a row of fraternities, where they lived. Each evening when he saw Bela, she seemed slightly altered—her bones and teeth more solid, her husky voice having turned more emphatic in the hours that he’d been away.

  She’d begun to write her name, to spread the butter on her toast. Her legs were growing long, though her belly was still rounded. Her back was soft with hair, an elegant line of it running along the length of her spine. There was a perfect loop of it at the center, like the whorls of her fingertips, or in the bark of a tree. Whenever he traced it, as he washed Bela in the soapy tub before bed, the hairs rearranged themselves, and the pattern dissolved.

  Though she’d learned to tie her laces she could not tell her left foot from her right. Other gestures of her infancy lingered—the way she reached out and opened and closed her fist when she wanted something. A glass of water, for example, that was out of reach.

  She was afraid of thunder, and even when there was none, sometimes woke up in the middle of the night, calling out for him, or simply walking into the room he shared with Gauri and tucking herself beside him in bed. In the mornings, on the verge of waking, she would lie on her stomach, legs tucked in, crouched over like a little frog.

  Every night, at Bela’s insistence, he lay with her until she fell asleep. It was a reminder of their connection to each other, a connection at once false and true. And so night after night, after helping her brush her teeth and changing her into her pajamas, he switched off the light and lay beside her. Bela instructed him to turn and face her, to lock eyes with her so that their breath mingled. Look at me, Baba, she whispered, with an intensity, an innocence, that overwhelmed him. Sometimes she held his face in her hands.

  Do you love me?

  Yes, Bela.

  I love you more.

  More than what?

  I love you more than you love me.

  That’s impossible. That’s my job.

  But I love you more than anybody loves anybody.

  He wondered how such powerful emotions, such superlative devotion, could exist in such a small child. Patiently he waited until she lowered her eyelids and became still. Her body always twitching a little; this was the sign that deep sleep, within seconds, was near.

  Every night, though the same thing happened, it came as a shock. A few minutes ago Bela would have been leaping off the bed, her laughter filling up the room. But when she closed her eyes that cessation of activity felt as unsettling, as final, as death.

  Some nights he, too, fell asleep briefly beside Bela. Carefully he removed her hands from the collar of his shirt, and adjusted the blanket on top of her. Her head was thrust back on the pillow, in a combined posture of pride and surrender. He’d experienced such closeness with only one other person. With Udayan. Each night, extracting himself from her, for a moment his heart stopped, wondering what she would say, the day she learned the truth about him.

  On Saturdays he and Bela went to the supermarket; this was their time alone together outside the apartment, a time he looked forward to more than any other in the course of the week. She no longer fit into the seat at the front of the cart, and now she hung on to the back as he steered, hopping off to help him choose the apples, a box of cereal, a jar of jam.

  Faster, she would insist, and sometimes, if the aisle was empty, he obliged, sprinting forward, playing along. In this sense Udayan had marked her, leaving
behind an exuberant replica of himself. And Subhash loved this about her; that there was such a liberal outpouring of who she was.

  Standing with him at the deli, she ate little cubes of cheese speared onto toothpicks, the spoons of potato salad set out on trays, pink wedges of ham. There was a cafeteria at the back of the supermarket, and here he treated her to a hot dog and a cup of punch, a plate of onion rings to share.

  One day, crossing the parking lot after they’d finished shopping, pushing the cart filled with brown paper bags, he saw Holly.

  Bela was still clinging to the back of the cart, facing him. It was a cold autumn day, the sky bright, the wind off the ocean strong.

  For so many years he had been careful to avoid places where he might run into her, no longer visiting the salt pond that was closest to her house, making sure her car was not parked at the beach where they’d first met.

  But now he saw her, in a place he came every week without fail. She was accompanied not by Joshua but by a man. He had his arm around Holly’s waist.

  The man was her husband, the same face in the photograph in Joshua’s room. Older now, going gray, his hairline receding.

  She appeared relaxed with this man who had once forsaken her, who had betrayed her. She was unaware of Subhash. He heard her laughter as they crossed the parking lot, and saw her tossing back her head. He’d been in his twenties when he knew her. She would be over forty now; Joshua would be fourteen, old enough to stay at home by himself while his mother and father went shopping.

  The years between them hadn’t mattered to Subhash. But he wondered if she’d broken it off because of this; because he’d been immature, in no position to replace the man now once more at her side.

  They began walking together toward the supermarket, Holly slowing down, seeing him, waving now in recognition, still approaching. Her blond hair was cut differently, in layers around her face. Wearing clogs, flared trousers, a cowl-necked sweater, clothing for colder weather. Otherwise she was unchanged.

  What are you looking at, Baba?

  Nothing.

  Let’s go, then.

  He was unable to move forward. And it was too late to avoid her now.

  Bela stepped off the back of the cart and stood next to him. He felt her leaning against his hip. He smoothed her hair, and sought the warmth at the base of her throat. Her face was still small enough for him to cup most of it in his hand.

  Subhash, Holly said. You have a little girl.

  Yes.

  I had no idea. This is Keith.

  This is Bela.

  They shook hands. Subhash wondered if Keith knew about the time he and Holly had spent together. Holly was taking Bela in, admiring her.

  How long have you been married?

  About five years.

  You decided to stay here, after all.

  I did. Joshua is well?

  Up to here on me, she said, indicating his height with her hand.

  She reached out, touching his arm for an instant. She looked genuinely pleased to see him, to have met Bela. He remembered how much she’d loved listening to him talk about his childhood, about Calcutta. What had she remembered? He’d never told her that Udayan was dead.

  Good to run into you, Subhash. Take care.

  Though jealousy should not have flared, he felt its hold as they walked past him, as he pushed the cart loaded with groceries toward his car. He saw that it had not simply been for Joshua that she’d forgiven her husband. That they loved one another still.

  Subhash and Gauri shared a bed at night, they had a child in common. Almost five years ago they had begun their journey as husband and wife, but he was still waiting to arrive somewhere with her. A place where he would no longer question the result of what they’d done.

  She never expressed any unhappiness, she did not complain. But the smiling, carefree girl in the photograph Udayan had sent, that had been Subhash’s first impression of her, that he had also hoped to draw out—that part of her he’d never seen.

  And another thing was missing, something that troubled him even more to admit. He hated thinking about it. He hated remembering the terrible prediction his mother had made.

  But somehow his mother had known. For the tenderness Subhash felt for Bela, that was impossible for him to ration or restrict, was not the same on Gauri’s end.

  Though she cared for Bela capably, though she kept her clean and combed and fed, she seemed distracted. Rarely did Subhash see her smiling when she looked into Bela’s face. Rarely did he see Gauri kissing Bela spontaneously. Instead, from the beginning, it was as if she’d reversed their roles, as if Bela were a relative’s child and not her own.

  On the beach with Bela, he was aware of families who traveled to Rhode Island to reinforce their closeness. For so many it seemed a sacred rite.

  Subhash and Gauri had never gone on vacation together, with Bela. Subhash had never suggested it, perhaps because he knew that the idea wouldn’t appeal to Gauri. He spent his time off with Bela, driving with her here and there for the day. He couldn’t imagine the three of them exploring a new place together, or renting a cottage with another family, as some of his colleagues did.

  He’d hoped that by now Gauri would be ready to have a child with him, and to give Bela a companion. He’d gone so far as to suggest it one day, saying he did not want to deny Bela a sibling. He believed it would correct the imbalance, if they were four instead of three. That it would close up the distance.

  She told him she would think about it in another year or two; that she was not yet thirty, that there was still time to have a child.

  And so he continued hoping, though every month, in the medicine cabinet, was a new packet of birth-control pills.

  At times he feared that his one act of rebellion, marrying her, had already failed. He’d expected more resistance from her then, not now. He wondered sometimes if she regretted it. If the decision had been made in error, in haste.

  She’s Udayan’s wife, she’ll never love you, his mother had told him, attempting to dissuade him. At the time he’d stood up to her, convinced it could be otherwise, and that he could make Gauri happy. He’d been determined to prove his mother wrong.

  In order to marry Gauri he’d compromised his ties to his parents, perhaps permanently, he did not know. But he was a father now. He could no longer imagine a life in which he had not taken that step.

  Chapter 6

  Play with me, Bela would say.

  If Subhash was not there she sought out Gauri’s companionship, instructing her to sit on the floor in Bela’s room. She wanted her to move pieces along a board, or help to dress and undress her dolls, tugging the clothes on and off their unyielding plastic limbs. She spread dozens of identical cards facedown, a memory game in which they were supposed to locate matching pairs.

  At times Gauri capitulated, holding on to a book she was reading, stealing glances while it was Bela’s turn. She played, but it was never enough.

  You’re not paying attention, Bela protested, when Gauri’s mind strayed.

  She sat on the carpet, conscious of Bela’s reproach. She knew that a sibling might relieve her of the responsibility to entertain Bela this way. She knew that this was partly what motivated people to have more than one child.

  She did not tell Subhash, when he brought it up with her, what she already knew: that though she had become a wife a second time, becoming a mother again was the one thing in her life she was determined to prevent from happening.

  She slept with him because it had become more of an effort not to. She wanted to terminate the expectation she’d begun to sense from him. Also to extinguish Udayan’s ghost. To smother what haunted her.

  Nothing in their lovemaking had reminded her of Udayan, so that, in the end, the fact that they had been brothers was not so strange. There was the focus of seeking pleasure, and the numbing effect, once they were finished, removing all specific thoughts from her brain. It ushered in the solid, dreamless sleep that otherwise eluded her.
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  His body was a different body, more hesitant but also more attentive. In time she came to respond to it, even to crave it, as she had craved odd combinations of food when she was pregnant. With Subhash she learned that an act intended to express love could have nothing to do with it. That her heart and her body were different things.

  She’d seen signs in the student union advertising babysitters, services provided by students and professors’ wives. She began writing down some names and phone numbers.

  She asked Subhash if they could hire somebody, to give her time to take a survey of German philosophy that met twice a week. Though Bela was five now, in kindergarten, she still attended school for only half the day. Gauri said that this was a reasonable solution, given that Subhash was busy, given that they knew no one else who could help.

  He told her no. Not for the money it would cost but on principle, not wanting to pay a stranger to care for Bela.

  It’s common here, she said.

  You’re home with her, Gauri.

  Though he had encouraged her to visit the library in her spare time, to attend lectures now and again, she realized that he didn’t consider this her work. Though he’d told her, when he asked her to marry him, that she could go on with her studies in America, now he told her that her priority should be Bela.

  She’s not your child, she wanted to say. To remind him of the truth.

  But of course it was not the truth. At Bela’s ballet recital a few weeks before, Gauri saw the change in her as soon as Subhash, arriving a few minutes late, had taken his place and waved; Bela filling with the awareness of him, her chin tucked into her shoulder, bashfully performing only for him.

  A few days later she brought it up again.

  This is important to me, she said.

  Willing to compromise, he told her he would try to rearrange his schedule. He began to leave earlier on certain mornings, and return, a few days a week, by late afternoon. She registered for the class and went to the bookstore, filling a basket with books. On the Genealogy of Morals. The Phenomenology of Mind. The World as Will and Idea. She bought a packet of pens and a dictionary. A wire-bound notebook bearing the university’s seal.