The Lowland

by Jhumpa Lahiri

  On the patio, with its wooden trellis overhead, terra-cotta tiles underfoot, she liked to sit after a long day in her study, to drink a cup of tea and sort through her bills, to feel the afternoon light on her face. To look over a sheaf of printed pages she was working on, and sometimes to eat dinner.

  In her car, when she tired of public radio, she listened to a biography or some other commercially published book she’d meant but never made time to read. But even these she borrowed from the library.

  Beyond these elements she did not tend to indulge herself. Her existence all these years, after Udayan, without Bela or Subhash, remained indulgence enough. Udayan’s life had been taken in an instant. But hers had gone on.

  Her body, in spite of its years, was as stubbornly intact as the muddy green teapot, shaped vaguely like an Aladdin’s lamp, a wedge of cork in its lid, that she’d bought for a dollar at a yard sale in Rhode Island. It still kept her company during her hours of writing. It had survived her flight to California, wrapped up in a cardigan, and served her still.

  One day, pausing to look through one of the catalogues that cluttered her mailbox, she came across a picture of a small round wooden table meant for outdoors. It wasn’t essential, and yet she picked up the phone and placed the order, having meant for too long to replace the dirty glass-topped wicker table that had been on the patio for years, covered by a series of printed cloths.

  A week or so after she’d placed the order, a delivery truck stopped in front of her building. She expected a flat heavy box, a day spent poring over an instruction manual, with a bag of nuts and bolts that she would have to tighten herself. Instead the table was delivered to her fully assembled, carried off the truck and into her home by two men.

  She told them where to put it, signed a sheet of paper to acknowledge its arrival, tipped them, and sat down. She put her hands flat on the table and smelled the strong odor of the wood. Of teak.

  She put her face to the table’s surface, inhaling deeply, her cheek against the slats. It was the smell of the bedroom furniture she’d left behind in Tollygunge, the wardrobe and dressing table, the bed with slim posts on which she and Udayan had created Bela. Ordered from an American catalogue, delivered off a truck, it had come to her again.

  The aroma of the table wasn’t as powerful, as constant, as that of the other furniture had been. But now and then it rose up as she sat on the patio, enhanced perhaps by the sun’s warmth, or circulated by the Santa Ana winds. A concentrated peppery smell that reduced all distance, all time.

  What had Subhash told Bela, to keep her away? Nothing, probably. It was the just punishment for her crime. She understood now what it meant to walk away from her child. It had been her own act of killing. A connection she had severed, resulting in a death that applied only to the two of them. It was a crime worse than anything Udayan had committed.

  She had never written to Bela. Never dared reach out, to reassure her. What reassurance was hers to give? What she’d done could never be undone. Her silence, her absence, seemed decent in comparison.

  As for Subhash, he had done nothing wrong. He had let her go, never bothering her, never blaming her, at least to her face. She hoped he’d found some happiness. He deserved it, not she.

  Though their marriage had not been a solution, it had taken her away from Tollygunge. He had brought her to America and then, like an animal briefly observed, briefly caged, released her. He had protected her, he had attempted to love her. Every time she had to open a new jar of jam, she resorted to the trick he’d taught her, of banging the edge of the lid three or four times with a spoon, to break the seal.

  Chapter 2

  In the new millennium a path was completed, an easement of a rail spur that had once taken passengers from Kingston station to Narragansett Pier.

  The course was moderate, through forest cover, skirting a river, some smaller creeks. There were benches here and there to rest on if one was tired, and at longer intervals a sign, indicating his position on the trail, perhaps also indicating a native species of tree.

  On Sunday mornings, after breakfast, he drove to the wooden train station where he had first arrived as a student, where he went on occasion to greet Bela on the platform, when she visited. Many years ago there had been a fire, but in time the station was restored and a high-speed rail put in. He parked the car and began walking, alone, through the sheltered innards of the town. At times, even now, Subhash could not fathom the extremes of his life: coming from a city with so little space for humans, arriving in a place where there was still so much of it to spare.

  He kept moving for at least an hour, sometimes a little more, for it was possible to travel six miles and back. It was the town he had lived in for more than half his life, to which he had been quietly faithful, and yet the new path altered his relationship to it, turning it foreign again. He walked past the backs of certain neighborhoods, alongside fields where schoolchildren played sports, over a wooden footbridge. Past a bog filled with cattails, past a former textile mill.

  He preferred shade these days to the coastline. He’d been born and bred in Calcutta, and yet the sun in Rhode Island, bearing down through the depleted ozone, now felt stronger than the sun of his upbringing. Merciless against his skin, striking him, especially in summer, in a way he could no longer endure. His tawny skin never burned, but the sensation of sunlight overwhelmed him. He sometimes took it personally, the enduring blaze of that distant star.

  He passed a swamp at the start of his walks, where birds and animals came to nest, where red maple and cedar grew from mossy mounds. It was the largest forested wetland in southern New England. It had once been a glacial depression, and was still bordered by a moraine.

  According to signs he stopped to read, it had also once been the site of a battle. Growing curious, he turned on his computer one day at home, and began learning, on the Internet, details of an atrocity.

  On a small island in the middle of the swamp the local Narragansett tribe had built a fort. In a camp of wigwams, behind a palisade of sticks, they had housed themselves, believing their refuge was impregnable. But in the winter of 1675, when the marsh ground was frozen, and the trees were bare, the fort was attacked by a colonial militia. Three hundred people were burned alive. Many who’d escaped died of disease and starvation.

  Somewhere, he read, there was a marker and a granite shaft that commemorated the battle. But Subhash got lost the day he set out through the swamp to find it. When he was younger he had loved nothing more than to wander like this, with Bela. He’d been compelled, back then, to follow crude directions, unmarked trails through woods, isolated with her, discovering blueberry bushes, secluded ponds in which to swim. But he had lost that confidence, that intrepid sense of direction. He felt only aware now that he was alone, that he was over sixty years old, and that he did not know where he stood.

  One Sunday, lost in his thoughts, he was surprised to see a helmeted man with a familiar face approaching on his bike, on the other side of the path, coasting to a stop.

  Jesus, Subhash. Didn’t I teach you to always keep your eyes on the road?

  Sitting astride a thin-framed ten-speed was Richard, his apartment mate from decades ago, shaking his head, smiling at him. What the hell are you still doing here?

  I never left.

  I thought you’d gone back to India after you finished. I didn’t even think to look you up.

  There was a bench nearby, and here they sat and talked. The hair under Richard’s helmet was no longer dark, a patch of it gone at the back, but what he had he still wore in a ponytail. He’d put on some weight, but Subhash recalled the handsome, wiry graduate student he’d first met, who’d reminded him in some ways of Udayan. A time before either of them had married, when they had lived with one another, and driven together to buy groceries, and shared their meals.

  Richard was married, a grandfather. After leaving Rhode Island he’d missed it, always intending someday to retire here. A year ago he and his wife, Claire,
had sold their house in East Lansing and bought a cottage in Saunderstown, not far from Subhash.

  He’d founded a center for nonviolent studies at a university in the Midwest and still served as a member of its board, though he’d managed never to wear a tie a day in his life. He was full of sundry plans—another book he was in the middle of writing, a kitchen he was trying to remodel himself, a political blog he maintained. A trip to Southeast Asia, to Phnom Penh and Ho Chi Minh City, he was planning with Claire.

  Can you believe it? he said. After all that, I’m finally going to Vietnam.

  Sitting beside him, Subhash delivered the sparse details of his own life. A wife from whom he was estranged, a daughter who had grown up and moved away. A job at the same coastal research lab he’d been with nearly thirty years. Some consulting work on oil spills from time to time, or for the town’s Department of Public Works. He was without a family, just as he’d been when he’d known Richard. But he was alone in a different way.

  Still working full-time?

  For as long as they let me.

  Still driving my car?

  Not since Nixon resigned and the transmission died.

  I always tell Claire about that curry you used to make. How you’d put onions in the blender.

  Richard had traveled to India, to New Delhi and to visit Gandhi’s birthplace in Gujarat. He’d wanted to include Calcutta, but hadn’t made it there. Maybe on the way back from Vietnam, he said.

  The next question came innocently. That brother of yours, the Naxalite. What ever happened to him?

  • • •

  He and Richard exchanged phone numbers and e-mails. They met up for a walk along the paths, or in town for a beer. Twice they’d gone fishing, casting their rods off the rocks at Point Judith, hooking sea robins, throwing back what they caught.

  Subhash would promise, whenever they parted, that the next time they’d meet would be at Subhash’s home, that Claire would come, and that Subhash would prepare a curry. He thought of planning it for one of Bela’s visits, so that Richard could meet her. But this hadn’t yet happened. The friendship remained a loose but easy bond between them, just as it had always been.

  By now he was used to Richard’s mass e-mails, announcing lectures and rallies, quoting statistics about the cost of the Iraq War, directing him to a link to Richard’s blog. He was used to the number and Richard’s last name, Grifalconi, saluting him from time to time in the little window of his telephone.

  He saw it one weekend morning as he watched a program on CNN. He turned down the volume with the remote. He did not expect the voice to belong to Richard’s wife, Claire, a woman he had not yet spoken to or met, telling him Richard had died a few days ago. A blood clot in his leg had traveled to his lungs the day after a bike ride Richard and Claire had taken together, out to Rome Point.

  Subhash put down the phone. He shut off the television. His eyes were distracted by a movement he saw through the window of his living room. It was the restlessness of birds, rearranging themselves.

  He walked to the window to have a better look. At the top of a tree in his yard, a group of them, small and loud and dark, were frantically coming and going. Taking, in winter, what nourishment the tree still had to give. There was a determined fury to their movements. An act of survival that now offended him.

  For the first time in his life Subhash entered a funeral home, kneeled down and regarded a body laid out in a coffin, neatly dressed. He observed the lack of life in Richard’s face, the facile betrayal of it, as if an expert had carved an effigy out of wax. He remembered his last glimpse of his mother, covered by a shroud.

  After the service he drove to the reception at Richard’s home, not so different from other American receptions he’d attended in his life. There was a long table with food laid out, platters of cheese and salads. People dressed in dark colors were drinking glasses of wine, carving slices from a ham.

  Claire stood at one end of the room, flanked by their children, their grandchildren, thanking people for coming, shaking their hands. Saying there had been no sign of distress until Richard complained that he felt short of breath. The next morning, he’d shaken Claire awake, pointing at the telephone, unable to speak. He’d died in the ambulance, Claire following in their car behind.

  The guests stood in circles, talking. Some photographs were taken by distant relatives for whom the gathering was a reunion as well as a funeral. For those who had traveled long distances it was an opportunity to explore Rhode Island, to drive to Newport the following day.

  Elise Silva was a neighbor.

  She came up to the sliding glass window where Subhash was standing, taking in the view of the descending birch-filled property behind Richard’s house. When he turned to look at her, she introduced herself.

  I saw Richard and Claire a few weeks ago, hand in hand like they’d just met, she said. She told him that there was a small pond behind the trees. When it froze over, Elise said, Richard and Claire would go skating with their elbows linked.

  She had olive skin, nearly as tan as his. Her hair had turned white but her brows were still dark. The hair was pulled back as Bela sometimes wore hers, a single clip fastened at the back of her head so that it would not interfere with her face. She wore a black dress with long sleeves, gray stockings, a silver chain around her neck.

  They spoke of how long they’d both known Richard. But there was another connection Elise and Subhash shared. It emerged when he told her his name, and then she asked if by any chance he was related to a student named Bela Mitra, who had taken her American history class many years ago at the local high school.

  I’m her father.

  He still felt nervous, proclaiming it that way.

  He looked at this woman who had once taught her. Elise Silva was one of so many things he had not known about his daughter, after she’d reached a certain age. He still remembered the names of some of her teachers in elementary school. But by high school it was just the report card, the list of grades he scanned.

  You don’t know me, and yet you’ve let me drive your daughter to Hancock Shaker Village, she said. She had taken Bela with a small group of other students on a field trip there.

  My ignorance is shameful. I don’t even know where Hancock Shaker Village is.

  She laughed. That is shameful.

  Why does one visit?

  She explained. A religious sect begun in the eighteenth century, dedicated to celibacy, to simple life. A utopian population whose very faith had caused their numbers to dwindle. She asked where Bela lived now.

  Nowhere. She’s a nomad.

  Let me guess, she carries her life around in a backpack, doing things to make the world a better place?

  How did you know?

  Some kids form early. They’re focused. Bela was one.

  He had a sip of wine. She had no choice, he said.

  Elise looked at him, nodding. Indicating that she knew the circumstances, that Gauri had left.

  She talked to you about it?

  No. But her teachers were told.

  Do you still teach?

  After fifty-five I couldn’t keep up with them. I suppose I needed a change.

  She worked part-time at the local historical society now, she said. She was transferring archives online, editing their newsletter.

  He told her he’d been reading about the Great Swamp Massacre. He asked if any records remained.

  Oh sure. You can even find musket balls if you poke around the obelisk.

  I tried to find it once. I got lost.

  It’s tricky. You used to have to pay a farmer who maintained the road.

  He felt tired from standing. He realized he had not eaten. I’m going to get some food. Would you like to join me?

  They approached the buffet table. Richard’s widow stood at one end. She was crying, being embraced by one of her guests.

  I went through this, years ago, Elise said. She had watched her husband die from leukemia at forty-six. He’d left he
r with three children, two sons and a daughter. The youngest had been four. After her husband’s death she’d moved with her children into her parents’ home.

  I’m sorry.

  I had my family. Sounds like, with Bela, you were on your own.

  Her daughter had married a Portuguese engineer and lived in Lisbon. It was where Elise’s ancestors were from, but she’d never visited Europe until her daughter’s wedding. Her sons lived in Denver and Austin. For a while, after she retired, she’d split her time among those places, helping out with grandchildren, going to Lisbon once a year. But she had moved back to Rhode Island about a decade ago, after her father died, to be closer to her mother.

  She mentioned a tour the following weekend, a house in the village that the historical society had restored. She handed him a postcard that was in her purse, with the details.

  He accepted the card, thanking her. He folded it to fit into his jacket pocket.

  Tell Bela hello from me, she said, leaving him with no one to talk to, turning to someone else in the room.

  After the funeral, for several nights, sometimes as late as three o’clock in the morning, he lay awake, unable to lose consciousness for any sustained period. The house was silent, the world surrounding it silent, no cars on the road at that hour. Nothing but the sound of his own breathing, or the sound his throat made if he swallowed.

  The house, always to his regret, was too far from the bay to hear the waves. But sometimes the wind was strong enough to approximate the roar of the sea as it blew inland. A violent power, insubstantial, rooted in nothingness. Threatening, as he lay unmoving under his blanket, to tear the rooms of the house from the foundation, to fell the trembling trees, to demolish the structure of his life.

  A colleague, noticing his fatigue at work, suggested getting more exercise, or a glass of wine in the evenings with dinner. A cup of chamomile tea. There were pills he could take, but he resisted this option. Already there was a pill to lower his cholesterol, another to raise his potassium, a daily aspirin to promote the passage of blood to his heart through his veins. He stored them in a plastic box with seven compartments, labeled with the days of the week, counting them out with his morning oatmeal.