The Lowland (18 page)

I like your outfit, the girl said, getting up to go.

Thank you.

But watching the girl walk away, Gauri felt ungainly. She began to want to look like the other women she noticed on the campus, like a woman Udayan had never seen.

April came, students welcoming the sunshine, gathering on the quadrangle and along the ledge of the student union, white blossoms filling the trees. On Friday afternoons she saw undergraduates lined up outside the union, with small suitcases or backpacks, sacks of dirty laundry. They boarded enormous silver busses that took them away for the weekend. They went to Boston, or Hartford, or New York City. She gathered that they went home to see their parents, or to visit their boyfriends and girlfriends, staying away until Sunday night.

Though she had no one to see off, she liked to observe this ritual egress, watching the driver place the passengers’ luggage into the belly of the bus, watching the students settle into their seats. She wondered what the places they were going to were like.

You getting on? one of them asked her once, offering to help her.

She shook her head, stepping away from the crowd.

The health service at the university referred her to an obstetrician in the town. Subhash drove her there, sitting in the waiting room while a silver-haired man named Dr. Flynn examined her. His complexion was pink, looking tender despite his years. As a nurse stood in the corner of the room he explored tactfully inside her.

How are you feeling?

Fine.

Sleeping at night?

Yes.

Eating for two? Feeling kicks throughout the day?

She nodded.

That’s only the start of the trouble they’ll give, he said, smiling, telling her to come back a month later.

What did he say? Subhash asked, when the appointment was over, and they were in the car again.

She conveyed what Dr. Flynn had said, that the baby was now about a foot long, that it weighed around two pounds. Its hands were active, its eyes sensitive to light. The organs would continue to develop: the brain and the heart, the lungs, preparing for life outside of her.

Subhash drove to the supermarket, telling her they needed a few things. He asked her to join him, but she told him she’d wait in the car. He left the key in the ignition, so that she could listen to the radio. She opened up the glove compartment, wondering what was kept inside.

She found a map of New England, a flashlight, an ice scraper, an instruction manual to the car. Then something else caught her eye. It was a woman’s hair elastic, a malleable red ring flecked with gold. One that she did not recognize as her own.

She understood that there had been someone before her, an American. A woman who’d once occupied the seat she was in now.

Perhaps it had not worked out for whatever reason. Or perhaps Subhash continued to see her, to get from her what Gauri did not give.

She left the elastic where she found it. She felt no impulse to ask him about it.

She was relieved that she was not the only woman in his life. That she, too, was a replacement. Though she was curious, she felt no jealousy. Instead she was thankful that he was capable of hiding something.

It validated the step she’d taken, in marrying him. It was like a high mark after a difficult exam. It justified the distance she continued to maintain from her new husband. It suggested that maybe she didn’t have to love him, after all.

One weekend he took her to the ocean, to show her what had given his life here its focus. Gray sand, finer than sugar. When she bent over to touch it, it spilled instantly from her fingers. It was like water, roughly rinsing her skin. Grass grew sparsely on the dunes. Gray-and-white birds paced stiffly, like old men, along the shore, or bobbed in the sea.

The waves were low, the water reddish where they broke. She removed her shoes, as Subhash did, stepping over hard stones, over seaweed. He told her the tide was coming in. He indicated the rocks, jutting out, that would be submerged in another hour’s time.

Let’s walk a bit, he suggested.

But the wind picked up and opposed them, and she stopped after a few paces, feeling too cumbersome to go on, too chilled.

Children were scattered here and there on the beach, bundled in jackets, climbing the rocks, running on the sand. It was still too cold to swim, but they dug trenches and craters, lying flat, legs spread. They decorated piles of mud with stones. Watching them, she wondered if her child would play this way, do such things.

Have you thought of a name? he asked. It was as if he’d read her mind.

She shook her head.

Do you like Bela?

She was bothered not by the name but by the fact of his suggesting it. But it was true, she had not thought of one.

Maybe, she said.

I can’t think of any boys’ names.

I don’t think it will be one.

Why not?

I can’t imagine it.

Does it help at all, Gauri?

What?

Being here? Any of this?

At first she didn’t answer. Then she said, Yes, it helps to be away.

Your brother was supposed to be here, she added. This child should have been his responsibility, whether he wanted it or not.

I’ll make it mine, Gauri. I’ve promised you that.

She was unable to express her gratitude for what he’d undertaken. She was unable to convey the ways he was a better person than Udayan. She was unable to tell him that he was protecting her, for reasons that would cause him to regard her differently.

She looked back at the set of footprints they had made in the damp sand. Unlike Udayan’s steps from childhood, which endured in the courtyard in Tollygunge, theirs were already vanishing, washed clean by the encroaching tide.

Chapter 2

He’d begun the new semester two weeks late, catching up on his classes, moving into a furnished apartment reserved for married students and their families. He’d bought sheets to fit the double mattress, and by calling people who advertised things for sale on bulletin boards he’d set up a household for Gauri. He acquired a few more dishes and pans, a potted jade plant, a black-and-white television on a wobbly cart.

All he saw of her body were glimpses when she came out of the bathroom after a shower. After Richard, he was used to sharing a space with another person while keeping to himself. In the evenings he removed the clothes he would wear the next day from the drawers in the bedroom, so that he would not disturb her in the mornings.

At night he was sometimes aware of her door opening. She went to the bathroom, she got herself a glass of water. He held his body still as the stream of her urine fell. In the light of early morning, he saw her hair unsprung from its customary knot, tensile, suspended like a serpent from the branch of a tree. She walked through the living room as if it were empty, as if he were not there.

He trusted that things would change, after the baby came. That the child would bring them together, first as parents, then as husband and wife.

Once, in the middle of the night, he heard her locked inside a nightmare. Her animal whimpering startled him; it was the sound of a scream stifled by a clenched jaw, a closed mouth. An articulate but wordless fury. He lay on the sofa, listening to her suffer, listening to her reliving his brother’s death, perhaps. Waiting for her terror to pass.

He ran into Narasimhan, and because Narasimhan asked, he told him his news. That he was nearly finished with his course work, that later in the spring he would take his qualifying exam. That his brother had died in India. That he had a wife now, that she was expecting. He did not reveal the connection, that he had married his brother’s wife.

He was unwell?

He was killed.

How?

The paramilitary shot him. He was a Naxalite.

I’m sorry. It’s a terrible loss to bear. But now you’ll be a father.

Yes.

Listen, it’s been too long. Why don’t you and your wife come to dinner one day?

He had the directions written on the back of an envelope. He got a little lost on unfamiliar roads. The house was in the woods, down a shaded dirt path, without a proper lawn, with no other homes in view.

They were one of a number of Indian couples at the university that Narasimhan and Kate had invited. A few of them already had children, who went off to play with Narasimhan’s boys, running along a deck that wrapped around two sides of the house. Subhash and Gauri were introduced to the other couples, mostly graduate students in engineering, in mathematics, and their wives. A number of the women had brought offerings of dishes they’d cooked, dals and vegetables and samosas, tasty accompaniments to the lasagna and salad that Kate had served.

The guests filled a large wood-paneled living room, standing and sitting, talking, holding their plates. Books crowded the shelves, plants hung in woven slings from the ceiling, record albums were stacked beside the turntable. There were no curtains in the windows, only views of the trees outside. On the walls were abstract paintings, bold blots of color that Kate had produced.

He was relieved to see Gauri mixing with the other women. She was wearing a pretty sari. The child was beginning to overwhelm her. He saw some of the women putting their hands on her belly. He heard them talking about children, about recipes, about organizing a Diwali festival on campus the following year. He was grateful to have arrived with her, and to know that he would be leaving with her. That they were greeted and regarded as one.

No one questioned that Gauri was his wife, or that he was soon to be the father of her child. The group wished them well, and they were sent off with an assortment of objects Narasimhan’s sons had once
used, which Kate had set aside: a folding playpen, towels and blankets, caps and pajamas that seemed meant for dolls.

In the car again, Gauri was quiet as Subhash retraced the drive. On the way there she’d read one of her books. But now that it was dark she had nothing to distract her.

The women seemed friendly. Who were they?

I don’t remember the names, she said.

The enthusiasm she’d mustered in the company of others had been discarded. She seemed tired, perhaps annoyed. He wondered if she had not really enjoyed herself, if she’d only been pretending. Still, he persisted.

Should we invite a few of them to our place, sometime?

It’s up to you.

They might be helpful, after the baby comes.

I don’t need their advice.

I meant as companions.

I don’t want to spend my time with them.

Why not, Gauri?

I have nothing in common with them, she said.

A few days later, he came home to the apartment and did not see her sitting in the living room as she usually was at that time, reading a book on the sofa, taking notes, drinking a cup of tea.

He knocked on the door to the bedroom, opening it partway when she did not answer. The room was dark, but he didn’t see her resting on the bed. He called out her name, wondering if she’d gone for a walk, though it was close to dinnertime, getting dark, and she’d mentioned nothing about going out when he’d called a few hours ago, to check in on her.

He went to the stove to put water on for tea. He wondered if she’d left him a note somewhere. A moment of panic flickered through him, wondering if something had happened to the baby. He checked the bathroom. He returned to the bedroom, this time turning on the light.

On the dressing table was a pair of scissors that he normally kept in the kitchen drawer, along with clumps of her hair. In one corner of the floor, all of her saris, and her petticoats and blouses, were lying
in ribbons and scraps of various shapes and sizes, as if an animal had shredded the fabric with its teeth and claws. He opened her drawers and saw they were empty. She had destroyed everything.

A few minutes later he heard her key in the lock. Her hair hung bluntly along her jawbone, dramatically altering her face. She was wearing slacks and a gray sweater. The clothes covered her skin, but they accentuated the contours of her breasts, the firm swell of her stomach. The shape of her thighs. He drew his eyes away from her, though already a vision had entered, of her breasts, exposed.

Where were you?

I took a bus from the union, into town. I bought a few things.

Why did you cut off your hair?

I was tired of it.

And your clothes?

I was tired of those, too.

He watched as she went into the bedroom, not apologizing for the spectacular mess she’d made, just putting away the new clothes she’d bought, then throwing the old things into garbage bags. For the first time, he was angry at her. But he didn’t dare tell her that what she’d done was wasteful, or that he found it disturbing. That such destructive behavior couldn’t have been good for the child.

That night, asleep on the couch, he dreamed of Gauri for the first time. Her hair was cut short. She wore only a petticoat and a blouse. He was under the dining table with her. He was astride her, unclothed, making love to her as he used to make love to Holly. His body combining on the hard tiled floor with hers.

He woke up, confused, still aroused. He was alone on the couch in the living room, Gauri asleep behind the bedroom door. They were married, she was his wife now, and yet he felt guilty.

He knew that it was still too soon. That it was wrong to approach her until after the baby was born. He had inherited his brother’s wife; in summer he would inherit his child. But the need for her physically—waking up from the dream, in the apartment in which they were living both together and separately, he could no longer deny that he’d inherited that also.

Chapter 3

As summer approached she began spending more time at the library, which was air-conditioned. A place where she was expected to be anonymous and industrious, concentrating on the pages before her, nothing more.

At her side was a long rectangular window, from floor to ceiling, looking out at the campus. Sunlight streamed in over treetops that had turned green and lush in a matter of weeks. From her desk she could see the surrounding woods and fields. The quadrangle was demarcated now by lengths of white rope, where white folding chairs were being arranged in rows for the commencement ceremony.