The Lowland (13 page)

The layout of the house was disorienting. The whitewash was so fresh that it rubbed off on his hand when he touched the walls. In spite of the new construction, the house felt unwelcoming. There was more space to withdraw to, to sleep in, to be alone in. But no place had been designated to gather together, no furniture to accommodate guests.

The terrace on the top floor was where his parents preferred to sit, the only part of the house they seemed fully to possess. It was here that, after his father returned from work, they took their evening tea, on a pair of simple wooden chairs. At that height the mosquitoes were fewer, and when the current failed there was still some breeze. His father didn’t bother to unfold the newspaper. His mother had no sewing in her lap. Until it grew dark, through the pattern of the trefoil grille, they looked out at the neighborhood; this seemed to be their only pastime.

If the houseboy was out on an errand, it was Gauri who served tea. But she never joined them. After helping his mother with the morning chores she kept to her own room, on the second floor of the house. He noticed that his parents did not talk to her; that they scarcely acknowledged her presence when she came into view.

Belatedly he was presented with his gifts for Durga Pujo. There was gray material for trousers, striped material for shirts. Two sets of each, for he was also given Udayan’s share. More than once, offering him a biscuit, asking if he needed more tea, his mother called him Udayan instead of Subhash. And more than once he answered, not correcting her.

He struggled to interact with them. When he asked his father how his days were at the office, his father replied that they were as they’d always been. When he asked his mother if there had been many orders that year, to embroider saris for the tailor shop, she said her eyes could no longer take the strain.

His parents asked no questions about America. Inches away, they avoided looking Subhash in the eye. He wondered whether his parents would ask him to remain in Calcutta, to abandon his life in Rhode Island. But there was no mention of this.

Nor was there mention of the possibility of their arranging a marriage
for him. They were in no position to plan a wedding, to think about his future. An hour often passed without their speaking. The shared quiet fell over them, binding them more tightly than any conversation could.

Again it was assumed that he would ask little of them, that somehow he would see to his own needs.

In the early evening, always at the same time, his mother gathered a few flowers from the pots in the courtyard and left the house. From the terrace he saw her, walking past the ponds.

She stopped at the marker by the edge of the lowland, rinsing the stone clean with water she drew from a small brass urn, the one she had used to bathe him and Udayan when they were small, and then she placed the flowers on top. Without asking, he knew that this was the hour; that this had been the time of day.

On the family radio they listened to the news of East Pakistan turning into Bangladesh after thirteen days of war. For Muslim Bengalis it meant liberation, but for Calcutta the conflict had meant another surge of refugees from across the border. Charu Majumdar was still in hiding. He was India’s most wanted man, a bounty of ten thousand rupees on his head.

Silently they listened to the reports, but his father hardly seemed to pay attention. Though the combing raids had ended, his father still kept the key to the house under his pillow when he slept. Sometimes, at random, sitting at the top of the padlocked house, he shone a flash-light through the grille, to see if someone was there.

They did not talk of Udayan. For days his name did not escape their lips.

Then one evening Subhash asked, How did it happen?

His father’s face was impassive, it was as if he hadn’t heard.

I thought he’d quit the party, Subhash pressed. That he’d drifted away from it. Had he?

I was at home, his father said, not acknowledging the question.

When were you home?

That day. I opened the gate for them. I let them in.

Who?

The police.

Finally he was getting somewhere. Some explanation, some acknowledgment. At the same time he felt worse, now that his suspicion had been confirmed.

Why didn’t you tell me he was in danger?

It would not have made a difference.

Well, tell me now. Why did they kill him?

His mother reacted then, glaring at Subhash. She had a small face, with just enough space for what it contained. Still youthful, her dark hair decorated with its bright column of vermillion, to signify that she had a husband.

He was your brother, she said. How can you ask such a thing?

The next morning, he sought Gauri out, knocking on the door of her room. Her hair had just been washed. She was wearing it loose to let it dry.

In his hand was a paperback book he’d bought for her at Udayan’s request.
One-Dimensional Man
, by Herbert Marcuse. He gave it to her.

This is for you. From Udayan. He’d asked me.

She looked down at the cover, and then at the back. She opened it and turned to the beginning. For a moment it seemed she’d begun to read it already, her face settling into a placid expression of concentration, forgetting that he was there.

Standing at her doorway, he felt that he was trespassing. He turned to leave.

You are kind to bring it, she said.

It was no trouble.

He wanted to talk to her. But there was nowhere in the house where they might have a conversation alone.

Shall we go for a walk?

Not now.

She stepped to one side and pointed to a chair in the room.

He hesitated, then entered. It was dim, until Gauri pushed open
the shutters of the two windows, admitting a stark white glow. A square of sunlight fell onto the bed, a calm bright patch containing the vertical shadows of the window bars.

The bed was low to the floor, with slender posts. There was also a short armoire, and a small dressing table with a bench. Instead of powders and combs there were notebooks, fountain pens, bottles of ink. The room smelled sharply of teak, emanating from the furniture. He could smell the fragrance of her freshly washed hair.

The light is nice, he said.

Only now. In a few minutes the sun will be too high and the angle will be lost.

He glanced at a set of shelves built into one wall, where she stored her books. Wedged among them was the shortwave radio. He pulled it out, not bothering to turn it on, but fiddling instinctively with one of the dials.

We put this together.

He told me.

Do you listen to it?

He was the only one who could get it to work. Would you like it back?

He shook his head, and replaced it on the shelf.

She perched on the edge of the bed. He saw other books spread open, facedown, covered in smooth brown paper. She had written the titles at the center, in her own hand. He watched as she retrieved an old section of newspaper and began to wrap the cover of the book he’d given her. He and Udayan used to do this together, after buying their new schoolbooks for the year.

No one does that over there.

Why not?

I don’t know. Maybe the covers are more durable. Or maybe they don’t mind them looking old.

Was it hard to find?

No.

Where did you get it?

In the campus bookstore.

Is it far from where you live?

Just around the corner.

You can walk there?

Yes.

The paper feels different. Smooth.

He nodded.

Do you stay at a hostel?

I have a room in a house.

Is there a mess hall?

No.

Who cooks for you, then?

I do.

Do you like living on your own?

Unexpectedly he thought of Holly, and the dinners at her kitchen table. That brief turbulence in his life felt trivial now. Like stones he would stop to gather in Rhode Island, that he would briefly clasp and then toss back into the sea when he walked along the beach, he’d let her go.

Still, he wondered now what she would have made of this sad and empty house, this swampy enclave south of Calcutta where he’d been raised. He wondered what she would have made of Gauri.

He asked Gauri about her studies, and she told him she’d completed her bachelor’s in philosophy earlier in the year. It had taken longer than it should have. It had been difficult, because of the unrest. She said that she’d been considering a master’s program, before Udayan was killed. Before she learned she was pregnant.

Did Udayan know he was going to be a father?

No.

Her waist was still narrow. But Udayan’s ghost was palpable within her, preserved in this room where she spent all her time. When she spoke of him it was an evocation of him. She had not shut down as his parents had.

When will the baby be born?

In summer.

How is it for you here in the house? With my parents?

She said nothing. He waited, then realized he was staring at her, distracted by a small dark mole on the side of her neck. He looked away.

I can take you somewhere else, he suggested. Would you like to visit your family for a while? Your aunts and uncles?

She shook her head.

Why not?

For the first time a smile nearly came to her face, the uneven smile he remembered from the photograph, slightly favoring one side of her mouth. Because I ran off and married your brother, she said.

Even now they don’t want to see you?

She shrugged. They’re nervous. I don’t blame them. I might compromise their safety, even your parents’ safety, who knows?

But surely there’s someone?

My brother came to see me after it happened. He came to the funeral. He and Udayan were friends. But it’s not up to him.

Can you tell me something else?

What do you want to know?

I want to know what happened to my brother, he said.

Chapter 2

It was the week before Durga Pujo. The month of Ashvin, the first phase of the waxing moon.

At the tram depot, Gauri and her mother-in-law hired a cycle rickshaw to take them home. They settled themselves on the bench of the rickshaw, packets and bags on their laps and heaped at their feet. They were returning from a day of shopping, a little later than they’d intended.

The packets contained gifts for extended family, also for themselves. New saris for Gauri and her mother-in-law, Punjabis and pajamas for her father-in-law, shirt and trouser material to clothe Udayan the following year. New sheets to sleep on, new slippers. Towels to dry their bodies, combs to untangle their hair.

As they approached the mosque at the corner her mother-in-law told the driver to slow down and turn left. But the driver stopped pedaling, telling them that he was unwilling to travel off the main road.

Pointing to all the bags and packets, her mother-in-law offered to pay more. But still the driver refused. He shook his head, waiting for them to disembark. So they finished the journey on foot, carrying the things they’d bought.

The lane hooked to the right, past the pandal in their enclave, the deities adorned but unattended. No families were walking about. Soon the two ponds across from their house came into view.

On the bank of the first pond Gauri saw a van belonging to the Central Reserve Police. Policemen and soldiers stood here and there, in their khaki uniforms and helmets. Not many, but enough of them to form a loose constellation wherever she looked.

No one stopped them from walking through the swinging wooden doors into the courtyard. They saw that the iron gate, located at the side of the house, was open. The key was dangling in the padlock, opened in haste.

They removed their street slippers and set down their bags.
They began to climb the first set of steps. Halfway up, Gauri saw her father-in-law descending, his hands raised over his head. He hesitated before lowering each foot, as if afraid of losing his balance. As if he’d never walked down a set of steps before.

An officer followed him. He was pointing a rifle at his back. Gauri and her mother-in-law were instructed to turn around, to walk back downstairs. So there was no opportunity to go further into the house, to see the rooms that had been overturned. Clothes knocked off the lines strung along the terrace where they had been hung to dry that morning, wardrobe doors flung open. Pillows and quilts pulled off the beds, coals dumped from the coal basket, lentils and grains tossed out of Glaxo tins in the kitchen. As if they were looking for a scrap of paper and not a man.

The three of them—her father-in-law, her mother-in-law and Gauri—were ordered to exit the house, to walk through the courtyard, to step over the stone slab and back onto the street. They were told to proceed in single file, past the two ponds, toward the lowland. The rains had been heavy, and it had flooded again. Water hyacinth shrouded the surface like a moth-eaten cloak.

Gauri felt people in the surrounding homes taking in what was happening. Watching through chinks in their shutters, standing still in darkened rooms.

They were arranged in a row. They stood close together, their shoulders touching. The gun was still trained on her father-in-law.

She heard a conch shell blowing, the ringing of a bell. The sounds carried in from another neighborhood. Somewhere, in some house or temple, someone was praying, giving offerings at the end of another day.

We are under orders to locate and arrest Udayan Mitra, said the soldier who seemed to be commanding the others. He announced this through a megaphone. If anyone in this locality knows where he is hiding, if anyone is harboring him, you are required to step forward.

No one said anything.

My son is in America, her mother-in-law said quietly. A lie that was also the truth.

The officer ignored her. He stepped over to Gauri. His eyes were a lighter brown than his skin. He studied her, pointing his gun at her,
moving it closer until she was no longer able to see it. She felt the tip, a cold pendant at the base of her throat.

You are the wife of this family? The wife of Udayan Mitra?