The Lowland

choose any language on earth in which to speak, she would have nothing to say.
    But no, that’s not true. She remains in constant communication with her. Everything in Bela’s life has been a reaction. I am who I am, she would say, I live as I do because of you.
    4.
    June brought clouds that concealed the sun, storms that turned the sea gray. The atmosphere was raw enough for Subhash to keep wearing corduroy slippers instead of flip-flops; to continue to preheat the electric blanket on the bed. The rhythm of the rain was nocturnal, drumming heavily on the rooftop, tapering to a drizzle in the mornings, pausing but never clearing. It gathered strength and weakened, then intensified again.
    At the side of the house he scraped scales of fungus off the shingles. His basement smelled of mildew, his eyes stinging when he put in the laundry. The soil of his vegetable garden was too wet to till, the roots of the seedlings he’d planted washing away. The rhododendrons shed their purple petals too soon, the peonies barely opening before the stalks bent over, the blossoms smashed across the drenched ground. It was carnal, the smell of so much moisture. The smell of the earth’s decay.
    At night the rain would wake him. He heard it pelting the windows, washing the pitch of the driveway clean. He wondered if it was a sign of something. Of another juncture in his life. He remembered rain falling the first night he spent with Holly, in her cottage. Heavy rain the evening Bela was born.
    He began expecting it to leak through the bricks around the fireplace, to drip through the ceiling, to seep in below the doors. He thought of the monsoon coming every year in Tollygunge. The two ponds flooding, the embankment between them turning invisible.
    In July his garden started filling with weeds. The evenings were long, the morning sky turned light at five. Bela called to say she was arriving. Sometimes she came by train, other times she flew into Boston or Providence. Once she showed up after driving herself hundreds of miles in a borrowed car.
    He vacuumed the carpet in her bedroom, laundered the sheets, though no one had slept on them since Bela’s last visit to Rhode Island, the summer before. He brought up another box fan from the basement now that it had turned warm and sunny, a bit humid, even, unscrewing the plastic grilles and wiping the blades before setting it into her window.
    On her shelves were certain things they’d discovered together, in the canopy of the woods, or along the shore. A small bird’s nest of woven twigs. The skull of a garter snake. The vertebra of a porpoise, shaped like a propeller. He remembered the excitement of finding these things with her, how she’d preferred them to toys and dolls. He remembered how she’d put pinecones and stones into the hood of her coat, when it was winter, when her pockets got too full, when she was small.
    She would stir up the staid atmosphere of his life. She would scatter her things through the house, shed her clothes on the floor; her long hairs would slow the shower drain. The foods she liked to eat, that she would go to the health food store to buy, would stand out for a while on the kitchen counter: amaranth flakes, chunks of carob, herbal teas. Butter made from almonds, milk derived from rice. Then she would go away.
    He set out for Boston to greet her. He remembered the drive to meet Gauri at the airport, in 1972, believing he would spend his life with her. He remembered coming back from the same airport with Bela, twelve years later, to discover that Gauri was gone.
    She arrived with a duffel bag, a backpack. Her plane had landed from Minnesota. She stood out from the others in their suits and windbreakers, checking messages on their cell phones, tensely rolling their luggage behind them. She was brown, sturdy, unadorned. She stood undistracted. She approached him, her skin radiant, embracing him with her strong arms.
    How are you, Bela?
    I’m good. I’m well.
    Are you hungry? Would you like to go out to eat somewhere, in Boston?
    I want to go home. Let’s go to the beach tomorrow. How have you been?
    He told her that his health was fine, that he was busy with his research, with an article he was contributing to. He said that the tomatoes in his garden weren’t thriving; there were black spots on the leaves.
    Don’t bother with them. Too much rain this spring. How is Elise?
    He told her Elise was well. But such