The Lowland

reacted to her. He wondered if she’d ever been to India. If she had, he wondered whether she’d liked it or hated it. He could not guess from looking at her.
    The ball rolled over in Subhash’s direction, and he kicked it back to them, preparing to continue on his way.
    You must be the new student in marine chemistry, Narasimhan said, walking toward him, shaking his hand. Subhash Mitra?
    Yes.
    From Calcutta?
    He nodded.
    I’m supposed to keep an eye out for you. I was born in Calcutta, Narasimhan added, saying that he still understood a word or two of Bengali.
    Subhash asked where in Rhode Island he lived, asking if it was close to campus.
    Narasimhan shook his head. Their house was closer to Providence. His wife, Kate, was a student at the Rhode Island School of Design.
    And you? Where in Calcutta is your family?
    In Tollygunge.
    Ah, where the golf club is.
    Yes.
    You’re staying at the International House?
    I preferred a place with a kitchen. I wanted to make my own meals.
    And you’ve settled in? Made some friends?
    A few.
    Tolerating the cold?
    So far.
    Kate, write down our phone number for him, will you?
    She turned to the back of her notebook and tore out a page. She wrote down the number and handed it to Subhash.
    Anything you need, just give a call, Narasimhan said, patting him on the shoulder, turning back to his sons.
    Thank you.
    I’ll make you my yogurt rice one of these days, Narasimhan called out.
    But an invitation never came.
    The oceanography campus, where most of his classes were held, overlooked the Narragansett Bay. Every morning, on a bus, he left the village behind, traveling along a wooded road where mailboxes stuck on posts were visible, but many of the homes were not. Past a set of traffic lights, and a wooden observation tower, before proceeding downhill toward the bay.
    The bus crossed over a winding estuary, to an area that felt more remote. Here the air was never still, so that the windows of the bus would rattle. Here the quality of the light changed.
    The laboratory buildings were like small airplane hangars, flat-topped structures made of corrugated gray metal. He studied the gases that were dissolved in the sea’s solution, the isotopes found in deep sediments. The iodine found in seaweed, the carbon in plankton, the copper in the blood of crabs.
    At the foot of the campus, at the base of a steep hill, there was a small beach strewn with gray-and-yellow stones where he liked to eat his lunch. There were views of the bay, and the two bridges going to islands offshore. The Jamestown Bridge was prominent, the Newport Bridge, a few miles in the distance, more faint. On cloudy days, at intervals, the sound of a foghorn pierced the air, as conch shells were blown in Calcutta to ward away evil.
    Some of the smaller islands, reachable only by boat, were without electricity and running water. Conditions under which, he was told, certain wealthy Americans liked to spend their summers. On one island there was space only for a lighthouse, nothing more. All the islands, however tiny, had names: Patience and Prudence, Fox and Goat, Rabbit and Rose, Hope and Despair.
    At the top of the hill, leading up from the beach, there was a church with white shingles arranged like a honeycomb. The central portion rose to a steeple. The paint was no longer fresh, the wood beneath it having absorbed so much salt from the air, so many storms that had traveled up the Rhode Island coast.
    One afternoon he was surprised to see cars lining the road where it crested. For the first time he saw the front doors of the church were open. A group of people, a mix of adults and children, no more than twenty, stood outside.
    He glimpsed a couple in middle age, newly married. A gray-haired groom with a carnation in his lapel, a woman in a pale blue jacket and skirt. They stood smiling on the steps of the church, ducking their heads as the group showered them with rice. Looking like they should have been parents of the bride and groom, closer to his parents’ generation than to his own.
    He guessed that it was a second marriage. Two people trading one spouse for another, dividing in two, their connections at once severed and doubled, like cells. Or perhaps it was a case of a couple who had both lost their spouses in midlife. A widow and widower with grown children, remarrying and moving on.
    For some reason the church reminded him of the small mosque that stood at the corner of his