The Lowland

clicking softly around the three sides of the bed. The dog stood patiently, panting by Holly’s side. The room was warm and bright.
    She’d been sleeping with her back to Subhash, nestled against him, unclothed. She got out of bed and pulled on the jeans and blouse she’d been wearing the night before.
    I’ll make coffee, she said.
    He dressed quickly. Stepping out to use the bathroom, he saw the open door to Joshua’s room. The boy’s absence had made it possible. He was there because Joshua was not.
    Holly came back from taking Chester outside, and offered to make breakfast. But Subhash told her he had work to catch up on.
    Should I let you know, the next time Joshua goes over to his father’s?
    He felt nervous suddenly; he saw that the encounter of the night before might be a beginning, not an end. At the same time he was impatient to see her again.
    If you like.
    Opening the door, he saw that the tide was in. The sky was bright, the ocean calm; no sign, apart from all the seaweed that had washed like empty nests up on the sand, of the storm there had been.
    3.
    He wanted to tell Udayan. Somehow, he wanted to confess to his brother the profound step he’d taken. He wanted to describe who Holly was, what she looked like, how she lived. To discuss the knowledge of women that they now shared. But it wasn’t something he could convey in a letter or a telegram. Not a conversation he could imagine, even if a connection were possible, taking place over the phone.
    Friday evenings: this was when he was able to visit Holly at the cottage and to spend the night. The rest of the time he kept a distance, sometimes meeting her for a sandwich on the beach but nothing more. For most of the week he was able to pretend, if he needed to, that he did not know her, and that nothing in his life had changed.
    But on Friday evenings he drove to her cottage, turning off the highway onto the long wooded road that gave way to the salt marsh. Through Saturday, sometimes as late as Sunday morning, he stayed. She was undemanding, always at ease with him. Trusting, each time they parted, that they would meet again.
    They walked along the beach, on firm sand ribbed by the tide. He swam with her in the cold water, tasting its salt in his mouth. It seemed to enter his bloodstream, into every cell, purifying him, leaving sand in his hair. On his back he floated weightless, his arms spread, the world silenced. Only the sea’s low-pitched hum, and the sun glowing like hot coals behind his eyes.
    Once or twice they did certain ordinary things, as if they were already husband and wife. Going together to the supermarket, filling the cart with food, putting the bags in the trunk of her car. Things he would not have done with a woman, in Calcutta, before getting married.
    In Calcutta, when he was a student, it had been enough to feel an attraction toward certain women. He’d been too shy to pursue them. He didn’t court Holly as he’d observed college friends trying to impress women they were interested in, women who almost always became their wives. As Udayan had surely courted Gauri. He didn’t take Holly to the movies or to restaurants. He didn’t write her notes, delivered, so as not to rouse suspicion from a girl’s parents, by the aid of a friend, asking her to meet him here or there.
    Holly was beyond such things. The only place it made sense for them to meet was at her home, where it was easiest to be, where he liked to spend time, and where she saw to their immediate needs. The hours passed with their talking, long conversations about their families, their pasts, though she didn’t talk about her marriage. She never tired of asking him about his upbringing. The most ordinary details of his life, which would have made no impression on a girl from Calcutta, were what made him distinctive to her.
    One evening, as they drove back together from the grocery store, having corn and watermelon to celebrate the Fourth of July, Subhash described his father setting out each morning to the market, carrying a burlap sack in his hand. If their mother complained that he hadn’t brought back enough, he’d say, Better to eat a small piece of fish with flavor than a large one without. He’d witnessed a famine of devastating proportions, never taking a single meal for granted.
    Some mornings, Subhash told her, he and Udayan had accompanied their father to shop, or to pick up rationed