The Lowland

Long Island, visible that day across the water.
    In the afternoon they cooled themselves in the ocean, walking down a steep set of rickety wooden steps, stripping to their bathing suits and swimming in rough waves. In spite of the warmth, the days were turning brief again. They rode over to another beach to watch the sun sink like a melting scarlet stain into the water.
    Returning to the town, they saw a box turtle at the edge of the road. They stopped, and Subhash picked it up, studying its markings, then removing it to the grass from which it had come.
    We’ll have to tell Joshua, Subhash said.
    Holly said nothing. She’d turned pensive, the glow of twilight tinting her face, her mood strange. He wondered if his mentioning Joshua had upset her. She was quiet at dinner, eating little, saying that their day in the sun had left her with a bit of a headache.
    For the first time they kissed each other good night but nothing more. He lay beside her, listening to the crash of the sea, watching a waxing moon rise into the sky. He longed for sleep, but it would not immerse him; that night the waters he sought for his repose were deep enough to wade in, but not to swim.
    In the morning she seemed better, sitting across from him at the breakfast table, hungry for toast, scrambled eggs. But as they waited for the ferry on the way back to the mainland, she told him that she had something to say.
    I’ve enjoyed getting to know you, Subhash. Spending this time.
    The shift he felt was instantaneous. It was as if she’d picked them up and put them off the precarious path they were on, just as he’d removed the turtle from the road the day before. Putting their connection to one another out of harm’s way.
    I want us to end this nicely, she continued. I think we can.
    He heard her say that she had been speaking with Joshua’s father, and that they were going to try to work things out between them.
    He left you.
    He wants to come back. I’ve known him for twelve years, Subhash. He’s Joshua’s father. I’m thirty-six years old.
    Why did we come here together, if you don’t want to see me again?
    I thought you might like it. You never expected this to go anywhere, did you? You and me? With Joshua?
    I like Joshua.
    You’re young. You’re going to want to have your own children someday. In a few years you’ll go back to India, live with your family. You’ve said so yourself.
    She had caught him in his own web, telling him what he already knew. He realized he would never visit her cottage again. The gift of the binoculars, meant so that they would no longer have to share; he understood the reason for this, too.
    He could not blame her; she had done him a favor by ending it. And yet he was furious with her for being the one to decide.
    We can remain friends, Subhash. You could use a friend.
    He told her he had heard enough, that he was not interested in remaining friends. He told her that, when the ferry reached the port in Galilee, he would wait for a bus to take him home. He told her not to call him.
    On the ferry they sat separately. He took out Udayan’s letter, reading it again, allowing it once more to comfort him. But when he was finished, standing on the deck, he tore it into pieces, and let them escape his hands.
    He began his third autumn in Rhode Island, 1971.
    Once more the leaves of the trees lost their chlorophyll, replaced by the shades he had left behind: vivid hues of cayenne and turmeric and ginger pounded fresh every morning in the kitchen, to season the food his mother prepared.
    Once more these colors seemed to have been transported across the world, appearing in the treetops that lined his path. The colors intensified over a period of weeks until the leaves began to dwindle, foliage clustered here and there among the branches, like butterflies feeding at the same source, before falling to the ground.
    He thought of Durga Pujo coming again to Calcutta. As he was first getting to know America, the absence of the holiday hadn’t mattered to him, but now he wanted to go home. The past two years, around this time, he’d received a battered parcel from his parents, containing gifts for him. Kurtas too thin to wear most of the time in Rhode Island, bars of sandalwood soap, some Darjeeling tea.
    He thought of the Mahalaya playing on All India Radio. Throughout Tollygunge, across Calcutta and the whole of West Bengal, people were waking up in darkness