The Lowland

had been enough, materially speaking.
    But he was still too weak to tell Bela what she deserved to know. Still pretending to be her father, still hoarding what had not been earned. Udayan had been right in calling him self-serving.
    The need to tell her hung over him, terrified him. It was the greatest unfinished business of his life. She was old enough, strong enough to handle it, and yet, because she was all he loved, he could not muster the strength.
    He was increasingly aware these days of how much he owned, of the ongoing effort his life required. The thousands of trips to the grocery store he had made, all the heaping bags of food, first paper, then plastic, now canvas sacks brought from home, unloaded from the trunk of the car and unpacked and stored in cupboards, all to sustain a single body. The pills he swallowed every morning. The cinnamon sticks he pried out of a tin to flavor the oil for a pot of curry or dal.
    One day he would die, like Richard, and there it would be for other people to puzzle over or sort through, to throw away. Already his brain had stopped holding on to directions he would never have to follow again, the names of people he would speak to only once. So much of what occupied his mind was negligible. There was only one thing, the story of Udayan, that he wanted to lay bare.
    He recognized the house at once. It was the rooming house he’d once lived in with Richard, across from the hand pump and the village well. A white wooden house with black shutters. Because the addresses of the houses had changed since then, because there had not been a picture on the postcard Elise had given him, he had not known.
    Elise smiled when she saw him, handing him his ticket off a fat spool, his change. She looked different today, wearing a loose shift of gray linen, her silver hair framing her face, a pair of sunglasses on her head.
    Thank you for coming. How have you been?
    I know this house. I used to live here. With Richard.
    You did?
    When I first got here, yes. You didn’t know?
    Her face changed, the smile fading, but there was a look of concern now in her eyes. I had no idea.
    She didn’t share what he’d told her with the rest of the group once the tour began. The layout had changed, the number of rooms fewer than they’d been. The rooms were sparsely furnished, the doorways fitted with iron latches, the furniture made of dark wood. The tables had dropped leaves that partially concealed their pedestals, like a modest woman’s skirt. The surface of the writing desk could be tucked away and locked. The lintel of the fireplace was made of oak.
    He remembered nothing. And yet he had lived here, he had looked out through these small windows as he’d studied. A time so long ago, when he was new to Rhode Island, when Udayan was still alive. Here he had read Udayan’s letters. Here he had looked at a photograph of Gauri, wondering about her, not realizing that he was to marry her.
    Elise pointed to the different styles of chairs that were popular: slat-back, banister back, fiddleback. The street had been the town’s commercial district, she told the group. Next door there had been a hat shop, and after that a barbershop, where the village men went to get shaved.
    This house had first been a tailor’s shop and residence, then a lawyer’s office, then a family’s home for four generations. It was cut up into a rooming house in the sixties. When the last landlord died, he’d bequeathed it to the historical society, and slowly they had raised funds to restore it, collaborating with a local art gallery so that there would be exhibits in the rooms downstairs.
    He was struck by the effort to preserve such places. The corner cupboard encased platters and bowls people had eaten from, candlesticks from which their light had burned. The kitchen walls displayed the ladles and griddles they had cooked with. The pine floors were the same hue they’d been when those people had walked through the rooms.
    The effect was disquieting. He felt his presence on earth being denied, even as he stood there. He was forbidden access; the past refused to admit him. It only reminded him that this arbitrary place, where he’d landed and made his life, was not his. Like Bela, it had accepted him, while at the same time keeping a distance. Among its people, its trees, its particular geography he had studied and grown to love, he was still a visitor. Perhaps the worst form of