The Lowland

struggling to know itself. You should be talking to my brother, he said.
    You have a brother?
    He nodded.
    You’ve never mentioned him. What’s his name?
    He paused, then uttered Udayan’s name for the first time since he’d arrived in Rhode Island.
    Well, what would Udayan say?
    He would say that an agrarian economy based on feudalism is the problem. He would say the country needs a more egalitarian structure. Better land reforms.
    Sounds like a Chinese model.
    It is. He supports Naxalbari.
    Naxalbari? What’s that?
    A few days later, in his mailbox at his department, Subhash found a letter from Udayan. Paragraphs in Bengali, dark blue ink against the lighter blue of the aerogramme. It had been mailed in October; it was November now.
    If this reaches you destroy it. No need to compromise either of us. But given that my only chance to invade the United States is by letter, I can’t resist. I’ve just returned from another trip outside the city. I met Comrade Sanyal. I was able to sit with him, speak with him. I had to wear a blindfold. I’ll tell you about it sometime.
    Why no news? No doubt the flora and fauna of the world’s greatest capitalist power captivate you. But if you can bear to tear yourself away try to make yourself useful. I hear the antiwar movement there is in full swing.
    Here developments are encouraging. A Red Guard is forming, traveling to villages, propagating Mao Tse-tung’s quotations. Our generation is the vanguard; the struggle of students is part of the armed peasant struggle, Majumdar says.
    You’ll come back to an altered country, a more just society, I’m confident of this. A changed home, too. Baba’s taken out a loan. They’re adding to what we already have. They seem to think it’s necessary. That we won’t get married and raise families under the same roof if the house stays the way it is.
    I told them it was a waste, an extravagance, given that you don’t even live here. But they didn’t listen and now it’s too late, an architect came and the scaffolding’s gone up, they claim they’ll be finished in a year or two.
    The days are dull without you. And though I refuse to forgive you for not supporting a movement that will only improve the lives of millions of people, I hope you can forgive me for giving you a hard time. Will you hurry up with whatever it is you’re doing? An embrace from your brother.
    He’d concluded with a quotation. War will bring the revolution; revolution will stop the war.
    Subhash reread the letter several times. It was as if Udayan were there, speaking to him, teasing him. He felt their loyalty to one another, their affection, stretched halfway across the world. Stretched perhaps to the breaking point by all that now stood between them, but at the same time refusing to break.
    Perhaps the letter would have been safe among his possessions in Rhode Island. It was written in Bengali, it could have been something Subhash kept. But he knew Udayan was right, and that the contents, the reference to Sanyal, in the wrong hands, might threaten them both. The next day he took it to his lab, lingering on some pretense at the end of the session, waiting to be alone. Ceremonially he placed the letter on the dark stone counter, striking a match, watching the edges blacken, his brother’s words disappear.
    I’ve been studying chemical processes unique to estuaries, sediments that oxidize at low tide. Strips of barrier beach run parallel to the mainland. The ferrous sulfide leaves wide black stains on the sand.
    As strange as it sounds, when the sky is overcast, when the clouds are low, something about the coastal landscape here, the water and the grass, the smell of bacteria when I visit the mudflats, takes me home. I think of the lowland, of paddy fields. Of course, no rice grows here. Only mussels and quahogs, which are among the types of shellfish Americans like to eat.
    They call the marsh grass spartina. I learned today that it has special glands for excreting salt, so that it’s often covered with a residue of crystals. Snails migrate up and down the stems. It’s been growing here over millennia, in deposits of peat. Its roots stabilize the shore. Did you know, it propagates by spreading rhizomes? Something like the mangroves that once thrived in Tollygunge. I had to tell you.
    The lawn of the campus quadrangle was covered now as if with a sea of rust, the dead