The Lowland

dolphins that leaped in pairs. Humpback whales spouted mists as they breathed, playfully breaching in the water, sometimes swimming beneath the ship without disturbing it, emerging on the other side.
    Sailing even slightly east reminded Subhash of how far away he was from his family. He thought of the time it took to cross even a tiny portion of the earth’s surface.
    Isolated on the ship with the scientists and other students and crew, he felt doubly alone. Unable to fathom his future, severed from his past.
    For a year and a half he had not seen his family. Not sat down with them, at the end of the day, to share a meal. In Tollygunge his family did not have a phone line. He’d sent a telegram to let them know he’d arrived. He was learning to live without hearing their voices, to receive news of them only in writing.
    Udayan’s letters no longer referred to Naxalbari, or ended with slogans. He didn’t mention politics at all. Instead he wrote about football scores, or about this or that in the neighborhood—a certain store closing down, a family they’d known moving away. A new film by Mrinal Sen.
    He asked Subhash how his studies were going, and how he spent his days in Rhode Island. He wanted to know when Subhash would return to Calcutta, asking him, in one of the letters, if he planned to get married.
    Subhash saved a few of these letters, since it no longer seemed necessary to throw them away. But their blandness puzzled him. Though the handwriting was the same, it was almost as if they’d been written by a different person. He wondered what was happening in Calcutta, what Udayan might be masking. He wondered how he and his parents were getting along.
    Letters from his parents referred only obliquely to Gauri, and only as an example of what not to do. We hope, when the time comes, you will trust us to settle your future, to choose your wife and to be present at your wedding. We hope you will not disregard our wishes, as your brother did.
    He replied to them, reassuring them that his marriage was up to them to arrange. He sent a portion of his stipend to help pay for the work on the house, and wrote that he was eager to see them. And yet, day after day, cut off from them, he ignored them.
    Udayan was not alone; he’d remained in Tollygunge, attached to the place, the way of life he’d always known. He’d provoked his parents but was still protected by them. The only difference was that he was married, and that Subhash was missing. And Subhash wondered if the girl, Gauri, had already replaced him.
    One cloudy day in summer he went down to the beach at the foot of the campus. At first he saw no one there apart from a fisherman casting for scup at the tip of the jetty. Nothing but shallow waves breaking over the gray-and-yellow stones. Then he noticed a woman walking, with a child and a jet-black dog.
    The woman was locating sticks on the sand and throwing them to the dog. She wore tennis sneakers without socks, a rubber rain slicker. A cotton skirt billowed out around her knees.
    The boy was holding a bucket, and Subhash watched as they untied their sneakers and wandered over the rocks into the tide pools. They were looking for starfish. The boy was frustrated, complaining that he could not find any.
    Subhash rolled up his pants. He removed his shoes and waded in, knowing where they hid. He pried one off a rock, and allowed it to rest, stiff but alive, in his hand. He turned his wrist to reveal the underside, pointing to the eyespots at the tips of the arms.
    Do you know what will happen if I put it for a moment on your arm?
    The boy shook his head.
    It will pull off the little hairs on your skin.
    Does it hurt?
    Not really. Let me show you.
    Where have you come from? the woman asked him.
    Her face was plain but appealing, the pale blue of her eyes like the lining of a mussel shell. She looked a bit older than Subhash. Her hair was long, dark blond, marsh grass in winter.
    India. Calcutta.
    This must be pretty different.
    It is.
    Do you like it here?
    No one had asked him this, until now. He looked out at the water, at the steel piles of the two bridges stretching across the bay: the lower, cantilevered centerpiece of the first, and the soaring steel towers of the second. The symmetrical rise and fall of the Newport Bridge, recently completed, had arched portals and cables that would light up at night.
    He had learned from one of his professors about the bridge’s