The Lowland

was bothered not by the name but by the fact of his suggesting it. But it was true, she had not thought of one.
    Maybe, she said.
    I can’t think of any boys’ names.
    I don’t think it will be one.
    Why not?
    I can’t imagine it.
    Does it help at all, Gauri?
    What?
    Being here? Any of this?
    At first she didn’t answer. Then she said, Yes, it helps to be away.
    Your brother was supposed to be here, she added. This child should have been his responsibility, whether he wanted it or not.
    I’ll make it mine, Gauri. I’ve promised you that.
    She was unable to express her gratitude for what he’d undertaken. She was unable to convey the ways he was a better person than Udayan. She was unable to tell him that he was protecting her, for reasons that would cause him to regard her differently.
    She looked back at the set of footprints they had made in the damp sand. Unlike Udayan’s steps from childhood, which endured in the courtyard in Tollygunge, theirs were already vanishing, washed clean by the encroaching tide.
    2.
    He’d begun the new semester two weeks late, catching up on his classes, moving into a furnished apartment reserved for married students and their families. He’d bought sheets to fit the double mattress, and by calling people who advertised things for sale on bulletin boards he’d set up a household for Gauri. He acquired a few more dishes and pans, a potted jade plant, a black-and-white television on a wobbly cart.
    All he saw of her body were glimpses when she came out of the bathroom after a shower. After Richard, he was used to sharing a space with another person while keeping to himself. In the evenings he removed the clothes he would wear the next day from the drawers in the bedroom, so that he would not disturb her in the mornings.
    At night he was sometimes aware of her door opening. She went to the bathroom, she got herself a glass of water. He held his body still as the stream of her urine fell. Once, in the light of early morning, he saw her hair unsprung from its customary knot, tensile, suspended like a thick snake from the branch of a tree. She walked through the living room as if it were empty, as if he were not there.
    He trusted that things would change, after the baby came. That the child would bring them together, first as parents, then as husband and wife.
    Once, in the middle of the night, he heard her locked inside a nightmare. Her animal whimpering startled him; it was the sound of a scream stifled by a clenched jaw, a closed mouth. An articulate but wordless fury. He lay on the sofa, listening to her suffer, listening to her reliving his brother’s death, perhaps. Waiting for her terror to pass.
    He ran into Narasimhan, and because Narasimhan asked, he told him his news. That he was nearly finished with his course work, that later in the spring he would take his qualifying exam. That his brother had died in India. That he had a wife now, that she was expecting. He did not reveal the connection, that he had married his brother’s wife.
    He was unwell?
    He was killed.
    How?
    The paramilitary shot him. He was a Naxalite.
    I’m sorry. It’s a terrible loss to bear. But now you’ll be a father.
    Yes.
    Listen, it’s been too long. Why don’t you and your wife come to dinner one day?
    He had the directions written on the back of an envelope. He got a little lost on unfamiliar roads. The house was in the woods, down a shaded dirt path, without a proper lawn, with no other homes in view.
    They were one of a number of Indian couples at the university that Narasimhan and Kate had invited. A few of them already had children, who went off to play with Narasimhan’s boys, running along a deck that wrapped around two sides of the house. Subhash and Gauri were introduced to the other couples, mostly graduate students in engineering, in mathematics, and their wives. A number of the women had brought offerings of dishes they’d cooked, dals and vegetables and samosas, tasty accompaniments to the pasta and salad that Kate had prepared.
    The guests filled a large wood-paneled living room, standing and sitting, talking, holding their plates. Books crowded the shelves, plants hung in woven slings from the ceiling, record albums were stacked beside the turntable. There were no curtains in the windows, only views of the trees outside. On the walls were abstract paintings, bold blots of color that Kate had produced.
    He was