The Lowland

work as an agricultural apprentice, in the field. Putting in irrigation lines, weeding and harvesting, cleaning out animal pens. Packing crates to sell vegetables, weighing them for customers on the side of the road.
    When she came home on weekends he saw that the shape and texture of her hands were being altered by the demands of her labor. He noticed calluses on her palms, dirt beneath her nails. Her skin smelled of soil. The back of her neck and her shoulders, her face, turned a deeper brown.
    She wore denim coveralls, heavy soiled boots, a cotton kerchief tied over her hair. She woke at four in the morning. A man’s undershirt with the sleeves pushed up to her shoulders, dark strips of leather knotted around her wrist in place of bangles.
    Each time there was something new to take in. A tattoo that was like an open cuff above her ankle. A bleached section of her hair. A silver hoop in her nose.
    It became her life: a series of jobs on farms across the country, some close by, others far. Washington State, Arizona, Kentucky, Missouri. Rural towns he had to look up on a map, towns where she said sometimes there were no stoplights for miles. She traveled for the growing season or the breeding season, to plant peach trees or maintain beehives, to raise chickens or goats.
    She told him she lived in close quarters, often not paid in wages but simply by the food and shelter that were provided. She’d lived with groups who pooled their income. She’d lived for a few months in Montana, in a tent. She found odd jobs when she needed to, spraying orchards, doing landscape work. She lived without insurance, without heed for her future. Without a fixed address.
    Sometimes she sent him a postcard to tell him where she’d gone, or sent a cardboard box containing softening bunches of broccoli, or some pears wrapped in newspaper. A cluster of dried chilies, fashioned into a wreath. He wondered if her work ever took her to California, where Gauri still lived, or if this was a place she avoided.
    He’d had no contact with Gauri. Only a post office box to which, for the first few years, he’d directed their tax returns, until they started filing separately. Apart from this official correspondence he had not sought her out.
    On either side of the enormous country they lived apart, Bela roaming between them. They had not bothered to obtain a divorce. Gauri had not asked for one, and Subhash had not cared. Staying married was better than having to negotiate with her again. It appalled him that she had never contacted Bela, never sent a note. That her heart could be so cold. At the same time he was grateful that the break was clean.
    Now and again, at a dinner he attended at the home of an American colleague, or one of the local Indian families with whom he kept cordial ties, there would be someone, a widow or a woman who’d never married. Once or twice he’d called these women, or they would call him, inviting him to attend a classical music concert in Providence, or a play.
    Though he had little interest in such entertainments, he’d gone; on a handful of occasions, craving company, he had spent a few nights in a woman’s bed. But he had no interest in a relationship. He was in his fifties, it was too late to start another family. He had overstepped with Gauri. He couldn’t imagine ever wanting to take that step again.
    The only company he longed for was Bela’s. But she was skittish, and he could never be certain of when he would see her again. She tended to return in the summer, taking off a week or two around the time of her birthday, to visit the beaches and swim in the sea, in the place where he’d raised her. Now and then she came during Christmas. Once or twice, promising to be there, then telling him something had come up at the last minute, she did not show up in the end.
    When she was there she slept in her old bed. She rubbed camphoraceous salves onto her arms and legs, and soaked herself in the bathtub. She allowed him to cook for her, to take care of her, briefly, in this simple way. She watched old movies on television with him, and they went on walks around Ninigret Pond, or through the clusters of rhododendrons in Hope Valley, as they used to do when she was small.
    Still, she required a certain amount of time to herself, so that even during the course of her visits she would stay up late after he’d gone to bed, baking loaves of zucchini bread, or she would borrow