The Lowland

his car and go for a drive, not inviting him to go with her. He knew, even when she returned, that part of her was closed off from him. That her sense of limits was fierce. And though she seemed to have found herself, he feared that she was still lost.
    At the end of each visit she zipped her bag and left him, never saying when she’d be back. She disappeared, as Gauri had disappeared, her vocation taking precedence. Defining her, directing her course.
    Over the years her work starting merging with a certain ideology. He saw that there was a spirit of opposition to the things she did.
    She was spending time in cities, in blighted sections of Baltimore and Detroit. She helped to convert abandoned properties into community gardens. She taught low-income families to grow vegetables in their backyards, so that they wouldn’t have to depend entirely on food banks. She dismissed Subhash when he praised her for these efforts. It was necessary, she said.
    In Rhode Island, she went through his refrigerator, chiding him for the apples he continued to buy from supermarkets. She was opposed to eating food that had to be transported long distances. To the patenting of seeds. She talked to him about why people still died from famines, why farmers still went hungry. She blamed the unequal distribution of wealth.
    She reproached Subhash for throwing out his vegetable scraps instead of composting them. Once, during a visit, she went to a hardware store to buy plywood and nails, building a bin in his backyard, showing him how to turn the pile as it cooled.
    What we consume is what we support, she said, telling him he needed to do his part. She could be self-righteous, as Udayan had been.
    He worried at times about her having such passionate ideals. Nevertheless, when she was gone, even though it was quicker and cheaper simply to go to the supermarket, he began to drive out to a farm stand on Saturday mornings, to get his fruits and vegetables, his eggs for the week.
    The people who worked there, who weighed his items and placed them in his canvas bag, who added up what he owed with the stub of a pencil instead of at a cash register, reminded him of Bela. They brought back to mind her pragmatic simplicity. Thanks to Bela he grew conscious of eating according to what was in season, according to what was available. Things he’d taken for granted when he was a child.
    Her dedication to bettering the world was something that would fulfill her, he imagined, for the rest of her life. Still, he was unable to set aside his concern. She had eschewed the stability he had worked to provide. She’d forged a rootless path, one which seemed precarious to him. One which excluded him. But, like Gauri, he’d let her go.
    A loose confederation of friends, people she spoke of fondly but never introduced him to, provided her with an alternate form of family. She spoke of attending these friends’ weddings. She knitted sweaters for their children, or sewed them cloth dolls, mailing them off as surprises. If there was any other partner in her life, a romantic interest, he was unaware of it. It was always just the two of them, whenever she came.
    He learned to accept her for who she was, to embrace the turn she’d taken. At times Bela’s second birth felt more miraculous than the first. It was a miracle to him that she had discovered meaning in her life. That she could be resilient, in the face of what Gauri had done. That in time she had renewed, if not fully restored, her affection for him.
    And yet sometimes he felt threatened, convinced that it was Udayan’s inspiration; that Udayan’s influence was greater. Gauri had left them, and by now Subhash trusted her to stay away. But there were times Subhash still feared that Udayan would come back, claiming his place, claiming Bela from the grave as his own.

VI
    1.
    In their bedroom, in Tollygunge, she combs out her hair before bed. The door bolt is fastened, the shutters closed. Udayan lies inside the mosquito netting, holding the shortwave on his chest. One leg folded, the ankle resting on the other knee. On the bedcover, beside him, he keeps a small metal ashtray, a box of matches, a packet of Wills.
    It is 1971, the second year of their marriage. Almost two years since the party’s declaration. A year since the offices of Deshabrati and Liberation were raided. The issues Udayan continues to read are secretly published and circulated. He hides them under the