His face softened. Or maybe it was only his lips that seemed to lose something of their severity, their density. “You remember that?”
“I’ve been wondering.”
“He’s from the Bible. Jesus brought him back to life, after he died. After four days, I think.”
“Was he being tested? Like Sita?”
“No, I think it was Jesus who was being tested. Or maybe his believers. But not Lazarus.”
Poornima looked at him. “Why do you like it? Because you think Puffrock is like you and me?”
“Proofrock. And yes, and because it’s such a lonely poem.”
“You should open it,” she said, nodding toward the whiskey.
This time, there was no hesitation. He poured himself a half glass of whiskey, the gold-brown liquid sending up the strong scent of deep forests and woodsmoke and something Poornima couldn’t name, but recalled, maybe that thunderstorm, she thought, the one that had caught her on the Krishna. He settled under the window and placed the glass in front of him. He took a sip.
Poornima watched him. She thought he might leave after finishing the first glass, but he poured himself another. She said to herself, Wait till he finishes this one. Wait till the end.
When he did, she said, “Your days must be long.”
His head was leaned back against the wall. He seemed to nod, or maybe she only imagined it.
“Are there other shepherds? What do you do after leaving here?”
“Homework.”
“Homework?”
He avoided her gaze. “I take classes. At the university.” He raised the bottle again and studied the label. “Where did you get this? I thought I told you not to leave the apartment?”
“For what? What are you studying?”
He laughed, poured another glass. “That Puffrock poem. Other poems, too.”
“But—”
This he drank in one great gulp. “You can tell a lot about a parent from what makes them laugh. When I told him, middle of high school, that I wanted to study literature, he laughed for three days, and then he said, ‘Engineering or medicine. You pick.’ That’s the best part of being an Indian kid,” he said. “We get to pick.” Then he looked at her sternly. “He doesn’t know about the classes. No one does.”
They sat in silence then, he against the window, she against the wall by the kitchen. Nothing stirred, not inside, not outside. Poornima shut her eyes. She could sense him watching her.
“These,” he said into the dark, “these are my favorite lines from the poem: ‘And indeed there will be time / To wonder, “Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?” / Time to turn back and descend the stair’.”
He went on to explain each of the lines, each of the words in meticulous detail, and about when the poem was written, and about how the time it was written related to the forces of fear and boredom and modernity, just before World War I, and he even told her about the author himself, and how he had been an immigrant, too, except to England, and Poornima wanted to ask about Michelangelo and Hamlet, but instead, she said, “What else made him laugh?”
There was silence again, and she thought he might be annoyed by her question, but when she opened her eyes, Mohan was asleep, the glass still clasped in his hand.
* * *
She had one week left.
Savitha
1
The bus was in the mountains when Savitha opened her eyes. She had been dreaming of Mohan. Nothing in particular, nothing she could name, not even in the moments after she woke up, but she had a sense that he’d drifted through her dreams, without touching them, like a ghost, or a scent. But then she was jolted from half sleep, and she looked around her frantically, seeing clearly the road, the mountains, the strange faces. The flight. Had there been footsteps behind her? She hadn’t looked. She’d run wildly from bus stop to bus stop, hailing buses just as they’d pulled away; the third local bus that passed her opened its doors; Savitha said, breathless, “New York?” and the driver had laughed and said, “Not quite. You want the Greyhound. I’m going past the station, though. Get on!” At the bus station in downtown Seattle, she’d stood and stared at a map of the United States. She’d found Seattle, knowing there was only water to its west, and then she’d looked for New York. Her gaze had traveled east and east and east. Where could it be? She thought she’d missed it and started again. This time she didn’t stop, and there it was, on the other side,