Dev nodded, but this wasn’t enough.
Promise, Dr. Sengupta insisted.
And, as her first wifely duty, Padma made him keep his promise.
There, in Lakhpat, as they walked, round stones ground against each other. When Dev stooped to pry one from between the treads of his shoe, he discovered that it was a shell, nearly translucent. He held up a handful, ranging in size from his pinkie fingernail to a lozenge.
— Look at this, he said. He poured the shells into her hands, and she shook them, as if separating rice from its panicles.
— There’s a legend, Padma said, — that in ancient times, these shells were used as money. It’s false, of course, since the currency of Kutch was the kori. Lakhpat itself was supposedly named after the fact that it brought in a daily income of one lakh kori.
Dev scooped both hands full.
— You’ve married a millionaire, he said.
— Only a millionaire? What a disappointment.
Padma circled the Ghaus Mohammad quba, a single dome upon an octagonal base. The mausoleum housed the body of a Sufi mystic, whose spiritual practices were said to have been half-Hindu and half-Muslim. The water from the adjacent tank was said to cure skin diseases. In it, dark-green algae clung to its sides; small white larvae gathered in the corner, roiling like foam. Weeds had overtaken the area, growing around an unmarked tumulus until the area looked cobwebbed. A hole had been knocked out of a nearby wall. Dev squinted; the architecture hurt his eyes. Nothing had a plain, solid surface. He didn’t understand all this effort. The sun worshiped by casting shadows; the pigeons worshiped by building their nests.
Padma examined the corner pilasters, solid columns of stone with the tree of life carved into them. She ran her hands over the lattice like a blind woman committing the image to memory. If she could have, she would have taken it home and rebuilt the entire mausoleum in Dev’s apartment.
Dev had wanted to marry, but marriage, family — these seemed like a mirage in the distance. What he saw in the foreground was his career, the long queue of patients waiting for his clinic to open, as they had once waited for his father’s. He remembered running among them as a child, marveling at their ills: open sores the color of currant jelly, broken limbs hanging at impossible angles. And then, after an hour with his father, they reemerged, arms and legs returned to their original orientations. Dev’s father taught him how to bind a wound in gauze, squeezing Dev’s wrist and saying, It should feel this tight: the correct pressure to save a life.
And now, an adult, he ignored the rumors regarding him as the jealously of gnats—the head of an HIV clinic, unmarried at thirty-five; what do you think? He lobbed away his colleagues’ offers of matrimonial representation. It was bothersome, these blessings people wished upon him, the pujas they wanted to perform. It had been his mother’s idea to place a matrimonial ad in the newspaper. She fielded possibilities during his residency, letters and photographs in thick files marked unsuitable, possibility, suitable, unavailable. That last folder grew increasingly fat, fed by women who could not wait for Dev to return from the States or, after his return, could not wait while he made up his mind. His mother lamented: Will you be an orphan before you marry? Or until you have become too old to be suitable? To which he replied: Mother, I am a doctor. I will always be suitable.
On Padma’s hands, the mehendi had not yet faded, though the images had begun to bleed. Dev’s name, hidden in the tail feathers of a peacock, had blurred. It was now an inscription as ancient and indistinct as anything here on the quba.
— Such a pity, Padma said. A camera hung around her neck, resting just below her breasts. She traced her fingers across cracks filled in with white mortar. Architectural scars. Designs interrupted, careful carvings discolored with moss and grime and only half cleaned, as if the task were too burdensome for one person to complete alone.
— These beautiful buildings, she continued. — Look at how those cornices have shifted so that the floral design no longer matches. And this latticework. It’s like someone threw plaster at the holes to repair it.
This was natural selection at work. If Lakhpat hadn’t been meant to survive, then it should have been allowed to die. But its residents persisted: an occasional motorcycle wound through the streets. Children called to each other. Two radio communication towers stood within the fort walls, like spikes driven into the city to keep it from blowing away. Dev understood the city’s significance — Padma, more so — but historical knowledge was like all things past: enlightening but hardly practical. The medical profession no longer relied on leeches, or bed rest, or admission to a sanitarium. No, these things were best left behind.
Padma left dainty tracks around the quba. Dev had chosen her from his mother’s files. In the photo she had sent, she posed with three school friends in Varanasi. If she had not circled herself, Dev would have assumed that she was one of the others. Other prospects sent carefully photographed studio portraits, lights positioned to catch cheekbone structure or the luminous sheen of glittered eyelids. This, apparently, was the best picture Padma could produce of herself, her eyes the color of the Ganges, as if she had reluctantly emerged from the water. He slipped her folder from possibility to suitable. If his mother recognized her when he presented Padma’s file, she said nothing.
— Let’s go to the fort walls, Dev said. — We can see the entire town from there and then move on.
Padma smiled and followed.
As she navigated the narrow path atop the fort, Dev walked a few paces behind. Travelers had left their mark: scratched-in graffiti, hieroglyphics of initials and dates. He wondered if, a hundred years from now, this writing would have more meaning than the fort itself. Once the fort had crumbled into its component parts, these letters would be framed in a museum—“PSK,” whoever he may be, memorialized forever.
Padma stopped to snap pictures — a cannon on the ground like an amputated leg, a crumbling lookout window — and as she did, she regained her enthusiasm. She cupped her hand out before her.
— Look, she said. — I can hold the entire city in my palm.
Dev knelt to look — one wall to the other, balanced between her fingertips and wrist.
— Be careful not to drop it, he said. — You don’t want to break it.
She laughed, a sound that startled Dev. Padma stretched her arms as if she could embrace the entire desert, the heat and salt and beige light, as if she wanted to embed this place of unlimited possibility and desolation in her skin. And for a moment, he didn’t see her as Padma, the shy one — he saw her as Karisma Kapoor, seated on a throne of broken rocks, a dupatta wrapped around her head, and he was Akshay Kumar, a man haunted by a dark secret.
Padma pointed to the horizon. — Boats! she said. She clambered off the fort walls and walked into the Great Rann. Areas were still moist from yearly flooding: the tidal surges that presaged the monsoons, then the monsoons themselves. The muddy patches reminded Dev of skin under a microscope, the irregular cracks of the cells’ borders. Padma could not completely avoid the mud and left skids where her balance wavered. Her tracks joined others: tridents left behind by birds, wishbones left by antelopes. Where the earth had dimpled, reservoirs filled with white flecks of salt remained.