— For goodness’ sake, Dev told his wife. — Hold your tongue.
Padma looked like a bird that had flown into a pane of clear glass.
— I apologize, Dev said. He took the camera from Padma’s neck. — Sometimes we need to be reminded of our place, he told them. He opened the back of the camera and pulled loose the film. The brown exposed coils curled around his wrists like manacles.
They waited a half hour in the sun until the commanding officer came. The officer lectured them as if they were unruly children—this is a time of great tension, this is for your protection—and Dev said, Yes, sir, yes, until he lost track of what he had agreed to. He could no longer say he was even annoyed. He felt less than nothing, really. This show of authority was as empty as a hand puppet; the soldiers had already proved what they wanted to prove. They were the lords of this expanse, keeping an endless vigil on this dead city. Lakhpat’s walls had been built as the first line of defense against Sindhu invaders. Now, it was the Pakistanis.
— You are not allowed beyond the city walls, the officer said, and Dev said, — Yes.
In the car, driving toward the guesthouse in Narayan Sarovar, Padma turned her head away from Dev, as if the landscape, an expanse the color of underbaked bread, was worth looking at. He asked how she was feeling, and she tilted her head in a maddeningly noncommittal way. — Things were going badly, he explained. He hadn’t meant to insult her. No reply.
— Very well, then! he yelled. He didn’t care if her tongue shriveled inside her mouth.
The guesthouse Padma had chosen was adjacent to a Dwarkadish temple. She went straight to the room while Dev registered. The only other person there was a young foreign tourist, the type that lived out of a backpack. Foreigners were a rarity here in Kutch. Dev guessed he was German.
The tourist acknowledged him with a nod and a smile.
He could understand Padma’s anger, up to a point. It was unfair for him to be cross with her for speaking, and then to be cross with her again for being quiet. But if she had wanted fairness, she should not have been born a woman.
Dev felt no better than those jawans. He had never before been disrespectful to a woman. Even in their short marriage, he was pleasantly surprised when she challenged him, correcting his admittedly incomplete knowledge of history. He placed no demands on her: he had not forced his way into her arms or come home demanding meals. Asking her to be silent — just for a moment — should have been of no consequence. He had apologized, and still a barrier he could not comprehend remained.
In the room, Padma unfolded the sari she would wear tomorrow to visit Dr. Sengupta. She brushed it to straighten the creases, to remove the dust that had infiltrated their luggage. Her hands glided against the fabric. It was a vermillion silk; the edges were hemmed with gold thread. Dev had chosen it for her, a traditional gift, something his mother or grandmother would have worn. It seemed out of place among Padma’s other clothes: the pantsuits, the blouses in colors unknown to nature, the saris she had named after different artists. Hand me my Pollock, she would say. My Picasso. My Chagall. Such a clever wife he had. His colleagues had been duly impressed. The ring he wore was proof against speculation, against rumors. It was proof of his duty, of the affection that had not yet had a chance to grow.
Dev lay on a pad that he had stretched across the floor so that his wife could have the bed.
— I know you’re disappointed with me, she said.
— I’m not disappointed, Dev replied. — Not with you.
But Padma stared at the ceiling, as if learning how to endure this, the first of the lies in their marriage.
Dev woke during the night, uneasy. Padma’s quiet breath filled the room, and from the high, arched window on the wall, a solid stripe of moonlight entered. What the soldier said disturbed him. The words ricocheted in his head.
Control your woman.
He left the room and paced the guesthouse. It wasn’t the thuggish command that bothered him—control. It was the other part. Your woman. He could no longer ignore it: Padma was his woman. Dev’s mother and father had embraced her as their own, as she had embraced them as new parents. And Dev, whose responsibilities had always been diffused among humanity, now possessed a specific set of responsibilities to which to attend. He felt bound to her in ways he could not — maybe could never — understand.
He knelt before the German’s room, this unfettered young man, free to wander the ends of the earth. He aligned his eye with the keyhole, resting his cheek against the wood. His aperture of vision revealed the German’s bed lit up by the moon. He had thrown off his sheet; it bunched on his shins. He slept nude, but the light ended just below his belly button. His stomach moved steadily. His right wrist bent awkwardly in front of his pubis, and Dev knew that when he woke, that hand would be numb, unresponsive. It would flap uselessly until blood returned to the nerves, and it would prickle as if on fire. Dev held his breath to still the terrible racket. His heartbeat pounded so loud it could have woken everyone in the city.
As he stood, his bones creaked. His joints popped. Adrenaline burned the back of his throat. He felt his way back to Padma, tracing the painted wall with his fingers. He could tell where the brush hadn’t fully covered a crevasse, where a drip had run in a vertical line. Shoddy workmanship, one incomplete project after another.
Back in the room, Padma hadn’t stirred. She gave off a floral smell, sweet in the salt-tinged air. He sat on the edge of the bed, the mattress so thin he could feel the metal springs underneath. Padma had the sheet up to her shoulders, and he caressed the outline of her body. He had once deemed Padma suitable. He had never considered if she considered him suitable in return. Perhaps they were suitable only for each other. He stroked her, as if smoothing out a piece of velvet, until she stirred. When she tried to rise, his lips found hers in the darkness, and he knew that he could not abandon either Padma or his duty to her.
They left shortly after sunrise, but the German had left even earlier than they. — These tourists and their backpacks, the guesthouse manager said. Dev nodded, and his heart thudded, emptying entirely of blood. On the ride to Bhuj, Padma had a smile that Dev could not place. It was not the previous day’s girlish glee. It was more settled, a smile with wrinkles at its borders. Padma napped when she could with her head on Dev’s shoulder. He sagged under her weight and balanced himself against the unsteady road.
The street on which Dr. Sengupta and his wife, Sushrita, lived had no two houses alike. They stood, one-, two-, and three-storied, balconies bulging like hernias. The architectural chaos was constrained only by the size of the plot. The other houses were so colorfully garish that Dr. Sengupta’s white paint seemed quaint. Dr. Sengupta would have been astounded at the buildings continually rising into the Delhi sky, thin and spindly as young bamboo. That’s where Dev’s future lay: years from now, he and Padma and Arusha would live in a block of flats in Noida, and from his window, he would see other gray constructs replicated across the length of the land. In the distance, cranes would herald the next step of progress. This was his life at its apex, comfort that others would envy, a beautiful stability. Perhaps he would shift away from his HIV clinic and into teaching, like Dr. Sengupta. Perhaps Padma would morph into a dutiful doctor’s wife, pleasant and content.
In Dr. Sengupta’s living room, Sushrita set out bowls of chaat. Dev nibbled nervously. Padma insisted that she could not eat a thing, and Sushrita insisted that she should, and since Sushrita had the force of age behind her words, Padma relented. — Delicious, she said. Dr. Sengupta’s portraits of his grown sons and their children hung on the walls. Generations smiled down upon the newlyweds.