The Lowland

by Jhumpa Lahiri

Plato says the purpose of philosophy is to teach us how to die.

She saw no sign of irritation or impatience in his expression when he spotted her. She saw only his pleasure in seeing her. As if he knew she would come; as if he knew, even, that she would deliberate, and be as ridiculously late as she was. When she asked what had happened in the film so far, he shook his head. I don’t know, he said, handing her the ticket. He’d been standing there all the while on the sidewalk, waiting for her. Waiting, until they were in the darkness of the theatre, to take her hand.

Her face was plain but appealing, the pale blue of her eyes like the lining of a mussel shell. She looked a bit older than Subhash. Her hair was long, dark blond, marsh grass in winter.

My parents were worried that it was typhoid, he told Holly. They were worried, for a few days, that we might die, the way another young boy in our neighborhood recently had. Even now, when they talk about it, they sound afraid. As if they’re still waiting for our fevers to break. That’s what happens when you become a parent, Holly told him. Time stops when something threatens them. The meaning goes away.

What was stored in memory was distinct from what was deliberately remembered, Augustine said.

In order to marry Gauri he’d compromised his ties to his parents, perhaps permanently, he did not know. But he was a father now. He could no longer imagine a life in which he had not taken that step.