Unaccustomed Earth - Jhumpa Lahiri [145]
The wife stood up when they were finished, kissed the husband on the forehead, and took the children away. “Join me for a drink?” the man called out to Kaushik after they’d gone.
They walked indoors into the air-conditioned bar and ordered whiskey. A band was setting up to play. The Swedish man, Henrik, worked as a film editor for a television station in Stockholm. They spoke about the press in Sweden and Italy, about the war in Iraq. “Our jobs, they are similar,” Henrik said. “Our names, too.”
Kaushik nodded.
It was the fourth Christmas the family had spent at this resort, Henrik said. “The first year, Lars was just a baby.”
“Your families don’t mind?”
“What?”
“Your going to Thailand for Christmas?”
“My wife’s parents complain. But we come anyway. They are in Stockholm, living across the street. My parents are divorced, both remarried.” Henrik shook his big head. “Too many people to see. And you, where is your family?”
“My mother’s dead. My father lives in the United States.”
“But you are Indian, no?”
“Yes.”
“You live in India?”
“I don’t live anywhere at the moment. I’m about to move to Hong Kong.”
“Married?” Henrik asked.
He shook his head.
“But you are thinking of someone. My wife says so. Missing her.”
He had not thought that he had been obvious, that the family had been paying attention to him. He thought about denying it. “Now and again.”
“You will see her soon?”
“No.”
Henrik shrugged. “Alone is good, too.” He drained his whiskey.
Kaushik’s mood darkened. As much as he’d wanted Hema to be with him now, he knew it would be easier to begin life in Hong Kong alone. He knew there was nothing for her to do there, that the move would have stripped her of her work, her world. The band started to play, the stale cover music grating. He wanted to be alone, to lie down and think. “I’m going to bed,” he said.
“Goodnight,” Henrik told him. He ordered another whiskey. “One last for me.”
Once more the day was flawless. Kaushik got up, walked over to the restaurant for breakfast. Henrik was sitting at the bar where Kaushik had left him the night before, but he was freshly showered, dressed in swimming trunks and a Hawaiian shirt, drinking coffee, breaking apart his rolls. “You felt your bed shake this morning?”
Kaushik shook his head.
“They said in the hotel, a small earthquake,” Henrik said. “Over now.”
Whatever had happened, Kaushik had slept through it. He thought back to the day in El Salvador when he’d taken his first real picture, and the tremor that had come just before: the stew spilling from its bowls, the young man in impeccably clean tan trousers lying in a pool of blood on the street.
“There is a shallow coral reef not far from here. Like to come? My wife and the kids want to buy things in town.”
Kaushik looked out at the water. “I’m not a very good swimmer.”
Henrik laughed. “Someone else will be doing the swimming for us.” He pointed to a fishing boat resting on the shoreline. “I’ve arranged for a good price. When we get there, you can relax while I poke around.”
After breakfast they walked over to the boat. The owner, a bare-chested teenage Thai boy wearing long red shorts, was clearing it of leaves and withered frangipani petals. Two small lime-colored frogs hopped out, leaping onto the sand. Henrik scooped up one in each of his large hands and brought them over to his children, who began chasing the frogs around in circles, their heads bent toward the ground. The Thai boy began to pull the boat into the water, Kaushik following, white foam like soap suds hissing around his ankles. He had brought one of his cameras, wearing it around his neck.