Unaccustomed Earth - Jhumpa Lahiri [146]
They got into the boat, the boy taking his place at the front. On the beach Henrik’s wife raised a thin arm from where she was sitting, gave a lazy wave. The children looked up briefly as Henrik and Kaushik settled themselves inside. There was plenty of room on board, and when Henrik called out to his wife and said something in Swedish, pointing to the empty seats, Kaushik guessed that it was to ask her and the children to join them. But she replied in the negative, shaking her head and retreating behind one of her magazines.
He experienced a moment’s nervousness because Henrik was so large, but the boat absorbed their shared weight. The Thai boy lifted his oar and they began to move. Kaushik felt the swell of the sea beneath the hull, close to his body, not touching him but penetrating him at the same time. The resort retreated from view, the bungalows beneath the palms and the darting forms of Henrik’s children turning to specks, the familiar coastline curving away like a flat smiling beast. The boy spoke a little English, told Henrik about a school of parrotfish he’d seen the day before. The morning sun was already strong, and after a while Henrik took off his shirt. Kaushik looked at Henrik’s broad pink back, glistening with sweat. They were skirting an abandoned cove. “It’s getting hot,” Henrik said. He tapped the boy on the shoulder. “I take a dip here to cool off.”
The boy nodded, rested his oar. Henrik dived over the edge of the boat and started to swim, his ungainly body turning graceful as it cut through the water with swift, skillful strokes. And alongside Henrik, for a moment, Kaushik saw his mother also swimming, saw her body still vital, a brief blur that passed as effortlessly as the iridescent fish darting from time to time beneath the boat. His torso cast a shadow into the sea. He thought of the thin bronze sculpture of the boy he’d seen with Hema in Volterra, in the Etruscan Museum. It was called L’ Ombra della Sera: the Shadow of Evening. But in Khao Lak it was morning, the sun burning down on Kaushik, his shadow still in proportion to his body.
When he looked up, he saw that the boy had guided them close to shore. Henrik emerged from the water, waded clumsily toward the deserted cove. The white sand was spotless, limestone cliffs looming behind. Kaushik lifted the camera to his face, took a picture, and set the camera down at his feet. He dipped his hands into the water, cooling off his neck and face, not expecting its salty taste. Then he unbuttoned his shirt, felt the sun strike his skin. He wanted to swim to the cove as Henrik had, to show his mother he was not afraid. He took off his sunglasses, leaving them in the boat next to his camera. The speck in his vision rose and fell, erasing its random trail. He held on to the edge of the boat, swinging his legs over the side, lowering himself. The sea was as warm and welcoming as a bath. His feet touched the bottom, and so he let go.
All day I was oblivious. I was out with my mother and two aunts, being fitted for blouses, selecting jewels. We had spent hours on a thin futon, drinking Cokes and eating mutton rolls, as men in a sari shop unfolded the greater part of their inventory. I went along with all of it, chose a red Benarasi to wear. But the whole time I was thinking of you, fearful of the mistake I was making. I was still slightly jet-lagged, hungry for meals we were used to eating together, for the taste of good coffee and wine. On the crowded street, walking back to my parents’ flat off Triangular Park, I searched foolishly for your face. “A terrible thing has happened,” the gatekeeper told us when we arrived.
On television, in a pink sitting room with stark fluorescent light, I saw images of the Indian and Sri Lankan coastline, glimpses from vacationers’ video cameras never intended to capture such a thing. I saw a massive surge of water moving so quickly that the tape seemed to be playing at an unnatural speed. At first it was only the damage in South India