Ravi didn't wait long to tell her. It was the night that Meera and he arrived in London, haggard from their two-day honeymoon in Jaipur, where an overenthusiastic bearer woke them every morning at six with bed-tea. Then, on a connecting flight from Cairo, they had dozed, their heads forming a tent against the propeller roar, and now, in Earl's Court, the street below empty save for murmuring students and a chestnut seller with a scratchy voice, they stayed awake into the night. Ravi showed her around the sparse, drafty top-floor flat and plugged in the three-bar fire. Then he began speaking to her in a businesslike way, a tone she'd never detected before in his arsenal of charm.
"I suppose, dear, we might as well discuss the issue at hand," he said. Casually he brought up the fact that he was already married to a woman in England, Margaret, a nurse. "I can only be half a husband," he declared. "I owe a responsibility to this woman. You see, when I was lonely and sad in this new country, she was of great ... assistance... to me, and I am like a father to her two children. No, let me finish. You see, there was no circumstance in which I could inform my family in Amritsar about her. People there don't understand these distances-the new world you and I inhabit." Ravi was a tall man with aristocratically weatherbeaten skin. He stooped more and more as he spoke, clutching the daggers of hair at the back of his neck, one eye twitching a little, the whites embroidered with rivulets of red, even as his voice remained deliberate. "You must realize, Meera, it was a very difficult circumstance for me. When a man is cast away from home, he needs an anchor to keep his ship in port."
Meera stood on her toes. Swaddled in several hand-knit pullovers, she reached up and touched his face.
Ravi looked as if he were going to sneeze but then relaxed.
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة August 14, 2023 من The New Yorker.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك ? تسجيل الدخول
هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة August 14, 2023 من The New Yorker.
ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.
بالفعل مشترك? تسجيل الدخول
BADDIE ISSUES
\"Wicked\" and \"Gladiator II.\"
LET'S MAKE A DEAL
\"Death Becomes Her\" and \"Burnout Paradise.\"
ANTI HEROES
\"The Franchise,\" on HBO.
FELLOW-TRAVELLERS
The surprisingly sunny origins of the Frankfurt School.
NOW YOU SEE ME
John Singer Sargent's strange, slippery portraits of an art dealer's family.
PARIS FRIEND - SHUANG XUETAO
Xiaoguo had a terror of thirst, so he kept a glass of water on the table beside his hospital bed. As soon as it was empty, he asked me to refill it. I wanted to warn him that this was unhealthy - guzzling water all night long puts pressure on the kidneys, and pissing that much couldn't be good for his injury. He was tall, though, so I decided his insides could probably cope.
WILD SIDE
Is Lake Tahoe's bear boom getting out of hand?
GETTING A GRIP
Robots learn to use their hands.
WITHHOLDING SEX FROM MY WIFE
In the wake of [the] election, progressive women, who are outraged over Donald Trump's victory at the ballot box, have taken to social media with public, vengeful vows of chastity. - The Free Press.
DEADLINE EXTENSION
Old age, reborn.
