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.
Denne historien er fra August 14, 2023-utgaven av The New Yorker.
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Denne historien er fra August 14, 2023-utgaven av The New Yorker.
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GET IT TOGETHER
In the beginning was the mob, and the mob was bad. In Gibbon’s 1776 “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” the Roman mob makes regular appearances, usually at the instigation of a demagogue, loudly demanding to be placated with free food and entertainment (“bread and circuses”), and, though they don’t get to rule, they sometimes get to choose who will.
GAINING CONTROL
The frenemies who fought to bring contraception to this country.
REBELS WITH A CAUSE
In the new FX/Hulu series “Say Nothing,” life as an armed revolutionary during the Troubles has—at least at first—an air of glamour.
AGAINST THE CURRENT
\"Give Me Carmelita Tropicana!,\" at Soho Rep, and \"Gatz,\" at the Public.
METAMORPHOSIS
The director Marielle Heller explores the feral side of child rearing.
THE BIG SPIN
A district attorney's office investigates how its prosecutors picked death-penalty juries.
THIS ELECTION JUST PROVES WHAT I ALREADY BELIEVED
I hate to say I told you so, but here we are. Kamala Harris’s loss will go down in history as a catastrophe that could have easily been avoided if more people had thought whatever I happen to think.
HOLD YOUR TONGUE
Can the world's most populous country protect its languages?
A LONG WAY HOME
Ordinarily, I hate staying at someone's house, but when Hugh and I visited his friend Mary in Maine we had no other choice.
YULE RULES
“Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point.”
