Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri

Author:Jhumpa Lahiri
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3, pdf
ISBN: 9780307268686
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2008-04-01T10:00:00+00:00

Rahul was already awake when she came downstairs the next morning, sitting at the table with Roger, a T-shirt sticking to his thickened body, sweaty hair plastered to his face. He was wearing shorts, the hair on his dark legs curlier than she remembered. Roger was drinking his tea, showing Rahul a Tube map, telling him which trains went where, pointing out parks in which he could run.

“Where did you go?” she asked Rahul. She prepared a pot of coffee, then warmed the milk for Neel’s Weetabix, knowing he would be up soon.

“No idea,” he said. “I just go for an hour. Running’s my new addiction.” It was the first time since he arrived that he’d alluded in any way to his drinking. “That and coffee.”

When it was ready she poured him a cup, watched him add three spoons of sugar, remembered the time he’d visited her in college and she’d handed him his first beer. “What will you do today?”

Rahul shrugged. “Maybe a museum. I just want to walk around.”

“Be ready in twenty minutes and I’ll drop you at the tube,” Roger offered.

While Sudha was at work she wondered what her brother was doing, wondered if one of the hundreds of pubs on the streets of London would tempt him. Part of her worried that something would set him off and that he would disappear again. But when she got back to the house that evening she found Rahul crawling up the staircase after Neel, pretending to be a hungry lion. That night they went out for curry and again he did not drink, covering the paper spread on the table with elaborate drawings. Again he sat with Sudha in the bathroom as she bathed Neel, and the following morning he went for his run. For the rest of the week he worked through his list of activities, always returning with a little gift for Neel. It felt strange to be at work for so much of the time that Rahul was visiting, but Sudha thought it was better, safer, that their time together was limited to mornings and evenings, times when Roger and Neel were around.

Saturday morning Rahul made omelettes, expertly chopping mushrooms and onions the way the chefs did on television, and then at Rahul’s suggestion they went to the London Zoo. Rahul had offered to take Neel himself, and though throughout the week both Sudha and Roger had taken advantage of Rahul’s presence, leaving him in charge for five or ten minutes if they needed to go to the corner for eggs or bread, there was no question of that. And yet, once they were at the zoo, both Roger and Sudha felt obsolete. Rahul carried Neel on his shoulders the whole time, the stroller Sudha pushed containing nothing but her purse. Neel was equally smitten, bursting into tears when Rahul had to use the restroom. Rahul had insisted on paying for everything—buying them their tickets, their sandwiches and sodas, the ice cream for Neel, the lime-green balloon that drifted all afternoon above their heads.

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