I decided to hang around Berkeley for at least a few days, to cool off and (I told myself) to immerse in work in a way that had been less possible with an often-pantsless girl wandering around the house. I wrote all morning, then found, in the afternoon, that I needed a book I’d left in the TA office a few weeks earlier. So, into Dwinelle I went, fat noise-canceling headphones on to ward off small talk. I nabbed the book from the bottom drawer of the desk I nominally shared with two other PhD candidates, and was on my way back out when I stopped, absently, to check my mailbox. Few people ever sent me mail, save some librarians who’d kick over reserved copies of requested books or specially called-up archives. But sitting in the wire tray labeled NEIL NARAYAN, GRAD ’20, was a mustard-yellow unmarked legal-size envelope. There was no return address.

“Do you know who dropped this off?” I asked the admin, who was watching reality television clips on her laptop.

“Not a clue.” She returned to The Bachelorette.

I peeked inside and extracted a photocopied newspaper page. The San Francisco Call, it read. The date of the paper was smudged, but I made out 185—1850-something. Below was a headline, above a single cold paragraph.

AN HINDOSTAN FOUND DEAD IN MINING CAMP.

Coroner Michael Rogers was yesterday called to hold an inquest upon the body of an Hindostan who was found dead from debility and injuries in Yuba County, near the banks of the Yuba River in Marysville. Nearby miners identified the man as a migrant from the East Indian city of Bombay, though at least one individual identified him in contradiction as Mamhood, of Egypt. The man has also been named as a known thief of gold dust. Injuries may have been visited upon him as a result, and the Coroner’s verdict was in agreement with the above statement.

There was nothing else.

I left Dwinelle Hall, stepping into the startlingly unrelenting East Bay sunshine, envelope in hand. So, the Bombayan was real. He had made it to Marysville. But no one knew him. I supposed he had never been my Isaac Snider. Isaac Snider was an unproven theory of history, formulated solely to explain me. I would never have a corollary in the past, never have a legible American ancestor to provide guidance on how to make a life. I would just have to keep on trying, tomorrow and tomorrow.