She looked puzzled. Then she hugged her knees close and spoke without looking at him. “When I was eight, at Diwali, I was playing marbles with Ishwar. Don’t you remember? When I won, Ishwar wanted to take the marbles from me. He was so angry. He called me ‘saali,’ and I began to cry. I went by myself to the tent and sat there and read quietly. He grabbed my book from me, like this.” She grabbed his hand and pulled, hard. The touch of her skin excited him. “But when you came, you took it from him. You scolded him and gave the book back to me.” She looked at him now. “Don’t you remember?” she asked again.

“No,” he said, although he remembered it very well. It frightened him, the thought that she had remembered this small kindness for so long.

“That is why I do not care that you have no father.” She leaned forward and kissed him. He had been relieved. It was their first kiss.

For years afterward, he regretted that he had not confessed to remembering the fight with Ishwar and the stolen book. But he had not known what he felt about his marriage. Not because of Padma’s limp, but because his childhood was unfinished. Too many questions were left unanswered.

HE DID NOT WANT to accept Karak’s offer. He did not even want to speak of it again. But that night after dinner, after the drinking, after Amarjeet fell asleep on his cot, when just he and Karak lay awake in the darkness, he could not help himself. “You have not made a fair allotment in your offer, Karak,” he said. It was his pride talking. He had never before called Karak by only his first name.

For a long time there was no answer, and Ram thought he had fallen asleep. Then he heard Karak clear his throat. “What would be fair?”

“One-third to Eggenberger, one-third to you, one-third to me.”

“That is very bold of you.”

Ram was quiet.

“Has your status in life changed, bhai?” Karak said softly, with a chuckle.

Ram swallowed. “No, but neither has my knowledge of how to grow cotton in the desert, when to water and when not, how to have three harvests from one planting.”

He hoped he had not gone too far. Karak lay on his back, saying nothing. If he had known Karak well then, Ram would have realized that the man was seething, his mind racing through all the things that he had done for Ram over the past year and a half, the money lent for Ishwar’s medicine, the camaraderie on the ship, the iron kara gifted at the moment they parted, the hospitality at Jivan’s home. He would have known that Karak had not understood Ram at all; that Karak’s only concern was to not show weakness, or what others might think to be weakness.

Ram felt his anger mount. “I will be going tomorrow. Back to Hambelton. I have been away for more than a week. They want me back.”