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Janaki went to the Maru Ganesh temple early in the morning to pray for her son. She stood before the small shrine, her eyes closed, palms together. Bhola often spoke of the voices inside his head. He covered his mouth with his hand as he laughed at the secret jokes he heard throughout the day, and sometimes he spoke into his hand as if it were a walkie-talkie.

She circled the shrine three times and headed back home. Last night, after she’d already gone to sleep, Bhola rapped on her front door, shouting, “Ama, Ama.” At first she thought she was dreaming about him, as she often did. But when she opened the door, he barged into her living room and said, “I need to buy a gun. Give me some money, Ama.” He’d tied a rope around his waist to hold up his pants and had bunched up his hair on the top of his head with a rubber band. His eyes scanned the room, then he strode into her bedroom.

“What do you need the gun for?” she asked quietly as she followed him. Over the years she had learned to act calmly when he became agitated—her tone baffled him at first, but it sometimes slowed him down.

“I am joining the Maobadis,” he said, turning to face her. “They need me. They’ll make me a commander if I can get a gun.” He whispered something into his palm.

“A gun costs a lot of money,” Janaki said.

“I only need three thousand rupees, Ama.”

She talked him into sitting on her bed, then went to get him a plate of dal-bhat from the kitchen. She always had food ready for him, knowing that he often didn’t eat enough. Since he’d moved into the single room on the top floor of her house about a year ago, he had started cooking for himself, and Janaki knew that sometimes he went hungry for a day or two. “You can sleep upstairs,” she’d told him when he first moved out. “But come downstairs to eat.” He’d narrowed his eyes and said, “I know what you’re up to. You’re going to poison me.” Of course that was just his madness talking, and when he came downstairs he did eat her food, with relish, and usually asked for more.

Now when she returned to her bedroom with his food, he was feeling around under her mattress, where she used to stash her money when he was younger.

“First eat,” she said. “Then we can talk about money.”

“My comrades need me,” he said. His desperate look reminded her of when he was about seven or eight and a neighborhood bully had snatched his marbles. “My marbles, Ama,” he’d say, “not his.” And she’d scour the neighborhood to find the thief, twist his ear, and get her son’s marbles back. At that time, Bhola’s madness hadn’t revealed itself. The only faintly suspect thing he did was stare at the picture of Lord Shiva in the kitchen for minutes on end.

In those days, both Janaki and Bhola’s father, Ananda, who now lived with his new wife in another part of the city, didn’t make much of it. “He’s a thinker,” Ananda used to say. “He’s just contemplating.” But over the years, Bhola developed a religiosity that surprised his parents. By the time he turned fifteen, he was constantly praying. He’d memorized Hanuman Chalisa, the Gayatri mantra, and a host of other sacred invocations. His lips seemed to move silently all the time. “He’s going to be a priest,” Ananda said, only half jokingly. By that time Janaki sensed something was wrong with her son. “What do you need to pray for?” she asked him once. “We’ve given you everything. What can God give you that we can’t?”

“You think you’re better than God?” Bhola said testily. “You want to go to hell?”

When he began to say that there were people inside his head who threatened to kill him if he didn’t pray hard enough, and when he accused strangers on the street of plotting to imprison him, Janaki took him to a local clairvoyant one afternoon, suspecting that her son was haunted by an evil spirit. She persuaded him to go by telling him that the clairvoyant specialized in prayer and could help him. A relative had suggested she consult a psychiatrist, but Janaki was afraid that doing such a thing would brand Bhola as crazy, stigmatizing him for life.

The clairvoyant was a college girl who was said to be possessed by a goddess, and she answered the door dressed in a saffron Padma Kanya College sari, a tube of lipstick in her hand. “I have to go to class now,” the girl said. “I only see people in the early morning.” But when Janaki insisted, the girl set down her lipstick, went to wash her hands, and sat on a straw mat on a dais in the corner of the room. Small statues and pictures of gods and goddesses surrounded her. Janaki and Bhola followed her and sat on the floor in front of her. Instantly, the girl’s eyes fluttered and a voice came out of her mouth that was different—hoarser, faster. “You like to play marbles, huh? Do you go to school? Do you get good grades?” she asked Bhola.

“He’s become very religious,” Janaki said.

The girl spoke in a rapid burst of Newari that Janaki didn’t understand.

“Is everything . . . all right with him?” Janaki asked.

The girl let out a sigh and said, “He’ll have problems.” She pointed to her own head. “Bad spirits have pushed themselves into his mind.”

Bhola was staring at the girl, his mouth slightly open as if transfixed by her face.

“What should I do? Can you do anything?” Janaki asked.

“Wait,” the girl said. Then her lips began to move. With her fingers she drew circles in the air around Bhola’s head, then said, “His father. His father will leave you. Go to the Dakshinkali temple and make an offering of a goat, then feed him fish soup with some ginger.”

“Feed my husband?”

“No, no, your son. Feed him fish soup every day for a month.”

“He’ll be fine then?”

The girl’s eyes fluttered and her earlier voice emerged. “I’ll be late for class. I have an exam today—I have to go.”

When sacrificing a goat at Dakshinkali and feeding Bhola fish soup did nothing, Janaki did take him to a psychiatrist, who met with them and prescribed some pills. But the pills only made Bhola more restless, more fearful and paranoid. A second psychiatrist said that Bhola suffered from a debilitating mental disease, schizophrenia, that had no known cure. He prescribed a medication that he hoped would help control it. These pills seemed to calm Bhola down, but after a few days he abruptly refused to keep taking them, saying they were shrinking his stomach and would starve him to death. Desperate, Janaki once again turned to shamans and soothsayers. But no matter how many chickens she sacrificed to goddesses, no matter what strange concoctions she made to drive the evil spirits away, the voices inside his head continued their harangue.

Now he refused to touch the dal-bhat she’d brought him. “My comrades have forbidden me to accept food or drink from you,” he said.

“Who are your comrades?”

“That’s top secret,” Bhola said with a sly smile. “You might tell the government, and then they’d get caught. So, no, that question I cannot oblige.”

It didn’t completely surprise Janaki that he was obsessed with the Maobadis. After all, everyone talked about them—in the shops, on the radio and television. The newspapers continually printed their photos: the top leader with his solemn eyes; the second-in-command, the tall doctor. Janaki didn’t understand how these ordinary-looking men could be responsible for spilling so much blood. Finally she said to Bhola, “I can’t give you money for a gun.”

“You’re a worthless mother. That’s why Baba left you.”

Janaki flinched. “Don’t speak to me that way, Bhola.”

“Are you giving me the money or not?” Something flickered in his eyes. He’d never been violent, but if he thought those rebels were his friends, who knew what he might do?

“I can’t give you money,” she said quietly.

Bhola hurled the plate of food across the room, and rice and dal scattered all over the floor. “The comrades will hear about this,” he said and stood. “I’ve an appointment to meet them in the hills tomorrow.” And then he left.

Janaki stared at the food, her head reeling, then she took a deep breath, stood, and tidied the floor. When Ananda was with her, she at least had someone to talk to about Bhola, but a year ago Ananda left her, after twenty years of marriage, for a woman who worked in his office. He’d announced it bluntly in the kitchen, right after they’d finished dinner. Bhola was at the window, watching passersby on the street below and speaking into a pen.

“How long?” she’d asked. She meant to ask him how long he’d been seeing this woman, but the rest of the words remained inside her.

Ananda shook his head. “I’ve known her about a year. Please forgive me, Janaki. I didn’t know it would come to this, but Sukumaya and I have decided to live together now.”

Janaki stood there. “What about Bhola?”

“He will be fine. He’ll come and visit me.” Ananda told her that she could continue to live in the house—he’d pay the mortgage—and that she could keep the rent from the shop on the bottom floor for her monthly expenses. She didn’t ask him what he’d live on, but he explained, “I’m going to sell that land in the village.” She was too numb to argue with him that they’d talked about transferring his family’s land to Bhola’s name, in case something happened to the two of them.

Later that night, as she lay down in bed and turned off the light, she felt Ananda slide next to her. She quietly got up, went to the living room sofa, and lay down there, shivering a bit because she hadn’t taken the blanket with her. A few minutes later, he came to her and gently placed the blanket on her body She lay still, and he said, “It has nothing to do with you, Janaki.”

She didn’t speak.

“It’s just that . . . with her I’ve begun to feel a lot of things.” In the dark he seemed to be searching for words to explain more, but when he spoke, he only said, “I’ll move out the day after tomorrow. Our house will be ready by then.”

Bhola was seventeen then and didn’t fully understand what was happening. “What did you say to Baba?” he asked the morning Ananda packed his things and took a taxi to his new house. “Why is he leaving us?”

“He has something important to take care of for a while,” Janaki said. “You can go visit him.”

“You’re a bad person,” Bhola said, and with his index finger drew a circle around her head. After his father moved out, Bhola got worse. He refused to bathe, brush his teeth, or comb his hair. One day he disappeared for two nights, and when he returned home, his clothes were in tatters. After that, Janaki took him to the hospital and checked him into the psychiatric ward for three weeks. There he developed a fantasy about running away to Bombay to become a movie star. “Amitabh Bachchan has promised me a role in his next movie,” he said to the doctors and nurses. Janaki visited him daily and stayed by his bed, reading him stories or playing cards with him, and one afternoon Ananda dropped by with a small cassette player, which he presented to his son. The two listened to songs on the new player, and Janaki went down to the yard, where she sat under a tree and watched some ducks bathe in a large puddle of water. When she went back up an hour later, Bhola was asleep and Ananda had left. He didn’t visit his son in the hospital again.

After Bhola returned home from the hospital, he told Janaki that he didn’t want to live with her anymore, and when he started shoving his clothes into a large plastic bag, Janaki panicked and offered him the room on the third floor that she’d been using for storage. After some persuasion, Bhola agreed, on the condition that she’d never come up and that he’d cook his own food on a portable stove, as if he worried she’d poison him. She feared he would leave the stove on and burn down the house, but she had no choice. From then on, she listened closely to his loud footsteps on the stairs, and when she was sure he’d left, she slinked upstairs, opened his door with an extra key, tidied up the room, and made sure everything was okay.

A few months later, at the crowded market in Asan, Janaki saw Ananda with Sukumaya, a thin woman with smooth skin and large, attractive eyes. She wore a bright orange sari, her wrists crowded with bracelets and bangles. She was bargaining with a vegetable vendor, and Janaki watched them with a feeling of detachment. She stood there, a packet of cumin seeds in her hands, and when Ananda turned and spotted her, he quickly ushered his new wife away.

*  *  *  *  *

Back home from the Maru Ganesh temple, Janaki went up to Bhola’s room. After he left the house in a huff last night, he hadn’t returned. On the floor was his filthy bedding, and two giant cockroaches, feelers twitching, scurried across the room.

Janaki swept and mopped the floor, then tidied up his clothes. As she was making his bed, her fingers touched something hard. She lifted the mattress, then froze at what she saw. She gingerly lifted the thing with two fingers; it was heavier than she thought—she’d never seen one before except in movies. It had a brown handle and was rusted in spots. There was a bulge in the middle where she imagined the bullets went. Did it even work? Where did he get the money to buy it? Who sold it to him? And why had he asked her for a gun? Holding it carefully, she peeked out the window. People were going about their business. Two women carrying babies on their backs laughed as they talked. A young man, his hands in his pockets, sang loudly as he passed by. Voices drifted up. Fear tightened her stomach: Bhola might use the gun on himself.

She found a plastic bag under the bed and wrapped it around the gun with great caution, terrified that it would suddenly fire. She left the house and found herself thrust into the cacophony of the Makhan Tole marketplace. I should have gone another way, she thought, brushing against the pedestrians, fearful that the package would slip from her hands. She headed toward Ratna Park, where she boarded a minibus to go to Ananda, who lived in Balaju. On the minibus, Janaki clutched the gun under her shawl, feeling the cold metal against her belly.

When she knocked on Ananda’s door, Sukumaya answered. Janaki had never spoken to her, although she had run into her and Ananda a couple of times in the city after that first day at the market. Janaki and Ananda had done all the talking, mostly about Bhola, while Sukumaya had stood timidly behind him. “Is he home?” Janaki asked now. Her eyes fell on Sukumaya’s large belly, and Janaki swallowed. Soon Ananda would have even less time for Bhola.

Playing nervously with her hair, Sukumaya said he was visiting a friend.

“I’ll come back, then,” Janaki said.

Sukumaya said something so softly Janaki could barely hear her. “Please have some tea first,” Sukumaya repeated, louder this time.

What a strange woman, thought Janaki, who had expected Sukumaya to act at least a little sullen. Well, why not? Janaki thought. Let’s see what this woman is all about. And maybe Ananda would come home soon, and she could show him the gun.

She followed her into the living room and took a seat on a plush velvet sofa while Sukumaya went to the kitchen. The walls were covered with photos of Ananda and Sukumaya together: at their wedding, with mountains in the background, outside a temple. Janaki’s eyes fell on the one picture of Bhola, when he was five. She remembered that one—he’d refused to smile, and when they’d forced him to, he’d bared his teeth. She peered at the photo to see if she could detect something different in his eyes that might indicate how he’d turn out later. But she found nothing.

Sukumaya came back with two glasses of tea and a plate of biscuits. An awkward silence hung in the air as they sipped their tea, then Janaki said, “And you are well? Your health is well?” She almost asked whether she was pregnant, but she barely knew the woman, and she certainly didn’t want to be mistaken.

Sukumaya nodded.

She can’t be more than a few years younger than me, Janaki thought. Ananda had never mentioned her age.

Sukumaya blurted out, “I am expecting!”

“That’s what I thought. How far along are you?”

“Already five months. When you were carrying your son,” Sukumaya said, setting her cup of tea down and leaning forward, “did you feel like something horrible was growing inside you?”

“No,” Janaki said, nearly choking on her tea at the odd question.

“Did you ever feel that the baby would come out all wrong, perhaps missing an eye or a leg?”

Janaki said no. She wondered whether Sukumaya, too, was touched in the head.

“I feel like that all the time.” Her face became slightly contorted.

“If you feel like that, why don’t you ask your mother to come stay with you for a while? Let her take care of you.”

“My parents don’t come here,” Sukumaya said. “They were against this marriage.”

“Don’t you have anyone else you could talk to, lean on? Friends?”

“Even my friends don’t talk to me much anymore. I do have a good friend who moved to Chitwan after she married, but we only talk on the phone.”

The gun poked at Janaki’s stomach as she moved closer to Sukumaya. “Look, strange things happen to pregnant women, especially women who have children at a slightly later age. You should also remember that there’s a new person growing inside you, so it’s natural that your body would feel awkward.”

“Did you feel anything different with . . . Bhola babu?”

Janaki understood what she was insinuating, and she didn’t like it. “You mean, did I know that he would be different? No.”

Sukumaya failed to catch the irritation in her tone. “To be honest, I’m a little terrified.”

“You can’t worry about such things,” Janaki said. “Though I guess that’s what a pregnancy does, it makes you worry, but you should talk about it with someone close to you. Do you talk to Ananda about it at all?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know why. I guess I’m afraid that if I tell him how I’m feeling, he’ll either get annoyed with me or brush me off.”

Ananda has married a child, Janaki thought. He’s isolated her from her family, her friends, and left her to deal with her pregnancy on her own. “Listen,” Janaki said. “Whenever you feel lonely, call me on the phone. Do you know my number?”

She nodded. “But I won’t call you when he is around, as he might not like it.”

Suddenly Ananda came in and stood in the doorway, apparently shocked to see Janaki. “Oh,” he said. “Everything all right? What brings you here?”

Janaki showed him the gun. Sukumaya gave a start, moved away from Janaki, and went to stand by her husband. “I don’t know where Bhola got the money to buy it,” Janaki said. “Did you give it to him?”

Ananda and Sukumaya exchanged glances. “I don’t know what happened,” Ananda said.

“He came to me,” Sukumaya said, looking at the floor. “He said he needed money for new clothes. I didn’t know he was going to buy a gun with it.”

Janaki grew annoyed. “How much did you give him?”

“Two thousand rupees.”

Ananda took the gun from Janaki and inspected it. He rolled the bulge in the middle. “There are bullets in here. What does he want a gun for?”

Janaki told him about Bhola’s coming to her the night before, about his throwing the plate of food and telling her all his ideas of joining the insurgents.

Ananda laughed. “Then they’ll really be a bunch of crazies.”

Janaki was irritated by his casual attitude. “What if he does something to himself?”

“Leave this here with me,” he said. “I’ll talk to him.”

“When? He’ll be outraged when he discovers that I stole it from his room.”

“Then tell him I stole it, and when he comes here, I’ll deal with him.”

“Why don’t you go and talk to him instead of waiting for him to come to you?”

“I guess I could do that,” Ananda said, and he and Sukumaya went to sit on the sofa. He reached his arm around her. Before Sukumaya, as far as Janaki knew, Ananda hadn’t cheated on her. He’d never expressed any major dissatisfaction with their marriage, though he was by nature a bit distant and aloof. Even on their wedding night, he fell asleep as soon as they were alone together. During Bhola’s childhood, Ananda had been a devoted father, but once their son’s mental illness became apparent, he grew more remote. Now he said, “I’m getting hungry.”

“Shall we eat?” Sukumaya asked. She turned to Janaki. “Janaki didi, you will join us for dinner?”

Didi. Now I’m her sister, Janaki thought. “I should probably go.”

“Please,” Sukumaya said. “You came all the way here, you might as well stay. I’ll go get everything ready.” Despite Janaki’s protests, she went off to the kitchen.

For a moment, Janaki and Ananda just glanced at each other. Then she said softly, “You should spend more time with her.”

Ananda looked at Janaki. “What do you mean? I do spend time with her.”

“When a woman is pregnant, she needs people to talk to.”

“What did she say to you?”

“She’s worried about the baby.”

“All pregnant women are like that. You were worried, remember?”

“Yes, but I had people around to take care of me. Remember, my mother was alive then, and she came to see me almost every day.”

Ananda stretched his legs and placed them on a small stool in front of the sofa. “We’re hoping it’s a son.”

“What would be wrong with a daughter?”

He shrugged. “I just want another son. Another try, maybe.”

“She told me she’s worried the child will turn out to be like Bhola.”

Ananda shook his head, then recalled how Bhola was as a child, before his illness took over. The way he threw a fit when Ananda had to leave for the office, saying, “Baba, no work, no work.” How, as Bhola got older, Ananda used to wrestle playfully with him. He smiled as he spoke, and despite herself Janaki was a little moved.

Sukumaya called them in for dinner, and reluctantly Janaki followed Ananda into the kitchen.

*  *  *  *  *

All that night Janaki stayed awake, expecting Bhola to bang loudly on her front door. At the slightest noise, she jerked upright. At four o’clock she finally fell asleep, only to awaken an hour later in the middle of a terrible nightmare, about Bhola hanging from a tree by the side of a hill, a noose around his neck. She scanned her dark room, breathless, and it took her a while to calm down and fall back to sleep.

He didn’t come home that night, or the night after, and the following day she scoured the city. Sometimes he hung out with the teenagers in Jhonche, so she walked through that neighborhood, peeking into restaurants and alleys. When she was younger, this area bustled with hippies, and the smell of ganja perpetually filled the air. Once she and Ananda had spotted two hippies sloppily groping in the middle of the street, and Janaki averted her eyes in embarrassment. That night, Ananda jokingly tried to kiss her the same way, squeezing her buttocks with his palms, but she pushed him away. She remembered this now, and at first felt a pang over her failed marriage, then realized what she was truly mourning was her life before Bhola began to slip away. Back then, Bhola’s dimpled smile, the way he clung to her and called her “Jana,” made tolerable the emotional distance she felt between herself and Ananda. She played peekaboo with Bhola in their garden, and the rapt attention on his face when she told him bedtime stories filled her with a pleasure she had never experienced with Ananda.

After about two hours of fruitless searching, she headed toward Ananda’s house again. Had Bhola indeed left the city in search of the Maobadis? How would he know where to find them? Still on the lookout for him, she walked all the way to Balaju, which took her nearly half an hour, and, exhausted, she stood in front of Ananda’s house and knocked on the door. No one answered, so she knocked again. A faint sound drifted out from inside: the television was on. She went to the back of the house and peeked in through the kitchen window, but couldn’t see anyone at first. She craned to look beyond the kitchen, into the living room, and she spotted a body on the floor. Sukumaya. Janaki ran to the front door, pounded on it, and shouted Sukumaya’s name. Eventually the woman came to the door, wearing only a petticoat and a bra, her hair disheveled. The kohl on her eyes had run down her face.

“What’s wrong? Why do you look like this?” Janaki asked, pushing herself inside.

Sukumaya walked back to the living room, where she sat on the sofa, her eyes lowered. On the small table next to her was a bottle, and next to it pills, laid out neatly, five in a row. Janaki grabbed the bottle and read the label—they were sleeping pills. “What is this?” she asked.

“I need them to sleep,” Sukumaya said in a soft voice.

“This many?”

After a silence, Sukumaya said, “I worry that I won’t love this child, didi.”

“The child hasn’t even been born yet. How can you say this?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I just hate my body right now.”

Janaki sat down next to Sukumaya and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. Sukumaya leaned against her, her eyes closed. “He doesn’t understand the way I feel,” she said. “I tried to tell him, but he never really listens to me. I don’t know what to do.”

“Try to calm yourself down. Everything will be all right.”

“I keep thinking of my parents,” Sukumaya said, “my friends.”

“Everything will be fine,” Janaki said, patting her head. She scooped up the pills and slipped them back inside the bottle. “Go wash your face, put on your dhoti, and I’ll make us some tea.” Sukumaya slowly stood and shuffled off.

In the kitchen, Janaki filled the kettle, and by the time Sukumaya emerged, wearing a fresh dhoti, her face washed and her hair combed, the tea was ready. They sat at the table, and Janaki tried to make small talk—complimenting Sukumaya’s earrings, saying the sky was supposed to clear later today. The tea and Janaki’s soft voice appeared to have rejuvenated Sukumaya, and when Janaki suggested they go outside to get some fresh air, Sukumaya sprang to her feet. “There are woods in Balaju Park. Why don’t we go for a walk there? It’s quite nice.”

Janaki wanted to ask her when Ananda was going to come home so she could tell him about Bhola, but she knew the mention of either man might change Sukumaya’s mood, so she remained quiet as they walked the street. Sukumaya began telling her about a picnic she’d had with her friends in Dhulikhel before the wedding, how the mountain view there was so stunning. And just as she spoke of the mountains, the clouds to the north of the city began to clear and they caught a glimpse of the Langtang range. Sukumaya squeezed Janaki’s arm. “Look, didi. How gorgeous it looks!” But Janaki found herself watching Sukumaya’s excited face rather than the mountains. Indeed, Ananda had married a child.

Then Janaki’s thoughts turned back to Bhola. She desperately wanted to talk to someone about him, even Sukumaya, but as soon as they reached the woods, Sukumaya became consumed in reciting the names of the trees and plants they were passing. A group of young boys went by, singing lewd songs at the two women. “Idiots,” Sukumaya said. “Young boys these days. Aren’t they so ridiculous?”

“Some are,” Janaki replied. How she wished Bhola had turned out to be like one of these boys—ridiculous but sane.

On their way back, she again tried to convince Sukumaya that she shouldn’t entertain negative thoughts about her baby. “You have joyful days ahead of you, especially after the baby is born,” Janaki said. “Don’t give in to such pointless thinking. Come talk to me if you are feeling low.”

Sukumaya nodded and thanked her. “Spending time with you today has made me feel so much better, didi,” she said.

Janaki finally told her the reason she’d come, and Sukumaya said, “I’m so selfish. Here you are, all worried about Bhola babu, and you have to deal with my nonsense.”

“It’s not nonsense. You know, I am thinking that once you have the baby, your parents will probably come around. Who can resist a grandchild?”

Back at the house, they saw that Ananda had returned, and when he learned that they’d gone out together, he didn’t look pleased. When Sukumaya went to the kitchen to make tea for him, he told Janaki, as he sat on the sofa, “I don’t know what you’re thinking, but please don’t put ideas into her head.”

She shook her head. “You should talk to your wife more, I’m telling you.” But she hadn’t come here to lecture him about her. She drew a deep breath. “Bhola hasn’t been home for two days.”

“He’s done this in the past, and he always comes back before too long.”

“I know, I know, but I feel like something really bad is going to happen to him this time.”

“Well, I’ll go out and look for him tomorrow,” Ananda said, then stood. She sensed that he wanted her to leave.

*  *  *  *  *

The next day, Janaki went to the police station in her neighborhood to file a report. She didn’t mention Bhola’s talk about joining the insurgents to the police inspector. “We’ll do what we can,” he said, “although, to be frank, so many people are disappearing these days, we don’t have enough policemen to search for them.”

“But my son has some mental problems and can’t take care of himself very well,” Janaki said. She handed him Bhola’s photo, which the inspector said he’d circulate to the police departments in and around the Kathmandu Valley.

Back at home, Janaki went up to Bhola’s room, pulled a chair to the window, and sat there, looking out. Across the street, two children were playing football in their yard. A young girl in a frilly dress with embroidered flowers walked below, holding her mother’s hand. Janaki closed her eyes and rocked in the chair, forcing herself to remember Bhola in his younger days—how he used to splash in the mud on the street after rain, how easily he recited the multiplication tables, how he used a tall bamboo stick to pole-vault around the neighborhood, swinging high into the air and landing nimbly on his feet.

*  *  *  *  *

The days turned into weeks. Janaki fell into a depression that made her unable to leave the house. Ananda called days later to say that he had searched all over the city but hadn’t found Bhola. “I’ll keep trying,” he said. “He’ll turn up sooner or later.” Every week Janaki called the police inspector, but all he said was that his men were on alert. She no longer turned on the radio, and she avoided newspapers, which these days were filled with pictures of widows holding their children.

Late one morning, Ananda called Janaki, saying that they were in the hospital, that Sukumaya had given birth to a baby boy and had been asking for her. “For me?” Janaki said. “Why me?”

“I don’t know,” Ananda said, his voice thick. “She’s been whispering your name all morning.”

“I can’t come. What happens if Bhola shows up while I’m gone?”

For a moment Ananda was silent. “I don’t know what to do about him,” he said gravely. “Where could he be?” When she didn’t answer, he said gently, “Don’t worry too much. And listen, I’ll give some excuse to Sukumaya for your not being able to come.”

“No, no,” Janaki said, “I’ll come. She must be missing her family.”

With some effort, she washed her face, changed her clothes, and left the house. The sun seemed too bright, and the people walking about too cheerful. She hailed a three-wheeler, and on the way she tried to muster happy thoughts for Sukumaya.

In the hospital, Sukumaya lay on a narrow bed, looking pale and exhausted. The room smelled of milk and soiled clothes, and briefly Janaki was transported back to her time in the hospital when Bhola was born. He had been a big baby, with thick arms, and she’d marveled that he’d managed to squeeze himself out of her womb. Sukumaya didn’t say anything when she first saw Janaki. She just pointed to the baby, who was sleeping in the crook of her arm. Ananda stood and left the room, and Janaki asked Sukumaya how she was feeling.

“I guess I’m all right, didi. Do you want to hold him?” she asked, gazing at the baby. Gingerly, Janaki reached over and took the baby from Sukumaya’s arms. He was tiny, with a small face and red lips. “He looks just like you,” Janaki managed to say.

“No, he looks like his father, doesn’t he? The same broad forehead, the same small mouth. But I don’t care. He’s my son.” Sukumaya suddenly looked as if she were about to weep.

“Calm down now,” Janaki said. “Fathers pass along their faces to their sons.” She set the baby back beside Sukumaya, who didn’t glance down at him. Janaki asked her what they’d decided to name the boy, but Sukumaya didn’t answer. She just stared out the window, her forehead creased.

Janaki sat down beside her. “Everything will be all right,” she told Sukumaya. “Listen, Ananda is a good father. He always was to Bhola. You have nothing to worry about.” Then she couldn’t help herself: she told Sukumaya that Bhola still hadn’t come home, and she feared that he would never come back. As soon as she said it, she knew she shouldn’t have, for Sukumaya lowered her eyes. “But these are just a worried mother’s fears,” Janaki said, wanting to salvage the mood. “I’m sure he’ll be back.”

For the next fifteen minutes, Janaki continued to try to cheer her up by saying how great Sukumaya would feel once the baby began crawling and when he took his first steps. But when the baby started crying, Sukumaya didn’t attend to him, and Janaki had to pick up the boy again and rock him. Ananda finally came back into the room, and Janaki handed him his son. “You’ll be a fine young man,” he said, gently rubbing his nose against the baby’s face. Janaki told Sukumaya that she’d visit her at home, and then she stood and left the hospital. On the bus ride back, she remembered when she and Ananda brought Bhola home from the hospital. Ananda spent hours with him, pinching his nose, making faces at him, picking him up and singing to him, watching as she gave him an oil bath, outside under the hot sun.

*  *  *  *  *

“I have no idea where your son is,” the police inspector said testily to Janaki. “I’m sorry, but you can’t imagine how busy we are. Do you know how many of my brothers on the force are getting killed these days?” He held his head in his hands. “I’m sorry, I really am, but please just leave, and I’ll call you if I hear anything.”

Janaki left the police station and passed by a newsstand. On the cover of a magazine were photos of the insurgents in uniforms that looked like the ones worn by the army. They were holding guns, marching. They all looked so young with their smooth cheeks—like schoolchildren.

At home she closed the curtains and bolted the door. Bhola wasn’t going to come home, and she wasn’t going to open it for anyone else. She lay down on the kitchen floor, resting her forehead on the cool tiles. Her mind was heavy, her body ached, and soon she slept.

*  *  *  *  *

It didn’t wholly surprise her when she found out, two days later, that Sukumaya had left Ananda and the baby. Janaki took the news calmly, even tried to console Ananda, who was weeping on the phone as he told her. Early that morning they had returned home from the hospital, and since Sukumaya refused to nurse the baby, he carried his son with him to the market to fetch formula. When he returned, she was gone. “How could she do this to me?” Ananda said. “To her own child?”

Janaki had to restrain herself from reminding him of what he’d done to her and Bhola, and when he asked her to come to him, she reluctantly agreed.

When she got near the front door of his house, she could hear the baby crying. She rushed in and saw Ananda on the phone, talking frantically. She picked up the baby from the sofa, and instantly he stopped crying and searched her face. The bottle of formula was on a table nearby, so she picked it up and slipped it into the baby’s mouth. Ananda hung up. “She’s left the city.”

“How did you find out?”

“Someone saw her at the bus station, boarding a bus to Chitwan.”

“Who lives there?” Janaki asked, vaguely recalling Sukumaya saying something about Chitwan.

“I don’t know,” Ananda said. “Wait, I think she has a friend there. Listen, I’ve got to go find her. I’ve got to bring her back.”

The baby’s eyes were closed now, and he was breathing heavily. Janaki met Ananda’s gaze and knew instantly what he was thinking.

“No, no,” she said, handing the baby to him. “Take him with you. He’ll need his mother when you find her.”

He pleaded with her, saying traveling with an infant would be a nightmare. “And what if I don’t find her?”

Janaki began walking to the door, but Ananda grabbed her arm. The baby, shaken by his move, awoke and began to cry again. “Janaki, I swear to you, it’ll only be a few days. If after three days I can’t locate her, I’ll return. I wouldn’t ask this of you, of all people, if I had anyone else to go to.”

“Inform her parents,” Janaki said. “They are the immediate kin, after all. Tell them they have to accept the baby, whether they like it or not.”

“You don’t know what kind of people they are, Janaki. They’ll slam the door in my face.”

The baby wailed, and she couldn’t help but take him from Ananda. She sighed. Ananda’s parents lived halfway across the country, in Biratnagar; he couldn’t possibly take the baby there.

“I’ll be forever grateful to you, Janaki, please,” Ananda said. “I have to leave now. Maybe I’ll find her in Chitwan by tonight.”

*  *  *  *  *

Back at home, Janaki held the baby until he fell asleep, then set him down on her bed. She looked at him. He was adorable, with his nose the size of a little button, and after all, he knew nothing. She watched his curled fists as he slept, and she touched his arm. Briefly he opened his eyes, gurgled happily, then closed them again.

After a week, Ananda hadn’t returned or called. The baby got used to Janaki, and he seemed to smile whenever she hovered over him. Sometimes he played with her nose, just as Bhola did when he was that small. Before long, she remembered exactly how to clean and change a baby, and all the work that was involved in tending to a newborn. The thought lingered at the back of her mind that the boy’s mother should be doing this, but she didn’t feel so resentful when she was playing peekaboo with him and laughing.

One evening after dinner, as she watched the baby sleep on her bed, she gave in and cried. So much sadness had seeped into her bones. The baby opened his eyes and watched her, and weeping, she stroked his hairy scalp. She reached for him, took him to the open window, and showed him the outside world. Darkness was approaching. Shops had turned on their lights, and people hurried home. The evening breeze felt good on her face, and she talked to the baby, saying, “A nice evening, isn’t it? When I was a young girl, you could see the stars, but now it’s impossible to glimpse the sky through this smog.”

Someone was climbing the stairs in her building. The heavy thumps made her hold her breath. It was certainly not Ananda, who had a lighter step. Had Bhola returned to her after all these days? With a thudding heart she went to open the door, but found she couldn’t move. Who knew where he’d been? Who knew what crazy thoughts now cluttered his mind? Who knew how he’d react to the baby?

Quickly she bolted the door and, clasping the baby tighter to her chest, told him not to be afraid.