Rebecca Makkai Reads Jhumpa Lahiri

Summary

Podcast Summary: The New Yorker: Fiction – "Rebecca Makkai Reads Jhumpa Lahiri"

Podcast Information:

• Title: The New Yorker: Fiction
• Host/Author: WNYC Studios and The New Yorker
• Description: A monthly reading and conversation with the New Yorker fiction editor Deborah Treisman.
• Episode: Rebecca Makkai Reads Jhumpa Lahiri
• Release Date: October 1, 2024

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Overview

In this episode of The New Yorker: Fiction, Rebecca MacKay, an accomplished author known for her novels such as The Great Believers, takes center stage to read Jhumpa Lahiri’s poignant short story, The Third and Final Continent. Following the reading, Rebecca engages in an insightful discussion with members of Critics at Large, delving deep into the story’s themes, characters, and literary craftsmanship.

The Reading: "The Third and Final Continent" by Jhumpa Lahiri

Rebecca MacKay delivers a heartfelt rendition of Lahiri’s The Third and Final Continent, a story that chronicles the immigrant experience through the eyes of a Bengali man who relocates from India to England and eventually to Boston. The narrative captures his journey of adaptation, loneliness, and the gradual forging of new relationships in a foreign land. Lahiri masterfully intertwines personal history with broader cultural observations, presenting a delicate balance of emotion and restraint.

Notable Passage:

"There is an American flag on the moon. Isn't that splendid?" – [03:07]

This line encapsulates the protagonist's sense of awe and the overarching theme of reaching for new horizons, both literally and metaphorically.

The Discussion: Analyzing Themes and Characters

Following the reading, Rebecca MacKay joins Critics at Large—comprising Nomi Fry, Vincent Cunningham, and Alex Schwartz—to unpack the layers of Lahiri’s story.

Immigrant Narrative and Cultural Adaptation

The discussion begins with an exploration of the classic immigrant journey depicted in the story. Nomi Fry highlights how the protagonist's experience mirrors many real-life immigrant stories, emphasizing the emotional and cultural dissonance faced when establishing oneself in a new country.

Nomi Fry: "The misunderstandings and the strangeness that often come with being a young adult in a new place are universal themes that resonate deeply with many listeners." – [56:17]

Character Analysis: The Protagonist, Mrs. Croft, and Mala

The trio delves into the complex characters that Lahiri presents. The protagonist is portrayed as a passive, introspective individual grappling with his past and present. Mrs. Croft, the enigmatic landlady, serves as a catalyst for his emotional awakening, while Mala, his arranged wife, represents the intersection of duty and personal desire.

Vincent Cunningham: "Mrs. Croft is such an amazing character. She just defies your expectations and plays a functional role that truly advances the emotional depth of the story." – [66:51]

Symbolism: The American Flag on the Moon

A significant symbol in the story is the American flag planted on the moon, which Mrs. Croft incessantly mentions. This symbolizes the protagonist's journey and the feeling of being on an entirely new "planet," both geographically and emotionally.

Alex Schwartz: "The flag on the moon symbolizes reaching for new horizons and the enormity of the protagonist’s journey." – [59:25]

Writing Style and Narrative Technique

Rebecca MacKay and the critics commend Lahiri’s subtlety in conveying deep emotions without overt exposition. The use of narrative distance allows readers to perceive the protagonist’s growth retrospectively, adding a layer of melancholy and reflection.

Nomi Fry: "The way Lahiri handles narrative distance and time is masterful. It allows for a profound emotional connection without being heavy-handed." – [03:07]

Notable Quotes and Insights

Throughout the discussion, several poignant quotes emerge that encapsulate the essence of the story and its themes:

• Nomi Fry: "The misunderstandings and the strangeness that often come with being a young adult in a new place are universal themes that resonate deeply with many listeners." – [56:17]

• Vincent Cunningham: "Mrs. Croft is such an amazing character. She just defies your expectations and plays a functional role that truly advances the emotional depth of the story." – [66:51]

• Alex Schwartz: "The flag on the moon symbolizes reaching for new horizons and the enormity of the protagonist’s journey." – [59:25]

• Rebecca MacKay: "The subtlety in Lahiri’s storytelling requires readers to immerse themselves emotionally and psychologically, making the experience deeply personal." – [74:40]

Conclusion: Insights and Reflections

The episode concludes with reflections on the enduring relevance of Lahiri’s The Third and Final Continent. The critics appreciate how the story navigates the complexities of identity, belonging, and the quiet resilience required to build a new life in unfamiliar territories. Rebecca MacKay emphasizes the beauty of Lahiri’s ability to write between the lines, allowing readers to draw their own emotional connections.

Nomi Fry: "There's just so much between the lines. It's an excellent trick that invites readers to immerse themselves fully into the protagonist's journey." – [75:07]

The episode not only celebrates Lahiri’s literary prowess but also invites listeners to contemplate their own experiences with change, adaptation, and the search for connection in an ever-evolving world.

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About the Participants:

• Jhumpa Lahiri: Acclaimed author of Interpreter of Maladies, Unaccustomed Earth, and The Namesake, Lahiri is renowned for her exploration of the immigrant experience, identity, and cultural assimilation.

• Rebecca MacKay: An award-winning author known for The Great Believers and I Have Some Questions for You, MacKay brings depth and insight to her literary analyses.

• Critics at Large:

  • Nomi Fry
  • Vincent Cunningham
  • Alex Schwartz

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Additional Resources:

Listeners interested in further exploring The New Yorker: Fiction podcast can access over 200 episodes, including readings by other distinguished authors and in-depth literary discussions. Subscribe on platforms like Apple Podcasts or join the conversation on the podcast’s Facebook page.

Transcript

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[Deborah Treisman]

This is the New Yorker fiction podcast from the New Yorker Magazine. I'm Deborah Treisman, fiction editor at the New Yorker. Each month we invite a writer to.

[Rebecca MacKay]

Choose a story from the magazine's archives.

[Deborah Treisman]

To read and discuss. This month we're going to hear the Third and Final Continent by Jhumpa Lahiri, which appeared in the New Yorker in June of 1999.

[Mrs. Croft]

There's an American flag on the moon, boy. Yes, madam. A flag on the moon. Isn't that splendid? I nodded, dreading what I knew was coming. Yes, madam. Say splendid.

[Deborah Treisman]

The story was chosen by Rebecca MacKay, who's published five books of fiction, including the novels the Great Believers, which won the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in fiction in 2019. And I have some questions for you, which came out last year. Hi, Rebecca.

[Mrs. Croft]

Hi.

[Deborah Treisman]

So when I got in touch with.

[Rebecca MacKay]

You about doing the podcast, the Third and Final Continent was your immediate first choice.

[Mrs. Croft]

Yeah.

[Deborah Treisman]

Why was that?

[Narrator]

Well, there were several things.

[Mrs. Croft]

One is that I read this story.

[Narrator]

When it came out in the New Yorker. I was 21, I was a young writer, and we can get into more detail on this later, but really taught me interesting things about narrative distance and.

[Mrs. Croft]

The use of time in fiction.

[Narrator]

And the other is that while it meant a lot to me at the time, it means even more to me now. My father was an immigrant to this country as a student, came to Boston. And, you know, I'm not a Bengali man, but this is a very personal story for me as well.

[Rebecca MacKay]

Right. That's interesting. This story is also, in some ways, the narrative of Jhumpa Lahiri's father.

[Narrator]

Right.

[Rebecca MacKay]

And I suppose we can talk about this more later, but there's a certain sameness to immigrant narratives, no matter where you're coming from.

[Narrator]

Yeah. The details are different, but the emotion is often similar. That just sense of finding yourself on another place in the solar system, which is what the story is really about.

[Rebecca MacKay]

Yeah.

[Deborah Treisman]

Well, this is like a relatively early.

[Rebecca MacKay]

Story for Jhumpa Lahiri.

[Deborah Treisman]

It was in her first book, Interpreter.

[Rebecca MacKay]

Of Maladies, which came out later in 1999, when she was 32. Do you see it as being early in her development as a writer?

[Narrator]

That's a good question. I mean, it literally was early. We can say that. And I love. I don't know, I love her later work. I don't know that she's someone, you know, who has radically changed her style. I think there's a lot of consistency there in the best way. She's certainly evolved. I mean, she's writing in Italian now. I guess that's a radical change. But, you know, language being different than content.

[Mrs. Croft]

You know, I'll say this.

[Narrator]

I don't think I would be shocked if she published this story this year. But for me, at least, I think some of those stories about my own family, about my own family's past, whether they're fictionalized or not, I needed to get those out early. I needed to get those down on the page so that I could move on to other things. And I have no idea if it's a similar situation for her, but there's a sort of excavating of the self and the past for a lot of fiction writers that needs to come sooner in the career.

[Rebecca MacKay]

Right. And that first book, Interpreter of Maladies, had a lot of stories about immigration from India and about what it was like to grow up in an Indian family in America and so on. So obviously, there's. That was territory she did need to cover at that point. The book won a Pulitzer Prize. It sold more than 15 million copies, which is kind of.

[Narrator]

Wow, I'm so happy about that story collection. I'm so happy.

[Rebecca MacKay]

Kind of unheard of for a debut story collection.

[Mrs. Croft]

Yeah.

[Rebecca MacKay]

Why do you think it had that kind of success?

[Narrator]

You know, here's the thing.

[Mrs. Croft]

I'll say, you know, 1999 was the.

[Narrator]

Year I graduated college, and I did not have a read on the literary world at that point. I was coming out of, you know, having read, assigned work in class, and then suddenly, literally. I think this. This probably came out a week after I graduated college. I didn't have a sense at the time even of how unusual it was for a story collection to do that well. And there was something zeitgeisty about it.

[Mrs. Croft]

There was something about the way people.

[Narrator]

Were talking about it that I'm not gonna have my finger on, because I was trying to figure out how to buy my first car, and I did not know what was going on.

[Rebecca MacKay]

Do you think reading her work then had an effect on you? As a budding writer.

[Narrator]

Absolutely. Absolutely. This story in particular really struck me, and I was struck by other things I read early in my writing life.

[Mrs. Croft]

That made interesting use of time.

[Narrator]

There's clearly a narrative distance, right. We're looking back at it from later. We don't know how much later, but it's evident in the language. You know, this was back then. At the time, I didn't yet know. So we know it's a narrator looking.

[Mrs. Croft]

Back, but then we get to the end and it feels so inevitable that.

[Narrator]

There'S this landing point of this later point of telling where we're going to talk now about what his life has become. But the story has lulled us into not expecting that. We feel almost like we're going to stay in the moment in 1969, and knowing that you could make seismic shifts like that in the chronology of a story, that a story doesn't need to get locked in to one mode of telling and stay true to that until the end. It can. But the end, especially of a story, is where you can pull the narrative rug out from under the reader. Think of the ending of A Good man is Hard to find by Flannery O'Connor, where we are in one point of view, close third the whole time, and then suddenly we are very much.

[Mrs. Croft]

And.

[Narrator]

I love when a story does that. And I think that was something I needed to discover early in my writing career, particularly through the short story form. When a short story does that sucker punch, really, of where it's one thing, but now, hey, it's another. I think I needed to learn that from the short story form in order to be able to do it myself in the short story. But also to have maybe a freer foot on the gas pedal in novels as well.

[Rebecca MacKay]

Absolutely.

[Deborah Treisman]

Well, we'll talk some more after the reading. And now here's Rebecca mackay reading the third and final continent by Jhumpa Lahiri.

[Mrs. Croft]

The third and final continent I left India in 1964 with a certificate in commerce and the equivalent in those days of $10 to my name. For three weeks I sailed on the SS Roma, an Italian cargo vessel in a cabin next to the ship's engine, across the Arabian Sea, the Red Sea, the Mediterranean, and finally to England. I lived in London, in Finsbury park, in a house occupied entirely by penniless Bengali bachelors like myself, at least a dozen, and sometimes more, all struggling to educate and establish ourselves abroad.

[Narrator]

I attended lectures at LSE and worked.

[Mrs. Croft]

At the university library. To get by, we lived three or four to a room shared a single icy toilet and took turns cooking pots of egg curry, which we ate with our hands on a table covered with newspapers. Apart from our jobs, we had few responsibilities. On weekends we lounged barefoot in drawstring pajamas, drinking tea and smoking Rothmans, or set out to watch cricket at Lord's. Some weekends the house was crammed with still more Bengalis to whom we had introduced ourselves at the greengrocer or on the tube, and we made yet more egg curry and played mukesh on a grundig reel to reel and soaked our dirty dishes in the bathtub. Every now and then someone in the house moved out to live with a woman whom his family back in Kolkata had determined he was to wed in 1969, when I was 36 years old, my own marriage was arranged. Around the same time, I was offered a full time job in America in the processing department of a library at mit. The salary was generous enough to support a wife, and I was honored to be hired by a world famous university. And so I obtained a green card and prepared to travel farther still. By then I had enough money to go by plane. I flew first to Kolkata to attend my wedding and a week later to Boston to begin my new job. During the flight I read the student guide to North America, for although I was no longer a student, I was on a budget all the same. I learned that Americans drove on the right side of the road, not the left, and that they called a lift an elevator and an engaged phone busy. The pace of life in North America is different from Britain, as you will soon discover, the guidebook informed me. Everybody feels he must get to the top. Don't expect an English cup of tea. As the plane began its descent over Boston harbor, the pilot announced the weather and the time and that President Nixon had declared a national holiday. Two American men had landed on the moon. Several passengers cheered. God bless America. One of them hollered.

[Narrator]

Across the aisle, I saw a woman praying.

[Mrs. Croft]

I spent my first night at the YMCA in Central Square, Cambridge, an inexpensive accommodation recommended by my guidebook, which was within walking distance of mit. The room contained a cot, a desk, and a small wooden cross on one wall. A sign on the door said that cooking was strictly forbidden. A bare window overlooked Massachusetts Avenue. Car horns, shrill and prolonged, blared one after another. Sirens and flashing lights heralded endless emergencies, and a succession of buses rumbled past, their doors opening and closing with a powerful hiss. Throughout the night, the noise was constantly distracting, at times suffocating. I felt it deep in my ribs just as I had felt the furious drone of the engine on the SS Roma. But there was no ship's deck to escape to, no glittering ocean to thrill my soul, no breeze to cool my face, no one to talk to. I was too tired to pace the.

[Narrator]

Gloomy corridors of the YMCA in my pajamas.

[Mrs. Croft]

Instead, I sat at the desk and stared out the window. In the morning I reported to my job at the Dewey Library, a beige fort like building by Memorial Drive. I also opened a bank account, rented a post office box, and bought a plastic bowl and a spoon. I went to a supermarket called Purity supreme, wandering up and down the aisles, comparing prices with those in England. In the end I bought a carton of milk and a box of corn flakes. This was my first meal in America. Even the simple chore of buying milk was new to me. In London we'd had bottles delivered each morning to our door. In a week I had adjusted, more or less. I ate cornflakes and milk morning and night and bought some bananas for variety, slicing them into the bowl with the edge of my spoon. I left my carton of milk on the shaded part of the windowsill, as I had seen other residents at the YMCA do to pass the time. In the evenings, I read the Boston Globe. Downstairs, in a spacious room with stained glass windows, I read every article and advertisement so that I would grow familiar with things. And when my eyes grew tired, I slept. Only I did not sleep well. Each night I had to keep the window wide open. It was the only source of air in the stifling room, and the noise was intolerable. I would lie on the cot with my fingers pressed into my ears, but when I drifted off to sleep, my hands fell away and the noise of the traffic would wake me up again. Pigeon feathers drifted onto the window cell, and one evening when I poured milk over my corn flakes, I saw that it had soured. Nevertheless, I resolved to stay at the YMCA for six weeks until my wife's passport and green card were ready. Once she arrived, I would have to rent a proper apartment, and from time to time I studied the classified section of the newspaper or stopped in at the housing office at MIT during my lunch break to see what was available. It was in this manner that I discovered a room for immediate occupancy in a house on a quiet street. The listing said for $8 per week. I dialed the number from a pay telephone, sorting through the coins with which I was still unfamiliar, smaller and lighter than shillings, heavier and brighter than paisas. Who is speaking? A woman demanded. Her voice was bold and clamorous. Yes, good afternoon, madam. I am calling about the room for rent. Harvard or Tech? I beg your pardon? Are you from Harvard or Tech? Gathering that Tech referred to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, I replied, I work at Dewey Library, adding tentatively, at Tech I only rent rooms to boys from Harvard or Tech. Yes, madam. I was given an address and an appointment for 7 o'clock that evening, 30 minutes before the hour. I set out my guidebook in my pocket, my breath fresh with Listerine. I turned down a street shaded with trees perpendicular to Massachusetts Avenue. In spite of the heat, I wore a coat and tie regarding the event as I would any other interview. I had never lived in the home of a person who was not Indian. The house, surrounded by a chain link fence, was off white with dark brown trim, with a tangle of forsythia bushes plastered against its front and sides. When I pressed the bell, the woman with whom I had spoken on the phone hollered from what seemed to be just the other side of the door, one minute, please. Several minutes later the door was opened by a tiny, extremely old woman. A mass of snowy hair was arranged like a small sack on top of her head. As I stepped into the house, she sat down on a wooden bench positioned at the bottom of a narrow carpeted staircase. Once she was settled on the bench in a small pool of light, she peered up at me, giving me her undivided attention. She wore a long black skirt that spread like a stiff tent to the floor and a starched white shirt edged with ruffles at the throat and cuffs. Her hands, folded together in her lap, had long pallid fingers with swollen knuckles and tough yellow nails. Age had battered her features so that she almost resembled a man, with sharp, shrunken eyes and prominent creases on either side of her nose. Her lips, chapped and faded, had nearly disappeared, and her eyebrows were missing altogether. Nevertheless, she looked fierce. Lock up. She commanded. She shouted, even though I stood only.

[Narrator]

A few feet away.

[Mrs. Croft]

Fasten the chain and firmly press that button on the knob. This is the first thing you shall do when you enter. Is that clear? I locked the door as directed and examined the house. Next to the bench was a small round table, its legs fully concealed much like the woman's, by a skirt of lace. The table held a lamp, a transistor radio, a leather change purse with a silver clasp, and a telephone. A thick wooden cane was propped against one side. There was a parlor to my right, lined with bookcases and filled with shabby claw footed furniture. In the corner of the parlor I saw a grand piano with its top down, piled with papers. The piano's bench was missing. It seemed to be the one on which the woman was sitting. Somewhere in the house a clock chimed seven times. You're punctual, the woman proclaimed. I expect you shall be so with the rent. I have a letter, madam. In my jacket pocket was a letter from MIT Confirming my employment, which I had brought along to prove that I was indeed from Teck. She stared at the letter, then handed it back to me, carefully gripping it with her fingers as if it were a plate heaped with food. She did not wear glasses, and I wondered if she'd read a word of it. The last boy was always late. Still owes me $8. Harvard boys aren't what they used to be. Only Harvard and Tech in this house. How's Tech, boy? It is very well. You checked the lock? Yes, madam. She unclasped her fingers, slapped the space beside her on the bench with one hand, and told me to sit down. For a moment she was silent. Then she intoned, as if she alone possessed this knowledge, there is an American flag on the moon. Yes, madam. Until then I had not thought very much about the moonshot. It was in the newspaper, of course, article upon article. The astronauts had landed on the shores of the Sea of Tranquility, I had read, traveling farther than anyone in the history of civilization. For a few hours they explored the moon's surface. They gathered rocks in their pockets, described their surroundings, a magnificent desolation, according to one astronaut, spoke by phone to the president, and planted a flag in lunar soil. The voyage was hailed as man's most awesome achievement. The woman bellowed, a flag on the moon, Boy. I heard it on the radio. Isn't that splendid? Yes, madam. But she was not satisfied with my reply. Instead she commanded, say splendid. I was both baffled and somewhat insulted by the request. It reminded me of the way I was taught multiplication tables as a child, repeating after the master, sitting cross legged on the floor of my one room Taligong school. It also reminded me of my wedding, when I had repeated endless Sanskrit verses after the priest, verses I barely understood, which joined me to my wife. I said nothing. Say splendid. The woman bellowed once again. Splendid, I murmured. I had to repeat the word a second time at the top of my lungs so she could hear. I was reluctant to raise my voice to an elderly woman, but she did not appear to be offended. If anything, the reply pleased her because her next command was, go see the room. I rose from the bench and mounted the narrow staircase There were five doors, two on either side of an equally narrow hallway and one at the opposite end. Only one door was open. The room contained a twin bed under a sloping ceiling, a brown oval rug, a basin with an exposed pipe, and a chest of drawers. One door led to a closet, another to a toilet and a tub. The window was open. Net curtains stirred in the breeze. I lifted them away and inspected the view. A small backyard with a few fruit trees and an empty clothesline. I was satisfied when I returned to the foyer. The woman picked up the leather change purse on the table, opened the clasp, fished about with her fingers and produced a key on a thin wire hoop. She informed me that there was a kitchen at the back of the house, accessible through the parlor. I was welcome to use the stove as long as I left it as I found it. Sheets and towels were provided, but keeping them clean was my own responsibility. The rent was due Friday mornings on the ledge above the piano keys. And no lady visitors. I am a married man, madam. It was the first time I had announced this fact to anyone. But she had not heard. No lady visitors, she insisted. She introduced herself as Mrs. Croft. My wife's name was Mala. The marriage had been arranged by my older brother and his wife. I regarded the proposition with neither objection nor enthusiasm. It was a duty expected of me, as it was expected of every man. She was the daughter of a schoolteacher in Belagata. I was told that she could cook, knit, embroider, sketch landscapes and recite poems by Tagore. But these talents could not make up for the fact that she did not possess a fair complexion. And so a string of men had rejected her to her face. She was 27, an age when her parents had begun to fear that she would never marry. And so they were willing to ship their only child halfway across the world in order to save her from spinsterhood. For five nights we shared a bed. Each of those nights, after applying cold cream and braiding her hair, she turned from me and wept. She missed her parents. Although I would be leaving the country in a few days, custom dictated that she was now a part of my household. And for the next six weeks, she was to live with my brother and his wife, cooking, cleaning, serving tea and sweets to guests. I did nothing to console her. I lay on my own side of the bed, reading my guidebook by flashlight. At times I thought of the tiny room on the other side of the wall which had belonged to my mother. Now the room was practically empty. The wooden pallet on which she'd once slept was piled with trunks and old bedding. Nearly six years ago, before leaving for London, I had watched her die on that bed, had found her playing with her excrement in her final days. Before we cremated her, I had cleaned each of her fingernails with a hairpin. And then, because my brother could not bear it, I had assumed the role of eldest son and had touched the flame to her temple to release her tormented soul to heaven. The next morning, I moved into Mrs. Croft's house. When I unlocked the door, I saw that she was sitting on the piano bench on the same side as the previous evening. She wore the same black skirt, the same starched white blouse, and had her hands folded together the same way in her lap. She looked so much the same that I wondered if she'd spent the whole night on the bench. I put my suitcase upstairs and then headed off to work. That evening, when I came home from the university, she was still there. Sit down, boy. She slapped the space beside her. I perched on the bench. I had a bag of groceries with me. More milk, more cornflakes, and more bananas. For my inspection of the kitchen earlier in the day had revealed no spare pots or pans. There were only two saucepans in the refrigerator, both containing some orange broth and a copper kettle on the stove. Good evening, madam. She asked me if I had checked the lock. I told her I had. For a moment she was silent. Then suddenly she declared, with the equal measures of disbelief and delight as the night before, there's an American flag on the moon, boy. Yes, madam, a flag on the moon. Isn't that splendid? I nodded, dreading what I knew was coming. Yes, madam. Say splendid. This time I paused, looking to either side in case anyone was there to overhear me. Though I knew perfectly well that the house was empty. I felt like an idiot, but it was a small enough thing to ask. Splendid. I cried out. Within days, it became our routine. In the mornings, when I left for the library, Mrs. Croft was either hidden away in her bedroom on the other side of the staircase, or sitting on the bench, oblivious of my presence, listening to the news or classical music on the radio. But each evening when I returned, the same thing happened. She slapped the bench, ordered me to sit down, declared that there was a flag on the moon, and declared that it was splendid. I said it was splendid, too. And then we sat in silence, as awkward as it was and as endless as it felt to me then. The nightly encounter lasted only about 10 minutes. Inevitably, she would drift off to sleep, her head falling abruptly toward her chest, leaving me free to retire to my room. By then, of course, there was no flag standing on the moon. The astronauts, I read in the paper, had seen it fall before they flew back to earth. But I did not have the heart to tell her. Friday morning, when my first week's rent was due, I went to the piano in the parlor to place my money on the ledge. The piano keys were dull and discolored. When I pressed one, it made no sound at all. I had put eight dollar bills in an envelope and written Mrs. Croft's name on the front of it. I was not in the habit of leaving money unmarked and unattended. From where I stood, I could see the profile of her tent shaped skirt in the hall. It seemed unnecessary to make her get up and walk all the way to the piano. I never saw her walking about and assumed from the cane propped against the round table that she did so with difficulty. When I approached the bench, she peered up at me and demanded, what is your business? The rent, madam, on the ledge above the piano keys. I have it here. I extended the envelope toward her, but her fingers, folded together in her lap, did not budge. I bowed slightly and lowered the envelope so that it hovered just above her hands. After a moment, she accepted it and nodded her head. That night when I came home, she did not slap the bench, but out of habit, I sat beside her. As usual, she asked me if I had checked the lock, but she mentioned nothing about the flag on the moon. Instead, she said, it was very kind of you. I beg your pardon, madam. Very kind of you. She was still holding the envelope in her hands. On Sunday, there was a knock on my door. An elderly woman introduced herself. She was Mrs. Croft's daughter, Helen. She walked into the room and looked at each of the walls as if for signs of change, glancing at the shirts that hung in the closet, the neckties draped over the doorknob, the box of corn flakes on the chest of drawers, the dirty bowl and spoon in the basin. She was short and thick waisted, with cropped silver hair and bright pink lipstick. She wore a sleeveless summer dress, a necklace of white plastic beads and spectacles on a chain that hung like a swing against her chest. The backs of her legs were mapped with dark blue veins, and her upper arms sagged like the flesh of a roasted eggplant. She told me she lived in Arlington, a town farther up Massachusetts Avenue. I come once a week to bring Mother groceries. Has she sent you packing yet? It is very well, madam. Some of the boys run screaming, but I think she likes you. You're the first boarder she's ever referred to as a gentleman. She looked at me, noticing my bare feet. I still felt strange wearing shoes indoors and always removed them before entering my room. Are you new to Boston? New to America, madam.

[Narrator]

From. She raised her eyebrows.

[Mrs. Croft]

I am from Calcutta, India. Is that right? We had a Brazilian fellow about a year ago. You'll find Cambridge a very international city. I nodded and began to wonder how long our conversation would last. But at that moment we heard Mrs. Croft's electrifying voice rising up the stairs. You are to come downstairs immediately. What is it? Helen cried back. Immediately. I put on my shoes. Helen sighed. I followed Helen down the staircase. She seemed to be in no hurry and complained at one point that she had a bad knee. Have you been walking without your cane? Helen called out. You know you're not supposed to walk without that cane. She paused, resting her hand on the banister, and looked back at me. She slips sometimes. For the first time, Mrs. Croft seemed vulnerable. I pictured her on the floor in front of the bench, flat on her back, staring at the ceiling, her feet pointing in opposite directions. But when we reached the bottom of the staircase, she was sitting there as usual, her hands folded together in her lap. Two grocery bags were at her feet. She did not slap the bench or ask us to sit down. She glared. What is it, Mother? It's improper. What's improper? It is improper for a lady and gentleman who are not married to one another to hold a private conversation without a chaperone, helen said. She was 68 years old, old enough to be my mother. But Mrs. Croft insisted that Helen and I speak to each other downstairs in the parlor. She added that it was also improper for a lady of Helen's station to reveal her age and to wear a dress so high above the ankle. For your information, Mother, it's 1969. What would you do if you actually left the house one day and saw.

[Narrator]

A girl in a miniskirt?

[Mrs. Croft]

Mrs. Croft sniffed. I'd have her arrested. Helen shook her head and picked up one of the grocery bags. I picked up the other one and followed her through the parlor and into the kitchen. The bags were filled with cans of soup, which Helen opened up one by one with a few cranks of a can opener. She tossed the old soup into the sink, rinsed the saucepans under the tap, filled them with soup from the newly opened cans, and put them back in the refrigerator. A few years ago she could still open the cans herself, Helen said. She hates that I do it for her now but the piano killed her hands. She put on her spectacles, glanced at the cupboards, and spotted my tea bags. Shall we have a cup? I filled the kettle on the stove. I beg your pardon, madam? The piano. She used to give lessons for 40 years. It was how she raised us after my father died. Helen put her hands on her hips, staring at the open refrigerator. She reached into the back, pulled out a wrapped stick of butter, frowned, and tossed it into the garbage. That ought to do it, she said, and put the unopened cans of soup in the cupboard. I sat at the table and watched as Helen washed the dirty dishes, tied up the garbage bag and poured boiling water into two cups. She handed one to me without milk and sat down at the table. Excuse me, madam, but is it enough? Helen took a sip of her tea. Her lipstick left a smiling pink stain on the rim of the cup. Is what enough? The soup in the pans, is it enough food for Mrs. Croft? She won't eat anything else. She stopped eating solids after she turned 100. That was, let's see, three years ago. I was mortified. I had assumed Mrs. Croft was in her 80s, perhaps as old as 90. I had never known a person who had lived for over a century. That this person was a widow who lived alone mortified me further still. Widowhood had driven my own mother insane. My father, who worked as a clerk at the General post office of Kalkara, died of encephalitis when I was 16. My mother refused to adjust to life without him. Instead, she sank deeper into a world of darkness from which neither I, nor my brother, nor concerned relatives, nor psychiatric clinics on Rajpahari Avenue could save her. What pained me most was to see her so unguarded. To hear her burp after meals or expel gas in front of company without the slightest embarrassment. After my father's death, my brother abandoned his schooling and began to work in the jute mill. He would eventually manage in order to keep the household running. And so it was my job to sit by my mother's feet and study for my exams. As she counted and recounted the bracelets on her arm as if they were the beads of an abacus, we tried to keep an eye on her. Once she had wandered half naked to.

[Narrator]

The tram depot before we were able to bring her inside again.

[Mrs. Croft]

I am happy to warm Mrs. Croft's soup in the evenings, I suggested. It is no trouble. Helen looked at her watch, stood up and poured the rest of her tea into the sink. I wouldn't if I were you. That's the sort of thing that would kill her altogether. That evening, when Helen had gone and Mrs. Croft and I were alone again, I began to worry. Now that I knew how very old she was, I worried that something would happen to her in the middle of the night or when I was out during the day. As vigorous as her voice was and imperious as she seemed, I knew that even a scratch or a cough could kill a person that old. Each day she lived, I knew, was something of a miracle. Helen didn't seem concerned. She came and went, bringing soup for Mrs. Croft one Sunday after the next. In this manner, the six weeks of that summer passed. I came home each evening after my hours at the library and spent a few minutes on the piano bench with Mrs. Croft. Some evenings I sat beside her long after she had drifted off to sleep, still in awe of how many years she had spent on this earth. At times I tried to picture the world she had been born into in 1866. A world I imagined filled with women in long black skirts and chased conversations in the parlor. Now, when I looked at her hands with their swollen knuckles folded together in her lap, I imagined them, smooth and slim, striking the piano keys. At times I came downstairs before going to sleep to make sure she was sitting upright on the bench or was safe in her bedroom. On Fridays, I put the rent in her hands. There was nothing I could do for her beyond these simple gestures. I was not her son, and apart from those $8, I owed her nothing. At the end of August, Mala's passport and green card were ready. I received a telegram with her flight information. My brother's house in Calcutta had no telephone around that time. I also received a letter from her, written only a few days after we had parted. There was no salutation. Addressing me by name would have assumed an intimacy we had not yet discovered. It contained only a few lines I write in English in preparation for the journey. Here I am very much lonely. Is it very cold there? Is there snow? Yours, Mala. I was not touched by her words. We had spent only a handful of days in each other's company, and yet we were bound together. For six weeks, she had worn an iron bangle on her wrist and applied vermilion powder to the part in her hair to signify to the world that she was a bride. In those six weeks, I regarded her arrival as I would the arrival of a coming month or season. Something inevitable but meaningless at the time. So little did I know her that while details of her face sometimes rose to my memory, I could not conjure up the whole of it. A few days after receiving the letter, as I was walking to work in the morning, I saw an Indian woman on Massachusetts Avenue wearing a sari with its free end nearly dangling on the footpath and pushing a child in a stroller. An American woman with a small black dog on a leash was walking to one side of her. Suddenly the dog began barking. I watched as the Indian woman, startled, stopped in her path, at which point the dog leaped up and seized the end of the sari between its teeth. The American woman scolded the dog, appeared to apologize and walked quickly away, leaving the Indian woman to fix her sari and quiet her crying child. She did not see me standing there, and eventually she continued on her way. Such a mishap, I realized that morning would soon be my concern. It was my duty to take care of Mala, to welcome her and protect her. I would have to buy her her first pair of snow boots, her first winter coat. I would have to tell her which streets to avoid, which way the traffic came, tell her to wear her sari so that the free end did not drag on the footpath. A five mile separation from her parents, I recalled with some irritation, had caused her to weep. Unlike Mala, I was used to it all by then, used to cornflakes and milk, used to Helen's visits, used to sitting on the bench with Mrs. Croft. The only thing I was not used to was Mala. Nevertheless, I did what I had to do. I went to the housing office at MIT and found a furnished apartment a few blocks away with a double bed and a private kitchen and bath for $40 a week. One last Friday I handed Mrs. Croft eight dollar bills in an envelope, brought my suitcase downstairs, and informed her that I was moving. She put my key into her change purse. The last thing she asked me to do was hand her the cane propped against the table so that she could walk to the door and lock it behind me. Goodbye, then, she said, and retreated back into the house. I did not expect any display of emotion, but I was disappointed all the same. I was only a boarder, a man who paid her a bit of money and passed in and out of her home for six weeks. Compared with a century, it was no time at all. At the airport I recognized Mala immediately. The free end of her sari did not drag on the floor but was draped in a sign of bridal modesty over her head, just as it had draped my mother until the day my father died. Her thin brown arms were stacked with gold bracelets. A small red circle was painted on her forehead and the edges of her feet were tinted with a decorative red dye. I did not embrace her or kiss her or take her hand. Instead, I asked her, speaking Bengali for the first time in America, if she was hungry. She hesitated, then nodded. Yes. I told her I had prepared some egg curry at home. What did they give you to eat on the plane? I didn't eat all the way from Kolkata. The menu said oxtail soup, but surely there were other items. The thought of eating an ox's tail made me lose my appetite. When we arrived home, Mala opened up one of her suitcases and presented me with two pullover sweaters, both made with bright blue wool, which she had knitted in the course of our separation, one with a V neck, the other covered with cables. I tried them on. Both were tight under the arms. She had also brought me two new pairs of drawstring pajamas, a letter from my brother, and a packet of loose Darjeeling tea. I had no present for her apart from the egg curry. We sat at a bare table, staring at our plates. We ate with our hands, another thing I had not yet done in America. The house is nice, she said. Also the egg curry. With her left hand she held the end of her sari to her chest so it would not slip off her head. I don't know many recipes. She nodded, peeling the skin off each of her potatoes before eating them. At one point the sari slipped to her shoulders. She readjusted it at once. There is no need to cover your head, I said. I don't mind. It doesn't matter here. She kept it covered anyway. I waited to get used to her, to her presence at my side, at my table, and in my bed. But a week later we were still strangers. I still was not used to coming home to an apartment that smelled of steamed rice and finding that the basin in the bathroom was always wiped clean, our two toothbrushes lying side by side, a cake of pears, soap residing in the soap dish. I was not used to the fragrance of the coconut oil she rubbed every other night into her scalp or the delicate sound her bracelets made as she moved about the apartment. In the mornings she was always awake before I was. The first morning, when I came into the kitchen, she had heated up the leftovers and set a plate with a spoonful of salt on its edge, assuming I would eat rice for breakfast, as most Bengali husbands did. I told her cereal would do, and the next morning when I came into the kitchen, she had already poured the cornflakes into my bowl. One Morning she walked with me to mit, where I gave her a short tour of the campus. The next morning, before I left for work, she asked me for a few dollars. I parted with them reluctantly, but I knew that this, too, was now normal. When I came home from work, there was a potato peeler in the kitchen drawer and a tablecloth on the table and chicken curry made with fresh garlic and ginger on the stove. After dinner, I read the newspaper while Mala sat at the kitchen table working on a cardigan for herself with more of the blue wool or writing letters home. On Friday I suggested going out. Mala set down her knitting and disappeared into the bathroom. When she emerged, I regretted the suggestion. She had put on a silk sari and extra bracelets and coiled her hair with a flattering side part on top of her head. She was prepared as if for a party, or at the very least, for the cinema. But I had no such destination in mind. The evening was balmy. We walked several blocks down Massachusetts Avenue, looking into the windows of restaurants and shops. Then, without thinking, I led her down the quiet street where for so many nights I had walked alone. This is where I lived before you came, I said, stopping at Mrs. Croft's chain link fence. In such a big house. I had a small room upstairs at the back. Who else lives there? A very old woman with her family alone. But who takes care of her? I opened the gate. For the most part, she takes care of herself. I wondered if Mrs. Croft would remember me. I wondered if she had a new boarder to sit with her each evening. When I pressed the bell, I expected the same long wait as that day of our first meeting, when I did not have a key. But this time the door was opened almost immediately by Helen. Mrs. Croft was not sitting on the bench. The bench was gone. Hello there, Helen said, smiling with her bright pink lips. At Mala, Mother's in the parlor. Will you be visiting a while? As you wish, madam. Then I think I'll run to the store, if you don't mind. She had a little accident. We can't leave her alone these days, not even for a minute. I locked the door after Helen and walked into the parlor. Mrs. Croft was lying flat on her back, her head on a peach colored cushion, a thin white quilt spread over her body. Her hands were folded together on her chest. When she saw me, she pointed at the sofa and told me to sit down. I took my place as directed, but Mala wandered over to the piano and sat on the bench, which was now positioned where it belonged. I broke my hip. Mrs. Croft announced as if no time had passed. Oh, dear, madam, I fell off the bench. I'm so sorry, madam. It was the middle of the night. Do you know what I did, boy? I shook my head. I called the police. She stared up at the ceiling and grinned sedately, exposing a crowded row of long gray teeth. What do you say to that, boy? As stunned as I was, I knew what I had to say. With no hesitation at all, I cried out, splendid. Mala laughed then. Her voice was full of kindness, her eyes bright with amusement. I had never heard her laugh before, and it was loud enough so that Mrs. Croft heard, too. She turned to Mala and glared.

[Narrator]

Who is she, boy?

[Mrs. Croft]

She is my wife, madam. Mrs. Croft pressed her head at an angle against the cushion to get a better look. Can you play the piano? No, madam, mala replied. Then stand up. Mala rose to her feet, adjusting the end of her sari over her head and holding it to her chest. And for the first time since her arrival, I felt sympathy. I remembered my first days in London, learning how to take the tube to Russell Square, riding an escalator for the first time, unable to understand that when the man cried Piper it meant paper, unable to decipher for a whole year that the conductor said, mind the gap, as the train pulled away from each station. Like me, Mala had traveled far from home, not knowing where she was going or what she would find for no reason other than to be my wife. As strange as it seemed, I knew in my heart that one day her death would affect me, and stranger still, that mine would affect her. I wanted somehow to explain this to Mrs. Croft, who was still scrutinizing Mala from top to toe with what seemed to be placid disdain. I wondered if Mrs. Croft had ever seen a woman in a Sorry with a dot painted on her forehead and bracelets stacked on her wrists. I wondered what she would object to. I wondered if she could see the red dye still vivid on Mala's feet, all but obscured by the bottom edge of her sari. At last, Mrs. Croft declared, with the equal measures of disbelief and delight, I knew well, she is a perfect lady. Now it was I who laughed. I did so quietly, and Mrs. Croft did not hear me. But Mala had heard, and for the first time we looked at each other and smiled. I like to think of that moment in Mrs. Croft's parlor as the moment when the distance between Mala and me began to lessen. Although we were not yet fully in love, I like to think of the months that followed as a honeymoon of sorts. Together we explored the City and met other Bengalis, some of whom are still friends today. We discovered that a man named Bill sold fresh fish on Prospect street and that a shop in Harvard Square called Cardullo's sold bay leaves and cloves. In the evenings we walked to the Charles river to watch sailboats drift across the water or had ice cream cones in Harvard Yard. We bought a camera with which to document our life together, and I took pictures of her posing in front of the Prudential Building so that she could send them to her parents at night. We kissed, shy at first, but quickly bold and discovered pleasure and solace in each other's arms. I told her about my voyage on the SS Roma and about Finsbury park and about and the YMCA and my evenings on the bench with Mrs. Croft. When I told her stories about my mother, she wept. It was Mala who consoled me when reading the Globe. One evening I came across Mrs. Croft's obituary. I had not thought of her in several months. By then, those six weeks of the summer were already a remote interlude in my past. But when I learned of her death, I was stricken. So much so that when Malo looked up from her knitting, she found me staring at the wall, unable to speak. Mrs. Croft's was the first death I mourned in America, for hers was the first life I had admired. She had left this world at last, ancient and alone, never to return. As for me, I have not strayed much farther. Mala and I live in a town about 20 miles from Boston, on a tree lined street much like Mrs. Croft's, in a house we own with room for guests and a garden that saves us from buying tomatoes in summer. We are American citizens now so that we can collect Social Security when it is time.

[Narrator]

Though we visit Kolkata every few years.

[Mrs. Croft]

We have decided to grow old here. I work in a small college library. We have a son who attends Harvard University. Mala no longer drapes the end of.

[Narrator]

Her sari over her head or weeps.

[Mrs. Croft]

At night for her parents. But occasionally she weeps for our son. So we drive to Cambridge to visit him or bring him home for a weekend so that he can eat rice with us with his hands and speak in Bengali, things we sometimes worry he will no longer do after we die. Whenever we make that drive, I always take Massachusetts Avenue. In spite of the traffic. I barely recognize the buildings now, but each time I am there, I return instantly to those six weeks as if they were only the other day. And I slow down and point to Mrs. Croft's street, saying to my son.

[Narrator]

Here was my first home in America.

[Mrs. Croft]

Where I lived with a woman who was 103. Remember? Mala says, and smiles. Amazed as I am that there was ever a time that we were strangers. My son always expresses his astonishment, not at Mrs. Croft's age, but at how little I paid in rent, a fact nearly as inconceivable to him as a.

[Narrator]

Flag on the moon was to a.

[Mrs. Croft]

Woman born in 1866. In my son's eyes I see the ambition that had first hurled me across the world. In a few years he will graduate and pave his own way alone and unprotected. But I remind myself that he has a father who is still living, a mother who is happy and strong. Whenever he is discouraged, I tell him that if I can survive on three continents, then there is no obstacle he cannot conquer. While the astronauts heroes forever spent mere hours on the moon, I have remained in this new world for nearly 30 years. I know that my achievement is quite ordinary. I am not the only man to seek his fortune far from home, and certainly I am not the first. Still, there are times I am bewildered by each mile I have traveled, each meal I have eaten, each person I have known, each room in which I have slept. As ordinary as it all appears, there are times when it is beyond my imagination.

[Deborah Treisman]

That was Rebecca MacKay reading the third and final continent by Jhumpa Lahiri. The story appeared in the New Yorker in June of 1999 and was included in Lahiri's debut story collection, Interpreter of Maladies, which was published by Houghton Mifflin later that year.

[Mrs. Croft]

I'm Nomi Fry.

[Vincent Cunningham]

I'm Vincent Cunningham.

[Alex Schwartz]

I'm Alex Schwartz and we are Critics at Large, a podcast from the New Yorkers. Guys, what do we do on the show every week?

[Vincent Cunningham]

We look into the startling maw of our culture and try to figure something out.

[Alex Schwartz]

That's right. We take something that's going on in the culture now. Maybe it's a movie, maybe it's a book, maybe it's just kind of a trend that we see floating in the.

[Rebecca MacKay]

Ether and we expand it across culture as kind of a pattern or a template.

[Vincent Cunningham]

We talked about the midlife crisis, starting with a new book by Miranda July. But then we kind of ended up talking about Dante's Inferno.

[Rebecca MacKay]

You know, we talked about Kate Middleton, her so called disappearance, and from that we moved into right wing conspiracy theories.

[Vincent Cunningham]

Alex basically promised to explain to me why everybody likes the Beatles.

[Alex Schwartz]

You know, we've also noticed that advice is everywhere. Advice columns, advice giving. And we kind of want to look at why. Join us on Critics at Large from the New Yorker. New episodes drop every Thursday. Follow wherever you get your podcasts.

[Rebecca MacKay]

So, Rebecca, as we were saying, this story is, or at least begins as a kind of classic narrative of immigration. A man leaves home almost penniless, lives in this crowded home with other immigrants, trying to recreate traditions from his past and his culture, and then slowly adapts to a new culture. What is it that makes this such a classic sort of trajectory for the immigration story? I mean, obviously, there are some people who have different experiences, of course. Yeah.

[Mrs. Croft]

I think it's. Maybe the reason it resonates so strongly.

[Narrator]

With me is in some of its particularities, actually. My father was a refugee from the failed Hungarian Revolution in 1956, and he got to Boston halfway through his education and managed to kind of talk his way into Harvard, which I guess you could do in those days if you were a charming young refugee. I don't know. But, you know, there's that part of it. There's the kind of landing someplace very suddenly that is in line with a lot of the narratives that I knew from my family, simply because of the refugee situation of people coming from both Hungary and Romania. And this narrator finds himself trying to figure out culturally how to get by. How do you get by with the strange food? How do you get by with the strange money? Those are the stories that I think any of us who know, our family members who came to America from elsewhere have heard those stories. The misunderstandings and the strangeness that often.

[Mrs. Croft]

Goes hand in hand with that of.

[Narrator]

Being a young adult in a new place. You're not someone who has your life behind you. You're not someone who necessarily knows fully who you are. And then in the case of, I think this narrator, as well as in the case of my father, realizing later that you've spent far more than half your life in this place that was once so foreign and maybe still in some ways is so I think there are for me, one of the emotional things about this story is these very specific particularities about Boston. But there's this universality, too, that I think would resonate not only with anyone who's immigrated, but I think very specifically with people who've sat there and listened to their parents stories of coming over and how scary that was and trying as the child of someone like that, to make sense of what it would be to come to this world that is home for me, that is home for Jhumpa Lahiri. But that wasn't for the parent.

[Rebecca MacKay]

Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting that for this narrator, in the time that he's in London, he's really immersed in a Bengali world.

[Narrator]

Right.

[Rebecca MacKay]

When he gets to Boston, he doesn't even seem to seek it out. He's goes to the Y and he is very lonely there. And then he goes to Mrs. Croft. And there's no attempt to kind of find an Indian community in Boston. I'm sure there was one.

[Mrs. Croft]

Yeah.

[Narrator]

Well.

[Mrs. Croft]

And until the wife comes and then.

[Narrator]

You get the sense that they're meeting other Bengalis. But there's a sense in the story of him moving farther and farther from home. And I think that's more effective actually than if he'd just come straight from India to Boston. Is. You know, I already went as far as England. It seems like it's as far as you can go. But no, wait. There's a whole other ocean I'm gonna cross.

[Rebecca MacKay]

We're still travel even further still. Yeah.

[Narrator]

Practically to the moon.

[Mrs. Croft]

Yeah.

[Rebecca MacKay]

Yes. And obviously it's not a narrative coincidence that he lands in Boston on the day of the moon landing.

[Narrator]

Right.

[Rebecca MacKay]

It's pretty easy to see that as symbolic. I don't know how much weight you think we should give to that. Is this like the prevailing metaphor of the story that you're going to another planet? You know, that you're going to this place that you thought you could never reach?

[Narrator]

What I'll say is I'm amazed that she gets away with it without it being heavy handed. Yeah. There's something about it.

[Mrs. Croft]

And I think that it's.

[Narrator]

I think it's two things if I try to analyze.

[Mrs. Croft]

One is that she mentions it in.

[Narrator]

Passing and then lets it drop for a while and doesn't assign it a ton of significance right away. And that even the narrator kind of doesn't pay that much attention to it. And then when she does bring it up again, it's in this kind of overblown way from Mrs. Croft. Right. It's so dramatic that I don't think the story is ever asking us. Look at this and take it very seriously.

[Mrs. Croft]

Wow.

[Narrator]

Moon landing. It's more ignoring it at first and then overemphasizing it through another character. And I think that's how she does it. Because in someone else's hands, this could be really cheesy. And it's not.

[Mrs. Croft]

It's beautiful.

[Rebecca MacKay]

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, just to cut back a little bit, for someone who has this kind of courage to leave his own world behind twice, he seems almost in those early scenes to be sleepwalking.

[Mrs. Croft]

Yeah.

[Rebecca MacKay]

And Particularly through his wedding and the.

[Deborah Treisman]

First days of his marriage.

[Rebecca MacKay]

Like, he's almost.

[Deborah Treisman]

He's not questioning anything.

[Rebecca MacKay]

He doesn't really seem to care.

[Mrs. Croft]

Yeah.

[Rebecca MacKay]

How do you kind of reconcile the contradiction between the way he behaves in that context and this huge, you know, challenge he's set for himself?

[Narrator]

Yeah. The same person who is willing to go along with. I mean, culturally, you're gonna go along with the arranged marriage. Right. This is not a specific. Nothing specific to him. But someone who's gonna go along with it kind of placidly and not have a lot of emotion about it is.

[Mrs. Croft]

The same type of person who would.

[Narrator]

Get a job offer on another continent and go, well, okay. And so I think, you know, rather than coming out of a spirit of great adventure for this character, it's coming about almost out of inertia in the sense that, you know, in the object.

[Mrs. Croft]

In motion remains in motion.

[Narrator]

Part of inertia. Right. The like, all right, here I am, Here I go. Which I think is an important narrative. I think that a lot of immigrant narratives are about someone breaking away from the family and setting out bravely and boldly on their own with a plan. And, of course, that's not always. That's not the only story.

[Rebecca MacKay]

Yeah.

[Mrs. Croft]

And he works in a library.

[Narrator]

This is not someone with a huge personality. This is not the kind of person who would go sign up to be an astronaut.

[Mrs. Croft]

But he is.

[Narrator]

He finds himself in this new place. And that's tricky. It's tricky to write a fundamentally passive character and let them carry a story. But, again, she does it.

[Rebecca MacKay]

What's interesting to me is that, you.

[Deborah Treisman]

Know, in those days after the wedding.

[Rebecca MacKay]

When his wife is, you know, weeping in bed next to him and he's just reading and sort of ignoring it, you know, he comes off. He's not very likable in those moments. You're like, could you just, you know, put an arm around her or something? But it's a strange thing also to reconcile how he feels about her compared with how he feels about his mother. Because we get these scenes in which he's, you know, cleaning his mother's fingernails after she's died, and he's doing all of these things and he's riddled with grief and then feels nothing for this stranger in the bed.

[Narrator]

Well, there are three women in this story. Right. If we count his mother. And it's very interesting to chart his relations to them where we get these.

[Mrs. Croft]

Stories of him being this incredibly devoted.

[Narrator]

Son and he's probably still grief stricken about his mother. Which might be part of his problem. And then we get his real, genuine concern and kindness for Mrs. Croft.

[Mrs. Croft]

And then we get, you know, the.

[Narrator]

Beginning of this arc with Mala where it seems like he's just quite unfeeling. But there's something, I think, because of the later point of telling, because we have the sense that this is someone looking back, saying things like, I did not yet feel anything for her. That's not quite the words. Right. There's the promise implicit in that, that something will change. And I think that in present tense, or just in a story set told as if told in 1969, I think he'd be unbearable. But you have someone look, right. You have someone looking back and this sense that, no, we're at the beginning of something. He's being very honest about his emotional failures, but we're going somewhere with this. I think that helps a lot. And we have this. These examples of him treating his mother very well, treating Mrs. Croft very well, that are sort of allure out there. You know, this promise that there's something better inside of him that he can find.

[Rebecca MacKay]

Yeah. I mean, in those weeks when he's living with Mrs. Croft, there are a few mentions. He's sort of dreading having Mala come because he's thinking about all the things he's going to have to do for her and deal with for her. And at the same time, he's wishing he could do more for Mrs. Croft. He wants to warm up her soup. He goes to check on her and make sure she's okay on her bench at night.

[Mrs. Croft]

Yeah.

[Rebecca MacKay]

And his feelings for the two of them are so radically different.

[Deborah Treisman]

He resents Mala and he does not resent Mrs. Croft.

[Rebecca MacKay]

And it's funny, because you'd think it would be the other way around.

[Mrs. Croft]

Yeah.

[Narrator]

I think I have a slightly different read on it where that scene where he sees the dog bite the woman. Sorry. And he starts to go through. I think he's feeling. I think he understands that when she.

[Mrs. Croft]

Comes, it's inevitable that he will end.

[Narrator]

Up caring for her a great deal and will need and want to do these things. And it's a tremendous burden.

[Mrs. Croft]

Not.

[Narrator]

You know, if he didn't care, I don't think it would be. It would feel like a burden. But I think he feels like, oh, she's gonna come and I'm gonna. Yeah, I'm gonna have to find that in myself. I'm gonna have to be that person.

[Mrs. Croft]

Even if he's not saying it.

[Narrator]

That's.

[Mrs. Croft]

Maybe.

[Narrator]

I think I have a more generous Read on him maybe, than you do. But.

[Mrs. Croft]

Yeah.

[Rebecca MacKay]

Then she gets there and he's, you know, she's made him these sweaters and they're too tight, and he's uninterested and so on. I mean, I think there may also be something in the idea of obligation. You know, he's sort of obliged to do things for her, whereas he makes a point of saying he owed Mrs. Croft nothing.

[Mrs. Croft]

It's true. It's true. Yeah. Yeah. His mother was someone he was obliged.

[Narrator]

To care for in a very scarring way. Mrs. Croft is someone to whom he doesn't owe anything. And he is yet able to kind of do things for her. And I think she's the healing link then, between the mother and the wife, where he's maybe found a generosity in himself that's not born of obligation that he's able to tap into later.

[Rebecca MacKay]

Let's talk about Mrs. Croft, because she is such an amazing character.

[Narrator]

I love her.

[Rebecca MacKay]

She's completely unpredictable.

[Mrs. Croft]

Yes.

[Rebecca MacKay]

You don't really even. I just. I never knew what was going to come out of her mouth, aside from splendid and, you know, sit here, boy.

[Narrator]

Yes.

[Rebecca MacKay]

And she just defies your expectations. You know, you have this woman born in 1866, who I would expect when the narrator walks in the door, for her to have a reaction to his foreignness.

[Narrator]

Right, right.

[Rebecca MacKay]

And she doesn't. She's only concerned if it's, you know, Harvard or Tech.

[Mrs. Croft]

Yes. That's all that matters.

[Rebecca MacKay]

As long as that's done, then we're okay. She doesn't react at all.

[Mrs. Croft]

Right.

[Rebecca MacKay]

And then again, you worry that looking at Mala, she's, you know.

[Narrator]

Yeah.

[Rebecca MacKay]

The narrator thinks she's looking with disdain, but in fact, what she says is she's a perfect lady. And she has no. Here's this woman in the kind of get up that you probably are confident Mrs. Croft has not seen before.

[Narrator]

Right.

[Rebecca MacKay]

Studying her. And that's her response. So, yeah. She just could so easily have been just a stereotype of what one would expect.

[Narrator]

Right.

[Rebecca MacKay]

And she's not.

[Narrator]

Yeah. And her saying she's a perfect lady is a sort of benediction in this wonderful way that she's, you know, he says, you know, it was our looking at each other and smiling that started the bond. But I think there's something else there of this woman's approval, in a way. This woman, she's previously called him a gentleman. She's now calling her a perfect lady. She believes they belong together. She sees them as a couple. And he also, you know, starts to really Empathize with Mala in that scene. Really starts to, you know, worry for the first time for her. Where Mrs. Croft is this incredible catalyst I think of a lot in the story. She's not just. There's another way that she could have been very stereotypical is if she were just used as set decoration. Here's this quirky old lady, and instead, she really has a functional role in the story. She makes other things happen, including, really, the emotional breakthrough of the story.

[Rebecca MacKay]

It's also like he's brought his, you know, his wife home for approval from his mother, in a sense. And he gets it. You know, he gets that benediction, like, as you were saying.

[Mrs. Croft]

Yeah. It is a mother's blessing, because his mother. His mother isn't there.

[Narrator]

His mother hasn't been able to bridge that gap and connect to the new central woman in his life. And Mrs. Croft is able to do that for him.

[Rebecca MacKay]

Yeah. And there's also this character, this narrator is not. It's not just that he's an immigrant. He's basically an orphan.

[Mrs. Croft]

Right.

[Rebecca MacKay]

So thinking about him as someone who's rootless in both ways, you know, in terms of family and in terms of where he's living, he finds this completely rooted person, you know, who's been around so long, who's been in this house teaching piano for 40 years before she was too old to do it, you.

[Narrator]

Know, who doesn't even seem to move.

[Mrs. Croft]

From the one bench.

[Rebecca MacKay]

Right. She's rooted. She's planted there.

[Narrator]

Yes.

[Mrs. Croft]

Yeah.

[Rebecca MacKay]

And so she gives him something like a connection, I suppose.

[Narrator]

Yeah. And think about, you know, she. This is not, you know, made explicit on the page, but as a representative of, you know, old Boston, old America. Someone who, you know, if he can win her over, he's like. He's winning over the past hundred and three years of American history to bless his arrival in a way.

[Rebecca MacKay]

That moment with Mrs. Croft, with the two of them, when she calls her a perfect lady and they laugh, and it's the first time they've laughed in front of each other, and it changes their relationship. You know, he says that that was basically the beginning of their relationship.

[Deborah Treisman]

Do you think it's because, I suppose.

[Rebecca MacKay]

Like, my feeling is that he hasn't really seen Mala. He's seen a kind of imposition. Someone who's been forced on him, in a sense, who has annoying emotions and gets homesick and has to be taken care of, and then suddenly he can see her, maybe through Mrs. Croft's eyes.

[Narrator]

I think that's it. Right. That sense where you I think we have that every day. I feel like, for me as a writer, the second I send a story off as an email attachment, I can think how you or someone else would read it. And I suddenly see everything that's wrong with it 30 seconds after I send it. Even though you haven't seen it yet, because it's that idea of someone else looking at it. Suddenly everything becomes clear. Right.

[Mrs. Croft]

And that can be for better or worse.

[Narrator]

Right. Usually you start to see all the flaws with something, but it could, you know, I think in this case, and this makes sense, you're seeing someone through the eyes of someone who's looking at them with ultimately approval, and then you kind of make yourself see what they see. It's an incredible moment in the story that just appraisal.

[Rebecca MacKay]

And I think, actually, you know, now that I think about it, the way he's been introduced to Mala, in a sense, is that she's someone everyone else has rejected. You know, she doesn't have a fair complexion. All the other men said no when they saw her.

[Narrator]

She's older and she's.

[Mrs. Croft]

Yeah, yeah.

[Rebecca MacKay]

And so finally, here's a moment where someone else has not rejected her. And it occurs to him that he doesn't have to either, somehow.

[Mrs. Croft]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Narrator]

And I, you know, I think that there's. I love the slipperiness of it.

[Mrs. Croft]

Right.

[Narrator]

That he's not someone who is. He's simultaneously very reflective from this later.

[Mrs. Croft]

Point about his emotions.

[Narrator]

He's also not the most in touch with his feelings of any narrative I've ever read. Right. This is a guy who's a little closed off and a little formal, and there's this delicate balance, I think, that she accomplishes between over explaining and, you know, killing the frog by. You know, the Mark Twain thing about. You can dissect the joke, but it's like dissecting a frog. You're gonna kill it. He said it way funnier than that. You know, the quote that I'm saying. So she could, you know, she could dissect the frog of this emotional reaction. And he could be saying, well, it.

[Mrs. Croft]

Was almost as if I felt there.

[Narrator]

Was approval coming down from, you know, America or from my own mother.

[Mrs. Croft]

But.

[Narrator]

But that's for us to read into the scene. But I think we have just enough to do that because going too far in the other direction, something happens and we're kind of going, I don't really know why he did this. That's, you know, that's a more common move in fiction where you go, I don't really understand why this person made the decisions they did. And to get this very subtle, complex, almost contradictory set of emotions across to us without spelling it out is phenomenal.

[Rebecca MacKay]

There's just so much that's between the lines. And it's a trick. And I don't mean a bad trick. I mean a very good trick. But when a writer does that, and Djerba is so excellent at it, we as readers lean in, in that way. Because we have to fill things in. We have to imagine them because we're not being told them. So we have to somehow feel what we think he might be feeling. And suddenly we're in the story and we're totally implicated.

[Mrs. Croft]

Yeah.

[Rebecca MacKay]

And she has that way of sort of requiring that kind of immersion, that kind of emotional, psychological immersion in her stories.

[Mrs. Croft]

And when you leave gaps for us to fill in.

[Narrator]

But most intelligent readers would have fairly similar reads on what happened, if not identical. You've given enough, and that's. It's such a hard thing to do. And she does it so well.

[Rebecca MacKay]

Yeah, absolutely.

[Narrator]

That's the rhythm, too.

[Rebecca MacKay]

Right.

[Narrator]

You get to the very end. Still. There are times I am bewildered by each mile I have traveled each meal I have eaten each.

[Mrs. Croft]

Each person I have known each room.

[Narrator]

In which I have slept as ordinary as it all appears.

[Mrs. Croft]

There are times when it is beyond my imagination.

[Narrator]

There's just this. It's the kind of. That litany, the breaking of the litany. There's still rhythm to that last sentence that I think is very carefully thought out. It's hard to get emotion without rhythm, especially at the end of something. It's a very. I feel like emotion is very tied to the musicality of writing. And she has her musicality down cold here at the end.

[Rebecca MacKay]

You know, there's that kind of amazing moment earlier in the story where he's looking at Mala and thinking, how strange that my death will matter to her and her death will matter to me.

[Narrator]

Yes.

[Rebecca MacKay]

And we get to the end, and what he's concerned about is that when they die, their son won't be able to eat rice with his hands anymore. Or speak Bengali, in fact. Kind of traditions that he was trying to get away from when they were foisted back on him by Mala, of course.

[Narrator]

Yeah.

[Rebecca MacKay]

So it's just she gets so many echoes in there that throw you back on the story.

[Mrs. Croft]

That's it. It's not just a leap forward in time.

[Narrator]

It's a leap forward in time from which we then look back and there's, I'm sure, a Technical term for that, but I love that kind of move.

[Mrs. Croft]

Right. We don't learn that much about the.

[Narrator]

Present day, just that there is a sun. I mean, he tells, we live in this house and on a tree lined street we grow tomatoes. But it's mostly a vantage point from which to telescope back to the time of the story. And that's that elegiac quality. He's elegizing something that we've been through with him. So we've only been reading this story for half an hour, but we are already nostalgic with him for that time, which is in the past, which is incredible.

[Rebecca MacKay]

And it comes soon after the news of Mrs. Croft's death, which. And he says, you know, hers was the first death I mourned in America for. Hers was the first life I had admired.

[Mrs. Croft]

Yeah.

[Rebecca MacKay]

And then you stop and think, what is he admiring? Is it just her longevity? Is it her. Just her strength? Because obviously she was a very strong person. Even at 103, she's screaming at Helen not to go in a man's room, wear his shorts, you know?

[Mrs. Croft]

Yeah. I love it. And I think the other thing in.

[Narrator]

There is, I think, as comic as it is, that use of the word splendid, which is ultimately about deeply seeing and appreciating something like, notice this, look at it.

[Mrs. Croft]

Isn't it splendid?

[Narrator]

Which is ultimately.

[Mrs. Croft]

She doesn't make him say that his.

[Narrator]

Wife is splendid, but that is essentially what she does. You know, look at her. She's a perfect lady.

[Mrs. Croft]

I think that's a big part of it.

[Narrator]

This guy's been kind of numb to the world. He's been just kind of moving along and doing what he's supposed to do. And she's saying, no, you don't understand.

[Mrs. Croft]

There are men on the moon.

[Narrator]

That is splendid.

[Rebecca MacKay]

Say it right?

[Mrs. Croft]

Yeah.

[Narrator]

Acknowledge it. It's something he needed. It's something he needed to kind of wake himself up out of this stupor, to see himself, to see this new world, to see how far he'd come and to see Mala as a person.

[Rebecca MacKay]

Well, thank you so much, Rebecca.

[Narrator]

Oh, my gosh, thank you. This is such a delight to revisit this story and to get to talk.

[Mrs. Croft]

About it with you.

[Deborah Treisman]

Jhumpa Lahiri, a winner of the PEN Hemingway Award, the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award, and the Pulitzer Prize, among others, has published six books of fiction, the novels the Namesake, the Lowland, and Whereabouts, which she wrote in Italian and translated into English, and the story collections Interpreter of Maladies, Unaccustomed Earth and Roman Stories, which was also first written in Italian. Rebecca Mackay is the author of the story collection Music for Wartime and the novel the Borrower, the Hundred Year House, the Great Believers, for which she won the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, and I have Some Questions for you, which was published last year. You can Download more than 200 previous episodes of the New Yorker Fiction Podcast, including episodes in which Jhumpa Lahiri reads and discusses stories by William Trevor and Primo Levy, or subscribe to the podcast for free. In Apple Podcasts on the Writer's Voice podcast you can hear short stories from the magazine read by their authors. You can find the Writer's Voice and other New Yorker podcasts on your podcast app. Tell us what you thought of this program on our Facebook page or rate and review us in Apple Podcasts. This episode of the New Yorker Fiction Podcast was produced by Chloe Procinos. I'm Deborah Driesman. Thanks for listening.

[David Remnick]

Hi, this is David Remnick and I'm pleased to share the news that I'm Not a Robot, A live action short film from the New Yorker's Screening Room series has been shortlisted for the Academy Awards. This thought provoking film grapples with questions that we can all relate to about identity and technology and what it means to be human in an increasingly digital world. I encourage you to watch I'm Not a Robot along with our full slate of documentary and narrative [e-mail] video.

[Rebecca MacKay]

From PRX.