Nikhil convinced himself that Sharma had opened his heart to the idea of fathering, but the exuberance of this conclusion led to certain practical questions. Sharma’s wife would be the carrier of the child, but where would the child live? In Sharma’s house in the village, or in Nikhil’s house here in the city? If she lived in the village, which Nikhil admitted was the safer option, how would Nikhil father her, how would she receive a proper education?

The first moment he saw his niece he nearly believed in God and, strangely, in his own ability — his right — to produce so perfect a thing.

Around Sharma’s neck, Nikhil tied his dead mother’s necklace.

Nikhil had argued over a year ago, and eventually Sharma had agreed to a marriage of convenience.

“A child diapered by two men,” said Sharma. “Your country is changing faster than my country is changing. What about the boys from Kerala?”

The next week, the afternoon before he would see Sharma again, he stepped into a clothing store on Rashbehari Avenue to calm his mind. It was a shop he’d frequented to purchase silk kurtas for Sharma or paisley shirts for himself. He told the attendants he needed an exceptional outfit for his niece. They combed the shelves and found a white dress with a lacy pink bow. He imagined his daughter wearing it. From his dreaming he was certain a girl would come out of their love — Shristi was what he’d named her — Shristi enunciating like a princess, Shristi riding her bicycle up and down Kakulia Lane.

Sharma emerged from the uneven music of metalworking with a cigarette between his lips. His Apollonian features were smeared with grease. His hands constricted by thick welding gloves, which excluded the possibility of even an accidental touch. When he saw Nikhil, Sharma scowled. “Sir,” he said, “you’ll have the parts to morrow.” Though he knew Sharma was treating him as a customer for good reason, the tone still stung. Nikhil whispered, “See what I have brought.” He produced the perfect baby girl dress. “You have lost your soup,” Sharma whispered back. Then, so everyone could hear, “Babu, you’ll have the parts tomorrow. Latest, tomorrow.” Nikhil tried again, “Do you see the collar, the sweet lace?” “You should go to your home now,” Sharma said. “Tomorrow, I’ll see you.”

Sharma

“I desire to have a child with you,” Nikhil said.

“It’s in part the physical act. We eat our meals together. We take walks to the bazaar or to the pond. But that, no, we do not do that.” “Don’t worry,” Nikhil said. “I shall do the deed. I shall be the child’s father.” While it was unpleasant to imagine the act of copulation itself, he’d studied the intricacies of the reproductive process and believed his chances were excellent for a single, well-timed session to yield its fruit. “But you can barely stand the smell of a woman.” What passed over Sharma’s face may have been described as amusement, but Nikhil refused to believe his lover wasn’t taking him seriously — not now that he’d opened his heart like a salvaged piano. “Sharma,” Nikhil said. “It shall be a small sacrifice for an enormous happiness.”

A question that led to Thursdays. Two years of Thursdays haunted by fear of discovery, which led to a wedding, because a married man who arrived regularly at Kakulia Lane could not be doing anything but playing backgammon with his happenstance friend. What followed was a year of bliss. He considered this time their honeymoon. They were as seriously committed as any partners who’d ever shared a covenant, and shouldn’t that show?

Thursdays because it was on a Thursday that they had met three years ago, that time of year when the city is at its most bearable, when the smell of wild hyacinth cannot be outdone by the stench of the gutters, because it is after the city’s short winter, which manages, despite its brevity, to birth more funerals than any other time of year. In the city’s spring, two men walking the long road from Santiniketan back to Kolkata — because the bus has broken and no one is interested in its repair — are not entirely oblivious to the smells abounding in the wildflower fields, not oblivious at all to their own smells.

There were certain topics Nikhil and Sharma had left to the wind, foremost the matter of Sharma’s marriage. In the beginning, Nikhil experienced a shooting pain in his abdomen whenever he thought about Sharma and Tripti coexisting in domestic harmony, though over the past few months that pain had numbed; the less he’d thought of Tripti, the less she existed, but here she was now— the would-be mother of his child. He rapped on the grill of her window.

It wasn’t difficult finding Sharma’s home. With money from the foundry and regular gifts of cash from Nikhil, Sharma had purchased several hectares of hilltop land and built a concrete slab of a house, garrisoned with a garden of squash, cucumber, and egg plant, and with large windows marking the combined living and dining area. Nikhil found the structure too modern, but that was Sharma’s way — he had never swooned over the old colonials of Kakulia Lane.

Nikhil