The Weight of Heaven

by Thrity Umrigar

  But the simple question unleashed Frank’s pent-up frustration. “I am. Can you imagine? The idiot is jealous of my friendship with his son. Thinks I’m going to steal him or something.”

  “You should.” Gulab’s voice was smooth, almost seductive.

  “Excuse me?”

  “You should steal him. Take him with you to America. Give him a good life. Over here, sir, he will just rot.” Gulab lowered his voice. “Plus, sir, parents are mixed marriage. And for many years now, they are living in this house, away from the village people. The boy will face much difficulties as he gets of marriageable age. No one will want his daughter to marry a mongrel.”

  Frank flinched and felt his temper rise. As if he’d read Frank’s mind, the older man held out his hand in front of him to deflect the blame. “That’s not my opinion, sir. I’m just knowing the mentality of these villagers.”

  He nodded, to let Gulab know that he understood. But his mind was elsewhere. With a start, he realized that for the last few months whenever he’d imagined Ramesh five or ten years from now, he’d imagined him in America. Seen him as an American boy. He had told Ellie so often about how this boy could be MIT-bound with just the right support that he had begun to believe it. The thought of Ramesh remaining in this tiny hellhole of a village, dropping out of school to work some miserable job, remaining a bachelor because no illiterate, ignorant villager thought he was worthy of marrying his vacuous, illiterate daughter and taking care of his worn-out mother and ingrate father as they aged, filled Frank with despair. For months now, he had believed the story he had spun for himself, a story that had him rescuing the boy from his fate, plucking him like a flower and transplanting him into fertile soil, where he could bloom. But Gulab’s succinct words had robbed him of that illusion, and he now had to imagine Ramesh as the villagers saw him—as a boy of dubious pedigree, the product of a transgression most of them frowned upon. If there was anything special about the boy that caught their attention, it was not the fact that he was sharp and warmhearted and gifted. It was the fact that his Hindu father—an orphan boy who they had raised on the crumbs of their charity—had married a nonlocal Christian girl whose own family had disowned her over this dishonor.

  “These people are idiots,” Frank said, the venom in his voice surprising even him. “I thought Ramesh only had that fool in the kitchen to contend with. I didn’t know there was a village full of them.”

  “You should take him, sir. To America, I mean. Give him a good life there.”

  Frank made a face. “And what do I do about his parents? They give me shit if I ask to take him to the beach for a day. He’s supposed to go to the States with us for ten days over Christmas. From what my wife tells me, getting Prakash to agree to even that was like pulling teeth. I can imagine what his reaction would be if—”

  He stopped, halted by the dismissive sound Gulab made, a cross between a hawk and a hiss. “Forget them, sir.” In a distinctively Indian gesture, Gulab brought all five fingers together and then made them fly apart, as if he was discarding something. “They are nothing. I can make them disappear.”

  “Huh? What do you mean, disappear?”

  Gulab’s dark eyes fixed themselves on Frank for a full moment. In that moment, Frank remembered what Gulab had once told him—I have killed men with my bare hands. He shivered. But before he could say anything, Gulab smiled, a slow, secretive smile. “When you are ready to take the boy with you, sir, then ask me. I will tell you what I mean.” His voice was low, mesmerizing, and Frank felt suddenly sleepy and dull, as if he was being drugged by Gulab’s seductive voice. A vein throbbed in his forehead as Gulab held his gaze. He shuddered and looked away, disturbed by what he saw in Gulab’s eyes.

  He yawned and shook his head, feeling the spell cast by Gulab break as he did so. “Okay. Enough of this crazy talk,” he said, forcing his voice into a lightness he didn’t feel. “We’d better get down to work.”

  Gulab was immediately formal. “Of course, sir. Lots of papers for you to sign.”

  They worked for about twenty minutes, and then Frank heard Prakash’s nasal voice in the doorway. “Soup is ready. Shall I bring out?” Looking up, Frank saw that although Prakash was addressing him, he was looking at Gulab as if transfixed, his eyes wary and fearful. He’s petrified of Gulab, Frank thought. This bastard must’ve terrorized him when they were boys. And despite himself, his heart filled with pity.

  “Just leave it in the pot,” he said. “I’ll warm it up when we’re done.” He was about to ask Gulab whether he wanted something cold to drink when he stopped himself. Somehow, he knew that asking Prakash to serve a Coke or a Limca to his old nemesis would be more than what the cook could bear. Beside, some instinct told him to keep his head of security at arm’s length, not to let the man forget his place too much. Even as small a gesture as offering him a drink would signal a familiarity, a collegiality, that he was not willing to confer on Gulab.

  “You can go home,” he told Prakash, his voice less harsh than it usually was. “Go get some rest.” Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Gulab’s head shoot up, but when he looked over, the man was looking at the papers in front of him, again.

  “As you wish,” Prakash said and turned away.

  “He’s a good cook,” Frank said after Prakash had left. Even to his own ears, the words sounded defensive, as if he was trying to justify his earlier kindness to Prakash.

  Gulab’s eyes were flat. “There’s a saying in Hindi. It means, the shit of even a chicken feeds flies. Even bevakoofs have their virtues, sir.”

  Frank laughed. “Never heard that one before.” He turned back to the stack of papers. “Okay. Let me go through these to see what else needs my signature.”

  He had barely read two letters when he looked up and saw Ramesh walking on the stone wall between the front lawn and the beach. Gulab spotted the boy at the same time and made to get up from the chair. “Some ruffian on your property, sir,” he said. “I’ll go chase him away.”

  “Leave him be,” Frank said. “That’s Ramesh. He lives here.”

  “Yes, of course, my mistake,” Gulab began, but Frank wasn’t paying him any attention because Ramesh had spotted the two men and was now running barefoot across the lawn toward them. “Hi, Frank,” he panted as he came up to them. “Can you play basketball today?”

  It felt wrong to have Gulab witness his interactions with the boy. He wanted to cover Ramesh’s innocent, open face from the other man’s probing, all-seeing eyes. “Not today,” he said curtly. “I have to work right now, Ramesh. We can talk later, okay?”

  “Okay,” Ramesh said, but Frank could tell he was hurt. It didn’t matter. More important to get this boy away from Gulab Singh and his watchful gaze. “Bye,” he added. “Go on, now.”

  Ramesh ran away, looking back once but never breaking his stride. The two men watched as he hopped back on the wall and then jumped onto the sand on the other side. “Sweet boy,” Gulab said. His tone was neutral. “He calls you Frank? Not sahib or sir?”

  “My wife doesn’t like formality.” He had almost said servitude, but knew that Gulab would think of that as a weakness on Ellie’s part.

  The man smiled. “Americans. Informal people. When I was in Virginia, same thing. Very informal in dress and speech.”

  “You were in America? When?”

  “When I was in the service, sir. Special training mission, with the American government.”

  Frank thought for a moment. “You were in Virginia? Working with the CIA?”

  Gulab turned his head so that he was gazing at the sea. “Secret work, sir. Even my mother-father didn’t know where I was for three months.” He proceeded to tell Frank what had taken him to Virginia, but the tale was so convoluted and Gulab used so many acronyms that Frank was unfamiliar with that he soon grew tired of trying to keep up. He had no idea if the man was telling the truth. Everything that he was saying sounded incredible, but Frank knew enough about politics to know that governments got away
with what they did because they counted on ordinary citizens dismissing events as being too incredible and implausible. He looked pointedly at the papers in front of him, and Gulab, attuned to his every nuance, stopped abruptly. “Anyway, sir. This is all past. Old history.”

  Picking up his pen, Frank started going through the papers. Gulab handed him more to read and sign. At one point, he went into the kitchen and returned with a glass of water. “Drink, sir,” he said. “Water important in this heat.” While Frank worked, the other man leaned on the railing of the porch and stared at the sea.

  The stack had gotten considerably shorter by the time Ellie came home. They both heard the doorknob turn and Ellie say, “Hon?”

  Shit, he thought, she’s home a lot sooner than I’d imagined. “Over here,” he yelled. “On the porch.”

  Ellie walked in, her face flushed from the heat. She was removing her straw hat as she walked in. The smile on her lips froze as she spotted Gulab, who had risen from his perch on the railing. “Oh,” she said stiffly. “I wasn’t expecting—”

  “Hello, memsahib,” Gulab said.

  She did not acknowledge Gulab’s greeting. Frank felt his face flush, embarrassed by his wife’s rudeness. Ellie turned to face Frank. “Why are you working on a Sunday?”

  “I was only signing some papers,” he said, willing her not to create a scene, not to come across as a hen-pecking wife in front of Gulab. To his relief, she turned around to leave.

  “Nice to see you again, memsahib,” Gulab said, but she didn’t respond.

  “She’s annoyed that I’m working,” he said, trying to gloss over Ellie’s inexplicable rudeness.

  Gulab’s face was impassive. “Of course, sir.”

  The man left a half hour later. Frank escorted Gulab to the door and then walked into the bedroom where Ellie was lying in bed, reading. “Hi,” he said. “How did breakfast go?”

  “Fine,” she said, looking up from the book she was reading. “Why’d you let that awful man back into our house?”

  “I told you. I wanted to get a jump start on things.”

  She rolled on her side and sat cross-legged behind where Frank was perched on the bed. Reaching over, she began to rub his shoulders. “We stopped at the market, and I purchased a few things for Ramesh to distribute as Christmas gifts to folks in Ohio.”

  “You did?”

  “Yeah, I figured it would be awkward for him to not participate in the gift exchange.”

  He turned around and kissed her. “You’re wonderful.” He rose from the bed. “I think Prakash has made us some chicken corn soup. Want some?”

  “Sure. I’ll be there in five minutes. I just want to finish this chapter. Oh, by the way. Nandita wants us to go to the Shalimar for tea this afternoon. Wanna go?”

  “Sure.”

  He went to the kitchen to heat the soup, his heart lighter than it had been in days. He knew Ellie was not thrilled about going home for the holidays, but he now dared to hope that perhaps having Ramesh with them would be good for her, also. He caught himself whistling as he placed the pot on the stove.

  Some part of his brain kept wanting to stray to the strange exchange he’d had with Gulab, wanted to try and decode the man’s evasive but vaguely sinister words. But he forced himself to focus on the steady, quiet flame of happiness that Ellie’s gift-buying spree had lit in his heart, much like the blue flame of the gas stove that he had just turned on.

  CHAPTER 23

  Prakash tried lifting the pot from the stove but couldn’t. His hands were shaking too much. Even though the badmaash Gulab had been gone for several hours and Frank and Ellie were out for the afternoon, he still felt the man’s vile presence hanging like black smoke over the house.

  Too much. He was being asked to put up with too much. First there was the American trying to take over the life of his son. And now he was letting into the house the man who had darkened his childhood, a bully whose hands had never failed to curl into a fist when Prakash was around. Every child in the village had feared Gulab, who was a few years older than most of them. But most children had a father or a mother to protect them, to grab Gulab by his ears and drag him to his mother’s house to protest. The old woman would slap her son’s head, and for a day or two, he would stop his terror. Prakash alone had no one to defend him, and Gulab made the most of this. Punches. Pinches. Kicks. Slaps. Head butts. And worst of all, the cruel jokes and the laughter.

  “Ae, Sad Face,” the teenage Gulab would call out. “What’s wrong, yaar? You look like your mother-father have died.”

  Prakash would try and slink away, would pray for invisibility, but silence only infuriated Gulab. “Come here, you motherfucker,” he’d continue. “Tell me, who died today?”

  There was no correct response. Answering back invited violence. So did silence. And besides, the physical pain was tolerable. What was intolerable was the humiliation. The way the other boys looked away while he was being tortured, the contempt and pity he saw on their faces. Without witnesses, the abuse would not have mattered. But Gulab always made certain that there were spectators to his torment. And no one ever spoke up for Prakash, no woman, man, or child. There was not even a family pet, a dog who would bare his teeth at Gulab.

  He had been so relieved when Gulab had disappeared from the village for several years. Rumor was that he had joined the army and was fighting in Kashmir. “I hope the Muslim scum kill him and eat his bones,” he’d said to his friend Amir when he’d first heard the news. Amir had looked shocked for a second but then grinned, showing red, paan-stained teeth. “May they choke on his bones,” he’d agreed.

  But demons were hard to kill, Prakash thought, as he washed a frying pan in scalding hot water. Gulab had come back to the village a few years after he and Edna had moved in with Olaf. During those years Gulab stopped by at least once a week, to bring Olaf a new woman each time. And now he was back, let into the house by the American. Still tormenting Prakash by his very existence.

  The door creaked, and Edna came in. “Baap re baap,” she said. “Such-such noises you’re making. Are you washing the pot or killing it?”

  He shot her an ugly look. “Don’t talk,” he said. “Just sit chup-chap, if you must be here.”

  “What bhoot got into you tonight?”

  Prakash set the pan down with a bang. “Gulab was here today,” he said. He knew Edna disliked the man, also. “See who your ’Merican lets into his home? Such low-class people.”

  For a happy moment he thought Edna was going to agree with him. Then her eyes narrowed and she said, “Gulab does security for the company. Of course Frank sir have him come here on business. Why that sticks in your gullet?”

  “Why for he give him the job? People in village say Gulab ordered that poor Anand to be beaten in the police chowki.”

  “People in village say moon come out in the afternoon. You believe them?”

  He hated this about her, how she blindly sided with the Americans over her own family. “You shameless. Not siding with your own countrymen.”

  “Countrymen? Those fools ignore me from the day I come to this godforsaken village. Now they become my fellow men?”

  He stared at her in frustration. For years he had let her believe that his aversion to Gulab stemmed from the fact that the man pimped women for Olaf, unable to let his wife see the smothering shame and terror that he felt each time he was in Gulab’s orbit. “You the fool,” he said lamely. “Blind by your loyalty to these foreigners.”

  “Ellie miss treat me better than anyone in Girbaug ever did. Frank sir teaches my son. Only you ungrateful to those who feed you.”

  He picked up the pot of curry from the stove and set it on the kitchen counter with such force that a little of the liquid sloshed over. “I feed them,” he yelled. “They not feeding me.” And before he could think, he swirled a nugget of saliva in his mouth and spit into the curry.

  Edna looked at Prakash in shocked silence. “What—what did you do?” she said finally. “Ha
ve you gone total mad? Spitting in their food? Arre baap. God save you, man.”

  He suddenly felt teary, unclean. He had never done such a dirty thing before. She had pushed him to this point of fury. “I…See what you make me do, woman?” he said, wishing she would leave the kitchen so that he could think. He glanced at the clock. No time to cook more curry before they returned home.

  Edna’s lips curved downward. “Shameless, useless man,” she began. “Total namak-haraam. My mother always said—”

  “Damn your mother and her mother,” he yelled. “Curse six generations of your family. Now go. Get out of my kitchen before I—” He picked up a spatula and raised his arm threateningly. “I’m telling you for your own good, Edna. Get out.”

  “I’m going.” She opened the door and then looked back. “But if you serve that curry, I swear I will tell them the truth.”

  He stood holding on to the counter, tears streaming down his cheeks. How he hated them all—Gulab, Edna, Frank. How he wished he could get on a bus and simply get away from this village, with its sad memories and ghosts that rose up to darken his present. He eyed the pot of red liquid, lifted it, and poured it down the sink.

  He would simply have to lie and say that he’d burned the curry.

  CHAPTER 24

  Frank was in a meeting when Ellie called him the next day. “What’s up?” he said impatiently, and before she could reply, “I’ll call you back in an hour, okay?”

  Ellie sounded like she was at her wits’ end when he finally reached her. “I’m so sorry, hon,” she said. “But I thought it was better to tell you right away, in case you can still get our money back.”

  “Tell me what? What’re you talking about?”

  “It’s Prakash. Turns out he’s changed his mind about Ramesh going to Cleveland with us. He’s convinced that we’re gonna—I don’t know—kidnap his son, or something.”

  “Did you try talking him out of it?”