The Weight of Heaven

by Thrity Umrigar

  Thank you for the world so sweet

  Thank you for the food we eat

  Thank you for the birds that sing

  Thank you God for everything

  He looked down at his hands. They looked dirty, stained, as if the deed that he was contemplating had already occurred. And then suddenly he was retching. He pulled the trashcan toward him, afraid he was about to soil his shirt. His mouth filled with the pungent taste of vomit, but he couldn’t throw anything up. The foulness remained lodged, deep within his gut.

  Prakash was walking down the street near their house as Frank got home that evening. The man was probably headed to the village bar, Frank surmised. “Stop,” he told Satish. “I’ll get out here. You go on home. I’ll be right behind you.”

  He hopped out of the car. “Wait up, Prakash,” he called and crossed the street.

  Prakash stopped. A wary look came over his face.

  Frank stood in front of him, his blue eyes looking into Prakash’s dark ones. “Hey, look. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have pushed you. I—I wanted to say sorry.”

  The wary look never left Prakash’s face as he stood silently.

  Frank dug up a fifty-rupee note from his pocket and thrust it into Prakash’s sweaty palm. He repressed the shudder that ran through him as his fingers made contact with Prakash’s moist hand. “This is for you,” he said. “As a way of saying I’m sorry.” He turned his head in a conspiratorial way. “Don’t tell Edna,” he added.

  He was rewarded with the thinnest of smiles. “Achcha.” Prakash raised his hand to his forehead. “Thank you, seth.”

  Frank waited as Prakash nodded, turned around, and walked away a few feet. Then he called out, “Oh, Prakash. One other thing.”

  Prakash stopped, the wary expression back on his face. Frank bridged the distance between them, keeping the smile on his face. “There’s a big soccer match two weeks from now. I want to take Ramesh. He will enjoy it very much, I know.” He watched Prakash watching him carefully. He made a downcast face. “Problem is, it’s in Bombay.”

  He stood quietly, waiting for Prakash to say something. There was a long silence. Then, Prakash said, “You are wanting to take him?”

  Frank gave a broad shrug. “I do. But I don’t want any more tension with you. If you say no, I won’t fight you. I’ll—you can just tell the boy you don’t want him to go.”

  Prakash stared at the ground. Then he looked up. The guarded expression was gone from his face. “Take him,” he said simply. “No problem.”

  “You sure?” Frank said, wanting to prolong the moment. “You won’t back out at the last minute?”

  Prakash’s eyes were clear. “I sure. Ramu love soccer.”

  And just like that, the final brick fell into place.

  CHAPTER 34

  It wasn’t until eight on Saturday evening that Frank began to miss Ellie. He and Ramesh were walking along the seaside across from the Taj when the boy tripped on a broken sidewalk and cut his knee. To Frank’s consternation, Ramesh burst into tears. He held the sobbing child in his arms, shocked at how openly Ramesh was crying in public. He examined the gash on his knee, dabbed at the droplets of blood with his handkerchief. He had seen Ramesh take tumbles that were much more severe when he and the boy had been engaged in an aggressive game of basketball. Then, the boy simply got up, dusted himself off, and resumed playing. So Frank was a little taken aback by this public display of emotion. He looked around helplessly, wishing Ellie was here. Passersby were taking in the scene—a white man holding and consoling a dark-skinned child—and shooting him curious looks. A gray-haired lady stopped and said to Ramesh, “Su che, deekra? Are you okay?” Ramesh nodded and pointed to his knee. “I fell,” he sobbed, and the woman tsk-tsked a few times before resuming her walk. “You should take him home and wash the wound,” she tossed over her shoulder.

  “C’mon, kiddo,” he said to Ramesh. “Let’s go back to the hotel, and I’ll clean this off for you.” They stopped at the Taj’s pharmacy on their way up, and he purchased some gauze and a box of Band Aids. But as Ramesh continued to cry in the room, it began to dawn on Frank that the boy’s tears had nothing to do with the fall. And as if to confirm his suspicions, Ramesh said, “I miss Ellie.” And then, “I miss my dada.” Frank was crushed. Ever since they’d said good-bye to Ellie and Ramesh’s parents this morning, he had endeavored to make sure Ramesh was having the time of his life—letting the boy hang his head out of the window as Satish drove them along the coast to Bombay, playing the wretched Hindi film music that Ramesh insisted on listening to on the car radio. At the soccer match this afternoon, he had allowed the boy to eat four samosas and drink two Cokes, until he was afraid Ramesh was going to puke. None of this had apparently been enough to distract him from homesickness. For the first time since he had hatched the plot with Gulab, Frank worried about how the boy would deal with his parents’ death. He had been so busy grappling with his own conflicted emotions that he had not stopped to consider how Ramesh would handle the event that was about to befall him. Now, mortified by his own obliviousness, he wondered how he could’ve possibly failed to factor in Ramesh’s grief. In a few hours from now, Ramesh would be an orphan. He flinched inwardly as his mind focused on that last word.

  “Frank,” Ramesh was saying. “Can we phone Ellie?”

  “We can’t,” he replied gently. “She’s on the train to Delhi, remember? No cell phone reception there.” Seeing Ramesh’s crestfallen face, he added, “She’ll be back on Thursday. You’ll see her then. Now, do you want to watch some TV before it’s time for bed?”

  “Okay,” Ramesh said. “But I choose the show.”

  Frank pretended to grumble as he handed the remote to the boy. “You’ve become a world-class bully,” he said.

  At ten o’clock they were still watching a Jackie Chan movie. Finally, Frank grabbed the remote and turned the TV off. “Come on, now. You have to go to bed. Go brush your teeth.”

  Ramesh looked surprised. “I brushed my teeth in the morning.”

  “Don’t you brush again at night?” Frank asked, and Ramesh shook his head no. Once again, Frank wished Ellie were here. She had been in charge of the boy’s nightly rituals the last time they’d traveled with him. “Well, you have to brush twice a day while you’re here with me.”

  Ramesh shot him a dirty look but rolled out of bed and padded into the bathroom. “Finished,” he said a few minutes later.

  “Okay, off you go to bed,” Frank said. He wondered if there were any bedtime rituals that his parents performed with the boy each night. Probably not, he thought. So he was taken aback when Ramesh came up to him and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. “My ma always gives me good-night kiss,” the boy said, grinning slyly.

  Frank ran his hand through the boy’s short hair. “Good night, pumpkin,” he said and then regretted his choice of words as Ramesh convulsed with laughter. “Pumpkin,” the boy repeated, holding his sides. “You said pumpkin.”

  “You are a silly boy,” Frank smiled. “Now come on, go to bed.” He turned off the lights.

  Ramesh was asleep within five minutes. But Frank was wide awake. His heart had begun to thud loudly as soon as the room had fallen dark. He glanced at the digitalized alarm clock by his bed every few minutes. Time crawled slowly. He turned on the televison set again, hitting the mute button, so as not to disturb Ramesh. He needn’t have worried. The boy’s steady breathing told Frank that he was fast asleep. Love Story was showing on one of the channels. He watched part of it. He wondered where Gulab was at this moment, whether his heart was racing like his was. Somehow, he doubted it. He did a quick calculation. Gulab was to creep into Prakash’s shack at about two in the morning. The plan was to…take care…of the couple before breaking into the main house and ransacking it a bit. Maybe take a small item or two and then drop it in the driveway, as if the thief had been scared into fleeing. So by the time Gulab made the anonymous phone call to the police and they investigated, it would be five or six o
’clock before he heard anything. He would have to pretend to be sleepy, disoriented, when they called. As if they’d woken him out of an undisturbed sleep. He looked at the clock again. It was only midnight. He would not sleep tonight. He would lie awake, keep a kind of deathbed vigil while Ryan O’Neal and Ali MacGraw frolicked in the snow. The icy feeling in his stomach grew. Our Father who art in heaven, he caught himself praying. He turned on his side to face Ramesh. Tomorrow morning the sun will rise, he thought, and there will be two less people in the world. A wild, sharp feeling that he could not name tore through his heart. He eyed the boy sleeping trustingly next to him. “I’ll take care of you,” he promised. “I’ll give you a great life.”

  His lips were moving as he fell asleep. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, he chanted to himself.

  The hotel phone rang at four thirty. Frank turned in bed, hit the snooze on the alarm clock, muttering in his sleep. Nothing happened. The ringing got louder. He suddenly sat up in bed. A spasm of pain bolted through his entire body. His jaw ached—he must’ve been grinding his teeth. He fumbled for his phone. “Hello?” he said.

  “Mr. Frank?” a male voice said.

  “Yes,” he said. His heart was beating so hard he thought he was going to pass out.

  “This is Inspector Sharma speaking. From Girbaug, sir. Sorry to say there’s been an accident, sir.”

  “Accident?”

  Sharma cleared his throat. “Um, yes. That is to say, two murders have occurred on your premises, sir.”

  He closed his eyes. So Gulab had done it. He was shaking with relief—and remorse. He was triumphant—and terrified.

  There was a sound in the background, as if there was a scuffle going on. He heard Sharma say something in Hindi, and then there was a gasping noise on the phone. “Hello?” he said cautiously.

  The nasal voice was immediately familiar. “Frank sahib,” the voice sobbed. “We brothers now. Arre bhagawan. We have both entered the Age of Darkness, seth.”

  There was a roaring in Frank’s ears. Prakash. Prakash was not dead? “Speak clearly,” he ordered. “Give the phone back to—”

  Prakash wailed in his ear. “We both widowers now, seth. We both—”

  Maybe Prakash had been shot in the head. “Prakash,” he said. “Stop talking rot. Give the phone to the inspector.”

  There was a pause—and Frank died and was reborn a hundred times in that pause—and then Sharma was back on the phone. “I’m so sorry, sir. He grabbed the phone—”

  In the background, he could hear Prakash’s sobs. “Inspector,” Frank said, his eyes filling with tears. “What has happened? Who—who is dead?”

  There was a crackle on the line. “The servant girl, sir. And—and your missus, sir. I’m desperately sorry, sir. Routine robbery, it appears to be.”

  He laughed out loud with relief. “That’s impossible. My wife is out of town, traveling to Delhi tonight.” She’s safe, he thought, Ellie’s safe.

  “Beg pardon, sir. This chappie here says she didn’t go. It—it definitely is your wife that is dead, sir. We have positively identified.”

  He hung up on Sharma. Ignored the urgent ring of the hotel phone as his fingers raced through the numbers on his cell phone. Shashi. He had to call Shashi. He would know what was going on. He glanced over at Ramesh. The boy was snoring with his mouth open. How the fuck can he sleep through this commotion? he thought with distaste. He looked away.

  “Hello?” It was Nandita. A sleepy Nandita, but Nandita all the same. His stomach dropped.

  “Nan? Why are you home? Why aren’t you—”

  “Who’s this?” Nandita still sounded sleepy.

  “It’s Frank,” he yelled. “Why are you home? Where’s Ellie?”

  “Oh, sorry. I didn’t recognize. El’s home. We didn’t go today. Shashi’s joining us. Last-minute decision. We’re all leaving tomorrow instead.”

  He listened in horror, unable to take in what she was saying. “Frank?” Nandita said. “What’s going on? Why’re you calling me?”

  His whole body began to shake. “You didn’t go to Delhi?” he repeated. “Ellie was home tonight?”

  “Yup. Are you trying to reach her?” Nandita sounded baffled. “She should be there. You can call her.”

  Why hadn’t she phoned him yesterday to tell him about her change of plans? But even as he wondered, he knew the answer—Ellie had not wanted to intrude on his time with Ramesh.

  The hotel phone was still ringing. He ignored it. “Frank,” Nandita said again. “You can reach Ellie at home.”

  “I can’t. I can’t call her. I just got a call from the police. There’s been a break-in at the house. Nandita, Ellie’s dead. My wife is dead.”

  He woke Satish up, told him to drive as fast as he could back to the Taj to pick them up. They would leave for Girbaug tonight. Next, he went into the shower and turned on the water. He forgot to remove his clothes. Steam filled the bathroom, the heat scalding his skin. He leaned his face against the moist bath tile and bellowed. Beat the walls with his fist. Fell to the floor; banged his head against tile. He raised his wrist to his mouth and bit into the flesh. He wanted to inflict pain on his penitent body; wanted to experience such strong physical pain that he would forget for a blessed second, the agony of his soul.

  He had killed her. Murdered the most precious thing in his life. The old Christian God, the one who kept track, kept score, the one who punished the wicked, had won. It was a moral universe, after all. He had tried to play his hand, winner take all. And instead he was left with nothing. Nothing. Just this empty void of a universe, emptied of the one person who had loved him, stood by him as steadily as a candle flame in the night.

  He came dripping out of the shower, peeled off his clothes, which clung to him like skin, and got into a bathrobe. He walked into the bedroom, eyed the sleeping Ramesh with as much interest as one would a pile of bills. He tried to muster up pity for what had happened to this innocent boy, guilt over what he had stolen from him. But he felt nothing. More precisely, he felt a kind of anger at Ramesh. He had lost his Ellie in his bid for this boy. Had he gone mad? This sleeping, snoring boy didn’t feel remotely worthy of the trade. The sacrifice had been too great.

  He went to wake Ramesh up, but the thought of telling the boy what had transpired in Girbaug froze the words in his mouth. He let him sleep. Ramesh would wake up soon enough into an irrevocably altered world.

  CHAPTER 35

  Ellie miss was to have left for the train station at six in the evening, but at three thirty the phone rang. “Hi, Nandita,” Prakash heard Ellie say. “I’m so excited—what? Oh, really? Well, I guess that’s okay.”

  She spoke for a few more minutes and then came into the kitchen where Prakash was preparing the mutton cutlets she was to carry on the train for dinner. “Sorry for all this work,” she said. “But there’s been a change of plans. We’re leaving tomorrow instead of today.”

  He was careful to keep the disappointment out of his face. This morning, Edna had told him that she’d been looking forward to a few days of rest while Frank and Ellie were away. “A little holiday for us, also, no?” Edna had said, “without having to do cooking-cleaning for them.”

  He had been anticipating spending the evening with his wife. Now, he would have to take care of Ellie miss. “Shall I put away the kheema in the fridge, madam?” he asked. “Or fry the cutlets for tonight?”

  Ellie sighed. “We’ll take them on the train tomorrow. But you may have to make a few more, Prakash. Shashi is joining us, also. And don’t worry about dinner for tonight. There’s plenty of leftovers.”

  “Yes, madam,” he said.

  “She not going to Delhi today,” he announced as he walked into their hut a half hour later.

  Edna was crouched in the corner of the shack, lighting the kerosene stove. “Don’t talk nonsense,” she said grumpily. “Of course she’s going. All packed-pooked, she is.”

  “She change her mind. Going tomorrow instead.”

/>   “What for?”

  He shrugged. “Because she American.”

  Edna curled her lip. “Don’t you be starting today, you stupid,” she said. “I’m not feeling well. No time for your nonsense.”

  He smiled. “You just missing our Ramu.” Frank and Ramesh had left for Bombay early this morning.

  She looked away. “Maybe.” She paused, struck by a thought. “So this means I have to clean as usual?”

  He took in Edna’s tired face. “You rest,” he said. “I will go over and do everything today.”

  Her face softened. “Many thanks, sweetie,” she said quietly.

  Sweetie. She hadn’t called him that in a long time. His heart was singing as he crossed the courtyard and went back into the main house. Ellie, reading on the sofa, raised her head as he walked in. “Yes?”

  “I will do cleaning-washing today instead of Edna, madam. She resting.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Prakash. I don’t need any clothes washed today.”

  He stood before her uncertainly. “So no washing?” he asked.

  “Nope. No other housework, either. I’d already told you guys you’d have these days off. So enjoy.”

  “I will clean before Frank seth return on Monday night,” he said, his Hindu belief in cleanliness outraged at the thought of a dirty house.

  “Whatever.”

  “Shall I prepare the tea now, madam?”

  “Prakash,” she said. “I don’t need anything. Really. Actually, I just want some priv—I want to be undisturbed the rest of the day.”

  He sighed and left the house. Despite himself, he felt a grudging affection for Ellie. She was nice, he thought. Kept her promises. Treated him and Edna as if she saw them.

  Instead of going back into the shack, he decided to go for a walk along the beach, wanting to jiggle and treasure this unexpected gift of leisure, like silver coins in his pocket.

  But the sea only made him miss Ramesh. He remembered bringing Ramesh to this beach the very first time, when he had been only six days old. Despite Edna’s protests about the baby catching cold, he had brought Ramu to the same spot where he was now standing and held him up in his arm. “Look at this,” he’d said to his son. “This all yours. Land, I will never possess. Your ma’s land in Goa, you will not inherit. But this—this sand, this sky, this sea—this belong to you. No one can ever take away. You remember this.”