The Weight of Heaven (38 page)

“But you’re trying to blame us for the corruption of your own

leaders,” Ellie said, tearfully aware that she had somehow slipped

into the role of playing Frank to Nandita’s Ellie.

“Who’s ‘us,’ my dear El?” Nandita’s voice was sad and weary.

“I’ve never thought of you as one of ‘them.’ So why are you making

these false distinctions based on nationality?” She jutted her hand

out to stop Ellie from interrupting her. “Wait. Let me finish. This

is not about white versus brown or America versus India, darling.

This is simply about the powerful versus the powerless. And all of

us get to choose where we throw in our lot, whose interests we want

to support. As for the corruption of the Indian government—you’re

absolutely right. But holding one institution culpable doesn’t mean

you excuse the culpability of the other, does it? You can blame both

sides, no?”

Ellie shook her head. She was tired and worried about Frank. Her

earlier gratitude at how willingly Nandita had canceled her plans for

the day and brought over Dr. Gupta now soured. She simply wanted

Nandita to leave, so that she could crawl back into bed with Frank

and forget about the world for a few hours.

As if she had read her mind, Nandita stood up. “Anyway. This is

not the time to talk about these things. You go take care of Frank.

And call me if you need anything, okay? You promise?”

Now that Nandita was standing up, ready to go, Ellie didn’t want

her to. Still, she said nothing, nodding mutely. They walked to the

door, and Ellie turned to accept Nandita’s hug. As always, she felt

comforted by Nandita’s warm, tight embrace. “I’m scared,” she

heard herself say. “I don’t want anything to be wrong with Frank.”

Her throat tightened with fear.

“I know.” Nandita’s arms around her got stronger. “I know,

2 8 4 Th r i t y U m r i g a r

sweetie. But don’t worry. He just has a fever, that’s all. You’re

not . . . you’re doing the right thing.”

“I’m sorry for being bitchy with you—”

“Hey. Who the hell do you think you’re talking to? I love you

like my own sister, remember?” Nandita walked down the path that

led to the door and then turned around. “Besides, love means never

having to say you’re sorry.” She pulled that rueful, doleful face that

always made Ellie laugh. “Another American expression of dubious

merit.”

Ellie felt a little lighter as she closed the door and went into the

bedroom to check on Frank.

He felt like a baby, learning to walk again. He was amazed at how

weak he felt as he got out of bed for the first time in days. Ellie was at

his side, holding him up, and he tried mocking the terrible weakness

in his limbs, but even that took too much effort. But slowly, with her

help, he made it into the kitchen to sit at the table. Edna had placed a

steaming bowl of soup for him and was fussing around so nervously

that it made Frank feel jittery. She hovered behind him, urging him

on with each spoonful that he swallowed, keeping up a steady chatter of inane conversation until Frank finally looked up and shot an

imploring look at Ellie. “Edna,” she said immediately. “Let him eat

in silence for a few minutes. The doctor said not to make too much

noise around him.”

Edna’s hands fluttered to her side. “Yes, yes, madam, of course,”

she said, hurrying back to the stove. “We have a nice roast chicken

for dinner.”

He put his spoon down after a few more swallows. “I’m full,”

he announced, and Ellie looked worried. “Okay,” she said. “Maybe

you can try again in a half hour.”

He sat at the table with his eyes closed.

“Tell you what, sweetie,” Ellie said. “Would you like to sit on the

porch for a few minutes before going back to bed?”

Th e We i g h t o f H e av e n 2 8 5

So he sat on the swing, staring out at the sun gleaming on the

water. He remembered his dream from a few days ago, but calling it

a dream felt wrong, as if he was desecrating its power. It hadn’t been

a dream; it had been a vision, a revelation. A message to him from

Benny. Despite the weakness of his body, his spirit felt light and

strong. He felt free—free, not just of the terrible belief that Benny’s

death had been a punishment for some past sin but free of his belief

in a moral universe. The arc of the world bent not toward morality

but toward indifference. He didn’t see this new way of thinking as a

crisis of faith. Rather, he had found a new home for his faith. It was

not that he had stopped believing in God; he had simply replaced

the old, scorekeeping God with one whose signature characteristic

was apathy.

He sat on that swing day after day as his body grew stronger,

looking out at the sun on the water. The fever had long left his body,

but his mind felt fevered as he tried to figure out what the vision had

meant. He was now convinced that it was Benny he had seen on the

couch on Christmas Eve, Benny come back to show him the way.

It had not been an optical illusion at all, as he had then supposed.

His son had come to lead him to the sun. He felt sad at the realization that he couldn’t explain any of this to Ellie. Without the sweaty

agitation of the sickbed, where the vision had been born, he could

speak to her the words but never the music. She would never see

Benny’s incandescent body dancing on the waves or illuminating

the sky, as he did.

He was talking to Benny and waving to him one afternoon when

Ellie walked onto the porch. He knew she had caught him gesticulating with his hands while his lips moved. I probably look like a

friggin’ madman, he thought to himself, as he caught the concerned

look that crossed her face. But really, he didn’t care all that much.

He mostly wanted to be left alone, so that he could figure out things,

and all she wanted to talk about was whether he wanted his eggs

fried or hard-boiled.

2 8 6 Th r i t y U m r i g a r

“A fried eye looks like a sun in the sky,” he blurted out. “You

ever thought of that?”

In response, she strode up to him and felt his forehead.

“I don’t have a fever,” he said.

Ellie was looking at him curiously. “You should take a nap,” she

said. “You’re still pretty weak.”

As it turned out, she was right. It took him almost another ten

days to feel like himself again.

He went back to work on the twelfth day. For the first time since

Mukesh’s death and the strike that followed, he did not dread stepping into the factory. Benny was with him. And the vision made him

feel less guilty about the events of the past few months. Mukesh had

died because it had been his time to enter the darkness, that’s all. It

was nobody’s fault. Nobody’s fault, at all.

Chapter 26

For two months now he had been losing his son to a machine. Bad

enough that he was forever fighting a silent battle with the American

for his son’s time and attention. But now Frank had set a trap for him

so that even when he and Edna had Ramesh with him physically, the

machine was controlling the boy, luring him away from his father,

seducing him with its color pictures or with its blank screen that

Ramesh filled with words Prakash could not read.

The child had come home with the computer on Christmas Eve.

Prakash remembered the day well. He and Edna had spent the evening watching television, looking up eagerly each time the wind

rattled their open door, thinking it was Ramesh come home. Occasionally, the tinkling sounds of laughter and voices wafted over

the courtyard from the main house, making them feel even more

miserable and isolated in their single room, making them feel like

underworld creatures, like mice or roaches, living in the dark, while

light and laughter poured out of the big house where the Americans

were having their celebration. With their boy as one of the guests.

At nine o’clock he had asked Edna if she would go to a movie with

him, but she shook her head. She was thinking about the Christmas

Eves of her youth in Goa, he knew, and that recognition added to

2 8 8 Th r i t y U m r i g a r

the closed-in, oppressive atmosphere of this single room. “Let’s go

get Ramesh and go to cinema hall,” he proposed again.

“Are you mad?” she snapped. “No manners? He at a party.”

What did he know about manners and parties? He had never

been invited to a party in his life. Diwali celebrations, Holi processions, were all community affairs, and when he was a child he would

enter people’s homes uninvited, like a scrap of paper blown in by

the wind. Most of the time nobody minded, and if they did, they

let him know, chased him out with words or a raised hand. Edna’s

childhood, he knew, was different, with family parties and dances

and socials. How low she had sunk since her marriage to him, how

isolated he had made her life. By marrying Edna, he had orphaned

her, also.

He was brooding on this long after Edna went to bed at eleven.

But he was up, feeling trapped in the little house. He longed to go sit

in the courtyard, feel some of the cool December breeze on his face,

but was afraid of running into the Americans or their guests, afraid

that they may think he was spying on them or worse, looking into

the main house with envy. He sat on his cot in the dark and made

himself miserable by counting the ways in which he’d made Edna

miserable.

So he was already in a foul mood when Ramesh bounded into the

house at eleven thirty and turned on the light. “Turn off the light,”

he snarled. “Your mother is sleeping.” But Edna was already rolling

on her side and getting out of bed.

Edna noticed the new sneakers immediately. “Let me see, Ramu,”

she said.

But Ramesh shook his head impatiently. “Look at this, ma. My

new computer. Frank gave.”

Prakash felt a flame of jealousy shoot through him. But before he

could react, Edna squealed. “What? A computer? For you?”

Ramesh nodded proudly. “Brand-new. For me. For school.”

The way they had gone on that night, mother and son, you’d have

Th e We i g h t o f H e av e n 2 8 9

believed Ramesh had been given a new car, Prakash now thought.

And a car he would’ve known what to do with. He would’ve known

how to repair it, drive it, paint it, wash it. But this computer was

like a foreign god who sat smug and fat and incomprehensible in his

house. One who controlled his son, one whose light shone late into

the night as Ramesh bowed his head before it.

Prakash now eyed the hated object. He was alone at home—

the boy was at school; Edna had gone shopping with Ellie miss.

He thought back to the evenings when he had wanted to take his son

for a walk along the beach or to the cinema house. Ramesh would

get a regretful look on his face. “I can’t, Dada,” he’d say. “I have

so-much, so-much homework to do.” And he’d go work on the

computer.

Well, let the boy read his books instead. Prithviji, the oldest man

in the village, who could recite part of the Mahabharata by heart,

had told him recently these computers were tools of the devil, corrupting the village youth, filling their heads with dangerous ideas.

And wasn’t Prithviji correct? Prakash saw pictures of America on

TV every day—women walking almost unclothed on the streets,

priests doing wicked-wicked things to children, soldiers putting

black bags over naked Iraqis and making them do unnatural things.

If he had his way, he wouldn’t even let the American teach his son.

God knows what the man was saying to Ramesh during their morning runs or while helping with his homework.

Nothing he could do about the homework—Edna would leave

him before she would allow Prakash to break that tie. Beside, he

worked for the Americans, and he had seen how Frank looked at

Ramesh with big, needy eyes. No point in lifting the rock that the

snake was coiled under. No need to bring Frank’s wrath on his

head.

The machine was a different story. The computer was a guest in

his home. One he could ask to leave. He went to the corner where he

kept his toolbox and picked out a screwdriver and a pair of cutters.

2 9 0 Th r i t y U m r i g a r

He unplugged the laptop, turned it around, and deftly unscrewed

the metal panel in the back. He stared at the miniature landscape of

shiny chips and wires before him, so that for a second his fascination

was stronger than his fury. Regret at what he was about to do nipped

at him momentarily, but he shook it off. He began to work, systematically snipping whatever wires he could. He stopped after a few

minutes, satisfied with his handiwork. Slowly, carefully, he screwed

the silver panel back into place. Nobody would ever guess what had

happened, what he had done. He plugged the computer back on and

noticed happily that there was no light in the power cord.

He walked toward the kitchen area, pulled down a bottle of cheap

liquor, and took a long, lingering swig. Then he walked out of their

tiny house. There was a lift in his step that had been missing for

months.

Chapter 27