The Weight of Heaven (47 page)

He had cremated her two days ago. Had ignored Anne’s and Delores’s pleas to have the body flown back to America for a decent

burial. At first he had tried to reason with them, to explain how difficult it would be logistically, how he wasn’t up to dealing with the

Indian bureaucracy at a time like this. But Anne had immediately

offered to fly to Girbaug to help. And he had recoiled at this. And

pulled out the final weapon in his arsenal. Ellie loved India, he’d

said. She had recently told me that she never wanted to leave. This—

this feels right, leaving her here. I’m just honoring her wishes. And

he didn’t know how much of this was true and how much of it was

convenience. Whether he believed his words or didn’t. Whether his

memory of Ellie saying those words was accurate or something he’d

dreamed up. And the surprising thing was, it didn’t matter. It was

all evasive, ephemeral, merely words and thoughts that floated by

as absently as clouds. The only truth that mattered was that Ellie was

dead. They could fight over her body, could bury or burn her, could

transport her body or keep it on this soil, and it wouldn’t lessen the

horror. Wouldn’t change the fact that the Ellie whom he loved, the

Ellie whose spirit rested in each one of his skin pores, the Ellie who

gave shape and meaning to his life, that Ellie was gone.

Which is why when Inspector Sharma had driven him to the

morgue fifty kilometers outside of Girbaug to identify the body, he

didn’t recognize her. His Ellie had a long, taut neck; this woman’s

neck was broken. His Ellie had eyes that shone like jewels; this

Th e We i g h t o f H e av e n 3 5 3

woman’s eyes were smudged glass. His Ellie had a chest that was

smooth and uniform; this woman had two button holes down her

breast bone, where the bullets had entered. Most important of all,

his Ellie had an expression of peace and contentment when she slept;

this woman’s face was twisted with indignation and rage, as if she

was outraged by the ugliness of what had befallen her. On the way

to the morgue he had been sick with fear at what he would have

to witness, had expected to look at the body just long enough to

identify his wife. But instead, he found himself staring and staring

at this body, waiting for Ellie to emerge, much as a sculptor waits for

the sculpted form to emerge from the block of marble. He chipped

away at this torn body with his eyes, looking for his Ellie. But nothing happened. Instead, the custodian of the morgue pulled the white

sheet back over the body, and Sharma was tugging at Frank’s elbow

and escorting him out of the small room. It was only then that he

paid attention to his own trembling body and realized that he was

throwing up all over himself.

“We will catch the
badmaash
who did this, sir,” Sharma was

saying. “No fears, I promise we will get him.”

And Frank understood the true horror of his situation. He would

not be afforded even the normal diversion that accompanied most

murder cases—the search for the killer, the putting together of

clues, the choking anger and rage directed toward the unknown assassin. In his case, the killer resided within and so all his wrath had

to be directed at himself. The crime and the punishment were one

and the same.

Deepak stood beside him in an open field a few days later as he

watched Ellie’s body burn. The fire hissed and crackled as it hit fat;

the sound of Ellie’s bones popping reminded him of the sound of the

pop of his BB gun when he and Scott pelted each other with its pellets as boys. The sounds the fire made repulsed him, so that he spent

much of the time fighting the urge to throw up. But there was also

something clean and beautiful about Ellie’s body being devoured

3 5 4 Th r i t y U m r i g a r

by fire, instead of entrusting her body to the whims and appetites of

the fat-bellied worms. Instead of lowering Ellie’s body into the dirt,

he had raised it to the heavens, to where it was escaping in large billows of smoke. It was exactly the kind of lavish, grand gesture she

would’ve loved.

Behind him, he heard a woman sob and turned his head slightly.

Nandita was convulsed with grief, bent and leaning into Shashi’s

body. Frank was grateful. He himself was unable to cry. Nandita

and Shashi were their Indian family, and Nandita’s sobs appeased

some of his guilt at having kept Ellie’s and his family at bay. They

had all wanted to rush to Girbaug, of course. But he just couldn’t

handle it. “Frank, you’re not thinking of anybody else,” Scott had

reprimanded him gently, and he was right.

“Damn straight,” he’d replied. “I—I can’t. Can’t think of anyone

else. I need to . . . this is about Ellie and me. No one else. No one

can understand.”

The wind shifted slightly, and a strange odor filled the air. He

gagged and then forced himself to stop. The breeze affected the trajectory of the flames, so that instead of shooting straight upward,

they tilted and bent a bit. In the space created by their new direction,

Frank saw the tall figure of a man standing on the other side of the

pyre, staring directly at him. His stomach dropped. It was Gulab.

And through the smoke and the flames Frank saw that Gulab was

standing ramrod straight and at attention, as if he was inspecting a

military parade.

It was the first time he had seen Gulab since the murders. He

had fantasized about running into the man and going straight for

his jugular. But now, as he watched Gulab staring back at him, a

lump formed in Frank’s throat. Gulab was here to apologize to him.

And to honor the memory of Ellie. Something about his military

bearing, his posture, conveyed this to Frank. Still, Frank couldn’t

bear to look at Gulab. Not here. Not now. He bent his head slowly

toward the ground. By the time he looked back up, there was only

Th e We i g h t o f H e av e n 3 5 5

air. Gulab had vanished. Frank looked around, even as he knew that

he wouldn’t see his chief of security again.

There was a final crackle of the fire, and then it was all done.

Frank said the Lord’s Prayer for Ellie’s soul. He noticed that the

man who had been stoking the funeral pyre was walking toward

them. The man went over to where Shashi stood and whispered

something. Shashi, his eyes blood-shot, came up to Frank. “He

wants to know if you want to collect the ashes now. Or he can send

them, later.”

In response, Frank walked over to the pyre and picked up a pinch

of Ellie’s ashes. He rubbed the ash in his gray hair and then wiped

his right hand on his left. She was on his skin, part of him now. Inseparable. Always.

He turned to face Shashi. “I don’t want her ashes. I—I wouldn’t

know what to do with them.” He stopped, struck by a thought. “In

fact, if you don’t mind, maybe I can ask you guys to sprinkle it in the

countryside, after I’m—gone? She’d like that.”

He saw them glance at each other. Nandita spoke first. “We

will.”

The three of them walked away from the smoldering pyre

toward where Shashi’s car was waiting. And then Frank saw them,

huddled together and standing to the left, under the shade of a

large tree. A group of men from his factory and other villagers he

didn’t recognize, including some children and teenagers. They were

standing with their heads bowed and their hands folded. So they had

come to pay their final respects to Ellie. He was surprised at how

touched he was. Glancing at Nandita and Shashi, he walked up to the

group. “Thank you,” he said simply. His eyes filled with tears, and

there was a lump in his throat the size of a baseball. “I—I sincerely

thank you.”

They looked at him blankly. He folded his hands and bowed his

head and from their sudden smiles knew that he’d made a connection.

“Ellie, miss, great lady,” one young boy said. “She teaching me.”

3 5 6 Th r i t y U m r i g a r

A young woman held out her hand and showed Frank a cheap

golden bracelet. “She gave to me. From her hand.”

Then they all spoke at once, and he felt overcome both by their

obvious gratitude and loyalty to Ellie and by his realization that

he had been blind to what Ellie had meant to them. What he had

thought of as a fanciful indulgence on her part, the bored housewife

volunteering her time, had changed something in the lives of these

people. He felt a profound loneliness for what he had missed, an

aspect of his wife that these people had known that he did not. He

stood surrounded by the jabbering villagers, as each of the adult

men took his hand in both of theirs and held it up to their foreheads,

in a gesture he supposed was an offering of condolence.

Shashi and Nandita drove him home from the funeral. They

parked in front of the house, and he knew that good manners demanded that he ask them in, but he didn’t. Couldn’t. He simply

turned and said that he’d come by their house to say his final goodbye before he took off for America a few days later. “Don’t leave

without seeing us, okay?” Nandita said gently, and he smiled and

assured her he wouldn’t.

He turned the key and walked into the kitchen and saw it at once.

A blue envelope on the floor. He knew what it was even before he

picked it up. His heart thudding, he slit open the envelope with his

index finger. And there was the bearer check that he had handed

to Gulab almost two weeks ago. Upon his instructions, Frank had

left the date blank and had made the check payable to bearer, which

meant that its recipient could cash it. Harder to trace that way, Gulab

had explained to him. So Gulab had left the funeral and driven here

to slip the check under the door. It was his way of apologizing for

how terribly wrong things had gone. And perhaps also to cover his

tracks. Refuse to accept blood money, since the wrong blood had

been shed. Frank had heard about honor among thieves. Now he

realized that there was honor among murderers, also. He held the

check up, eyeing his signature with distaste. He remembered how

Th e We i g h t o f H e av e n 3 5 7

badly his hand had shaken when he’d signed this check—no, this

death warrant. And yet, he’d done it, hadn’t he? He had not woken

up from his obsession with Ramesh, from the long dream of replacing one son with another, had not heeded the calls of his conscience

because those calls had been covered by the incessant chatter of his

desperate need.

Now, running along the side of the sea under the watchful eye

of the overhead sun, he remembered the check. He had resisted the

temptation to tear it into a hundred little pieces and had instead left

it on top of the dresser in his bedroom, where it could torment him

every time he walked by. One more way to flog himself, to feel the

pinch of stinging guilt. In the days following Ellie’s death he had

flirted with the idea of turning himself in to the authorities. But the

truth was, the thought of life in an Indian prison terrified him. So he

told himself that he could devise far more exquisite tortures for himself. Also, the crime was his alone, and he didn’t want others to pay

for it. Both his and Ellie’s families were devastated enough. Even

Gulab—Gulab’s sin was nothing compared to his. Gulab didn’t deserve to hang for his, Frank’s, sins. No, the tortures the world had in

store for him were plenty. Like walking into a room and calling out

for Ellie. And the lurching disappointment that followed as realization seeped in like black poison. Or rolling in bed in the middle of

the night and his hand groping its way toward where Ellie should

be. And wasn’t. A million, trillion pinpricks of memory and forgetfulness, so much more painful than the swift slash of a knife.

He looked at his watch. It was 1:30 p.m. Satish would arrive soon.

The plan was to stop at the Hotel Shalimar to say his good-byes to

Nan and Shashi and then drive to an airport hotel in Bombay and rest

for a few hours before catching the night flight to America. Looking

down at his watch, sweat dripping from his forehead, he remembered Ellie’s large, men’s watch. She had been wearing it the night of

the murders. The glass plate was shattered when the police handed

it to him. She must have hit it against something—or something

3 5 8 Th r i t y U m r i g a r

must have hit it. The broken dial had conveyed the brutality of the

violence against his wife more than even her battered body had. So

he had saved it, too. Placed it on top of the dresser, next to the check.

Felt its shattered face watching him, accusing him, like a woman

with a black eye.

The memory of the two objects on the dresser made him turn and

begin the run back home. As he ran closer to the water, the waves tickled his ankles. A few of the bolder ones splashed his shins. He peeled

off his wet sneakers outside the house and left them there. He would

not need them again. He walked immediately into the bathroom and

took a shower. His last shower in Girbaug. Then he changed into the

silk kurta that he had found gift wrapped in his closet, after Ellie had

died. He pulled on his blue jeans and went to inspect himself in front of