The Weight of Heaven (5 page)

fifteen, the reckless giddiness of being twenty, the contentment of

being forty, the achievement of being sixty, the acceptance of being

eighty—none of this would be Benny’s fate. Ellie understood now

why people mourned the death of children. The reason to mourn the

death of a child of seven (or eight, or nine) was simple—at seven (or

eight, or nine) children are stupid, so unformed, so inexperienced,

that they may as well belong to a different species. The true reason

to mourn the young dead was not because of what they were but of

what they would never be.

Now Ramesh was drawing tiny circles on Ellie’s wrist with his

fingernails, a shy, self-conscious gesture that she immediately recognized. Without thinking about it, she lifted his thin hand to her

lips and kissed it. An American boy may have been embarrassed by

this. Ramesh beamed. “I like you, Ellie,” he said, but his voice was

thin and uncertain with shyness, as if he was asking her permission,

as if the statement had a question mark at the end of it.

“I like you, too,” she said. Then, to mask her own embarrassment she added gruffly, “Now come on, enough dillydallying. You

want to do well on the test tomorrow, don’t you?”

“Dillydallying.” Ramesh giggled. “Is that like
khaata-mitha
?”

She frowned. “
Kaataa-meeta
?”

“It’s meaning sour and sweet. Like eating a green, unripe

mango”—Ramesh screwed up his face—“and then eating an ice

cream.”

“Well, dillydally is nothing like that. It means to waste time on

purpose. Which is what, you, dear boy, are doing.”

Ramesh’s grin was disarming. “Caught me,” he said. He stretched

his hands in a leisurely yawn above his head so that Ellie could see

the flat, hollow stomach under his shirt. “I’m feeling lazy just now,

Ellie.”

“But ten minutes ago you were all frantic”—she saw he didn’t

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

know that word—“worried about your test. Now come on, a few

more questions and then we can stop.”

Outside, the music of the storm continued unabated and the

house creaked and groaned in accompaniment. When she was satisfied that Ramesh knew the answers to her questions, she got up.

“I’m going to make a cup of tea. You read another chapter, okay?”

He nodded, but each time she turned away from the kettle to look

at him, she caught Ramesh staring at the front door. He’s keeping

a vigil for Frank, the same as I am, she thought, but was not offended by the thought. In fact, it touched her, reminded her of how

Benny used to wait for his father to return home at the end of each

workday. Except for Thursdays, when Ellie worked late, she always

came home by three o’clock so that for a few uninterrupted hours,

it was just her and Benny in the house. But by six the boy would be

agitated, his voice just a little louder, his playing a little more aggressive, looking out the living room window for his dad.

Ellie felt her throat swelling at the memory of those long afternoons with her son. The dappled sun climbing into the kitchen as

she cooked their supper. The stereo playing Benny’s favorite song,

“Yellow Submarine.” Benny climbing the tree house that Frank had

built for him, his light hair looking like spun gold in the sun. The

smell of the earth as Ellie dug a garden, Benny beside her with his

red shovel, trying to help. The two of them lying on a blanket in

the backyard, the grass green and sparkling in the afternoon light.

Golden. The memory of those years felt golden, draped in yellow

light. Although she knew that she had been as rushed and harried

as any working mom, now when she revisited that time, it felt lazy,

stretched out, like a movie reel that someone was winding very

slowly. How blithely, how casually, she had treated those years, Ellie

now thought. She had had the cavalier attitude of a woman who

expected her good fortune to last and last, who never realized that

every Eden came with its own handy-dandy snake, one who would

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

2 9

strike without warning and at the moment she would least expect

it to.

“Frank may be late coming home tonight, Ramesh,” she said

over the whistle of the kettle. “I’m the best you have for now, I’m

afraid.”

The boy threw her a perceptive, needle-sharp look. “That’s

okay,” he said hastily. “I like studying with you.”

Ellie smiled to herself at the obvious untruth.

They studied for another two hours. When Ramesh finally left

after ten thirty, Frank had still not returned home.

Chapter 3

Through the curtain of fog and rain, the distant lights looked like a

swarm of fireflies. But as the Jeep drew closer to the factory, Frank

saw that the light came from the kerosene lamps carried by the

twenty or so men milling around the gate. A few of them had black

umbrellas, but the majority of them were soaking wet. Their long

white tunics clung to their bodies, and despite being warm and dry

in the car, Frank shivered in sympathy. Or perhaps it was the ugliness that he saw on their faces as they peered into the Jeep—their

eyes wide open, their mouths twisted in anger as they shouted slogans, the sound of which barely reached Frank, given the rain and

the fact that his windows were rolled up—that accounted for the

shiver. Or the fact that several of them beat on the Jeep with their

fists or with open palms as Satish slowly drove by them, waiting for

the night watchman to open the large iron gate. Without intending

to, Frank found himself turning in his seat and looking back, and he

saw that the crowd had surged toward the open gate but was held at

bay by the armed
chowkidar
. Shit, he thought. This is not good.

The first time he had ever laid eyes on the factory, he had been

embarrassed by the long, tree-lined driveway, by the green, manicured lawns, the flowering bushes, by the sheer wastefulness and

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

3 1

display of wealth in a village marked by so much poverty. Tonight,

he was grateful for the distance it put between him and the workers outside the gates. The driveway wound behind the factory to

a separate building that housed HerbalSolution’s corporate offices

and where Satish was now headed. By the time Satish pulled up to

the front entrance, the Jeep was almost out of sight from the angry

gazes of the mob outside the gate. As he jumped out of the vehicle under the protection of the umbrella Satish was holding out for

him, Frank felt unreal, had the feeling of being trapped in one of

those movies based on a Graham Greene novel. He had needed the

twenty-minute car trip here to gather his thoughts. A worker dead.

What was their liability? Their responsibility? He felt totally out

of his element, more of a stranger to India than on the day he had

landed in the country last year. When he had gone into Pete’s office

to accept the assignment, labor troubles had been the last thing he’d

thought of. How to deal with the aftermath of a dead worker was

something they had not taught him in business school. A feeling of

dread came over him, a deep resistance at having to deal with this

situation. The men who were gathered at the gate during a thunderstorm were not going to forget about their fallen comrade any time

soon. He knew that. This is fucked up, he thought. I come to this

country just trying to do my fucking job, and next thing I know, I’m

dealing with a mob that has some serious hatred on their faces.

By the time he walked through the long hallway that led to his

office, anger had replaced fear. He noticed that every light in the

one-floor corporate building had been turned on, and for some

reason, this irritated him. Did these people think this was a picnic

or something? Who the hell did they think was paying their electric

bills?

He was further annoyed to find Gulab Singh sitting on his chair

at his desk and using his phone. At least the man had the decency to

rise from Frank’s chair when he entered the room. “
Achcha
,” Gulab

was saying. “Okay, no problem. First thing tomorrow morning I

3 2 Th r i t y U m r i g a r

will be there. But the big boss just walked in. We will talk again

tomorrow,
achcha
?” He disconnected the phone.

“What the hell is going on, Gulab?” Frank said before the other

man could greet him. “What happened to Anand?”

Gulab took out a white handkerchief from his jeans pocket and

deliberately wiped off the phone’s mouthpiece before setting it

down. Stupid Indian habit, Frank thought. All he’s doing is moving

the germs around. He forced himself to take his mind off the phone

and focus on Gulab.

Frank’s head of security was a big, burly man with a cleanshaven, strong jaw, a boxer’s nose, and large, meaty hands. He

was by far the largest Indian that Frank had ever met. Everything

about him exuded power and raw, brute strength. He alternated

in dress between the traditional Sikh long tunic and pajamas to

occasionally showing up at the factory in a shirt and blue jeans.

It was as if he changed his dressing habits often enough to remain

something of a mystery. Something about Gulab had always made

Frank uneasy, but he had never been able to put a finger on it.

Unlike the other workers, Gulab always kept his word, was hardworking, reliable, and could think for himself. Nor was he obsequious or ingratiating like the others, traits that Frank despised.

Most of the Indians he knew were either as blunt as a fist to the

mouth or ingratiating as hell. But their fawning just made him feel

aloof and distant. The more distant he got, the greater the intensity of the vigorous head-nodding and the smiles and the yessirs.

Though, in fairness, he didn’t quite like the opposite either, this

new sternness and seriousness that had overcome them since the

labor situation arose two months ago. Men who had seemed infantile to him just a few months ago now seemed hardened and

mature, and looked at him as if they saw something in him that he

himself couldn’t see, as if he was something more than just Frank

Benton from Ann Arbor, who had accepted a posting in a distant

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

3 3

land and was trying to make a go of it, a working stiff (when you

got right down to it) the same as any of them.

“So what’s going on?” Frank said again, taking his position

behind his desk so that Gulab had no choice other than to sit on the

visitor’s chairs facing him.

Gulab shook his head. “It’s not a good situation, sir. As you

know, Anand was taken in police custody two days ago. And—”

“Wait. Did I know this?”

Gulab shot him a curious look. “I informed you myself, boss.”

There was something in his voice Frank could not pick up on. “I

think you were on your way to the weekly meeting when I told you.

And your answer was—you asked me to take care of it.”

Frank felt something form in the pit of his stomach. “So what did

you do, Gulab?”

Gulab spoke slowly. “I thought your instructions were clear, sir.

So I told the police chief to, you know, put some
dum
—apply some

pressure—on the boy. He was the ringleader, see? And I thought

if we could break his back, we’d break the rest of the union before

things got out of hand.”

“You asked them to kill him?” Frank’s voice was a whisper.

Gulab looked startled and sat even more erect in his chair. “Sir.

Of course not, sir. The death was a terrible accident. They were

just—roughing him up—to make sure he came to his senses. God

knows what went wrong. Police here know how to beat so that

marks don’t show, so that nothing too serious happens. This boy

must’ve been weak for starters.” Gulab’s eyes darted about as he

thought. “In fact, it probably was a heart condition he was having.

Yes, probably had a weak heart.”

That feeling of unreality, of being caught in a bad movie, swept

over Frank again. I’m sitting in an office in India in the middle of

the night discussing how to cover up the death of a young man, he

thought, and despite the horror, the shame, the revulsion he felt,

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

there was no escaping it—there was also a kind of excitement, a

sense of being tested, of being adult and worldly in a way he never

would’ve been if he’d remained in Ann Arbor. “So is that our defense?” he heard himself ask. “That Anand had a bad heart?”

“Defense?” This time there was no mistaking the fact that

Gulab was mocking him, that he knew that Frank was out of his

element, out of his depth, an innocent American boy trying to swim

in murky, adult waters. Dimly, Frank remembered an earlier conversation with Gulab where the man had told him about his stint

with the Indian Army in Kashmir. “I have killed men with my bare

hands, sir,” Gulab had said. “It was that or be killed by the Muslim

swine myself.” Now, he forced himself to focus on what Gulab was

saying. “No need for a defense, sir. Our company is not responsible

for his death. If Anand had a bad heart, he should’ve thought twice