The Weight of Heaven (10 page)

Imagine. I’d lusted after this woman for weeks, and I’m finally in

her apartment and I’m snoring soundly on her couch, like a good

altar boy.”

“So now we don’t drink to excess,” Ellie said happily. “Now we

just get high to excess. Moral of the story.”

“So,” Frank said. “How did you and Shashi meet?”

Shashi spoke before Nandita could. “I saw her picture in the

newspaper once. And fell in love with her. Small black-and-white

picture it was.” He turned to Nandita, who was looking at him

openmouthed. “I never told you this. Anyway, I made some inquiries. Found out who her friend circle was, wormed my way into it.”

“And I thought I was the only investigative reporter in the

family,” Nandita muttered.

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

“Shashi, you’re a sly one,” Ellie said. “And romantic. Such a romantic.”

“Withstood years of her ignoring me,” Shashi continued, as if

speaking to himself. “When she did notice me, it was only to ask me

for money for some cause or the other. I had almost given up.” He

suddenly looked up at them. “But then, one day, she said yes.” He

sounded delighted, as if Nandita had said yes to him yesterday.

Ellie had the strangest feeling that as Shashi spoke, the physical

space that separated him from her disappeared. She felt that she was

entering the body of this man who had always felt a little aloof to

her, so that she could relive his long-ago anticipation at having finally met a woman whose picture he’d fallen in love with, his crushing disappointment at her rejection of him, his steady doggedness at

hovering at the periphery of her life, his triumph at having won her

over at last. She suddenly knew what it felt like to be Shashi from

the inside—his sadness at the knowledge that he would always love

Nandita a little more than she loved him, his delight at having a brilliant, beautiful woman as his wife, his ambivalence, that mixture of

pride and bashfulness at the way she barged ahead in life, shaming

and chastising his rich relatives and business associates into donating money to whatever cause she was championing. Ellie felt she

had a glimpse of what it meant to be a man who was married to

a cloud—ever-shifting, hard to pin down, filtering light but also

holding rain.

Something was shifting, the mellow happiness of earlier making

way for a sweet sadness. But before the melancholy could descend

on her any further, she felt Frank’s arm around her. “Hey, baby,” he

said softly. “You okay?”

Ellie wished suddenly that someone would invent an album for

filing moments, just as you could photographs. If so, she would file

the imprint of Frank’s warm hand against her sleeveless arm, the

quizzical smile that played on his lips, the breath-stopping expression of curiosity and love that she saw on his face.

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

6 3

“Beyond okay,” she said, snuggling closer to him.

It was almost one o’clock when they got up to leave. At the front

door, Nandita gave each of them a hug. “You come and see us soon,

okay?” she said to Frank. And then, with her voice lowered, “And

you know you can always ask Shashi for advice, right? He’ll help

you in any way he can.”

“Thanks, Nan,” Frank said lightly. Ellie noticed that even the

reference to work didn’t yank Frank out of the languid, mellow

mood he was in. Weed therapy, she said to herself. I’m going to ask

Nandita for some.

“And you should start coming to the clinic,” Nandita said to

Ellie, loud enough that Frank could hear. “You’ll be absolutely safe,

I promise.” Both women waited for Frank to react. He didn’t. “I’ll

come pick you up at eleven tomorrow,” Nandita said.

Satish had brought the Camry to pick them up, and they rode in

the back seat together with Ellie cradled in Frank’s arms. They rode

quietly in the dark, and after a few moments, Ellie heard the sound.

At first she thought it was Frank humming, but then she realized

what it was. Frank was snoring lightly, rhythmically, even while he

kept his arms wrapped around his wife.

Chapter 6

Prakash glanced at the big clock in the kitchen again. It was only

ten thirty in the morning, too early to sneak into his shack and have

a drink. Edna was in a foul mood this morning, and it was making

him jittery. He could tell by the way she was sweeping the floor

around where he was standing in front of the stove. Usually, she

would wait respectfully for him to lower the flame and move away

from the stove before sweeping near him. But today she sat on her

haunches and hit his bare feet with the thick end of the
jaaro
, grunted

an abrupt, “Move.” He resisted the urge to strike her on the head,

aware of the fact that Ellie memsahib was still in the house, rushing from the living room to the bedroom as she got dressed. But he

stood his ground, even though his hands shook. “No eyes to see I’m

cooking?” he muttered to her. “So-so much in a hurry you are. Late

to meet a boyfriend or something?”

She looked up at him, her eyes barely hiding her disdain. “After

you, I swear off men. Even a rat would be better than you.”

As usual, he looked away first. It hurt when she talked to him

like this, brought back memories of his childhood when he used to

wander from house to house, exposing himself to whatever mood

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

6 5

a particular resident was in. Never knowing whether the women

would chase him away with a curse or welcome him in with a sweet.

And the worst part was, the children themselves picked up on the

moods of the adults, so that one day they would invite him to play

kabaddi
or hopscotch with them and the next day they would chase

him around the village calling him names—Orphan Boy, Long

Face, Cursed One.

“Move, men,” Edna said. “You deaf or what?”

“You deaf or what?” he imitated but heard the feebleness of his

counterattack and got no satisfaction from it. He went and stood in

the doorway.

There was a time when Edna would’ve killed herself before talking so rudely to him. She had been only twenty-three when they’d

met; he, almost ten years older. Enthralled by a Bollywood movie

shot in Goa, he had impulsively asked his boss at the auto shop for

two weeks’ leave, borrowed a motorcycle from one of his clients,

and taken off for Goa.

He met Edna on his second day there. She was working as a maid

at the run-down, ten-room motel where he was staying. He was immediately smitten, although in those days he spoke little English,

and he thought her Goanese Hindi was hilarious. She told him of

cheap places to eat and what beaches to visit. On the third day of

his visit, she had the day off and airily proposed that she show him

around. By the fourth day, he was sure that she was the woman he

had to marry. They eloped two weeks later, after Edna had convinced him that her Catholic father would never give his blessings to

her marrying a Hindu. She was right—neither her parents nor her

older sister ever saw her again.

“Are you wanting me to convert?” she had asked him after they’d

been married for about six months. “Will that make you happy?”

“Why for?” he’d replied, in the broken English he’d started learning soon after meeting her. “I marry knowing you are Christian.”

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

She flung her arms around him. “Thank you,” she whispered.

“You Hindu fellows have so-so many gods, it would make me giddy,

trying to decide which one to worship.”

In the early days, he would come home from the auto shop, go

for a swim in the sea, and then help Edna with the evening meal. He

discovered an aptitude for cooking, and Edna delighted in teaching

him the Goanese and continental dishes that her mother had spent

a lifetime making for the British babu who had visited Goa forty

years ago and never left. Sometimes they would go for a night show

at the village’s only cinema and ride home on Prakash’s bicycle, him

pedaling standing up and Edna perched on the seat. If they overheard the tsk-tsking of the neighbors, saw someone looking at them

askance, they ignored it, accepting the villagers’ judgment at their

intermarriage as the price of their happiness.

The first time he had made her
bebinca
, the Goanese pancake

made from coconut milk, she had wept with gratitude, told him

it tasted better than her mother’s even. He had last made the dessert for her two months ago. This time, Edna had chastised him for

trying to add fat to her hips, ignored him when he protested that she

was as beautiful as ever, accused him of stealing her family recipe,

and told him it didn’t taste as good as her mother’s, anyway.

Standing in the doorway, eyeing his wife, Prakash thought he

knew exactly when things had begun to sour between them—it

was after Ramesh’s birth. Edna had not informed her parents of

her pregnancy, as she had wanted to surprise them after the birth

of their first grandchild. For nine months she had pictured the

reconciliation—her teary parents cradling the infant in their arms,

welcoming Prakash into their family, her mother covering Edna’s

face in kisses, telling her how much she’d missed her. But the telegram she had sent them announcing Ramesh’s birth was answered by

one that said, “We have no grandson. Stop. Because we have no

daughter.”

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6 7

Prakash had held her in his arms for hours that day, a wailing

infant on one side and a sobbing wife on the other. “They will

change,
na
, Edna,” he said. “We have one miracle, our Ramu.

Second miracle take time.”

She had shaken her head. “You not knowing how stubborn my

papa is.” She picked up Ramesh and held him to her breast. “It is

decided—my son will pay for my sins.”

Something had turned cold inside him then. Sins? Edna thought

of her marriage to him as a sin? The old childhood names—Cursed

One, Bad Luck—came back into his mind. He saw himself clearly

at that moment—a skinny, ungainly man with a third-grade education, who had few prospects and little to offer his son and young

wife.

“Sorry,” he said, rising to his feet. “Your father right. You marry

trouble.”

“Prakash,” she cried. “I’m not meaning anything bad.” She set

the baby down and cradled his face with her hands. “You—you

never my trouble. You are my joy. You make me so happy.”

He shook his head. “I have nothing to give this boy. Nothing

more than my hands.”

“Is enough, Prakash,” she said fiercely. “We will love our son

enough for everybody.”

But it hadn’t been. It was the great source of sorrow in Edna’s life,

that Ramesh was growing up without knowing his elders. Maybe

that was why she had seemed so pleased when Frank had first taken

an interest in Ramesh. And Prakash had not minded either, when, a

few months after the Americans had moved into the beautiful bungalow with the pink stucco walls and the bougainvillea growing up

those walls, Frank had offered to pay Ramesh’s tuition so that he

could attend the missionary school in Kanbar. But now Ramesh was

spending more time at the main house than with his own parents.

When he’d mentioned this to Edna last month, she had turned on

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

him. “Stupid idiot,” she’d said. “Jealous of your own son. Should

be glad someone so powerful paying him attention but no, jealous

instead.”

“Let him mind his own business. His son dead, so he’s trying to

buy my son.”

“Shameless, shameless man,” Edna had replied. “The devil is

talking from your lips.”

Some days Prakash found himself missing his old boss, Olaf. He

was the first pink man that Prakash had ever seen, much less spoken

to. Olaf spoke little English and no Hindi and took absolutely no

interest in Ramesh. Every few days the German would go to the

market to shop for fresh fish and vegetables—a task that he refused

to hand over to Edna after he’d hired her—and that was the extent

of his communication with the local people. The village children

followed him at arm’s length, giggling and nudging each other, as

he bought his okra and eggplant and pomfrets. The vendors quoted

him absurd prices that would’ve drawn a sharp rebuke from Edna if

she’d been allowed to accompany him, but he didn’t seem to notice.

He just drove back to the house, set the bags on the kitchen counter

without a word, and then withdrew to his typewriter and resumed

his
click-click-click
. Over time, Edna had figured out that Olaf wrote

books, but that was about all they knew about him. Once, Prakash

had tried questioning him, but Olaf had spoken such gibberish, half

in English and half in German, that he’d given up. Still, Olaf was

kind—he left one peg for Prakash in the bottle of Scotch he downed

every two or three days, winking as he handed the bottle over.

Prakash still remembered the day Olaf had come into the kitchen

and announced he was leaving. Going back to Germany. He had

been stunned. But being from Goa, Edna wasn’t too surprised. It