The Weight of Heaven (44 page)

doing—goes against everything that I know and believe in. Do

you understand? I—we Americans believe in the sanctity of life. I

was brought up to believe, Thou Shalt Not Kill.”

Something bright flashed in Gulab’s eyes. But when he spoke, his

tone was flat, his face expressionless. “Yes, sir. World over, Americans are known for respecting life.”

Was the guy mocking him? Frank peered closely, but Gulab’s

expression was as blank as a wall. “In any case, I want an assurance

that you will—you will do this job yourself.”

“No problem, sir.”

“And—one more thing. How much—that is, what do you charge

for this job?”

Gulab’s smile was thin and stretched. “No fixed rate, sir. This is

not exactly my profession, to bump off people. Just as a favor to you.

So whatever your heart tells you to pay is good.”

Frank felt the sweat forming on his forehead again. He felt weak,

nauseous, and his hands fluttered in his lap. “Gulab, I have no idea

what would be fair.”

“Would one lakh be possible, sir? A special discount rate for

you,” he added.

One lakh. Frank did a quick calculation. That was about twenty-3 3 0 Th r i t y U m r i g a r

five hundred dollars. He felt something twist in his heart. He now

knew the value of a human life. Of two lives.

Gulab was waiting for his answer. “That’s fine,” Frank said. “But

this money has to come from my personal account, obviously. And

I have to withdraw it without making my wife suspicious. So I need

to think about how—”

“Buy a carpet.”

“Excuse me?”

“My friend has a shop, sir. Sells handwoven carpets. Good quality. You buy a very cheap one. He will give you receipt for one lakh.

You just give me a bearer’s check next week. And I will get you the

invoice. Carpet delivered few days after—after the job.”

So Gulab knew how to launder money. It shouldn’t surprise him,

really, that someone as worldly as him would have the whole thing

figured out. This, after all, was a country where bribery was so

common that middle-class businessmen openly boasted about never

paying so much as a traffic violation fine. He himself had gotten

used to paying
baksheesh
for every doggone license and permit that

he needed at HerbalSolutions.

“One other thing, sir,” Gulab was saying. “We should decide

now only the date you will pay me. Best I come here to pick it up.

After that, there should be no contact between us until—after. Safer

for you, that way.”

“Okay,” he whispered. “But . . . what if something goes wrong,

Gulab?”

Gulab sat up straight in his chair and threw his shoulders back.

“I don’t know if you remember, sir. But a long time ago—when the

Anand situation was going on—you held me responsible for what

had happened to that boy. At that time you said that I owed you.” To

Frank’s consternation, Gulab swallowed hard, and Frank realized

that his careless words had deeply affected this man. “Well, Gulab

Singh doesn’t like to owe any man, sir. So I give you my word, if

Th e We i g h t o f H e av e n 3 3 1

something goes wrong, I will not betray you. I will hang from the

gallows before I do that. I will say I had an old score to settle with

Prakash. Okay?”

And Frank had the unreal sense that in the space that it took

Gulab to make his promise, the world had broken into a million

jigsaw pieces and been rearranged again. This man whom he had

thought of as a coldhearted killer had suddenly displayed the sensitivity of a butterfly; had taken his nonchalant Americanism—
you

owe me
—and heard it as a challenge to his honor. He thought back

to the revelation he’d had during his illness. A kindly old God with

a long, flowing beard could’ve never created as complicated a being

as Gulab; it took the randomness of an indifferent universe to have

birthed a man who was this immoral and honorable.

“Okay,” he said.

He sat in his chair for a long time after Gulab left. Multiple voices

competed for his attention—his mother’s voice, reading the Bible to

him as he lay in his boyhood bed, Scott discussing Hegel and metaphysics with him when they were both young men, Ellie reading

out loud passages from Father Oscar Romero’s last sermon, Benny

reciting the prayer that he said every night before going to bed:

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.

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

*

*

*

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.”

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

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-tsk
ed 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

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

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 goodbye 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.”

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

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,

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

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