Nandita and Ellie remained in the living room, sipping their drinks, while the three males crowded around the kitchen table, checking out the new gadget. “This is beautiful, Ramesh,” Shashi breathed. “Will you share it with me?”
Ramesh balked. He looked at Shashi for the longest time as he considered the request. “You can play with it again next Christmas,” he said finally.
Shashi burst out laughing. “This boy is a pucca businessman,” he said to Frank. “I should hire him to work for me.”
Frank smiled back, despite being slashed by two contradictory emotions—pride in Ramesh and affront at the thought of Ramesh working for Shashi at his hotel.
This boy is destined for greater things, he thought dreamily. This boy is destined for America.
Book Five
Spring 2008
Girbaug, India
CHAPTER 25
The sun was God.
Frank wondered why he’d never known this before. He had spent his childhood yearning to see the face of God, had always thought of him as an old man with a long, white beard, as Charlton Heston, and here he had been—hiding in plain sight. All those years spent following a false theology, believing in a personal God, praying to the Father and the Son—when all along it had been the Sun instead of the Son. He had believed the myths about Adam and Eve and the Serpent, about God as a personal savior, as if he was some damn accountant perched in the sky with a giant ledger book. All-powerful they called him, but really, their view of Him was that of a petty, vengeful tyrant.
But it was all clear now. Of course. Of course. The sun was God—life-giving but mercurial, sometimes soft and mellow, sometimes fiery and distant. This was the all-powerful deity they talked about. Wasn’t everything controlled by the sun—the seasons, the weather, the vegetation, the animal kingdom? And yet, what a mystery. The beautiful star that affected every single life form on earth chose to remain hidden from us. And why wouldn’t it? Why would it bother with an army of gnats? No wonder Icarus got his wings burned by flying too close to it. Flying into the face of God.
Shadow and light. All the things that human beings took personally—the ups and downs of personal fortunes, the roller-coaster ride through life’s vagaries, was just a damn light show. When the sun went down, the world went dark. Every toddler knew this. But surely this cycle of dawn and dusk, the strictest law governing the universe, also governed individual lives? What we humans called fate was simple physics, a matter of degrees and positioning: sometimes the sun turned a benevolent eye onto a lucky mortal and showered him in its light, so that he was blessed, golden, untouchable. And then, it moved a few inches, gracing another with its attention, giving that person his moment in the sun, leaving the first person to feel the coldness of its shadow. How easily we accepted the rotation of the earth around the sun, the dissolving of day into night, the partitioning of the globe between darkness and light. And yet how we resisted the fact that this interplay between darkness and dawn also ruled each person’s life.
Perhaps, Frank thought, we mistook the sun’s consistency, its reliability, its unfailing rise in the east, for a kind of love. But really, the hallmark of the sun was its indifference to us. Our prayers, our piety, did not disturb it in the least. It didn’t care if it ruined our picnics or weddings or even our lives. Tossing in his bed, Frank felt liberated by this thought. It was foolishness, conceit, this belief in a personal god, an indication of our puniness and weakness.
This is what had happened to them, to him and Ellie. They had basked in the sun’s benevolence for an absurdly long time. How fortunate we are, they’d whispered to each other a million times as they lay in bed together. Every night they used to meet in Benny’s bedroom and take turns naming three things they were grateful for that day. And after their son fell asleep, he and Ellie would walk out holding hands. Looking back at that young couple now, Frank saw how silly, how deluded, they were. The golden couple, expecting their time to last forever. Born on a planet pockmarked with war and famine and disease and ancient hatreds, they had somehow thought they could soar above it all, trusting only themselves and their love for each other. Thinking they could use their college degrees, their jobs, their beautiful home, their healthy bodies, their American citizenship, their white skin, to shelter them from the savage world that prowled outside. But it caught up with them, didn’t it? The sun tilted away from them and smothered them with a blanket of darkness that snatched Benny away. A cheap trick, part of the repertoire of any two-bit kidnapper. And a ransom that they would pay the rest of their lives.
It was wonderful, really. Not to have to take it personally. To give up once and for all the old-fashioned notions of good versus evil, of fate and destiny, of wondering what they could or couldn’t have done. To realize that there was no great scorekeeper in the sky whom they might have displeased. To know that the signature mark of the universe was indifference. No more praying to the Father and Son. The only son who really counted had been taken away. It felt good to no longer be burdened by the awful weight of heaven. If he thought of Benny in an afterlife now, he would imagine him glittering like crushed glass in the eye of the sun. Adding his tiny, holy body to the majesty and power of the sun, making it even more powerful, feeding it with his own coarse energy. Perhaps that’s what global warming was all about, the destroyed energy of a million Bennys feeding the open mouth of a fiery beast.
He wanted to think harder, didn’t want to wake up or open his eyes until he had understood it all, but his head was throbbing with pain. Beside, he wanted to share this new understanding with Ellie, explain to her how it wasn’t their fault, that what had happened to them was not punishment but simple mechanics, like the turning of the wheel. He wanted to tell her that they could stop missing Benny, that he was playing peekaboo with them all day long, just like he used to when he was two, the little rascal. Looking at them, following their every move, like when he was an infant and had learned to turn his head, remember? For the last two years since his death they’d thought they were alone, while all along he had been slipping in through the windows, dancing on the ocean outside their porch in Girbaug. And not just that—Benny was keeping an eye on his grandparents as well as on Scott and Anne and Bob. He was no longer their own private Benny. They had to share him with the universe now. Why, he could feel Ben on his skin right now, hot as coal.
He needed to tell Ellie all this. Right now. He tried to get out of bed but felt as if he had been stitched on to the mattress, pinned down by invisible threads that only pricked when he moved. And the throbbing in his forehead was stronger than ever. Beside, he couldn’t remember how to make his mouth take the shape of Ellie’s name.
“Ell—Benny,” he screamed. “Benny. Help me.”
“He’s delirious,” Dr. Gupta said. “It’s but natural. Result of the fever. He’ll be all right as soon as he gets more medicine in him.”
“I want to transfer him by ambulance to a hospital in Bombay,” Ellie said. “I don’t want to take any chances.”
Gupta looked amused. He glanced quickly at Nandita, who was standing next to a very worried-looking Ellie. “Madam, please,” he said. “It’s a simple case of pneumonia. Very common here. A few days of my tablets, and he’ll be back to normal. Strong antibiotics we’re treating him with. Same as what the hospital in Mumbai will do.”
Ellie opened her mouth, but before she could say anything, Nandita stepped up. “Dr. Gupta, let me talk to you for a minute.” She pulled him aside while Ellie went and sat next to Frank, trying to calm him down. “It’s okay, sweetie,” she said. “You were just having a bad dream, all right? You’re gonna be fine, I promise.”
Gupta’s eyes showed a new seriousness when he returned to the bedside, and Ellie suspected that Nandita had told him about Benny. “Here’s what I propose, madam,” he said. “Let’s give the antibiotics a chance to work for today. If the fever is not down by tonight, we can talk about shifting him to the hospital.” As Ellie looked up at him, his face softened. “I’m jus
t trying to spare him the road trip to Mumbai,” he added. “Our ambulances are not as well-equipped as yours in America.”
“I appreciate your help, Doctor,” Ellie said. She cast about for Nandita. “What do you think, Nan? Does that sound reasonable, to wait?”
“It does.” She smiled in Gupta’s direction. “Shashi and I have blind faith in Dr. Gupta. He has wonderful diagnostic skills. I would trust his judgment on anything. If any guests get sick at the hotel, he’s whom we call. And as you know, he’s our private physician, too.”
Gupta bowed. “Thank you for the vote of confidence,” he said. He put a hand on Ellie’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, madam. I’ve treated more cases of pneumonia here than even a top infectious disease specialist in America. Your husband will be in tip-top shape in a few days.”
“Okay,” Ellie said. “We’ll wait.”
She walked Gupta to the door, and when she walked back, Nandita was sitting on the couch in the living room, patting the seat next to her. “Come get off your feet for a bit,” she said.
“I will in a minute. Let me just check on him.”
Frank had fallen into a deep sleep again. She stroked his hair for a few minutes, and when he didn’t respond, she crept out of the room.
“He’s sleeping,” she said, and Nandita nodded.
“Good. That’ll help him more than anything else.”
Ellie sighed. “He’s been running himself ragged. The labor situation has been so hard on him. He worked right through Christmas, also.”
Nandita stared straight ahead, saying nothing.
“What?”
She shook her head. “Nothing.”
“Come on. I know when you’re trying to be diplomatic. What’s on your mind?”
Nandita shrugged her shoulders. “We just saw our first case of diabetes among the villagers. I’m really upset about it. These were a people who had never heard of the disease, thanks to their consumption of the girbal leaves. God knows how these folks even knew of its healing properties—guess that’s the kind of primitive, ancient wisdom that people who live close to the land develop over the centuries.”
Usually, Ellie enjoyed listening to Nandita wax philosophical about the native genius of the local people. But she’d been up since early morning with Frank and was worried to death about his health.
“What’s your point?” she said.
Nandita trained a level gaze on her. “My point is, Ellie, that it’s downright unfair that HerbalSolutions owns these trees. This fact just sticks in my craw.”
Ellie sighed. Everything about Nandita was irking her today. She’s so goddamn self-righteous, she thought. “Well, you know that Frank has agreed to allow the locals to take a small share of the harvest. And in any case, it was the Indian government who leased the forest to HerbalSolutions. It is their job to protect their own citizens. So you can’t fault—”
Nandita looked aghast. “Oh, come off it, Ellie. You know better than that. The bastards in the state government are so corrupt they’d sell their own sisters if the price was right. What do they care about a forest of trees in the middle of nowhere? Or about the fate of some poor, impoverished villagers? A few, well-placed bribes and they’ll do—”
“Nandita, please. Nobody at HerbalSolutions offered any bribes. Frank would never stand for that.”
“Don’t take it so personally, na, El,” Nandita said softly. “This is not about your husband or even one company and one village. I’m talking about how entire economies are being shaped and devastated by the forces of globalization.”
“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, 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?”
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 h
ad 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.
“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
The Weight of Heaven: A Novel Page 27