The Weight of Heaven: A Novel

by Thrity Umrigar

  During the Olaf years, the three of them would often come to the beach and take their supper on the sand, returning home after the sun went down. Or he and Ramesh would sometimes get a ride on a fishing boat on a Sunday morning. They would return home stinking of fish, and Edna would laughingly hold her nose while heating up water for their baths. That was the good thing about Olaf babu—he minded his own business. Give the man a clean house, hot meals cooked on time, pour him his Scotch exactly at seven in the evening, have that Gulab bring him a woman once a week, and bas—he was happy. Made no other demands on them. Didn’t try and worm his way into their family life.

  He was kicking up puffs of sand as he walked, resentment tearing tiny holes into the contentment he’d felt when he’d left the house. He decided to change tracks. He would walk to the market and buy his Edna a box of ladoos. They were on a kind of holiday, after all. They should celebrate.

  Edna seemed touched but uninterested when he presented her with the gift. Setting the box aside, she said, “I’ll eat these later. My tummy is paining right now.”

  “You want tea?” he asked but she simply shook her head. “I want sleep.”

  He sat watching her for half an hour while she slept. It felt strange having time on his hands and no one to spend it with. He had a sudden thought—he could go to a movie. He rose to his feet, wondering whether to wake Edna up. But she was sleeping so peacefully, he decided to go without her. His bicycle rested against the corner of the house, and getting on it, he pedaled toward the village’s only theater. He spent the next three hours in the dark, his heart soaring during the romantic dance numbers, filling with outrage at the villain’s chicanery. The man sitting behind him sang along with all the songs, which Prakash didn’t mind, and recited all the dialogue spoken by the villain, which he did. “Chup re,” he hissed a few times but it didn’t make a difference.

  It was dark by the time he left the theater. He began to ride home, but as he passed the village bootlegger’s shop decided to have one shot of daru before proceeding. There, he ran into Moti, the village cobbler’s son, who bought him a second drink. Etiquette demanded that he reciprocate. A few other men joined them. This is good, Prakash thought, and so much more fun than drinking alone at home, under the shadow of Edna’s disapproving looks. The men were friendly with him today, drawing him into the fold, and the lonely feeling that he usually felt around the villagers vanished. He was one of them tonight, not the orphan who usually stood at the outskirts of their lives. It was a powerful feeling, this sense of belonging, this camaraderie, and it made him want to drink to rejoice. When he finally staggered out of the joint, he was stunned to realize it was ten o’clock. He pedaled home as fast as his wobbly legs allowed him to.

  He had braced himself for the gust of Edna’s wrath as soon as he walked through the tin door. What he was unprepared for was the sight of his wife curled up in a fetal position on the rope cot. Her face was flushed and her forehead covered with sweat.

  “Prakash,” she gasped as she saw him. “Where have you been?”

  “I went to see a film. What is wrong?”

  “I don’t know. Horrible stomach cramps I’m having. Maybe something I ate. Though truth to tell, not much I’m eating today.” Her voice was so low, he had to drop to his knees to hear her.

  Panic seized him. He wished his head wasn’t spinning so much, so he could think of what to do. “Shall I call doctor sahib?” he said, even as he remembered that they owed the doctor two hundred rupees.

  Edna lifted her head. “No,” she gasped. “No doctor, I beg you.” She had a deep fear of doctors, he knew.

  “Wait,” he said. “I be right back.”

  “Prakash, stay here, na.”

  “I come right back. Two minutes, total.” He pulled his hand from hers.

  The lights were turned out in the big house, and for a minute he worried that Ellie was not home, had left to meet Nandita memsahib for dinner, perhaps. Or maybe she had gone to bed. He banged hard on the kitchen door, and when there was no answer, banged again. To his relief, a light turned on. A second later, Ellie opened the door and blinked at him.

  “What the—?” And then, screwing up her nose, “You’ve been drinking, haven’t you?”

  “Ellie madam, come quick-quick. My Edna is most sick.” The words came out slurred, despite his best efforts.

  He watched her forehead crease with worry. “What’s wrong?” she asked, but before he could answer, she disappeared. When she appeared again, she had thrown a robe over her pajamas. “Let’s go,” she said and they hurried across the courtyard.

  Edna was holding her stomach and moaning lightly. “Turn on the lights,” Ellie ordered, and he did. Ellie sat at the edge of Edna’s cot. “Tell me what’s happening,” she said gently.

  Edna licked her upper lip. “I don’t know, miss,” she gasped. “Stomach is paining a lot.”

  “Do you have a fever?” And before Edna could reply, she turned to Prakash. “You have a thermometer?”

  He stared at her, his drunken brain trying to conjure up the image of a thermometer. Ellie made an exasperated sound. “Never mind,” she said, stood up, and left the shack. She was back a moment later. “Here we go.” She smiled at Edna. “Let’s stick this under your tongue, okay?”

  There was no fever. “That’s good,” Ellie said. “And here are some pills for a tummy ache. Can you sit up to take these?” She looked to Prakash. “Go get me a glass of water.”

  She helped ease Edna back onto the cot. “Boil a pot of water,” she instructed Prakash. “I’ll be back with a hot water bottle.”

  By quarter to midnight the spasms had diminished, but Edna still looked terrible. Prakash sat propped up in one corner, trying his best to stay awake. Ae bhagwan, he prayed. Let my Edna be okay, and I will not touch this vile daru for one whole week.

  Ellie sat on the cot across from Edna’s. “Are you asleep?” she whispered.

  “No, miss,” Edna answered immediately. “Pain is better but still there.”

  Ellie looked around helplessly. “I think we should have Dr. Gupta come in.”

  Edna looked to the ceiling. “No, miss. I beg you. No doctor.”

  “But why…?”

  Edna folded her hands. “I beg you. No doctor.”

  “Listen,” Ellie said. “Let me at least phone him, okay?” She was walking to the door before Edna could respond.

  Prakash got up off the floor and sat holding his wife’s hand. He didn’t know how much time had passed before Ellie came back. “Okay,” she said loudly. “I reached Dr. Gupta. He says as long as you don’t have a fever, that’s good. But he wants you to take two more of these.” She held out the big pink tablets.

  “Thank you, madam,” Edna said. “You go home, madam. It’s late.”

  In response, Ellie turned to Prakash. “Listen,” she said. “I’m going to spend the night here with Edna. I—I’ll sleep on the cot and keep an eye on her. You go into the main house. Take some sheets and go to sleep in the kitchen. Understand?”

  He staggered to his feet without protest. As he rose, the veil of alcohol lifted for a second, and he saw his home clearly—saw how empty and shabby it looked compared to the opulent main house. He took in the filthy sheet that he covered himself with at night, the lack of a pillow on the rope cot. “Excuse, please,” he mumbled and stumbled out of the house. Outdoors, he went behind the house, walked a distance, and took a piss against a tree on the street. He would’ve been too embarrassed to use the tiny bathroom in his own home with Ellie there, knowing it was separated by the rest of the shack by a flimsy door that didn’t hide many sounds or smells. Next, he entered the main house and opened the linen closet. He picked out two sheets—one to drape over the cot, which he knew Ellie would find uncomfortable to sleep on, and the other to cover herself with. He wondered whether to fetch her her pillow but was afraid of touching her bed without her permission. He hurried back to the shack. Ellie was again crouching near Edna, stroking her hai
r. He used the time to make the bed.

  “Shall I stay, also?” he whispered to Ellie. “I can sleep in the corner,” he added hastily.

  She peered at him. “It’s too tight and hot in here,” she said. A look of annoyance crossed her face. “Besides, you’re too drunk to be of help. Better if you sleep this off and be fresh in the morning. I’m sure she’s going to need your help tomorrow.”

  “As you wish,” he mumbled. He went over and kissed Edna’s forehead and received the slightest of smiles. “Go rest,” she said to him. “So late it is.”

  As he crossed the courtyard, resentment at having been banished from his own home wrestled with gratitude at Ellie’s willingness to spend the night with Edna. Not too many mistresses do this, he reminded himself. And by the time he placed a clean, lavender-scented sheet on the cool kitchen floor and fell asleep in the spotless, airy room, only gratitude remained.

  The pressure of his bladder woke him up a few hours later. He was getting up off the floor to go pee when he heard it: pop. Followed by a woman’s scream. And then, in rapid succession: pop. Pop-pop. A pause and then, another pop. Something crashed. Followed by an abrupt silence, louder than what had gone before. He had no idea what the popping sounds were, but his heart was pounding as he rose to his feet and rushed to the kitchen window. And he saw it: a man as tall as a tree emerged from the shack and disappeared into the black of the night. Prakash blinked a few times, wanting to decipher whether the shadowy presence was a daku or a bhoot, a dacoit or a ghost. But then, to his terror, he saw the figure moving slowly toward the main house. Prakash’s trembling hands instinctively moved toward the light switch. He flipped it on, flooding the room with brightness. The figure stopped dead in its tracks and then moved away, heading rapidly toward the driveway. A ghost for sure, Prakash’s alcohol-soaked, superstition-riddled brain told him. A ghost chased away by the purity of light. He thought he saw the figure leap over the low brick wall and onto the driveway, but it was too dark to be sure. He stood at the window a few more minutes. Then he remembered the scream. As he hurried across the courtyard, he heard the engine of a car fire up in the distance. He paid it no mind.

  The door of the shack was open. He walked in. “Edna?” he whispered. No response. And then he heard it—a moan so low and horrible, it made the hair on his body stand up. He turned on the light. And saw the scene that he would still see when he was a seventy-year-old man waking up from his nightmares each night.

  Edna was in a fetal position, cradling her stomach. But now there was a river of blood emerging from her stomach. In place of the red bindi she always wore on her forehead, was a bullet hole, the size of a rupee coin. Her eyes were closed.

  He looked over to his right. Ellie was sitting up on his cot, leaning against the plastered walls. Her head was slumped against her collar bone. Her mouth hung open, a thin stream of blood trickling out. Her legs were splayed in front of her. The wall behind her was splattered with blood and some yellow—ae bhagawan—what was this puslike, yellow, alive-looking thing that was pouring out of her head?

  And one of them had moaned. Who had moaned? One of them had been alive when he’d entered the room. “Ednaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa,” he screamed. “Madaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaam.” There was no response.

  He fell to his knees in front of his wife. He picked up her hand, and when he lowered it, it dropped lifelessly away. She was dead. In his shell-shocked mind, the realization registered as fact, not as grief. Not yet. Still on his haunches, he scrambled his way toward Ellie. The floor was hot and slick and slippery with blood. “Miss Ellie,” he cried. “Miss.” He went to lift her arm, but something about its angle, the unnatural way in which it was bent, gave him the answer he needed.

  Police. He needed to phone the police. He scooted away on his buttocks toward the door. He felt like he was being marinated in their boiling, steaming blood. For the first time, he became aware of the slaughterhouse odor filling this tiny room. Immediately, he began to retch and gag. Get away. He needed to get away. Call police. Breathe fresh air. He rose to his feet. And slipped on the slick floor. He steadied himself. He was almost to the door when his bladder betrayed him. With that release came another: he emerged from the protective shell of numbness that he had built around himself, into the dark continent of grief.

  And so Prakash stood at the door, tears streaming down his blood-streaked face, hot piss streaming down his trembling legs, eyeing the mutilated female bodies that would haunt him the rest of his days.

  CHAPTER 36

  He ran. Down the steps of the porch leading to the front yard and across the lawn and to the steeper flight of stone steps that led to the beach. Onto the brown sand and directly toward the blaze of the mid-morning sun as it glowered like a scold over the protesting waves. And then, a sharp right away from the house and he was running on the dark, muddy flatness of the beach where the waves scuttled and lapped, timid as mice.

  He ran. His shirt was hanging on the rocker on the porch back at the house, fluttering like a white flag in the breeze. The sun broiled the skin on his back, turning it a salmon red. By tomorrow he would be sunburned and the burns would feel delicious, an addition to the litany of ways in which he was trying to punish himself since Ellie’s death. He focused now on how the sneakers were tight on his feet, how they were pinching his little toe, sending occasional sparks of pain that his brain hungered to register. Later, he would find the bloom of a red blister and he would cherish it, pick at its red heart to feel the lovely, tortured sensation. How clean, how uncomplicated, how free of irony, physical pain was. And what a great diversion from the mental anguish that he fought every second of his life to keep at bay.

  He ran. Waited for that moment when his lungs would be bursting, when rivulets of sweat would fall from him, when exhaustion would make his calf muscles quiver and his mind would turn blank, mercilessly blank, a white sheet of nothingness. That magical moment when he would enter the zone, where he would stop being a thinking, tortured man and simply become an animal, a mechanical being, a sum of moving body parts—a heaving chest, a burned back, a straining thigh muscle, a pair of eyes watering from the sun’s glare.

  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 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 b
een 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 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.