Behind him, he heard a woman sob and turned his head slightly. Nandita was convulsed with grief, bent and leaning into Shashi’s body. Frank was grateful. He himself was unable to cry. Nandita and Shashi were their Indian family, and Nandita’s sobs appeased some of his guilt at having kept Ellie’s and his family at bay. They had all wanted to rush to Girbaug, of course. But he just couldn’t handle it. “Frank, you’re not thinking of anybody else,” Scott had reprimanded him gently, and he was right.
“Damn straight,” he’d replied. “I—I can’t. Can’t think of anyone else. I need to…this is about Ellie and me. No one else. No one can understand.”
The wind shifted slightly, and a strange odor filled the air. He gagged and then forced himself to stop. The breeze affected the trajectory of the flames, so that instead of shooting straight upward, they tilted and bent a bit. In the space created by their new direction, Frank saw the tall figure of a man standing on the other side of the pyre, staring directly at him. His stomach dropped. It was Gulab. And through the smoke and the flames Frank saw that Gulab was standing ramrod straight and at attention, as if he was inspecting a military parade.
It was the first time he had seen Gulab since the murders. He had fantasized about running into the man and going straight for his jugular. But now, as he watched Gulab staring back at him, a lump formed in Frank’s throat. Gulab was here to apologize to him. And to honor the memory of Ellie. Something about his military bearing, his posture, conveyed this to Frank. Still, Frank couldn’t bear to look at Gulab. Not here. Not now. He bent his head slowly toward the ground. By the time he looked back up, there was only air. Gulab had vanished. Frank looked around, even as he knew that he wouldn’t see his chief of security again.
There was a final crackle of the fire, and then it was all done. Frank said the Lord’s Prayer for Ellie’s soul. He noticed that the man who had been stoking the funeral pyre was walking toward them. The man went over to where Shashi stood and whispered something. Shashi, his eyes blood-shot, came up to Frank. “He wants to know if you want to collect the ashes now. Or he can send them, later.”
In response, Frank walked over to the pyre and picked up a pinch of Ellie’s ashes. He rubbed the ash in his gray hair and then wiped his right hand on his left. She was on his skin, part of him now. Inseparable. Always.
He turned to face Shashi. “I don’t want her ashes. I—I wouldn’t know what to do with them.” He stopped, struck by a thought. “In fact, if you don’t mind, maybe I can ask you guys to sprinkle it in the countryside, after I’m—gone? She’d like that.”
He saw them glance at each other. Nandita spoke first. “We will.”
The three of them walked away from the smoldering pyre toward where Shashi’s car was waiting. And then Frank saw them, huddled together and standing to the left, under the shade of a large tree. A group of men from his factory and other villagers he didn’t recognize, including some children and teenagers. They were standing with their heads bowed and their hands folded. So they had come to pay their final respects to Ellie. He was surprised at how touched he was. Glancing at Nandita and Shashi, he walked up to the group. “Thank you,” he said simply. His eyes filled with tears, and there was a lump in his throat the size of a baseball. “I—I sincerely thank you.”
They looked at him blankly. He folded his hands and bowed his head and from their sudden smiles knew that he’d made a connection. “Ellie, miss, great lady,” one young boy said. “She teaching me.”
A young woman held out her hand and showed Frank a cheap golden bracelet. “She gave to me. From her hand.”
Then they all spoke at once, and he felt overcome both by their obvious gratitude and loyalty to Ellie and by his realization that he had been blind to what Ellie had meant to them. What he had thought of as a fanciful indulgence on her part, the bored housewife volunteering her time, had changed something in the lives of these people. He felt a profound loneliness for what he had missed, an aspect of his wife that these people had known that he did not. He stood surrounded by the jabbering villagers, as each of the adult men took his hand in both of theirs and held it up to their foreheads, in a gesture he supposed was an offering of condolence.
Shashi and Nandita drove him home from the funeral. They parked in front of the house, and he knew that good manners demanded that he ask them in, but he didn’t. Couldn’t. He simply turned and said that he’d come by their house to say his final good-bye before he took off for America a few days later. “Don’t leave without seeing us, okay?” Nandita said gently, and he smiled and assured her he wouldn’t.
He turned the key and walked into the kitchen and saw it at once. A blue envelope on the floor. He knew what it was even before he picked it up. His heart thudding, he slit open the envelope with his index finger. And there was the bearer check that he had handed to Gulab almost two weeks ago. Upon his instructions, Frank had left the date blank and had made the check payable to bearer, which meant that its recipient could cash it. Harder to trace that way, Gulab had explained to him. So Gulab had left the funeral and driven here to slip the check under the door. It was his way of apologizing for how terribly wrong things had gone. And perhaps also to cover his tracks. Refuse to accept blood money, since the wrong blood had been shed. Frank had heard about honor among thieves. Now he realized that there was honor among murderers, also. He held the check up, eyeing his signature with distaste. He remembered how badly his hand had shaken when he’d signed this check—no, this death warrant. And yet, he’d done it, hadn’t he? He had not woken up from his obsession with Ramesh, from the long dream of replacing one son with another, had not heeded the calls of his conscience because those calls had been covered by the incessant chatter of his desperate need.
Now, running along the side of the sea under the watchful eye of the overhead sun, he remembered the check. He had resisted the temptation to tear it into a hundred little pieces and had instead left it on top of the dresser in his bedroom, where it could torment him every time he walked by. One more way to flog himself, to feel the pinch of stinging guilt. In the days following Ellie’s death he had flirted with the idea of turning himself in to the authorities. But the truth was, the thought of life in an Indian prison terrified him. So he told himself that he could devise far more exquisite tortures for himself. Also, the crime was his alone, and he didn’t want others to pay for it. Both his and Ellie’s families were devastated enough. Even Gulab—Gulab’s sin was nothing compared to his. Gulab didn’t deserve to hang for his, Frank’s, sins. No, the tortures the world had in store for him were plenty. Like walking into a room and calling out for Ellie. And the lurching disappointment that followed as realization seeped in like black poison. Or rolling in bed in the middle of the night and his hand groping its way toward where Ellie should be. And wasn’t. A million, trillion pinpricks of memory and forgetfulness, so much more painful than the swift slash of a knife.
He looked at his watch. It was 1:30 P.M. Satish would arrive soon. The plan was to stop at the Hotel Shalimar to say his good-byes to Nan and Shashi and then drive to an airport hotel in Bombay and rest for a few hours before catching the night flight to America. Looking down at his watch, sweat dripping from his forehead, he remembered Ellie’s large, men’s watch. She had been wearing it the night of the murders. The glass plate was shattered when the police handed it to him. She must have hit it against something—or something must have hit it. The broken dial had conveyed the brutality of the violence against his wife more than even her battered body had. So he had saved it, too. Placed it on top of the dresser, next to the check. Felt its shattered face watching him, accusing him, like a woman with a black eye.
The memory of the two objects on the dresser made him turn and begin the run back home. As he ran closer to the water, the waves tickled his ankles. A few of the bolder ones splashed his shins. He peeled off his wet sneakers outside the house and left them there. He would not need them again. He walked immediately into the bathroom and took a sho
wer. His last shower in Girbaug. Then he changed into the silk kurta that he had found gift wrapped in his closet, after Ellie had died. He pulled on his blue jeans and went to inspect himself in front of the closet mirror. What shocked him was how unchanged he looked. He took in the blue eyes, as clear as a California sky; the way the full lips closed together in a line that indicated strength and integrity; the wide, uncreased forehead that conveyed clarity and innocence. He still had feet, not hooves. Yes, his hair was gray but he still had a thick head of hair and it did not sprout horns. His hands were burned bronze and there was no blood running down them. This was the final insult, this appearance of normalcy.
Self-loathing made it hard to continue looking in the mirror. He turned away and picked up Ellie’s watch and shoved it into the pocket of his jeans. He folded the check in half and thrust it into the other pocket. Next, he unzipped his suitcase and placed the photo frame with Benny’s picture in between some of his shirts. He took one last look at the bedroom. If he looked closely at the bed, he could still see Ellie’s indentation. So he didn’t permit himself a close look. Every day, for the rest of his life, would be a balancing act, weighing what degree of pain and pleasure he could bear. That would be his true punishment—caution. Never again would he be able to do anything spontaneously, or on an impulse. He would measure his life in coffee spoons.
Satish was in the courtyard when he stepped out of the house. “Sir,” he said hurrying up to Frank, to relieve him of his suitcase. The driver opened his mouth to say more, swallowed. “I’m sorry, sir,” he said.
Frank put his arm on the young man’s shoulder. “Thank you,” he said. They both stood in the courtyard for a moment. Frank eyed the small shack that had become Ellie’s tomb. The shack was empty now. Prakash had refused to step foot into it since the night of the murders. Shashi had offered Prakash a job at the hotel, and father and son were currently living there. Turning away, Frank looked back at the sweet little cottage where he and Ellie had spent two years together. I hope you were happy here with me at least part of the time, he said to himself. I hope I made you happy sometimes.
They drove to Hotel Shalimar, and Nandita burst into tears as she hugged him good-bye. “I can’t stand this,” she sobbed. “It’s hard enough without Ellie. But now you too are leaving us, Frank.”
“You guys were wonderful friends to us,” he replied. “I’ll never forget that.” He turned toward Shashi. “One more favor to ask. Is there a private room where I can talk to Prakash and Ramesh for a few seconds? And then I’ll be on my way.”
He waited alone in an unoccupied hotel room, and a few minutes later there was a soft knock on the door that he immediately recognized. “Come in,” he called, and they entered.
He had barely spoken to Ramesh since the drive back from Bombay. Back at the hotel, he had simply told him that his mother and Ellie were both sick, and even that lie had been unbearable. The desolation that he saw on Ramesh’s face at the thought of Edna being sick had been a wake-up call. The mad self-absorption, the crippling delusion that had made him plot the murders, the fog of insanity that had made him ignore the fact that he would be inflicting on Ramesh the most grieveous injury a child could suffer, lifted during that long ride from Bombay to Girbaug. He was mortified, guilt-riddled. And so he had avoided Ramesh. Also, his grief over losing Ellie was so blinding, he couldn’t bear to acknowledge that Ramesh was hurting in the same manner as he was. He might have been able to handle either guilt or grief. Together, they were too heavy a load for Frank to carry. He felt his obsession with the boy ebbing away, like a fever leaving his body. Now, he saw the child for who he was—an extraordinarily smart kid but perhaps not college material; a sweet, bright boy, but certainly not someone who held the key to his happiness.
Now, as if aware of his fall from grace, Ramesh looked at him silently. Frank forced himself to acknowledge his presence. “How are you, Ramesh?” he said softly.
The boy shrugged.
“I see. Yes…well…”
“I am missing my mama. And Ellie, too,” Ramesh blurted out.
Frank looked away. His eyes focused on where Prakash was standing. The cook looked as if he’d aged by about ten years. An image of Ellie’s haggard face at the hospital when Benny was sick flashed unbidden through Frank’s mind. People don’t age with time, he realized. They bend with grief.
He walked up to Prakash. “I’m very sorry for your loss,” he said. He pulled the check out of his pocket. “This—is for you and for Ramesh. For his education. Maybe you can even buy a small house, somewhere. In any case, I hope it helps.”
Prakash stared at the piece of paper, and Frank realized that the cook was illiterate. But Ramesh was at his father’s side, and Frank saw his eyes widen. “Baap re,” the boy breathed. “Dada, this is for one lakh rupees.”
Prakash looked bewildered. “I don’t understand?”
“It’s for you,” Frank said urgently. “A gift from me—and Ellie.”
“I am a millionaire? A lakhpati?” Prakash said.
Frank smiled. “I guess so.” He waited for his words to sink in and then said, “Listen, Prakash. Put this money in a bank. Don’t drink it away, you understand? This is your chance to—”
Prakash placed his hand on Ramesh’s head. “I’m swearing on my son,” he said. “Frank seth, I haven’t touched one drop since—since that day. May worms eat my flesh if I ever touch that daru again. It is the devil’s brew.”
“Good. Look, this is your money. But I’m going to give you some advice—ask Nandita and Shashi for help. They will tell you how to invest it.”
Prakash still look dazed. “I will be forever in their debt if they help, sir,” he said. “What do I know of banks and things?”
“Okay,” Frank replied. “I’ll let them know.” He stared at Prakash for a moment, wondering why he’d ever disliked the man so much.
Ramesh wove his hand into Frank’s and looked up at him. “I will miss you, Frank.”
For a second, he felt the old connection again, and his heart responded to Ramesh’s simplicity and innocence. How happy this boy had made him for a little while. “I’ll see you sometime,” he lied.
“You are going home?” Ramesh said.
“Yes,” he lied. He had no idea where home was or where he was going. His ticket said he was going from Bombay to New York, but it all felt like a dream to him right now. He might decide to get off at London. Or he might oversleep in his hotel room in Bombay and miss the flight and lose himself among the eighteen million people who called that strip of an island their home. Or he might actually arrive at JFK and be met by Scott and his mother. In a way, it didn’t matter where he went, because wherever he went, he would be alone and homeless. He had had only two homes in his life—Benny and Ellie. And they were gone.
A month ago, the thought of turning his back on Ramesh and walking away had been unimaginable. Now, he was doing it. Without a backward glance.
He hugged Nandita one more time. “Will you stay in touch?” she cried.
“Yup. I’ll send you my information as soon as I’m settled,” he said. But what came to his mind was not the house in Ann Arbor or Scott’s condo in New York. What came to mind was wandering. That’s all he wanted to do, wander, walk and walk until his legs gave out, the mechanical movement of his feet keeping rhythm with the hectic pace of his mind, until there was only blankness, until his thoughts stopped pestering him like tiny insects. The thought of a desk job where he sat in meetings or moved paper; of living in his home, where he was controlled by the tyranny of the coffeemaker and the dishwasher and the television set; of being around people whose skins were unlined and minds unburdened, frightened him. He had been ejected from that world, into a rarer world—one occupied by ascetics and sadhus and wanderers. He needed to move, move, to escape the menagerie in his head.
Back in America, there were people who loved him—loved him for himself and because he was their last link to Ellie. Who wanted to care for and co
nsole him, to draw him back into the fold of human company. He was unworthy of their love. They did not know that they would be bringing a killer into their midst. The normal consolations of bereavement were not open to him. He did not deserve them. Even between him and Scott there would now be a secret. He would not—could not—avail the luxury of confession. Perhaps the only person who would understand him—no, the only person he, Frank, would understand—would be his father. Who also knew a thing or two about betraying the ones you love.
Maybe I’ll look for him, he said to himself as he got back into the car. Maybe I’ll—but he didn’t finish the thought. Like so many of his thoughts these days, this one shivered and died, like a fish washed to shore.
“Ready, sir?” Satish said.
“Ready,” he answered. He looked to where Nandita, Shashi, Prakash, and Ramesh were standing at the entrance of the hotel. He waved and then rolled up the window. In a minute the car approached the hotel gates. He looked back, and they were all still standing there, as distant as stars. Then Satish made a right turn, and they fell away.
Out of the blue, he remembered something his grandma Benton had once said to him in one of her boozy moments. The old lady, gin on her breath, had bent toward the startled eleven-year-old boy and said, “You know the most dangerous force on earth, darlin’? It ain’t the atom bomb. It’s a man who is truly free. That’s who you gotta watch out for.”
Frank leaned back in his seat as Girbaug erupted in bursts of red dust and occasional green around them. He felt free and dangerous.
CHAPTER 37
The sky dripped gold that evening. And reds and purples, as rich as blood. As twilight fell, the colors dropped onto their skins, breathed fire into his and Benny’s blond hair. The sand had turned the color of copper, and they ran greedy fingers through it. The ocean rustled like autumn trees, sighed in contentment. They were at Captiva Island in Florida, and each night they had slept deeply, their breathing in unison with the breathing of the ocean.
The Weight of Heaven Page 34