Read The Weight of Heaven Online
Authors: Thrity Umrigar
Tags: #Americans - India, #Murder, #Psychological Fiction, #Married People, #India, #Family Life, #Crime, #Psychological, #Family & Relationships, #General, #Americans, #Bereavement, #Death; Grief; Bereavement, #Adoption, #Fiction
before becoming a union leader. Conditions in jail are such they resulted in his untimely death.”
“You think they’ll buy it?” And then he caught himself, heard
himself becoming an accomplice in the death of a youth he barely
knew, a man who had come into his office a few weeks ago with a
petition demanding better pay for the workers and longer breaks.
There had been nothing exceptional about Anand, no trait that had
snagged itself onto Frank’s memory, and it was that everydayness,
that ordinariness, that filled Frank with a deep sorrow and revulsion
at the conversation he was now having. “Listen,” he said, faking
a resoluteness he wasn’t feeling, “there’s got to be a better way to
handle this. We can simply come clean. Say that the police tortured
Anand, and that we had nothing to do with that.”
“Frank, sahib. Just think. If we do this, our involvement with
the police becomes clear, no? Why did they arrest him at all, sir?
It’s because we—I—asked them to. He had done nothing criminal.
Still, they went into his house in the evening and pulled him out for
questioning. And secondly, if we finger the police this time, what do
you think happens when we need their help next time? For the last
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year the villagers have been disputing our rights to the trees that are
HerbalSolutions’s lifeblood, sir. You know that. Who do you think
helps us keep those ignorant villagers from claiming the trees for
themselves?”
Frank was aware of the simmering discontent among the villagers
about the fact that HerbalSolutions had signed a fifty-year lease to
thousands of acres of forest land from the Indian state government.
The villagers had traditionally brewed, chewed, and even smoked
the leaves of the girbal tree—the same leaves that HerbalSolutions
was now harvesting and processing to use in its SugarGo line as
an alternative treatment to control diabetes. The villagers were also
used to chopping what they thought of as their trees for firewood.
After signing the lease, HerbalSolutions had posted guards to protect the trees against poachers. But there were constant disputes and
run-ins between the hired guards and the people who believed that
despite what the government said, the trees belonged to their forefathers and were to be passed on to their children. Several times, the
police had been called to quell the unrest.
“So what do we propose we do?” Frank said, hating this feeling
of being boxed in.
“Just leave things to me, sir. I’ll take care of everything.”
“No, thanks. I won’t make that mistake again. The last time I
asked you to take care of things, I end up with a dead man on my
hands.” The words shot out of Frank, fired by the anger and resentment he felt.
Gulab stiffened imperceptibly, and his eyes went flat and hollow.
Frank could tell that he had drawn blood. He felt a small satisfaction
followed by a twinge of regret. Gulab was not someone he wanted
to turn against himself. “I’m sorry,” he began. “That was—”
“No harm done, sahib.” Gulab’s smile was stiff, perfunctory.
“And sir. I honestly thought I was following your instruction. When
you told me to take care of the situation with Anand, I thought—”
Was the fellow trying to implicate him? Trying to ensure that
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his hands were dirty—hell, bloody—too? And what
had
he meant
when he’d told Gulab to handle the situation? Just the reflexive mutterings of a harried executive? Or had there been something more
sinister—a desire for the problem to go away, to be solved by any
means necessary—in that command? He could barely remember
saying those words to Gulab. But even if he had, dear God, surely
he had not meant
murder
, had not even meant torture. Frank remembered when he had first read about the Abu Ghraib scandal. He had
felt physically sick. This is so not us. This is not what Americans
do, he’d thought. Ellie, of course, had been characteristically more
cynical. C’mon, Frank, she had said, what do you think happened
in Vietnam? Hell, what do you think happens in U.S. prisons every
day? But he had been genuinely shocked, repulsed by the pictures
on television. He looked at Gulab now, trying to think of a way to
explain all this to him, to make him see that his was not a world
of police torture and beatings and prison deaths. For a moment
he thought with longing of the house in Ann Arbor, the animated
dinner parties with friends who shared their political views, the easy
conversations where they all vowed to move to Canada if Bush won
a second term and never mentioned it again after he did. But it was
like looking into that world from a thick sheet of ice, as if his former
life was encapsulated inside one of those snow globes, delicate, fragile, lovely, and he was holding it in the palm of his hand, looking at
it from the outside. After living in India for the past year and a half,
he felt closer to the American soldiers who were up to their ears in
shit and muck in Iraq, felt that he could comprehend their lost innocence and their confusion and irritation, even their contempt and
hatred for a culture they had come to save but that was destroying
them. All his liberal beliefs—that people were the same all over the
world, that cultural differences could be bridged by goodwill and
tolerance—seemed dangerous and naïve to him at this moment.
The man who sat before him right now was as unknowable as a
mountain, as impenetrable as a dense forest. The distance between
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3 7
them was greater than the geographical distance between their two
countries.
“Listen, Gulab,” he said. “You know damn well that whatever
I said, I didn’t intend any violence. That’s not how we do business.” He looked at Gulab and thought again of how he didn’t want
this man as an enemy. Forcing himself to lighten his tone, he said,
“Anyway. It’s a shitty situation, but we’ll have to face up to it. I’ll
back you in this. And you’ll just owe me big, won’t you?”
Gulab looked puzzled at this last, unfamiliar Americanism.
Then, he nodded. “I’m in your debt, sir.” He opened his mouth to
say more, but just then there was a knock on the door.
“Come in,” Frank called, and Deepak Mehta, Frank’s second-incommand, walked in. “Hi, Frank,” he said, ignoring Gulab. “What
a tragedy, hah? I just now only got the news. Roads were bad, but I
came as quickly as I could.”
“You shouldn’t have come in at all, Deepak. I could’ve handled
it.” Frank realized that he had not even thought of calling Deepak.
You’re not thinking clearly, he chastised himself. You’ve got to do
better than this.
“Nonsense. Wouldn’t think of letting you deal with this alone.
Have you seen the crowd at the gate? There’s about fifty people
there. Including the mother.”
“What mother?”
Deepak blinked. “Why, the man’s—that is, Anand’s mother.”
“She’s outside the factory?”
“Yah. I got out and talked to her. But she’s not satisfied. She
wants to talk to you, only.”
Frank blanched, and from the slightest movement of Gulab’s
head, he knew that the man had seen his fear. But he was beyond
caring. The thought of meeting Anand’s mother, of answering her
accusations, of looking her in the eye, was beyond what he could
physically do. He knew his limits. Less than two years ago, he had
attended his own son’s funeral, had avoided eye contact with another
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bereaved mother, who happened to be his own wife. He couldn’t do
it. He couldn’t.
“Frank,” Deepak was saying. “It will probably help a lot if you
could, y’know, go out and address the crowd. Say a few sorrys to
the mother.”
“I can’t.” Instinctively, Frank turned to Gulab for support. The
man was staring at Frank in fascination, as if he was solving a puzzle.
Slowly, a look of understanding spread across his face. But Frank
was too anguished to register much of this. He felt like a cornered
animal, actually rubbing his hand over his neck, where he felt the
unmistakable bite of a noose being tightened.
“It’s customary here.” Deepak seemed oblivious to Frank’s discomfort. “Mark of respect. You have to pay condolence to—”
“Deepak babu,” Gulab said, jutting out his right arm as if to
stop the flow of words. “Not a good idea for Frank sahib to face the
crowd tonight. Maybe we can give the mother a few hundred rupees
and send her home tonight. Later on, we shall see.”
Deepak’s mouth tightened. “A twenty-two-year-old boy has
died here,” he said. “I don’t think a few hundred rupees will appease
the mother.”
Gulab laughed. There was something dismissive and frightening about his laugh, and it had the desired effect. Deepak looked
uncertainly from one man to the other. “I’ll deal with those
junglee
villagers outside, sahib,” Gulab said. “Once they see that both of
you have left, they will leave, also. And I’m going to make arrangements for both of you to leave from the back road, okay? No need to
face that crowd again.” Although he was addressing both of them,
his eyes bore into Frank’s, who sensed that a subtle, imperceptible
shift had occurred between him and Gulab, that Gulab had spotted
some essential weakness in him and was protecting him.
“Okay,” Frank said. His mouth was dry, his voice weak.
Gulab shot him another look. “I’ll go find your driver,” he said
and left the room.
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3 9
“What the hell is going on, Frank?” Deepak turned to him as
soon as Gulab was out of the door. “What are we going to do?”
“It turns out the boy had some kind of heart condition. Being
in jail probably stressed him out. It’s very unfortunate.” Even to
Frank, his voice sounded wobbly and untrue. But he already had the
premonition of saying those words over and over again, until they
would finally set, harden, become true.
Deepak gave him a long, thoughtful look. “I see. Is that what
we’re saying?”
Frank’s tone was wooden. “That’s what’s true.”
“I see,” Deepak said again. He too sounded flat, his natural exuberance leveled into a kind of bleariness. And then, in a sudden,
savage burst, “These greedy bastards. Everything was going so
well. And then they had to start wanting more money and this and
that.”
Frank appreciated what Deepak was trying to do, incite himself,
convince himself that the crowd waiting for them to appear outside the gate was to blame for the tragedy that had occurred. Out
of the blue, he remembered an interview with a young soldier in
Iraq whose buddies had been accused of slaughtering innocent civilians. “These mofuckin’ rag-heads are treacherous, man,” he had
told the reporter. “One moment they’re smiling at you and shit and
the next they’re pelting you with stones. So they bring a lot of this
shit on themselves, man.” Watching the interview, Frank had been
ashamed and repulsed. But now, he was grateful for what Deepak
was doing, understood that he would have to start thinking the same
way himself.
“Deepak,” he said urgently, taking advantage of Gulab’s absence. “Whatever happens, I don’t want to face the mother, okay?”
He tried to find a lighter tone. “That wasn’t part of the job description,” he added, but it came out wrong, thin and whiny instead of
casual and jocular.
“I already met with the mother,” Deepak mumbled, shifting in
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his chair, averting his gaze. “Also, there will be a funeral. Someone
from the factory will have to attend.” His expression made it clear
that he wasn’t volunteering for the job.
Frank sighed. “It’s late. Let’s get home for a few hours and meet
again in the morning, okay?” He got up from his chair to indicate
the meeting was over and opened the door. Together, they walked
down the hallway, only to run into Satish, who was hurrying toward
them.
“You need a ride, Deepak?” Frank asked.
“No, thanks. I drove myself.”
“Okay. Be careful going home.”
“You, too.”
In the Jeep, Frank climbed into the back seat, ignoring Satish’s
quizzical look. The driver expertly steered the vehicle down the
side road behind the office, until they were off the HerbalSolutions
grounds and could loop around again on the main road, thereby
bypassing the crowd.
The rain had slowed down and the air-conditioning was on, but
the vehicle still felt stuffy and hot. Frank tapped on the driver’s seat.
“Satish,” he called. “Pull over.”
He had jumped out of the Jeep before Satish could even come
around to open the door for him. Running to the side of the road,
he bent over and threw up. It was too dark to see the contents of
tonight’s dinner, but Frank had the inescapable feeling that he was
throwing up more than food—that he was bringing up bruised and
beaten flesh, gallons of spilled blood, the unbearable, inexpressible
anguish of a bereaved mother and the lost promise of a life that he
may have unwittingly taken with his careless words.