The Weight of Heaven (33 page)

good home and disturb your sleep.”

“Listen,” Frank said. “I don’t want any more violence, you hear?

The last thing we need is more trouble.” He paused for a moment

and ran his hand over his tired face. “Who is this guy, anyway?

What did he kill himself for? And why the fuck are they angry at

me? What did I have to do with this?”

“Frank sahib,” Gulab said. “You go get some rest. And please,

not to come into the factory today. I will take care of everything.”

“That’s bullshit.” Ellie’s voice was louder and sharper than she’d

intended. “My husband is not a child. He needs to understand what

is going on.” She looked at Frank, silently urging him to side with

her, to demand an explanation from this man whom she disliked and

distrusted more with each passing moment.

Frank looked from Ellie to Gulab, as if just picking up on the

hostility that ran like a black wire from one to the other. “What’s

going on?” he said. “Who was that man?”

“A known Communist, sir,” Gulab replied. “Hating Americans.

Best of friends with Anand. Hung himself because he knew we were

watching him.”

Ellie was incredulous. Who the hell was this man who was treating Frank like a puppet? Did he himself believe a word of what he

was saying? Did Frank realize that he was being fed fiction? Would

he acquiese or protest?

“This is such crap,” she said. “I know this guy.” She turned to

Frank. “I didn’t tell you. I met this man who . . . who has died . . .

when I was at the clinic a few months ago. His wife is one of my

clients. He went into a tirade when he saw me in his home.” She saw

Frank’s eyes widen but forced herself to continue. “I didn’t want

to worry you at the time, sweetie,” she said. “Anyway, he went on

2 3 8 Th r i t y U m r i g a r

and on about how he used to earn his living selling the leaves from

the
girbal
tree. And something about the guards not allowing him

access to the trees. He was very frustrated.”

Frank exhaled. “I see.” He looked at Gulab, not bothering to hide

his distaste. “Well, you better come in. We have to come up with a

strategy to deal with this mess.” He turned to face Ellie. “Thanks

for letting me know. Just wish you’d mentioned this at the time.”

Ellie saw something gleam in Gulab’s eye and knew that he had

picked up on Frank’s mild rebuke. She felt her jaw muscles clench.

This man was a snake. She could only pray that her husband saw

this. “Well, I guess I should leave you two alone,” she said at last.

She walked toward the kitchen, and the two men followed her

into the living room. “Sit down,” she heard Frank say, and then

she could only hear a low murmur of voices. “Ellie,” Frank yelled

after a few minutes. “Any chance I could ask you to make us a cup

of tea?”

Her stomach muscles clenched at the thought of serving tea to

Gulab. But she said, “Sure.”

Frank was scribbling something on a notepad when she entered

the living room with the tray. “Can you tell me what will happen to

those people they arrested?” she asked Gulab.

Instead of answering, Gulab turned toward Frank, who stared

at the floor. “Frank,” she said sharply. “There’s a woman in jail who

has just lost her husband. What do you intend to do about it?”

He looked up at her with a sigh. “What do you suggest I do?”

he said. Despite her mounting anger, she heard the fatigue—and

something more than that, a trace of confusion—in his voice.

“I suggest you get this guy here,” she pointed her chin at Gulab,

“to get them out of jail. Immediately. This morning. Before”—and

here she thrust in the knife, deliberately, calculatingly—“someone

else gets hurt in police custody, like earlier this year.”

Frank fixed her a baleful look. “That wasn’t necessary.”

Th e We i g h t o f H e av e n 2 3 9

But it was. It was necessary to wake Frank up from the comatose state that he was in, to snap her fingers and break the diabolical

spell this horrible man was casting on her husband. She saw that

Gulab was looking back and forth between them, knew that he was

picking up on the tension between husband and wife, knew he was

exactly the kind of man who would file this knowledge away to use

at some later time. But she couldn’t be concerned with that right

now. The task of the moment was to make Frank say the words that

would spring Radha and the others out of jail. She was stunned that

Frank himself couldn’t see that, beyond the simple morality of the

issue, it was also the absolute best thing for HerbalSolutions, the

only prudent, political thing to do. A man is dead, she wanted to

scream at Frank to get him out of his catatonic state. A man has died,

hung himself from a tree that was part of his childhood inheritance

and that is now owned by a company headquartered eight thousand

miles away. A man has hung himself to prove the irrefutability of his

belonging to a piece of the natural world that we have taken away

from him.

“You know I’m right,” she now said, her voice cracking with

urgency. “I—I know the villagers better than you do. The arrests

will pour gasoline on the fire, Frank.”

Something in her words, her tone of voice, clicked. He turned

his head toward Gulab and said, “Call the police chief. Have them

release all of them.”

“But Frank
seth
—” Gulab began.

“Don’t waste any more time,” Frank cut him off. “Just make the

call. Ellie is right. It will save us grief in the end.”

Gulab rose to his feet and bowed slightly. “As you wish, sir.”

His manner was calm, imperturbable. “But best if I go down to the

police
chowki
myself.” He nodded toward Ellie. “Good making your

acquaintance, madam.”

She forced herself to nod back.

2 4 0 Th r i t y U m r i g a r

At the door, Gulab turned around. “Better if you don’t come

in today, sir,” he said. “There may be some—trouble—at the factory.”

Frank closed his eyes for a moment. “Okay,” he said. “But call me

if anything is wrong. I want you to stay in touch with me during the

day, understand? And tell Deepak to call me as soon as he can.”

“Yes, sir. Get some rest, sir.”

They sat on opposite couches, staring at each other, after Gulab

had left. Neither one of them spoke for a few moments. Then Frank

said, “Still think coming to India was a good idea?”

She looked at him, unsure of how to answer. “I certainly didn’t

expect any of—this,” she said at last.

He shook his head. “I’d better call Pete and let him know,” he

said. “Seems like I’m giving him more bad news each time I call.”

He suddenly punched the palm of his left hand with his right fist.

“Goddamn it. So we settle with the workers in May in order to buy

ourselves some friggin’ peace. I give in to most of their demands.

But how the fuck can I anticipate that some yokel from the village is

going to kill himself and then blame us?”

Frank’s look of outrage reminded her of the expression on Benny’s face if he felt somebody had been unfair to him. Despite her

anger, her heart went out to her husband. “How did they know his

reason for committing suicide?” she asked. “Did Gulab say?”

“Yeah, apparently he told some of the village youth that his wife

had had to beg her parents for money for cooking fuel. The guy

had not worked in months.” His face crumbled. “Jesus, Ellie. What

the fuck am I supposed to do? How can they possibly hold HerbalSolutions responsible for something like this? I know these folks are

dirt-poor. But we didn’t create their poverty. And we’re a business,

goddamn it, not some social service agency.”

She looked away, knowing that what Frank needed from her

right now was unconditional support and not a self-righteous lecture. Beside, some part of her agreed with him. She knew Frank

Th e We i g h t o f H e av e n 2 4 1

and Pete well enough to know that destroying the local economy or

ruining a man’s life was the last thing they’d have anticipated when

they were negotiating for the grove of
girbal
trees. She remembered

how Pete had rushed to the hospital when Ben was dying, how he’d

looked as bleary-eyed and ruined as the rest of them at the end of

their vigil. Pete was a loving dad, a generous friend, a good citizen.

And so was Frank, a good man, despite his growing disenchantment

and callousness. You shouldn’t judge him, she chastised herself. She

didn’t have to deal with the stupefying Indian bureaucracy, with

the sullen, erratic demands of the workers, the casual disregard for

deadlines by the suppliers. For all practical purposes, Frank lived in

a different India than she did.

She pushed herself off the couch and went and sat next to him.

They sat leaning into each other. “I’m sorry, baby,” she murmured.

“But it will be okay. Don’t worry. Everything will be all right.”

She didn’t know if either one of them believed her comforting

words.

Chapter 21

The young woman sitting across from him reminded Frank of Ellie.

That is, Ellie from twelve years ago, the fiery, impulsive woman

who had been willing to right every wrong in the world. There was

some of that in Sunita Bhasin, the journalist who had come into his

office a half hour ago. Frank couldn’t help but like her, even though

he was painfully aware of the fact that she saw him as one of the

wrongs she was trying to right.

He had blown her off the first time she’d called seeking an interview. He had been stunned to find out that Mukesh’s death—and

the ensuing strike by HerbalSolutions’ workers—had made news in

the Bombay newspapers. They were also dredging up the incident

involving Anand’s death in May. He had been shocked at how onesided and unfair most of the coverage had been—hell, I’ll never

bitch about Fox News again, he’d groused to Ellie. So when Sunita,

who worked for an English daily in Bombay, had first called him,

he’d hung up on her. Days of negative coverage followed, and the

stories never failed to include the line, “Officials at HerbalSolutions

refused to comment.” It was maddening. And thanks to the glories of the Internet, Pete was following every blasted story. To top

things off, the alternative paper in Ann Arbor had gotten wind of

Th e We i g h t o f H e av e n 2 4 3

the news, also. Every day now there were phone calls from Pete or

one of the other executives in Ann Arbor, demanding that he stop

the beating they were taking in the press. Demanding that he do

something to end the strike.

“What the fuck would you like me to do, Peter?” he’d finally

asked. “You wanna return the bastard trees back to them? That’s

what it will take.”

There was a short silence. Then Pete said, “Can’t do that. The

antidiabetes pill is our number-one seller these days. But you have

to do something, Frank. I was at Joe’s baseball practice last night,

and another parent stopped and asked me about the situation in

India. That’s bad.”

“So what would you like me to do?” he asked again.

“I don’t know, Frank.” Pete didn’t bother to hide the irritation in

his voice. “You figure it out. That’s what I pay you to do.”

He was shaking when he hung up from that phone call. Pete was

his friend. In all their years together, Pete had never thrown his

weight around, had never reminded Frank of the fact that he was

the head of the company. Also, the casual reference to Joe’s baseball game, with Pete’s indifference to the memories of Benny that

it would inevitably arouse in Frank, stung. He thought for a few

minutes and then dialed Sunita Bhasin’s number. “If you still want

to interview me, I’m willing,” he said.

He had expected a middle-aged professional journalist and so

was pleasantly surprised when a young, attractive woman of about

twenty-five walked into his office two days later. She was dressed

in the way many of the educated, college-age women in Bombay

did—a white kurta over blue jeans and carrying a long cotton bag.

Straight black hair framed an intelligent-looking face. His heart

lightened. She looked like someone he could talk to, someone who

clearly came from an educated, westernized background.

But half an hour later, he was conscious of the faint trickle of

sweat running down his face. He fought the urge to wipe it off, not

2 4 4 Th r i t y U m r i g a r

wanting her to see the effect her tough, matter-of-fact questioning

was having on him. They had already engaged in a spirited but general debate about the pros and cons of globalization, and as long as

the conversation stayed at an abstract, theoretical level, he felt sure

of himself, felt that he was on safe ground. But now she was asking

him about the circumstances of Mukesh’s death.

“Do you think it is ethical for a foreign company to own natural

resources in another country?” Sunita asked.

Frank made an exasperated sound. “Oh, for God’s sake. The land

was leased to us by your own government fair and square. If we’d

have known there would be all these problems, why, we wouldn’t

have even bid on it.”