Final arrangements

The dawn light was tinged with blue.

The lawyer Kulkarni climbed to the second floor and knocked on the door.

The door opened a crack, and Mary stepped out, pulling it shut behind her.

Mary looked terribly haggard, her eyes red and swollen, her face deathly pale. She looked as though she had just been hauled out of the water.

"It's time to make the final arrangements," Kulkarni said quietly. As a lawyer, he had seen plenty of death, and spoke of it matter-of-factly.

Mary nodded.

Aditya came over from the other end of the corridor. He had barely slept all night, and his wrinkled shirt clung to his body.

"Did your father ever say what he wanted done after he died?" Aditya asked.

"He said he didn't want to be cremated, or taken back to Mumbai for burial. He didn't want to be loaded into a vehicle and jolted around all the way back, or cremated beside the Ganges with a crowd gathered around him." Mary turned and said, "My father just wanted us to find somewhere clean and bury him."

"And do you believe that?" Aditya asked.

Mary looked up at him without speaking.

"Your father didn't want to cause you trouble," Aditya said.

"I know." Mary's lips moved. "But I don't know what to do." She squeezed her fingers and looked up at the sky.

Aditya thought for a moment, then said, "My family has a plot of land. It's not big, and it's beside the Ganges, but the ground is fairly high, so water doesn't collect there. It's been sitting empty all this time. It's quiet, and not far from here."

Solomon, a Jew, had been like him, his soul trapped in India. One had been barred from leaving the country; the other had been thrown here by fate. Neither could leave. Now that the old man was gone, Aditya couldn't leave him without a place to stay.

Mary froze for a moment, then shook her head. "That wouldn't be appropriate. It's your family's land, and my father wasn't a Mishra. You Brahmins have so many rules. I can't bury my father on your family's land."

"He deserves it. He was a friend of the Mishra Family," Aditya said. "Your father helped me. It's my family's land, and I have the final say. If you think it's inappropriate, just consider it a plot of land I'm giving him to rest in."

Mary lowered her head. Only after a long while did she say, "Will your family agree?"

"I've been the one making the decisions in the Mishra Family for a long time now," Aditya said. "My family will agree."

Mary pursed her lips and was about to say something else when Kulkarni gently interrupted her. "Miss Mary, if Mr. Cohen were still here, he wouldn't want you wasting time over something like this either. Matters in Mumbai can't wait."

Mary closed her eyes and shook her head.

"Let's do as you said," she told Aditya. "Aditya, thank you."

Aditya shook his head. "He was a friend of the Mishra Family."

The men digging the grave were tenant farmers of the Mishra Family. Each was paid a hundred rupees, and they worked with great vigor, digging the grave quickly.

Mary stood at the edge of the plot, watching them dig down, shovelful by shovelful.

The excavated soil gave off an earthy, rank smell as the sun beat down on it. Aditya stood two paces behind Mary.

When the pit was almost waist-deep, Aditya raised a hand to stop them.

He took a white cloth from the back of the jeep and, together with Mary, lifted Solomon's body off the makeshift wooden board.

Solomon's body was very light. Aditya barely had to exert himself.

Once a person breathed out that final breath, their body became very light.

With her own hands, Mary slowly lowered the body wrapped in white cloth into the pit. Solomon's face pointed west, toward Jerusalem. This was the last little thing Mary insisted on.

Mary grabbed the first handful of earth and scattered it into the grave. It fell onto the white cloth.

Aditya crouched down and picked up a handful of earth from the ground too. He slowly opened his hand, letting it scatter over the white cloth.

The tenant farmers began shoveling earth, filling the grave shovelful after shovelful without stopping.

Once the grave was filled level, Aditya went to the irrigation ditch to wash his hands.

He picked up several blue-gray stones and arranged them in a ring around the grave mound.

They did not erect a headstone for Solomon, nor could they carve his name. Aditya chose the flattest stone and scratched its surface a few times with the jeep key, carving two letters: "S.K."

Mary crouched there and looked at the grave for a while.

"Let's leave it at that!" she said as she stood. "My father knew who he was. He doesn't need anyone else to remember him."

That afternoon, Aditya called the Diya Textile Factory in Kanpur.

Dipti answered.

Aditya explained to Dipti that Solomon had passed away, and that he would be taking Mary to Mumbai to deal with the port company's affairs.

After listening on the other end of the line, Dipti said:

"Go ahead and take care of things in Mumbai. Uncle Madan and I will keep an eye on things at the Diya Factory."

Look at that! How comfortable a boss's life must be with a heaven-chosen worker.

"Keep a tight grip on the money. When the payment for Suen's shipment comes in, set it aside first. Make sure you calculate the wages for the tenth correctly and pay the workers on time." Even Aditya's tone had softened.

"Got it."

"All right, I'll hang up, then."

Aditya hung up the phone.

The lawyer Kulkarni left ahead of them, having booked his train ticket in advance. He had to go to Mumbai City Hall first to register the transfer of the company shares, then deliver the registration documents to the bank.

Before leaving, Kulkarni handed the company token and keys to Mary, then told Aditya, "Once you reach Mumbai, go straight to the port office."

Aditya had originally planned to drive the jeep to Mumbai. But with sixteen hundred kilometers of road, two people, and one old jeep, both the vehicle and its passengers would probably be falling apart by the time they arrived. With Mary in her current state, he couldn't bear to have her jolted around on broken roads for two days either.

"Let's tidy things up here tonight. We'll take the train to Mumbai tomorrow," Aditya told Mary.

Mary sat on the sofa and nodded, looking very haggard.

That evening, the two of them sorted through Solomon's belongings and sealed up everything in the room for storage.

The next day, the two arrived at Varanasi Railway Station.

The platform was packed as usual. Porters carrying bags weaved through the crowd, while tea vendors held their copper kettles high and shouted at the tops of their lungs.

A hot gust of air carrying the mingled smells of coal smoke, stale urine, and fried food hit them in the face.

Mary took out her sunglasses and put them on, then wrapped a blue gauze scarf tightly around her mouth and nose.

Carrying both their suitcases, Aditya walked ahead to clear a path. Mary followed behind him without a word, her eyes vacant, staring only at his back.

They boarded the train. The sleeper carriage wasn't too bad, but it was full too. Aditya had Mary take the lower berth and climbed into the upper one himself.

With a clank, the train began to move, and Varanasi slowly receded outside the window.

Aditya woke in the middle of the night and glanced down at the lower berth. Mary was not asleep. She lay on her side facing the aisle, her shoulders completely still.

Aditya knew Mary was hurting, but there was nothing he could do, and he didn't know how to comfort her. He turned his head back and closed his eyes. All he could do now was hope that time would let her forget her grief.

The train clattered along the tracks, heading south all the way. Occasionally, something blocked the tracks, only to be mercilessly crushed beneath the train, smashed beyond recognition, merely staining the locomotive red.