The little priest, who had stationed himself at my side so close I could hear his neurons synapsing, rummaged deep inside his dhoti, then pulled out a cell phone. There had been no ring, he must have set it on vibrate. With the phone pressed to his ear he was nodding emphatically, but since no sound came out of his mouth, my eyes followed the arc of his gaze, which was focused intensely up the slope of the ghat to the very top, where Manika was positioned talking animatedly into her cell phone, gesturing furiously. Manika was directing the show from above, she was the power behind the throne, pulling all the strings. It was an exquisitely complex and above all sensitive operation to bring together, not least because each of its elements was in violation of the faith, from its leading lady, the Hebrew corpse herself in all her splendor, to its supporting cast of bearers and mourners of ambiguous gender. But this little sweeper and excrement wiper Manika was on top of every detail. She was wielding the clout of money. The priest too was on retainer and was being lavishly rewarded.

Orders received, he shoved the phone back down into the folds of his dhoti, dragged me along to the boss Dom assigned to the job, and pointed severely to a significant stash of untouched ghee. The crooks had been caught in the act, attempting to pirate these blocks of soft gold to sell a second time, figuring Ma could stew in her own juices, but Manika was having none of that. We stood there grimly, alert and unblinking as more and more cakes of ghee were inserted into strategic pockets of the pyre, leaving just enough in reserve to add as needed once the entire bed had been set alight. Fistfuls of incense that had also been hoarded were now generously sprinkled on top and scattered within. The priest handed me a flaming sheaf of twigs, ignited from the eternal fire that the Doms are said to maintain, and instructed me as the eldest son and chief mourner to walk around the altar, like a bride circling her bridegroom under the canopy at a Jewish wedding, only counterclockwise, because in death time unravels and leaks back into chaos and formlessness. When my bridal bouquet of burning twigs became too hot to hold I gave up running in circles like a rat in a maze, shoved it deep into the heart of the sandalwood cage, and set my mother on fire.

The netting of logs spun by the Doms in which the victim was caught collapsed almost instantly, sizzling and frying the great hump of the belly until it simply deflated, liquefied, and then seemed to vaporize. Her right leg flexed suddenly, startling me, as if she were unfolding in an effort to settle into a more comfortable position. A bare foot kicked out, the horned yellow toenails shockingly flecked with chipped polish, cherry red—and I had always thought I knew my own mother. The thin muslin in which she was swaddled clung to her skin, blistered, melted into translucence, outlining precisely each delicate seashell whorl and crevice and cavity of her ears. Dom boys stoked the fire with long wooden poles, throwing in more incense, adding ghee and sandalwood to keep it going.