Zoe and Ames love each other with an invincible passion; but their touch can only come as a chill from the wind, or the sudden chime of a bell. Zoe is a ghost, and Ames is the man that helped her die.
Anastasia is the other ghost haunting Ames. Refusing to look death in the eye, she must tell the story of her murderous husband Erland, and a miscarried child whom she loves more than life itself – a tale of civil war and purge in Stalin's Russia.
Louise and Max Gratian, siblings, each having narrowly escaped death, are faced with the heavy burden of life on their backs, and the great freedom coupled with it. How much does the soul weigh? Ought we to try to measure at all?
PROLOGUE
“Uffg...where's Sally...Sally?” she whispered, her body once strong – now frail; once alive – now dead, and her eyes still blurry windows to a life she loved with all of her failing heart. Only one quarter of it could be loving how.
“I'm here Nanna,” said Sally, clasping her left hand.
“Sally's got my manuscript. Doctor, what's it called? The one about the dog devoured the...skeletons and my recipes I gave to her to keep for when I get back from New York City.”
“Hush Nanna, I'm taking care of everything,” assured Sally, but Nanna didn't hear.
Through Nanna's mind, snippets of her work were boiling, steaming – poetry, prose; prose and drama; prose and visits to other places – places where she was rejected – and homes where she was loved – and love where she was a genius. Ideas were forming a mist around her.
Her greying hair was wild on the pillow, escaping from its fate. Medusa. It wanted to be black again. Wanting to find life again, Nanna's fingernails fumbled with the blanket on her other hand. Sally squeezed the left.
“I know it hurts,” she cooed, “but...”
Sally's brown eyes began to brim with angry tears. Tuberculosis. It sounds like an insult from the heavens. Seemingly, the publisher of life had rejected Nanna's years of ink-stained effort. That's it. No gleaming political satire, no shimmering bravery; Nanna was a cliché tragedy.
“It doesn't hurt Doctor... not in my head it don't,” and Nanna rasped a sigh of curdled sweat. Aloof, it echoed through her veins and out of her throat; it was a monster of hope. Effortlessly, now, she closed her eyes. It was the last time she ever did.
Nanna would pass away in several hours, but she was too ill to care. What's the point of caring if all you can do is suffer? But tell me, what's the point of suffering when all you can do is care? Sally's tears would leave a crust of salt on the old, red carpet of the old age home, but Nanna, contrarily, would lighten her load upon its fibrous traps.
The year was 1907, and Doctor Duncan MacDougall was sat across from Sally in a Massechussets old age home. He took Nanna's right hand in his own well attired left and checked her pulse.
“I give her one hundred and thirty minutes more,” he said. Sally began to shake.
Nanna was one of six tuberculosis patients tested here. At their hour of death, they were placed on a bed on top of an industrial scale, because MacDougall had noticed that everyone lightens slightly as they die.
“How much does the soul weigh?” he'd asked.
Later, Sally pulled her feet along a dirt road. She didn't hold up her dress – she let it become filthy, and her eyes stared at the emptiness all the way home. Cold in disposition, Sally's lungs felt like solid blocks of air – small, dry sponges waiting to be filled, and unable to take liquid. Each healthy breath scratched the inside of her throat with an unblamed guilt. All around her,great oak trees stood strong – held up by firm, unmoving wood – silent, unfeeling. Perhaps that is the way to be.
Nanna had left her only one thing in the will – a small pack of stones passed down in the family. Desperately, Sally clutched it to her breast. It weighed about three quarters of an ounce.
And Sally did not hear, for she was too deep in thought; but in the wind and the trickling of the stream beside her, Sally's name could be faintly made out – whispered like a rocky secret of love. Sally only answered with footsteps, but there was one floating heart in the air's currents which was enlightened by her aliveness; no matter that it dwells upon death.
Meanwhile in his study, Dr MacDougall averaged up the weights lost, and came to one firm conclusion: the soul weighs 21 grams.
