Last Man in Tower

  ‘I could do that.’ Kothari nodded. ‘It would be within the rules.’

  ‘My husband will come with you, if you want.’

  ‘No, Mrs Pinto. It’s my responsibility. I’ll go to Mahim, so no one will recognize me.’

  ‘Bandra is far enough.’

  ‘You’re right.’ He smiled. ‘In all these years we’ve never talked like this, Mrs Pinto.’

  ‘In parliament we have. But not like this. I have always admired you. I never thought you stole money from the Society. I never did.’

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Pinto.’

  She got up, with her hand to the wall. ‘It’s for his own sake, remember. This Confidence Shah is not a Christian man.’

  Kothari prodded the stray dog to get it out of Mrs Pinto’s way and she went on down the stairs.

  In the lowest drawer of his desk, the Secretary of Vishram Society keeps a box of the spare keys to all the units in the building. To be loaned to the rightful owner in case of emergency: no key to leave the box for more than twenty-four hours.

  A pair of fingers disturbed the keys. One key was removed. Then the man who had stolen the key closed the door of the Secretary’s office behind him.

  Something growled at him from the black Cross: the stray dog was looking up from its bowl of channa.

  Kothari bought a twice-buttered sandwich at the market; he ate it in the autorickshaw that took him to the train station, and licked his fingers as he stepped out.

  Full, he dozed on the Churchgate-bound local, until the smell of the great black sewer outside Bandra woke him.

  Straightening his comb-over to make sure it covered his baldness, Kothari descended on to the platform. A pink palm shot out at him from a dark blazer: ‘Ticketticket.’

  He handed over his three-month first-class rail pass to the ticket inspector; as the man in the blazer checked the validity of the pass, he recited:

  ‘Do as you will, evil king:

  I, for my part, know right from wrong

  And will never follow you,

  said the virtuous demon Maricha

  When the lord of…’

  Except for that one time he thought he was going to jail because he forgot to pay his advance tax, the Secretary had never felt like this.

  The evening rays of the sun, intercepted by trees and shop fronts around the station, fell near his feet like claw marks on bark. He was heading down one of the alleys by the side of the Bandra train station. On every side of him, he saw bananas, cauliflower, apples, burnished and expanded by the golden light. Like another strange kind of fruit, giant cardboard keys, yellow and white, dangled from the branches of the next banyan tree; each bore the legend:

  RAJU KEY-MAKER. MOBILE PHONE: 9811799289

  Beneath them, the key-maker sat on a grey cloth, his tools and keys spread before him. He worked with a knife, cutting a piece of iron into a new key, closing an eye to compare it with another key that he brought out from his shirt pocket.

  ‘Can you make a duplicate for me?’ the Secretary asked. ‘It’s for my mother-in-law’s house – in Goregaon.’

  The key-maker indicated that he should move so his shadow fell to the side.

  Kothari felt the key grow hot in his hand.

  ‘Had some free time on Gandhi Jayanti, thought, let’s get it done… Go to my mother-in-law’s house in Goregaon and check for yourself. The building is right there. Near the Topi-wala cinema hall.’

  ‘Look here,’ the key-maker said. ‘I’ve got six orders ahead of yours.’

  Nearly two hours later, Ajwani opened his door to find the Secretary standing with something wrapped in a handkerchief in his hand.

  He smiled and reached for the handkerchief; but the Secretary hid it behind his back.

  ‘Look here, Ajwani, if you’re getting anything extra for this from Shah – and I know you are – I want half of it. I did all the work today.’ Coming close to Ajwani’s ear, he whispered: ‘I want a large glass panel in my living room in Sewri. For a full view of the flamingoes. A large glass panel.’

  Ajwani grinned. ‘You’re becoming a man, Kothari. All right, fifty fifty.’

  He reached behind the Secretary’s back and took the thing wrapped in a handkerchief; in return he handed the Secretary a large soft packet.

  ‘Cotton wool,’ he said. ‘Distribute it to everyone in the Society. Before 9 p.m. I’m going right now to see the boys.’

  The Secretary turned his face to the right and held the cotton bale up to his ear. ‘Don’t tell me what is going to happen.’

  Outside Vishram Society, the street lamps were flickering to life. Mrs Puri was out in the market, shopping for fresh, vitamin-rich spinach with which she would stimulate her son’s slow neurons.

  A jarring noise of brakes tore through the market. The Tata Indigo, which had swerved from the main road, slowed down, but not fast enough: there was a mad squealing, and a thrashing of living limbs under its wheels.

  ‘You’ve killed it!’ someone shouted at the driver. ‘And on Gandhi Jayanti!’

  Two men came out of a grocery store; one of them, who wore a blue lungi, tied it up around his knees. ‘Pull him out of his car and give him a thrashing!’ he yelled.

  The Indigo sped away; the grocery-store men went back to their work.

  The stray yellow dog, an uninvited and unexpelled guest at Vishram Society for so many months, lay in a puddle of dark sticky blood near the market. A crow hopped by the side of the animal. It picked at its entrails.

  Mrs Puri shielded Ramu’s face with her palm. He whimpered. Hugging him into her side, she led him back to Vishram, and left him there with Mrs Saldanha.

  She shook Ram Khare out from his guard’s booth.

  Ram Khare brought water in the channa bowl Ramu had left near the black Cross. The dog was too weak to drink it. They lowered the animal into the gutter, so that it might pass away in dignity, if not in comfort.

  ‘Ask the municipality men to take it with them when they come here in the morning, Ram Khare. We can’t leave its body out here.’

  She went back and explained to Ramu: that wasn’t their friendly stray dog. No, it was another dog that looked a bit like theirs. Ramu brightened. His mother promised that they would see their yellow dog in the morning, eating channa from the bowl. Promise.

  She was tucking him into bed with the Friendly Duck when the Secretary knocked on the door.

  ‘Double lock your door tonight, Mrs Puri,’ he said.

  She came to the door and whispered: ‘Is it really going to happen? The simple thing?’

  Kothari said nothing; he handed her a small plastic bag full of cotton wool, and went down the stairs. Mrs Puri stood in the stairwell, listening as he knocked on the Pintos’ door.

  ‘Double-lock your door tonight, Mr Pinto.’

  ‘We lock them every night.’

  ‘Lock it extra tight tonight. Wear cotton in your ears if you have any. You don’t? Then take some of this. It’s in the bag. Wear it at night. Do you understand?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Try. It is a simple thing, Mr Pinto.’

  She heard Kothari’s footsteps go down another flight of stairs, and then his voice saying: ‘Double-lock your door tonight, Mrs Rego.’

  Just as he was turning from Mrs Saldanha’s door, the Secretary saw Mary, standing near his office. She was staring at him.

  ‘What do you want?’ he asked.

  ‘I clean your office every evening at this time,’ she said. ‘I was going to get the broom.’ And then she added: ‘I didn’t hear anything.’

  ‘Clean the office tomorrow, Mary. You may take the rest of the day off.’

  She stood there.

  ‘Mary’ – the Secretary lowered his voice – ‘when the Shanghai comes up, they’ll hire you. I’ll make sure that they do. They’ll give you a uniform. Good pay. I’ll make sure. Do you understand?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Now go home,’ Kothari said. ‘Enjoy the evening with your son.’

>   He watched until she went out of the gate and turned left towards the slums.

  There was now a night-time silence in Vishram such as they had not heard in decades; the deserted Tower B with the yellow Marked for Demolition tape around it seemed to secrete stillness. The Pintos, as they lay in bed, could hear once again the roar of the planes going over Vakola.

  ‘There,’ Mr Pinto whispered.

  ‘Yes,’ Mrs Pinto whispered. ‘I heard it too.’

  Masterji was back in his room. He was washing his face in the basin.

  ‘Maybe nothing will happen tonight,’ Mrs Pinto whispered.

  ‘Go to sleep, Shelley.’

  ‘He has stopped walking. He’s gone to bed,’ she said. She strained her ears.

  ‘But someone’s walking above him.’

  A little after midnight, the Secretary woke up.

  He had dreamed that he was standing before a panel of four judges. They wore the expected black robes and white wigs of the judiciary, but each had the face of a flamingo. The senior judge, who was larger than the others, wore a shawl of golden fur. The face of this flamingo-judge was so terrible that the Secretary could not look at it; hoping for sympathy, he turned to the lesser judges. All three were reading aloud, but all he could hear was one word, repeated endlessly, Bye-law, Bye-law. The senior judge, adjusting his wig, said: ‘Human beings are only human individually: when they get together they turn…’ His three junior colleagues were already tittering. ‘… birdy.’ The three laughed together in high-pitched cackles. Then the senior flamingo adjusted his golden shawl, for he was a vain judge, and spoke in a deep voice, which the Secretary recognized as his father’s:

  ‘Now for the verdict on Ashvin Kothari, Secretary, Vishram Society Tower A, incorporated in the city of Mumbai, who made a duplicate of a key entrusted to his care to facilitate a break-in into his own Society, and that too on the holy day of Gandhi Jayanti. In accordance with the law of the land, and to avoid giving offence, the verdict of this panel shall be read in English, Marathi, Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi, Gujarati…’

  Kothari opened his eyes. He turned on his lamp so he could see the clock. His wife, lying next to him, began to grumble.

  In the dark Kothari walked over the carpet in his living room. Holding his comb-over in place, he lowered himself on to the sofa.

  No one should point a finger at him. Ajwani had arranged for the ‘simple thing’.

  Yet he wanted to scream for help, or run to the police station near the highway and tell the fat constable Karlekar everything, before something terrible happened in the night, and they woke to find Masterji with his legs broken, or worse, much worse…

  His wife snored from the bed. Getting down on his knees, Kothari put his ear to the carpet and listened. All he could hear was the sound of his own voice, whispering:

  ‘Do as you will, evil king:

  I, for my part, know right from wrong…’

  A little after two o’clock, the Pintos heard Masterji’s door open again.

  It was like the way you hear someone making love in another home, their bed creaking and their sighing, and you’re trying hard to shut it out of your ears. They wanted not to hear.

  Something was walking upstairs. Two somethings.

  ‘The boys are here.’

  ‘Yes.’

  The two old bodies moved in bed, following the footsteps; a flurry of steps, and then a little cry of pain: bone had hit table.

  ‘The teakwood table.’

  ‘Yes. Oh, no.’

  This was followed by more shuffling; the table fell over; a scream.

  ‘Thieves!’

  No one stirred. No one moved. The two Pintos joined hands. Everyone in the building, prostrate in the same way, must have heard the cry. The Pintos could feel the warming of hearts in every listening bedroom – the same ‘At last.’

  Then there was a muffled wrestling – and then there was the sound of swatting, as if someone was hitting at a rat running around the room. Then – piercing the night – not a human cry, but the howling of an animal.

  The Rubik’s Cube saved him.

  One of the boys stepped on it, slipped, and hit his knee against the teakwood table, which toppled over.

  Masterji awoke.

  He had grabbed the blue Illustrated History of Science at once – had some secret part of him been waiting for this, rehearsing this moment? – and rushed out of his bedroom; before they had even seen him he had hit the first one on the head with the book. Screaming – Thieves! – and with a strength that he would not be able to reproduce in daylight, he had shoved one of the boys – who, staggering back, had hit the other one, who fell by the phone. The Illustrated History of Science went up high and then came down on the skull of the boy, who howled. It was by now a rout, and the two hooligans rushed out through the open door, where one tripped and tumbled down the stairs; by which time they were in a frenzy just to survive, realizing they had been sent to bully and threaten not a helpless old man, as they had been told, but a live ogre. They ran into the compound and leapt over the gate.

  Masterji pushed the sofa against the door, to barricade it against a second attack. Purnima, he chanted, Purnima. He moved the chair against the sofa.

  Then it seemed to him that this was the wrong thing to have done. He had to be able to run in and out if there was another attack, and the door should be open. He moved the sofa and the chair back to their places.

  He let the water run into a pot; he turned on the gas, and brought water to a boil. He would pour it on their heads when they came back. On his knees, he examined the gas cylinder. Perhaps he could explode it in their faces?

  Purnima, he thought, Purnima. He tried to summon his wife’s face but no image came into his mind: he could not remember what she looked like. Gaurav, he called, Gaurav, but he could not remember his face, either… he saw only darkness, and then, emerging from that darkness, people, men of various races, standing in white shirts, close together. He recognized them: they were the commuters on the suburban train.

  Now a ray of sun entered the compartment and their varied faces glowed like a single human light refracted into colours. He searched for the face of the day-labourer from Crawford Market; he could not find him, but there were others like him. The vibrating green cushions and the green-painted walls of the carriage were luminous around them. ‘Calm down, Masterji,’ the radiant men in the white shirts said, ‘for we are all with you.’ He understood now that he had not struck the two boys down: they had done it for him. Beyond the grille, the faces in the yellow second-class compartment turned to him, and said: ‘We are with you too.’ Around him they stood thick and close; he felt hands come into his hand; and every murmur, every whisper, every jarring of the train said: You were never born and you will never die: you cannot hurt and cannot be hurt: you are invincible, immortal, indestructible.

  Masterji unbolted the latch, left his door open, and slept.

  3 OCTOBER

  ‘Sir.’ Nina, the Pintos’ maid, turned to her employer. ‘You should see for yourself who it is.’

  Mr Pinto, rising from a breakfast of a masala three-egg omelette, served with buttered toast and tomato ketchup, came to the door dragging his brown leather sandals along the floor.

  He saw who was at the door and turned around: ‘Nina,’ he cried. ‘Come back here.’

  Masterji was standing outside.

  ‘I was sure in the night it was Mr Shah who had done it,’ Masterji said. ‘And I felt safe until the morning. But when I woke up, I thought, those boys did not break down the door. They had a spare key. Who gave them this spare key?’

  Mr Pinto turned and gestured to the table.

  ‘Come have breakfast with us. It’s the three-egg omelette. Your favourite. Nina – one more omelette, at once. Come, Masterji, sit at the table.’

  ‘Did you know what was going to happen last night?’ Masterji asked. ‘Did the Secretary tell everyone to keep quiet when I screamed? That was something else I didn’
t think about until this morning. No one came to help me.’

  Mr Pinto gestured helplessly. ‘For our part, honestly, we heard nothing. We were asleep. Ask Shelley.’

  Mrs Pinto, rising from the breakfast table, stood next to her husband, and took his hand in hers.

  ‘We wanted to save you, Masterji,’ she said in her rasping voice. ‘They told us if we kept quiet we would save you.’

  ‘Shelley, shut up. Go back to the table. We didn’t know anything, Masterji. We thank God that you are safe. Come in and eat now—’

  ‘You’re lying, Mr Pinto.’

  Masterji pulled the front door from Mr Pinto’s grasp and closed it on himself. He pressed his forehead against the door. Rajeev and Raghav Ajwani, in their school uniforms, tried to tiptoe past him.

  Hearing voices from below, Masterji went down the stairs.

  Three women sat in the white plastic chairs.

  Mrs Puri was speaking to the Secretary’s wife; Mrs Ganguly, bedecked in gold and silk, apparently on her way to a wedding ceremony, was listening.

  ‘So what if the Sisters at the Special School want Ramu to play David Slayer of Goliath in the pageant? What is it to me that David was a Christian and we are Hindus? Jesus and Krishna: two skin colours, same God. All my life I have gone in and out of churches like a happy bird.’

  ‘You’re right, Sangeeta,’ the Secretary’s wife responded. ‘What difference is there, deep down?’

  Masterji went from Mrs Puri to Mrs Kothari to Mrs Ganguly, trying to find a face that revealed guilt when he stared at it. None paid the slightest attention to him. Am I looking at good people or bad? he thought.

  Mrs Puri brushed a housefly from Mrs Kothari’s shoulder and continued.

  ‘Didn’t I pray at St Antony’s and then at St Andrew’s and then at Mount Mary that the doctors should be wrong about Ramu? Just as I prayed in SiddhiVinayak temple, Mrs Kothari.’

  ‘You are a liberal person, Sangeeta. A person of the future.’

  ‘Did all of you know what was going to happen last night?’ Masterji asked. ‘Am I the only human being in this building?’