Last Man in Tower

  Mrs Puri continued to talk to the Secretary’s wife.

  ‘I make no distinction between Hindu and Muslim and Christian in this country.’

  ‘So true, Sangeeta. Let the heart be good, that’s what I say.’

  ‘I agree with you one hundred per cent,’ Mrs Ganguly joined in. ‘I never vote for the Shiv Sena.’

  Now Masterji saw Tinku Kothari, the Secretary’s son. Squished into a plastic chair with his miniature carom board, the fat boy was playing by himself, alternately striking black and beige pieces. With his fingers tensed to hit the blue striker, he paused, turning his eyes sideways to Masterji.

  He was chuckling. His jelly-like flesh rippled beneath his tight green T-shirt with its golden caption, Come to Ladakh, land of monasteries. The grins of Tibetan monks on the boy’s T-shirt widened.

  The blue striker scattered the carom pieces. One black piece ricocheted over the board’s edge, and rolled through parliament, until it touched Masterji’s foot: he shivered.

  He went up the stairs to his living room and waited for his old friend. If only Shelley would persuade that stubborn old accountant to knock on the door and say one word. ‘Sorry.’

  Just one word.

  He waited for half an hour. Then he got up and reached for the No-Argument book, still wrapped in a blue rubber band, lying on top of The Soul’s Passageway after Death in the bookshelf.

  He undid the rubber band. He tore the pages out of the No-Argument book one by one, then tore each page into four pieces, and then tore each piece into smaller pieces.

  Down in 2A, Mr Pinto, sitting at his dining table, turned to the window to watch the snowfall of paper pieces: all that was left of a 32-year-old friendship.

  A scraping noise began in the compound. Mary was sweeping the confetti into a plastic bag. Masterji watched. He was waiting for her to look up at him, he was waiting for one friendly face within his Society. But she did not look.

  He understood: she was ashamed. She too had known of what was going to happen.

  A shadow fell over Mary’s bent back: a hawk went gliding over her into one of the open windows of Tower B.

  ‘Come to this tower!’ Masterji called out.

  From his window he watched as the hawk, as if at his command, came out of Tower B and flew back.

  And not just you.

  Pigeon, crow, hummingbird; spider, scorpion, silverfish, termite and red ant; bats, bees, stinging wasps, clouds of anopheles mosquitoes.

  Come, all of you: and protect me from human beings.

  The cricket game at the Tamil temple had ended. A good game for Timothy; his mother had not caught him playing, and he had scored the most runs this afternoon.

  Kumar, tallest of the boys who played with Timothy, had not had a good game. His shift as a cleaner at the Konkan Kinara, a cheap restaurant near the Santa Cruz train station, would start soon, and he was walking through the wasteland around Vakola to his home in one of the slums behind the Bandra-Kurla Complex. He was limping this evening; with the cricket bat in his hand, he slashed at the tall grass to either side of the mud path. A few paces ahead of him, Dharmendar, the cycle mechanic’s assistant, walked with his hands in his pockets, staring at the ground.

  From the tall grass, a small dark creature in a blue safari suit leapt out at them.

  ‘Ajwani Uncle,’ Kumar said.

  The broker slapped Dharmendar on the head. ‘The simplest of jobs.’ A second slap. ‘All you had to do was scare an old man. A 61-year-old man.’

  Ajwani’s forehead bulged and his scalp retracted. The tendons in his neck became taut. His spit came out in a spray; he swore.

  Kumar put down his cricket bat, and stood by Dharmendar’s side, to indicate his share of the responsibility. He bowed his head: Ajwani disdained to slap it. He wiped his palms on his safari suit, as if he had soiled them by touching one so unworthy.

  ‘You had the key, you had to go in and put a hand over his mouth and give him a message. And you couldn’t do that.’

  ‘He was… very fierce, Ajwani Uncle.’

  The broker scowled. ‘And now you’re playing cricket.’

  ‘Forgive us, Uncle,’ Kumar said. ‘We’re no good for work like this.’

  A plane with the red-and-white Air India colours rose into the sky. Below its roar, Ajwani cursed and spat into the grass.

  ‘How many boys wait for a call like this? A chance to make some easy money. The beginning of a career in real estate. And I had to pick the two of you. Kumar: didn’t I find your family a place in the slums? Was there any other way you could have got a roof over your heads for 2,500 rupees a month?’

  ‘No, Uncle.’

  ‘And you, Dharmendar: didn’t I help your mother find a job as a maid in Silver Trophy Society? Didn’t I go there and speak to the Secretary personally?’

  ‘Yes, Uncle.’

  ‘And you boys let me down like this. Running from a 61-year-old…’ He shook his head. ‘And now the police will be here. After me.’

  ‘Forgive us, Uncle.’

  ‘What happened to the key I gave you?’ Ajwani gestured for it with his fingers.

  ‘We lost the key,’ Kumar said.

  ‘When we were running out of the building, Uncle.’

  ‘Lost the key!’ Ajwani shouted. ‘When the police come to arrest me, I should give them your names and say it was your idea.’

  ‘We’ll go to jail for you, Uncle. You are like a father to—’

  ‘Oh, shut up,’ Ajwani said. ‘Shut up.’

  Almost choking with disgust, he walked back to the market and crossed the road to his office.

  When Mani returned to the Renaissance Real-Estate office, he found his boss lying on the cot in the inner room, with one foot stretched out and playing with the coconuts in the wicker basket.

  ‘Why, Mani? Why did I give the job to those boys? I know so many people along the highway. I should have gone to a real goonda. Someone with experience.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Mani sat in a corner and watched the boss.

  ‘I have failed in everything I’ve put my hand to, Mani. I bought Infosys shares in 2000. Four days later the Nasdaq crashed. Even in real estate I keep buying at the wrong time. I am just a comedian in my own movie.’ His eyes filled with tears; his voice broke. ‘Get out of here, Mani.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And take care of my children when the police come to question me, Mani.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Picking up the black curved knife, the broker sliced open a coconut, drank its water, then got down on the floor and did twenty-five push-ups in an attempt to improve his morale.

  At three o’clock, when Mani came back to the inner room, he was still lying on the cot, looking at the ceiling.

  ‘The way he dealt with those two useless boys, Mani. There’s guts in a 61-year-old doing that. Even in an enemy I admire courage.’

  Now that he had done this terrible thing to Masterji, Ajwani felt closer than ever before to the stern sanctimonious old teacher, whom he had neither liked nor trusted all these years.

  To wake up every morning white and hot and angry. To become a young man again at the age of sixty-one. What must it feel like? Ajwani clenched his fist.

  At four o’clock, he called the Secretary’s office.

  Kothari’s voice was relaxed. ‘You have nothing to worry about. He hasn’t gone to the police.’

  ‘He isn’t going to file a complaint against us?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I don’t understand…’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about it all morning,’ the Secretary said. ‘Like you, I sat here shaking in my office. But the police never came. Why didn’t Masterji call them?’

  ‘That’s what I asked you, Kothari.’

  ‘Because,’ the voice on the phone dropped to a whisper, ‘he knows he’s the guilty one. Not going to the police, what does it mean? Full confession. He accepts responsibility for everything that has gone wrong in this Society. And to think w
e once respected the man. Now listen, Ajwani. The deadline ended yesterday. At midnight. Correct?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But no one has come from the builder’s office. To tell us that it is over, and Tower A is no longer wanted by the Confidence Group.’

  ‘What does it mean?’ Ajwani whispered back. ‘Is Shah giving us more time? He said he would never do that.’

  ‘I don’t know what it means,’ the Secretary said. ‘But look – all of us have signed and dated our agreement forms before October 3. Correct? If Shanmugham comes tomorrow and says, it is over, we can always say, but we did sign the forms. You did not come yesterday.’

  Ajwani exhaled. Yes, it could still work. Nothing had been lost just yet.

  ‘But this means…’

  ‘This means,’ the Secretary continued for him, ‘we have to try something even more simple with Masterji. Tonight.’

  ‘Not tonight,’ Ajwani said. ‘I need a day. I have to plan things.’

  The voice on the other end of the phone paused.

  ‘And you call me a nothing man, Ajwani?’

  ‘Why do I have to do everything? Do it yourself this time!’ the broker shouted. He slammed the phone down.

  You stink. You people.

  He could smell them from his room too well. He burned the candle, he burned an incense stick, he sprayed a perfume about the rooms, but he could still smell them.

  I’ll go up as high as possible, Masterji thought.

  So he climbed the stairs and went out on to the terrace again. Standing at the edge, he looked down on the black Cross, which was being garlanded by Mrs Saldanha.

  She must be praying I should die, he thought.

  He circled about the terrace. After a while, he saw small faces down in the compound, staring up: Ajwani, Mrs Puri, and the Secretary were watching him.

  Those who had tried to attack him in his room the previous night now gaped at him from down there, as if he were a thing to fear. How monstrous a child’s face with a torch-light must seem to a poisonous spider. He smiled.

  The smile faded.

  They were pointing at him and whispering into each other’s ears.

  ‘Go down at once,’ he told himself. ‘By staying up here you are only giving them an excuse to do something worse to you.’

  Half an hour later he was still up there: with his hands clasped behind his back, walking in circles around the terrace, as helpless to stop moving as those down below were to stop watching.

  BOOK NINE

  The Simplest of Things

  4 OCTOBER

  They stood, white and pink, on a metal tray in front of the glass-encased figure of the Virgin; their individual flames merged into a thick fire and swayed, alternately answering the sea breeze and the chanting of the kneeling penitents. Thick, blackened wicks emerged from the melting candles like bone from a wound.

  White and pink wax dripped like noisy, molten fat on to the metal under-plate, then hardened into white flakes that were blown around like snow.

  ‘How long is Mummy going to pray today?’

  The Virgin stood on a terrace with the sea of Bandra behind her and the stony grey Gothic façade of the church of Mount Mary in front of her.

  Sunil and Sarah Rego waited at the wall of the terrace; Mrs Puri stood beside them, ruffling Ramu’s hair and goading him to say the words (which he once knew so well): ‘Holy Roman Catholic.’

  It had been Mrs Puri’s idea that they should come here: the black Cross in the compound had failed them. Eaten prayer after prayer and flower garland after flower garland and done nothing to change Masterji’s mind.

  So she made them all climb into two autorickshaws, brave the fumes of the Khar subway, and come here, to the most famous church in the city.

  Mrs Rego was on her knees before the Virgin, her hands folded, her eyes closed, her lips working.

  Sunil had prayed for a respectable time; now he leaned over the edge of the terrace, reading aloud the holy words painted along its steps.

  ‘That word is “Rosary”. And the next word is “Sacrifice”. And that word is “Re-pa-ra-tion”. It’s a big word. Mummy can use it to trump Aunty Catherine.’

  Mummy had not moved for half an hour. The person praying by Mrs Rego’s side got up; an old woman in a purple sari moved in to fill the gap, touching her forehead three times to the ground.

  ‘Is someone ill? Is it Daddy in the Philippines?’

  ‘Keep quiet, Sarah,’ Sunil whispered.

  ‘Why else is Mummy praying so long?’

  Half an hour later, all five of them walked down the hill to the Bandra bandstand. They bought four plates of bhelpuri from a roadside vendor and sat in the shade of the pavilion; Sunil and Sarah gobbled theirs, while Mrs Puri brought a spoonful of her bhelpuri to Ramu’s mouth.

  Mrs Rego asked: ‘Why did no one come today from the Confidence Group to tell us it is over?’

  ‘Mr Shah must be preparing the papers for his half-Shanghai. My guess is that he will send Shanmugham over tomorrow.’

  Ramu chewed his food. His mother watched him, gently pressing the stray puffed rice to his mouth.

  ‘Do you know everyone in Tower B got their final instalment last week?’

  ‘So quickly?’

  ‘Ahead of schedule, once again. Ritika phoned. This man, this Mr Shah – he does keep his word.’

  Mrs Puri fed her son another spoonful.

  ‘Do you know what Kala Paani means? They used to call the ocean that. People were frightened to cross it. Ajwani says we are all at the Kala Paani now. Mr Shah says the same thing. We must cross the line. The way he did, when he came to Mumbai without shoes on his feet.’

  ‘How do you know this?’ Mrs Rego’s voice dropped. ‘Did you meet him?’

  Mrs Puri nodded.

  ‘Did you talk about money?’

  ‘No. He didn’t try to bribe me.’

  Mrs Rego looked away.

  ‘It is a simple thing,’ Mrs Puri said. ‘And then this nightmare is over for all of us. We can phone Mr Shah at once. Before Shanmugham comes.’

  ‘We already tried the simple thing. I didn’t like it. Criminals inside my Society.’

  Mummy smiled and wiped Ramu’s mouth.

  ‘There is an even simpler thing. Just a push. But it must be done now.’

  Mrs Rego frowned; she tried to understand what her neighbour had said.

  ‘Georgina! What are you doing in Bandra?’

  A woman in a green dress was walking towards them; a tall, bald foreigner with a goatee followed behind her.

  Introductions were made: the woman in the green dress was Catherine, Mrs Rego’s sister, and the foreign thing with her was her American journalist husband, Frank. His articles appeared in many, many progressive magazines.

  ‘We read about your Society in the paper, Georgina,’ Frank said, addressing his sister-in-law. ‘And your old teacher. In the Sun.’

  Mrs Rego had not paid much attention to her plate of bhelpuri. Now she began eating.

  Frank rubbed his hands. ‘I know why he’s doing this. It’s a statement, isn’t it? Against development. Against unplanned development.’

  Mrs Rego ate bhelpuri. Mrs Puri stood up and faced the foreigner.

  ‘He’s not making a statement. He’s mad.’

  The American winced.

  ‘No, I think it’s a statement.’

  ‘What do you know – you don’t live in Vishram. Yesterday he was walking on the terrace. Round and round and round. With a Rubik’s Cube in his hand. What does that mean, except: “I have lost my mind completely.” And we hear him, don’t we, my husband and I, from next door. Talking to his wife and daughter as if they were alive.’

  Mrs Puri looked at Ramu. The boy was playing with Mrs Rego’s children.

  ‘No statement is happening here,’ she whispered. ‘Just madness.’

  The plate of bhelpuri dropped from Mrs Rego’s hand. She began to sob.

  Catherine squatted by her sister and rubb
ed her back.

  ‘Frank, did you have to mention that horrible man? Did you have to upset my sister?’

  ‘What did I do?’ The man looked around. ‘I just said—’

  ‘Shut up, Frank. You are so insensitive sometimes. Don’t cry, Georgina. We’ll get you another plate. Here, look at me.’

  ‘I’m going to lose the money, it’s not fair,’ Mrs Rego sobbed. ‘It’s not fair, Catherine. You’ve trumped me again. You always do.’

  ‘Oh, Georgina…’

  Mrs Rego’s children came to either side of her and held her hands protectively.

  ‘Mummy,’ Sunil whispered, ‘Aunty Catherine’s children are stupid. You know that. Sarah and I will make a lot of money for you, and you’ll trump her again. Mummy, don’t cry.’

  An hour later, Mrs Puri opened the gate of Vishram Society for her Ramu. Mrs Rego and her children came in behind Ramu.

  ‘All of Vishram Society is helpless before a bird,’ Mrs Puri said, when she stood outside Mrs Saldanha’s kitchen.

  The crow’s nest had come up above Mrs Saldanha’s kitchen window; it had been showering twigs and feathers into the kitchen for days. Mary had refused to do anything; it would bring bad luck to toss the eggs down. ‘I am a mother too,’ she had retorted, when Mrs Saldanha accused her of dereliction of her duties.

  Now the eggs had hatched. Two blood-red mouths opened out of little beaks and screeched desperately, all day long. The mother crow hopped from chick to chick and pecked each one consolingly, but they, with raised beaks, cried out for more, much more.

  ‘We’ll tell the Secretary to call the seven-kinds-of-vermin man,’ Mrs Rego said, keeping her eyes to the ground.

  This man, who worked near the train station, was often called to Vishram to knock down a wasps’ nest or a beehive; he scraped it down with his pole and sprayed white antiseptic on the wall.

  ‘Don’t call anyone,’ Mrs Puri said. She seized Mrs Rego by the arm to arrest her.

  ‘We will do it right now. You watch.’

  She took out her mobile phone and punched at the buttons. Ajwani was at home. He came down wearing a banian over his trousers and scratched his forearms: he lived directly above the nest, it was true, but on the second floor …