‘It is just a crow, and we are people,’ Mrs Puri reasoned with him.
Ajwani remembered a long pole he used to clean cobwebs from the ceiling.
A few minutes later, he was leaning out of his wife’s kitchen window, aiming the long pole at the crow’s nest like a billiards-player. His sons stood on either side and guided his aim.
The Secretary came out of his office to watch. So did Mrs Saldanha.
Mrs Puri sent Ramu up the stairs; he was under orders to wait for her on the first landing.
‘Do it quickly,’ she shouted at Ajwani. ‘The mother knows.’
Ajwani pushed at the nest with the pole. The crow flew up, its claws extended. Ajwani pushed again; the nest tipped over the edge, the two chicks screeching desperately. ‘A little to the left, Father,’ Raghav said. The broker gave a final nudge: the nest dropped to the ground, scattering sticks and leaves.
One of the chicks was silent, but the other poked its beak through the overturned nest. ‘Why doesn’t it shut up?’ the Secretary said. Giving up on Ajwani, who had closed his window, the crow flew down towards her living chick. Kothari stamped on the fledgling’s head, stopping its voice. The crow flew away.
Suddenly, someone began to scream from the stairwell.
‘A simple thing, wasn’t it?’ Mrs Puri said.
All of them looked up at the roof: Masterji was up there, hands clasped behind his back, walking round and round.
A few hours earlier, he had been standing at his window: in the garden he saw Mary’s green hosepipe lying in coils around the hibiscus plants.
Things, which had seemed so simple that evening at Crawford Market, had now become so confusing.
Something rattled against the wall of the kitchen: Purnima’s old calendar.
Masterji searched among the crumpled clothes by the washing machine, picked a shirt that was still fresh-smelling and changed into it.
Out in the market, Shankar Trivedi was enjoying, in between the chicken coop and the sugarcane-crushing machine, the second of his daily shaves. His face was richly lathered around his black moustache. He held on to a glowing cigarette in his right hand, as the barber unmasked him with precise flicks of his open blade.
‘Trivedi, it’s me.’
The priest’s eye moved towards the voice.
‘I’ve been trying to find you for days. It’s tomorrow. Purnima’s anniversary.’
The priest nodded, and took a puff of his cigarette.
Masterji waited. The barber oiled, massaged, and curled the priest’s luxuriant moustache. He slapped talcum powder on the back of Trivedi’s neck – gave a final thwack of his barber’s towel – and discharged his customer from the blue chair.
‘Trivedi, didn’t you hear me? My wife’s death anniversary is tomorrow.’
‘… heard you… heard you…’
The freshly shaved priest, now a confluence of pleasing odours, took a long pull on his cigarette.
‘Don’t raise your voice now, Masterji.’
‘Will you come to my home tomorrow – in the morning?’
‘No, Masterji. I can’t.’
Trivedi drew on his cigarette three times, and threw it down.
‘But… you said you would do it… I haven’t spoken to anyone else because you…’
The priest patted fragrant talcum powder from his right shoulder.
The moral evolution of an entire neighbourhood seemed compressed into that gesture. Masterji understood. Trivedi and the others had realized their own property rates would rise – the brokers must have said 20 per cent each year if the Shanghai’s glass façade came up. Maybe even 25 per cent. And at once their thirty-year-old ties to a science teacher had meant no more to Trivedi and the others than talcum powder on their shoulders.
‘I taught your sons. Three of them.’
Trivedi reached for Masterji’s hand, but the old teacher stepped back.
‘Masterji. Don’t misunderstand. It’s easy to rush to conclusions, but…’
‘Who was the first man to say the earth went around the sun? Anaxagoras. Not in the textbook but I taught them.’
‘When your daughter died, I performed the last rites. Did I or did I not, Masterji?’
‘Just tell me if you will perform my wife’s one-year ritual, Trivedi.’
The baby-faced barber, resting his chin on the blue chair, had been watching the entertainment. Trivedi now addressed his appeal to him.
‘Tell him, everyone in Vakola knows that he is under so much mental stress. I am frightened to do anything in his place. Who knows what might happen to me in there?’
‘Mental stress?’
‘Masterji: you are losing weight, your clothes are not clean, you talk to yourself. Ask anyone.’
‘What about those who smeared excrement on my door? What about those who are paying thugs to attack me? Those who call themselves my neighbours. If I am under stress, what are they under?’
‘Masterji, Masterji.’ Trivedi turned again to the barber for some support. ‘No one has attacked you. People worry about your stability when you say things like this. Sell 3A. Get rid of it. It is killing you. It is killing all of us.’
I should have told my story better, Masterji thought, on his way back to Vishram Society. Ajwani and the others have convinced them I am losing my mind.
He saw Mary’s drunken father, silver buttons twinkling on his red shirt, lying in the gutter by Hibiscus Society like something inedible spat out by the neighbourhood.
The first honest man I have seen all day, Masterji thought, looking down at the gutter with a smile.
He took a step towards the gutter, and stopped. He remembered that there was a better place to escape to.
When he got back to Vishram, he walked on the roof, turning in circles, wanting to be as far above them all as possible.
Mani, Ajwani’s assistant, knew that his boss did not want to be disturbed. Standing outside the glass door of the Renaissance Real-Estate Agency, he had seen Mrs Puri and the broker talking to each other for over half an hour. Something big was going on in there; he had been given charge of keeping Mrs Puri’s Ramu occupied outside the office.
On the other hand, it was a girl.
He pushed open the glass door and put his head in.
‘Sir…’
‘Mani, didn’t you hear what I said?’ Ajwani winced.
Mani just stepped aside, to let the boss see what had turned up.
Ajwani’s frown became a pretty smile.
Though today she wore a black salwar kameez, it was the same woman who had come dressed in that sky-blue sari the day Shanmugham had delivered the details of Mr Shah’s proposal.
‘Ms Swathi. Sit down, sit down. This is my neighbour, Mrs Puri.’
The girl was almost in tears.
‘I came looking for you earlier, sir. I have to speak to you now, it’s urgent.’
‘Yes?’ The broker leaned forward, his hands folded. Mrs Puri sighed.
She had almost convinced Ajwani, and then this happens.
The girl reminded the broker. He had helped her find a place in Hibiscus Society. She was supposed to move in today. He remembered, he remembered.
There had been a lift in the Hibiscus building when she had visited with him, but when she had gone there today, the lift was not working. It would not be repaired for three months, the landlord said. ‘How will my parents go up the stairs, Mr Ajwani? Mother had a hip replacement last year.’
Ajwani retreated into his chair. He pointed a finger behind his head.
‘I told you to worship Information, Ms Swathi. You should have asked about the lift back then. The landlord is within his rights to keep the deposit if you cancel the lease.’
She began to sob.
‘But we need that money, or how will we go looking for another place?’
Ajwani made a gesture of futility.
‘I suppose you’re also going to bring up the matter of the broker’s fee that you gave me.’
&nb
sp; She nodded.
‘Sixteen thousand rupees. Like the landlord, I have every legal right to keep it.’
Ajwani’s foot left its chappal, and opened the lowest drawer of the desk. He leaned down and brought up a bundle of cash, from which he counted off 500-rupee notes. Mrs Puri stared.
The broker counted them again, moistening his right index finger on his tongue thirty-two times; then pushed the bundle of notes across the table.
‘I’ll phone the landlord. Go home, Ms Swathi. Call me tomorrow, around four o’clock.’
The girl looked at him, through her sobs, with surprise.
‘A rare thing in this modern age, Ms Swathi. The way you take care of your parents.’
Mrs Puri waited till the girl had left, and said: ‘This is why you never became rich, Ajwani. You waste your money. You should have kept the 16,000 rupees.’
The broker rubbed his metal and plastic rings. ‘Women I did well with, in life. Money, never.’
‘Then become rich now, Ajwani. Be like Mr Shah for once in your life. What you did today with a pole, do again tomorrow on the terrace.’
This was where they had left off.
‘I’m not frightened,’ Ajwani said. ‘Don’t think I am.’
About to speak, Mrs Puri saw Mani, and stopped.
The broker looked at his assistant. ‘Go outside and play with Ramu,’ he said. ‘You shouldn’t leave the boy alone out there.’
Mani sighed. He stood outside the office and pointed at passing cars and trucks; Ramu held on to the little finger of his left hand. He was still sobbing because of the way the chick’s head had been crushed under Kothari Uncle’s foot.
After half an hour, Mrs Puri left with her boy.
As he watched the fat woman leave, Mani thought: What have they been talking about?
When he pushed open the glass door, he found the office deserted; from the inner room beyond the Daisy Duck clock came the noise of a coconut being hacked open.
Lying next to Ramu’s blue aeroplane quilt, Sanjiv Puri, who had been drawing cartoons of lizards, white mice, and spiders, now began to sketch, as if by logical progression, politicians.
As he was putting the final touches to the wavy silver hair of his favourite, ex-president Abdul Kalam, he looked up.
The lights were on in the living room: his wife had come home with his son.
‘Ramu.’ He put down his sketchbook and held out his arms.
Mrs Puri said: ‘Play with your father later. He and I have to talk now.’
Closing Ramu’s bedroom door behind her, she spoke in a soft voice.
‘You can’t come to Ramu’s pageant tomorrow.’
‘Why not?’
‘Stay late in the office. Have dinner there. Use the internet. Don’t come home till after ten o’clock.’
He watched her as she went to the dining table, where she began folding Ramu’s freshly washed laundry.
‘Sangeeta…’ He stood by her. ‘What is happening that I can’t come to my own home until ten?’
She looked at him, and said nothing, and he understood.
‘Don’t be crazy. If they do it, Ajwani and the Secretary, well and good. Why should you dip your hands into it?’
‘Keep your voice down.’ Mrs Puri leaned her head in the direction of you know who. ‘Ajwani is doing it. Kothari is going to hide somewhere all day long – so if Shanmugham comes in the morning, he will not be able to tell him that the Confidence Group has withdrawn its offer. And unless their letter is not handed to the Secretary of a Society in person, they cannot say they have taken back their offer. That is the law. In the evening Ajwani will do it. I’ll phone him when Masterji goes up to the terrace. That’s all there is to it.’
‘But if anything goes wrong… it is a question of going to jail.’
She stopped, a blue towel over her forearm. ‘And living in this building for the rest of my life is better than going to jail?’ She flipped the towel over and folded it.
Her husband said nothing.
Ramu popped his head out of his room, and Mummy and Daddy smiled and told him to go back to bed.
‘My fingers still smell,’ she whispered. ‘That man made me dirty my fingers. With my own son’s… He made me do that. I can never forgive him.’
Mr Puri whispered: ‘But tomorrow is Ramu’s pageant.’
‘So it’s perfect,’ Mrs Puri said, pushing the towels to one side, to start work on Ramu’s underwear. ‘No one will suspect me on a day like tomorrow. I will have to stay back at the school hall to help dismantle the pageant. Someone will remember me. Someone will get the time confused. I’m not asking you to do anything. Just stay away from home. That’s all.’
Mr Puri went to the sofa, where he slapped magazines and newspapers on to the ground with his palm; then he walked over to the kitchen, where he stripped things off the fridge door, and then he shouted: ‘No. I won’t do it.’
His wife stood holding Ramu’s underwear against her chest. She stared.
‘No.’ He took a step towards her. ‘I’m not leaving you alone tomorrow. I’m staying here. With you.’
Letting the underwear fall, she put her fingers around her husband’s neck, and – ‘Oy, oy, oy’ – kissed the crown of his head.
Ramu, opening his bedroom door just a bit, gaped at the show of affection between Mummy and Daddy.
Mrs Puri blushed; she pushed the boy back into his room and bolted the door from the outside.
‘He isn’t in his room now,’ she said, putting her ear to the wall to check for any sound. ‘So he’s still up on the roof, then. He went up there yesterday and he went today. He will probably go tomorrow too. Ajwani will have to do it then. Up there.’
‘Kothari?’
‘He will say what we want him to say. When it’s all over. He promised me that much.’
Mr Puri nodded. ‘It could work,’ he said. ‘Could work.’
The sketchbook on which he had been doodling lizards and politicians lay on the table; he tore out a page.
‘Here. We should write it down here. What time he goes up to the terrace and what time he comes down. This will help us tomorrow.’
‘Ramu! Stop pushing the door!’ Mrs Puri raised her voice; the bedroom door stopped rattling.
‘Write it down?’ she asked her husband.
‘Why not? It’s how they do it in the movies. In the English movies. They always plan the previous day. Let’s take this seriously,’ Mr Puri said, as if he had been the one to come up with the whole idea.
He put his ear to the wall.
‘His door has opened.’ He turned to his wife and whispered: ‘What time is it?’
So I have failed you again, Purnima. Masterji removed his shoes, went to his bed and lay down, his arm over his face.
He controlled his tears.
His shirt was wet from walking round and round the terrace; when he turned in the bed, it stuck to his back and made him shiver. A husband who survives his wife must perform her memorial rites. But all of them had got together to strip away even this final satisfaction from him.
He bit his forearm.
How obvious now that Mr Pinto had wanted someone to threaten him outside the compound wall that evening. How obvious now that he and Shelley wanted the money. How obvious that the Secretary had been lying all this time about responsibility and flamingoes; he wanted money. He had been cheating them for years; he had been stealing from the funds. How obvious that Mrs Puri wanted money for herself, not for Ramu.
He covered his face in his blanket and breathed in. The game he played as a child: if you cannot see them, they cannot see you. You are safe in this darkness with your own breathing.
Look down – he heard a whisper.
What is down there? he whispered back.
Look at me.
Under his blanket, Masterji felt himself sliding: trapdoors had opened beneath his bed.
Now he was again on the builder’s terrace on Malabar Hill, watching the darkening ocean. He
heard blows like the blows of an axe. The water was ramming into Breach Candy – into the original wall that held the tides out of the great breach of Bombay.
He saw its horns rising out of the dark water: the bull in the ocean, the white bull of the ocean charging into the wall.
Now he could see the original breach in the sea wall reopen: and the waters flooding in – waves rising over prime real estate, wiping out buildings and skyscrapers. Now the white angry bull, emerging horns-first from the waves, charges. The waves have come to the edge of the towers, and flooded into them. Muscles of water smash into the Brabourne Stadium and into the Cricket Club of India; a hoof of tide has brought down the Bombay University…
A finger snapped in the darkness, and a voice said: ‘Get up.’
He opened his eyes; he was too weak to move. Again the finger snapped: ‘Up.’
I cannot go back to bed. If I lie down, I will curse my neighbours and my city again.
He opened the door and went down the stairs. The moonlight pierced the octahedronal stars of the grille; it seemed as bright as the moon he had seen that night, so many years ago, in Simla.
Pinned by a moonbeam, he leaned against the wall.
The Republic, the High Court, and the Registered Co-operative Society might be fraudulent, but the hallways of his building were not without law; something he had obeyed for sixty-one years still governed him here.
He returned to his home; he closed the door behind him.
Opening his wife’s green almirah, Masterji knelt before the shelf with the wedding sari, and thought of Purnima.
Low, white, and nearly full, the moon moved over Vakola.
Ajwani could not stay at home on a night like this. He had walked along the highway, sat under a lamp post, then walked again, before taking an autorickshaw to Andheri, where he had dinner.
It was past eleven o’clock. After a beer at a cheap bar, he was returning along the highway in an autorickshaw. The night air lashed his face. He passed packed, box-like slum houses along the highway. Dozens of lives revealed themselves to him in seconds: a woman combing her long hair, a boy wearing a white skullcap reading a book by a powerful table lamp, a couple watching a serial on television. The autorickshaw sped over a concrete bridge. Below him, homeless men slept, bathed, played cards, fed children, stared into the distance. They were the prisoners of Necessity; he flew.