Last Man in Tower

by Aravind Adiga

  He lifted his foot just in time: a dead rat lay before him imprinted with a tyre-track.

  He walked past the huts and the Tamil temple, to return to the gate of his Society. The celebrations continued outside Tower B.

  He was halfway up the stairs, when a red missile hurtled down in the opposite direction.

  ‘Sorry, Masterji.’

  It was Ms Meenakshi, his next-door neighbour: wearing a red blouse that did not quite reach her jeans.

  ‘Don’t worry, Ms Meenakshi. How are things?’

  She smiled and kept going down the stairs.

  ‘How is your boyfriend?’ he shouted.

  From somewhere near the ground floor, she laughed. ‘My boy friend is scared of you, Masterji. He won’t come here any more.’

  He listened to her charge out of the building. Exactly the way Sandhya, when her friends called her for a game of volleyball, dropped her sketchbook and rocketed downstairs.

  He placed his hand on the warm building. Just as when a drop of formaldehyde falls on a dead leaf in a science class, revealing a secret life of veins, Vishram throbbed with occult networks. It was pregnant with his past.

  Back in his flat, he turned the tap at the washbasin sink. He slapped it. Water spurted out brown and then red and then stopped. He slapped it again, and now the tap spat out a stone. A final red spurt, and finally the water flowed clear and strong.

  Who says it is falling down? he thought, washing his face in the cold water. It will last for ever, if we take care of it.

  From the kitchen, the old calendar tapped against the wall in a frenzy of approval.

  Turning its page to October, where some dates had been circled by his wife (7 October – Dentist), he added a circle of his own in red. 3 October. He flipped the calendar’s pages back to June. Last year’s calendar, but it would do. He crossed out ‘25 June’. The red tip of the pen hopped over days and months… just ninety-eight days left.

  No.

  Ninety-nine days left.

  Down in the compound, a last firecracker exploded.

  29 JUNE

  Friday mornings in 1B, Vishram Society Tower A. Kellogg’s, warm milk, lots of sugar. Marmalade on toast. Wedges of Amul cheese.

  The dishes had been cleared from the dining table and immersed in a kitchen sink brimming with frothy soap-water.

  Sitting on their mother’s bed, Sunil and Sarah watched as Mrs Rego, at her reading table, slit open the latest letter from her younger sister, Catherine, who lived in Bandra.

  Hair brushed, double-windsor-knotted, wearing his navy-blue-and-white school uniform, fourteen-year-old Sunil, Mummy’s ‘senior adviser’, closed his eyes to concentrate. Next to him in her pretty uniform (pink and white), Sarah, eleven, the ‘junior adviser’, kicked her legs and watched a dragonfly.

  A black-and-white photograph of Arundhati Roy hung from the bedroom wall next to a framed poster for a Vijay Tendulkar play performed at the Prithvi Theatre.

  Putting on her glasses, Mummy read Aunty Catherine’s letter out loud, until she reached the sentence that began: ‘Even though you have not written for a week, as it is your wont to do…’

  Reading it aloud a second time, Mrs Rego put a hand to her heart. Gasp. ‘Wont’ was a most stylish word, she explained to her children. Which meant that the three of them had been well and truly ‘trumped’.

  The aim of this Friday-morning epistolary jousting was for each sister, in an apparently banal letter to the other, to slip in a ‘stylish’ word or phrase, which would catch the other off guard, and force her to concede that she had been ‘trumped’. Even though they were just minutes apart from each other (depending on the traffic in the east–west passage), Mrs Rego each Friday sealed a blue prepaid letter, addressed it with formal pomp (‘Mrs Catherine D’Mello-Myer of Bandra West’) and walked over to the postal workers’ colony near the Vakola mosque to drop it into the red box there.

  A week later, the postman would deliver the riposte from Bandra.

  Now Mrs Rego had to ‘trump’ Aunty Catherine back.

  Taking out her best Parker fountain-pen, using her most florid hand, she wrote on the blue prepaid letter:

  Dearest Darling Catherine…

  … while preparing for an important executive meeting at the Institute, I found, quite serendipitously, your lovely little letter…’

  ‘“Serendipitously” is a very stylish way of saying “by chance”,’ Mrs Rego explained to the children. The three shared wicked giggles. The moment she got to the line, Catherine would have to swivel about in her chair, saying, ‘Oh, but I’ve been trumped.’

  Sunil took Mummy’s Parker and underlined the phrase three times, just to stick it in to his Aunty Catherine.

  ‘Time for school, children.’ She rose from the bed. ‘I’ll get a plastic bag.’

  Mrs Rego went into the kitchen to check on Ramaabai, the maid. Standing at the sink, the old woman removed one wet utensil after the other from the foamy water, like a psychoanalyst extracting submerged memories, and wiped each one clean with a pink Brillo pad.

  ‘Ramaabai, if you break any of the glasses today I’ll deduct the cost from your month’s salary,’ Mrs Rego said. ‘And be on time in the evening.’

  The maid kept cleaning the dishes.

  Mrs Rego and her children went from floor to floor in Vishram Society, inspecting the doors. Another shipment of sweets had arrived from the builder last night, to celebrate Tower B’s (unanimous) acceptance of his plan, and Mrs Rego knew from the last time what would happen. The golden Ganeshas from the red sweet-boxes, cut out by those who did not wish to discard a god’s image, had turned up alongside the overlapping Shivas and Jesuses on the doors.

  Mrs Puri, naturally, had put up a Confidence Group Ganesha on her door. Two of them, in fact. Mrs Rego’s nails scraped at the god’s pot belly until it bulged out. She did the same to the second Ganesha. Sunil held up the black bag; his mother flicked the gods into it.

  Saying goodbye to her two advisers at the gate – they would catch their school bus from the market – Mrs Rego went the other way. Her fingers touched her black handbag, her elbow thrust out at a sharp angle; her lips were sucked in and her eyes were narrowed. Not a square inch of vulnerable surface.

  She pitched the black bag into the open rubbish pit, where, to her delight, a stray hog took an interest in it. She wished she had rubbed some honey over the Confidence Group Ganeshas she had removed from the doors.

  ‘Liar,’ Mrs Rego said, as if goading the animal to attack. ‘Liar, liar, liar’: she clapped three times.

  Leaving the hog to enjoy Mr Shah’s gifts to Vishram, she walked towards her institute.

  A life like Mrs Rego’s provided an excellent schooling in the ways of liars.

  Georgina Rego, the ‘Battleship’, was one of two daughters of a famous Bandra doctor who would have been rich if he had not trusted every man he met on the street. Catherine, the younger sister with whom she played her game of ‘trump’, still lived in Bandra, in a flat in the Reclamation. Disobeying their father, Catherine had married an American exchange student, a half-Jew – a scandal in the community in those days; now the foreign husband, a quiet, goateed man, wrote articles on village life in India that were published in foreign magazines and in the copies of the Economic and Political Weekly that came to Mrs Rego’s desk at the Institute.

  Her own husband, Salvador, had been picked by her father. A Bombay Bandra Catholic who liked worsted wool suits and dark shirts embroidered with his initials: ‘S.R.’ After two years in Manila working for a British merchant bank he confessed one evening by long-distance that he had found another, a local, younger. Naturally, a Catholic. They were all good Catholics in the Philippines. ‘You were never going to be enough for a man like me, Georgina.’

  He cleaned her out.

  Her entire dowry. Sixteen George V half-sovereigns, her father’s share certificates in the Colgate-Palmolive company, two heavy silverware sets – all smuggled in her husband’s luggage
to Manila. Her father was dead and she could not live off Catherine’s handouts, so she had left Bandra, a single mother with two children, and moved to the eastern side of the city, to a neighbourhood without roads and reputation, but with Christians. Va-kho-la. (Or was it Vaa-k’-la? She still wasn’t entirely sure.)

  From Catherine she heard about big changes in Bandra. One by one, the old mansions on Waterfield Road were melted down like ingots – even her own Uncle Coelho’s. It was always the same builder, Karim Ali, who broke down the houses. When he wanted to snatch Uncle Coelho’s house on Waterfield Road to put up his apartment block for Bollywood stars, he too had come with sweets and smiles – it was all ‘Uncle and Aunty’ at first. Later on, the threatening graffiti on the walls and the late-night phone calls, and finally the day when four teenagers burst in when Uncle Coelho was having dinner, put a cheque on one side of the table, a knife on the other, and said: ‘Either the knife or the cheque. Decide before dinner is over.’ This Confidence Shah was the same kind of man as that Karim Ali – how could anyone believe those oily smiles, those greasy sweets? Behind the smiles were lies and knives.

  ‘Hey!’ Mrs Rego shouted. ‘Turn your phone off while driving!’

  A motorcyclist was wobbling down the road, his head propped to one side as he talked on his phone. He grinned as he passed her, and kept talking.

  Breaking the law in broad daylight. Did the police care? Did anyone care? You would never get away with talking on your phone while driving in Bandra – that much had to be said for the western side of the railway lines. Raise property prices in Vakola by 20 per cent, and fellows like this – she snapped her fingers – evaporate.

  The Institute for Social Action lay halfway between Vishram Society and the slums that lay further down the road. An old tiled building, the door left open at all times.

  Saritha was standing outside the door, waiting for Mrs Rego.

  Along with Julia and Kamini, Saritha was one of the three socially committed girls from good families (employment at the Institute was strictly restricted to good families) who answered to Mrs Rego. Saritha’s role was to conduct research into public interest litigation on slum redevelopment, and kill the lizards that overran the walls. For if there was much compassion at the Institute for the poor, there was none for reptiles or arachnids; Mrs Rego hated and feared anything that crawled on walls.

  ‘What is it?’ she shouted at Saritha. ‘Is there a lizard in the office?’

  Saritha tilted her head.

  Now Mrs Rego saw it: there was a black Mercedes parked right by the Institute. Shanmugham stood by the car. He smiled, and made a sort of salute, as if he worked for her.

  ‘Mrs Rego, my boss wants to have a word with you. He sent the car for you.’

  ‘How dare you,’ she said. ‘How dare you! Get out of here, or I’ll call the police.’

  ‘He just wants to have lunch with you, Mrs Rego. Please… just for ten minutes.’

  She went into her office and closed the door. She took up the papers on her desk and read. A reply from a German government-run social welfare body; yes, there was funding available for those doing work for the poor in Mumbai. The deadline, unfortunately, had… A request from a social worker studying for her Ph.D. at the University of Calicut. She was collecting data on child sponsorship; did the Institute have any information on children…

  Mrs Rego looked at the clock.

  ‘Is that man still outside?’ she shouted.

  Saritha came into the office and nodded.

  From her office window, she saw Mr Shah’s half-built towers in the distance: blue tarpaulin covered them against the rains, and work went on inside the covers.

  A gust of wet wind blew through the window; Mrs Rego rubbed her goosebumpy forearms.

  ‘That’s a shark, sir. Freshwater. A small one. But authentic.’

  The smell of beer, prawn, curry, butter, oil thickened the recycled air-conditioned air inside the restaurant. An aquarium had been set into the near wall. The thing that had been called a shark gaped with a stupid open mouth in one corner, while smaller fish glided around, scoffing at its sharkish pretensions.

  Mr Shetty, the manager, stood with his hands folded in front of his crotch.

  ‘A recent addition to the aquarium,’ he said. ‘I hope you approve of it.’

  In the restaurant in Juhu – Mangalorean seafood, his favourite cuisine – Dharmen Shah sat in silence at a table with a view of the door. The ceiling of the restaurant was vaulted, an allusion to the caves of Ajanta; the wall opposite the aquarium was covered with a bas-relief, in plaster of Paris, of the great civic monuments of the city – VT, the Rajabai Tower, the columned façade of the Asiatic Society library. Beer, prawn, curry, butter, oil mingled in the chilled air.

  The manager waited for Mr Shah to say something.

  A waiter brought a whole lobster on a plate and placed a bowl of butter by the side. More food came: crab, fish curry, a prawn biryani. Wrapped in aluminium foil, a stack of glistening naans arrived in a wicker basket. Four flavoured cream spreads were placed next to it: pudina, garlic, lemon, and tomato.

  Maybe she isn’t going to come, Shah thought, as he tore apart the bread with his fingers.

  She had quoted God’s name, after all. ‘By the Lord Jesus Christ I will…’

  He wondered which of the four cream spreads to dip his bread in.

  Remember, Dharmen: he told himself. A person who quotes Jesus is not, in real-estate terms, a Christian. No. A person who quotes Jesus is looking for a higher price to sell.

  Humming a Kishore Kumar tune, he dipped the bread into the pudina cream.

  Next he went for the buttered crab. With a long thin spoon, Shah scooped the baked flesh from the salted and peppered exoskeleton of the crab; when all the easy meat had been carved from the chest and eaten, he tore the limbs apart, and chewed on them, one at a time, biting into the shell and chewing till it cracked open, before sucking at the warm white flesh. The waiters were prepared to carve out the flesh and bring it on a small plate, but Dharmen Shah did not want it that way. He wanted to feel he was eating a thing that had been breathing just an hour ago: wanted to feel, once again, the extraordinary good fortune of being one of those still alive.

  He began to think of the woman again. Mrs Rego. Maybe she was not going to come? No. No. A social worker needs a builder. We make each other: she can be so pure only if I am so evil. She will come to me.

  He spat out shell and cartilage on to the porcelain plate. With a finger he checked the colour of the mucus that covered the shell.

  The restaurant door opened: Shanmugham stepped in from blinding light, like a figure in a revelation.

  He’s come alone, Mr Shah thought. So she said no. He could not breathe.

  The restaurant door opened again: silhouetted against the painful white light, Shah saw a middle-aged woman.

  He wiped his lips and stood up.

  ‘Ah, Mrs Rego, Mrs Rego. How nice of you to come. I assume the traffic kept you so long?’ he asked, looking at Shanmugham.

  Who made a quick negative movement of his head.

  Mrs Rego did not sit down.

  ‘Why have you brought me here, Mr Builder? What is the business?’

  Shah spread his arms over the dishes on the table.

  ‘This is the business. We Gujaratis don’t like to eat alone. Would you like some fresh-lime soda, Mrs Rego? – and you must sit down, please.’

  ‘I’m not hungry. I may go back now.’

  ‘No one is stopping you at any time, Mrs Rego. There are autorickshaws right outside. You will be back in Vakola in ten minutes.’

  Mrs Rego looked around the restaurant; she looked at the vaulted ceiling, at the bas-relief, and stared at the fish. ‘But why have you brought me here?’

  Shah shared the joke with his food.

  ‘She is frightened I will do something to her. With that shark near by: I must look like some James Bond villain. Shanmugham, please call the manager of the restauran
t here.’

  Who came, with folded hands, leaning forward, eager to please.

  ‘Mr Shetty: this is Mrs Rego. You have seen her with me at… what time is it? 1.20 p.m. I want you to write it down in your register. Mrs Rego, resident of 1B, Vishram Society Tower A, Vakola, seen in the presence of Mr Shah. I want that down, word for word – do you have that?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And please send a waiter for our order.’

  The builder looked at his nervous guest.

  ‘Now: if anything happens to you, I will go to jail. You are a social worker: the press and the television people will show me no mercy. I took the liberty of ordering some dishes of seafood and crab before you got here. Shanmugham, you too sit down, and eat.’

  Mrs Rego did not move. She stood staring at Mr Shah’s plate, on which gristle, bone, flesh, had piled up around bread, rice, and red curry.

  ‘You’re my guest, Mrs Rego. You may not like my offer, but you must eat the food at my table. A lady like you, who grew up in Bandra, must know not to snub her host. If it’s too much you can take it back for your boy. You have two boys, don’t you? A son and daughter, sorry. Well, you’ll take it back for both of them.’

  Pulling out a chair, Mrs Rego sat.

  A waiter cleared the napkin from her plate. Mr Shah himself served a portion of curried lobster, and offered Mrs Rego a naan, which she declined.

  She never had carbohydrates in the afternoon.

  *

  Sunil Rego, coming home dirty from his cricket, found his mother sitting on the bed, with Sarah on her lap. The bedside lamp had been turned on.

  ‘There’s food for you in the fridge, Sunil. It’s wrapped in silver foil.’

  Mrs Rego looked at her daughter. ‘Very good, isn’t it?’

  Sarah nodded.

  ‘Why did you buy it, Mother?’ Sunil sat next to them.

  ‘I didn’t buy it. You know we don’t have money to spend on restaurant food.’

  Mrs Rego whispered: ‘The builder sent it. Mr Shah. He has made us an offer.’