Last Man in Tower

by Aravind Adiga

  When he opened the door, Mrs Puri smiled.

  ‘Masterji, I just went down to the Pintos’ house. And asked them again if they would sign.’

  Ajwani stayed a few feet behind Mrs Puri, looking at his feet. Masterji felt that there had been some tension between the two of them, and that he was the source of this tension.

  ‘Don’t speak to the Pintos. Speak to me. My answer is still no.’

  ‘Masterji, I am not a brilliant human being as you are. I just have one question for you. Why do you want to stay in a building that is about to fall down?’

  He knew, from the absolute nature of the silence, the ceasing of all ambient noise, that the Pintos were listening in.

  ‘I have memories here, Mrs Puri. My late daughter, my late wife. Shall I show you Sandhya’s sketchbook? It is full of drawings of the garden. Every tree and plant and spider’s web and stone and…’

  She nodded.

  ‘I remember her. A beautiful girl. But you are not the only one with memories in this building. I have them, too. I have one of this very spot. Do you remember, Masterji, that day eighteen years ago, when I came here and told you what the doctors had told me about Ramu? Purnima was at the door and you put your book down on your teakwood table. And you remember what you did, what your eyes did, when you heard the news about Ramu?’

  The old man blinked with emphasis. He remembered.

  ‘Masterji, I love the Pintos as much as you do. For years they have looked after my Ramu as he played in the compound. But will they pay for his hospital and his nurse when he grows old and needs medical attention? Ask them.’

  He listened: not a cough, not a scratch on a table, from downstairs. The Pintos did not object to the logic.

  ‘Thirty years,’ Mrs Puri said, ‘I’ve come to you for advice. Now I ask you to listen to a foolish, fat woman just this once. Speak to Gaurav. Ask him what he thinks, as a father should ask his son. Will you do that for me, for your Mrs Puri?’

  She glared at the small dark man next to her.

  The markings on Ajwani’s cheeks rose ingratiatingly: he forced out a grin.

  ‘Masterji, my two sons are your biggest fans. R and R. I am your third-biggest fan in the world.’

  When the rain had ended, Masterji walked down the stairs to the compound. Mrs Saldanha’s door opened.

  ‘Masterji, I have avoided meetings all my life, as you may have noticed. But I have something to tell you.’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Saldanha.’

  She stood in a shapeless green gown; worry-lines cut into her brow and strands of untidy silver coiled out of her hair. He remembered her twenty years ago: the most beautiful woman in the building.

  ‘Masterji, my Radhika wants to study Journalism. At Syracuse University.’

  He avoided her eyes.

  ‘There was a Syracuse in the Roman empire. A place of learning.’

  ‘This one is in America. New York State. And they won’t give scholarships to Indians, so we have to pay for everything… ’

  He passed through his neighbours sitting out in the parliament and walked around the compound. Mrs Kudwa, bringing along little Mohammad, in his white tae kwon-do outfit, came to see him next. The boy hid his face behind his mother; he had skipped Friday’s science tutorial.

  When she was gone, others followed: Mrs Ganguly from the fifth floor, Mrs Vij from the second floor. In addition, Masterji received petitions from an invisible party. He was sure he heard his wife whispering to him as he crunched the gravel of the compound. These people were her neighbours too. She urged the cause of the living.

  Before going into the building, he stopped by Mrs Puri’s chair in parliament, and told her that he would go see his son tomorrow. Not in the morning, though. The rush on the trains would be too great then.

  ‘It’s over. Even Masterji has agreed,’ Mary said.

  Standing outside Silver Trophy Society, she explained her situation to the security guard: ‘When this Shanghai comes up, they’ll have maids who wear uniforms and speak English. They won’t want me. I have a son in school; I can’t miss a month’s pay.’

  The guard was a lean light-skinned man; he assured Mary he would keep an eye out, but then asked about her ‘family’ with a gleam in his eye that could only signify lechery.

  The guard at a building near the Dhobi-ghat had told her to check with him after noon; a doctor’s family had just moved in from Delhi.

  Rain clouds were regrouping in the evening sky. Mary crossed the road, and walked past the rows of fish-sellers with their glistening fresh catch, to be told:

  ‘Those people from Delhi found a servant girl just ten minutes ago. Not even ten.’

  Thanking the guard, she sat on a stone wall near the fish-sellers, and breathed into a fold of her sari. She had been out since seven in the morning. On either side of her, in baskets, or spread on blue tarpaulin sheets on the ground, she saw dried anchovies, fresh crabs, prawns in plastic buckets, and small slimy things that were still wriggling. An old fisherwoman scraped the scales off a two-foot yellow-finned tuna with a curved knife.

  As if the departed souls of the fish were rising in a great host, a boom filled the air.

  Mary looked up. A Boeing, climbing up from the Santa Cruz airport, cut through the darkening sky.

  A blind man sat selling jasmine in the compound of the Tamil temple. The gate of the altar was open, and a small oil lamp glowed in front of a black Ganesha, resinous from decades of holy oil.

  The side wall of the temple with the painted demon’s mouth was once again doing duty as a wicket.

  Kumar, who worked as a cleaner in the kitchen of a nearby hotel, stood near the side wall, slapping his thighs in anticipation.

  Dharmendar, the cycle mechanic’s boy, was running up to bowl with the red rubber ball in his hand.

  Timothy, who had ‘bunked’ school to be here, had been given the honour of batting first, and took guard in front of the demon’s mouth.

  Instead of releasing the red ball, Dharmendar dropped it and grinned.

  ‘It’s your lucky day, Timothy. Your mother is coming.’

  ‘Shit.’

  The boy dropped his bat, grabbed his school satchel, and ran. Screaming his name – as the cricketers whistled with glee – Mary chased after him with her right hand raised and her fingers flexed.

  Lightning forked over their heads, and large drops of rain fell on mother and son as they ran towards the nullah.

  6 JULY

  An old man leaned out of the open door, relishing the wind in his hair like a fourteen-year-old on his first unaccompanied ride. He stared at a train going in the opposite direction.

  What power. The passing locomotive was a vector of raw momentum, rushing from another dimension at an angle through this one. A fragment of a dream slicing into the waking world.

  It was two o’clock in the afternoon.

  The first-class compartment was almost empty. But on an impulse Masterji had got up from his seat and done something he had not for decades – come to the open door of the compartment.

  Insanity.

  He, above all other men, should know the danger of standing here: he who had warned his students so many times against doing so: he, who had suffered so much from the tracks.

  Another express sped past, and this time, the warm wind rushing between the trains felt like a spell. The faces of the commuters opposite him looked potent, magical, even demonic – as if they were creatures from another world: or perhaps always present in his world, well-hidden, exposed now by the jarring energy released by the passing of the engines.

  A touch on his shoulder.

  ‘Radium, sir? It works. Real radium.’

  Masterji turned round. It took him a second to recover from the illusion of the passing demon-faces.

  A man in a dirty shirt was offering him a packet of glow-in-the-dark stars: ‘Radium for Children.’ Ten rupees. Suitable for bedroom walls. Sparks the intellect, sends them to university.

  Masterji lo
oked at the packet; he had forgotten to bring a gift for Ronak.

  Paunchy, with his breasts pressing against a patterned silk shirt, Gaurav Murthy walked down the aisle of the grocery store. He pointed at peanut chikkis and golden ladoos, at fried banana chips and spicy farsan packets; the storekeeper swept them all into a plastic bag.

  Ten rupee packets of peanuts, natural and masala batter-coated, one packet of Frito-Lay’s masala kurkure. One more packet of peanuts? Why not.

  ‘My father is coming home again, you see.’

  ‘A happy occasion,’ the store owner said. ‘Buying sweets for him. You’re a good son.’

  ‘Why not give me some banana chips, just in case? A small packet will do.’

  With a half-kilo of snacks in a bag, Gaurav Murthy walked home. A quarter to five. His father had said he would come at five. Which meant he was already there.

  He shouldn’t have strayed this far from his Society, but the snacks in Dhobi Talao, just around the corner, were cheaper. Stopping outside his building to catch his breath, he noticed a star from last Deepavali on the terrace; he was sure his father had noticed it too. (‘Why is it still up there? Don’t you pay the maid to…’) Reaching into his shopping bag, he ripped open a packet of chikki. He chewed the peanuts. His father would mock him for having put on weight; he chewed faster.

  ‘His father’s tail.’ That was what his mother had called him in the earliest days, when with a dumb, animal joy he had jumped up when the doorbell rang in the evening and had followed his father around the house, even into the bathroom, which he had to be pushed out of. The disenchantment began when he was fourteen, and his mother came back from Suratkal robbed by his uncles: he discovered that his father, who struck him on the knuckles with a steel foot-ruler for minor infractions, could not stand up to two provincial thieves. Contempt was born in Gaurav, the contempt of a son who has been hit by a weak father. As his shoulders grew, the contempt grew with them. His father wanted him to become a scientist or a lawyer, a man who worked with his mind; he decided to study commerce. In the university library he looked up from his textbooks of finance and thought of something his father had done or said the previous day: like a common stock on the Bombay Sensex, the value of Yogesh Murthy’s reputation was recalculated daily in his son’s mind, and daily it fell.

  A man has no choice in his father; but if he keeps his distance from an unlikeable one, Society always blames him. It seemed wildly unfair to Gaurav.

  As he pressed the doorbell, he could hear screams from the compound of his Society; he identified the particular shrillness that was his son’s. Why hasn’t the boy come up right away?

  The maid opened the door. His father stood in the living room, admiring Sonal’s latest acquisition: a large bronze ornamental plate, filled to the brim with water, on which floated red gulmohar petals.

  ‘Look, Gaurav: Father-in-law has brought a nice gift for Ronak,’ his wife said, showing him the packet of Radium stars. ‘How sweet of him to spend the money.’

  Saying it was time to feed her father, she retreated into an inner room, leaving the two men to the business of the day.

  ‘Life is difficult, Father. Sonal’s life is very difficult.’

  ‘I thought you had a good job, son.’

  When Gaurav spoke, Masterji had the impression he was addressing someone on his right shoulder. He moved his head to intercept his son’s gaze; the boy shifted his eyes further to the right.

  ‘Job is good, Father. Other things in life are not good. Stress. All the time. I see a Guru now for my stress. Sangeeta Aunty told me about him. He gives me mantras to chant.’

  His father was a rationalist, of course. Something stinging would be on its way soon. Gaurav bit into the chikki.

  ‘When are you signing the acceptance form, Father, and taking the money?’

  Sonal, from the other room, supplied the lines he had forgotten:

  ‘Father-in-law, there are questions of… income tax, estate tax. Life insurance. We have to plan. Sooner you say “yes”, the better for all of us.’

  Masterji glared at the chikki as he spoke.

  ‘Son, there are the things we know about Vishram. Physically it has fallen behind but the memories of my late wife…’

  ‘You mean my mother.’

  ‘Yes, your mother, and your sister. It is not such an easy thing, to pack up and leave.’

  As his father watched, Gaurav ripped open another packet of chikki; his wife spoke for him.

  ‘Have you seen the new buildings in Parel, Father-in-law?’

  Leaning back, so that he could see her with her feeding spoon, dripping with yoghurt, Sonal smiled.

  ‘They’re duplexes. Not yet built and each is sold already. NRIs from England. You know how much they cost?’ She fed her father yogurt. ‘Twenty-seven crores each. All sold.’

  Twenty-seven crores each. Trying to make sense of how much money that was, Masterji thought of the ocean.

  ‘Twenty-seven crores,’ Gaurav said. ‘Twenty-seven.’

  Look at the boy, bleating his wife’s words. Masterji glared once again at the chikki in his son’s hand.

  The maid brought in a piece of barfi and six or seven fried banana chips and put them on the table in front of him. The portions were small. This was always the case when he came here; food merely tiptoed across his plate.

  ‘We have your mother’s one-year anniversary coming up in October, son. I spoke to Trivedi, he’s eager to perform the ceremony. The three of us will go to Bandra like last time. I hope you’ll join us this year, Sonal. And bring Ronak too.’

  He ate the banana chips one by one.

  Gaurav picked up the Radium packet and sniffed. ‘Father, this is a cheap thing, not good for the boy.’ He let it fall.

  Masterji got up and went to the balcony. Spotting Ronak playing down in the compound, he clapped. Without turning to his son, he said: ‘Not one of my gifts for Ronak is liked in this household. I give him a book, a wonderful blue book. The Illustrated History of Science. It was returned to me by his mother.’

  He clapped again.

  Sonal leaned back from the inner room to look at her husband. Answer, answer, his eyes urged her.

  Moving towards her father with another spoonful of yoghurt, she disappeared from sight.

  ‘Father, you always expected me to read books, even when I was a boy. You made me learn French. I am no good at these things. Mother told you this: I am not intellectual like you.’ Gaurav opened a new bar of peanut-chikki. ‘And, Father, the practice among Sindhis is to give gold when a child is born. Sonal once told you this, thinking that a south Indian like you might not know it. But you never gave Ronak any gold. One of Mother’s necklaces is still in the old place. A Vummidi necklace. In her almirah. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter.’

  After clapping once more – ‘Ronak, it’s me, come up!’ – Masterji returned to the room. He sat down in front of his son.

  ‘You’re too lazy to read, but it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t encourage Ronak. It is life’s greatest joy and power: the ability to learn. Remember what I used to tell you. Lord Elphinstone refused the governor-generalship so he could write his history of India.’

  Gaurav ate more chikki.

  Sonal, Sonal, please come out – he licked his thumbnail, thumb, index finger nail, index finger, and the webbing in between thumb and index finger. Come out before I get up and shout at the old man.

  But then the smell of sweat and sun entered the room; a wooden cricket bat dropped to the ground; and a boy was hoisted up into the air in his grandfather’s arms.

  In the kitchen Sonal did mathematics. ‘It’s 810 square feet, you say, Father-in-law? That would be… 1.62 crores. Let me double-check. 810 times 20,000. Yes, I think that’s right… 1,62,00,000.’

  She came out with a glass of pineapple juice on a tray.

  ‘Not for me, Sonal, too much sugar.’

  He offered the glass to Ronak, who sat next to him on the sofa, but the well-mann
ered child refused.

  ‘This Mr Shah had better pay on time, Father-in-law. If not, Gaurav has a connection at work who knows a good property lawyer. Once you sign the agreement, you can move in here,’ Sonal said. ‘Both our fathers will be with us.’

  ‘It might be a good idea,’ Masterji said. ‘To be close to Ronak.’

  His son reached for the bar of chikki, broke off a chunk, and began chewing again.

  Sonal smiled at her husband. ‘Of course, if Father-in-law doesn’t want to stay with us, he can always buy a one-bedroom flat in Vakola.’ She said it out loud: ‘One-six-two-zero-zero-zero-zero-zero!’

  Masterji, stroking his grandson’s wet hair, heard a gurgling noise from the inside room – as if even that brain-dead old man was excited. Senility for a banker, Masterji thought, must consist of lots of zeroes going round and round in his head.

  ‘Are you sure you won’t drink that pineapple juice before you leave?’ Sonal said. ‘Just a sip? Share it with your grandson?’

  The lift was broken, so he walked down the stairs.

  When he raised his leg, the stair dissolved, and he put it down into soft, wet black air. He held on to the solid banister to stop himself sliding. His arthritic left knee throbbed. O, Purnima, he prayed, Purnima. His blood sugar was sputtering like the engine of an old autorickshaw. O, Purnima.

  Explosions of glucose – comets and supernovae – lit up his private darkness; a bacchanalia had begun in his hyper-metabolizing cells.

  Holding on to the banister he lowered himself down on to the steps. He could hear Purnima yelling at him from the oceans of the other world. Why hadn’t he taken that diabetes test yet?

  Is it possible, he wondered, that Sonal gave me that pineapple juice precisely to make this happen? She kept insisting.

  Down below on the landing, a man in rags, one of the servants of Gaurav’s Society, slept with his arm over his face.

  Masterji touched the wall of his son’s Society. It did not remember Purnima or Sandhya. Soon he would be living within four walls like this.

  Striding over the sleeping servant, he walked on down, still wondering about Sonal and the pineapple juice.