Manu Joseph - Serious Men

Later in the evening, as Acharya was dozing somewhere near the lawn, Ayyan knelt beside him and said, ‘Sir, do you want some office space?’

Acharya opened his eyes and looked confused.

‘Do you want an office, Sir?’ Ayyan asked again.

Acharya followed him. They went down to the basement. The stark white walls and the hum of subterranean machines brought back to Acharya the memories of nocturnal love. Somehow it was always night here. It felt like night. He saw in his mind the face of Oparna, and the way she used to look at him. He remembered the way she used to sit, her melancholic smoking, and her insolence that seemed then to be the right of every naked woman. He felt a nervous anticipation in his stomach as if she would appear at the end of the walk, waiting for him on the cold floor in the fragrance of lemon.

The board that said ‘Astrobiology’ was still there, but the lab door was locked. Ayyan took out a key from his pocket.

‘How do you have the key?’ Acharya asked in a whisper because he was still in the fragile delusion that Oparna was inside and that this dark man was an accomplice of love.

‘Keys are easy to find, Sir,’ Ayyan said. He opened the door and switched on the lights.

‘You’re going to get into trouble for this,’ Acharya said.

‘Yes,’ Ayyan said.

‘Why are you doing this, Ayyan? Jana is a very mean man. He is the practical sort.’

‘So am I,’ Ayyan said.

Acharya looked around the lab for the memories of a girl. But there was no life here. The air had no smell. The equipment on the main desk was shrouded in its covering. The chairs were in a perpetual wait. The phone was still there, on the same wooden stool. Everything was as he remembered. Like the abandoned rooms of the dead.

Ayyan turned on the computer and inspected the air-conditioning vents. ‘There is internet,’ he said. He held the phone receiver to his ear. ‘This is still working. I’ll give you a number you can call if you need anything.’ And he left.

Acharya sank to the floor holding a knee. He leaned his back on the wall and stretched his legs. In the desolation of the lab, he saw the face of Oparna and heard her say this and that. And he remembered a love so light, like the sack of that eloping girl from another time whom he had seen as a boy from the footbridge over the railway tracks. He wondered how the life of that girl had turned out. Maybe she lived happily with her man and recounted her elopement to her grandchildren with delirious exaggerations. He would confirm all her lies, if she so wished.

IT WAS TRUE that Administration had the mystery of God in the Institute, but very few realized that on the second floor there was, in fact, a board that said ‘Administration’. The mystical department was a maze of wooden partitions where laypeople looked soberly at their computer screens, silently sustaining the pursuit of truth in the higher floors. At one end of the room, the maze became more intricate and the cubicles became smaller and numerous. This was the Accounts Department which Ayyan Mani always remembered for the striking ugliness of its women, and the old bonds of friendship he shared with its mostly Malayalee men.

He saw Unny at the end of a narrow way that ran between the cubicles. He was kicking the base of an enormous printer.

‘The great man comes to the abode of the poor,’ Unny said, throwing a glance at Ayyan. He kicked the printer one more time. ‘One day, someone will make a printer that works,’ he said. ‘A lot of paper is jammed inside.’

Ayyan kicked the printer a few times.

‘Forget it,’ Unny said. ‘How is the boy genius?’

‘He is all right. Now he wants to know if underwear is important in life,’ Ayyan said.

‘That’s strange, even my son asked me that. Come, let’s go to my desk.’

‘I’m in a hurry,’ Ayyan said. ‘Your Malayalee chief wants something urgently.’

‘Who? Nambodri? What does he want?’

‘He said he wants some copies from the payment files of Aryabhata Tutorials. Do you know what that means?’

Unny nodded and went to an open steel shelf that was stuffed with files. As he was searching, he asked, ‘Adi is studying hard for the test?’

Ayyan did not show his impatience, but he wanted to finish the job quickly, and as discreetly as possible.

Unny screamed to someone across the room, ‘Where is the Aryabhata file?’ That made Ayyan nervous. He looked around the room for any suspicious faces. ‘It’s in the petty cash shelf,’ a woman’s voice said.

Unny went to the adjacent shelf, muttering how disorganized the place was.

‘Tell me, Ayyan,’ he said, standing on a stool and tapping the spines of files with his index finger. ‘How did Adi become so bright? Do you feed him something we don’t know about?’

‘He was born a bit strange,’ Ayyan said.

‘There it is,’ Unny yelped, and pulled out a thin file. He went through it with a confused expression and handed it to his friend. ‘I’ve always wondered what exactly is this Aryabhata Tutorials,’ Unny said.

‘Only God knows what it is,’ Ayyan said, trying to look as if he had no interest in the file, but his hands were trembling.

‘It is a separate company owned by the Institute,’ Unny said. ‘Why would the Institute own a tutorial? And where is this place? What does this tutorial do? I don’t understand. I’ve not seen a single board in the city that says Aryabhata Tutorials. I don’t know a single student who goes there. It’s very strange, you know.’

Ayyan leafed through the file. His heart was pounding, but he tried to look relaxed, even bored. He photocopied three bills and gave the file back.

Unny went through the file again and shook his head. ‘These last twenty years, Aryabhata Tutorials has made payments only to printers. Nothing else. It only makes payments and it pays only printers. It does not earn.’

‘God knows what these guys do,’ Ayyan said. ‘I never understood them anyway. I will see you in the canteen soon?’

Ayyan went to his desk and collected the late courier mail and the faxes, opened the inner door and walked in. As usual, the astronomers were sitting on the sofas by the window. Some of them stared unpleasantly at him. Eyes followed him as he went to Nambodri’s vacant table in the far corner. Normally, they did not register his presence but that had changed after their last encounter. He pretended to sort the courier mail and the faxes on Nambodri’s desk. His left hand slowly reached for the small gap between the table top and drawer compartment where he usually left his mobile phone. He put the phone in his pocket and walked out.

He went down the corridor of the third floor and as he walked he took out the copies of the three bills he had made in the Accounts Department. He dialled the number on the first bill. A woman’s voice came on the line. Ayyan said, ‘I am calling from Aryabhata Tutorials. I want to know when we can expect the consignment?’

The woman’s voice asked, ‘You said you are from Aryabhata Tutorials?’

‘Yes.’

‘Hold on,’ she said.

A man’s voice came on the line. ‘Who is speaking?’

‘Murthy,’ Ayyan said.

‘Which job are you talking about?’

‘There was only one.’

‘But the sample papers were sent a month ago,’ the man’s voice said with concern.

Ayyan disconnected the line and called the second number, and then the third. The other two printers too said that the consignments had been dispatched a month ago. Ayyan had feared this. He was too late.

The question-paper of the Institute’s Joint Entrance Test was a jewel and it was guarded not through the frailties of a written code, nor the dangerous inconsistencies of loyalty, but by the force of tradition. Its annual creation was a highly secretive process known to very few. Ayyan was not supposed to be among those few. He had learnt its rudiments over the years, listening carefully to the walls and piecing together bits of information.