Aravind Adiga - Last Man in Tower

‘Just one suicide?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘I’ll manage.’

At the traffic lights before Malabar Hill, a headless cat lay on the road; from the neck up, it was just a smear of pink pulp imprinted with a tyre tread, an exclamation mark of blood. The builder’s heart went out to it. In a world of trucks and heavy traffic, the little cat had not been given a fair chance. But what about you, Dharmen , the pulverized animal asked. You’re next, aren’t you?

He lowered the window and spat at the corpse.

He dreamed of breakfast. Eight pieces of toast, sliced diagonally, piled into a porcelain dish; a jar of Kissan’s Mixed-Fruit Jam; a jar of Kissan’s Marmalade; a bottle of Heinz Tomato Ketchup; and, suspended in a lobed bowl of water to keep it soft, an iceberg of homemade butter.

The Mercedes drove up Malabar Hill; the ocean glinted to Shanmugham’s left.

As the driver adjusted his gears, they stalled outside an old ruined mansion. Fresh saplings had broken through the exquisitely carved stone leaves and flowers on the nineteenth-century cornice, and a sign hammered into the front wall said:

MUMBAI MUNICIPAL CORPORATION THIS BUILDING IS DANGEROUS, DILAPIDATED, AND UNFIT FOR HUMANS TO BE AROUND. NO ONE SHOULD ENTER IT.

As the car accelerated past, light from the ocean echoed through the ruined mansion.

Shanmugham saw four massive banyan trees growing in the compound of one grand building, their aerial roots clinging as if glued to the boundary wall: four escutcheons of the House of Shah.

The lift took them to the eighth floor.

‘We’ll go to the construction site right after breakfast,’ Shah told his assistant, as they walked towards his flat. ‘The contractor told me this morning that everything was all right and there was no need for me to be there. You know what that means.’

A medallion of a golden Lord Ganesha sat on the lintel above the builder’s home.

The door was open. Two black leather shoes had been left outside.

In the living room, a tableau as if from a stage comedy. In front of a giant bronze image of the Dancing Nataraja, Shah saw Giri, his housekeeper, alongside two men in khaki uniforms, one of whom sipped a glass of cold water. The other man in uniform had a hand on Satish, his son, and was admonishing the boy with his index finger, as if putting on a dumb show for his father’s sake.

The mucus in Shah’s chest rumbled.

‘Boss.’ Giri, who wore a tattered banian and blue lungi, came up to him. ‘He did it again. He was spray-painting cars outside the school; they caught him and brought him here. I told them to wait till you…’

The policeman who had his hand on Satish, appeared to be the senior of the two. He spoke. The other kept drinking his cold water.

‘First, we saw him doing this…’

The policeman made a circular motion to indicate the action of spraying. Shah listened. The fingers of his left hand rubbed the thick gold ring on the fingers of his right.

‘Then he did this . Then this . They finished painting the first car, and then they went to the next. It’s a gang, and each one of them has a gang-name. Your son’s name is Soda Pop.’

‘Soda Pop,’ Shah said.

The policeman who had been sipping water nodded. ‘… Pop.’

Plump, fair-skinned Satish exuded nonchalance, as if the matter concerned someone else.

‘Then Constable Hamid, sir’ — the policeman talking gestured to the one who was not — ‘he’s sitting in the police van, he said, isn’t that the developer Mr Shah’s son? And then, considering the excellent relations that our station has always had with you, sir, we thought…before it gets into the papers…’

The developer Mr Shah, having heard enough, wanted possession of the goods: with his fingers, he beckoned the boy. The policeman did not stop him; he strolled over to his father’s side.

‘His friends? Those other boys, who were doing this—’ Shah made the same circular motion. ‘What happens to them?’

‘They’ll all have to go to the police station. Their parents will have to come and release them. We’ll keep the names out of the papers. This time.’

Shah put his hand on his heart. ‘ So grateful.’

Giri went at once into his master’s study. A wooden drawer opened, then closed. Giri had done this before, and knew exactly how much to put in the envelope.

He handed it to Shah, who felt its weight, approved, and handed it to the policeman who had done the talking: ‘For some chai and cold drinks at your police station, my friend. I know it’s very hot these days.’

Though the envelope had been accepted, neither of the policemen had left. The talkative one said: ‘My daughter’s birthday is coming up, sir. It’ll be a nice weekend for me.’

‘I’ll send her a birthday cake from the Taj. They have a nice pastry shop. It’ll arrive soon.’

‘Sir…’ The quiet policeman spoke.

‘Yes?’

‘Well, my daughter’s birthday is coming up too.’

Giri saw the policemen out with a smile; Shah stood chafing the thick gold rings on his index finger. The moment Giri closed the door, Shah jabbed the ring into his son’s nose.

‘Soda Pop’ flinched, squeezed his eyes closed, and held his face averted, as if preserving the force of the jab.

Soda Pop trembled; if he could, every part of his body said, he would have launched himself at his father and killed him right then.

Giri took him away to his room. ‘Let’s wash up, Baba. We’ll go to your room and drink some warm milk. That’s what we’ll do.’

Returning to the living room, Giri found his employer and Shanmugham on either side of the Dancing Nataraja, examining the white thing that shared the wooden table on which the bronze statue stood: a plaster-of-Paris model of a building, which a peon from Mr Shah’s office had brought to the flat two days ago.

‘Will you go and speak to the boy now?’ Giri asked. ‘Say something nice.’

Shah ran his palm down the side of the plaster-of-Paris model.

‘Bring me a plate with some toast, Giri,’ he said. ‘At once. And some for Shanmugham, too.’

Giri glared at Shanmugham as he went to the kitchen; he did not approve of the presence of employees during meals.

Shah kept looking at the plaster-of-Paris model. His eyes went down to the inscription on its base:

CONFIDENCE SHANGHAI VAKOLA, SANTA CRUZ (E) SUPER LUXURY APARTMENTS ‘FROM MY FAMILY TO YOURS’

‘Look at it, Shanmugham,’ he said. ‘Just look at it. Won’t it be beautiful when it comes up?’

From the moment the car turned on to the bridge at Bandra, Shah had kept his eyes closed.

He felt his pulse quickening. His lungs became lighter. It was as if he had not coughed in years.

The Mercedes came to a halt; he heard someone opening the door for him.

‘Sir.’

He stepped out, holding Shanmugham’s hands. He had still not opened his eyes; he wanted to defer the pleasure for as long as possible.

He could already hear the two of them: the Confidence Excelsior and the Confidence Fountainhead. Rumbling, the way the boy had been inside his mother’s womb, in the last months before delivery.

He walked over truck tyre ruts, hardened and ridged like fossilized vertebrae. He felt crushed granite stones under his feet, which gave away to smooth sand, studded with fragments of brick. The noise grew around him.

Now he opened his eyes.

Cement mixers were churning like cannons aimed at the two buildings; women in colourful saris took troughs full of wet mortar up the floors of the Fountainhead. Further down the road, he saw the Excelsior, more skeletal, covered with nets and scaffoldings, ribs of dark wooden beams propping up each unbuilt floor.