Aravind Adiga - Last Man in Tower

A tall man in a white shirt and black trousers — salesman, Ram Khare assumed — stood in front of the booth and entered his details into the ledger. The visitor put his pen back in his pocket. ‘Can I go in now?’

Ram Khare moved a thumb from his holy digest to the visitors’ register.

‘You haven’t filled in this last column.’

The visitor smiled; an upper tooth was chipped. Clicking the ballpoint pen back to life he wrote in the column headed Person(s) to see :

Hon’ble Sec

Turning to his right upon entering the building, as directed by Ram Khare, the visitor walked into a small room with an open door, where a bald man sat at a desk, one finger of his left hand poised over a typewriter.

‘… no-tice… to… the… res-ee-den-ts… of Vi-shraaam…’

His other hand held a sandwich over a scalloped paper plate brightened by comets of mint chutney. He bit into the sandwich, then typed with one finger as he ate, breathing laboriously, and murmuring between breaths: ‘… sub-ject… Gen-ral… Wa-ter… May-n-tenanse…’

The visitor knocked on the door with the back of his hand.

‘Is there a place to rent here?’

The man with the sandwich, Mr Kothari, Secretary of Vishram Tower A, paused with a finger over the old Remington.

‘There is,’ he said. ‘Sit down.’

Ignoring the visitor, he continued typing, eating, and mumbling. There were three printed sheets on his desk, and he picked one up and read aloud: ‘… questionnaire from the Municipality. Have all the children in the Society received anti-polio drops? If so, kindly provide… if not, kindly…’

A small hammer sat near the typewriter. With the polio notice in one hand, the Secretary stood up with the hammer in the other hand and went to the noticeboard, whose glass face he opened. The visitor saw him pinning the notice into place with a nail, then driving the nail into the wooden board with three quick blows — tuck, tuck, tuck — before closing the glass. The hammer returned to its spot near the typewriter.

Back in his chair, the Secretary picked up the next piece of paper. ‘… complaint from Mrs Rego. Giant wasps are attacking… why am I paying monthly maintenance fees if the Society cannot hire the…’ He crushed it.

And then the final sheet. ‘… complaint from Mrs Rego. Ram Khare has been drinking again. He should be replaced with a sober, professional… Why am I paying monthly maintenance…’ He crushed it.

About to return to his typing, he remembered the visitor.

‘A place to buy, you said?’ he asked hopefully.

‘Rent.’

‘Good. What is your line of work?’

‘Chemicals.’

‘Good. Very good.’

Dark-skinned, tall, upright, in well-ironed Oxford-style shirt and pleated cotton trousers, the visitor gave the Secretary no reason to doubt that he was in a solid field like Drug & Chem.

‘Nothing is strictly speaking available now,’ the Secretary confessed, as the two men climbed the stairs. (‘Ninety-nine per cent of the time the lift works.’) ‘But, I can tell you, confidentially, that the owner of 3B is not fully happy with the present situation .’

An eczema of blue-skinned gods, bearded godmen, and haloed Christs covered the metal door of 3B — a testament to generations of ecumenical tenants who had each added a few icons of their own faith without removing those of any other — so that it was impossible to know if the present tenant was Hindu, Christian, or a member of a hybrid cult practised only in this building.

About to knock on the door, the Secretary checked himself — his fist was going to hit a sticker with the face of Jesus on it. Shifting his hand to find one of the few blank spots on the door, he knocked with care; after knocking again, he used his master key.

The cupboard doors had been left wide open; the floor an archipelago of newspapers and undergarments — the Secretary had to explain that 3B was currently rented to a most unsatisfactory single woman, a working journalist. The stranger looked at the peeling grey paint and the water-damage blotches on the wall; the Secretary got ready with the official line given to potential tenants — ‘in the monsoons the rainwater stains the walls, but does not reach the floor’. He got ready with official answers to all the usual tough questions — how many hours of water supply, how much noise from the planes at night, whether the electricity ‘tripped’.

Stepping over a variety of underwear, the stranger touched the wall, scratched on the flaking paint and sniffed. Turning to the Secretary, he took out a striped red notebook and wet a finger on his tongue.

‘I want a legal history of Towers A and B.’

‘A what?’

‘A summary of lawsuits filed, pending, or likely to arise in the future?’

‘There was a disagreement between the Abichandani brothers, true, over 1C. Solved out of court. We are not court-loving people here.’

‘ Very good. Are there any “peculiar situations”?’

‘Peculiar…?’

‘I mean: family disputes ongoing or pending, pagdi system dealings, illegal sub-rentings, transfers of property under the informal method?’

‘None of that happens here.’

‘Murders and suicides? Assaults? Any and all other things that may make for bad luck, karma, or negative energy in the Vastu sense?’

‘Look here.’ Secretary Kothari folded his arms on his chest. The stranger seemed to want to know the moral history of every doorknob, rivet and nail in the Society. ‘Are you from the police?’

The visitor looked up from his notepad, as if he were surprised.

‘We live in a dangerous time, do we not?’

‘Dangerous,’ the Secretary conceded. ‘Very.’

‘Terrorists. Bombs in trains. Explosions.’

The Secretary couldn’t argue.

‘Families are coming apart. Criminals taking over politics.’

‘I understand now. Can you repeat your questions?’

When he was gone, the Secretary, though eager to resume his typing, found himself too nervous. He refreshed each day’s labours with two ready-made sandwiches, purchased in the morning and stored in the drawers of his desk. Unwrapping the second sandwich, he nibbled on it ahead of schedule.

He thought of the visitor’s jagged upper tooth.

‘Fellow might not even be in chemicals. Might not even have a job.’

But the anxiety must have been merely digestive in nature, for he felt better with each bite he took.

The residents of Vishram Tower A, thanks to the ledger in the guard’s booth, knew the basic facts about the strangers who visited them, something that could not necessarily be said about the people they had lived with for twenty or thirty years.

Late in the morning Mr Kothari (4A), their Secretary, got on his Bajaj scooter and left on ‘business’. Early in the afternoon, while all the others were still working, he drove back, the rear-view mirror of his scooter reflecting a quadrilateral of sunlight on to his upper breast like a certificate of clear conscience. From his movements his neighbours had deduced the existence of a ‘business’ that did not require a man’s presence for more than two or three hours a day and yet somehow funded a respectable existence. That was all they knew about Mr Kothari’s life outside their gates. If they asked, even in a round-about way, how he had saved up enough to buy the Bajaj, he would reply, as if it were explanation: ‘Not a Mercedes-Benz, is it? Just a scooter.’

He was the laziest Secretary they had ever had, which made him the best Secretary they had ever had. Asked to resolve disputes, Kothari listened to both parties, nodding his head and scratching sympathetic notes on scrap paper. Your son plays music late at night disturbing the entire floor, true. Yet he’s a musician, true . When the disputants left his office, he threw the paper into the waste bin. Jesus be praised! Allah be praised! SiddhiVinayak be —! Etc. People were forced to adjust; temporary compromises congealed. And life went on.