Aravind Adiga - Last Man in Tower

‘I know Shah has seen Mrs Rego,’ he whispered. A teenager in the slum, one of his connections down there, had seen a Mercedes driving down to the Institute. The next morning wrappers from a very expensive seafood restaurant at Juhu had been discovered in her rubbish.

‘How do you know what is in her rubbish?’ Mrs Puri asked.

Ajwani grinned; the gill-like lines on his cheeks deepened.

‘Do you want to fight over small things, Mrs Puri? I know I am the black sheep of this Society. I do things you good people will not do. But now you must listen to the black sheep, or all of us will lose the money.’ He whispered, ‘Mrs Rego was offered a small sweetener. By Mr Shah. That is my guess.’

‘A small sweetener?’ Mrs Puri turned the words upside-down as if they were a pair of suspect jeans. ‘You mean extra money? Why only her? Are you getting one, Ajwani?’

The broker threw up his hands in frustration.

‘I won’t even ask for one. If everyone wants a small sweetener, no one will get the cake. On my own personal initiative, I am convincing the Opposition Party, one by one. Why? Because I take responsibility.’

Mrs Puri closed Ramu’s bedroom door. She whispered, indicating to Ajwani the appropriate decibel level for a home with a growing child. ‘ You took responsibility for Mrs Rego? Then why hasn’t she agreed?’

Ajwani winced.

‘A man can’t put pressure on a woman beyond a certain point. A man can’t.’

‘So that’s why you came here,’ Mrs Puri said. ‘ I am not going to speak to that Communist woman.’

‘Mrs Puri…’ The broker joined his hands in prayer. ‘… this old fighting, this old pettiness — they have to end. This is why we have never gone anywhere in this country.’

Telling Ajwani to watch over Ramu while he slept — the Friendly Duck nearby, in case he woke up — Mrs Puri limped down the stairs, breathing stertorously as she transferred her weight from foot to foot. No one answered the bell at 1B. She pressed a second time.

‘It’s open,’ a voice said from within.

She found the Battleship at the dining table, staring at the wall.

‘What is wrong, Mrs Rego?’

‘It’s on the wall. Do you see it?’

It was the first time Mrs Puri had been inside the Battleship’s home.

She saw framed posters in Hindi and English, and three large black-and-white photographs, one of which she recognized as that of President Nelson Mandela.

‘Ramaabai usually handles them when they come inside the house. I can’t do anything until someone kills them for me.’ Mrs Rego pointed a finger.

Now Mrs Puri saw it. Above President Mandela.

Thick and curvy as something squeezed out of a tube, pistachio in colour, the lizard was moving towards the fluorescent tube-light, where the flies had gathered.

A fellow like this one Mrs Puri had never seen: a monarch of his species. Seizing a dragonfly hovering near the tube-light he tossed back his head; the translucent wings glowed golden against the tube-light and then disappeared into crunching jaws. His engorged body went inside the tube-light, a grey form making precise black marks where the feet pressed on the illuminated cylinder.

‘ This is the problem?’ she asked.

Mrs Rego nodded.

Mrs Puri went into the kitchen, removed the gold bangles from her forearms, and put them on a newspaper on the table. She looked for a chair that would help her reach the tube-light.

She saw, above the fridge, a poster of a human being formed entirely by hands and feet clasping each other, with the slogan:

NONE OF US IS AS STRONG AS ALL OF US VOTE IN EVERY ELECTION IT IS YOUR RIGHT AND DUTY

Mrs Puri shook her head. Even the kitchen was Communist.

Searching for a weapon, she settled on the Yellow Pages lying on the microwave oven. She climbed on to a chair by the dining table. Tapping a corner of the Yellow Pages against the tube-light, she drew the monster out, tap by tap.

Mrs Rego had withdrawn into the kitchen for safety.

‘Are you killing it?’ she shouted from there.

‘No, I’m throwing it out.’

‘Its tail will fall off! You must kill it!’

The tail had indeed fallen off. Mrs Puri caught the body of the wriggling lizard, went outside, and dropped it down the wall of the Society. She came back for the tail.

‘Over,’ she said, walking into the kitchen to wash her hands.

She held out her arm with the fingers bunched together. Mrs Rego picked up the bangles from the newspaper and slid them one by one over her neighbour’s wrist, until the forearm was again sheathed in gold.

‘Why are you so scared of them? My husband draws them to amuse Ramu. Spiders, too.’

‘You know he stole all my gold coins,’ Mrs Rego said, as she slid the final bangle on to Mrs Puri’s forearm.

‘Who? The lizard?’

‘Sovereigns. George V sovereigns. Half-sovereigns. This fat. All gone.’ Mrs Rego smiled. ‘The man from whom I take my last name.’

‘I never met him, Mrs Rego.’

‘He is a thief. He made me a poor woman. Did I ever tell you that my father was one of the richest men in Bandra?’

‘Many times.’ Mrs Puri gave the bangles a shake to settle them down her arm.

‘It’s true. We had the best of everything. Catherine and me. Yet we fought over everything. For dinner our father would serve us biryani. Mutton. We fought so much, you’re getting more, I’m getting less, he decided to weigh each portion of biryani on a scale before he served us. That way neither would “trump” the other. Catherine was light-skinned; each time we stood in front of a mirror she trumped me. When she married that Jewish man, and I married a pucca Catholic, I thought I had trumped her for good. But now… she still lives in Bandra. Her husband is well known. And she has a Sony PlayStation in her flat. I have to take my children there so they can play with it.’

Mrs Puri gave her left hand another shake. ‘You have your work.’

‘Who am I, Arundhati Roy? Just a woman in Vakola sending letters to foreigners asking for money. Once in a blue moon I help someone in the slums. Mostly I just sit and watch as this city is ruined by developers.’

A new Heinz ketchup bottle stood on the Regos’ table, but the empty one, which it superseded, had not yet been thrown out. Mrs Puri placed the new bottle adjacent to the empty one. ‘This is what we want in life,’ she said, pointing to the new bottle. ‘And this is what we get.’ Mrs Rego laughed.

‘I’ve admired your way with words all these years, Mrs Puri. Even when we fought.’

‘In college you should have seen my short stories, my poems.’ Mrs Puri swiped her hand over her head, to indicate past glories. ‘I could’ve been a writer, anything I wanted. We have all had to accept other lives.’

‘The Confidence builder gave me a bribe, Mrs Puri. To accept the offer.’

Mrs Puri nodded. ‘I know. Ajwani told me.’

‘How does Ajwani know?’

‘He knows all kinds of things. He’s like one of these lizards, going up every wall.’ Mrs Puri came closer to Mrs Rego to say: ‘He is a dirty man.’

‘Dirty?’

‘He goes to unclean women. In the city. I know it for a fact. My husband once saw him near Falkland Road.’

Mrs Rego, about to ask what Mr Puri had been doing near Falkland Road, suppressed her question.

‘Money is nothing to me,’ Mrs Puri said. ‘When I’m hungry I butter a loaf of bread and eat. But Ramu I have to think of. And Sunil and Sarah you have to think of. Even the poor live better than we do. When you drive on a high road over the slums, you see satellite TV dishes like lotus leaves on a pond. You’ve thought about the poor for years. Now think about your children. I know what I want to do with my money. Take care of Ramu. Buy a home in Goregaon. Do you know what I want to do with the rest? A clinic for injured dogs. This city is full of disfigured animals.’