Aravind Adiga - Last Man in Tower

‘How Christian of you, Mrs Puri.’

‘I know you don’t like builders. Don’t do it for Mr Shah. Do it for your children. When small people like us compromise, it is the same as when big people refuse to compromise. The world becomes a better place.’

Mrs Puri needed another half an hour. Then the two women embraced; Mrs Puri saw, through a veil of sincere tears, a shining wooden cupboard full of Ramu’s fresh, fragrant clothes. She closed her eyes in happiness. The harder she cried, the bigger the cupboard grew.

If anyone’s getting a small sweetener , she thought, eyes closed, patting her friend’s back, it’s me and Ramu .

*

In 2A, Vishram Society, Mrs Pinto and her husband held hands across their dining table.

Masterji cracked his knuckles. He was on the sofa.

‘So what if Mrs Rego has changed her mind? There are three of us, and that is enough. In Rome they had this triumvirate. Caesar, Crassus, Pompey. We’ll be like that. The Vakola Triumvirate.’

‘Do you want the money, Masterji?’ Mr Pinto asked. ‘If you want it, Shelley and I will agree. We don’t want to hold you back.’

‘What a thing for you to ask, Mr Pinto. What a thing for you to…’

‘Like a lemon being squeezed. That is how they feel with every passing day,’ Mr Pinto said, thinking of what Ajwani had told him in parliament the previous evening. ‘Yesterday Mrs Saldanha smiled at me when I walked out of the gate. But she didn’t smile when I came back. In those five minutes she must have heard the ticking of the deadline clock.’

‘I haven’t noticed anything changing,’ Masterji said. ‘Our neighbours are solid people.’

‘We’ll give in to Mr Shah for your sake, Masterji. Won’t we, Shelley?’

Masterji felt things shifting beneath his feet, as if he were standing by the waves at Juhu beach. But I’m doing it for their sake , he thought.

He looked at Mr Pinto’s old face staring into Shelley’s old face; he saw their osteoarthritic fingers knitted together on the table. They don’t want to be thought of as the people who are holding everyone else up .

His gaze moved to the dining table with the red-and-white cloth, where he had eaten his meals since his wife’s death.

‘I do not want to take Mr Shah’s offer,’ he said. ‘I have lived in Vishram Society with my friends and I wish to die here with them. As there is nothing more to say, I will see you at dinner.’

In the crepuscular light of the stairwell he examined the old walls of his Society: the dim yellow paint, nicks, blotches, and rain-stains.

Now it seemed to him that Mr Pinto was right. They had been changing for some time. His neighbours. When Ajwani met him in the street, he would turn away and pretend to be on his mobile phone. Masterji touched a fresh white indentation in the wall. The Secretary. Here the change was more subtle: the laugh-lines around the snowy eyebrows spread wider with each smile.

Purnima’s function in life had been to restrain him; and now this dim stairwell forced him into self-reflection, as if her spirit had been reincarnated here. You’re doing it again , she said. Imagining the worst in humans . He stood in the stairwell, scooping out dirt from the wet octagonal stars of the grille.

Half an hour later, the pink orthopaedic bandage fastened around his knee to ease the tension in it, he was on his bed turning the Rubik’s Cube when two sets of knuckles knocked on his door: one rhythm insistent, the other unctuous.

‘I’m coming, Sangeeta. And don’t knock so loudly, Ajwani.’

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.’