Aravind Adiga - Last Man in Tower

He imagined he could hear similar noises from all the rooms of his Society: all of them were jabbing fists and lancing kicks to gouge him out of Vishram.

Now he heard the Secretary’s footsteps from above. He was sure they were louder than they had been for the past twenty-five years.

He did not want to get up; did not want to walk down the stairs and read the new notices they had posted about him.

If, in the early days of the ‘boycott’, there was an apologetic smile on the Secretary’s lips when he evaded Masterji’s attempts to make small talk, now there were neither smiles nor apologies.

They treat me like they would treat an untouchable in the old days , he thought: even at the thought of his shadow falling on them, his neighbours cringed and withdrew.

Degree by degree, they were turning their faces from him, until, as he passed the parliament, he confronted a row of turned backs.

If, in defiance, he sat among them, they got up and left. The moment he went up the stairs, they would regather. Then the taunts began. Always directed at him, never at the Pintos.

‘… if only Purnima were alive, wouldn’t she be ashamed of him?’

‘… his own son. A man who does not care for his own son, what do you…’

So this is what they mean by the word: boycott . Even in his bed he felt it, their contempt, like the heat radiating from a brick wall on a summer night.

He went down to the bottom of the stairwell. Through the octagonal stars of the grille, he saw Ajwani, pacing about the compound, talking on his mobile phone — to a client, no doubt.

I could never do that , Masterji thought: negotiate. Use the ‘personal touch’ . He had none of the small-bored implements of personality that other men did; no good at charm and fake smile, he never bartered or traded in the normal human way. Which is why he had only two real friends. And for the sake of those two friends he was rejecting a windfall. Not so long ago they had called him an English gentleman for doing this. These very people.

He struck the grille with his fist.

It was a ‘top-up’ day; he looked at the round water stains on the ceiling of his living room and saw asteroids and white dwarves. In the cursive mildew he read E = mc 2.

He straightened out the books in his cabinet (where had all the Agatha Christies vanished?), dusted the teakwood table, tried to limit his use of the Rubik’s Cube by hiding it on a shelf of his wife’s cupboard, and drew the blinds and lay in bed.

He closed his eyes.

He did not see her until too late. The old fish-seller had a leathery face, cunning with wrinkles, and she walked with a basket on her head. Closer and closer she came towards him, grinning all the time: and just as she passed him he saw that a large wet tail was poking out of her basket.

He awoke to find his face and arms smelling like fish. He swatted the pillows off his bed and got up.

I’ve slept during the day , he thought. Around him the living room trembled, like a cage from which light had just sprung out. It was thirty-five minutes past four.

To expunge the sin of afternoon indolence, his first lapse since childhood, he washed his face in cold water three times, slapped his cheeks, and decided to walk all the way to the train station and back.

Tinku Kothari, the Secretary’s son, dressed in a crumpled school uniform, stood outside his door. Masterji paused with the key in his hand.

‘They’re calling you.’

‘Who?’

The fat boy went down the stairs. Still holding the key in his palm, Masterji followed the boy through the gates of Vishram; every now and then, Tinku would turn around, like a dark finger that was summoning him. Masterji thought he smelled more and more strongly of fish’s tail. He followed the boy to Ibrahim Kudwa’s cyber-café.

Tinku ran in and shouted: ‘Uncle! He’s here!’

Arjun, the Christianized assistant, had climbed up to the glass lunette above the doorway of the café to fix a loose rivet with a screwdriver. From up there he looked down, monkey-like, on the fat boy who had run into the café. How all creatures , Masterji thought, watching Arjun, have their niche in this world. Just two weeks ago I was like him. I had somewhere to perch among the windows and grilles of Vishram.

A Mercedes was parked not far from the doorway of the internet café.

Kudwa came to the doorway. Ajwani stood by his side; he knew the two had just been talking about him. Now, Ajwani and Kudwa seemed to say with their eyes, they could — if he entered the café, if he accepted the logic of the boycott — give him back his place in the hierarchy of Vishram Society. Ajwani, a natural-born middle-man, could broker the deal: at a rate of so much rage forsaken, of so much pride swallowed, he would be readmitted into the common life of his Society.

‘Mr Shah has sent his car for you; he is waiting in his Malabar Hill home. You have nothing to fear. He admires teachers.’

Masterji could barely ask: ‘What is all this about?’

‘I’ve been asked to bring you to Mr Shah’s house. We will drop you back to Vishram, Masterji. The driver is right here.’

Tinku Kothari, standing on the threshold of the café, watched Masterji.

‘Is there a bathroom in there?’ he asked — he could still smell the dream-fish on his moustache and fingertips.

‘Arjun has a toilet in the back,’ Kudwa said. ‘It’s not very clean, but…’ Monkey-like Arjun, from the lunette, indicated with his screwdriver the way.

He was standing before the toilet bowl when the engine of the Mercedes came to life, and once that noise started, he simply could not urinate.

Everything in the moving car was sumptuous — the air-conditioned air, the soft cushions, the floral fragrance — and all of it added to Masterji’s discomfort.

He sat in the back, his arms between his knees.

Ajwani, seated by the driver, turned every few minutes, and smiled.

‘Is everything okay back there?’

‘Why would it not be?’

He was sure he reeked of fish, all the way from his moustache-tips to his fingertips, and this shamed and weakened him. He closed his eyes and settled back for the long ride into the city.

‘Why is there no traffic today?’ he heard Ajwani asking. ‘Is it a holiday?’

‘No, sir. We’re almost alone on the roads.’

‘I know that: but why?’

Some time passed, and then he heard Ajwani say: ‘There really is no traffic. I don’t understand.’

Masterji opened his eyes: as if by magic, they were already at the foot of Malabar Hill.

Resplendent in his circle of fire, his foot pressing down on the demon of ignorance, the bronze Nataraja stood on the table in the living room. The plaster-of-Paris model of the Shanghai sat at the god’s feet, in ambiguous relationship, of either deference or challenge, to his power.

In a corner of the room, far from the gaze of the bronze Nataraja statue, Shanmugham opened the glass panels of his employer’s drinks cabinet. Three rows of clean crystal glasses filled the wooden shelves above the cabinet.

All the pots and pans in the kitchen shook in a bout of metallic nervousness: Giri was hacking at something with a cleaver.

Shanmugham closed the cabinet door.

His phone rang. It was Ajwani: they had reached the building.

‘But Mr Shah has just left,’ Shanmugham said. ‘He’s gone to his boy’s school for a meeting. You’re not supposed to be here for an other hour.’

‘There was no traffic. I’ve never seen a thing like it. Should we go up and down Malabar Hill? Stop at Hanging Gardens?’

‘No. Come in, and wait here for Mr Shah. I’ll text him that you’re early.’