Aravind Adiga - Last Man in Tower

‘Fellow,’ Shah said. ‘Take this.’

‘What’s this for?’ The boy did not touch the banknote the stranger offered.

‘Because I feel like it.’

The boy shook his head.

‘Then take it for keeping your horse in good shape. I like looking at beautiful things.’

Now the boy took the hundred-rupee note.

‘Where are you from, son?’

‘Madhya Pradesh.’

‘How long in Mumbai?’

‘Two months. Three months.’

‘You shouldn’t spend all your time talking to the horse. You should look around you, at people. Rich people. Successful people. You should always be thinking, what does he have that I don’t have? That way you go up in life. You understand me?’

Stroking the side of the horse, Shah left.

The horse-keeper was still examining his windfall when Shanmugham swooped down on him.

‘Give that to me,’ he said. The boy shook his head and pressed his face into his horse’s neck.

‘The Sahib meant to give you a ten-rupee note. He gives money and then he changes his mind; he’ll send someone down to take you to the police.’

The boy considered this, found it believable, and surrendered the gift. Shanmugham exchanged it for a ten-rupee note; then he leapt up the rocks with the spring of a man who has just become ninety rupees richer.

What do you want?

In the continuous market that runs right through southern Mumbai, under banyan trees, on pavements, beneath the arcades of the Gothic buildings, in which food, pirated books, perfumes, wristwatches, meditation beads and software are sold, one question is repeated, to tourists and locals, in Hindi or in English: What do you want? As you walk down the blue-tarpaulin-covered souk of the Colaba Causeway, pass the pirateers at the feet of the magical beasts which form the pillars of the Zoroastrian temple in Fort, someone will demand, at every turn: What do you want? Anything can be obtained; whether it is Indian or foreign; object or human; if you have no money, perhaps you will have something else with which to trade.

Only a man must want something ; for everyone who lives here knows that the islands will shake, and the mortar of the city will dissolve, and Bombay will turn again into seven small stones glistening in the Arabian Sea, if it ever forgets to ask the question: What do you want?

Lunch at the Pintos’ was served, as usual, at fifteen minutes past one o’clock. Nina went around the dining table, ladling out steaming prawn curry over plates of white rice. As Masterji settled into his chair, Mr Pinto asked: ‘Is anything wrong with your phone?’

Masterji, about to stab a prawn with his fork, looked up.

‘Why do you ask?’

‘No reason,’ Mr Pinto said, as he mixed curry into his rice.

Sometime before two o’clock, Masterji said goodbye to the Pintos. The moment he opened the door of his flat, the phone rang.

‘Yes?’

A few minutes later, it rang again.

‘Who is it?’

As soon as he put his phone down, he heard the phone ringing in the Pintos’ living room. Then his rang again, and the moment he picked it up it went dead and the Pintos’ was ringing again.

The door of the Pintos’ flat was open. They were sitting side by side on the sofa, and Nina, their maid, stood next to them, protectively.

‘It’s just the children,’ Masterji said, standing by the door with his arms folded. ‘It must be Tinku or Mohammad. At school there was a boy who stuck notes on the backs of teachers. Tall boy. Rashid. Kick Me. I Love Girls . I caught him, and he got two weeks’ suspension. The maximum penalty, short of expulsion.’

‘I wonder why God made old age at all,’ Mrs Pinto said. ‘Your eyes are cloudy, your body is weak. The world becomes a ball of fear.’

‘We’re the Vakola triumvirate, Mrs Pinto. Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus. No one can make us budge.’ Masterji refused a glass of cold water that Nina offered. ‘I’ll go down and speak to Kothari.’

‘Someone rings and hangs up the phone,’ he explained to the Secretary, who sat in his office, reading the real-estate pages of the Times of India . ‘I think it’s someone inside the building.’

The Secretary turned the page.

‘Why?’

‘Because the moment I enter my room, they start calling. And when I leave, they stop calling. So they know where I am.’

The Secretary folded his newspaper. He patted his comb-over into place and leaned back in his chair, exhaling a breath of curried potatoes and onions.

‘Masterji’ — he burped — ‘do you know, another person died in a building collapse on Tuesday?’

Kothari grinned; the lynx-whiskers spread around his slitted eyes.

‘I forget the name of the place now. Someone in that slum near the ocean… that wall near their slum collapsed when the rains… it was in the papers…’

‘Are you the one making the phone calls, Kothari?’ Masterji asked. ‘Are you the one threatening us?’

‘See?’ Kothari said, gesturing helplessly to a phantom audience in his office. ‘See? For 2,000 years we’ve played this game, this man and I, and now he asks if this is a threat. And then he hears phone calls. And soon he’ll see men with knives and hockey sticks coming after him.’

Back in the Pintos’ flat, they talked it over.

‘Maybe it is just in our minds,’ Mr Pinto said. ‘Maybe Kothari is right.’

‘When in doubt, make an experiment,’ Masterji said. ‘Let’s put the phone back on the hook.’

When no one had called for an hour, Masterji walked up to his room. As he turned the key in his door, the phone rang. The moment he picked it up, it went dead.

*

At midnight, he went down the stairs and knocked on the Pintos’ door. Mr Pinto opened it, went to the sofa, and held his wife’s hands.

‘I heard it,’ Masterji said.

The Pintos’ children in America did sometimes miscalculate the time difference and call late at night; but the phone had rung four times without being picked up. Now it began to ring again.

‘Don’t touch it,’ Mr Pinto warned. ‘They are speaking to us now.’

Masterji picked up the receiver.

‘Old man, is that you?’ It was a high-pitched, taunting voice.

‘Who is this calling?’

‘I have a lesson for you, old man: if you don’t leave the flat, there will be trouble for you.’

‘Who is this? Who told you to call? Are you Mr Shah’s man?’

‘There will be trouble for you and for your friends. So leave. Take the money and sign the paper.’

‘I won’t leave, so don’t call.’

‘If you don’t leave — we’ll play with your wife.’

‘What?’

‘We’ll take her down to the bushes behind the building and play with her.’

Masterji let out a laugh.

‘You’ll play with a handful of ashes?’

Silence.

‘It’s the other one who has a—’ A voice in the background.

The phone went dead. Within a minute it rang again.

‘Don’t pick it up, please,’ Shelley said.

He picked it up.

‘Old man: old man.’

This time it was another voice: lower, gruffer. Masterji was sure he had heard this voice somewhere.

‘Act your age, old man. Grow up. Take the money and leave before something bad happens.’

‘Who is this? I know your voice. You tell your Mr Shah…’

‘If anything bad happens, you alone are responsible. You alone.’

Masterji slammed down the phone. He walked up the stairs to Mrs Puri’s door and knocked; when there was no response, he banged. She opened the door, with bleary eyes, as if she had been sleeping.

‘What is this about, Masterji?’

‘The phone calls. They just called us again. They’re threatening us now.’