Aravind Adiga - Last Man in Tower

Masterji understood: this must be Mr Pinto’s way of apologizing.

As his rickshaw fought its way to Bandra through the Khar subway, Masterji thought: I wonder how Ramu is doing, poor boy .

For maximum chance of winning favour from the red elephant-god, the temple of SiddhiVinayak must be visited, the devout believe, on foot: the farther from the temple you live, the longer your journey, the greater the accumulation of virtue.

The Puris had so often talked about walking to SiddhiVinayak in the past eighteen years that some of their neighbours believed they had done so, and Mr Ganguly had even asked Mrs Puri for advice on how to make the trip.

These things catch up with you, for the gods are not blind.

Mrs Puri calculated the trip from Vakola to Prabhadevi would take them about four hours. Everything depended on Ramu. If things became really bad they would have to make him pee or shit on the road, like some street urchin. But he had to come along: that was the sacrifice she was going to make to Lord Ganesha. Not enough that she and her husband should ache from the walk. God would see that she was even prepared to make her son suffer: the thing she had fought for eighteen years to prevent.

They walked down the highway into the city. The sky brightened. Streaks of red ran through an orange dawn, as if the skin had been peeled from heaven. A man inside a tea stall struck a match; a blue flame ignited above his portable gas cylinder.

Every few minutes, Ramu whispered into his mother’s ear.

‘Be brave, my boy. The temple is just around the corner.’

If he stopped, she pinched him. If he stopped again, she let him rest a minute or two, and — ‘Oy, oy, oy!’ — they were off.

Two hours later, somewhere beyond Mahim, they sat down at a roadside tea stall. Mrs Puri poured tea into a saucer for the boy. Ramu, high on caffeine, lost in his delirium of fatigue and pain, began to rave until his mother patted his head and soothed him with her voice.

Two municipal workers began sweeping the pavement behind the Puris. Their faces filled with dust; they were too tired to sneeze.

Mrs Puri closed her eyes. She thought of the Lord Ganesha at the temple in SiddhiVinayak and prayed: We said we were going to temples but we went to see new homes. We were afraid of the Evil Eye but we forgot about you. And you punished us by placing a stone in everyone’s path. Now move the stone, which only you, God, with your elephant’s strength, can do.

‘Ramu, Ramu,’ she said, shaking her son awake. ‘It’s only an other hour from here. Get up.’

When the clock struck five, Shelley Pinto was in bed, her purblind eyes staring at the ceiling.

She heard her husband at the dinner table, scribbling away with paper and pencil, as he used to when he was an accountant.

‘Is something worrying you, Mr Pinto?’ she asked.

‘After I said goodbye to Masterji, I saw a fight in the market, Shelley. Mary’s father was drunk, and he had said something. One of the vendors hit him, Shelley. In the face. You could hear the sound of bone crushing into bone.’

‘Poor Mary.’

‘It’s a horrible thing to be hit, isn’t it, Shelley. A horrible thing.’ He spoke to himself in a low voice, until his wife said:

‘What are you whispering there, Mr Pinto?’

He said: ‘How many square feet is our place, Shelley? Have you ever calculated?’

‘Mr Pinto. Why do you ask?’

‘I have to calculate, Shelley. I was an accountant. It gets into the blood.’

‘I’ll be blind in another building, Mr Pinto. I have eyes all around Vishram Society.’

‘I know, Shelley. I know. I’m just calculating. Is that a sin? I just want to turn into US dollars. Just to see how much it would be.’

‘But Mr Shah is paying us in rupees. We can’t send it in dollars.’

When they had gone to America in 1989, Mr Pinto had acquired, on the black market, a small stash of US dollars from a man in Nariman Point. The government in those days did not allow Indians to convert rupees into dollars without its permission, so Mr Pinto had made her swear not to tell anyone. The dollars proved to be redundant, for the children took care of them in Michigan and Buffalo. On the return stopover in Dubai, they exchanged their original dollar stash, plus the gifts of American money Deepa and Tony had forced on them, for two 24-carat gold biscuits, one of which Mr Pinto smuggled into India in his coat pocket while a trembling Shelley Pinto carried the other in her purse past a customs officer.

That was her abiding memory of the word ‘dollar’. Something that turned into gold.

‘Oh, all that’s changed, Shelley. All that has changed.’

Mr Pinto sat by her bedside and explained. It was all there on the Reserve Bank of India’s website. He had been to Ibrahim Kudwa’s cyber-café a few days ago and had navigated the site with Ibrahim’s kind help.

‘If it is a gift, we can only send out 10,000 dollars per annum. But if it is investment, we can send 100,000 dollars. And soon they may increase the limit to 200,000 dollars each year. It’s perfectly legal.’

The darkness that enveloped Mrs Pinto grew larger. They, from India, would now have to send the children, in America, money?

‘Will Tony have to come back?’

‘He has a Green Card. Don’t be stupid, Shelley. Their children are citizens.’

‘But he has no money?’

‘Things are difficult over there. Deepa may lose her job. I didn’t want to frighten you.’

‘Everything is so expensive in the States. Don’t you remember how much the sandwiches cost? Why did they leave Bombay?’

‘Just tell me how many square feet this place is, woman. Let me worry about things.’

‘812 square feet,’ she said. ‘We had it measured once.’

Mr Pinto sat at the dinner table again and rubbed his pale hands together: ‘I feel young again, Shelley.’ She wondered if he was asking for a resumption in their relations, which had ceased some twenty-seven years ago, but no, of course not, all he meant was this: he was being an accountant again.

‘It would be so simple, Shelley. Two-thirds of the money we send in dollars to the children, and with the rest we buy a small flat right here in Vakola. Nina could come and cook there too.’

‘How can you talk like this, Mr Pinto?’ she said. ‘If Masterji says no, we must say no.’

‘I’m just cal-cu-la- ting , Shelley. He is my friend. Of thirty-two years. I will never betray him for US dollars.’

Mr Pinto walked around the living room, and said: ‘Let us go for our evening walk, Shelley. Exercise is good for the lower organs.’

‘Masterji warned us not to leave the building while he was gone.’

‘I am here to protect you. Don’t you trust your own husband? Masterji is not God. We are going down.’

With her husband behind her, Mrs Pinto descended the steps. Just before she reached the ground floor, something bumped into her side — she knew, from the smell of Johnson’s Baby Powder, who it was.

‘Rajeev!’ Mr Pinto called after Ajwani’s son. ‘This is not a zoo, run slowly.’

‘Don’t fight with anyone today, Mr Pinto,’ she said. ‘Let’s be quiet and stay out of trouble.’

Holding on to each other, they walked out of the darkened entranceway into the sunlight. Mrs Kudwa, seated on the prime chair in parliament, talking to Mrs Saldanha at her kitchen window, was silent as they passed.

The guard was in his booth, keeping a watch on the compound.

Mr Pinto coughed. Smoke billowed in from over the compound wall; gathering the stray leaves from the Society, Mary had set fire to them in the gutter outside. Suspended in a dark cloud, the hibiscus flowers had turned a more passionate red.