Aravind Adiga - Last Man in Tower

So he is the son , Masterji thought. The possession of this fact — trivial, and irrelevant to his troubles — mysteriously filled him with strength. He put his hands on the arms of his chair and stood up.

‘Now wait here,’ the younger Parekh said, realizing that the bird was about to fly. ‘If you’re going to leave like this, what about our dues? What about all the photocopying we did for you?’

From behind him, Masterji heard the young man’s voice protesting: ‘Let’s stop him, Father — at once. Father, let’s run after him.’

The green bucket fell over as Masterji pulled his umbrella from it, and splattered his ankles with water.

Past the guards and their blind deity he walked, down the old stairs — past the pigeon, thrashing behind the blind lunette.

Purnima , he prayed, swoop down and lift me from the land of the living .

His wife answered him, as he ran out of the Loyola Trust Building, in an aroma of freshly fried potatoes.

He stopped at a fried-snacks shop.

In seconds a ball of batter-fried vada pav , bought for four rupees, was dissolving in Masterji’s gut. Oil, potato, cholesterol, trans-fats slowed the whirlpool in his stomach.

Wiping away the humiliating slick of grease on his lips, he found a grocery store where he could make calls from a yellow payphone wrapped in plastic. Gaurav would be at work now. The one place where that boy might be free of his wife’s influence. Umbrella under his arm, he called Vittal, in the school library, and asked for the phone number of Gaurav’s bank, the Canara Cooperative Society. With a second rupee, he called the bank and asked for Mr G. Murthy, junior branch manager.

‘It’s me. Your father. I’m calling from Bandra. Something very bad has just happened.’

There was silence.

‘What is it, Father? I’m at work.’

‘Can you speak now? It’s urgent, Gaurav. No, it’s a payphone. I’ll call back from this same number. Ten minutes.’

Telling the grocery store owner to keep the phone free for him, he ran over to the fried-snacks store, and bought another vada pav .

Munching on the batter-fried potatoes, he walked back to Parekh’s office: at the barber’s shop, he saw a familiar dark face reflected in one of the mirrors.

He turned and found a man in a crisp white shirt standing right outside the Loyola Trust Building.

He stared at Mr Shah’s left-hand man. The metal grilles of the building groaned as pigeons landed on them.

‘Mr Masterji…’ Shanmugham held out his hand. ‘Don’t do this to yourself. This is the last chance.’

Masterji shivered at the sight of that hand. Without a word he walked away from his ex-lawyer’s office.

‘Hire another lawyer,’ Gaurav said, when his father, calling him from the pay telephone, had explained everything. ‘There are thousands in the city.’

Masterji found his son’s voice changed, ready to listen.

‘No,’ he told Gaurav. ‘It won’t work. The law won’t work.’

He could hear the builder’s tongue vibrating within Parekh’s mucus. Just like the tuning fork he had used in class for an acoustics experiment. Corruption had become Physics; its precise frequency had been discovered by Mr Shah. If he engaged another lawyer, that thick tongue would fine tune him too.

‘My last hope is Noronha. At the Times . I’ve written letter after letter, and he won’t write back. If there’s some way to reach him, son…’

More silence. Then Gaurav said: ‘I have a connection at the Times . I’ll see if we can reach Noronha. In the meantime you go home and lock the door, Father. When my connection gets back to me, I’ll phone you.’

‘Gaurav,’ he said, his voice thickening with gratitude. ‘I’ll do that, Gaurav. I’ll go home and wait for your call.’

A cow had been tied up by the side of the fried-snacks store, a healthy animal with a black comet mark on its forehead. It had just been milked, and a bare-chested man in a dhoti was taking away a mildewed bucket inside which fresh milk looked like radioactive liquid. Squatting by the cow a woman in a saffron sari was squeezing gruel into balls. Next to her two children were being bathed by another woman. Half a village crammed into a crack in the pavement. The cow chewed on grass and jackfruit rinds. Round-bellied and big-eyed, aglow with health: it sucked in diesel and exhaust fumes, particulate matter and sulphur dioxide, and churned them in its four stomachs, creaming good milk out of bad air and bacterial water. Drawn by the magnetism of so much ruddy health, the old man put his finger to its shit-caked belly. The living organs of the animal vibrated into him, saying: all this power in me is power in you too.

I have done good to others. I was a teacher for thirty-four years.

The cow lifted her tail. Shit piled on the road. When they saw Masterji talking to the cow and telling her his woes, those who had been born in the city perhaps thought that he was a mad old man, but those who had come from the villages knew better: recognizing the piety in his act, the woman in the saffron sari got up. The two children followed her. Soon the cow’s forehead was covered with human palms.

Giri laid out dinner on the table. White rice, spinach curry, curried beans, and pappad , around a hilsa fish, grilled and chopped, mixed with salt and pepper, and served in a porcelain bowl. The fish’s head sat on top, its lips open, as if pleading for breath among its own body parts.

The hilsa made Shah’s mouth water. He walked around the dinner table in his Malabar Hill home with a piece of silk in his hand — a handkerchief that Rosie had bought him, one of those tiny portions of his own money that she returned to him, perfumed and gift-wrapped in damask. He rubbed it between his fingers.

He had been walking about the flat ever since Shanmugham had come back from the lawyer’s office, sweating with bad news.

Fresh breeze: he went up to the window. Down below, in the gutter outside his building, a man in rags scavenged for empty bottles.

Even down there, Shah saw wanting. That beggar with the gunny sack, if the story so far were told to him, would be appalled by this old teacher. A man who does not want: who has no secret spaces in his heart into which a little more cash can be stuffed, what kind of man is that?

‘I have seen every kind of negotiation tactic, Giri. I can classify them. Saying you’re ill. Blind. You miss your beloved dead dog Timmy or Tommy that lived in that flat. But I have never seen this tactic of simply saying “No”, permanently.’

‘Yes, Boss.’ Giri said. ‘Will you eat now?’

‘We are dealing with the most dangerous thing on earth, Giri. A weak man. A weak man who has found a place where he feels strong. He won’t leave Vishram. I understand now.’

Giri touched his master.

‘Sit. Or the hilsa will get cold, and what did Giri go to all this trouble for?’

Shah looked at the fish: and he had a vision of the old teacher, sliced and chopped the same way, salted and peppered, sitting on the dinner table. He shivered, and rubbed the silk again.

All Shanmugham had done so far was to send a boy with a hockey stick to speak to that old man — Mr Pinto. Nothing criminal in that. He had just been sending Vishram Society a gift from reality. He had assumed that would be enough, for a building full of older people. Social animals.

Now Shanmugham was waiting in the basement for instructions. He could see him standing by a car’s rear-view mirror or in the lift, practising his threats: ‘Old man, we have given you every chance, and now we are left with no…’

The silk grew warm in Shah’s fingers.