Aravind Adiga - Last Man in Tower

A dirty business, construction, and he had come up through its dirtiest part. Redevelopment. If you enjoy fish, you have to swallow a few bones. He made no apology for what he had had to do to get here. But this was not how the Shanghai was meant to happen: not after he had offered 19,000 rupees a square foot for an old, old building.

The hot silk handkerchief fell to the floor.

Hanging above the writing desk in his study was Rosie’s gift, the framed three-part black-and-white poster of the Eiffel Tower being raised into place. Placing all his fingers on the polished mahogany table Shah saw, as if through a periscope, the rabbit-warren of cash networks that ran beneath it: he spied into the deepest, most secret paths through which the Confidence Group moved its money and followed the flipping serial numbers of accounts in the Channel Islands and in the Maldives. He was master of things seen and things unseen. Buildings rising above the earth and concourses of money running below it.

And why had he built these things above and below the earth?

Now everyone believed India was going to be a rich country. He had known it ten years ago. Had planned for the future. Skip out of slum redevelopment. Start building glossy skyscrapers, shopping malls, maybe one day an entire suburb, like the Hiranandanis in Powai. Leave something behind, a new name, the Confidence Group, founder Dharmen Vrijesh Shah, a first-wife’s son from Krishnapur.

And some stupid old teacher was going to get in the way? One of the neighbours had told Shanmugham that Masterji’s son had contacted her. He had told her that his father planned on going to the Times of India the next day. To say that the Confidence Group was threatening him.

The builder slapped both palms against his skull. Of all the good housing societies in Vakola, of all the societies dying to receive such an offer, why had he picked this one?

Fate, chance, destiny, luck, horoscopes. A man had his will power, but there were dark powers operating all around him. So he sought protection in astrology. His mother had died when he was a boy. Wasn’t he marked out for bad luck from the start? The first wife’s son. Krishnapur, he smelled its cow shit in his nostrils. He had rebelled against it, but it was still there, the village mud, village fatalism.

He could not leave Vishram now. He would lose face in Vakola. J. J. Chacko would take out advertisements up and down the highway mocking him.

And that meant there was only one thing to do with this old man. Only one thing could make the Shanghai happen.

Shah thought of the chopped hilsa .

In the old days, if a builder had a problem, that problem would end up in pieces in the wet concrete: it became part of the building it had tried to obstruct. A bit of calcium was good for the foundations. But those days were gone: the lawless days of the 1980s and ’90s. Vishram was a middle-class building. The man was a teacher. If he died suddenly, there would be an immediate suspect. The police would come to Malabar Hill and press his doorbell the next morning.

On the other hand, the palms of the policemen had been well greased. He might get away with it if the job were done well: scientifically, no fingerprints left behind. His reputation in Vakola would certainly improve: deep down, everyone admires violence. It was a risk, a big risk, but he might get away with it. He bent down and picked up the silk cloth.

As it became warm again between his fingers, he heard snoring.

The door to his son’s room was ajar. Satish’s thick legs were curled together on the bed. Shah closed the door behind him and sat down by his son’s side.

Seeing his son like this, a breathing thing amidst warm dishevelled sheets, Shah thought of the woman with whom he had made this new life.

Rukmini. He had never seen her before the wedding day; she had been sent by bus from Krishnapur after he refused to return for the marriage. They had been wed right here in the city. He admired her courage: she had adapted to the big city in a matter of hours. The evening of the wedding, she was fighting with the grocery store man over the price of white sugar. After all these years, Shah smiled at the memory. For thirteen years she had kept his house, raised his son, and supervised his kitchen while he shouted at his colleagues and left-hand men in the living room or on the phone. She seemed to have no more of an opinion about construction than he did about cooking. Then one evening — he could not remember what she had overheard — she came to the bedroom, turned off his Kishore Kumar music, and said: ‘If you keep threatening other people and their children, one day something might happen to your own child.’ Then she turned the music on and left the room. The only time she had ever commented on his work.

Shah touched the dark body on the dishevelled bed. He felt the boy’s future like a fever. Drugs, alcohol. Jail time. A spiral of trouble. All because of his karma.

He felt he had tripped over something ancestral and half buried, like a pot of gold in the backyard: a sense of shame.

‘Master’ — it was Giri, silhouetted in the blinding light through the open door. ‘The hilsa .’

‘Throw it out. And close the door, Giri, Satish is sleeping.’

‘Master. Shanmugham… has come upstairs. He asks if you have anything to say to him.’

His wife’s almirah was open, the fragrance of her wedding sari and the old balls of camphor filled the bedroom air.

Masterji sat like a yogi on the floor.

Mrs Puri was shouting at her husband next door; the Secretary was pounding his heavy feet above his head. Then he heard feet from all around the building heading for the door below him. They were speaking to the Pintos. He heard voices rising, and then Mr Pinto saying, ‘All right. All right. But leave us alone then.’

A few minutes later, the doorbell rang.

When he opened the door, a small thin woman stood outside with a red notebook. A blue rubber band had been tied twice around it.

‘Mr Pinto gave this to his maid to give you, Masterji.’

‘So why are you giving it to me, Mary?’

Mary looked at her feet. ‘Because she didn’t want to give it to you herself.’

Masterji took the red book and removed the rubber band. The No-Argument book had been returned to him, with a yellow Post-it note on its cover, All debts settled and accounts closed .

‘Don’t be angry with Mr Pinto,’ Mary whispered. ‘They forced him to do it. Mrs Puri and the others.’

Masterji nodded. ‘I don’t blame him. He is frightened.’

He did not know whether to look at Mary. In all these years, he had not exchanged, except on matters directly related to her work, even a dozen words with the cleaning woman of his Society.

She smiled. ‘But you don’t worry, Masterji. God will protect us. They’re trying to throw me out of my home too. I live by the nullah .’

Masterji looked at Mary’s hands, which were covered in welts. He remembered a boy in school whose mother was a scavenger. Her hands were scored with rat-bites and long scratches.

How could they throw a poor woman like this out of her hut? How many were being forced out of their homes — what was being done to this city in the name of progress?

Closing the door behind Mary, he leaned forward and pressed his forehead against the cool wood: ‘Must not get angry. Purnima would not want it.’

The phone began ringing. Though he was waiting for Gaurav’s call, he approached the phone as he had recently learned to, with trepidation.

He picked up the receiver and brought it to his ear. He breathed out in relief.

Gaurav.

‘Good news, Father. I got through to Noronha. My connection put me through. I explained the situation: the threats, the phone calls, the attack on Mr Pinto—’