Aravind Adiga - Last Man in Tower

‘Don’t hurt the poor worm, Ramu. Is it hurting you?’

Shaking his mother’s hands off him, he thrust his wooden stick back into the coiled-up earthworm, which squirmed under the pressure, but did not uncoil. Mrs Puri felt as if someone had poked a rod into her side.

‘Oy, oy, oy, my Ramu, it is Mahatma Gandhi’s birthday. What would he say if he saw you?’

He must have overheard someone talking in the stairwell or in the garden. He knew what had happened last night.

‘If Masterji doesn’t say yes, we won’t ever get our new home. Remember, Ramu, the wooden cupboard in that nice new building in Goregaon… the fresh smell, the sunlight on the wood?’

He did not turn around. She saw that he had cut the earthworm into two writhing pieces.

‘I promise: not one thing to upset Masterji after this. I promise. Don’t hurt the worm.’

But he would not turn.

‘Ramu. Are you fighting with your mother?’

Masterji, who had walked in through the gate, came towards the hibiscus plant. ‘Happy Gandhi Jayanti,’ he said to the woman who had applied excrement to his door only a few hours ago.

She said nothing.

The boy dropped his stick and came to him; the old teacher put his arms around his neighbour’s son and whispered: ‘Mustn’t fight with Mummy, Ramu. The deadline will end soon. After that your Mummy and I will be friends again.’

He left the two of them alone and went up to his flat.

Standing at the window of the living room, he was hoping to see some celebrations for Gandhi Jayanti. It was traditionally a big day at the Society. An old picture of Mahatma Gandhi kept inside the Secretary’s desk for such occasions would be placed over the guard’s booth. A black Sony three-in-one would play old film songs from Ibrahim Kudwa’s window.

His phone rang. It was Ms Meenakshi, his ex-neighbour. She was calling from her new home in Bandra.

The response to the story about him — the one her boyfriend had written — had been ‘fantastic!’ Would Masterji consider a follow-up? Would he keep a blog? Not a blong, a blog .

‘Thank you for your help, Ms Meenakshi, and give my regards to your boyfriend. But my answer remains no.’

He put the phone down. He went back to the window.

Another truck had stopped in front of Tower B; beds and tables had been brought down from the building and were being loaded on to it. The last residents were leaving. The remaining children of Tower B were playing cricket by the truck with the children of Tower A.

He closed his eyes: he imagined the living room full of his neighbours’ children again. Dirty cricket bats and bright young faces again.

‘Today we shall see how sound travels at different speeds in solids and in liquids’ — he stretched his legs — ‘right here in this room. And you, Mohammad Kudwa, make sure you don’t talk while the experiment is going on. No, I haven’t forgotten what you did last time…’

When he woke from his nap, the truck was gone.

The security grilles, removed from what used to be Vishram Tower B, had left rusty ghost-shadows around the windows and balconies, like eyebrows plucked in a painful ceremony. Pigeons flew in and out of the rooms, now no one’s rooms, just the spent cartridges of old dreams. Yellow tape criss-crossed the base of the building:

THE CONFIDENCE GROUP (HEADQUARTERS: PAREL) HAS TAKEN PHYSICAL POSSESSION OF THIS BUILDING MARKED FOR DEMOLITION

*

Holding the latest letter from Deepa in her fingers, re-creating her daughter’s face and voice from the texture of the paper, Mrs Pinto lay in bed. The stereophonic buzz of evening serials from TV sets on nearly every floor of the building penetrated her thoughts, as if they were long-wave messages from her daughter in America.

The door to the flat scraped open; she heard her husband’s slow footsteps.

‘Where were you gone so long?’ she shouted. ‘Leaving me alone here.’

Her husband sat down at the dining table, breathing noisily and pouring himself a glass from a jug of filtered water.

‘The deadline has almost passed, Shelley. I really thought he would say yes in the end, Shelley. I really did.’

She spoke softly.

‘What will that Confidence Man do to him now, Mr Pinto?’

‘Anything could happen. These are not Christian men. These builders.’

‘Then you must save Masterji, Mr Pinto. You owe it to him.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘The number of times you cheated him, Mr Pinto. You owe him.’

‘Shelley Pinto.’ Her husband sat up on his side of the bed. ‘Shelley Pinto.’

‘In the No-Argument book. When you were an accountant at the Britannia Biscuit Company you cheated people at work. I think you cheated Masterji too.’

‘This is a lie, Shelley. How dare you speak to your husband like this?’

‘I have been your wife for thirty-six years. That one time you and Masterji went to Lucky Biryani in Bandra. You came back very happy that night and I thought: He must have cheated Masterji again . Didn’t you change numbers in the No-Argument the way you changed numbers at the Britannia Biscuit Company?’

She heard a creaking of springs; she was alone in the bedroom. Mr Pinto had turned on the television set.

She went to the sofa and sat by him.

‘We don’t have to save him, Mr Pinto. The others will do it. We just have to keep quiet.’

‘ What are they going to do?’

She motioned for him to increase the volume of the television.

‘Sangeeta and Renuka Kothari came today and said, if all of us agree to do something — a simple thing — would you and Mr Pinto agree?’

‘What is this simple thing, Shelley?’

‘I don’t know, Mr Pinto. I told them not to tell us.’

‘But when is it happening?’

‘I told them not to tell me anything . Now turn the television down a bit.’

‘What did you say?’

‘Turn the TV down.’

‘I like it loud,’ Mr Pinto said. ‘You go into the garden.’

Treading on ‘the Diamond’, Mrs Pinto went down the stairs.

She thought of 1.4 crore rupees of Mr Shah’s money: the figure was part of the dark world around her. She went down two more steps. Now she thought of 100,000 dollars, sent to Tony, and another 100,000 dollars, sent to Deepa: her eyes filled with light, and the wall glowed like a plane of beaten gold.

When she had descended another flight of steps, her foot struck something warm and living. It did not smell like a dog.

‘Stop prodding me with your foot.’

‘Why are you sitting on the steps, Kothari?’ she asked.

‘My wife won’t let me watch television, Mrs Pinto. Renuka has cut the cable connection. My wife of thirty-one years. Without TV, what is a home?’

She sat a step above him.

‘What a strange situation. But you can watch in our house.’

‘My wife of thirty-one years. Yet she does this. See what is happening to our Society.’

‘If I may ask, Mr Kothari… why has she cut your cable connection?’

‘Because I won’t do the simple thing. The one she and the others want to do to Masterji. Do you know what the simple thing is?’

‘They did not tell me what it was. I thought it was your idea.’

‘Mine? Oh, no. It was Ajwani’s.’

The Secretary tried to remember: was it Ajwani’s idea? It didn’t matter: like one of those wasps’ nests that sometimes grew on the walls of the Society, the idea of the “simple thing” had materialized out of nowhere, swelling in size in hours, until every household in Vishram seemed to have become one of its cells. All of them wanted it done now. Even his own wife.

‘This simple thing… will it hurt Masterji?’