Aravind Adiga - Last Man in Tower

She went back and explained to Ramu: that wasn’t their friendly stray dog. No, it was another dog that looked a bit like theirs. Ramu brightened. His mother promised that they would see their yellow dog in the morning, eating channa from the bowl. Promise.

She was tucking him into bed with the Friendly Duck when the Secretary knocked on the door.

‘Double lock your door tonight, Mrs Puri,’ he said.

She came to the door and whispered: ‘Is it really going to happen? The simple thing ?’

Kothari said nothing; he handed her a small plastic bag full of cotton wool, and went down the stairs. Mrs Puri stood in the stairwell, listening as he knocked on the Pintos’ door.

‘Double-lock your door tonight, Mr Pinto.’

‘We lock them every night.’

‘Lock it extra tight tonight. Wear cotton in your ears if you have any. You don’t? Then take some of this. It’s in the bag. Wear it at night. Do you understand?’

‘No.’

‘Try. It is a simple thing, Mr Pinto.’

She heard Kothari’s footsteps go down another flight of stairs, and then his voice saying: ‘Double-lock your door tonight, Mrs Rego.’

Just as he was turning from Mrs Saldanha’s door, the Secretary saw Mary, standing near his office. She was staring at him.

‘What do you want?’ he asked.

‘I clean your office every evening at this time,’ she said. ‘I was going to get the broom.’ And then she added: ‘I didn’t hear anything.’

‘Clean the office tomorrow, Mary. You may take the rest of the day off.’

She stood there.

‘Mary’ — the Secretary lowered his voice — ‘when the Shanghai comes up, they’ll hire you. I’ll make sure that they do. They’ll give you a uniform. Good pay. I’ll make sure. Do you understand?’

She nodded.

‘Now go home,’ Kothari said. ‘Enjoy the evening with your son.’

He watched until she went out of the gate and turned left towards the slums.

There was now a night-time silence in Vishram such as they had not heard in decades; the deserted Tower B with the yellow Marked for Demolition tape around it seemed to secrete stillness. The Pintos, as they lay in bed, could hear once again the roar of the planes going over Vakola.

‘There,’ Mr Pinto whispered.

‘Yes,’ Mrs Pinto whispered. ‘I heard it too.’

Masterji was back in his room. He was washing his face in the basin.

‘Maybe nothing will happen tonight,’ Mrs Pinto whispered.

‘Go to sleep, Shelley.’

‘He has stopped walking. He’s gone to bed,’ she said. She strained her ears.

‘But someone’s walking above him.’

A little after midnight, the Secretary woke up.

He had dreamed that he was standing before a panel of four judges. They wore the expected black robes and white wigs of the judiciary, but each had the face of a flamingo. The senior judge, who was larger than the others, wore a shawl of golden fur. The face of this flamingo-judge was so terrible that the Secretary could not look at it; hoping for sympathy, he turned to the lesser judges. All three were reading aloud, but all he could hear was one word, repeated endlessly, Bye-law, Bye-law . The senior judge, adjusting his wig, said: ‘Human beings are only human individually: when they get together they turn…’ His three junior colleagues were already tittering. ‘… birdy .’ The three laughed together in high-pitched cackles. Then the senior flamingo adjusted his golden shawl, for he was a vain judge, and spoke in a deep voice, which the Secretary recognized as his father’s:

‘Now for the verdict on Ashvin Kothari, Secretary, Vishram Society Tower A, incorporated in the city of Mumbai, who made a duplicate of a key entrusted to his care to facilitate a break-in into his own Society, and that too on the holy day of Gandhi Jayanti. In accordance with the law of the land, and to avoid giving offence, the verdict of this panel shall be read in English, Marathi, Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi, Gujarati…’

Kothari opened his eyes. He turned on his lamp so he could see the clock. His wife, lying next to him, began to grumble.

In the dark Kothari walked over the carpet in his living room. Holding his comb-over in place, he lowered himself on to the sofa.

No one should point a finger at him . Ajwani had arranged for the ‘simple thing’.

Yet he wanted to scream for help, or run to the police station near the highway and tell the fat constable Karlekar everything, before something terrible happened in the night, and they woke to find Masterji with his legs broken, or worse, much worse…

His wife snored from the bed. Getting down on his knees, Kothari put his ear to the carpet and listened. All he could hear was the sound of his own voice, whispering:

‘Do as you will, evil king:

I, for my part, know right from wrong…’

A little after two o’clock, the Pintos heard Masterji’s door open again.

It was like the way you hear someone making love in another home, their bed creaking and their sighing, and you’re trying hard to shut it out of your ears. They wanted not to hear.

Something was walking upstairs. Two somethings.

‘The boys are here.’

‘Yes.’

The two old bodies moved in bed, following the footsteps; a flurry of steps, and then a little cry of pain: bone had hit table.

‘The teakwood table.’

‘Yes. Oh, no.’

This was followed by more shuffling; the table fell over; a scream.

‘Thieves!’

No one stirred. No one moved. The two Pintos joined hands. Everyone in the building, prostrate in the same way, must have heard the cry. The Pintos could feel the warming of hearts in every listening bedroom — the same ‘At last.’

Then there was a muffled wrestling — and then there was the sound of swatting, as if someone was hitting at a rat running around the room. Then — piercing the night — not a human cry, but the howling of an animal.

The Rubik’s Cube saved him.

One of the boys stepped on it, slipped, and hit his knee against the teakwood table, which toppled over.

Masterji awoke.

He had grabbed the blue Illustrated History of Science at once — had some secret part of him been waiting for this, rehearsing this moment? — and rushed out of his bedroom; before they had even seen him he had hit the first one on the head with the book. Screaming — Thieves! — and with a strength that he would not be able to reproduce in daylight, he had shoved one of the boys — who, staggering back, had hit the other one, who fell by the phone. The Illustrated History of Science went up high and then came down on the skull of the boy, who howled. It was by now a rout, and the two hooligans rushed out through the open door, where one tripped and tumbled down the stairs; by which time they were in a frenzy just to survive, realizing they had been sent to bully and threaten not a helpless old man, as they had been told, but a live ogre. They ran into the compound and leapt over the gate.

Masterji pushed the sofa against the door, to barricade it against a second attack. Purnima, he chanted, Purnima. He moved the chair against the sofa.

Then it seemed to him that this was the wrong thing to have done. He had to be able to run in and out if there was another attack, and the door should be open. He moved the sofa and the chair back to their places.

He let the water run into a pot; he turned on the gas, and brought water to a boil. He would pour it on their heads when they came back. On his knees, he examined the gas cylinder. Perhaps he could explode it in their faces?

Purnima , he thought, Purnima . He tried to summon his wife’s face but no image came into his mind: he could not remember what she looked like. Gaurav, he called, Gaurav, but he could not remember his face, either… he saw only darkness, and then, emerging from that darkness, people, men of various races, standing in white shirts, close together. He recognized them: they were the commuters on the suburban train.