Aravind Adiga - Last Man in Tower

Suddenly, someone began to scream from the stairwell.

‘A simple thing, wasn’t it?’ Mrs Puri said.

All of them looked up at the roof: Masterji was up there, hands clasped behind his back, walking round and round.

A few hours earlier, he had been standing at his window: in the garden he saw Mary’s green hosepipe lying in coils around the hibiscus plants.

Things, which had seemed so simple that evening at Crawford Market, had now become so confusing.

Something rattled against the wall of the kitchen: Purnima’s old calendar.

Masterji searched among the crumpled clothes by the washing machine, picked a shirt that was still fresh-smelling and changed into it.

Out in the market, Shankar Trivedi was enjoying, in between the chicken coop and the sugarcane-crushing machine, the second of his daily shaves. His face was richly lathered around his black moustache. He held on to a glowing cigarette in his right hand, as the barber unmasked him with precise flicks of his open blade.

‘Trivedi, it’s me.’

The priest’s eye moved towards the voice.

‘I’ve been trying to find you for days. It’s tomorrow. Purnima’s anniversary.’

The priest nodded, and took a puff of his cigarette.

Masterji waited. The barber oiled, massaged, and curled the priest’s luxuriant moustache. He slapped talcum powder on the back of Trivedi’s neck — gave a final thwack of his barber’s towel — and discharged his customer from the blue chair.

‘Trivedi, didn’t you hear me? My wife’s death anniversary is tomorrow.’

‘… heard you… heard you…’

The freshly shaved priest, now a confluence of pleasing odours, took a long pull on his cigarette.

‘Don’t raise your voice now, Masterji.’

‘Will you come to my home tomorrow — in the morning?’

‘No, Masterji. I can’t.’

Trivedi drew on his cigarette three times, and threw it down.

‘But… you said you would do it… I haven’t spoken to anyone else because you…’

The priest patted fragrant talcum powder from his right shoulder.

The moral evolution of an entire neighbourhood seemed compressed into that gesture. Masterji understood. Trivedi and the others had realized their own property rates would rise — the brokers must have said 20 per cent each year if the Shanghai’s glass façade came up. Maybe even 25 per cent. And at once their thirty-year-old ties to a science teacher had meant no more to Trivedi and the others than talcum powder on their shoulders.

‘I taught your sons. Three of them.’

Trivedi reached for Masterji’s hand, but the old teacher stepped back.

‘Masterji. Don’t misunderstand. It’s easy to rush to conclusions, but…’

‘Who was the first man to say the earth went around the sun? Anaxagoras. Not in the textbook but I taught them.’

‘When your daughter died, I performed the last rites. Did I or did I not, Masterji?’

‘Just tell me if you will perform my wife’s one-year ritual, Trivedi.’

The baby-faced barber, resting his chin on the blue chair, had been watching the entertainment. Trivedi now addressed his appeal to him.

‘Tell him, everyone in Vakola knows that he is under so much mental stress. I am frightened to do anything in his place. Who knows what might happen to me in there?’

‘Mental stress?’

‘Masterji: you are losing weight, your clothes are not clean, you talk to yourself. Ask anyone .’

‘What about those who smeared excrement on my door? What about those who are paying thugs to attack me? Those who call themselves my neighbours. If I am under stress, what are they under?’

‘Masterji, Masterji.’ Trivedi turned again to the barber for some support. ‘No one has attacked you. People worry about your stability when you say things like this. Sell 3A. Get rid of it. It is killing you. It is killing all of us.’

I should have told my story better , Masterji thought, on his way back to Vishram Society. Ajwani and the others have convinced them I am losing my mind .

He saw Mary’s drunken father, silver buttons twinkling on his red shirt, lying in the gutter by Hibiscus Society like something inedible spat out by the neighbourhood.

The first honest man I have seen all day , Masterji thought, looking down at the gutter with a smile.

He took a step towards the gutter, and stopped. He remembered that there was a better place to escape to.

When he got back to Vishram, he walked on the roof, turning in circles, wanting to be as far above them all as possible.

Mani, Ajwani’s assistant, knew that his boss did not want to be disturbed. Standing outside the glass door of the Renaissance Real-Estate Agency, he had seen Mrs Puri and the broker talking to each other for over half an hour. Something big was going on in there; he had been given charge of keeping Mrs Puri’s Ramu occupied outside the office.

On the other hand, it was a girl.

He pushed open the glass door and put his head in.

‘Sir…’

‘Mani, didn’t you hear what I said?’ Ajwani winced.

Mani just stepped aside, to let the boss see what had turned up.

Ajwani’s frown became a pretty smile.

Though today she wore a black salwar kameez, it was the same woman who had come dressed in that sky-blue sari the day Shanmugham had delivered the details of Mr Shah’s proposal.

‘Ms Swathi. Sit down, sit down. This is my neighbour, Mrs Puri.’

The girl was almost in tears.

‘I came looking for you earlier, sir. I have to speak to you now, it’s urgent.’

‘Yes?’ The broker leaned forward, his hands folded. Mrs Puri sighed.

She had almost convinced Ajwani, and then this happens.

The girl reminded the broker. He had helped her find a place in Hibiscus Society. She was supposed to move in today. He remembered, he remembered.

There had been a lift in the Hibiscus building when she had visited with him, but when she had gone there today, the lift was not working. It would not be repaired for three months, the landlord said. ‘How will my parents go up the stairs, Mr Ajwani? Mother had a hip replacement last year.’

Ajwani retreated into his chair. He pointed a finger behind his head.

‘I told you to worship Information, Ms Swathi. You should have asked about the lift back then. The landlord is within his rights to keep the deposit if you cancel the lease.’

She began to sob.

‘But we need that money, or how will we go looking for another place?’

Ajwani made a gesture of futility.

‘I suppose you’re also going to bring up the matter of the broker’s fee that you gave me.’

She nodded.

‘Sixteen thousand rupees. Like the landlord, I have every legal right to keep it.’

Ajwani’s foot left its chappal, and opened the lowest drawer of the desk. He leaned down and brought up a bundle of cash, from which he counted off 500-rupee notes. Mrs Puri stared.

The broker counted them again, moistening his right index finger on his tongue thirty-two times; then pushed the bundle of notes across the table.

‘I’ll phone the landlord. Go home, Ms Swathi. Call me tomorrow, around four o’clock.’

The girl looked at him, through her sobs, with surprise.

‘A rare thing in this modern age, Ms Swathi. The way you take care of your parents.’

Mrs Puri waited till the girl had left, and said: ‘This is why you never became rich, Ajwani. You waste your money. You should have kept the 16,000 rupees.’

The broker rubbed his metal and plastic rings. ‘Women I did well with, in life. Money, never.’

‘Then become rich now, Ajwani. Be like Mr Shah for once in your life. What you did today with a pole, do again tomorrow on the terrace.’