Aravind Adiga - Last Man in Tower

‘… boys, a promise is a promise, I know, but I just can’t go today. I will take you to the beach, and all of us will have sugarcane juice there. In the meantime I hope all of you have been staying out of trouble and…’

‘Aunty, no trip to the beach and a lecture? That’s not fair, is it?’

‘I am sorry, Vikram. I will take all of you one day.’

The cricket game continued after Mrs Rego left. One of the boys chased the ball into the temple courtyard.

‘Masterji,’ he said. ‘I’m Mary’s son. Timothy.’

Taking the old teacher by the hand he brought him out to show the other boys. At once, two of them ran away.

‘What happened?’ Masterji asked.

‘Oh, that Kumar, he’s a strange boy. Dharmendar too.’

Timothy smiled.

‘Will you take us to the beach, Masterji? Mrs Rego Aunty was supposed to take us.’

‘Why do you want to go to the beach?’

‘Why do you think? To play cricket there.’

‘So go on your own.’

‘Well, someone has to pay for bus fare. And sugarcane juice afterwards, Masterji.’

‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Maybe I’ll take you there one of these days. If you can answer this question: why are there tides at the beach?’

‘No reason.’

‘There is a reason for everything.’ Masterji pointed to the boy who had been bowling at Timothy. ‘What is your name?’

‘Vijay.’

‘Do you know the reason, Vijay?’

He picked up a red stone, went to the wall of the Tamil temple, and drew a circle above the demon’s wide-open mouth.

‘This is the earth. Our planet. In infinite space.’

Masterji saw shadows on the wall — he felt sweat and heat nearby — he realized that they had all gathered behind him.

‘Our earth is that small?’ someone asked.

About to reply, Masterji stopped and said: ‘I can start a school here. An evening school.’

‘Evening school?’ Timothy asked. ‘For who ?’

The boys looked at one another; Masterji looked at them and smiled, as if the answer were obvious.

The sun had slipped in between two skyscrapers on Malabar Hill; the nearer of the buildings had become a flickering silhouette, a thing alternately of dark and light, like the lowest visible slab of a ghat descending into a river.

Ajwani sat on the sea wall of Marine Drive, looking at the tetrapod rocks below him and the waves washing around them.

He had been thinking for over an hour, ever since he had come down here from Falkland Road. It all made sense to him now. So this was why Shah paid Tower B ahead of time. To get everyone at Vishram desperate. This was why he did nothing when the story ran in the newspaper. He wanted them to do it.

‘And making Shanmugham tell me his life’s story,’ Ajwani said, aloud, surprising a young Japanese man who had sat down by his side to take photographs of the city.

Ajwani thought about the details of Mr Shah’s story. Now it seemed to him that something was wrong with the information. If Shah had come to Mumbai with only twelve rupees and eighty paise, and no shoes on his feet, how did he manage to open a grocery store in Kalbadevi? There was a father in the village — he must have sent him money. Men do have a sense of responsibility to their first wife’s sons. Ajwani struck his forehead with his palm. These self-made millionaires always hide a part of the story. The truth was as obvious as the ocean.

‘It’s been cat and mouse. From the start.’

And the cat had always been Dharmen Shah.

I’m trapped , Ajwani thought, as he walked on the ocean wall towards Churchgate station. Mrs Puri and the Secretary were waiting for him. He, more than anyone else, had moved his nothing Society to this point. He could not fail them now. He looked down and thought if only he could live there, by the crabs, among the rocks by the breaking water.

Inside the station, Ajwani paid five rupees for a white plastic cup of instant coffee. His stomach needed help. All that industrial smoke from the metallurgical shops. Sipping the coffee, he walked to his platform; the Borivali local was about to depart.

Now he had industrial smoke and instant coffee in his stomach. He felt worse with each shake and jerk of the train.

He cursed his luck. Of all the things to pick up from Falkland Road — all the horrible names he had worried about for all these years — gonorrhoea, syphilis, prostatitis, Aids — he had to pick this up: a conscience.

‘You are at the Kala Paani ,’ he told himself. ‘You have to cross it. Have to be one of those who get things done in life.’

A fellow passenger was staring at him. Lizard-like, stout, thick-browed, massively lipped, the man clutched a small leather bag in his powerful forearms: his eyes bulged as they focused on Ajwani.

The lizard-man yawned.

When he shut his mouth, he had taken on the face of the man aging director of the Confidence Group. In a moment the train compartment was full of Shahs.

‘Fresh air, please. Fresh…’ Ajwani moved through the crowd to the open door of the moving train. ‘Please please let me breathe.’

Migrants had squatted on the wasteland at the edge of the tracks; they had turned it into a vegetable patch, seeding and watering it. Ajwani held on to the rod in the open door of the train. Behind the little green fields he could see the blue tents they lived in. The sight was chastening; his stomach wanted to call out to them.

He began to vomit on to the tracks.

The lights were coming on in the market as the Secretary scraped his shoes on the coir mat outside the Renaissance Real-Estate office.

‘Come in, sir,’ Mani had said. Ajwani had told him what to do when Kothari arrived.

He showed the Secretary past the Daisy Duck clock into the inner room and told him to sit on the bed.

‘Your boss isn’t here?’ the Secretary said, looking at the empty cot. ‘I was hiding in my mother-in-law’s house all day long. In Goregaon. Near the Topi-wala building. I just got back to Vakola. Where is he?’

Mani shrugged.

‘He isn’t even picking up the phone. Maybe I should wait outside for him.’

‘It’s better that you wait here, sir, isn’t it?’ Mani’s eyes shone with their usual half-knowledge of his master’s dealings.

The Secretary sat on the cot in the inner room, looking at the wicker basket full of coconuts and wondering if the broker had counted them. A few minutes later the door creaked open.

‘You?’ Mrs Puri asked, as she came into the inner room. ‘You’re not supposed to be here.’

‘I kept worrying about you, Mrs Puri. I came to check that you were all right,’ the Secretary said.

‘Better you leave us alone here, Kothari. All we want from you is an alibi.’

The Secretary of Vishram Society shook his head. ‘And what of my responsibility to you, Mrs Puri? My father said, a man who lives for himself is an animal. I’m going to make sure you’re all right. Now tell me, where is Ajwani?’

‘In the city,’ Mrs Puri said. ‘Falkland Road.’

‘On a day like this?’

‘Especially on a day like this. That’s the kind of man he is.’

‘Let me wait until he comes back. It’s my responsibility to do so. Don’t tell me to go away.’

‘You’re not such a bad Secretary after all,’ Mrs Puri said, as she sat on the cot.

Kothari kicked the wicker basket in the direction of Mrs Puri, who kicked it back, and this became a game between them. Someone knocked on the door of the inner room.

When the Secretary opened it, he saw Sanjiv Puri.

‘What are you doing here?’ Mrs Puri hissed. Her husband walked in, and along with him came Ibrahim Kudwa.