Last Man in Tower (23 page)

He understood now. It was the smell of his own cowardice, blown back at him from this creature’s mouth.

‘And what was that redevelopment project you were telling me about, Ajwani… where the old couple refused to take the offer, and then one day… did they fall down the stairs? Or were they pushed, or… old people should take care. It’s a dangerous world. Terrorism. Mafia. Criminals in charge.’

‘Oh, yes. That old couple in Sion you were talking about, they were pushed. For sure.’

In the light of the towers Shanmugham’s thoughts seemed to crystallize into giant letters in front of Masterji: ‘This is how I will flatter the old man, and very subtly, bully him. I will show him the kingdoms of the earth and give him a hint of the instruments of torture.’ So they had shown him all the kingdoms of Bombay and told him: ‘Take your pick.’ And he knew now what he wanted.

Nothing
.

Masterji could see black water crashing into the ocean wall that was meant to keep it out, rolling back and crashing again.

Once before, when Purnima had been threatened by her brothers, he had been weak. Not wanting trouble at his Society, he had again been weak.

‘And Masterji – the Pintos want you to agree. For their sake you must say yes.’

‘Don’t
you
speak about the Pintos.’

‘Your friend Mr Pinto is not the man you think he is, Masterji. Until two weeks ago he used to drink Royal Stag whisky. The other morning, a used Blenders Pride quarter-bottle carton turns up in his rubbish. He has started paying fifteen rupees more for a bottle of whisky. Why? Because he loves money more than he loves his wife’s blindness.’

So he is examining our rubbish
, Masterji thought.
But a man’s rubbish is not the truth about him, is it?

‘You don’t know a thing about Mr Pin… Mr Pint… Mr Pint…’

Masterji felt the floor slipping beneath his feet: ‘It’s starting again.’ He heard his blood sugar chuckling. His left knee swelled up in pain; his eyes dimmed.

‘Masterji,’ Ajwani reached for him. ‘Masterji, what’s the matter?’

‘Nothing,’ he shook off Ajwani’s hand. ‘Nothing.’

‘Just stay calm, Masterji. And breathe deeply. It will…’

Look down
, a voice said.
Look at me
. Masterji turned to his left and saw the swirls in the ocean, the foam that was hitting the wall along the shore of Bombay. The foam thickened. The ocean rammed into the wall of Breach Candy like a bull.
Look at me, Masterji
. The bull came in again and rammed into the wall of the city and back he went to gather his strength.
Look at me
.

The oceans were full of glucose.

‘What are you saying, Masterji?’ Ajwani asked. He looked at Shanmugham with a grin.

Shanmugham remembered the sign on the mansion that he saw every morning on his drive up Malabar Hill. ‘This place is dilapidated, dangerous, and unfit for human beings to be around.’ The Municipality should hang the same sign on old men like this. He tried to touch Masterji, who took a step back and glared at him: ‘Did you bring me here to
coerce
me?’

Said in English, the force of that word,
coerce
, weakened both Ajwani and Shanmugham.

The aroma of batter-fried food blew on to the terrace. Giri was walking towards the men with a silver tray full of just-fried pakoras sitting on paper stained with fresh grease.

‘Hot, hot, hot, hot.’

‘Please offer the pakoras to Mr Murthy from Vishram Society,’ Shanmugham said. ‘He’s a teacher.’

‘Hot, hot, hot, hot…’ Giri brought the tray over to the distinguished visitor.

The old man’s left hand slapped at the tray; it slipped in and out of Giri’s hands, then crashed to the floor. Shanmugham and Ajwani moved their feet to dodge the rolling pakoras. Giri stared with an open mouth. When the three of them looked up, they realized they were alone on the terrace.

1 AUGUST

In the morning, at the dining table with the red-and-white cloth, the Pintos heard what had happened at Malabar Hill, while in the kitchen, Nina, their maid-servant, obscured by steam, took idlis out of the pressure cooker.

‘So you just left?’

‘They were threatening me,’ Masterji said. ‘Of course I left.’

‘Ten thousand appointments are missed in this city because of too much traffic, and you missed Mr Shah because of too little traffic. Fate, Masterji,’ Mr Pinto said, as the maid tipped three idlis on to his plate. ‘The very definition.’

‘You sound bitter, Mr Pinto.’ Masterji leaned back and waited for his idlis. Three for him too.

‘And what do we do now?’ Shelley asked. As usual, she received only two idlis.

‘We will wait till October 3. The deadline will expire and that Shah fellow will go away. He said so, don’t you remember?’

‘And until then the boycott will get worse.’

‘There’s something bigger than us involved here, Mr Pinto. Yesterday, when I was at the builder’s terrace I saw something in the ocean. Things are changing too fast in this city. Everyone knows this, but no one wants to take responsibility. To say: “Slow down. Stop. Let’s think about what’s happening.” Do you understand me?’

But that was not it, either. There was something more in the foaming white waters: a sense of power. Breaking an implicit rule – never to touch another man’s body while they were eating – he reached over and gripped his friend’s shoulder. Mr Pinto almost spat out his idli.

After dinner the maid poured tea into small porcelain cups.

‘This boycott,’ Mr Pinto said. ‘It is already so difficult to bear. Shelley cries every night in bed. How can they do it to us, after all these years of living together?’

‘We mustn’t think badly of our neighbours.’ Masterji sipped his tea. ‘Purnima would not like it. Remember what she used to tell us about man being like a goat tied to a pole? There is a radius of freedom, but the circumference of our actions is set. People should be judged lightly.’

Mr Pinto, who had never been sure how well Purnima’s image squared with Catholic teaching, grunted.

Masterji was cheerful. Breaking a rule not to impose on the Pintos’ generosity, he asked Nina for a second cup of tea.

The defecators have left the water’s edge at the slummy end of Versova beach; while, in an equal exchange, the posh end of the beach has rid itself of the joggers, callisthentic stretchers, and t’ai-chi practitioners. It is a quarter past ten. Down a concrete path comes a saddled white horse. This path cuts between boulders to lead to the beach; drawing the horse by its stirrups, a boy stops to whisper into its ear.
No one here, Raja. In the evening they will come, children to be taken for a ride over the sand. For now we are alone, Raja.

The ambient murmur of the waves makes their privacy more exclusive; on a high rock the boy sits to bring his mouth level with Raja’s large ear.

The boy stops talking. There is someone else on the beach. A fat man is standing at the water’s edge, looking out at the blue-grey mess of towers on the distant Bandra shoreline. The boy strokes his horse’s ear, and watches the fat man.

Shah had been staring at the turrets of the hotel at Land’s End in Bandra. Somewhere beyond it, where the planes were landing, was Santa Cruz. Somewhere in there was Vishram Society Tower A. He saw the building in front of him, dirty, pink, rain-stained. Six floors. He held out his palm and closed his fingers.

Footsteps behind him. Shah turned.

Descending from the rocks behind him, the tall chastened figure of Shanmugham walked on to the beach with a small blue tin in his hands.

‘This is for you, sir,’ he said, handing it over to Shah.

Rosie, who had seen her Uncle alone down by the beach, had summoned Shanmugham and handed over the blue tin of
gutka
.

Shah scooped out some
gutka
, and chewed.

Shanmugham could see the thinking part of his employer, his jaw, struggling to make sense of things.

‘I still don’t understand. You and that broker – all you had to do was keep that teacher there till I got back.’

‘He became violent, sir. Ask Giri. He hit the tray and then he ran out.’

‘I don’t like blaming another man when it’s my fault,’ Shah said, chewing fast. ‘Going to see that headmaster – a total waste of time. What does the man do? Namastes me, says, what an honour to meet you, Developer sir, and then asks for advice on a one-bedroom he is buying in Seven Bungalows. Would the Four Bungalows area be a better investment? Will Andheri East show superior appreciation once the Metro comes up? I should have stayed home and finished off this Vishram Society teacher. My fault.
My
fault.’ He bit his lower lip.

‘Sorry, sir.’

‘Don’t say sorry, Shanmugham. It is a worthless word. Listen to me: every midget in Mumbai with a mobile phone and a scooter fancies himself a builder. But not one in a hundred is going to make it. Because in this world, there is a line: on one side are the men who cannot get things done, and on the other side are the men who can. And not one in a hundred will cross that line. Will you?’

‘Yes, sir.’

Shah spat on the beach.

‘We have been reasonable in every way with this old teacher. We asked him what he wanted from us, and promised to give it to him.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Now let him find out what it means to want nothing in Mumbai.’

Shanmugham held out his fist to his employer and opened it. ‘Yes, sir.’

On the way back, the builder stopped to stroke the horse. Ignoring him, the boy whispered into the large pink ear.

‘Fellow,’ Shah said. ‘Take this.’

‘What’s this for?’ The boy did not touch the banknote the stranger offered.

‘Because I feel like it.’

The boy shook his head.

‘Then take it for keeping your horse in good shape. I like looking at beautiful things.’

Now the boy took the hundred-rupee note.

‘Where are you from, son?’

‘Madhya Pradesh.’

‘How long in Mumbai?’

‘Two months. Three months.’

‘You shouldn’t spend all your time talking to the horse. You should look around you, at people. Rich people. Successful people. You should always be thinking, what does he have that I don’t have? That way you go up in life. You understand me?’

Stroking the side of the horse, Shah left.

The horse-keeper was still examining his windfall when Shanmugham swooped down on him.

‘Give that to me,’ he said. The boy shook his head and pressed his face into his horse’s neck.

‘The Sahib meant to give you a ten-rupee note. He gives money and then he changes his mind; he’ll send someone down to take you to the police.’

The boy considered this, found it believable, and surrendered the gift. Shanmugham exchanged it for a ten-rupee note; then he leapt up the rocks with the spring of a man who has just become ninety rupees richer.

What do you want?

In the continuous market that runs right through southern Mumbai, under banyan trees, on pavements, beneath the arcades of the Gothic buildings, in which food, pirated books, perfumes, wristwatches, meditation beads and software are sold, one question is repeated, to tourists and locals, in Hindi or in English:
What do you want?
As you walk down the blue-tarpaulin-covered
souk
of the Colaba Causeway, pass the pirateers at the feet of the magical beasts which form the pillars of the Zoroastrian temple in Fort, someone will demand, at every turn:
What do you want?
Anything can be obtained; whether it is Indian or foreign; object or human; if you have no money, perhaps you will have something else with which to trade.

Only a man must want
something
; for everyone who lives here knows that the islands will shake, and the mortar of the city will dissolve, and Bombay will turn again into seven small stones glistening in the Arabian Sea, if it ever forgets to ask the question:
What do you want?

Lunch at the Pintos’ was served, as usual, at fifteen minutes past one o’clock. Nina went around the dining table, ladling out steaming prawn curry over plates of white rice. As Masterji settled into his chair, Mr Pinto asked: ‘Is anything wrong with your phone?’

Masterji, about to stab a prawn with his fork, looked up.

‘Why do you ask?’

‘No reason,’ Mr Pinto said, as he mixed curry into his rice.

Sometime before two o’clock, Masterji said goodbye to the Pintos. The moment he opened the door of his flat, the phone rang.

‘Yes?’

A few minutes later, it rang again.

‘Who is it?’

As soon as he put his phone down, he heard the phone ringing in the Pintos’ living room. Then his rang again, and the moment he picked it up it went dead and the Pintos’ was ringing again.

The door of the Pintos’ flat was open. They were sitting side by side on the sofa, and Nina, their maid, stood next to them, protectively.

‘It’s just the children,’ Masterji said, standing by the door with his arms folded. ‘It must be Tinku or Mohammad. At school there was a boy who stuck notes on the backs of teachers. Tall boy. Rashid.
Kick Me. I Love Girls
. I caught him, and he got two weeks’ suspension. The maximum penalty, short of expulsion.’

‘I wonder why God made old age at all,’ Mrs Pinto said. ‘Your eyes are cloudy, your body is weak. The world becomes a ball of fear.’

‘We’re the Vakola triumvirate, Mrs Pinto. Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus. No one can make us budge.’ Masterji refused a glass of cold water that Nina offered. ‘I’ll go down and speak to Kothari.’

‘Someone rings and hangs up the phone,’ he explained to the Secretary, who sat in his office, reading the real-estate pages of the
Times of India
. ‘I think it’s someone inside the building.’

The Secretary turned the page.

‘Why?’

‘Because the moment I enter my room, they start calling. And when I leave, they stop calling. So they know where I am.’

The Secretary folded his newspaper. He patted his comb-over into place and leaned back in his chair, exhaling a breath of curried potatoes and onions.

‘Masterji’ – he burped – ‘do you know, another person died in a building collapse on Tuesday?’

Kothari grinned; the lynx-whiskers spread around his slitted eyes.

‘I forget the name of the place now. Someone in that slum near the ocean… that wall near their slum collapsed when the rains… it was in the papers…’

‘Are
you
the one making the phone calls, Kothari?’ Masterji asked. ‘Are you the one threatening us?’

‘See?’ Kothari said, gesturing helplessly to a phantom audience in his office. ‘See? For 2,000 years we’ve played this game, this man and I, and now he asks if this is a threat. And then he hears phone calls. And soon he’ll see men with knives and hockey sticks coming after him.’

Back in the Pintos’ flat, they talked it over.

‘Maybe it is just in our minds,’ Mr Pinto said. ‘Maybe Kothari is right.’

‘When in doubt, make an experiment,’ Masterji said. ‘Let’s put the phone back on the hook.’

When no one had called for an hour, Masterji walked up to his room. As he turned the key in his door, the phone rang. The moment he picked it up, it went dead.

*

At midnight, he went down the stairs and knocked on the Pintos’ door. Mr Pinto opened it, went to the sofa, and held his wife’s hands.

‘I heard it,’ Masterji said.

The Pintos’ children in America did sometimes miscalculate the time difference and call late at night; but the phone had rung four times without being picked up. Now it began to ring again.

‘Don’t touch it,’ Mr Pinto warned. ‘They are speaking to us now.’

Masterji picked up the receiver.

‘Old man, is that you?’ It was a high-pitched, taunting voice.

‘Who is this calling?’

‘I have a lesson for you, old man: if you don’t leave the flat, there will be trouble for you.’

‘Who is this? Who told you to call? Are you Mr Shah’s man?’

‘There will be trouble for you and for your friends. So leave. Take the money and sign the paper.’

‘I won’t leave, so don’t call.’

‘If you don’t leave – we’ll play with your wife.’

‘What?’

‘We’ll take her down to the bushes behind the building and play with her.’

Masterji let out a laugh.

‘You’ll play with a handful of ashes?’

Silence.

‘It’s the
other
one who has a—’ A voice in the background.

The phone went dead. Within a minute it rang again.

‘Don’t pick it up, please,’ Shelley said.

He picked it up.

‘Old man: old man.’

This time it was another voice: lower, gruffer. Masterji was sure he had heard this voice somewhere.

‘Act your age, old man. Grow up. Take the money and leave before something bad happens.’

‘Who is this? I know your voice. You tell your Mr Shah…’

‘If anything bad happens, you alone are responsible. You alone.’

Masterji slammed down the phone. He walked up the stairs to Mrs Puri’s door and knocked; when there was no response, he banged. She opened the door, with bleary eyes, as if she had been sleeping.

‘What is this about, Masterji?’

‘The phone calls. They just called us again. They’re threatening us now.’

Mrs Puri swallowed a yawn.

‘Masterji, you have been talking and talking about these phone calls but no one else can hear them.’

‘Either someone in the building is calling, or someone in here is giving a signal to the callers. Their timing is too good. I’m sure I recognized one of the voices.’

She laughed.

‘Mine? Is that what you’re saying?’

‘No… I don’t think so.’

‘I am not making the phone calls. Shall I ask Ramu if he is making the calls?’

She began to close the door: but Masterji pushed it back towards her.

‘What about your sense of shame, Sangeeta? I am your neighbour. Your neighbour of thirty years.’

‘
Our
sense of shame? Masterji, you say
our
…? After the way you behaved at Mr Shah’s house? After the way you lied to your own son about accepting the offer?’