Last Man in Tower (35 page)

BOOK NINE

The Simplest of Things

4 OCTOBER

They stood, white and pink, on a metal tray in front of the glass-encased figure of the Virgin; their individual flames merged into a thick fire and swayed, alternately answering the sea breeze and the chanting of the kneeling penitents. Thick, blackened wicks emerged from the melting candles like bone from a wound.

White and pink wax dripped like noisy, molten fat on to the metal under-plate, then hardened into white flakes that were blown around like snow.

‘How long is Mummy going to pray today?’

The Virgin stood on a terrace with the sea of Bandra behind her and the stony grey Gothic façade of the church of Mount Mary in front of her.

Sunil and Sarah Rego waited at the wall of the terrace; Mrs Puri stood beside them, ruffling Ramu’s hair and goading him to say the words (which he once knew so well): ‘Holy Roman Catholic.’

It had been Mrs Puri’s idea that they should come here: the black Cross in the compound had failed them. Eaten prayer after prayer and flower garland after flower garland and done nothing to change Masterji’s mind.

So she made them all climb into two autorickshaws, brave the fumes of the Khar subway, and come here, to the most famous church in the city.

Mrs Rego was on her knees before the Virgin, her hands folded, her eyes closed, her lips working.

Sunil had prayed for a respectable time; now he leaned over the edge of the terrace, reading aloud the holy words painted along its steps.

‘That word is “Rosary”. And the next word is “Sacrifice”. And that word is “Re-pa-ra-tion”. It’s a big word. Mummy can use it to trump Aunty Catherine.’

Mummy had not moved for half an hour. The person praying by Mrs Rego’s side got up; an old woman in a purple sari moved in to fill the gap, touching her forehead three times to the ground.

‘Is someone ill? Is it Daddy in the Philippines?’

‘Keep quiet, Sarah,’ Sunil whispered.

‘Why else is Mummy praying so long?’

Half an hour later, all five of them walked down the hill to the Bandra bandstand. They bought four plates of bhelpuri from a roadside vendor and sat in the shade of the pavilion; Sunil and Sarah gobbled theirs, while Mrs Puri brought a spoonful of her bhelpuri to Ramu’s mouth.

Mrs Rego asked: ‘Why did no one come today from the Confidence Group to tell us it is over?’

‘Mr Shah must be preparing the papers for his half-Shanghai. My guess is that he will send Shanmugham over tomorrow.’

Ramu chewed his food. His mother watched him, gently pressing the stray puffed rice to his mouth.

‘Do you know everyone in Tower B got their final instalment last week?’

‘So quickly?’

‘Ahead of schedule, once again. Ritika phoned. This man, this Mr Shah – he does keep his word.’

Mrs Puri fed her son another spoonful.

‘Do you know what
Kala Paani
means? They used to call the ocean that. People were frightened to cross it. Ajwani says we are all at the
Kala Paani
now. Mr Shah says the same thing. We must cross the line. The way he did, when he came to Mumbai without shoes on his feet.’

‘How do you know this?’ Mrs Rego’s voice dropped. ‘Did you meet him?’

Mrs Puri nodded.

‘Did you talk about money?’

‘No. He didn’t try to bribe
me
.’

Mrs Rego looked away.

‘It is a simple thing,’ Mrs Puri said. ‘And then this nightmare is over for all of us. We can phone Mr Shah at once. Before Shanmugham comes.’

‘We already tried the simple thing. I didn’t like it. Criminals inside my Society.’

Mummy smiled and wiped Ramu’s mouth.

‘There is an even simpler thing. Just a push. But it must be done
now
.’

Mrs Rego frowned; she tried to understand what her neighbour had said.

‘Georgina! What are you doing in Bandra?’

A woman in a green dress was walking towards them; a tall, bald foreigner with a goatee followed behind her.

Introductions were made: the woman in the green dress was Catherine, Mrs Rego’s sister, and the foreign thing with her was her American journalist husband, Frank. His articles appeared in many, many progressive magazines.

‘We read about your Society in the paper, Georgina,’ Frank said, addressing his sister-in-law. ‘And your old teacher. In the
Sun
.’

Mrs Rego had not paid much attention to her plate of bhelpuri. Now she began eating.

Frank rubbed his hands. ‘I know why he’s doing this. It’s a statement, isn’t it? Against development. Against
unplanned
development.’

Mrs Rego ate bhelpuri. Mrs Puri stood up and faced the foreigner.

‘He’s not making a statement. He’s
mad
.’

The American winced.

‘No, I think it’s a statement.’

‘What do you know – you don’t live in Vishram. Yesterday he was walking on the terrace. Round and round and round. With a Rubik’s Cube in his hand. What does that mean, except: “I have lost my mind completely.” And we hear him, don’t we, my husband and I, from next door. Talking to his wife and daughter as if they were alive.’

Mrs Puri looked at Ramu. The boy was playing with Mrs Rego’s children.

‘No statement is happening here,’ she whispered. ‘Just madness.’

The plate of bhelpuri dropped from Mrs Rego’s hand. She began to sob.

Catherine squatted by her sister and rubbed her back.

‘Frank, did you have to mention that horrible man? Did you have to upset my sister?’

‘What did I do?’ The man looked around. ‘I just said—’

‘Shut up, Frank. You are so insensitive sometimes. Don’t cry, Georgina. We’ll get you another plate. Here, look at me.’

‘I’m going to lose the money, it’s not fair,’ Mrs Rego sobbed. ‘It’s not fair, Catherine. You’ve trumped me again. You always do.’

‘Oh, Georgina…’

Mrs Rego’s children came to either side of her and held her hands protectively.

‘Mummy,’ Sunil whispered, ‘Aunty Catherine’s children are stupid. You know that. Sarah and I will make a lot of money for you, and you’ll trump her again. Mummy, don’t cry.’

An hour later, Mrs Puri opened the gate of Vishram Society for her Ramu. Mrs Rego and her children came in behind Ramu.

‘All of Vishram Society is helpless before a bird,’ Mrs Puri said, when she stood outside Mrs Saldanha’s kitchen.

The crow’s nest had come up above Mrs Saldanha’s kitchen window; it had been showering twigs and feathers into the kitchen for days. Mary had refused to do anything; it would bring bad luck to toss the eggs down. ‘I am a mother too,’ she had retorted, when Mrs Saldanha accused her of dereliction of her duties.

Now the eggs had hatched. Two blood-red mouths opened out of little beaks and screeched desperately, all day long. The mother crow hopped from chick to chick and pecked each one consolingly, but they, with raised beaks, cried out for more, much more.

‘We’ll tell the Secretary to call the seven-kinds-of-vermin man,’ Mrs Rego said, keeping her eyes to the ground.

This man, who worked near the train station, was often called to Vishram to knock down a wasps’ nest or a beehive; he scraped it down with his pole and sprayed white antiseptic on the wall.

‘Don’t call anyone,’ Mrs Puri said. She seized Mrs Rego by the arm to arrest her.

‘We will do it right now. You watch.’

She took out her mobile phone and punched at the buttons. Ajwani was at home. He came down wearing a
banian
over his trousers and scratched his forearms: he lived directly above the nest, it was true, but on the second floor …

‘It is just a crow, and we are people,’ Mrs Puri reasoned with him.

Ajwani remembered a long pole he used to clean cobwebs from the ceiling.

A few minutes later, he was leaning out of his wife’s kitchen window, aiming the long pole at the crow’s nest like a billiards-player. His sons stood on either side and guided his aim.

The Secretary came out of his office to watch. So did Mrs Saldanha.

Mrs Puri sent Ramu up the stairs; he was under orders to wait for her on the first landing.

‘Do it quickly,’ she shouted at Ajwani. ‘The mother knows.’

Ajwani pushed at the nest with the pole. The crow flew up, its claws extended. Ajwani pushed again; the nest tipped over the edge, the two chicks screeching desperately. ‘A little to the left, Father,’ Raghav said. The broker gave a final nudge: the nest dropped to the ground, scattering sticks and leaves.

One of the chicks was silent, but the other poked its beak through the overturned nest. ‘Why doesn’t it shut up?’ the Secretary said. Giving up on Ajwani, who had closed his window, the crow flew down towards her living chick. Kothari stamped on the fledgling’s head, stopping its voice. The crow flew away.

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.