Last Man in Tower - Aravind Adiga [104]
That was her abiding memory of the word “dollar.” Something that turned into gold.
“Oh, all that’s changed, Shelley. All that has changed.”
Mr. Pinto sat by her bedside and explained. It was all there on the Reserve Bank of India’s website. He had been to Ibrahim Kudwa’s cyber-café a few days ago and had navigated the site with Ibrahim’s kind help.
“If it is a gift, we can send out only ten thousand dollars per annum. But if it is investment, we can send one hundred thousand dollars. And soon they may increase the limit to two hundred thousand dollars each year. It’s perfectly legal.”
The darkness that enveloped Mrs. Pinto grew larger. They, from India, would now have to send the children, in America, money?
“Will Tony have to come back?”
“He has a green card. Don’t be stupid, Shelley. Their children are citizens.”
“But he has no money?”
“Things are difficult over there. Deepa may lose her job. I didn’t want to frighten you.”
“Everything is so expensive in the States. Don’t you remember how much the sandwiches cost? Why did they leave Bombay?”
“Just tell me how many square feet this place is, woman. Let me worry about things.”
“Eight hundred twelve square feet,” she said. “We had it measured once.”
Mr. Pinto sat at the dinner table again and rubbed his pale hands together: “I feel young again, Shelley.” She wondered if he was asking for a resumption in their relations, which had ceased some twenty-seven years ago, but no, of course not, all he meant was this: he was being an accountant again.
“It would be so simple, Shelley. Two-thirds of the money we send in dollars to the children, and with the rest we buy a small flat right here in Vakola. Nina could come and cook there too.”
“How can you talk like this, Mr. Pinto?” she said. “If Masterji says no, we must say no.”
“I’m just cal-cu-la-ting, Shelley. He is my friend. Of thirty-two years. I will never betray him for U.S. dollars.”
Mr. Pinto walked around the living room, and said: “Let us go for our evening walk, Shelley. Exercise is good for the lower organs.”
“Masterji warned us not to leave the building while he was gone.”
“I am here to protect you. Don’t you trust your own husband? Masterji is not God. We are going down.”
With her husband behind her, Mrs. Pinto descended the steps. Just before she reached the ground floor, something bumped into her side—she knew, from the smell of Johnson’s Baby Powder, who it was.
“Rajeev!” Mr. Pinto called after Ajwani’s son. “This is not a zoo, run slowly.”
“Don’t fight with anyone today, Mr. Pinto,” she said. “Let’s be quiet and stay out of trouble.”
Holding on to each other, they walked out of the darkened entranceway into the sunlight. Mrs. Kudwa, seated on the prime chair in parliament, talking to Mrs. Saldanha at her kitchen window, was silent as they passed.
The guard was in his booth, keeping a watch on the compound.
Mr. Pinto coughed. Smoke billowed in from over the compound wall; gathering the stray leaves from the Society, Mary had set fire to them in the gutter outside. Suspended in a dark cloud, the hibiscus flowers had turned a more passionate red.
“Are you all right?”
“Fine, Shelley. Just a cough.”
Mr. Pinto heard singing in the distance: children rehearsing patriotic songs for Independence Day:
“Saarey jahan se accha
Yeh Hindustan hamara
Hum bulbule hain iski
Yeh gulistan hamara.”
“Better than all the world
Is this India of ours;
We are its nightingales,
It is our garden.”
A few steps down, he turned to his wife and said: “Wait.”
They were in the “blood stretch,” and he held his breath. Leaning over the wall, he saw a pack of stray black dogs, down in the gutter, running after a small white-and-brown puppy. It squealed as if this were no game. The four dogs chased it down the length of the gutter. Then all of them vanished.
“What is happening there, Mr. Pinto?”
“They’re going to kill that little thing, Shelley.” He paused. “It looks like Sylvester.”
The Pintos had once had a dog, Sylvester, for the sake of their son Tony. When Sylvester