Last Man in Tower - Aravind Adiga [105]
The squealing noise broke out again from inside the gutter.
The old accountant put his hand on his wife’s back. “You walk on along the wall, Shelley; you know the way, don’t you? I have to see what they are doing to that puppy.”
“But Masterji said not to leave the building till he came back with a lawyer.”
“I’m going right outside, Shelley. We have to save that little fellow.”
Shelley waited by the wall, holding her breath against the stench from the beef-shop. The squealing from the gutter grew louder, and then died out. She heard footsteps from the other side of the wall. She recognized them as Mr. Pinto’s. She heard him lower himself into the gutter.
“Don’t walk in the gutter, Mr. Pinto. Do you hear me?”
Now she heard a second set of footsteps. Younger, faster footsteps.
“Mr. Pinto,” she called. “Who is that coming close to you?”
She waited.
“Mr. Pinto … where are you? And who is that who has come into the gutter? Say something.”
She put her hand on the wall; from a bruise in the brick, she knew that the guard’s booth was to her left, about thirty-four small steps away.
She walked with her hand on the wall.
The guard’s booth was still twenty-nine steps away when Shelley Pinto heard her husband cry out.
Masterji, on his way to the lawyer’s office, stopped and sniffed. Balls of batter-coated starch were sizzling inside a snack store.
Quick dark arms emerged from a white banian to grate potatoes into a vat of boiling oil. Another pair of arms waited with a scoop; now and then the scoop dipped into the vat to come up with sizzling wafers. Big bins full of snacks surrounded the two men: fried potatoes (red and spicy, or yellow and unspiced), fried plantains (cut into round slices, or sliced longitudinally into strips, or coated in spices, or dusted in brown sugar), and batter-fried greens. Next door, in a rival establishment, a rival vat of raucous oil hissed with potatoes. Between them, the two shops produced the continuous competitive buzzing of boiling oil that is as much a dialect of the Bombay street as Hindi, Marathi, or Bhojpuri.
The competition of painted signs came next.
FERROUS NONFERROUS METALS
IQBAL ROZA PROPRIETOR
D’SOUZA BRAND WEDDING CARDS
BULK SALES
The old buildings began to ooze out fresh juice; ensconced in arched niches in the rotting façades, vendors sat before pyramids of oranges and lemons, operating electric mixers that rumbled apoplectically.
The sound of metallic snipping warned Masterji to slow down.
FAMOUS HAIR CUTTING PALACE
—this was the landmark mentioned in the advertisement. The next doorway must lead into the Loyola Trust Building.
The pigeons landing on the metal grilles of the windows made a constant cooing as he walked in; a sapling had cracked the cornice above the doorway. No reception area, no signboard in the lobby. A metal cage went up the airshaft, as if protecting the lift, which seemed, in any case, to be broken. Masterji knew at once the story of this building. The landlord could not—because of tenant protection laws—force his tenants out; they were probably paying the same rent they were in 1950, and he was retaliating by refusing to provide even the basics—light, safety, hygiene. You could almost hear him praying every night to God: make my tenants fall down the stairs, break their bones, burn in fire.
It grew darker as Masterji climbed the steps. A plaque of dense black wires criss-crossed the wall like a living encrustation growing over old plaster and brick. He could even smell the acridity of cockroach on the wall. He heard talking from above him:
“There are three great dangers in this city.”
“Three?”
“Three: children, goats, and a third thing I forget.”
“Children—a danger?”
“The greatest. Responsible for half the traffic accidents in this city. Half.”
He climbed more steps to see a pale pot-bellied idol of Ganesha in a niche, like a soft white rat living on the staircase. There appeared to be no electricity up here, and