Last Man in Tower - Aravind Adiga [120]
He could not leave Vishram now. He would lose face in Vakola. J. J. Chacko would take out advertisements up and down the highway mocking him.
And that meant there was only one thing to do with this old man. Only one thing could make the Shanghai happen.
Shah thought of the chopped hilsa.
In the old days, if a builder had a problem, that problem would end up in pieces in the wet concrete: it became part of the building it had tried to obstruct. A bit of calcium was good for the foundations. But those days were gone: the lawless days of the 1980s and ’90s. Vishram was a middle-class building. The man was a teacher. If he died suddenly, there would be an immediate suspect. The police would come to Malabar Hill and press his doorbell the next morning.
On the other hand, the palms of the policemen had been well greased. He might get away with it if the job were done well: scientifically, no fingerprints left behind. His reputation in Vakola would certainly improve: deep down, everyone admires violence. It was a risk, a big risk, but he might get away with it. He bent down and picked up the silk cloth.
As it became warm again between his fingers, he heard snoring.
The door to his son’s room was ajar. Satish’s thick legs were curled together on the bed. Shah closed the door behind him and sat down by his son’s side.
Seeing his son like this, a breathing thing amidst dishevelled sheets, Shah thought of the woman with whom he had made this new life.
Rukmini. He had never seen her before the wedding day; she had been sent by bus from Krishnapur after he refused to return for the marriage. They had been wed right here in the city. He admired her courage: she had adapted to the big city in a matter of hours. The evening of the wedding, she was fighting with the grocery store man over the price of white sugar. After all these years, Shah smiled at the memory. For thirteen years she had kept his house, raised his son, and supervised his kitchen while he shouted at his colleagues and left-hand men in the living room or on the phone. She seemed to have no more of an opinion about construction than he did about cooking. Then one evening—he could not remember what she had overheard—she came to the bedroom, turned off his Kishore Kumar music, and said: “If you keep threatening other people and their children, one day something might happen to your own child.” Then she turned the music on and left the room. The only time she had ever commented on his work.
Shah touched the dark body on the dishevelled bed. He felt the boy’s future like a fever. Drugs, alcohol. Jail time. A spiral of trouble. All because of his karma.
He felt he had tripped over something ancestral and half buried, like a pot of gold in the backyard: a sense of shame.
“Master”—it was Giri, silhouetted in the blinding light through the open door. “The hilsa.”
“Throw it out. And close the door, Giri, Satish is sleeping.”
“Master. Shanmugham … has come upstairs. He asks if you have anything to say to him.”
His wife’s almirah was open, the fragrance of her wedding sari and the old balls of camphor filled the bedroom air.
Masterji sat like a yogi on the floor.
Mrs. Puri was shouting at her husband next door; the Secretary was pounding his heavy feet above his head. Then he heard feet from all around the building heading for the door below him. They were speaking to the Pintos. He heard voices rising, and then Mr. Pinto saying, “All right. All right. But leave us alone then.”
A few minutes later, the doorbell rang.
When he opened the door, a small thin woman stood outside with a red notebook. A blue rubber band had been tied twice around it.
“Mr. Pinto gave this to his maid to give you, Masterji.”
“So why are you giving it to me, Mary?”
Mary looked at her feet. “Because she didn’t want to give it to