Last Man in Tower - Aravind Adiga [126]
Masterji walked behind the marching band towards VT, and felt—for the first time since his wife had died—that he was not alone in the world.
4 SEPTEMBER
Oval Maidan at sunset.
Dust everywhere, and the sun doing wonderful things to the dust: electrolysing it into a golden cloud in which the stone of the Gothic towers, the singed green of the palm fronds, and the living brown of humans were blended into one.
Driving past the maidan, the bars of the fence broke the cricket matches into large rectangular panels, like frames from a film put up on a wall for analysis.
“Feeling better, Uncle?”
“You’re a good girl, Rosie. A good girl to come to the hospital.”
Resting his head on Rosie, Shah watched as the driver, who had collected the two of them from Breach Candy Hospital (Rosie, in the waiting room, had flicked through a copy of Filmfare magazine while they took his X-rays), now drove in slow circles around the heart of the city.
“I know what you’re thinking about, Mr. Confidence.”
“What?”
“Money. The only thing on your mind.”
Her fingers moved into his pocket.
“Your phone is ringing, Uncle.”
“Let it.”
“There are fifteen missed calls.”
“Let there be a sixteenth. I don’t care about my work. I don’t care about anything.”
“Why are you talking like this, Mr. Confidence?” She smiled at him.
My Shanghai, Shah thought. Gone. Because of one old teacher.
He felt as if a hand had entered his abdomen and surgically removed the breath.
In the driver’s mirror he saw his blackened teeth and thought: Not nearly enough. Neither the damaged teeth, nor the disease in his chest, nor the blood he spat out, were nearly enough punishment. For the sin of being a mediocrity. The only real sin on this earth. He should have stayed in Krishnapur and cleared cow shit from the family shed.
Fingers ran through his hair; he felt a breath on his face.
“To-re-a-dor. To-re-a-dor.”
“Leave me alone, Rosie.”
Prising the blue X-ray folder away from him, she slid out the grinning phosphorescent skull.
“So this is who you really are, Uncle.”
He took it back from her and held it up against the light. Taking out a pen he began to sketch over the skull.
“Don’t!”
He slapped Rosie’s fingers away. He drew more lines up and down the glowing skull and showed her.
“That’s my Shanghai, Rosie. Gothic style, Rajput touch, Art Deco fountain. My life’s story in one building. Why does that old teacher keep saying no to it? In China, you know what they would have done to a man like him by now?”
She snatched at the X-ray; he raised his hand high to dodge her.
“Teachers are the worst kind of people, Rosie. All that time they spend beating children, it makes them cruel. Twisted on the inside.”
“Unlike builders, of course.”
And though he wished she wouldn’t make jokes like this, he had to chuckle.
She laughed at her own joke as she slid his X-ray back into its manila folder. A husky cackle: it made Shah shiver. One of the things he loved about Rosie—her voice always had its knickers down.
“Come here,” he said, though the girl was already beside him. “Come here.” He kissed her on the neck.
It was the first time he had done something like this in the car; Parvez, his driver, pretended not to notice.
Shah did what he had not done for days. He forgot about the Shanghai.
At the next traffic signal, they stopped by a bus painted with advertisements for a new Bollywood film—Dance, Dance.
“What’s the inside scoop, Rosie?” Shah asked, tapping the glass with his fingers. “Why is that Punjabi man wasting so much money on this flop?”
It was a film that had excited much speculation in the papers. The case was an unusual one: the film was a “comeback” vehicle for the 1980s film star Praveena Kumari. Ms. Kumari, at the height of her fame, had quit Bollywood to settle in America; now, visibly ageing and heavy, she had been cast in a big-budget film—a certain flop. The film’s producer was a walnut-headed Punjabi,