Last Man in Tower - Aravind Adiga [137]
The door to the flat scraped open; she heard her husband’s slow footsteps.
“Where were you gone so long?” she shouted. “Leaving me alone here.”
Her husband sat down at the dining table, breathing noisily and pouring himself a glass from a jug of filtered water.
“The deadline has almost passed, Shelley. I really thought he would say yes in the end, Shelley. I really did.”
She spoke softly.
“What will that Confidence man do to him now, Mr. Pinto?”
“Anything could happen. These are not Christian men. These builders.”
“Then you must save Masterji, Mr. Pinto. You owe it to him.”
“What do you mean?”
“The number of times you cheated him, Mr. Pinto. You owe him.”
“Shelley Pinto.” Her husband sat up on his side of the bed. “Shelley Pinto.”
“In the No-Argument book. When you were an accountant at the Britannia Biscuit Company you cheated people at work. I think you cheated Masterji too.”
“This is a lie, Shelley. How dare you speak to your husband like this?”
“I have been your wife for thirty-six years. That one time you and Masterji went to Lucky Biryani in Bandra. You came back very happy that night and I thought: He must have cheated Masterji again. Didn’t you change numbers in the No-Argument the way you changed numbers at the Britannia Biscuit Company?”
She heard a creaking of springs; she was alone in the bedroom. Mr. Pinto had turned on the television set.
She went to the sofa and sat by him.
“We don’t have to save him, Mr. Pinto. The others will do it. We just have to keep quiet.”
“What are they going to do?”
She motioned for him to increase the volume of the television.
“Sangeeta and Renuka Kothari came today and said, if all of us agree to do something—a simple thing—would you and Mr. Pinto agree?”
“What is this simple thing, Shelley?”
“I don’t know, Mr. Pinto. I told them not to tell us.”
“But when is it happening?”
“I told them not to tell me anything. Now turn the television down a bit.”
“What did you say?”
“Turn the TV down.”
“I like it loud,” Mr. Pinto said. “You go into the garden.”
Treading on “the Diamond,” Mrs. Pinto went down the stairs.
She thought of 1.4 crore rupees of Mr. Shah’s money: the figure was part of the dark world around her. She went down two more steps. Now she thought of 100,000 dollars, sent to Tony, and another 100,000 dollars, sent to Deepa: her eyes filled with light, and the wall glowed like a plane of beaten gold.
When she had descended another flight of steps, her foot struck something warm and living. It did not smell like a dog.
“Stop prodding me with your foot.”
“Why are you sitting on the steps, Kothari?” she asked.
“My wife won’t let me watch television, Mrs. Pinto. Renuka has cut the cable connection. My wife of thirty-one years. Without TV, what is a home?”
She sat a step above him.
“What a strange situation. But you can watch in our house.”
“My wife of thirty-one years. Yet she does this. See what is happening to our Society.”
“If I may ask, Mr. Kothari … why has she cut your cable connection?”
“Because I won’t do the simple thing. The one she and the others want to do to Masterji. Do you know what the simple thing is?”
“They did not tell me what it was. I thought it was your idea.”
“Mine? Oh, no. It was Ajwani’s.”
The Secretary tried to remember: was it Ajwani’s idea? It didn’t matter: like one of those wasps’ nests that sometimes grew on the walls of the Society, the idea of the “simple thing” had materialized out of nowhere, swelling in size in hours, until every household in Vishram seemed to have become one of its cells. All of them wanted it done now. Even his own wife.
“This simple thing … will it hurt Masterji?”
“I don’t know, Mrs. Pinto, what the ‘simple thing’ is any more than you do. It’s Ajwani’s idea. He has connections in the slums. They just want me to give him the duplicate key to Masterji’s flat. I can’t do that, Mrs. Pinto. It’s against the rules.”
Mrs. Pinto sucked in the dark air of the stairwell.
“Will Mr. Shah really not extend the deadline?”
The Secretary exhaled.
“Every time