Last Man in Tower - Aravind Adiga [138]
“Then we won’t see the dollars.”
“Dollars?”
“Rupees.”
“Why doesn’t Masterji see it the way we do?”
“He doesn’t even come down to have dinner. Thinks he’s too good for Mr. Pinto and me. After poor Mr. Pinto broke his leg for Masterji’s sake. Thinks he’s a great man because he’s fighting this Shah. Went and spoke to the papers about his own Society.”
“After all the times he came down to your house and ate your food. Ingratitude is the worst of sins, my father always said.” He paused. “My father was the greatest man I ever knew. If he had stayed in Africa, he would have become a millionaire. A prince. But the foreigners didn’t want him to succeed. Isn’t that always the story of our people?”
Mrs. Pinto placed her cold hand on his. “Is someone walking up the stairs?” she whispered.
The Secretary peered down the stairwell. “Just the dog.”
With his palm he wiped the sweat from his forehead.
“Why don’t you make a duplicate of Masterji’s key?” Mrs. Pinto put her hand on the Secretary’s shoulder. “That won’t be against the rules. The key will always be in your possession. Just give the duplicate to Ajwani.”
“I could do that.” Kothari nodded. “It would be within the rules.”
“My husband will come with you, if you want.”
“No, Mrs. Pinto. It’s my responsibility. I’ll go to Mahim, so no one will recognize me.”
“Bandra is far enough.”
“You’re right.” He smiled. “In all these years we’ve never talked like this, Mrs. Pinto.”
“In parliament we have. But not like this. I have always admired you. I never thought you stole money from the Society. I never did.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Pinto.”
She got up, with her hand to the wall.
“It’s for his own sake, remember. This Confidence Shah is not a Christian man.”
Kothari prodded the stray dog to get it out of Mrs. Pinto’s way and she went on down the stairs.
In the lowest drawer of his desk, the Secretary of Vishram Society keeps a box of the spare keys to all the units in the building. To be loaned to the rightful owner in case of emergency: no key to leave the box for more than twenty-four hours.
A pair of fingers disturbed the keys. One key was removed. Then the man who had stolen the key closed the door of the Secretary’s office behind him.
Something growled at him from the black cross: the stray dog was looking up from its bowl of channa.
Kothari bought a twice-buttered sandwich at the market; he ate it in the autorickshaw that took him to the train station, and licked his fingers as he stepped out.
Full, he dozed on the Churchgate-bound local, until the smell of the great black sewer outside Bandra woke him.
Straightening his comb-over to make sure it covered his baldness, Kothari descended onto the platform. A pink palm shot out at him from a dark blazer: “Ticketticket.”
He handed over his three-month first-class rail pass to the ticket inspector; as the man in the blazer checked the validity of the pass, he recited:
“Do as you will, evil king:
I, for my part, know right from wrong
And will never follow you,
said the virtuous demon Maricha
When the lord of ….”
Except for that one time he thought he was going to jail because he forgot to pay his advance tax, the Secretary had never felt like this.
The evening rays of the sun, intercepted by trees and shop fronts around the station, fell near his feet like claw marks on bark. He was heading down one of the alleys by the side of the Bandra train station. On every side of him, he saw bananas, cauliflower, apples, burnished and expanded by the golden light. Like another strange kind of fruit, giant cardboard keys, yellow and white, dangled from the branches of the next banyan tree; each bore the legend:
RAJU KEY-MAKER.
MOBILE PHONE: 9811799289
Beneath them, the key-maker sat on a grey cloth, his tools and keys spread before him. He worked with a knife, cutting a piece of iron into a new key, closing an eye to compare it with another key that he brought out from his shirt pocket.
“Can