Last Man in Tower - Aravind Adiga [140]
“What do you want?” he asked.
“I clean your office every evening at this time,” she said. “I was going to get the broom.” And then she added: “I didn’t hear anything.”
“Clean the office tomorrow, Mary. You may take the rest of the day off.”
She stood there.
“Mary”—the Secretary lowered his voice—“when the Shanghai comes up, they’ll hire you. I’ll make sure that they do. They’ll give you a uniform. Good pay. I’ll make sure. Do you understand?”
She nodded.
“Now go home,” Kothari said. “Enjoy the evening with your son.”
He watched until she went out of the gate and turned left towards the slums.
There was now a night-time silence in Vishram such as they had not heard in decades; the deserted Tower B with the yellow MARKED FOR DEMOLITION tape around it seemed to secrete stillness. The Pintos, as they lay in bed, could hear once again the roar of the planes going over Vakola.
“There,” Mr. Pinto whispered.
“Yes,” Mrs. Pinto whispered. “I heard it too.”
Masterji was back in his room. He was washing his face in the basin.
“Maybe nothing will happen tonight,” Mrs. Pinto whispered.
“Go to sleep, Shelley.”
“He has stopped walking. He’s gone to bed,” she said. She strained her ears.
“But someone’s walking above him.”
A little after midnight, the Secretary woke up.
He had dreamed that he was standing before a panel of four judges. They wore the expected black robes and white wigs of the judiciary, but each had the face of a flamingo. The senior judge, who was larger than the others, wore a shawl of golden fur. The face of this flamingo-judge was so terrible that the Secretary could not look at it; hoping for sympathy, he turned to the lesser judges. All three were reading aloud, but all he could hear was one word, repeated endlessly, Bylaw, Bylaw. The senior judge, adjusting his wig, said: “Human beings are only human individually: when they get together they turn ….” His three junior colleagues were already tittering. “… birdy.” The three laughed together in high-pitched cackles. Then the senior flamingo adjusted his golden shawl, for he was a vain judge, and spoke in a deep voice, which the Secretary recognized as his father’s:
“Now for the verdict on Ashvin Kothari, Secretary, Vishram Society Tower A, incorporated in the city of Mumbai, who made a duplicate of a key entrusted to his care to facilitate a break-in into his own Society, and that too on the holy day of Gandhi Jayanti. In accordance with the law of the land, and to avoid giving offence, the verdict of this panel shall be read in English, Marathi, Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi, Gujarati ….”
Kothari opened his eyes. He turned on his lamp so he could see the clock. His wife, lying next to him, began to grumble.
In the dark Kothari walked over the carpet in his living room. Holding his comb-over in place, he lowered himself onto the sofa.
No one should point a finger at him. Ajwani had arranged for the “simple thing.”
Yet he wanted to scream for help, or run to the police station near the highway and tell the fat constable Karlekar everything, before something terrible happened in the night, and they woke to find Masterji with his legs broken, or worse, much worse …
His wife snored from the bed. Getting down on his knees, Kothari put his ear to the carpet and listened. All he could hear was the sound of his own voice, whispering:
“Do as you will, evil king:
I, for my part, know right from wrong ….”
A little after two o’clock, the Pintos heard Masterji’s door open again.
It was like the way you hear someone making love in another home, their bed creaking and their sighing, and you’re trying hard to shut it out of your ears. They wanted not to hear.
Something was walking upstairs. Two somethings.
“The boys are here.”
“Yes.”
The two old bodies moved in bed, following the footsteps; a flurry of steps, and then a little cry of pain: bone had hit table.
“The teakwood table.”
“Yes. Oh, no.”
This was followed by more shuffling; the table fell over; a scream.
“Thieves!