Last Man in Tower - Aravind Adiga [141]
No one stirred. No one moved. The two Pintos joined hands. Everyone in the building, prostrate in the same way, must have heard the cry. The Pintos could feel the warming of hearts in every listening bedroom—the same “At last.”
Then there was a muffled wrestling—and then there was the sound of swatting, as if someone was hitting at a rat running around the room. Then—piercing the night—not a human cry, but the howling of an animal.
The Rubik’s Cube saved him.
One of the boys stepped on it, slipped, and hit his knee against the teakwood table, which toppled over.
Masterji awoke.
He had grabbed the blue Illustrated History of Science at once—had some secret part of him been waiting for this, rehearsing this moment?—and rushed out of his bedroom; before they had even seen him he had hit the first one on the head with the book. Screaming—Thieves!—and with a strength that he would not be able to reproduce in daylight, he had shoved one of the boys—who, staggering back, had hit the other one, who fell by the phone. The Illustrated History of Science went up high and then came down on the skull of the boy, who howled. It was by now a rout, and the two hooligans rushed out through the open door, where one tripped and tumbled down the stairs; by which time they were in a frenzy just to survive, realizing they had been sent to bully and threaten not a helpless old man, as they had been told, but a live ogre. They ran into the compound and leapt over the gate.
Masterji pushed the sofa against the door, to barricade it against a second attack. Purnima, he chanted, Purnima. He moved the chair against the sofa.
Then it seemed to him that this was the wrong thing to have done. He had to be able to run in and out if there was another attack, and the door should be open. He moved the sofa and the chair back to their places.
He let the water run into a pot; he turned on the gas, and brought water to a boil. He would pour it on their heads when they came back. On his knees, he examined the gas cylinder. Perhaps he could explode it in their faces?
Purnima, he thought, Purnima. He tried to summon his wife’s face but no image came into his mind: he could not remember what she looked like. Gaurav, he called, Gaurav, but he could not remember his face, either … he saw only darkness, and then, emerging from that darkness, people, men of various races, standing in white shirts, close together. He recognized them: they were the commuters on the suburban train.
Now a ray of sun entered the compartment and their varied faces glowed like a single human light refracted into colours. He searched for the face of the day-labourer from Crawford Market; he could not find him, but there were others like him. The vibrating green cushions and the green-painted walls of the carriage were luminous around them. “Calm down, Masterji,” the radiant men in the white shirts said, “for we are all with you.” He understood now that he had not struck the two boys down: they had done it for him. Beyond the grille, the faces in the yellow second-class compartment turned to him, and said: “We are with you too.” Around him they stood thick and close; he felt hands come into his hand; and every murmur, every whisper, every jarring of the train said: You were never born and you will never die: you cannot hurt and cannot be hurt: you are invincible, immortal, indestructible.
Masterji unbolted the latch, left his door open, and slept.
3 OCTOBER
“Sir.” Nina, the Pintos’ maid, turned to her employer. “You should see for yourself who it is.”
Mr. Pinto, rising from a breakfast of a masala three-egg omelette, served with buttered toast and tomato ketchup, came to the door dragging his brown leather sandals along the floor.
He saw who was at the door and turned around: “Nina,” he cried. “Come back here.”
Masterji was standing outside.
“I was sure in the night it was Mr. Shah who had done it,” Masterji said. “And I felt safe until the morning. But when I woke up, I thought, those boys did not break down the door. They had a spare key. Who gave them this spare