Last Man in Tower - Aravind Adiga [144]
“Yes, sir.”
“And take care of my children when the police come to question me, Mani.”
“Yes, sir.”
Picking up the black curved knife, the broker sliced open a coconut, drank its water, then got down on the floor and did twenty-five push-ups in an attempt to improve his morale.
At three o’clock, when Mani came back to the inner room, he was still lying on the cot, looking at the ceiling.
“The way he dealt with those two useless boys, Mani. There’s guts in a sixty-one-year-old doing that. Even in an enemy I admire courage.”
Now that he had done this terrible thing to Masterji, Ajwani felt closer than ever before to the stern sanctimonious old teacher, whom he had neither liked nor trusted all these years.
To wake up every morning white and hot and angry. To become a young man again at the age of sixty-one. What must it feel like? Ajwani clenched his fist.
At four o’clock, he called the Secretary’s office.
Kothari’s voice was relaxed. “You have nothing to worry about. He hasn’t gone to the police.”
“He isn’t going to file a complaint against us?”
“No.”
“I don’t understand ….”
“I’ve been thinking about it all morning,” the Secretary said. “Like you, I sat here shaking in my office. But the police never came. Why didn’t Masterji call them?”
“That’s what I asked you, Kothari.”
“Because,” the voice on the phone dropped to a whisper, “he knows he’s the guilty one. Not going to the police, what does it mean? Full confession. He accepts responsibility for everything that has gone wrong in this Society. And to think we once respected the man. Now listen, Ajwani. The deadline ended yesterday. At midnight. Correct?”
“Yes.”
“But no one has come from the builder’s office. To tell us that it is over, and Tower A is no longer wanted by the Confidence Group.”
“What does it mean?” Ajwani whispered back. “Is Shah giving us more time? He said he would never do that.”
“I don’t know what it means,” the Secretary said. “But look—all of us have signed and dated our agreement forms before October 3. Correct? If Shanmugham comes tomorrow and says, it is over, we can always say, but we did sign the forms. You did not come yesterday.”
Ajwani exhaled. Yes, it could still work. Nothing had been lost just yet.
“But this means ….”
“This means,” the Secretary continued for him, “we have to try something even more simple with Masterji. Tonight.”
“Not tonight,” Ajwani said. “I need a day. I have to plan things.”
The voice on the other end of the phone paused.
“And you call me a nothing man, Ajwani?”
“Why do I have to do everything? Do it yourself this time!” the broker shouted. He slammed the phone down.
You stink. You people.
He could smell them from his room too well. He burned the candle, he burned an incense stick, he sprayed a perfume about the rooms, but he could still smell them.
I’ll go up as high as possible, Masterji thought.
So he climbed the stairs and went out onto the terrace again. Standing at the edge, he looked down on the black cross, which was being garlanded by Mrs. Saldanha.
She must be praying I should die, he thought.
He circled about the terrace. After a while, he saw small faces down in the compound, staring up: Ajwani, Mrs. Puri, and the Secretary were watching him.
Those who had tried to attack him in his room the previous night now gaped at him from down there, as if he were a thing to fear. How monstrous a child’s face with a torch-light must seem to a poisonous spider. He smiled.
The smile faded.
They were pointing at him and whispering into each other’s ears.
“Go down at once,” he told himself. “By staying up here you are only giving them an excuse to do something worse to you.”
Half an hour later he was still up there: with his hands clasped behind his back, walking in circles around the terrace, as helpless to stop moving as those down