Last Man in Tower - Aravind Adiga [157]
“It’s been cat and mouse. From the start.”
And the cat had always been Dharmen Shah.
I’m trapped, Ajwani thought, as he walked on the ocean wall towards Churchgate station. Mrs. Puri and the Secretary were waiting for him. He, more than anyone else, had moved his nothing Society to this point. He could not fail them now. He looked down and thought if only he could live there, by the crabs, among the rocks by the breaking water.
Inside the station, Ajwani paid five rupees for a white plastic cup of instant coffee. His stomach needed help. All that industrial smoke from the metallurgical shops. Sipping the coffee, he walked to his platform; the Borivali local was about to depart.
Now he had industrial smoke and instant coffee in his stomach. He felt worse with each shake and jerk of the train.
He cursed his luck. Of all the things to pick up from Falkland Road—all the horrible names he had worried about for all these years—gonorrhoea, syphilis, prostatitis, AIDS—he had to pick this up: a conscience.
“You are at the Kala Paani,” he told himself. “You have to cross it. Have to be one of those who get things done in life.”
A fellow passenger was staring at him. Lizard-like, stout, thick-browed, massively lipped, the man clutched a small leather bag in his powerful forearms: his eyes bulged as they focused on Ajwani.
The lizard-man yawned.
When he shut his mouth, he had taken on the face of the managing director of the Confidence Group. In a moment the train compartment was full of Shahs.
“Fresh air, please. Fresh ….” Ajwani moved through the crowd to the open door of the moving train. “Please please let me breathe.”
Migrants had squatted on the wasteland at the edge of the tracks; they had turned it into a vegetable patch, seeding and watering it. Ajwani held on to the rod in the open door of the train. Behind the little green fields he could see the blue tents they lived in. The sight was chastening; his stomach wanted to call out to them.
He began to vomit onto the tracks.
The lights were coming on in the market as the Secretary scraped his shoes on the coir mat outside the Renaissance Real-Estate office.
“Come in, sir,” Mani had said. Ajwani had told him what to do when Kothari arrived.
He showed the Secretary past the Daisy Duck clock into the inner room and told him to sit on the bed.
“Your boss isn’t here?” the Secretary said, looking at the empty cot. “I was hiding in my mother-in-law’s house all day long. In Goregaon. Near the Topi-wala building. I just got back to Vakola. Where is he?”
Mani shrugged.
“He isn’t even picking up the phone. Maybe I should wait outside for him.”
“It’s better that you wait here, sir, isn’t it?” Mani’s eyes shone with their usual half-knowledge of his master’s dealings.
The Secretary sat on the cot in the inner room, looking at the wicker basket full of coconuts and wondering if the broker had counted them. A few minutes later the door creaked open.
“You?” Mrs. Puri asked, as she came into the inner room. “You’re not supposed to be here.”
“I kept worrying about you, Mrs. Puri. I came to check that you were all right,” the Secretary said.
“Better you leave us alone here, Kothari. All we want from you is an alibi.”
The Secretary of Vishram Society shook his head. “And what of my responsibility to you, Mrs. Puri? My father said, a man who lives for himself is an animal. I’m going to make sure you’re all right. Now tell me, where is Ajwani?”
“In the city,” Mrs. Puri said. “Falkland Road.”
“On a day like this?”
“Especially on a day like this. That’s the kind of man he is.”
“Let me wait until he comes back. It’s my responsibility to do so. Don’t tell me to go away.”
“You’re not such a bad Secretary after all,” Mrs. Puri said, as she sat on the cot.
Kothari kicked the wicker basket in the direction of Mrs. Puri, who kicked it back, and this became a game between them. Someone knocked on the door of the inner room.
When the Secretary opened