Last Man in Tower - Aravind Adiga [168]
“Mr. Shah?” A crooked finger summoned him back into the X-ray room.
You don’t fool me, Shah thought, as the X-ray machine did its work again. You’re not going to save anyone. This was just the bureaucracy of extinction: its first round of paperwork. The cold of the metal bed penetrated multiple layers of butter-fed fat; he shivered.
“Should I keep my eyes closed or open?”
“Doesn’t matter. Just relax.”
“I’ll close them, then.”
“As you wish. Relax.”
He could feel Rosie’s fingers still warm on his own. He could smell her legs on his trousers. He thought again of the abandoned old mansion that he passed every day on his way down Malabar Hill, the green saplings breaking through the stone foliage. It was as if each green sapling were a message: Leave Mumbai with Rosie, find a city with clean air, have another son, a better one—you still have time, you still have …
Shah took a deep breath and closed his eyes.
… He saw the hawks again: circling with drawn claws, as they had been that sunlit morning in Doctor Nayak’s home above the Cooperage, locked in battle, the most beautiful creatures on a beautiful earth.
The hawks faded away, and he saw an island in the Arabian Sea—saw it as he had once, years ago, on a return flight from London which was held up by congestion at the airport and flew in circles: down there, the city in sunlight seemed like a postage stamp struck in silver, precise and shining and so easy to comprehend. He saw it all, from Juhu to Nariman Point: Bombay, the Jewel in the Jewel in the Crown. He saw south Bombay and Colaba: so closely packed with mirror-clad buildings that the land glittered. He saw Chowpatty Beach; the two green ovals of the cricket stadia; the Air India Building and the Express Building behind, and the towers of Cuffe Parade …
The plane turned to the right. Now he saw the city dramatically walled in by green-red cliffs and plateaux. The air on one side of the cliffs was dark blue and dense; on the other, it was clear. If a man crossed those cliffs, he would find clean air—he would breathe.
The mucus in his chest rumbled. It voted for the clean side of the cliffs.
Dharmen Shah moved the plane back to the dirty side of the cliffs.
The plane was over Vakola now. He saw his Shanghai, most silver among the silver towers; and next to it another Shah tower; and next to it …
His diseased body began to move, despite the radiologist’s orders, on the cold bench, seizing more square inches for itself, dreaming, even here, of reclamation and warm space.
There had been another terrorist threat to the city, and the metal detector at the entrance to the Infiniti Mall in Andheri (West), installed months ago and left inactive ever since, was turned on at last.
It responded with such enthusiasm—beeping three times for each person—that every man and woman entering the mall became a high-risk terrorist threat. A quick frisking and opening of bags restored their name and good reputation, allowing them to ride the escalator to the Big Bazaar supermarket on the first floor, or the Landmark Book Store on the second.
“Thirty-six rupees for a plate of bhelpuri!”
Mr. Kothari, the former Secretary of Vishram Society Tower A, sat down at a table in the atrium of the food court with a heaped plate of bhelpuri. Tinku, holding his plate in one hand, pulled a chair from an adjacent table and joined his father.
“It is a mall, Father, what do you expect?” He began to scoop the food into him.
“This place used to be just birds and trees.” Kothari looked about the atrium. “Andheri.”
As if conjured by his nostalgia, a few sparrows flew into the food court.
His mouth full of puffed rice and diced onion, Tinku gaped.
“Look who’s here, Father.”
“Who? Oh, ignore them. Keep eating.”
“Father, they’re coming here.”
“A man can’t even enjoy his bhelpuri. Which he’s paid thirty-six