Last Man in Tower - Aravind Adiga [19]
“We’ll never put them behind bars, I told her. The law in this country takes for ever to do anything. Is it worth wasting all that money? She thought about it and said, ‘All right, let it drop.’ Sometimes I would look back on the incident and ask myself, should I have paid for that lawyer? But whenever I brought it up with her, she just did this”—he shrugged—“and said that thing. Her favourite saying. ‘Man is like a goat tied to a pole.’ Meaning, all of us have some free will but not too much. One shouldn’t judge oneself harshly.”
“That is so beautiful. She was a wonderful woman, wasn’t she?” Sonal got up. “I am sorry—I have to check on my father for a minute.”
Her father, once a respected banker, now suffered from advanced Alzheimer’s; he lived with his daughter, and was fed, bathed, and clothed by her. As Sonal slipped into an inner room, Masterji silently commended her filial devotion. So rare in an age like this. He tapped his knee and tried to remember the name of that striped animal in the cage. Ronak was taking a nap in his bedroom. He wanted to remember before the boy woke up.
Sonal came out of her father’s room with a large blue book which she placed on the table in front of Masterji.
“The boy doesn’t read much; he plays cricket.” She smiled. “It is better that you keep this yourself, since you are fond of books.”
Masterji opened the blue book. The Illustrated History of Science. Purchased a decade ago at the Strand Book Shop in the city, maintained impeccably, until two weeks ago given to his grandson as a gift.
He got up from his chair with the book. “I’ll go back now.”
“At this hour?” Sonal frowned. “The train will be packed. Wait an hour here. It’s your home, after all.”
“What am I, a foreigner? I’ll survive.”
“Are you sure you want to take the train at this ….” There was a gurgling from the inner room, and Sonal turned in its direction. “One minute,” she said. “My father needs attention again.”
“I’m leaving,” Masterji shouted after putting on his shoes. He stood waiting for a response from Sonal, then closed the door behind him and took the elevator down.
With his blue book in his hand he walked past the old buildings of Marine Lines, some of the oldest in the city—past porticos never penetrated by the sun, and lit up at all times of day by yellow electric bulbs, stone eaves broken by saplings, and placental mounds of sewage and dark earth piled up on wet roads. Along the side of the Marine Lines train station he walked towards Churchgate.
He tried not to think of The Illustrated History of Science in his hands. Was that flat so small they couldn’t keep even one book of his in it? The boy’s own grandfather—and they had to shove my gift back in my hands?
He opened the blue book, and saw an illustration of Galileo.
“Hyena,” he said suddenly, and closed the book. That was the word he had not been able to find for Ronak; the striped animal in the cage.
“Hyena. My own daughter-in-law is a hyena to me.”
Don’t think badly of her. He heard Purnima’s voice. It is your ugliest habit, she had always warned him. The way you get angry with people, caricature them, mock their voices, manners, ideas; the way you shrink flesh-and-blood humans into fireflies to hold in your palm. She would cut his rage short by touching his brow (once holding a glass of ice-cold water to it) or by sending him out on an errand. Now who was there to control his anger?
He touched The Illustrated History of Science to his forehead and thought of her.
It was dark by the time he reached the Oval Maidan. The illuminated clock on the Rajabai Tower, its face clouded by generations of grime and neglect, looked like a second moon, more articulate, speaking directly to men. He thought of his wife in this open space; he felt her calm here. Perhaps that calm was all he had ever had; behind it he had posed as a rational creature, a wise man for his pupils at St. Catherine’s and his neighbours.
He did not want to go home. He