Last Man in Tower - Aravind Adiga [26]
Shah put his hand on his heart. “So grateful.”
Giri went at once into his master’s study. A wooden drawer opened, then closed. Giri had done this before, and knew exactly how much to put in the envelope.
He handed it to Shah, who felt its weight, approved, and handed it to the policeman who had done the talking: “For some chai and cold drinks at your police station, my friend. I know it’s very hot these days.”
Though the envelope had been accepted, neither of the policemen had left. The talkative one said: “My daughter’s birthday is coming up, sir. It’ll be a nice weekend for me.”
“I’ll send her a birthday cake from the Taj. They have a nice pastry shop. It’ll arrive soon.”
“Sir ….” The quiet policeman spoke.
“Yes?”
“Well, my daughter’s birthday is coming up too.”
Giri saw the policemen out with a smile; Shah stood chafing the thick gold ring on his index finger. The moment Giri closed the door, Shah jabbed the ring into his son’s nose.
“Soda Pop” flinched, squeezed his eyes closed, and held his face averted, as if preserving the force of the jab.
Soda Pop trembled; if he could, every part of his body said, he would have launched himself at his father and killed him right then.
Giri took him away to his room. “Let’s wash up, Baba. We’ll go to your room and drink some warm milk. That’s what we’ll do.”
Returning to the living room, Giri found his employer and Shanmugham on either side of the Dancing Nataraja, examining the white thing that shared the wooden table on which the bronze statue stood: a plaster-of-Paris model of a building, which a peon from Mr. Shah’s office had brought to the flat two days ago.
“Will you go and speak to the boy now?” Giri asked. “Say something nice.”
Shah ran his palm down the side of the plaster-of-Paris model.
“Bring me a plate with some toast, Giri,” he said. “At once. And some for Shanmugham, too.”
Giri glared at Shanmugham as he went to the kitchen; he did not approve of the presence of employees during meals.
Shah kept looking at the plaster-of-Paris model. His eyes went down to the inscription on its base:
CONFIDENCE SHANGHAI
VAKOLA, SANTA CRUZ (E)
SUPER LUXURY APARTMENTS
“FROM MY FAMILY TO YOURS”
“Look at it, Shanmugham,” he said. “Just look at it. Won’t it be beautiful when it comes up?”
From the moment the car turned onto the bridge at Bandra, Shah had kept his eyes closed.
He felt his pulse quickening. His lungs became lighter. It was as if he had not coughed in years.
The Mercedes came to a halt; he heard someone opening the door for him.
“Sir.”
He stepped out, holding Shanmugham’s hands. He had still not opened his eyes; he wanted to defer the pleasure for as long as possible.
He could already hear the two of them: the Confidence Excelsior and the Confidence Fountainhead. Rumbling, the way the boy had been inside his mother’s womb, in the last months before delivery.
He walked over truck tyre ruts, hardened and ridged like fossilized vertebrae. He felt crushed granite stones under his feet, which gave away to smooth sand, studded with fragments of brick. The noise grew around him.
Now he opened his eyes.
Cement mixers were churning like cannons aimed at the two buildings; women in colourful saris took troughs full of wet mortar up the floors of the Fountainhead. Further down the road, he saw the Excelsior, more skeletal, covered with nets and scaffoldings, ribs of dark wooden beams propping up each unbuilt floor.
A small village had sprung up around the construction work: migrants from north India, the workers had re-created the old home. Cows swatting away flies, broth in an aluminium vessel boiling over, a small shrine of a red god. Hitching up his trousers, Shah walked up to the cow; he touched its forehead three times for good luck and touched his own.
A group of day-labourers were waiting for him.
“How is the cement pouring today?” he asked.
“Very well, sir.”
“Then why are you people standing here, wasting time?”
He counted the men. Six. They wore banians and white dhotis, and their bodies were filmed over with construction