Last Man in Tower - Aravind Adiga [76]
“It’s on the wall. Do you see it?”
It was the first time Mrs. Puri had been inside the Battleship’s home.
She saw framed posters in Hindi and English, and three large black-and-white photographs, one of which she recognized as that of President Nelson Mandela.
“Ramaabai usually handles them when they come inside the house. I can’t do anything until someone kills them for me.” Mrs. Rego pointed a finger.
Now Mrs. Puri saw it. Above President Mandela.
Thick and curvy as something squeezed out of a tube, pistachio in colour, the lizard was moving towards the fluorescent tube-light, where the flies had gathered.
A fellow like this one Mrs. Puri had never seen: a monarch of his species. Seizing a dragonfly hovering near the tube-light he tossed back his head; the translucent wings glowed golden against the tube-light and then disappeared into crunching jaws. His engorged body went inside the tube-light, a grey form making precise black marks where the feet pressed on the illuminated cylinder.
“This is the problem?” she asked.
Mrs. Rego nodded.
Mrs. Puri went into the kitchen, removed the gold bangles from her forearms, and put them on a newspaper on the table. She looked for a chair that would help her reach the tube-light.
She saw, above the fridge, a poster of a human being formed entirely by hands and feet clasping each other, with the slogan:
NONE OF US IS AS STRONG AS ALL OF US
VOTE IN EVERY ELECTION
IT IS YOUR RIGHT AND DUTY
Mrs. Puri shook her head. Even the kitchen was Communist.
Searching for a weapon, she settled on the Yellow Pages lying on the microwave oven. She climbed onto a chair by the dining table. Tapping a corner of the Yellow Pages against the tube-light, she drew the monster out, tap by tap.
Mrs. Rego had withdrawn into the kitchen for safety.
“Are you killing it?” she shouted from there.
“No, I’m throwing it out.”
“Its tail will fall off! You must kill it!”
The tail had indeed fallen off. Mrs. Puri caught the body of the wriggling lizard, went outside, and dropped it down the wall of the Society. She came back for the tail.
“Over,” she said, walking into the kitchen to wash her hands.
She held out her arm with the fingers bunched together. Mrs. Rego picked up the bangles from the newspaper and slid them one by one over her neighbour’s wrist, until the forearm was again sheathed in gold.
“Why are you so scared of them? My husband draws them to amuse Ramu. Spiders, too.”
“You know he stole all my gold coins,” Mrs. Rego said, as she slid the final bangle onto Mrs. Puri’s forearm.
“Who? The lizard?”
“Sovereigns. George V sovereigns. Half-sovereigns. This fat. All gone.” Mrs. Rego smiled. “The man from whom I take my last name.”
“I never met him, Mrs. Rego.”
“He is a thief. He made me a poor woman. Did I ever tell you that my father was one of the richest men in Bandra?”
“Many times.” Mrs. Puri gave the bangles a shake to settle them down her arm.
“It’s true. We had the best of everything. Catherine and me. Yet we fought over everything. For dinner our father would serve us biryani. Mutton. We fought so much, you’re getting more, I’m getting less, he decided to weigh each portion of biryani on a scale before he served us. That way neither would ‘trump’ the other. Catherine was light-skinned; each time we stood in front of a mirror she trumped me. When she married that Jewish man, and I married a pucca Catholic, I thought I had trumped her for good. But now … she still lives in Bandra. Her husband is well known. And she has a Sony PlayStation in her flat. I have to take my children there so they can play with it.”
Mrs. Puri gave her left hand another shake. “You have your work.”
“Who am I, Arundhati Roy? Just a woman in Vakola sending letters to foreigners asking for money. Once in a blue moon I help someone in the slums. Mostly I just sit and watch as this city is ruined by developers.”
A new Heinz ketchup bottle stood on the Regos’ table, but the empty one, which it superseded, had not yet been thrown out. Mrs. Puri placed the new bottle adjacent to the