Last Man in Tower - Aravind Adiga [84]
Note: Signatures of all members of the Society are listed below, next to their respective unit numbers (with square footage in brackets)
The Secretary emerged from his office with a smile.
“What is this?” Masterji asked, his index finger on the noticeboard. “I just got back to Vishram. I haven’t signed anything yet.”
Kothari came to the noticeboard and squinted; the lynx-like laugh-lines spread from his eyes. “Well, I was just saving time, Masterji. Since you’ve agreed, I thought I’d type up the notice.”
Masterji’s index finger had not moved.
“Did I agree? When did I agree? I said I was going to speak to my son. That was all.”
The Secretary stopped smiling. “It was not my idea, actually. Ajwani’s idea. He forced me to put it up before you came back … he ….”
Dislodging Masterji’s hand from the glass, the Secretary lifted it open. He tore off the notice, one half of which fell to the floor.
“There, Masterji, are you happy?”
He was not.
“Who gave you the right to say I have agreed? Why do you say I’ve signed something?”
“Thank you, Masterji.” Mrs. Puri was coming down the stairs. “Thank you for thinking of all of us.”
Masterji’s index finger was again on the empty noticeboard.
“Sangeeta, did you know the Secretary thinks he can forge my signature?”
“Masterji!” The Secretary raised his voice. “This is too much drama. It is just a simple thing—a simple mistake that we made! And I keep telling you, it was not my idea. It was Ajwani!”
Masterji took the crumpled form from the floor and straightened it out. He read it again.
“It is a signature,” he whispered. “My signature.”
“Mrs. Puri ….” The Secretary looked up. “You are his champion in the building. Talk to him, won’t you?”
“Masterji. We waited for hours for you. I didn’t collect water for Ramu’s evening bath. You did tell us you would sign it.”
A voice boomed: “Don’t blame us, Masterji. We just put that notice up half an hour ago. Why did you take so long to come back?”
Ajwani’s small black face looked down from the second-floor banister.
“It’s true, Masterji,” the Secretary said. “If you had come back just half an hour ago ….”
“I couldn’t come sooner, because … I wasn’t feeling well ….”
People looked down from various places along the stairwell: Mr. Ganguly, Ajwani, Mr. Puri, Ibrahim Kudwa, Mr. Vij.
He wanted to breathe in the camphor-scented air from his wife’s cupboard. Mrs. Puri stepped aside to let him go. The sick dog lay on the first landing, trembling from its joints. Masterji stopped in front of it and looked up at his neighbours. It was like being at the train compartment’s edge again, with the warm wind blowing into his eyes and the other train rushing past: he saw the demonic faces crowding around him.
He spoke so all would hear:
“… have not said yes, have not said no.”
BOOK SIX
FEAR
15 JULY
“… you said it was over, Shanmugham. A week ago.”
Driving through Juhu in the morning, sunk into the black leather cushions of his Mercedes, chewing gutka from his blue tin, Mr. Shah watched the only thing there was to watch.
All night long rain had pounded Mumbai; now the ocean retorted.
Storm-swollen, its foam hissing thick like acid reflux, dissolving gravity and rock and charging up the ramps that separated beach from road, breaking at the land’s edge in burst after burst of droplets that made the spectactors, huddled under black umbrellas, scream.
Shah told his driver to take slow circles around Juhu; as the car made a U-turn, he moved to the other window, so he could keep watching the ocean. “I don’t care about that old teacher and his mood swings. Now you tell that Secretary, he won’t see one rupee of his sweetener—what did we promise him, an extra one lakh?—unless he earns it. Didn’t I tell you from the start, that teacher was going to make trouble? And you, Shanmugham, don’t ever again tell me something is done, until it is done, until the signature is there, until—”
Mr. Shah threw the mobile phone into a corner of the car.
He had hoped there would be no fighting this time. With an offer