Last Man in Tower - Aravind Adiga [91]
Tinku ran in and shouted: “Uncle! He’s here!”
Arjun, the Christianized assistant, had climbed up to the glass lunette above the doorway of the café to fix a loose rivet with a screwdriver. From up there he looked down, monkey-like, on the fat boy who had run into the café. How all creatures, Masterji thought, watching Arjun, have their niche in this world. Just two weeks ago I was like him. I had somewhere to perch among the windows and grilles of Vishram.
A Mercedes was parked not far from the doorway of the internet café.
Kudwa came to the doorway. Ajwani stood by his side; he knew the two had just been talking about him. Now, Ajwani and Kudwa seemed to say with their eyes, they could—if he entered the café, if he accepted the logic of the boycott—give him back his place in the hierarchy of Vishram Society. Ajwani, a natural-born middle-man, could broker the deal: at a rate of so much rage forsaken, of so much pride swallowed, he would be readmitted into the common life of his Society.
“Mr. Shah has sent his car for you; he is waiting in his Malabar Hill home. You have nothing to fear. He admires teachers.”
Masterji could barely ask: “What is all this about?”
“I’ve been asked to bring you to Mr. Shah’s house. We will drop you back to Vishram, Masterji. The driver is right here.”
Tinku Kothari, standing on the threshold of the café, watched Masterji.
“Is there a bathroom in there?” he asked—he could still smell the dream-fish on his moustache and fingertips.
“Arjun has a toilet in the back,” Kudwa said. “It’s not very clean, but …” Monkey-like Arjun, from the lunette, indicated with his screwdriver the way.
He was standing before the toilet bowl when the engine of the Mercedes came to life, and once that noise started, he simply could not urinate.
Everything in the moving car was sumptuous—the air-conditioned air, the soft cushions, the floral fragrance—and all of it added to Masterji’s discomfort.
He sat in the back, his arms between his knees.
Ajwani, seated by the driver, turned every few minutes, and smiled.
“Is everything okay back there?”
“Why would it not be?”
He was sure he reeked of fish, all the way from his moustache-tips to his fingertips, and this shamed and weakened him. He closed his eyes and settled back for the long ride into the city.
“Why is there no traffic today?” he heard Ajwani asking. “Is it a holiday?”
“No, sir. We’re almost alone on the roads.”
“I know that: but why?”
Some time passed, and then he heard Ajwani say: “There really is no traffic. I don’t understand.”
Masterji opened his eyes: as if by magic, they were already at the foot of Malabar Hill.
Resplendent in his circle of fire, his foot pressing down on the demon of ignorance, the bronze Nataraja stood on the table in the living room. The plaster-of-Paris model of the Shanghai sat at the god’s feet, in ambiguous relationship, of either deference or challenge, to his power.
In a corner of the room, far from the gaze of the bronze Nataraja statue, Shanmugham opened the glass panels of his employer’s drinks cabinet. Three rows of clean crystal glasses filled the wooden shelves above the cabinet.
All the pots and pans in the kitchen shook in a bout of metallic nervousness: Giri was hacking at something with a cleaver.
Shanmugham closed the cabinet door.
His phone rang. It was Ajwani: they had reached the building.
“But Mr. Shah has just left,” Shanmugham said. “He’s gone to his boy’s school for a meeting. You’re not supposed to be here for another hour.”
“There was no traffic. I’ve never seen a thing like it. Should we go up and down Malabar Hill? Stop at Hanging Gardens?”
“No. Come in, and wait here for Mr. Shah. I’ll text him that you’re early.”
He waited for them in the doorway under the golden Ganesha medallion. When the old teacher stepped out of the lift, Shanmugham noticed that he had a slight limp. Arthritic in one leg.