Last Man in Tower

Aravind Adiga

• Éditeur: Atlantic Books
• Année: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781848877863
• Sujet: Littérature
• Sous-sujet: Littérature générale

The magnificent new novel from the Booker Prize-winning author of The White Tiger: LONGLISTED FOR THE 2013 IMPAC AWARD. Ask any Bombaywallah about Vishram Society - Tower A of the Vishram Co-operative Housing Society - and you will be told that it is unimpeachably pucca. Despite its location close to the airport, under the flight path of 747s and bordered by slums, it has been pucca for some fifty years. But Bombay has changed in half a century - not least its name - and the world in which Tower A was first built is giving way to a new city; a Mumbai of development and new money; of wealthy Indians returning with fortunes made abroad.When real estate developer Dharmen Shah offers to buy out the residents of Vishram Society, planning to use the site to build a luxury apartment complex, his offer is more than generous. Initially, though, not everyone wants to leave; many of the residents have lived in Vishram for years, many of them are no longer young. But none can benefit from the offer unless all agree to sell. As tensions rise among the once civil neighbours, one by one those who oppose the offer give way to the majority, until only one man stands in Shah's way: Masterji, a retired schoolteacher, once the most respected man in the building. Shah is a dangerous man to refuse, but as the demolition deadline looms, Masterji's neighbours - friends who have become enemies, acquaintances turned co-conspirators - may stop at nothing to score their payday.A suspense-filled story of money and power, luxury and deprivation; a rich tapestry peopled by unforgettable characters, not least of which is Bombay itself, Last Man in Tower opens up the hearts and minds of the inhabitants of a great city - ordinary people pushed to their limits in a place that knows none.

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 this generous. But there would always be a fight. The nature of this stupid, stupid city. What he wouldn’t have built by now if he were in Shanghai – hospitals, airports, thirteen-storey shopping malls! And here, all this trouble, just to get started on a simple luxury housing…

The mucus in his chest thickened; his breathing sounded like a feral dog’s growling. Shah coughed and spat into his handkerchief. He checked the colour of the spit with a finger.

Bending down to pick up the mobile phone, he dialled Shanmugham’s number again.

Parvez, the driver, turned on the windscreen-wipers. The rain had started again.

‘Wait,’ Shah said. ‘Stop here.’

The boys inside the bus stand to their left were cheering.

Across the road, in the sheeting rain, one man in rags was bearing another on his back towards the bus stand. The fellow on top was covered in a cape of blue tarpaulin which billowed around them both. The man doing the carrying was pushed sideways by the wind and the weight on his shoulders; vehicles flashed their headlights at him through the rain; yet he came closer and closer to the cheering spectators, who, as if by will power alone, were pulling him to safety.

‘Sir?’ Shanmugham was on the line. ‘Do you want me to start taking action in Vishram? Should I do what I did last year in that project in Sion?’

Shah looked at the men in the rain. Adding his will to that of the spectators, he urged the two of them on until they staggered into the bus stand.

The builder smiled; he struck the window with a golden ring, making Parvez turn around.

21 JULY

Fine wrinkles radiated from Ram Khare’s eyes as he read from his holy digest, like minute illustrations of the net that Fate had cast over him.

When he was in his teens he had had hopes of playing cricket for Bombay in the Ranji Trophy; when he was in his twenties he dreamed of buying a home of his own; when he was in his thirties of taking his old parents on a pilgrimage to the city of Benaras.

At the age of fifty-six, he found that his life had contracted to three things: his daughter Lalitha, an alumna of St Catherine’s School, now studying computer engineering in Pune; his rum; and his religion.

Mornings were for religion. Standing inside his guard’s booth with a string of black rudraksha beads in his left hand, he kept a finger on page 23:

‘What are the marks by which a soul may be known? Listen to the words of our Lord Krishna. The soul is not born and it does not…’

Footsteps came towards Vishram Society. He turned to the gate and said: ‘One minute, Masterji. One minute.’

Opening the tin door of the watchman’s booth, Khare stepped to one side, inviting Masterji to enter. The old teacher, who was returning with a bundle of fresh coriander for the Pintos, held it up: a gesture of protest.

Khare said: ‘One minute.’

Disarmed by the servant’s insistence, Masterji gave up, and so, for the first time in thirty-two years, entered the guard’s booth at Vishram Society.

‘Now if you wait just a second, sir, I’ll show you my life’s work.’

There was a large spider’s web growing in a corner of the guard’s booth; Khare seemed to have no objection to its existence. Objects from the ground – twigs, chalks, pen-tops, snippets of metal wire – had been conveyed into this web, several feet off the ground: the whole thing looking like a project in mild black magic that Khare carried on in his spare time.

‘This is my life’s work, sir. My life’s work.’

Ram Khare’s fingers rested on another magical object: the long, stiffspined Visitors’ Log Book.

He ran his clean fingernail down the columns.

Guest Name

Occupation

Address

Mobile Number

Purpose of Visit

Person to See

Time Entry

Time Exit

Remarks (if any)/Observations (if any)

Signature of Guest

Signature of Guard

‘Every single guest is noted, and his mobile number registered. For sixteen years it has been this way—’ he pointed to the old registers stuffed into plastic trays. ‘Ask me who came into the building on the morning of 1 January 1994, I’ll tell you. What time they left, I’ll tell you. Sixteen years, seven months and twenty-one days.’

Khare closed the log book and sniffed.

‘Before that I was the guard at the Raj Kiran Housing Society in Kalina. A good Society. There too they had an offer of redevelopment from a builder. One man refused to sign the offer – a healthy young fellow, not like you – and one morning he tripped down the stairs and broke his knees. He signed in his hospital bed.’

Masterji closed his eyes for a beat.

‘Are you threatening me, Ram Khare?’

‘No, sir. I am informing you that there is a snake in my mind. It is long and black.’

The guard spread his arms wide.

‘And I wanted you to see this black snake too. Every day Mrs Puri or Mrs Saldanha or someone else comes to your door and knocks, and asks: “Have you made up your mind? Will you sign?” And everyday you say: “I’m thinking about it.” How long can this go on, Masterji? Now it makes no difference to me whether you say yes or no. If this building stands, I have this job. If it falls, I have a job somewhere else. But…’

Ram Khare opened the door for his guest: ‘… there is the question of my duty to you. And whatever happens now, I’ve discharged it. The Lord Krishna has taken note of that.’

And with that, he went back to his holy digest: ‘… it does not die. It cannot hurt and cannot be hurt. It is invincible, immortal, and…’

What cheek, Masterji thought, walking to the entranceway of his Society. Talking of a ‘black snake’ in Vishram.

He should complain to the Secretary. Mrs Rego was right; Ram Khare was drinking too much. He had smelled molasses in that booth.

Mrs Puri was at her window, watching him from behind her grille.

‘Mrs Puri,’ he shouted, ‘will you listen to what Ram Khare just said? He said I should be worried about what you and my other neighbours will do to me.’

As he watched, she shut the window and pulled down the blind. Must not have seen me, he thought. He did it all the time himself, ignored people right in front of him. Can’t be helped after a certain age.

He walked into the building with the coriander.

Retreating to the mirror in her bedroom, Mrs Puri brushed her long black hair to soothe herself.

Her husband had yelled at her in the morning as he left. The first time he had yelled at her in Ramu’s presence. He had never trusted that old man. She was the one who described Masterji as ‘an English gentleman’. She was the one who had called him a ‘big jackfruit’.

Ramu, sensing his mother was upset, sat by her side, and imitated her with a phantom brush. She saw this, and in gratitude, sobbed a little.

Wiping her mobile phone clean on her forearm, she re-dialled a number.

‘Gaurav, it’s me again,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you come here, Gaurav. Speak to him. Bring Ronak. He will change his mind: he is your father. Don’t be obstinate like him, Gaurav. You must come to see him. Do it for your Sangeeta Aunty, won’t you?’

Wiping the mobile phone on her forearm, she put it down on the table and turned to her son.

‘Can you believe it, Ramu? All those mangoes, all those years. I cut them into long thin slices and put them in his fridge. You remember, don’t you?’

She could hear Masterji opening the fridge to pour himself a glass of cold water.

‘What a selfish, greedy old man he has become, Ramu. He wants to take our wooden cupboards away from us. The Evil Eye must have found out about my good luck. This time too.’

Ramu had put his fingers in his ears. His face began to shake; his teeth chattered. Mrs Puri knew what was coming, but he beat her to it, ran into the toilet, and slammed the door. No: he wouldn’t open the door for Mummy.

‘Ramu, I won’t say anything bad about Masterji again. I promise.’

The door opened at last, but Ramu wouldn’t get up from the toilet bowl. Breathing as normally as she could, to show that she was not angry with him, that he had not made a stinky mess in the toilet, Mummy washed his behind clean with a mug of water, changed his trousers, and put him into bed with Spiderman and the Friendly Duck.

She struggled down to her knees and scrubbed the toilet floor clean. When he was frightened, he missed the bowl.

When she opened the door of his bedroom, Ramu was sitting up, angling the book in which his father had drawn lizards and spiders so that the Friendly Duck could see the pictures too.

Just outside the bedroom, a bird began to trill, its notes long and sharp like a needled thread, as if it were darning some torn corner of the world. Mother and son listened together.

When Mrs Puri came down the stairs, she found three women on the first landing, talking in whispers.

‘He plays with his Rubik’s Cube all day long. But does he have a solution?’ Mrs Kothari, the Secretary’s wife, asked. ‘He’s just a block of darkness.’

‘Won’t even do it for his son. Or hi...