When the elections came up, defeating Dhamu became his sole aim. But when the business ground to a complete halt, he could not keep paying salaries. He had to let a few of his employees go with a cash payout. But he found it impossible to lay off the shop boys who had been very loyal to him. The boys held their breath for a few months, even though he could not pay them their salaries, but once the money owed them grew large enough to affect their basic sustenance, they quietly slipped away and found jobs in other shops. In the end, the only one left was the bookkeeper. Khader requested him to stay on and help settle some outstanding dues, and the man agreed and got busy wrapping up the accounts. Just as he suspected, he could not get a salary from Khader for this work, but he invented a few emergencies to get a little money out of him. Then Dhamu approached him and made a secret offer of a job at his store. Dhamu thought it was an excellent idea to bring in a man who had experience managing accounts at a wholesale cigarette agency. The bookkeeper accepted Dhamu’s offer.

It was the bookkeeper who explained to Dhamu why Isakki and Chairman M. C. Joseph had instigated the movement to cut down the tamarind tree, and why Khader had taken such an avid interest in that project. It happened like this: One day, Dhamu went to his store to pick up some cash he needed for election expenses. When he got there, he found his brother Chellappan and his friends engaged in a heated debate about the resolution passed by the municipality.

“I get your point, brother. But why is that Khader fellow so concerned about it all? Why the hell is he so intent on making sure the tree is cut down?” Dhamu asked his brother.

“That guy’s a fool,” said Chellappan.

“See, right now it is M. C. Joseph who is throwing him the crumbs. So he has to wag his tail toward him a little, doesn’t he?” said one of the friends sitting on the bench in front of Chellappan.

The bookkeeper, who had been leaning over the ledger, looked up over his glasses at everybody sitting there and said, “Is it so easy to figure out why assurance money has exchanged hands?” His tone and expression suggested that the matter was more serious than they assumed.

Dhamu studied the bookkeeper’s face.

When he became aware of how Dhamu was looking at him, the bookkeeper put on an expression of innocence that was meant to suggest that he was powerless to withstand such scrutiny and that it was all none of his business anyway, and he lowered his head and returned to his ledger.

“Why don’t you tell us what you think?” said Dhamu.

The bookkeeper looked up at Dhamu and then scanned the small crowd of people sitting with Chellappan.