Raj

It was almost 10 pm as Raj neared home, his research in digital technology and leadership still tinkling connections and potentials in his head. The forty-minute walk from the university was like descending a mountain of knowledge. The fact that he concluded the descent in a basement flat contributed to this impression. His was a cerebrally intensive existence. The research institute he worked at was beside the university so, when the workday ended, he could go, via dinner in the student canteen, to the lab or the library to work on his postdoc: convenient, but physically slothful. He needed these two daily walks. His body was the benevolent host to his brain, a rich aunt who would support you if you toed the line. Sidewards glances from women he passed on campus suggested he was not doing so bad a job on corporal maintenance. If these women came too close, though, they might smell his apartment off him.

For the last week, after noticing that some of his colleagues talked to him from a greater distance, or just waved where they would previously have come over and fist-bumped, Raj had started taking his showers in the changing room at work.

A fortnight earlier, his flatmates, Krishna and Pradeep, had found a notice in their letter box about the smell, telling them to use the ventilator when they showered, to consider their neighbours when preparing food, to use, or indeed install, an extractor fan over the cooker, to keep the door to the stairwell closed at all times, especially when food was being cooked. When they received this recipe for civilized living early one morning - that is to say, it had been placed in their letter box late at night - Raj noticed that neither the part-time dad on their storey nor any of the others had a similar note folded and sticking out of their letter box. None of his neighbours were suspects.

Not only were Raj and his flatmates extracontinental foreigners - who, it seemed, needed to be told the basic rules that allowed Europeans to live side by side - not only this, but they were also tenants. Eva Holt, head of the board of residents, had not-so-casually bumped into Pradeep soon after they moved in and told him that they were the only tenants. All the other apartments were owner-occupied, so she just wanted to say that they had only to ask if there was anything they were unsure of, and had their landlord given them the house rules? If not, she happened to have a copy on her.

All the other residents came down to his storey from time to time to get to their storage rooms, and they inevitably complained about the smell. It was probably one of them who had stashed away something horrendous, a slaughtered elk in a malfunctioning freezer, though it was not the smell of rotting flesh. There was certainly nothing Indian about the smell, a fact that should have exonerated Raj and his flatmates. There was nothing particularly foreign about it even, whatever that meant. It was not a spicy, aromatic or pungent smell. It smelled of basement to a factor of ten. It smelled wet, or damp, even though the surfaces were dry. He had looked up dry rot and fungal growths and checked along the floor and behind the furniture. There were no characteristic black spots; there was no rotting wood. It looked fine - but it smelled intense.

It hadn't always stunk. When they moved in it had been all right - a fact that made the whole situation worse, since there was a temporal link between their tenancy and the smell. Worried about their deposit, they had been eating salads and taking cold showers to avoid steam for the past fortnight, but the smell only got worse.

They paid a three-month deposit when they signed the tenancy contract, all three of them, but they had only lived there for one month. The other two were as tightly strung on student loans as Raj was, otherwise they would have looked for a place somewhere else. Next time he would rent somewhere on a higher storey. He could probably get something cheaper closer to the university, and he could get his exercise by jogging. He didn't benefit from the central location of his apartment. It was just expensive.

There must be something they could do about the smell. He was the only son of scientists and maybe that was why he could not let it rest, why he needed to understand.

Raj, Pradeep and Krishna all worked in IT, worked by day and researched in the evenings, or the other way round in Krishna's case, since he was still contracted to a Delhi-based company. Dealing with smells was not within their skill sets. Scent and taste were still way off on the edges of virtual reality, the last unconquered senses.

As he walked down the street he saw Krishna inside, attempting to open his bedroom window to a greater angle. They shrugged at each other. There were bushes directly outside the windows, so Raj always felt he was peeping out of a hiding place when he looked out. They mainly kept their curtains drawn, however, as people - strangers as well as neighbours - tended to gape in as they went by. It could be that some people thought single flatmates were in a public sphere with each other, not being related, so it was less of an intrusion to stare in at them, less provocative to suggest they stank. Perhaps these people believed that families lived in homes, whereas young single males, especially academic migrants, never lived in more than a flat or apartment. Raj did not think of that stinking hole as his home. It was just a place to stay and, increasingly, a place he was glad to leave every morning.

It was called a basement apartment, but the floor inside was only a couple feet under the level of the narrow garden along the street. Because of how the streets sloped, whoever designed these buildings had managed to shoehorn Raj's apartment and one other in under the rest of the apartments, in front of the basement storage rooms. For all he knew, the apartment they rented might once have been part of the cellar, and he and his flatmates were in temporary storage.

The part-time dad's red-nosed face leered at him through his basement window, and Raj wondered if this meant he too was one of those who dared look in at ground-floor residents, if he was entitled to do so since others did the same to him, or if it was the movement of the man, right behind the glass, which had caught his attention. Raj averted his gaze as neutrally as he could.

As he came through the glass doors, a silver cat darted slipper-silent up the stairs. Even cats could not abide the smell - or this cat might be in the habit of urinating down there. This beautiful feline might not be so beyond reproach and thoroughly refined as one would expect from her graceful movements and the dazzling gloss of her fur.

His red-nosed neighbour was peering from his door as Raj came down the half flight of stairs to his apartment. A whiff of whiskey tinctured the overwhelmingly subterranean odour.

Was that your cat? said Raj.

I want you to know, said the man, that I have a little daughter, a seven-year-old girl, a pure princess, who I bring to my home from time to time, for the weekend. Do you know what it is like to have your own daughter say your home stinks? I tell you, young man, I am meticulously clean. It is simply not fair, what you're doing: you and your chums stinking out the whole floor. You know the rules; you've been given notice. Now, just show some respect, can't you?

His monologue complete, the man slammed the door.

Not your cat then, said Raj.

As he came inside, a noise drew his glance inwards along the floor. Mice, four at least, shuttled in various directions and disappeared, hidden who knows where.

He checked under his own bed. That would be the worst. He closed his bedroom door, but opened it again, because he didn't want to block them in.

He heard a low meowing out in the stairwell. In his hurried mouse chase, he had left the door unlocked.

Pss-pss-pss, he said. Here, pussy pussy.

He held the door open and stood well back so as not to frighten the animal. She kept her eyes on him as she passed and then made straight for the kitchen.

Pradeep came out of his room, and Raj put a finger to his lips.

We have mice, he said.

Krishna came out too.

Is that your cat? he said. It is not allowed.

We have mice, said Pradeep, putting on his jacket. I'm going out to get a trap.

We'll need a few, said Raj, but the hardware stores will all be closed now.

I'll try the shopping centres.

I'll come with you, said Krishna. There are humane traps we could get.

Stay with me, said Raj. We should tidy up and seal all the food. Get some tape too, Pradeep, will you?

Text me if there's anything else, said Pradeep, already out the door and tapping up the half-flight of stairs at speed.

Raj heard squealing and hissing from the kitchen.

Where did you get the cat? said Krishna.

It just came in.

He held the door ajar and allowed the cat to go out with a small mouse in her mouth - alive or dead, he couldn't tell - and to come back to fetch another and another.

They waited quietly as this happened. Raj stood aside in the hallway, so he would hear anyone coming on the stairs. He didn't show himself at the door, in case the alco-dad could see him through his spyhole. If anyone came and saw the door ajar, they would be accused anew of spreading their dinner odours into the stairwell. This despite the fact that none of them had cooked dinner and none of them would have the appetite to eat anything now.

Let's keep the cat overnight, said Raj, in the lowest of voices. She had come in of her own accord, and she would be well fed.

What if the owners come knocking? said Krishna. We...