Shantaram

by Gregory David Roberts

  Hands clapped in brittle echoes, and a little girl stood up from the bench to sing and dance. It was a love song from a popular Hindi movie. I heard it many times, hundreds of times, during the following years, and it always reminded me of that child, ten years old, and her surprisingly strong, high, thin voice. She swayed her hips, pushing up her non-existent breasts in a child’s imitation of a temptress burlesque, and new interest quirked the heads of the purchasers and agents.

  Prabaker played the Virgil. His soft voice was ceaseless, explaining all that we saw, and all that he knew. He told me that the children would’ve died, if they hadn’t found their way to the people-market. Professional recruiters, known as talent scouts, roamed from one catastrophe to another, from drought to earthquake to flood. Starving parents, who’d already watched one or more of their children sicken, and die, blessed the scouts, kneeling to touch their feet. They begged them to buy a son or a daughter, so that at least that one child would live.

  The boys on sale there were destined to work as camel jockeys in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and other Gulf States. Some would be maimed in the camel races that provided afternoon entertainment for the rich sheiks, Prabaker said. Some would die. The survivors, grown too tall to ride in the races, were often abandoned to fend for themselves. The girls would work in households throughout the Middle East. Some of them would be used for sex.

  But they were alive, Prabaker said, those boys and girls. They were the lucky ones. For every child who passed through the people-market there were a hundred others, or more, who’d starved in unutterable agonies, and were dead.

  The starving, the dead, the slaves. And through it all, the purr and rustle of Prabaker’s voice. There’s a truth that’s deeper than experience. It’s beyond what we see, or even what we feel. It’s an order of truth that separates the profound from the merely clever, and the reality from the perception. We’re helpless, usually, in the face of it; and the cost of knowing it, like the cost of knowing love, is sometimes greater than any heart would willingly pay. It doesn’t always help us to love the world, but it does prevent us from hating the world. And the only way to know that truth is to share it, from heart to heart, just as Prabaker told it to me, just as I’m telling it to you now.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ‘DO YOU KNOW the Borsalino hat test?’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘The Borsalino hat test. It is the test that reveals whether a hat is a genuine Borsalino, or an inferior imitator. You know about the Borsalino, non?’

  ‘No, I can’t say I do.’

  ‘Aaaaah,’ Didier smiled. The smile was composed of one part surprise, one part mischief, and one part contempt. Somehow, those elements combined in an effect that was disarmingly charming. He leaned slightly forward and inclined his head to one side, his black curly hair shaking as if to emphasise the points in his explanation. ‘The Borsalino is a garment of the first and finest quality. It is believed by many, and myself included, to be the most outstanding gentleman’s head covering ever made.’

  His hands shaped an imaginary hat on his head.

  ‘It is wide-brimmed, in black or white, and made from the furs of the lapin.’

  ‘So, it’s just a hat,’ I added, in what I thought to be an agreeable tone. ‘We’re talking about a rabbit-fur hat.’

  Didier was outraged.

  ‘Just a hat? Oh, no, my friend! The Borsalino is more than just a hat. The Borsalino is a work of art! It is brushed ten thousand times, by hand, before it is sold. It was the style expression of first choice by discerning French and Italian gangsters in Milan and Marseilles for many decades. The very name of Borsalino became a synonyme for gangsters. The wild young men of the underworld of Milano and Marseilles were called Borsalinos. Those were the days when gangsters had some style. They understood that if you were to live as an outlaw and steal and shoot people for a living, you had a responsibility to dress with some elegance. Isn’t it so?’

  ‘It’s the least they could do,’ I agreed, smiling.

  ‘But of course! Now, sadly, there is all attitude and no style. It is the mark of the age in which we live that the style becomes the attitude, instead of the attitude becoming the style.’

  He paused, permitting me a moment to acknowledge the turn of phrase.

  ‘And so,’ he continued, ‘the test of a real Borsalino hat is to roll it into a cylinder, roll it up into a very tight tube, and pass it through a wedding ring. If it emerges from this test without permanent creases, and if it springs back to its original shape, and if it is not damaged in the experience, it is a genuine Borsalino.’

  ‘And you’re saying …’

  ‘Just so!’ Didier shouted, slamming a fist down on the table.

  We were sitting in Leopold’s, near the square arch of the Causeway doors, at eight o’clock. Some foreigners at the next table turned their heads at the noisy outburst, but the staff and the regulars ignored the Frenchman. Didier had been eating and drinking and expostulating at Leopold’s for nine years. They all knew there was a line you could cross with him, a limit to his tolerance, and he was a dangerous man if you crossed it. They also knew that the line wasn’t drawn in the soft sand of his own life or beliefs or feelings. Didier’s line was drawn through the hearts of the people he loved. If you hurt them, in any way, you roused him to a cold and deadly rage. But nothing anyone said or did to him, short of actual bodily harm, ever really offended or angered him.

  ‘Comme ςa! That is my point! Your little friend, Prabaker, has put you through the hat test. He rolled you into a tube, and dragged you through the wedding ring, to see if you are a real Borsalino or not. That was his purpose in taking you on the tour of the bad sights and sounds of the city. It was a Borsalino test.’

  I sipped my coffee in silence, knowing that he was right—Prabaker’s dark tour had been a kind of test—but not willing to give Didier the trophy of conceding the point.

  The evening crowd of tourists from Germany, Switzerland, France, England, Norway, America, Japan, and a dozen other countries thinned out, giving way to the night crowd of Indians and expatriates who called Bombay home. The locals reclaimed places like Leopold’s, the Mocambo, Café Mondegar, and the Light of Asia every night, when the tourists sought the safety of their hotels.

  ‘If it was a test,’ I did at last concede, ‘he must’ve given me a pass. He invited me to go with him to visit his family, in his village in the north of the state.’

  Didier raised his eyebrows in theatrical surprise.

  ‘For how long?’

  ‘I don’t know. A couple of months, I think. Maybe more.’

  ‘Ah, then it is so,’ he concluded. ‘Your little friend is beginning to love you.’

  ‘I think that’s putting it a bit strong,’ I objected, frowning.

  ‘No, no, you do not understand. You must be careful, here, with the real affection of those you meet. This is not like any other place. This is India. Everyone who comes here falls in love—most of us fall in love many times over. And the Indians, they love most of all. Your little friend may be beginning to love you. There is nothing strange in this. I say it from a long experience of this country, and especially of this city. It happens often, and easily, for the Indians. That is how they manage to live together, a billion of them, in reasonable peace. They are not perfect, of course. They know how to fight and lie and cheat each other, and all the things that all of us do. But more than any other people in the world, the Indians know how to love one another.’

  He paused to light a cigarette, and then waved it like a little flagpole until the waiter noticed him and nodded to his request for another glass of vodka.

  ‘India is about six times the size of France,’ he went on, as the glass of alcohol and a bowl of curried snacks arrived at our table. ‘But it has almost twenty times the population. Twenty times! Believe me, if there were a billion Frenchmen living in such a crowded space, there would be rivers of blood. Rivers of blood! And, as everyone knows, we French are the mos
t civilised people in Europe. Indeed, in the whole world. No, no, without love, India would be impossible.’

  Letitia joined us at our table, sitting to my left.

  ‘What are you on about now, Didier, you bastard?’ she asked companionably, her South London accent giving the first syllable of the last word an explosive ring.

  ‘He was just telling me that the French are the most civilised people in the world.’

  ‘As all the world knows,’ he added.

  ‘When you produce a Shakespeare, out of your villes and vineyards, mate, I might just agree with you,’ Lettie murmured through a smile that seemed to be warm and condescending in equal parts.

  ‘My dear, please do not think that I disrespect your Shakespeare,’ Didier countered, laughing happily. ‘I love the English language, because so much of it is French.’

  ‘Touché,’ I grinned, ‘as we say in English.’

  Ulla and Modena arrived at that moment, and sat down. Ulla was dressed for work in a small, tight, black, halter-neck dress, fishnet stockings, and stiletto-heel shoes. She wore eye-dazzling fake diamonds at her throat and ears. The contrast between her clothing and Lettie’s was stark. Lettie wore a fine, bone-coloured brocade jacket over loose, dark-brown satin culottes, and boots. Yet the faces of the two women produced the strongest and most unexpected contrast. Lettie’s gaze was seductive, direct, self-assured, and sparkling with ironies and secrets, while Ulla’s wide blue eyes, for all the make-up and clothing of her professional sexuality, showed nothing but innocence—honest, vacuous innocence.

  ‘You are forbidden to speak to me, Didier,’ Ulla said at once, pouting inconsolably ‘I have had a very disagreeable time with Federico—three hours—and it is all your fault.’

  ‘Bah!’ Didier spat out. ‘Federico!’

  ‘Oh,’ Lettie joined in, making three long sounds out of one. ‘Something’s happened to the beautiful young Federico, has it? Come on, Ulla me darlin’, let’s have all the gossip.’

  ‘Naja, Federico has got a religion, and he is driving me crazy about it, and it is all Didier’s fault.’

  ‘Yes!’ Didier added, clearly disgusted. ‘Federico has found religion. It is a tragedy. He no longer drinks or smokes or takes drugs. And of course he will not have sex with anyone—not even with himself! It is an appalling waste of talent. The man was a genius of the corruptions, my finest student, my masterwork. It is maddening. He is now a good man, in the very worst sense of the word.’

  ‘Well, you win a few, you lose a few,’ Lettie sighed with mock sympathy. ‘You mustn’t let it get you down, Didier. There’ll be other fish for you to fry and gobble up.’

  ‘Your sympathy should be for me,’ Ulla chided. ‘Federico came from Didier in such a bad mood yesterday, he was at my door today in tears. Scheisse! Wirklich! For three hours he cried and he raved at me about being born again. In the end I felt so sorry for him. It was only with a great suffering that I let Modena throw him and his bible books onto the street. It’s all your fault, Didier, and I will take the longest time to forgive you for it.’

  ‘Fanatics,’ Didier mused, ignoring the rebuke, ‘always seem to have the same scrubbed and staring look about them. They have the look of people who do not masturbate, but who think about it almost all the time.’

  ‘I really do love you, you know, Didier,’ Lettie stuttered, through her bubbling laughter. ‘Even if you are a despicable toad of a man.’

  ‘No, you love him because he is a despicable toe of a man,’ Ulla declared.

  ‘That’s toad, love, not toe,’ Lettie corrected patiently, still laughing. ‘He’s a toad of a man, not a toe of a man. A despicable toe wouldn’t make any sense at all, now would it? We wouldn’t love him or hate him just for being a toe of a man, would we, darlin’—even if we knew what it meant?’

  ‘I’m not so good with the English jokes, you know that, Lettie,’ Ulla persisted. ‘But I think he is a big, ugly, hairy toe of a man.’

  ‘I assure you,’ Didier protested, ‘that my toes—and my feet, for that matter—are exceptionally beautiful.’

  Karla, Maurizio, and an Indian man in his early thirties walked in from the busy night street. Maurizio and Modena joined a second table to ours, and then the eight of us ordered drinks and food.

  ‘Lin, Lettie, this is my friend, Vikram Patel,’ Karla announced, when there was a moment of relative quiet. ‘He came back a couple of weeks ago, after a long holiday in Denmark, and I think you’re the only two who haven’t met him.’

  Lettie and I introduced ourselves to the newcomer, but my real attention was on Maurizio and Karla. He sat beside her, opposite me, and rested his hand on the back of her chair. He leaned in close to her, and their heads almost touched when they spoke.

  There’s a dark feeling—less than hatred, but more than loathing—that ugly men feel for handsome men. It’s unreasonable and unjustified, of course, but it’s always there, hiding in the long shadow thrown by envy. It creeps out, into the light of your eyes, when you’re falling in love with a beautiful woman. I looked at Maurizio, and a little of that dark feeling began in my heart. His straight, white teeth, smooth complexion, and thick, dark hair turned me against him more swiftly and surely than flaws in his character might’ve done.

  And Karla was beautiful: her hair, in a French roll, was shining like water running over black river stones, and her green eyes were radiant with purpose and pleasure. She wore a long-sleeved Indian salwar top that reached to below her knees, where it met loose trousers in the same olive silk fabric.

  ‘I had a great time, yaar,’ the newcomer, Vikram, was saying when my thoughts returned to the moment. ‘Denmark is very hip, very cool. The people are very sophisticated. They’re so fucking controlled, I couldn’t believe it. I went to a sauna, in Copenhagen. It was a fucking huge place, yaar, with a mixed set-up—with men and women, together, walking around stark naked. Absolutely, totally naked. And nobody reacted at all. Not even a flickering eye, yaar. Indian guys couldn’t handle that. They’d be boiling, I tell you.’

  ‘Were you boiling, Vikram dear?’ Lettie asked, sweetly.

  ‘Are you fucking kidding? I was the only guy in the place wearing a towel, and the only guy with a hard-on.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Ulla said, when we stopped laughing. It was a flat statement—neither a complaint, nor a plea for further explanation.

  ‘Hey, I went there every day for three weeks, yaar,’ Vikram continued. ‘I thought that if I just spent enough time there, I’d get used to it, like all the super-cool Danes.’

  ‘Get used to what?’ Ulla asked.

  Vikram frowned at her, bewildered, and then turned to Lettie.

  ‘It was no good. It was useless. After three weeks, I still had to wear the towel. No matter how often I went there, when I saw those bouncy bits going up and down, and side-to-side, I stiffened up. What can I say? I’m too Indian for a place like that.’

  ‘It is the same for Indian women,’ Maurizio observed. ‘Even when they are making love, it is not possible to be naked.’

  ‘Well, that’s not always true,’ Vikram went on, And anyway, it’s the guys who are the problem here. Indian women are ready to change. Young Indian chicks from middle-class families are wild about change, yaar. They’re educated, and they’re ready for short hair, short dresses, and short love affairs. They’re ready for it, but the guys are holding them back. The average Indian guy has a sexual maturity of about fourteen.’

  ‘Tell me about it,’ Lettie muttered.

  Kavita Singh had approached our table moments before, and stood behind Vikram while he made his observations about Indian women. With short, styled hair, and wearing jeans and a white sweatshirt bearing the emblem of New York University, she was the living woman, the physical representation of what Vikram had been saying. She was the real thing.

  ‘You’re such a chudd, Vikkie,’ she said, taking a place opposite him and on my right side. ‘You say all this, but you’re just as bad as all the res
t. Look at how you treat your own sister, yaar, if she dares to wear jeans and a tight sweater.’

  ‘Hey, I bought her that tight sweater, in London, last year!’ Vikram protested.

  ‘But you still gave her buckets of grief when she wore it to the jazz yatra, na?’

  ‘Well, how was I to know that she would want to wear it outside the apartment?’ he countered lamely, provoking laughter and derision from the whole group. None laughed harder than Vikram himself.

  Vikram Patel was of average height and build, but average stopped just there, with those characteristics. His thick, curly, black hair framed a handsome, intelligent face. The bright and animated light brown eyes stared out confidently above a long, hawk-like nose and a sharp, immaculately trimmed Zapata moustache. His clothes were black—cowboy boots, jeans, shirt, and leather vest—and he wore a flat, black Spanish flamenco hat on his back, hanging from a leather thong at his throat. His bolo tie, dollar-coin belt, and hatband were all in silver. He looked like a hero in a spaghetti western movie, and that was, in fact, the inspiration for his style. Vikram had an obsession with Sergio Leone’s films, Once Upon A Time In The West, and The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. Later, when I knew him better, when I watched him win the heart of the woman he loved, and when we stood together to face and fight enemies who wanted to kill me, I learned that he was a hero, and that he would’ve held his own with any of the gunslingers he adored.

  Sitting opposite him on that first meeting, I was struck by the ease with which he assumed his black cowboy dream, and the stylish assurance that carried it off. Vikram is the kind of man who wears his sleeve on his heart, Karla once said. It was an affectionate joke, and one that we all understood, but there was a brittle filament of scorn in it, as well. I didn’t laugh with the others when she said it. People like Vikram, people who can wear an obsession with panache, always win me over because their honesty speaks directly to my heart.

  ‘No, it’s true!’ he persisted. ‘In Copenhagen there was this club. It’s what they call a telephone club. There’s all these tables, yaar, and every table has a number that’s lit up in red lights. If you see someone interesting, someone really hot, sitting at table twelve, you just dial up number twelve, and speak to them. Fucking deadly system, man. Half the time you don’t know who’s calling you, or they don’t know who you are. Sometimes you talk for an hour, trying to guess who’s talking to you, because everybody is talking at the same time. And then you tell each other what table you’re at. I had a real nice party there, I can tell you. But if they tried to do it here, it wouldn’t last five minutes, because the guys couldn’t handle it. So many Indian guys are chutias, yaar. They’d be swearing, and saying all sorts of indecent shit, the childish motherfuckers. That’s all I’m saying. In Copenhagen, the people were a lot cooler, and we’ve still got a damn long way to go, here, before India catches up to them on the cool scale.’