And there was another difference between the men in that group and me—a difference so profound that friendship, on its own, couldn’t surmount it. I was the only man at that table who hadn’t killed a human being, in hot blood or cold. Even Andrew, amiable and garrulous young Andrew, had fired his Beretta at a cornered enemy—one of the Sapna killers—and emptied all seven rounds of the magazine into the man’s chest until he was, as Sanjay would’ve said, two or three times dead.
Just at that moment the differences suddenly seemed immense and unconquerable to me—far greater and more significant than the hundred talents, desires, and tendencies that we had in common. I was slipping away from them, right there and then, at the long table in the Taj. While Amir told his stories and I tried to nod and smile and laugh with the others, grief came to claim me. The day that had started well, and should’ve been like any other, had spun askew with Salman’s little words. The room was warm, but I was cold. My belly hungered, but I couldn’t eat. I was surrounded by friends, in a vast, crowded restaurant, but I was lonelier than a mujaheddin sentry on the night before battle.
And then I looked up to see Lisa Carter walk into the restaurant. Her long, blonde hair had been cut. The new short style suited her open, honest, pretty face. She was dressed in pale blue—her favourite colour—a loose shirt and pants, with matching blue sunglasses propped in her thick hair. She looked like a creature of light, a creature made out of sky and clean, white light.
Without considering what I was doing, I stood and excused myself, and left my friends. She saw me as I approached her. A smile as big as a gambler’s promise unveiled her face as she opened her arms to hug me. And then she knew One hand reached up to touch my face, her fingertips reading the braille of scars, while the other hand took my arm to lead me out of the restaurant and into the foyer.
‘I haven’t seen you for weeks,’ she said as we sat together in a quiet corner. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing,’ I lied. ‘Were you going in to have some lunch?’
‘No. Just coffee. I’ve got a room here, in the old part, looking out over the Gateway. It’s a million-dollar view, and a great room. I’ve got it for three days while Lettie sews up a deal with a big producer. This is one of the fringe benefits she managed to squeeze out of him. The movie business—what can I say?’
‘How’s it going?’
‘Great,’ she smiled. ‘Lettie loves every minute of it. She deals with all the studios and the booking agents now. She’s better at it than me. She drives a better deal for us every time. And I do the tourists. I like that part better. I like meeting them and working with them.’
‘And you like it that sooner or later, no matter how nice they are, they always go away?’
‘Yeah. That, too.’
‘How’s Vikram? I haven’t seen him since—since the last time I saw you and Lettie.’
‘He’s cool. You know Vikram. He’s got a lot more time on his hands now. He misses the stunt thing. He was really big on that, and he was great at it. But it drove Lettie crazy. He was always jumping off moving trucks and crashing through windows and stuff. And she worried a lot. So she made him give it up.’
‘What’s he doing now?’
‘He’s kind of the boss, you know? Like the executive vice-president of the company—the one Lettie started, with Kavita and Karla and Jeet. And me.’ She paused, on the verge of saying something, and then plunged on. ‘She was asking after you.’
I stared back at her, saying nothing.
‘Karla,’ she explained. ‘She wants to see you, I think.’
I held the silence. I was enjoying it, a little, that so many emotions were chasing one another across the soft, unblemished landscape of her face.
‘Have you seen any of his stunts?’ she asked.
‘Vikram’s?’
‘Yeah. He did a whole lot before Lettie made him stop.’
‘I’ve been busy. But I really want to catch up with Vikram.’
‘Why don’t you?’
‘I will. I heard he’s hanging out at the Colaba Market every day, and I’ve been wanting to see him. I’m working a lot of nights, so I haven’t been to Leopold’s lately. It’s just … I’ve been … busy.’
‘I know,’ she said softly. ‘Maybe too busy, Lin. You don’t look too good.’
‘Gimme a break,’ I sighed, trying to laugh. ‘I work out every day. I do boxing or karate every other day. I can’t get any fitter than this.’
‘You know what I mean,’ she insisted.
‘Yeah, I know what you mean. Listen, I should let you go …’
‘No. You shouldn’t.’
‘I shouldn’t?’ I asked, faking a smile.
‘No. You should come with me, now, to my room. We can have coffee sent up. Come on. Let’s go.’
And she was right: it was a spectacular view. Tourist ferries bound for the caves on Elephanta Island, or returning to shore, rose up the wavelets and rolled over them in proud, practised glissades. Hundreds of smaller craft dipped and nodded like preening birds in the shallow water while huge cargo vessels, anchored to the horizon, lay motionless on that cusp of calm where the ocean became the bay. On the street below us, parading tourists wove coloured garlands with their movements through and around the tall, stony gallery of the Gateway Monument.
She kicked off her shoes and sat cross-legged on the bed. I sat near her on the edge of the bed. I stared at the floor near the door. We were quiet for a while, listening to the noises that pushed their way into the room with a breeze that caused the curtains to riffle, swell, and fall.
‘I think,’ she began, taking a deep breath, ‘you should come and live with me.’
‘Well, that’s—’
‘Hear me out,’ she cut in, raising both palms to silence me. ‘Please.’
‘I just don’t think—’
‘Please.’
‘Okay,’ I smiled, sitting further along the bed to rest my back against the bed-head.
‘I found a new place. It’s in Tardeo. I know you like Tardeo. So do I. And I know you’ll like the apartment, because it’s exactly the kind of place we both like. And I think that’s what I’m trying to get at, or trying to say—we like the same things, Lin. And we got a lot in common. We both beat the dope. That’s a fuckin’ hard thing to do, and you know it. And not many people do it. But we did—we both did—and I think that’s because we’re alike, you and me. We’d be good, Lin. We’d be … we’d be real good.’
‘I can’t say … for sure … that I beat the dope, Lisa.’
‘You did, Lin.’
‘No. I can’t say I won’t ever touch it again, so I can’t say I beat it.’
‘But that’s even more reason to get together, don’t you see?’ she insisted, her eyes pleading and close to tears. ‘I’ll keep you straight. I can say I won’t ever touch it again, because I hate the stuff. If we’re together, we can work the movie business, and have fun, and watch out for each other.’
‘There’s too much …’
‘Listen, if you’re worried about Australia, and jail, we could go somewhere else—somewhere they’ll never find us.’
‘Who told you about that?’ I asked, keeping my face straight.
‘Karla did,’ she answered evenly. ‘It was in the same little conversation we had once, where she told me to look after you.’
‘Karla said that?’
‘Yeah.’
‘When?’
‘A long time ago. I asked her about you—about what her feelings were, and what she wanted to do.’
‘Why?’
‘Whaddaya mean, why?’
‘I mean,’ I replied slowly, reaching out to cover her hand with mine, ‘why did you ask Karla about her feelings?’
‘Because I had a crush on you, stupid!’ she explained, holding my eye for a second and then looking away again. ‘That’s why I went with Abdullah—to make you jealous, or interested, and just to be close to you, through him, because he was your friend
.’
‘Jesus,’ I sighed. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Is it still Karla?’ she asked, her eyes following the rise and breathless fall of the curtains at the window. ‘Are you still in love with her?’
‘No.’
‘But you still love her.’
‘Yes.’
‘And … how about me?’ she asked.
I didn’t answer because I didn’t want her to know the truth. I didn’t want to know the truth myself. And the silence thickened and swelled until I could feel the tingling pressure of it on my skin.
‘I’ve got this friend,’ she said at last. ‘He’s an artist. A sculptor. His name’s Jason. Have you ever met him?’
‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘He’s an English guy, and he’s got a real English way of looking at things. It’s different than our way, our American way, I mean. He’s got a big studio out near Juhu Beach. I go there sometimes.’
She was silent again. We sat there, feeling the breeze alternately warm and cool as the air from the street and the bay swirled into the room. I could feel her eyes on me like a blush of shame. I stared at our two hands joined and resting on the bed.
‘The last time I went there, he was working on this new idea. He was filling empty packaging with plaster, using the bubble packs that used to have toys in them, you know, and the foam boxes you get packed around a new T.V. set. He calls them negative spaces. He uses them like a mould, and he makes a sculpture out of them. He had a hundred things there—shapes made out of egg cartons, and the blister-pack that a new toothbrush came in, and the empty package that had a set of headphones in it.’
I turned to look at her. The sky in her eyes held tiny storms. Her lips, embossed with secret thoughts, were swollen to the truth she was trying to tell me.
‘I walked around there, in his studio, you know, looking at all these white sculptures, and I thought, that’s what I am. That’s what I’ve always been. All my life. Negative space. Always waiting for someone, or something, or some kind of real feeling to fill me up and give me a reason …’
When I kissed her, the storm from her blue eyes came into our mouths, and the tears that slid across her lemon-scented skin were sweeter than honey from the sacred bees in Mombadevi’s Jasmine Temple garden. I let her cry for us. I let her live and die for us in the long, slow stories our bodies told. Then, when the tears stopped, she surrounded us with poised and fluent beauty—a beauty that was hers alone: born in her brave heart, and substantialised in the truth of her love and her flesh. And it almost worked.
We kissed again as I prepared to leave her room—good friends, lovers, gathered into one another then and forever by the clash and caress of our bodies, but not quite healed by it, not quite cured by it. Not yet.
‘She’s still there, isn’t she?’ Lisa said, wrapping a towel around her body to stand in the breeze at the window.
‘I’ve got the blues today, Lisa. I don’t know why. It’s been a long day. But that’s nothing to do with us. You and me … that was good—for me, anyway.’
‘For me, too. But I think she’s still there, Lin.’
‘No, I wasn’t lying before. I’m not in love with her any more. Something happened, when I came back from Afghanistan. Or maybe it happened in Afghanistan. It just … stopped.’
‘I’m going to tell you something,’ she murmured and then turned to face me, speaking in a stronger, clearer voice. ‘It’s about her. I believe you, what you said, but I think you have to know this before you can really say it’s over with her.’
‘I don’t need—’
‘Please, Lin! It’s a girl thing. I have to tell you because you can’t really say it’s over with her unless you know the truth about her—unless you know what makes her tick. If I tell you, and it doesn’t change anything or make you feel different than how you feel now, then I’ll know you’re free.’
‘And if it does make a difference?’
‘Well, maybe she deserves a second chance. I don’t know. I can only tell you I never understood Karla at all until she told me. She made sense, after that. So … I guess you have to know. Anyway, if there’s anything gonna happen for us, I want it to be clear—the past, I mean.’
‘Okay,’ I relented, sitting in a chair near the door. ‘Go ahead.’
She sat on the bed once more, drawing her knees up under her chin in the tight wrap of the towel. There were changes in her, and I couldn’t help noticing them—a kind of honesty, maybe, in the way her body moved, and a new, almost languorous release that softened her eyes. They were love-changes, and beautiful for that, and I wondered if she saw any of them in me, sitting still and quiet near the door.
‘Did Karla tell you why she left the States?’ she asked, knowing the answer.
‘No,’ I replied, choosing not to repeat the little that Khaled had told me on the night that he walked into the snow.
‘I didn’t think so. She told me she wasn’t going to tell you about it. I said she was crazy. I said she had to level with you. But she wouldn’t. It’s funny how it goes, isn’t it? I wanted her to tell you, then, because I thought it might put you off her. Now, I’m telling you, so that you can give her one more chance—if you want to. Anyway, here it is. Karla left the States because she had to. She was running away … because she killed a guy.’
I laughed. It was a small chuckle, at first, but it rolled and rumbled helplessly into a belly laugh. I doubled over, leaning on my thighs for support.
‘It’s really not that funny, Lin.’ Lisa frowned.
‘No,’ I laughed, struggling to regain control. ‘It’s not … that. It’s just … Shit! If you knew how many times I worried about bringing my crazy, fucked up life to her! I kept telling myself I had no right to love her because I was on the run. You gotta admit, it’s pretty funny.’
She stared at me, rocking slightly as she hugged her knees. She wasn’t laughing.
‘Okay,’ I exhaled, pulling myself together. ‘Okay Go on.’
‘There was this guy,’ she continued, in a tone that made it clear how serious she considered the subject. ‘He was the father of one of the kids she used to baby-sit for, when she was a kid herself.’
‘She told me about it.’
‘She did? Okay, then you know. And nobody did anything about it. And it messed her up pretty bad. And then, one day, she got herself a gun, and she went to his house when he was alone, and she shot him. Six times. Two in the chest, she said, and four in the crotch.’
‘Did they know it was her?’
‘She’s not sure. She knows she didn’t leave any prints there, at the house. And nobody saw her leave. She got rid of the gun. And she scrammed out of there, right out of the country, real fast. She’s never been back, so she doesn’t know if there’s a sheet on her or not.’
I sat back in the chair and let out a long, slow breath. Lisa watched me closely, her blue eyes narrowing slightly and reminding me of the way she’d looked at me on that night, years before, in Karla’s apartment.
‘Is there any more?’
‘No,’ she answered, shaking her head slowly, but holding my eyes in the stare. ‘That’s it.’
‘Okay’ I sighed, running a hand over my face, and standing to leave. I went to her, and knelt on the bed beside her, with my face close to hers. ‘I’m glad you told me, Lisa. It makes a lot of things … clearer … I guess. But it doesn’t change anything in how I feel. I’d like to help her, if I could, but I can’t forget … what happened … and I can’t forgive it, either. I wish I could. It’d make things a lot easier. It’s bad, loving someone you can’t forgive.’
‘It’s not as bad as loving someone you can’t have,’ she countered, and I kissed her.
I rode the elevator down to the foyer alone with the crowd of my mirror selves: beside and behind me, still and silent, not one of them was able to meet my eye. Once through the glass doors, I walked down the marble steps and across the wide forecourt of the Gateway Monument to the sea. Beneath the a
rched shadow I leaned on the sea wall and looked out at the boats carrying tourists back to the marina. How many of those lives, I wondered, watching the travellers pose for one another’s cameras, are happy and carefree and … simply free? How many of them are sorrowing? How many are …
And then the full darkness of that long-resisted grieving closed around me. I realised that for some time I’d been gritting my teeth and that my jaw was cramped and stiff, but I couldn’t unlock the muscles. I turned my head to see one of the street boys, someone I knew well, doing business with a young tourist. The boy, Mukul, sent his eyes left and right, lizard quick, and passed a small, white packet to the tourist. The man was about twenty years old: tall and fit and handsome. I guessed him to be a German student, and I had a good eye. He hadn’t been in the city long. I knew the signs. He was new blood, with money to burn and the whole world of experience open to him. And there was a spring in his step as he walked away to join his friends. But there was poison in the packet in his hand. If it didn’t kill him outright, in a hotel room somewhere, it would deepen in his life, maybe, as it did once in mine, until it poisoned every breathing second.
I didn’t care—not about him or me or anyone. I wanted it. I wanted the drug, just then, more than anything in the world. My skin remembered the satin-flush of ecstasy and the lichen-stippled creep of fever and fear. The smell-taste was so strong that I felt myself retching it. The hunger for oblivion, painless, guiltless, and unsorrowing, swirled in me, shivering from my spine to the thick, healthy veins in my arms. And I wanted it: the golden minute in heroin’s long leaden night.
Mukul caught my eye and smiled from habit, but the smile twitched and crumbled into uncertainty. And then he knew. He had a good eye, too. He lived on the street, and he knew the look. So the smile returned, but it was different. There was seduction in it—It’s right here … I’ve got it right here … It’s good stuff … Come and get it—and the dealer’s tiny, vicious, little sneer of triumph. You’re no better than me … You’re not much at all … And sooner or later, you’ll beg me for it…
Shantaram: A Novel Page 103
