The Mountain Shadow

by Gregory David Roberts

  ‘You don’t know me.’

  He snarled, whirling his head around, and spitting on the ground.

  ‘I mean, that faggot, think about it. If the whole world was like him, the human race would die out.’

  ‘And if the whole world was like you, Concannon, we’d deserve to.’

  It was hard; too hard. Who was I to throw stones? But I loved Didier, and I’d had all of Concannon I could take for one long day.

  His eyes flashed with sudden murderous fury, and I stared back at him, thinking that I’d been tied up and beat up that day, and he could stare all he wanted.

  I started the bike, kicked away the side-stand, and helped Kavita to climb up behind me. We rode away without looking back.

  ‘That guy,’ she shouted, leaning over my shoulder, her lips touching my ear, ‘is out of his bloody mind, yaar.’

  ‘I only met the guy once before,’ I shouted back. ‘He seemed kind of okay.’

  ‘Well, somebody emptied his okay basket,’ Kavita said.

  ‘You could say that about most of us,’ I replied.

  ‘Speak for yourself,’ Kavita laughed. ‘My basket is a horn of plenty, baby.’

  I wasn’t laughing. The look in Concannon’s eyes stayed with me. Even as I brushed aside Lisa’s pain and concern, apologised to her, kissed her, and sat on a wobbly stool in the bathroom while she cleaned and dressed the cuts on my face, I saw Concannon’s eyes: omens in a cave.

  ‘It suits Lin, this look,’ Kavita said to Lisa, claiming a comfortable place on the couch after I’d been patched up. ‘I think he should pay someone to do it at least once every month. I’ve got a couple of girlfriends who’d do it for free.’

  ‘You’re not helping, Kavita. I mean, look at him. That’s what a car accident would look like, if cars were made out of people.’

  ‘Okay,’ Kavita said, ‘I’m really not wanting to get that image in my mind.’

  Lisa frowned, and turned back to face me, her hand cradling the back of my head.

  ‘You’re not going to tell me what the hell happened, are you?’

  ‘Happened?’

  ‘You’re a sick man,’ she declared, pushing me away. ‘Did you at least eat something today?’

  ‘Well . . . I got kinda busy.’

  ‘Kavita, will you cook for us? I’m just too emotional to cook right now.’

  Kavita cooked one of my favourites, yellow dhal and aloo ghobi, spiced cauliflower-potato mix. It was pretty good, too, and I didn’t know how much I needed it until I ate it. After we cleaned up quickly, we sat together to watch a movie.

  It was Konchalovsky’s film of Kurosawa’s Runaway Train, with John Voight riding fearless into the white sky that every outlaw finds, sooner or later, on the horizon of violent desire.

  Kavita, who condemned it as testosterone terrorism, insisted that we watch it a second time, but with the sound turned to zero, and with each of us speaking the parts of the characters. We ran the movie again, and laughed our way through the second viewing.

  I played the game, making up lines for the characters Kavita gave me, desecrating the beloved movie, but as the light from that runaway train poured onto our laughing faces in the darkened room, other images and other faces from another dark place, earlier that long day, rained into me.

  When Lisa put a new film in the player I stood, gathered my keys, and put my two knives into the scabbards.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Lisa asked from the couch, where she was snuggled in beside Kavita.

  ‘I’ve got something I have to do,’ I replied, leaning over to kiss her on the cheek.

  ‘You’re gonna what?’ she demanded. ‘We’re gonna watch another movie here! My choice, this time. It’s not fair that I have to see your testosterone terrorism, and you don’t have to see my oestrogen ecstasy.’

  ‘Let him go,’ Kavita said, cuddling close. ‘We’ll have a girls’ night in.’

  At the door to the living room I turned to look at them again.

  ‘If I don’t come back tonight,’ I said, ‘don’t give my stuff away, because I always come back.’

  ‘Very funny,’ Lisa said. ‘Tell me, did you have a stamp collection, when you were a kid?’

  ‘Please, Lin,’ Kavita laughed. ‘Don’t answer that question.’

  ‘I tried,’ I said. ‘My father stamped it out. By the way, do you think I’m grouchy?’

  ‘What?’ they both asked.

  ‘Someone, a kid I know, he said I’m grouchy. I don’t get it. Do you think I’m grouchy?’

  Lisa and Kavita laughed so hard they fell off the couch. When they saw the expression on my face they laughed harder and rolled together, their legs in the air.

  ‘Come on, it’s not that funny.’

  They screamed for me to stop.

  ‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Thanks a lot.’

  They were still laughing when I started my bike, pulled out of the driveway, and headed along Marine Drive toward Tardeo.

  It was late, and the streets were almost deserted. A scent of iron and salt, the blood of the sea, rose from the crests of waves, exhausting themselves on the walls of the wide bay. That scent rode the midnight breeze into every open window on the boulevard.

  Massive black clouds boiled and swarmed overhead, so close that it seemed I could reach up and touch them as I rode. Lightning, silent but sky-wide, ripped the veil of night, shredding the darkness with theatres of cloud in every silver strike.

  After eight dry months, the soul of the Island City was begging for rain. Every heart, sleeping or awake, stirred to the roil and rumble of the gathering storm. Every pulse, young or old, was drumming to the rhythm of the coming rain, every sighing breath a part of the waxing wind and the flooding clouds.

  I parked the bike in the entrance to a deserted alley. The footpaths nearby were empty, and the few sleepers I saw were stretched out near a line of handcarts, three hundred metres away.

  I smoked a cigarette, waiting and watching the quiet street. When I was sure that no-one was awake on the block, I put my cotton handkerchief under the downpipe of the petrol tank on my bike, pulled the feeder tube free, flooded the handkerchief with petrol, and then reconnected the tube.

  At the door of the warehouse where they’d slapped me around that afternoon, I broke the padlock on the chain across the door, and slipped inside.

  I used my cigarette lighter to find my way to the piece of pool furniture: that banana lounge in acid-green and yellow vinyl. There was an empty drum nearby. I dragged it toward the banana lounge, and sat down.

  In a few minutes, my eyes adjusted to the darkness. I made out certain objects and pieces of furniture quite clearly. Among them was a large coil of coconut-fibre rope. The rope they’d used to tie me to the pool chair had been cut from that roll.

  I stood up and uncoiled the rope until it tumbled into a large, loose pile. Packing the pile of rope under the banana lounge, I stuffed the petrol-soaked scarf within the fibre strands.

  There were empty cardboard cartons, old telephone books, oily rags and other inflammables in the warehouse. I dragged them into a line leading from the pool chair to a row of cabinets and benches where the power tools were displayed, and doused them with everything I could find.

  When I lit the scarf it flared up quickly. The flames fluttered and then rushed into a fierce fire that began to consume the pile of rope.

  Thick, musty smoke quickly filled the open space. The vinyl banana lounge was putting up a fight. I waited until the fire had prowled along the line of combustible refuse, and then left the warehouse, dragging a heavy oxy-acetylene kit with me.

  I let the gas bottles rest in the gutter, out of reach of the fire, and walked slowly to my bike.

  The firelight in the windows of the warehouse rippled and throbbed for a time, as if a silent party was underway inside. Then there w
as a small explosion.

  I guessed that a container of glue or paint thinner had exploded. Whatever it was, it brought the fire into the rafters of the warehouse, and sent the first flames and pieces of orange ash into the heavy, humid air.

  People began emerging from surrounding shops and houses. They ran toward the fire, but there was nothing they could do. There was little water to spare. The warehouse was a stand-alone building. It was lost to the fire, and everyone knew it, but other buildings wouldn’t burn with it.

  As the crowd swelled, the first chai and paan sellers arrived on bi­cycles to profit from the pool of spectators. Not long behind them were the firemen and the police.

  The firemen trained hoses on the sides of the burning building, but the hoses only produced a thin stream of water. The police lashed out with bamboo canes at a few of the spectators, established a command post opposite the fire, and commandeered a chai seller for themselves.

  I was getting worried. I wanted to burn down the torture shed. It had seemed like a good idea at the time. Vishnu wanted me to leave a message there, and I was sure that he’d get my message clearly. But I didn’t want the fire to spread.

  The firemen in their brass Athenian helmets were helpless. It seemed, for a handful of heartbeats, that the fire might jump the open space to the next building.

  Thunder boomed the drum of sky. Every window in the street shuddered. Every heart trembled. Thunder smashed the sky again and again, so fearsome that lovers, neighbours and even strangers reached out to one another instinctively.

  Lightning lit lanterns of cloud everywhere at once, directly overhead. Dogs cowered and scampered. A cold wind gusted through the humid night, the blade of it piercing my thin shirt. The freezing wind fled, and a warm, plunging wave of air as damp as sea spray moved through the street like a hand rustling a silk curtain.

  It rained. Liquid night, heavy as a cashmere cloak: it rained. And it rained.

  The crowd shivered and shouted with delight. Forgetting the fire they jumped and whooped and danced together, laughing madly as their feet splashed on the sodden street.

  The fire sizzled, defeated in the flood. Firemen joined the dancers. Someone turned on music somewhere. Cops swayed in a line beside their jeeps. The dancers laughed, soaked through, satin-skin clothes reflecting colours in the puddles at their feet.

  I danced on a river of wet light. Storms rolled, while the sea came to the earth. Winds leapt at us like a pack of happy dogs. Lakes of lightning splashed the street. Heat sighed from every stone. Faith in life painted our faces. Hands were laughter. Shadows danced, drunk on rain, and I danced with them, the happy fool I was, as that first flood drowned the sins of the sun.

  Part Three

  Chapter Fourteen

  ‘Are you awake?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Yes, you are.’

  ‘No, I’m not.’

  ‘If you’re not awake, how come you’re answering me?’

  ‘I’m having a nightmare.’

  ‘Oh, yeah?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘What kinda nightmare?’

  ‘It’s horrible. There’s this persistent voice, destroying the first good sleep I’ve had in weeks.’

  ‘That’s your nightmare?’ Lisa mocked from behind my back. ‘You should try a year in the art business, baby.’

  ‘It’s getting scarier. I can’t make the voice stop.’

  She was silent. I knew from her breathing, as you do when you like a woman enough, that her eyes were open. The overhead fan turned slowly, stirring liquid monsoon air. Street light slivers penetrated the wooden shutters on the windows, dissecting the paintings on the wall beside the bed.

  Morning was still half an hour away, but the false dawn flattened all the shadows in the room. Surreal grey settled on every surface, even on the skin of my hand, beside my face on the pillow.

  The Peyote Effect, Karla called it once. And she was right, of course. The drug’s tendency to paint the universe in the same shade was like a false dawn of the imagination. Karla, always so clever, always so funny . . .

  My eyes closed. I was almost gone; holding a peyote button in the palm of my dreaming hand, and almost gone.

  ‘How often do you think about Karla?’ Lisa asked.

  Damn, I thought, waking up, how do women do that?

  ‘A lot, lately. That’s the third time I’ve heard her name in as many days.’

  ‘Who else talked about her?’

  ‘Naveen, the young private detective, and Ranjit.’

  ‘What did Ranjit say?’

  ‘Lisa, why don’t we not talk about Karla and Ranjit, okay?’

  ‘Are you jealous of Ranjit?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, you know, I’ve been spending a lot of time with him lately, late at night.’

  ‘I haven’t been here lately, Lisa, so I didn’t know. How much time have you been spending with Ranjit?’

  ‘He’s been damn helpful with the publicity for the shows. We’ve had lots more people coming through the doors since he got on board. But there’s absolutely nothing going on between us.’

  ‘O . . . kay. What?’

  ‘So, how often do you really think about Karla?’

  ‘Are we doing this now?’ I asked, turning over to face her.

  She raised herself on an elbow, her head tilted to her shoulder.

  ‘I saw her yesterday,’ she said, watching me closely, her blue eyes innocent as flowers.

  I frowned silence at her.

  ‘I ran into her at my dress shop. The one on Brady’s Lane. I thought it was a secret, my secret, and then I turned around and saw Karla, standing right beside me.’

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, what did she say to you?’

  ‘That’s . . . kinda bizarre,’ she said, frowning at me.

  ‘Whaddaya mean, bizarre?’

  ‘You didn’t ask how she looks, or how she’s feeling – you asked what she said.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘So . . . you haven’t seen her for almost two years, and the first thing you ask me about is what she said. I don’t know what’s more freaky, that you said that, or that I kinda understand it, because it’s about Karla.’

  ‘So . . . you do understand.’

  ‘Of course I do.’

  ‘So . . . it’s not bizarre.’

  ‘The bizarre part is what it tells me about you and her.’

  ‘What are we talking about, again?’

  ‘Karla. Do you want to know what she said, or not?’

  ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘No.’

  ‘Of course you do. First, let me say she looked great. Really great. And she seems fine. We had a coffee at Madras Café, and I laughed myself silly. She’s on a thing about religion at the moment. She said – no, wait, let me get it right – oh yeah, she said Religion is just a long competition to see who can design the silliest hat. She’s so funny. It must be damn hard.’

  ‘Being funny?’

  ‘No, always being the smartest person in the room.’

  ‘You’re smart,’ I said, turning onto my back, and putting my hands behind my head. ‘You’re one of the smartest people I know.’

  ‘Me?’ she laughed.

  ‘Damn right.’

  She kissed my chest, and then nestled in beside me.

  ‘I’ve offered Karla a place with me in the art studio,’ she declared, her feet wriggling in time to the words.

  ‘That’s not the best idea I’ve heard this week.’

  ‘You just said I was smart.’

  ‘I said you were smart,’ I teased her. ‘I didn’t say you were wise.’

  She punched me in the side.

  ‘I’m serious,’ I laughed. ‘I . . . I don’t .
. . I mean, I’m not sure I want Karla walking back into the apartment of my life. The rooms where she used to live are boarded up now. I’d kinda like to keep it that way, for a while longer.’

  ‘She’s a ghost in my mansion, too,’ she said wistfully.

  ‘Oh, I see. I’ve got an imaginary apartment, and you’ve got an imaginary mansion?’

  ‘Of course. Everybody’s got a mansion inside. Everyone except people with self-esteem issues, like you.’

  ‘I don’t have self-esteem issues. I’m a realist.’

  She laughed. She laughed for quite a while: long enough to make me wonder what it was that I’d said.

  ‘Be serious,’ she said when she settled down. ‘That was the first time I’ve seen Karla in almost ten months, and I . . . I looked at her . . . and . . . I realised how much I love her. It’s a funny thing, don’t you think, to remember how much you love somebody?’

  ‘I’m just saying –’

  ‘I know,’ she murmured, leaning across to kiss me. ‘I know.’

  ‘What do you know?’

  ‘I know it’s not forever,’ she whispered, her face close, her lips still touching mine, and those blue eyes challenging the morning sky.

  ‘Every time you answer a question, Lisa, I get more confused.’

  ‘I don’t even believe in forever,’ she said, tossing eternity away with a flash of blonde curls. ‘I never did.’

  ‘Am I going to like what we’re talking about, Leese, when I know what it is?’

  ‘I’m kind of a now fanatic, if you know what I mean. Kind of a now fundamentalist, you could say.’

  She began to kiss me, but she began speaking again, her lips bubbling the words into my mouth.

  ‘You’re never gonna tell me about that fight you had, are you?’

  ‘It wasn’t much of a fight. It wasn’t really a fight at all, if you wanna get technical.’

  ‘I do wanna get technical. What happened?’

  ‘Happened?’ I said, still kissing her.

  She pulled herself away from me, and sat up on the bed, her legs crossed.

  ‘You’ve gotta stop doing this,’ she said.

  ‘Okay,’ I sighed, sitting up and resting my back against a stack of pillows. ‘Let’s have it.’