The Mountain Shadow

by Gregory David Roberts

  ‘You should be eating stones!’ she declared, waving the side of her hand at him. ‘Stones from those ditches your poor father was searching, instead of tasty mutton chunkies.’

  ‘The daal is also tasty, isn’t it?’ Jaya Auntie asked me.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ I said quickly.

  ‘Your poor father, out the whole night in those bloody ditches.’

  ‘Enough about the ditches, Mother dear,’ Farzad’s father said gently. ‘Let the boy tell us what happened.’

  ‘I was at the Drum Beat last night,’ Farzad began.

  ‘Oh! What music did they play?’ a pretty girl of perhaps seventeen asked.

  She was sitting a little way along the table, and she leaned in to catch Farzad’s eye.

  ‘This is Kareena Cousin, Jaya Auntie’s daughter,’ Farzad said, without looking at her. ‘Kareena, this is Lin.’

  ‘Hi,’ she said, smiling shyly.

  ‘Hi,’ I answered her.

  Having finished the bowl of vegetables, I gently pushed it away. Zaheera Auntie immediately shoved the spare bowl of mutton in front of me, so close that it almost fell into my lap. I grasped the bowl with both hands.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Good mutton,’ Zaheera Auntie confided, with a wink. ‘Good for all of your angers and such.’

  ‘My angers. Yes, ma’am. Thanks.’

  ‘So, you were at the Drum Beat nightclub,’ Arshan said quietly, ‘which I warned you against, many a time, son.’

  ‘What warnings?’ Anahita asked, slapping Farzad on the back of the head.

  ‘Ow! Mom! Cut it out, yaar!’

  ‘Your warnings are delicious to him! He eats them up like sweeties. Yum, yum, yum! I’ve told you, operant conditioning is the only thing that works on this boy, but you’re such a Steiner fan. I’d say your son got fairly Steinered last night, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘I don’t think you can blame the Steiner School,’ Jaya cut in.

  ‘Indeed,’ Zaheera agreed. ‘The methodology is pretty sound, na? My Suleiman was saying only last night –’

  ‘And, while you were at the nightclub . . . ’ Arshan prompted patiently.

  ‘Well,’ Farzad said, casting a wary eye about for his Mother’s hand. ‘There was this party and all, and we –’

  ‘Were they doing any new dances?’ Kareena asked. ‘Did they play the music from the new Mithun picture?’

  ‘I can get you that music this afternoon,’ Ali answered her casually, taking a piece of Farzad’s bread and biting off a chunk. ‘Whatever you want. Even stuff from movies that haven’t come out yet.’

  ‘Wow!’ the girl sighed.

  ‘And while you were at this club,’ Arshan persisted resolutely.

  ‘And while you were at this Steiner School nightclub,’ Anahita interrupted, raising her hand, ‘free as a bird, your father was in the ditches!’

  ‘No,’ Arshan said, his patience a sympathetic string. ‘I’m pretty sure the ditches came later, sweetheart. So, what happened at the club, that put you in jail?’

  ‘I’m . . . I’m not sure,’ Farzad said, frowning. ‘I drank too much. That I’ll freely admit. And there was this argument, when the cops came to close the place down. Next thing I know, I was lying on the ground. I fell, I think. And then this cop kicked me in the back of the head, right where you keep hitting me, Mom, and I passed out. I woke up in the police jeep, and they locked me up, without a phone call or a by your leave. Somebody there called the Company, and they called Lin, and he came and got me out. He saved my hide. Count on it.’

  ‘That’s it?’ Farzad’s Mother asked, contempt drawing down the corners of her mouth. ‘That’s your big adventure?’

  ‘I didn’t say it was a big adventure!’ Farzad protested, but his Mother was already gone, headed for the open kitchen.

  ‘Thank you, Lin, for bringing our boy home to us,’ Arshan said, his hand resting on my forearm for a moment.

  He turned his attention back to Farzad once more.

  ‘Let me get this straight. A policeman kicked you in the head, while you were on the ground. Kicked you so hard that you lost consciousness?’

  ‘That’s right, Pop. I wasn’t doing anything. I was too drunk to do anything. I was just lying there, where I fell over.’

  ‘Do you know this policeman’s name?’ Arshan asked thoughtfully.

  ‘Lightning Dilip, they call him. He’s a duty sergeant at the Colaba lock-up. Why?’

  ‘My dad’s gonna go nuts about this!’ Ali said. ‘He’ll have this Lightning Dilip’s badge. He’ll bring the entire law faculty with him.’

  ‘And my dad will bring the medical fraternity on board,’ Kareena added, her eyes fierce. ‘We’ll have this cop kicked off the force.’

  ‘Absolutely!’ Jaya agreed. ‘Let’s get started!’

  ‘Can I say something here?’

  Everyone turned toward me.

  ‘I know this Lightning Dilip pretty well. He doesn’t bear grudges easily. He doesn’t even bear bribes easily.’

  I paused, feeling the attention in the group.

  ‘Go on,’ Arshan said softly.

  ‘You can’t badge this cop. You can make his life very unpleasant for a while, and get him moved somewhere for a while, maybe, but you can’t badge him. He knows too much about too many people. No-one’s saying he doesn’t deserve it, but if you make his life unpleasant, sooner or later he’ll come back. And when he comes back, he’ll disturb your happiness again. Probably forever.’

  ‘Are you saying we shouldn’t do anything about this?’ Ali asked.

  ‘I’m saying that if you go up against this guy, be prepared for a war. Don’t underestimate him.’

  ‘I agree,’ Arshan said quietly.

  ‘What?’ Ali and Jaya asked together.

  ‘Farzad is lucky. Lin’s right. It could’ve been much worse. And the last thing we need, right now, is a sociopathic policeman on our doorstep.’

  ‘And operant conditioning takes another beating,’ Anahita said, returning from the kitchen. ‘What is it with you Steiners, and running away?’

  ‘Don’t go to that nightclub again, Farzad,’ Arshan said, ignoring her. ‘Do you hear me? I forbid you.’

  ‘Yes, Pop,’ Farzad said, hanging his head.

  ‘Okay,’ Arshan said, standing to clear the dishes. ‘Are you finished with these?’

  He and Anahita took the dishes to the near kitchen, and returned bearing two fresh bowls and two bottles of soft drink.

  ‘Nice custard,’ Anahita said, dropping bowls of sweet custard in front of us. ‘To fill your blood with sugar.’

  ‘And Rogers Raspberry,’ Arshan said, placing the crimson-coloured soft drink bottles beside our bowls. ‘There’s not many problems in life that a long, cold glass of Rogers Raspberry can’t make look much rosier. Drink up!’

  ‘I like what you’ve done with the place,’ I remarked. ‘Who’s your decorator? Harlan Ellison?’

  Farzad turned to face his father.

  ‘He saved my life, Pop. The families voted. I think this is the time. What do you say?’

  ‘It seems that it is,’ Arshan murmured, glancing around at the Escheresque web of ladders, handmade stairs and catwalks scaling upwards around him in the vast, half-bell chamber.

  ‘Is that a yes?’ Farzad asked.

  Arshan swung his leg across the bench seat we were sitting on, and faced me directly.

  ‘What’s your guess that we’re doing here?’ he asked.

  ‘Taking a wild stab in the step-ladder, I’d say you’re looking for something.’

  ‘Precisely,’ Arshan grinned, showing a row of neat, small, perfectly white teeth. ‘I see why Keki Uncle liked you. That’s exactly what we’re doing. All of this, everything you see here, is one great big treasure hunt, for a very valuable treasure chest
.’

  ‘As in . . . a pirate’s treasure chest?’

  ‘In a way, yes,’ he replied. ‘But a merchant’s treasure – smaller, and much more valuable.’

  ‘It must be, for all this remodelling.’

  ‘Farzad,’ Arshan said. ‘Get the list.’

  When Farzad left us, his father began to explain.

  ‘My great-grandfather was a very successful man. He amassed a considerable fortune. Even after putting much of his money into charities and public works, in the Parsi tradition, his wealth was still equal to that of any industrialist or merchant of his age.’

  Farzad rejoined us, sitting beside me on the long bench seat. He passed a folded parchment document to his father. Arshan’s hand rested on the document while he finished his explanation.

  ‘When the British could see the writing on the wall, and they knew their rule here was coming to an end, they began to leave Bombay, some of them in great haste. Many of the most successful British businessmen and their wives feared that after independence there would be a violent backlash against them. There was something of a mad scramble, in the last weeks and days.’

  ‘And your great-grandfather was in the right place, at the right time.’

  ‘It was pretty well known that my great-grandpa had loads of un­declared cash that he didn’t keep in bank accounts,’ Farzad said.

  ‘Money that was never adequately accounted for,’ Arshan added.

  ‘And that missing cash,’ I said, ‘bought stuff from the departing British.’

  ‘Exactly. Fearing that the Indian authorities might think they’d stolen or looted the jewels they had, and who knows, maybe some of them did, many of the British sold off their jewellery in advance, for cash. My great-grandfather bought a very large quantity of those jewels in the last months before independence, and he hid them –’

  ‘Somewhere in this house,’ I concluded for him.

  Arshan sighed, and allowed his gaze to roam along the catwalks and conduits that wound their way around the woven basket of the chamber.

  ‘But there was no clue where the treasure was hidden?’

  ‘Not a word,’ Arshan sighed, opening the parchment letter, and holding it between us. ‘The document we found in an old book is very specific about the number and type of gems, and the fact that they were hidden somewhere, even to describing the chest they were hidden in, but there was no hint about exactly where. My great-grandfather owned all three of the houses in this block, and in his time he lived and worked in them all.’

  ‘So you started looking.’

  ‘We searched the rooms, and all the furniture. We turned everything over, looking for secret drawers. Then we searched the walls for secret panels, or hidden sliding doors, or suchlike. When we found nothing, we knew we had to start breaking into the walls.’

  ‘We started here, on the joining walls in our own house,’ Anahita said, as Kareena placed a bone china cup of chai in front of me. ‘But then, when we started on the this-thing –’

  ‘The common wall,’ Arshan helped her.

  ‘Yes, when we started breaking into the this-thing, a lot of stuff started falling down inside the house of our neighbours, the Khans.’

  ‘My favourite illuminated clock, for one thing,’ Zaheera said ruefully. ‘It had a waterfall, you know, so it looked like water was falling down all the time. Then the whole clock fell down, and it smashed into a million pieces. I haven’t found one as good since.’

  ‘And when things started falling down in their house, the Khans came here, asking us what we were doing.’

  ‘Which is where my dad came in,’ Farzad’s young friend, Ali, said.

  ‘Literally,’ Farzad joked.

  ‘Our two families have been close for ever,’ Ali said. ‘Arshan Uncle and Anahita Auntie decided to tell my dad exactly what they were doing, and to invite him to join in the hunt for the treasure.’

  ‘We thought that my great-grandfather might have hidden the box of jewels inside the common wall,’ Arshan added. ‘There were a lot of renovations and changes made to these houses, in his time, and there was no way into the walls without involving the Khans.’

  ‘My Suleiman came home that night, after visiting here,’ Zaheera Auntie said, ‘and sat the whole family down for a meeting. He told us about the treasure, and the invitation to join in the hunt, even if it meant breaking down the wall between our two houses. We were all talking at once, like crazy people!’

  ‘It was damn cool,’ Ali added.

  ‘And arguing also,’ Zaheera said. ‘But after a lot of heart-to-heart, we decided to join in the hunt for the treasure, and we started breaking down the wall the very next day.’

  ‘But the treasure wasn’t in there,’ the pretty girl, Kareena, said. ‘Not that we’ve found so far. And that brought my dad into the mela.’

  ‘Arshan and Anahita invited us in for a talk,’ Jaya explained, smiling at the recollection. ‘When we got here, we found all the Daruwallas and all the Khans, and all the breaking-down inside. Then they invited us to join in with them, because they thought maybe the treasure was inside the wall between our two houses, on the other side. And to search through the upper floors, they needed cooperation from us. My husband, Rahul, agreed right there, on the spot. He’s mad for adventure.’

  ‘He skis,’ Kareena said. ‘In the snow.’

  People shook their heads in wonder.

  ‘And you’re completely sure this treasure is really here?’

  ‘Count on it,’ Farzad said. ‘When we didn’t find the treasure in that wall, we started working on the ceilings and floors between us and the roof. It’s here, and we’ll find it.’

  ‘It’s a kind of madhouse, for sane people,’ Kareena finished for him. ‘With three happy families, one Hindu, one Muslim and one Parsi, all living together in it.’

  The people around me, members of three extended families from three faiths, shrugged and smiled.

  ‘There’s no first and last here,’ Arshan said softly. ‘We’re in this together. We all agreed to split the treasure three ways, with equal shares to each family.’

  ‘If you find it,’ I said.

  ‘When we find it,’ a few voices corrected me.

  ‘And this has been going on for how long?’

  ‘Nearly five years now,’ Farzad answered. ‘We started right after we found the parchment. The Khans came in a year after that, and the Malhotras came in about six months later. I went to college and Wall Street and back again, in the time we’ve been searching.’

  ‘But this isn’t our real job, or anything,’ Kareena Malhotra said. ‘My dad’s a doctor. Ali’s pop, Suleiman Uncle, teaches law at Bombay University. Arshan Uncle is an architect, which is how we can do all this renovation, without the whole thing falling down. And we’re all studying, those of us who don’t work full time outside, or with the kids here at home.’

  ‘The treasure hunt is what we do at night and holidays, mostly,’ Ali added. ‘Or if we get a free day, like this one, where everybody was so worried about Farzad being missing all night. Thanks for the holiday, cuz.’

  ‘Any time,’ Farzad smiled.

  ‘And we have two kitchens,’ Anahita declared triumphantly. ‘Veg and non-veg, so there’s no problem.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Jaya Auntie said. ‘Really, you know, a lot of differences between communities come down to ghobi and gosht, cauliflowers and kebabs. If there are two kitchens, everybody eats the food they like, and everything is hunky and this-thing –’

  ‘Dory,’ Anahita said, and the two women exchanged smiles.

  ‘And we’re all in this together, make or break,’ Ali added, ‘so we don’t have a reason to argue.’

  ‘Except for philosophy,’ Anahita contradicted him.

  ‘As interesting as this mystery is –’ I said, but Farzad cut me off.

 
; ‘I told you it would be interesting, didn’t I?’

  ‘Ah . . . yeah. But we still didn’t get to the part where I know why you’re telling me about all this.’

  ‘We have a problem,’ Arshan said simply, staring his earnest frown directly into my eyes. ‘And we were hoping you would help us with it.’

  ‘Okay. Tell me.’

  ‘An inspector from the City Council came here a few weeks ago,’ Ali said, ‘and he got a look inside at some of the work.’

  ‘He doesn’t know what we’re doing, of course,’ Farzad added. ‘We told him we’re renovating the houses to make apartments.’

  ‘What brought him here in the first place?’ I asked.

  ‘We think it was a neighbour down the street,’ Arshan explained. ‘He saw us taking delivery of some heavy steel girders a few months ago. We use them to support the arches, when we take out sections of the walls.’

  ‘He tried to buy our house a few years back,’ Anahita said. ‘The rascally fellow tried every trick in the book to make us sell. When we refused, he was angrier than a scalded cat.’

  ‘It’s bad luck to hurt a cat,’ Zaheera said, nodding sagely.

  ‘You mean, even in similes?’ Anahita asked earnestly.

  ‘I’m just saying, one must be prudent, where cats are concerned. Probably even in similes.’

  The whole group nodded.

  After a few moments of silence, I spoke again.

  ‘So . . . cats aside, you need what, from me?’

  ‘Planning permits,’ Arshan said, coming back to the moment. ‘The City Council official agreed, after a lot of negotiation, to accept a bribe to let us get on with the . . . renovations. But he insists that we get the proper planning permit certificates, or damn good copies.’

  ‘To cover his arse,’ Ali said.

  ‘He can’t fake the permits, and he can’t steal them,’ Farzad added. ‘But if we can fake them, he promised that the investigation will end with him.’

  ‘If you can fake them for us, Lin,’ Arshan corrected him.

  ‘Yeah, if you can fake them, the inspector will sign off on them, and leave us alone to search for the treasure, like always. No problem. Count on it.’