The Mountain Shadow

by Gregory David Roberts

  ‘So, that’s it,’ Arshan sighed, resting his elbows on the long table. ‘If you can’t help us, we’ll have to stop. If you can help us, we can go on until we find the treasure.’

  ‘You can make those documents yourself,’ I said to Farzad. ‘You’re pretty good. You don’t need me.’

  ‘Thanks for the compliment,’ he grinned, ‘but there’s a couple of problems. First, I don’t have any contacts at the City Council. And second, the boys in the factory won’t take orders from me on a job like this, and they’ll probably tell Sanjay about it. But you, on the other hand . . . ’

  ‘Why am I always on the other hand?’

  ‘You can do it discreetly, or let me do it, because you’re the boss at the factory,’ Farzad said, pushing on. ‘With your help, it could be done without anyone coming to know about it.’

  ‘You might think this is a strange question,’ I said, glancing around at the expectant faces staring at me, ‘but it’s probably a lot stranger not to ask it. What makes you think I won’t help you out, and then tell Sanjay anyway?’

  ‘It’s a fair question,’ Arshan allowed, ‘and I hope you won’t be offended if I tell you it’s not the first time it has been raised in this room. The bottom line is that we need your help, and we believe we can trust you. Keki Uncle thought very highly of you. He told us, many times, how you were with Khaderbhai at the end, and that you are a man of honour.’

  The use of the word honour struck at my chest, especially when they were asking me to conceal something from my boss, Sanjay. But I liked them. I already liked them more than I liked Sanjay. And Sanjay was rich enough. He didn’t need a piece of their treasure, if they ever found it.

  ‘I’ll have your paperwork this week,’ I said. ‘I’ll tell Sanjay it’s a favour to a friend, which it is. I’ve done off-the-books jobs before. But I want it to end here. I don’t want this coming back to me from Sanjay, Farzad. Are we clear?’

  The group of people around me burst into applause and cheering. Several of them rushed forward to pat me on the back, hug me, and shake my hand.

  ‘Thank you so much!’ Arshan said, smiling happily. ‘We’ve been so worried about this City Council thing. It’s the first real challenge to what we’ve been doing here. We . . . we’ve come to enjoy this treasure hunting of ours, and we . . . well . . . I think we’d be as lost as the treasure is, if the council shut us down.’

  ‘And we’re not expecting you to do this for nothing,’ Farzad added. ‘Tell him, Pop!’

  ‘If you’ll accept it, we want to give you one per cent of the treasure,’ Arshan said.

  ‘If you find it,’ I smiled.

  ‘When we find it,’ several voices corrected me.

  ‘When you find it,’ I agreed.

  ‘Now, how about some more daal roti?’ Jaya asked.

  ‘And some chicken pieces,’ Zaheera suggested.

  ‘And a nice egg and curry sandwich,’ Anahita offered, ‘with a long glass of raspberry.’

  ‘No, no, thank you,’ I said quickly, stepping up and away from the table. ‘I’m still completely full. Maybe next time.’

  ‘Definitely next time,’ Anahita said.

  ‘Sure, definitely.’

  ‘I’ll see you out,’ Farzad said, as I made my way to the long curtain closing off the front of the house. The whole group walked with us to the door.

  I said my goodbyes, shaking hands and exchanging hugs, and stepped through the vestibule to the street beyond with Farzad.

  A monsoon shower had soaked the street, but the heavy clouds had passed, and bright sunshine steamed the moisture from every mirrored surface.

  Somehow, that first glimpse of the street seemed strange and un­familiar, as if the weird megacosm of catwalks and crawlspaces in the gigantic bell-chamber of Farzad’s house was the real world, and the gleaming, steaming street beyond was the illusion.

  ‘I . . . ah . . . I hope my mixed-up family didn’t freak you out,’ Farzad muttered.

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘You don’t think, you know, it’s a bit . . . crazy, na? What we’re doing?’

  ‘Everybody’s searching for something. And from what I can see, you’re all happy.’

  ‘We are,’ he agreed quickly.

  ‘What kind of crazy person doesn’t like happy?’

  Impulsively, the young Parsi reached out and hugged me stiffly.

  ‘You know, Lin,’ he said, as we parted from the hug, ‘there is actually something else I wanted to ask you.’

  ‘Something else, yet?’

  ‘Yes. You know, if you ever get the phone number of that girl, that beautiful girl with the loveliness in her eyes, that Divya, the one we met outside the police station this morning, I –’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Really no?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘No,’ I said gently, smiling at his puzzled frown.

  He shook his head, turned, and walked back inside the building, the hive, the home. I faced the sun and stood for a while on the rain-scented street.

  Money’s a drug too, of course, but I wasn’t worried for Farzad’s extended family. They weren’t hooked. Not yet. They’d torn their homes apart, true enough, but they’d replaced them with a common space of sharing. They’d turned their lives upside down, but it was an adventure: a voyage within themselves. They made sense of the dream they lived. It was still fun, for them, and I liked them very much for it.

  I was standing, with my face in the sunlight, looking calm, very calm, and crying, somewhere inside. Sometimes the sight of what you lost, reflected in another love, is too much: too much of what was, and isn’t any more.

  Family, home: little words that rise like atolls in earthquakes of the heart. Loss, loneliness: little words that flood the valleys of alone.

  In the island of the present, Lisa was slipping away, and a spell had been cast by the mention of a name: Karla. Karla.

  It’s a foolish thing to try to love, when the one you really love, the one you’re born to love, is lost somewhere in the same square circle of a city. It’s a desperate, foolish thing to try to love someone at all. Love doesn’t try: love is immediate, and inescapable. The mention of Karla’s name was fire, inside, and my heart wouldn’t stop reminding me.

  We were castaways, Karla and I, because we were cast out, both of us. Lisa and all the other bright people we loved, or tried to love, were volunteers, sailing to the Island City on dreams. Karla and I crawled onto the sand from ships we’d sunk ourselves.

  I was a broken thing. I was a lonely, broken thing. Maybe Karla was, too, in her own way.

  I looked at the domed house: separate entrances on the outside, joined lives on the inside. Whether they found the treasure or not, it was already that marvel, that miracle, an answered prayer.

  I turned to the storm-faded sunlight again, and rejoined the world of exiles that was my home.

  Chapter Sixteen

  I swung the bike away from Farzad’s house and into the wide, divided boulevard that followed the Island City coast north. Densely packed, sodden rainclouds closed in overhead, darkening the street.

  I began to pass a wide, sheltered inlet, and slowed down.

  Long wooden fishing boats painted vivid blue, red and green had been dragged onto the shore for maintenance work. The fishermen’s simple huts leaned into one another, their plastic sheet coverings secured to the corrugated roofs against storm winds by bricks and pieces of broken concrete.

  Nets were strung between wooden poles. Men worked on them, threading spools of nylon through holes and woven loops. Children played on the sand, defying the gathering rainstorm, and chased one another between the boats and webs of netting.

  From dawn, the little bay was a small but important part of the loca
l fishing community. After midnight it was a small but important part of the local smuggling community, who used fast boats to bring in cigarettes, whiskey, currencies and drugs.

  Every time I passed the sandy beach I scanned it, looking for faces I knew, and signs of illicit trade. I had no personal interest: Farid the Fixer administered the bay, and the profits and opportunities were his. It was professional curiosity that drew my eye.

  All of us in the black market knew every place in South Bombay where crime flourished, and all of us sent a discreet, searching eye into them, every time we passed. We began in caves and dark places, Didier once said, and we criminals still miss them terribly.

  I let my eyes glance back to the wide divided road, and saw three motorcycles pass me on the other side. They were Scorpions. The man riding in the centre was Danda. I recognised one other as Hanuman, the big man who’d given me a professional beating in the warehouse.

  I stopped my bike, shifted into neutral gear, and adjusted the rear-view mirror until I could see them. They’d stopped at a traffic signal, some way in the distance behind me. As I watched in the mirror, they talked, argued, but then swung their bikes around and came after me. I sighed, and hung my head for a moment.

  I didn’t want to fight them, but I was in my own area, and I didn’t want to lead them into any of the Company operations. And too proud to run, I didn’t want to let them chase me into the arms of my Company friends, only a few streets away.

  Kicking the bike into gear, I let out the clutch, rapped the throttle, and spun the bike around in a tight circle. Gunning the engine, I accelerated toward the oncoming Scorpions, on the wrong side of the divided road.

  I had nothing to lose. There were three of them, and if the charge didn’t go well for me, I was in trouble anyway. I’d come off motor­cycles before, and preferred to take my chances with an accident than a massacre. And my bike was in everything with me, all the way, as I was with her.

  They must’ve had something to lose, or less loyal motorcycles: at the last moment they turned their bikes aside.

  Two of them rattled away into spiralling arcs, as they tried to keep their bikes under control. The third bike spun out, crashing into a slide against a wall at the side of the road.

  I braked hard, whirling through a half-turn, one boot sliding on the wet road, and threw my bike onto the side-stand, cutting the engine with the kill-switch.

  The fallen rider struggled to his feet. It was Danda, and me with no aftershave. I met him with left and right punches that threw him backwards onto the ground.

  The other Scorpions let their bikes fall, and ran at me. I felt bad for their bikes.

  Ducking, weaving and throwing punches where I could, I battled the two Scorpions on the side of the road, beside the tumbled scatter of their motorcycles. Cars slowed on the road as they passed, but none stopped.

  Recovering from the blows, Danda ran at us. He stumbled past his friends and into me, grasping at my vest to steady himself.

  I lost my footing on the wet road and fell backwards. Danda landed on top of me, growling like an animal.

  He was burrowing his head in next to mine, trying to bite me. I felt his mouth against my neck, the wetness of his tongue, and the blunt nub of his head, as he strained to get close enough to put his teeth on my throat.

  His fingers were locked in a clutch of my vest. I couldn’t throw him off. The other two Scorpions kicked at me, trying to land blows in the gaps between Danda’s body and mine. They missed, and kicked Danda a couple of times. He didn’t seem to notice.

  I hadn’t been hurt, or even properly hit by anyone. I could feel my two knives pressing against my back on the ground. I had a policy. I never drew the knives unless the other man was armed, or if it became a question of life or death.

  I managed to roll over, wrestled away Danda’s grip on my vest, and stood up quickly. I should’ve stayed down. Hanuman was behind me. He wrapped an arm around my throat from behind. His powerful arm began to choke off my air.

  Danda rushed at me again, trying to burrow his head in close. He was a biter. I knew one in prison: a man whose anger suddenly became biting, until pieces were missing from anyone he attacked. A victim knocked his teeth out, leaving the rest of us in peace, and I was thinking of doing the same to Danda.

  He was pressed up close against me, his head tucked in under Hanuman’s arm, his teeth against my arm. I couldn’t hit him in any place that might make him let go.

  I reached up, closed my fingers around Danda’s ear, and ripped at it hard. I felt the whole flap of his ear give way, tearing itself from the side of his head. When he stopped biting, I stopped ripping.

  He screamed, hurling himself backwards, clutching at the bloody wound.

  Shifting my hand around, I tried to shove it between Hanuman’s body and mine. I wanted to reach one of my knives, or one of his balls; either one would do.

  The third man rushed at me. In his fury, he began to slap at my head, standing too close. I kicked him in the balls. He fell as if he’d been shot.

  I closed my hand around the hilt of my knife, as darkness closed a hand around my throat. The knife was free. I tried to stab the big man in the leg. I missed. The knife slid away to the side.

  I tried again. I missed. Then the blade found flesh, a small cut on the outer edge of Hanuman’s thigh. He flinched.

  It was enough to get a bearing. I struck again and rammed the blade into the meat of his thigh. The big man lurched suddenly, and I lost my grip on the knife.

  The arm didn’t weaken. I’d followed my training, turning my chin into the crook of his elbow to lessen the choking effect. It was no use. I was going under.

  A voice, blurred and rumbling, seemed to be calling my name. I twisted my head against the locked muscle and bone of Hanuman’s arm. I heard a voice.

  ‘Look away, now, boyo,’ it said.

  I saw something, a fist, coming at me from the sky. It was huge, that fist, as big as the world. But just when it should’ve smashed into my face it struck somewhere else, somewhere so close that I felt the shudder of it. And again it struck, and again.

  And the arm around my neck released its grip, as Hanuman fell to his knees and flopped forward, his head made of lead.

  I rolled and stood, shaping up, my fists close to my face, coughing and breathing hard. I turned to look around me. Concannon was standing near the fallen Hanuman, his arms folded.

  He smiled at me, and then nodded his head in a little warning.

  I turned quickly. It was Danda, all blood-streaked teeth, blood-streaked eyes, and blood-streaked ear. And me with no aftershave.

  He swung a wild punch trying to knock me out. He missed. I snapped a fist at the gash where the ragged flap of his ear was hanging by a tongue-tip of skin. He screamed, and it rained. Sudden rain spilled and splashed on us.

  Danda ran, clutching at the side of his head, rain running red into his shirt. I turned to see Concannon swinging a kick at the other departing Scorpion. The man yelped, and joined Danda, stumbling toward a stand of taxis.

  Hanuman groaned, wakened by the rain. He crawled to his knees, stood unsteadily, and realised that he was alone. He hesitated for a moment.

  I turned to look at Concannon quickly. The Irishman was grinning widely, all clenched teeth.

  ‘Oh, Lord,’ he said softly. ‘Please make this man too stupid to run away.’

  Hanuman lurched away, limping after his friends.

  My knife was lying in the rain, still bleeding into the bitumen. Some way down the wide road, the Scorpions tumbled into a taxi as it sped away from the rank. I picked up the knife, cleaned it, closed it and slid it into the scabbard.

  ‘Fuckin’ grand fight!’ Concannon said, slapping me on the shoulder. ‘Let’s get stoned.’

  I didn’t want to, but I owed him that, and more.

  ‘Okay.’

&n
bsp; There was a chai shop beneath a very large tree, close to where we stood. I pushed my bike under the shelter of the tree. Accepting a rag from the chai stall owner, I dried the bike off. When the job was done, I began to walk back to the road.

  ‘Where the fuck are you goin’?’

  ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’

  ‘We’re havin’ a civilised cup of fuckin’ tea here, you Australian barbarian.’

  ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’

  The abandoned Scorpion motorcycles were still lying in the rain by the side of the road, leaking petrol and oil. I picked them up, stood them on their stands in the cover of the stone wall, and returned to Concannon as the tea arrived.

  ‘Lucky for you I came along,’ he said, sipping at a glass of chai.

  ‘I was doin’ okay.’

  ‘The fuck you were,’ he laughed.

  I looked at him. When a man’s right, he’s right.

  ‘The fuck I was,’ I laughed. ‘You really are one mad Irish motherfucker. What are you doing here, anyway?’

  ‘My favourite hash shop used to be near here,’ he said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of Cuffe Parade. ‘But somebody threw a fella off a building next door, and he landed right on top of the shop. And on top of Shining Patel, the owner.’

  ‘You don’t say.’

  ‘The upside is that a notorious singer was also hit, which saved me quite a bit. I used to pay him, regularly. It was the only way I could get him to stop singin’. Where was I?’

  ‘You were telling me what you’re doing here.’

  ‘Oh, so ya think I was followin’ ya? Is that it?’ Concannon asked. ‘You must have a mighty high opinion of yourself, boyo. I’m just here buyin’ hash.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  Some time passed. It was a strangely brooding silence between men, brooding in strangely different directions.

  ‘Why did you help me?’

  He looked at me with an expression that seemed genuinely hurt.

  ‘And why the fuck would one white man not help another white man, in a fuckin’ heathen place like this?’

  ‘There you go again.’