The Mountain Shadow

by Gregory David Roberts

  ‘A plane? But . . . what?’

  ‘You know what I mean. She woke up a few days ago with a dead boyfriend in the bed. That’s a big fire to put out. Go easy, man.’

  ‘Oh, sure, sure. I mean, like – hey, wait a minute! You don’t think I’m taking advantage of her situation, do you? I’m . . . I’m not that kinda guy.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I haven’t put a hand on her.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I wouldn’t do that.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I’m not that kinda guy,’ he said again gruffly.

  I was suddenly tired: the kind of angry-tired that’s irritated by everything that isn’t flat, and white, and has a pillow at one end.

  ‘If I thought you were that kinda guy, I wouldn’t have let you get near her, or any girl I know.’

  He bristled, young manhood straightening his spine.

  ‘Any time you think you’re good enough, sport.’

  ‘I really haven’t got time for this shit, Vinson. I met Rannveig before you did. And I got her out of jail, remember? That gives me the right to tell you not to push her too hard. If you don’t like it, and you want to get slappy, I’ll be downstairs by my bike, in about five minutes.’

  We stared at one another, his pride riding out to meet my irritation. Men. I liked Vinson, and he liked me, and we were ready to fight.

  ‘When did you meet her?’ he asked, after a long stare.

  ‘Before that day at the police station.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘Why didn’t she? Maybe because it’s none of your business. Look, I met her once, on the street, outside Leo’s. She was waiting for her boyfriend to score. Ask her about it.’

  ‘Okay, okay. But I care about her. Don’t you see that?’

  ‘Of course I do. I’m glad she’s with you. That’s what I was trying to tell you before, maybe in the wrong way. You’re a nice guy. She’ll be safe with you. I know that. Just ease up a little. She had a boyfriend. He’s dead. What she needs is a friend. The boy-part can wait, while the friend-part does the work. You see that, right?’

  He relaxed, letting out a gush of air.

  ‘Wow! You really had me going there, Lin. Jesus! I thought –’

  ‘Listen, the best thing you can do for that girl, right now, is to tell her that her boyfriend didn’t commit suicide. She feels guilty, but she had nothing to do with it. The dope was too strong. Three kids died in the same week. Check on it. Make sure she understands that, and clear her mind.’

  ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘Hey, I’m sorry we got off on the wrong –’

  ‘It’s my fault. Got a lot on my mind. Have you seen Lisa anywhere?’

  ‘She was with that artist, last time I saw her. The tall guy, with the slicked-back hair.’

  ‘Thanks. He’s one of the partners in her gallery. If I can’t find her, I’m gonna go home. If you see her or the artist, please tell her that. You take care.’

  ‘Wait!’ Vinson said, reaching out to offer his hand. ‘Thanks. Thanks. I mean . . . I’ll take care of Rannveig. I mean –’

  ‘It’s good,’ I said, shaking hands with him, smiling at him, liking him, wishing happiness for him and the girl, and not really caring, so long as they were happy, if I ever saw either one of them again. ‘It’s good.’

  Little tornadoes of laughing-drinking people whirled in every room. I went from whirl to whirl, searching for Lisa. Nobody had seen her for a while at the party. I finally made my way to the door.

  Karla was dancing with Rannveig. For a minute, I watched: her hips the sea, her eyes the flute, her hands the cobra. Karla.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  When the elevator doors opened, Scorpio George, Naveen Adair and Divya Devnani stepped out.

  ‘Lin!’ Naveen cried. ‘Where are you going, man? The party’s just getting started!’

  ‘I’m beat,’ I said, stepping into the elevator and holding the button to keep the doors open. ‘But can you give me a minute?’

  ‘Oh, please come with us!’ Scorpio pleaded. ‘I want you to tell me about that shooting incident at Leopold’s. Nobody’s talking, and I’m dying to know what happened.’

  ‘Another time, Scorp.’

  ‘Okay, then we’ll ride back down with you,’ Naveen said, pulling the others into the elevator with him.

  The doors closed, leaving us with our reflected selves in the mirrored walls.

  ‘There was a very pretty American girl, all blonde hair and brown eyes, waiting upstairs,’ Divya said. ‘Did you meet her?’

  ‘There’s a very pretty girl waiting for me at home,’ I said.

  ‘But this girl –’

  ‘Forget it, Divya!’ I snapped, too harshly.

  ‘You should take a little time off from that Charm School, motherfucker,’ Divya said matter-of-factly. ‘You sweep a girl off her feet.’

  ‘I’m sorry, it’s been a rough –’

  ‘I’ll meet the American girl with brown eyes,’ Scorpio said brightly.

  We turned to look at him.

  ‘I mean . . . if Lin’s, you know, not going to be there at the party, and . . . ’

  ‘You spruced up some, Scorpio,’ I remarked.

  His longish hair was pulled into a ponytail. He wore a yellow shirt, new jeans, a silver-buckled belt and cowboy boots. A ring on his middle finger featured a Greek helmet, in gold, gleaming from the centre of an onyx square.

  ‘Is it too much?’ he asked, checking himself quickly in the wall mirror. ‘It was Diva’s idea. She said –’

  ‘It’s good,’ I said. ‘You look like a million dollars. Kudos, Divya.’

  ‘Thirty-five million dollars, actually,’ Divya replied. ‘And it’s Diva, remember? I swear, if you call me Divya again, I’ll punch you straight in the balls. And I’m short enough and mean enough to do it.’

  ‘That’s not hyperbole,’ Naveen averred.

  ‘Okay. You’re Diva, from now on.’

  I looked down at her proud, pretty face. She was a short girl, who wore high-heeled shoes so often that it gave her a slightly forward-leaning stance, on the balls of her feet: a leopard-footed posture that made her look as if she was stalking prey. I liked it, and liked her, but just wanted to go home.

  The doors opened on the lobby, and I stepped out quickly.

  ‘Sure we can’t tempt you?’ Naveen asked.

  ‘Not tonight.’

  I pulled him close enough to whisper.

  ‘That thing at Leopold’s,’ I said quietly. ‘I’m glad you were there, Naveen.’

  ‘When there’s a reckoning,’ he said, just as quietly, ‘count me in.’

  ‘I will. Listen, if Didier asks you for any help, do me a good. He’s watching Lisa, while I’m away.’

  ‘Away?’

  ‘A week or so. I’ll check in with you, when I get back.’

  ‘Thik.’

  ‘And, hey, Scorpio,’ I said, in a louder voice, as Naveen rejoined Diva. ‘Be careful with the girl.’

  ‘The blonde, with brown eyes?’

  ‘Any girl,’ I said.

  The doors closed, and the lift carried them back to the penthouse party.

  I made my way to the bike, paid a tip to the security guards, and rode out into the coursing rain.

  Soothing cleansing showers, cold so close to the sea, rolled with me as I rode the length of Marine Drive twice, before turning again and making my way home.

  I didn’t know it then, but that fall of purging rain, drops as big as flowers, was the last heavy fall of the Bombay season. The torrents that had swamped the streets of the Island City, and left every patch of dusty earth lush with weeds, was drifting south toward Madras, before riding the sea lane up-drift to Sri Lanka, and the great oceans that had birthed them.

>   I took the steps two at a time, and rushed into the apartment, spilling water onto the silver-flecked marble of the hallway floor. Lisa wasn’t there.

  I stripped off my sodden boots and clothes, scrubbed the cuts on my face clean with disinfectant, and stood in the shower, letting the cold water run on my back, the suburban penitent’s scourge.

  I dressed, and was just about to make a pot of coffee, when Lisa walked in.

  ‘Lin! Where the hell have you been? Are you okay? Oh, God, let me look at your face.’

  ‘I’m fine. How are you? Has everything been quiet here?’

  ‘Are you proud of yourself?’

  ‘What?’

  She shoved me, two hands on my chest, then picked up a metal vase, and threw it at me. I ducked, and it crashed into a wall unit, sending things clattering to the floor.

  ‘Coming home, all beat up like that!’

  ‘I –’

  ‘Gang wars in the street! Grow up, for God’s sake!’

  ‘It wasn’t –’

  ‘Shooting people at Leopold’s! Are you a complete asshole?’

  ‘I didn’t shoot any –’

  ‘Running off to the mountain with Karla.’

  ‘Okay, okay, so that’s what this is about.’

  ‘Of course it is!’ she shouted, throwing an ashtray at the wall unit.

  She suddenly cried, then suddenly stopped crying and sat down on the couch, her hands folded in her lap.

  ‘I’m calm now,’ she said.

  ‘Okay . . . ’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘It’s not about you,’ she said.

  ‘Fair enough.’

  ‘No, really.’

  ‘Lisa, I didn’t even know she was there. But since you mention Karla, there’s something –’

  ‘Oh, Lin!’ she cried, pointing at the things that had fallen from the wall unit. ‘Look what happened to the sword! I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean that to happen.’

  One of the things that had fallen from the cabinet was Khaderbhai’s sword: the sword that should’ve been willed to Tariq, the boy king, Khaderbhai’s nephew and heir. The sword was broken. The hilt had snapped completely free from the shaft of the sword. It lay in two pieces beside the scabbard.

  I picked them up, wondering at the strange frailty of a weapon that had survived battles in the Afghan wars against the British.

  ‘Can you get it fixed?’ she asked anxiously.

  ‘I’ll do it when I get back,’ I said flatly, putting the pieces of the sword into the cabinet. ‘I’m going to Sri Lanka tomorrow, Lisa.’

  ‘Lin . . . no.’

  I went to the bathroom, and showered again to cool down. Lisa showered, and joined me as I was drying off. I leaned into the mirror, and put a plaster on the ugly cut that Concannon’s lead sap had left on my cheek.

  She talked, warning me about the dangers of going to Sri Lanka, telling me what she’d read in the newspaper, Ranjit’s newspaper, explaining to me that I had no obligation to go, and that I owed the Sanjay Council nothing, nothing, nothing.

  When she finished, I pleaded with her to leave Bombay for a while, told her everything I knew about the Leopold’s incident, and warned her that things wouldn’t get better, until I reached some kind of an understanding with Concannon.

  ‘Enough horrible stuff,’ she said at last. ‘Is it my turn, now?’

  I lay back against a stack of pillows on the bed. She was leaning against the doorjamb, her arms folded across her waist.

  ‘Okay, Lisa, your turn.’

  ‘If I can’t stop you leaving, it’s time to talk about other things.’

  ‘As a matter of fact –’

  ‘Women want to know,’ she said quickly. ‘You’re a writer. You’re supposed to know that.’

  ‘Women want to know . . . what?’

  She joined me on the bed.

  ‘Everything,’ she said, a hand resting on my thigh. ‘All the stuff you never tell me, for example. The stuff you don’t tell any woman.’

  I frowned.

  ‘Look, they say that women are emotional, and men are rational. Bullshit. If you saw the stuff you guys do, saw it from our point of view, the last thing you’d call it was rational.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘And women are actually pretty rational. They want clarity. They want an answer. Are you in this, or are you out? Women want to know. Anything less has no guts, and women like guts. That’s rational, in our book, if you’ll forgive the literary metaphor.’

  ‘Forgiven. What are you talking about?’

  ‘Karla, of course.’

  ‘I’ve been trying to talk to you about –’

  ‘You and Karla,’ she said. ‘Karla and you. On the mountain, and off it. I get it. And I’m cool with it.’

  And suddenly it was done: we were two minds, two ways of being, two paradigms whirling apart, leaving phantom limbs where once they’d touched.

  ‘I can’t shake it, Lisa,’ I said. ‘It’s not Karla, it’s me, and I –’

  ‘Karla and I have an understanding about you,’ she said impatiently.

  ‘An . . . understanding?’

  ‘That’s what the lunch with her at Kayani’s was all about. Weren’t you paying attention?’

  Feynman once said that if you understand quantum theory, you don’t. I had no idea what Lisa was talking about.

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘It’s not about her, and it’s not about you. It’s about me.’

  ‘That’s what I was trying to talk about.’

  ‘No, you weren’t. You were talking about you and Karla. Fine. I get that. But this isn’t about that. This is about me.’

  ‘This . . . what?’

  ‘This conversation.’

  ‘Didn’t I start this conversation?’

  ‘No, I did,’ she frowned.

  ‘Was I there, when you did?’

  ‘Here it is. You can’t love two people, Lin. Not in the right way. Nobody can. She can’t do it, and neither can you. I get that. I really do. But sad and romantic and fucked up and thrilling and wonderful as all that is, it’s irrelevant. This isn’t about her, and it’s not about you. It’s my turn. It’s about me. It’s my shot at the mike, Lin.’

  ‘It’s what about you?’

  ‘It’s all about me.’

  ‘You think you could start this conversation again?’

  She looked directly into my eyes, challenging me to stay with her.

  ‘See, women need to know, it’s that simple.’

  ‘I got that bit.’

  ‘And once they know, they can deal with anything.’

  ‘Deal with . . . what?’

  ‘Stop beating yourself up, Lin. You’re good at beating yourself up. You could get a prize, if they gave prizes for beating yourself up, and I kinda love that about you, but it’s not needed here. I’m breaking up with you, tonight, and I wanted to talk about it, because I thought you should know why.’

  ‘I . . . sure . . . of course. What?’

  ‘I really think you should know.’

  ‘Can I pretend to know?’

  ‘Stop kidding around, Lin.’

  ‘I’m not kidding, I’m just lost.’

  ‘Okay. It’s like this – I don’t want to explain you any more.’

  ‘Explain me to your friends, or my enemies?’

  ‘I don’t give a shit what anybody says about you,’ she said, burning blue into my eyes. ‘And I wouldn’t listen to it. You know that. What I don’t like about what you do is that you like it.’

  ‘Lisa –’

  ‘You like having two guns and six false passports and six currencies in the drawer. And you can’t say you do it to survive. You’re smarter than that. I’m s
marter than that. The fact is, you like it. You like it a lot. And I don’t want to explain that to myself any more. I don’t like that you. I can’t like that you. I won’t like that you. I’m sorry.’

  A man’s a prison. I should’ve told her that I’d quit the Sanjay Company, and the Sri Lanka run was my ticket home. I’d taken a step away from the me that she didn’t like. It wouldn’t have changed her mind, but it was something she had a right to hear. A man’s a prison. I didn’t speak.

  ‘Karla likes that you,’ she said casually. ‘I think she likes that you even more than you do.’

  ‘Where did you go, Lisa?’

  She laughed, and pretty hard.

  ‘You really want to know?’

  ‘Enough with the wanting to know, Lisa.’

  She sat up on the bed, her legs crossed. Her blonde hair was tied into a swallowtail, dipping and shaking as she spoke.

  ‘You know Rish, my partner in the gallery?’

  ‘How many partners have you got now?’

  ‘Six. Well –’

  ‘Six?’

  ‘So, anyway –’

  ‘Six?’

  ‘So, anyway, Rish has been doing a lot of meditation –’

  ‘Oh, no.’

  ‘And a lot of yoga studies –’

  ‘Okay, Lisa, stop. If you tell me there’s a guru behind all this, I’ll be obliged to slap him.’

  ‘He’s not my guru, he’s Rish’s guru, and that’s not the point. It wasn’t said by a guru, and Rish didn’t say it. A woman said it, I think. I don’t know who she is, actually. But Johnny Cigar gave me a self-help book, and Rish gave me exactly the same book, on the same day. And the quote was in that book – the thing she said.’

  ‘What thing?’

  ‘The thing that Rish heard from somewhere, and said to me.’

  ‘What thing?’

  ‘Resentment is unmet need or desire,’ she said. ‘That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.’

  I thought about it. A writer’s worst instinct, and too often the first, is to look for the flaw in any written or spoken thing that looks good. I didn’t find it.

  ‘That’s pretty good,’ I conceded.

  ‘Pretty good! She should get the Nobel Prize for Saying Cool Shit.’

  ‘Okay,’ I smiled.

  ‘It ripped my mind apart, Lin, I gotta tell ya. It made so much sense. I suddenly understood exactly why I was feeling so resentful, these last months. I was really out of it on resentment, you know? Like, when you get to the stage where you get irritated by things that used to be cute, only now they’re not cute any more?’