The Mountain Shadow

by Gregory David Roberts

  ‘How much not cute are we talking about?’

  ‘A lot not cute.’

  ‘A lot?’

  ‘I was muttering,’ she confessed.

  ‘You were muttering?’

  ‘I was.’

  ‘Muttering?’

  ‘I thought you must’ve heard me, a couple times.’

  ‘About irritating things I did?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Well, for starters –’

  ‘No, don’t tell me. I don’t wanna know.’

  ‘It might be helpful to your process,’ she suggested.

  ‘No, I’m good. I’ve already been processed. Go on. You were muttering.’

  ‘See,’ she said, smoothing out the bedcover in front of her folded legs, her feet asleep against her calves. ‘When I heard those words, resentment is unmet need or desire, I knew how to think about what I was feeling. Do you get that?’

  ‘Think-feeling. I . . . think I get it.’

  ‘I had a frame, you know, for the painting of me. I knew what my unmet need was. I knew what my unmet desire was. And when I knew that, I knew it all.’

  ‘Can you divulge the unmet need?’

  ‘I need to be free of you,’ she said flatly, her hands pressed into stars on the bed.

  ‘The new you gave up sugar.’

  ‘I don’t need it. Not any more,’ she said, tracing a circle on the bedcover with her finger. ‘I don’t have to sugar anything, especially not what I tell myself.’

  ‘And the unmet desire?’

  ‘I want to be one hundred per cent inside my own now. I want to be the moment, instead of just watching the moment pass. You know what I’m talking about, right? You get me?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Now. This now. My now. All my nows. That’s what I want. Do you get that?’

  ‘You’re in the now. I get it. I swear, Leese, if there’s a guru involved in this –’

  ‘This is all me. This is all mine.’

  ‘And it’s what you want?’

  ‘It’s the beginning of what I want, and I’m completely sure of it.’

  She was tough. She was superb.

  ‘Then, if it’s really what you want, I love it, Lisa.’

  ‘You do?’

  ‘Of course. You can do anything you put your heart into.’

  ‘You really think so?’

  ‘It’s great, Lisa.’

  ‘I knew you’d get it,’ she said, her eyes blue pools of relief. ‘It’s just that I want a special now, one that’s mine, instead of a constant now, that I constantly share with someone else’s now.’

  A constant now, that you constantly share with someone else’s now. It was a pretty good definition of prison.

  ‘I hear you.’

  ‘I want to know what it’s like to be me, when it’s just me.’

  ‘Go get ’em, Lisa.’

  She smiled, and let out a weary sigh.

  ‘It sounds so selfish, but it wasn’t. It was generous, you know, not just to me, but to you and Karla, too. It let me see us all clearly, for the first time. It let me see how much you’re alike, you and her, and how different you both are than me. Do you understand that?’

  In a damning way, in a kind and loving way, she was telling me that Karla and I were made for each other: Karla’s edges fitting my scars. True or not, strangely hurtful or not, it didn’t matter, because those minutes weren’t Karla’s or mine: they were hers.

  The fall and summit within, what we do, and what we choose to become, are ours alone, as they should be, and must be. Lisa was deep in that serene, uncontradictable stillness born in resolution, and she was gloriously alone with it. She was clear, determined, brave and hopeful.

  ‘The new you is really something,’ I said quietly.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said softly. ‘And the new me, broken up with old you, and not sleeping in the same bed as the new you, needs to rent the guest bedroom to sleep in.’

  ‘Well,’ I laughed, ‘if your now isn’t too compromised by it, no problem.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ she said seriously, snuggling in beside me, her head on my chest. ‘But I do think, now that we’re separated under the same roof, we should have a few rules.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘Like with sleepovers. We should have a sleepover rule.’

  ‘Sleepovers? Your now is getting more crowded by the minute.’

  ‘We could hang a sign on the front door.’

  ‘A sign?’

  ‘I mean, a sign that only we understand. Like a garden gnome, for example. If the garden gnome is on the left side of the door, one of us has a sleepover guest. If it’s on the right side of the door, no sleepovers.’

  ‘We don’t have a garden gnome. We don’t have a garden.’

  ‘We could use that cat statue you don’t like.’

  ‘I didn’t say I didn’t like it. I like it plenty. I said it didn’t seem to like me.’

  ‘And you’ll have to forgive the rent, for at least six months.’

  ‘Just to be clear on the sleepover cat signal,’ I asked. ‘Was it the left side of the door, or the right?’

  ‘The left. And you’ll have to forgive the rent.’

  ‘The rent’s already paid for a year, Lisa.’

  ‘No, I mean my rent, for the guest room. I’ll pay the market rate. I insist. But I put everything I have into the next show, and I’m skinned alive. I won’t be able to pay you for at least six months.’

  ‘Forget about it.’

  ‘No, really, I insist on paying,’ she said, punching me in the ribs.

  ‘Forget about it.’

  She hit me again.

  ‘I give up. I’ll let you pay me back.’

  ‘And . . . I’ll need an advance,’ she added.

  ‘An advance?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘You don’t work for me, Lisa.’

  ‘Yes, but I hate the word loan. It sounds like the noise a dog makes, when it’s in pain. I’ve decided, from now on, that when I need a loan I’ll ask for an advance. It’s a much more inspiring word.’

  ‘Advanced thinking.’

  ‘But I won’t be able to pay for food, electricity, phone or laundry bills for a while. Every penny of my advance will be tied up.’

  ‘Covered.’

  ‘I insist on paying it, when I have enough to spare from my next advance.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘And I’ll need a car, but we can talk about that when you get back.’

  ‘Sure. Is that it, with the house rules?’

  ‘There is one other thing.’

  ‘Let’s have it.’

  ‘I don’t know. I mean –’

  ‘Let’s have it.’

  ‘I’m not cooking any more,’ she said, pressing her lips together until the bottom lip pouted free.

  She’d cooked three times, in two years, and it wasn’t pleasant eating.

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘To be brutally honest, I absolutely hate cooking. I can’t stand it. I only did it to please you. It was a living hell for me every time, from beginning to end. I’m not doing it any more. I’m sorry, but that’s just how it is, even as a roommate.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘I don’t want to hurt you, but I don’t want you to get any expectations, either. I’m big into expectations at the moment, as part of my process, and I hose them down before they become –’

  ‘Resentments?’

  ‘Exactly! Oh, God, I feel so much better. Do you?’

  ‘I feel okay,’ I said.

  ‘You do? Really? It’s important to me. I don’t want to drag any guilt or shame into my now with me. It’s important to me that you care enough to let me do this, a
nd that you feel good about it.’

  Good is only half the truth, and truth is only half the story. A small part of me was aggrieved that she was demanding so much and taking so much from the little that we had left. But the bigger part of me had always supposed or expected, however silently and reluctantly, that we’d part from one another one day, and probably with little more than we could hold in our hands. And then there was Karla, always Karla. I had no right to shade a minute of Lisa’s happiness. Good is only half the truth, and truth is only half the story.

  ‘I’m good, Lisa. I just want you to be happy.’

  ‘I’m so glad,’ she said, smiling through her lashes. ‘I was dreading this, you know.’

  ‘Why? When have I ever not listened to you, or not supported you?’

  ‘It’s not that. It’s more complicated than that.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘There are other things and other people to consider.’

  ‘What things, Lisa? What people?’

  ‘I don’t want to go into it, now.’

  Women want to know? I thought. Men want to know, too.

  ‘Come on, Lisa –’

  ‘Look, you’re leaving tomorrow, and I want us to keep feeling happy about how far we’ve come tonight, okay?’

  ‘If that’s the way you want it.’

  ‘I do. I’m happy, Lin, and don’t want to spoil it.’

  ‘I’ll be back soon, a week or so, and we’ll talk again. Whatever help you need, it’s yours. If you want a new place, I’ll set it up, and clear the rent for a year. Whatever you want. Don’t worry.’

  ‘You’ve really evolved, you know,’ she said wistfully.

  ‘From what?’

  ‘From what I met,’ she said.

  She looked up at me with an expression I couldn’t recognise, at first, and then I did. It was endearment; the kind of endearment we reserve for very dear friends.

  ‘Do you remember our first kiss?’ she asked.

  ‘Afghan Church. They chased us out. We almost got arrested.’

  ‘Let’s find out,’ she said, moving to sit across me, ‘how we’ll remember our last kiss.’

  She kissed me, but the kiss dissolved in whispers and we talked, lying side by side in the dark, until the storm softened and died. When she slept, I rose and packed a bag for the morning’s train ride.

  I put my guns, ammunition, long knives, some passports and a few bundles of money in a compartment I’d had made in the back of a heavy chest of drawers. I left extra money for Lisa in the top drawer of the dresser, where she’d find it.

  When everything was set, I went to the window and sat in the wicker chair I’d bought for her, high enough to give a view of the street below.

  The last lonely chai seller walked past our window, gently ringing the bell on his bicycle to attract the attention of dozing nightwatchmen. Little by little the thring-thring of the bell faded, until the street was silent.

  All life orbits that sun, Fate’s heart. Ranjit, Vikram, Dennis the Sleeping Baba, Naveen Adair, Abdullah, Sanjay, Diva Devnani, Didier, Johnny Cigar, Concannon, Vinson, Rannveig, Scorpio, Gemini, Sri Lanka, Lisa: my thoughts, a voyager, sailed from sea to sea, with one star in the black-ink sky, Karla.

  Lisa was still asleep when I left, at dawn. I walked, contrition-brisk, to a taxi stand on the causeway. My shadow played like a laughing dog in the yellow morning. A sleepy taxi driver reluctantly accepted double the fare. The empty streets we drove were bright, cleaned by light.

  The station, Bombay’s pagan cathedral, urged porters, passengers and burdens into passageways of crucial consequence, every seat precious; every seat important; every seat essential to someone’s destiny.

  And when the Madras Express pulled out, at last, my window woke the streets for me, all the way through rain-stained suburbs to the tree line of green mountains and valleys, beyond the city’s grey hunger.

  Again-and-again, again-and-again, the train’s rhythm chanted. I felt good: bad and good at the same time. My heart was a question; my head was a command.

  Sri Lanka was risky. Lisa was right about that. But Abdullah had spoken to Sanjay, wresting my freedom from him in exchange for the mission I’d promised to do. And one job, like fifty others I’d done, was a small price to pay for a clean exit from the Company.

  I was happy for Lisa, happy that she was free of me, if that was what she wanted. I was still feeling the same worried affection for her, but I had to start getting used to the fact that she was already gone: she was gone, and I was on a war train.

  Lisa found her truth, and I found mine. I was still in love with Karla, and I couldn’t love anyone else.

  It didn’t matter what intrigues Karla was plotting, with Ranjit or against him. It didn’t matter that she’d married someone else, or that I’d tried to love someone else. It didn’t matter if we couldn’t be more than friends. I loved her, and I always would.

  I felt good, and bad: one bad mission away from good.

  Again-and-again, the train wheels sang, again-and-again, again-and-again, as farms and fields and towns of dreams streamed past my window, and a shawl of sky misted distant mountains with the last of that year’s rain.

  Part Six

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  There was no moon. Clouds hid, afraid of the dark. Stars were so bright that whenever I shut my eyes they burned sparks on the dark inside. The wind was everywhere, playful, happy to see us out there on the surface of nowhere, and the ship plunged and rose gently, as if swimming through the waves, rather than floating on them.

  I’d waited three days in Madras for just such a night, as had the seventy-seven others with me. Those waiting days had shrunk to minutes: minutes before midnight, minutes before leaving the danger of the ship for the greater danger of small boats, on the open ocean.

  Waves licked at the prow, streaming in salted mists all the way to the stern where I stood, dressed in dark blue fatigues and jacket, one more camouflaged bundle on the camouflaged deck.

  I looked at the stars, as the ship sighed through the waves, drifting between dark night and darker sea.

  Most ocean-going cargo ships are painted white, cream or pale yellow above the waterline. In the event of an emergency at sea, such as dead engines or a ruptured hull, they can be seen from far by search and rescue vessels, or aircraft.

  The Mitratta, a Panamanian coastal freighter of fifty thousand tons, was painted dark blue, everywhere, and dark blue tarpaulins covered the cargo and rig on the deck.

  The captain ran the bridge on instrument lights. The ship was so dark that the forward running lights seemed like tiny creatures, diving into and out of the waves.

  Figures huddled together like bundles of cargo, which, of course, we were. Smuggled people smuggle their dreams with them, and they whispered to one another often, but no word could be heard. Their whispers were always just softer than the lush of the waves. Victims of war become masters of silence.

  I suddenly needed company. I made my rolling way along the deck to the first of several groups. I smiled at them, teeth in the darkness. They smiled back at me, teeth in the darkness.

  I sat down beside them. They began whispering again.

  They were speaking in Tamil. I couldn’t understand a word, but I didn’t mind. I was in the bubble-murmur of their voices, the gentle music of it dripping shadows around us on the painted steel deck.

  A figure approached, and squatted down beside me. It was Mehmood, nicknamed Mehmu, my contact on the ship.

  ‘It’s a young war,’ he said softly, looking at the faces of the Tamils near us on the deck. ‘The Tamil homeland in Sri Lanka is an old idea, but the young are dying for it. Can you come with me now?’

  ‘Sure.’

  I followed him until we reached the afterdeck.

  ‘They don’t trust you,’ he said, lighting two cigaret
tes, and passing me one. ‘It’s nothing personal. They don’t know who you are, or why you’re in the group. When you’re in a situation that only ever gets worse, like theirs, everyone’s a threat, even a friend.’

  ‘You stay on this ship for every tour?’

  ‘I do. We unload the legit cargo, and I go back with the ship to Madras.’

  ‘I wouldn’t want to do this every month. Those patrol boats we saw weren’t far away, and they’ve got big guns.’

  He laughed quietly.

  ‘You know anything about the Tamil Muslims in Sri Lanka?’

  ‘Not much.’

  ‘Pogroms,’ he said. ‘Look it up.’

  He laughed, but it was just sadness, finding a different way to his face. He straightened up.

  ‘The gold and passports you’re bringing will help,’ he said. ‘We have to buy people out of prison, and then we have to get them out of Sri Lanka to tell the world about our situation. For the others, it’s a new civil war. For us, this is a war we never start, but always have to fight. For us, this isn’t a matter of nationality, it’s a matter of faith.’

  Faith, again. There wasn’t any pure or noble cause in what I was doing. There was no cause but my own. I was ashamed to think it, standing next to a man who risked his life for what he believed.

  The hundred-gram gold ingots I was smuggling had been melted down from jewellery that the Sanjay Company had stolen or extorted. There was blood on it already, and I was carrying it: nothing noble, and nothing pure.

  But there was still a stained-glass shard of faith somewhere inside. Mehmu’s sacred mission was a job, for me, it was true, but the same dark vessel carried both of us to the same dark war. And it was a war of one, for me: one man’s freedom from a gang that was once a band of brothers.

  Faith is belief without fear, and freedom is one of faith’s perfections. Standing there on that smothered deck, listening to prayers in Arabic, Hindi, English, Sinhalese and Tamil, the stars so bright those tiny suns burned my eyes, I put my faith in freedom, and asked Mehmu for my gun.