The Mountain Shadow

by Gregory David Roberts

  ‘Sure, okay, certainly,’ they all said, none of them asking what it was.

  ‘Didier, do you think we can wake up your friend, Tito?’

  ‘Tito doesn’t sleep, as far as I know,’ Didier replied. ‘At least, no-one has ever actually seen him sleeping.’

  ‘Good. Let’s go.’

  Didier gave Randall directions to the fishermen’s colony behind Colaba market. We parked beside a row of tilted handcarts and wound through dark lanes and alleys to find Tito, who was reading Durrell by kerosene lantern. He was lonely, he said, so he taxed us time: ten per cent of two hours. We smoked a joint with him, talked books, and then collected my kit.

  ‘What is our new destination, sir?’ Randall asked, when we were all in the car.

  ‘The Air India building,’ I said. ‘And a funeral in the sky.’

  Chapter Forty-One

  The nightwatchman remembered me, accepted some money, and sent us up to the roof of the deserted Air India building.

  The red archer was turning slowly. The night was clear, the star-horizon wider than the sea. The waves below seemed fragile, their crests of foam like strips of floating seaweed, seen from our perch in the sky.

  While they were admiring the archer and the view, I set about making a small fireplace. Naveen helped me gather bricks and broken tiles from the wide concrete roof. We made a base of tiles and built a small hearth around them with bricks and stones.

  I’d taken a newspaper from the nightwatchman, and began screwing the pages up into small, tight balls. When it was ready, I uncovered Lisa’s box of things from the bag that Tito had kept safe.

  The metal wind-up toy was a bluebird, attached to a device with finger holes like a pair of scissors. I pressed the scissors together, and the bird moved its head and sang. It was Lisa’s. She’d had it since she was a child. I gave it to Karla.

  There was a yellow tube with brass fittings at the end, which held all of my old silver rings. I’d made it as a paperweight for Lisa. I gave it to Naveen. The stones, acorns, shells, amulets and coins fit inside a blue velvet jewel box. I gave it to Didier.

  I tore the photographs into fragments and fed them into the fireplace, along with anything that would burn, including the hemp sandals and the box itself, marked REASONS WHY, ripped into small pieces. Her thin, silver scarf was last into the pile, curled and coiled like a snake.

  I lit the lowest of the paper balls around the fire, and it caught. Didier helped it along with a swish from his flask. Karla did the same. Naveen fanned the flames with a chunk of tile.

  Karla took my hand, and led me to the edge of the building where we could look at the sea.

  ‘Ranjit,’ I said softly.

  ‘Ranjit,’ she repeated softly.

  ‘Ranjit,’ I growled.

  ‘Ranjit,’ she growled back.

  ‘How are you holding up?’

  ‘I’m okay. I’ve got other things on my mind. Are you okay?’

  ‘Ranjit,’ I said, my teeth clenched.

  ‘He always liked her,’ Karla said. ‘I was so busy projecting him into the limelight that I didn’t see how close they got.’

  ‘You’re saying Ranjit had a thing for Lisa?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe. I never asked him anything about his sex life, and he never told me anything. Maybe it was just because we liked her so much. He’s a competitive man. But like all competitive men, his balls fell off when the going got hard.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘I’ll tell you, one day, after we find him. My problem with Ranjit isn’t important now, and it had nothing to do with Lisa. His problem was a fear of success. Surprising, how common that is. There should be a name for it.’

  ‘Ambition fatigue?’ I suggested.

  ‘I like it,’ she laughed softly. ‘What do you think Ranjit was doing with Lisa, that night?’

  ‘Rohypnol is a rape drug, but sometimes people take it together because they like it. So, either Ranjit is a rapist, and it went wrong, or they had a thing, and that went wrong. Thing is, I didn’t think they were that close, except that she liked his politics.’

  ‘His politics?’ Karla laughed, to herself.

  ‘How is that funny?’

  ‘I’ll explain it one day. How was it tonight, Shantaram, in the cage with Lightning Dilip?’

  ‘The usual. Short back and sides.’

  ‘Bad cops are bad priests,’ she said. ‘All confession, and no absolution.’

  ‘How are you comin’ along, Slim?’

  ‘I’m okay. I’ve got bruises like Rorschach tests. One of them looks like two dolphins, making love. But, you know, maybe that’s just me.’

  I wanted to see the bruise. I wanted to kiss it. I wanted to beat the man who put it there.

  ‘The car and Randall,’ I said, ‘and staying at the Taj. It costs. I’ve got some money put away, a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. I can set you up in a safe place somewhere, with the car and Randall and whatever else you need. While Ranjit’s on the loose, you should play it safe.’

  ‘Listen,’ she said. ‘I told you that I’ve been working with the economists and analysts at Ranjit’s paper. I made some money, and put a little aside.’

  ‘Yeah, but –’

  I spent two years on it, with the best advice the boss’s money could buy, and quite a bit of the boss’s money.’

  I remembered the bike-talk, me telling her to save money and put a down payment on a house. And she was working with professional economists and stock market analysts all the time, and didn’t say a thing. She was even sweet to me.

  ‘You’ve been playing the market?’

  ‘Not . . . exactly.’

  ‘Then what . . . exactly?’

  ‘I’ve been manipulating it.’

  ‘Manipulating it?’

  ‘A bit.’

  ‘How much of a bit?’

  ‘I used a proxy vote to leverage the theoretical worth of all of Ranjit’s shares in communications, energy, insurance and transportation, and I built a secret buying block, for sixteen minutes, and then I closed it down.’

  ‘A buying block?’

  ‘And I bought my brains out, with six guys on six phones, for sixteen minutes.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘I moved the stock prices in selected arm’s-length companies, where I’d already bought preferential stock.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I rigged the market a couple of times. No big deal. I made my cut, and got the hell out.’

  ‘How much did you make?’

  ‘Three million.’

  ‘Rupees?’

  ‘Dollars.’

  ‘You made three million dollars on the market?’

  ‘I skimmed it off the market, to be precise. It’s actually not that hard, if you’re stinking rich to begin with, which I was, with Ranjit’s proxy shares. So, there’s no problem for money. I have it in four different accounts. I don’t need Ranjit’s money, or yours, Lin. I need your help.’

  ‘Three million? And I was talking to you about –’

  ‘Being a London Bombay wife,’ she ended for me. ‘I loved it. Really. And –’

  ‘Wait. You said you need my help?’

  ‘An old enemy of mine is back in town,’ she said. ‘Madame Zhou.’

  ‘I detest that woman, and I’ve only met her once.’

  ‘Detest is the doormat,’ Karla said. ‘What I feel for that woman is a whole mansion of malice.’

  Madame Zhou was an influence peddler who’d sweated secrets from influential patrons of her brothel, the Palace of Happy, for more than a decade. When she drew Lisa into her maze of stained sheets, Karla got Lisa out, poured gasoline on the Palace of Happy, and burned it to the ground.

  ‘She put it around that she’s looking for me. And this time
, it’s not just the twins.’

  I knew the twins, Madame Zhou’s bodyguards and constant companions. The last time I’d seen them, they were bleeding, because I was losing a very untidy fight with them, and because Didier shot them.

  ‘I detest those twins, and I’ve only met them once, as a pair.’

  ‘This time,’ Karla said, looking out at the night, ‘she’s got personal cosmeticians with her. Two acid throwers.’

  One of the retribution services offered in those years was acid-throwing. Although usually limited to so-called honour burnings, acid throwers hired themselves out for other matters, when the price was right.

  ‘When did she get back to Bombay?’

  ‘Two days ago. She found out about Lisa’s death, somehow. She knows I burned down her palace for Lisa. She wants to look me in the eyes, and laugh, before she burns me.’

  Stars wandered their dark pastures. Early dawn pressed all the shadows flat. Faint light began to wake waves in brilliant peaks: seals of candescence, playing.

  I turned my head slowly, so that I could look at Karla’s profile as her heart talked to the sea.

  She’d been afraid, for days. She’d discovered our sweet, dead friend, and she’d been beaten by the cops, and she’d broken up with Ranjit, permanently, for whatever reason, and she had Madame Zhou’s acid throwers looking for her, and then she’d discovered that Ranjit was the one who was with Lisa, at the end.

  She was the bravest girl I ever met, and I’d been so much in my own guilt and loss that I hadn’t been beside her, where I belonged, when she needed me.

  ‘Karla, I –’

  ‘Shall we do this now?’ Didier asked, from beside the small fire. ‘We are ready.’

  Didier and Naveen had tended the fire well. The residue of fine ashes, cooled by fanning them out on the ground, was enough for each of us to have a handful.

  We went to a corner facing the open sea, and scattered those little ashes we had of her, in the place she would’ve chosen to scatter mine.

  ‘Goodbye, and hello, beautiful soul,’ Karla said, as the ashes drifted from our fingers. ‘May you return, in a longer and happier life.’

  We followed the wind and ashes with thoughts of her. I was so angry at Fate that I couldn’t cry.

  ‘Well, we’d better get out of here,’ Naveen said, cleaning up the impromptu fireplace. ‘The cleaning staff will arrive soon.’

  ‘Wait, guys,’ I said. ‘Madame Zhou’s back in town, with acid throwers, and she’s asking around about Karla.’

  ‘Acid throwers,’ Didier said, spitting the words in a shiver of dread.

  ‘Who’s Madame Zhou?’ Naveen asked.

  ‘A loathsome woman,’ Didier said, drinking the last sip from his flask. ‘Imagine a spider, the size of a small woman, and you will be very close.’

  ‘We’ll keep a watch on Karla round the clock,’ I suggested, ‘until we throw Madame Zhou and her acid throwers in the sea. We –’

  ‘I thank you, and accept your help, Didier and Naveen,’ Karla cut me off. ‘Much appreciated. But you can’t, Lin.’

  ‘I can’t?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because you won’t be here. You’re going away.’

  ‘I am?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘This morning.’

  ‘Goodbye, Lin,’ Didier said, rushing to hug me. ‘I never wake before the afternoon, so I fear that I will miss your departure.’

  ‘My departure?’

  ‘To the mountain,’ Karla said. ‘To stay with Idriss, for two weeks.’

  ‘Goodbye, Lin,’ Naveen said, hugging me. ‘See you when you get back.’

  ‘Wait a minute.’

  They were already walking to the door. We joined them, and as the elevator doors closed, Karla sighed.

  ‘Every time an elevator door closes on me –’ she began.

  Didier handed her a flask.

  ‘I thought you were out,’ she said, taking a swig.

  ‘It is my reserve.’

  ‘Will you marry me, Didier, if I can divorce Ranjit, or kill him?’

  ‘I’m already married to my vices, Karla dear,’ Didier replied, ‘and they’re very jealous lovers, all of them.’

  ‘Just my luck,’ Karla said. ‘All my guys are vices, or married to them.’

  ‘Which one am I?’ Naveen asked. ‘Now that I’m one of the guys.’

  ‘Maybe both,’ Karla said. ‘Which is why I have such high hopes for you.’

  We reached Karla’s car, and Randall opened the doors. I told them that I wanted to walk back to my bike, still parked near the Scorpion house. Karla walked me to the sea wall to say goodbye.

  ‘Stick it out,’ she said, her palm on my chest.

  Her fingers were truth, touching me.

  Imagine this, every day.

  ‘As it happens,’ I smiled, ‘I’m a stick-it-out guy.’

  She laughed. Temple bell.

  ‘I’d like to be beside you, when Madame Zhou pops out of the shadows.’

  ‘You can help me by staying two weeks up there, Lin. Let everything cool down. Let me set this in motion. Let me do what I have to do, and keep you out of it while I do it. Stay longer up there with Idriss, if you need.’

  ‘Longer?’

  ‘If you need.’

  ‘What about us?’

  She smiled. She kissed me.

  ‘I’ll come and see you.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘When you least expect it,’ she said, walking back to the car.

  ‘What about Madame Zhou?’

  ‘We’ll be merciful,’ she said out the window as Randall drove away, ‘until we find her.’

  I watched the car out of sight, and began to walk the sea wall promenade. Early walkers brisked elbows and ankle socks at me, too serious to look at anything but the pavement.

  Morning rose behind eastern buildings, shadow-veils lifting slowly from their faces. Dogs, impatient for action, barked here and there. Flocks of pigeons tested their skills, swooping the flourish of a dancer’s dress over the path, and soaring invisible again.

  I was a funeral procession of one. I could still feel the ashes on my fingers as I walked. Tiny fragments of Lisa’s life were floating across the sea, and along the promenade.

  Everything leaves a mark. Every blow echoes in the forest inside. Every injustice cuts a branch, and every loss is a fallen tree. The beautiful courage of us, the hope that defines our kind, is that we go on, no matter how much life wounds us. We walk. We face the sea and the wind and the salted truth of death, and we go on.

  And every step we take, every breath we spend, every wish fulfilled is a duty to those lives and loves no longer graced, as we still are, with the spark and rhythm of the Source: the soul we loved, in their eyes.

  Part Seven

  Chapter Forty-Two

  ‘Let me begin our lessons by telling you where Khaderbhai was wrong in his instruction of you,’ Idriss said, when I’d been with him on the mountain for three restless, sleep-sluggish nights, and three days filled with chores.

  ‘But –’

  ‘I know, I know, you want the Big Answers, to the Big Questions. Where did we come from? What are we now? Where are we going? Is there a purpose to life? Are we free, or are we determined by a Divine plan? And we’ll get to them, irritating as they are.’

  ‘Irritating, Idriss, or irresolvable?’

  ‘The Big Questions only have small answers, and the Big Answers can only be found through small questions. But first, we need a little R and R.’

  ‘Rest and Recuperation?’

  ‘No, Repair and Rectification.’

  ‘Rectification?’ I asked, an eyebrow dissenting.

  ‘Rectification,’ he repe
ated. ‘It is the duty of every human being to help others toward rectification, whenever the discourse between them is private, and of a spiritual nature. You will help me in this, and I will help you.’

  ‘I’m not a spiritual person,’ I said.

  ‘You’re a spiritual person. The very fact that we’re having this conversation is the proof, although you don’t have the eyes to see it.’

  ‘Okay. But if the club lets me in, you should look at the membership criteria.’

  We were sitting in a corner of the white-stone mesa with a view directly into the tallest trees in the valley. The kitchen was to our left. The main areas were behind us.

  It was late afternoon. Small birds chittered from branch to branch, fussing and fidgeting among the leaves.

  ‘You seek escape in humour,’ he observed.

  ‘Actually, I just try to stay on my game. You know Karla, Idriss, and you know she likes to raise the bar.’

  ‘No, you are escaping, all the time, except for this woman. You are escaping everything, even me, except her. If she were not here, you would escape Bombay, as well. You are running, even when you are standing still. What are you afraid of?’

  What was I afraid of? Take your pick. Let’s start with dying in prison. I told him, but he wasn’t buying it.

  ‘That’s not what you’re afraid of,’ he said, pointing the chillum at me. ‘If something happened to Karla, would you be afraid?’

  ‘Oh, yeah. Of course.’

  ‘That’s what I mean. The other things are things you already know, and things you can survive, if you have to. But Karla, and your family, that’s where your real fear lives, isn’t it?’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  He settled back again, smiling contentedly.

  ‘It means that you are carrying fear within you, Lin. Fear should be outside us. It should only jump into us, when it is required. The rest of the time, we are designed by nature, and culture, to flourish in peace, because it’s very difficult to maintain a connection to the Divine, when you’re living in fear.’

  ‘Which means?’

  ‘You need to be rectified.’

  ‘What if I like being unrectified? What if I think the unrectified part is the best part? What if I’m beyond rectification? Are there rules to this procedure?’