The Mountain Shadow

by Gregory David Roberts

  ‘You . . . fucking . . . did . . . what?’

  ‘Diva, will you please trust me on this,’ Naveen said, tucking strands of his shirt into his pants.

  ‘Trust you? I did trust you, and you lost my fucking car! Do you know how far a girl can walk or run in these shoes? That’s what limousines were designed for, idiot, the fucking shoes! Where’s my four-wheeled shoebox, Naveen?’

  ‘Can we have this conversation off the main street? There’s a corner just ahead, with a laneway.’

  ‘You must be –’

  ‘Please, Miss Diva,’ Didier said. ‘You can surely understand that we three men would not be here, appealing to you in this way, if we did not care about you, and if we did not judge it prudent.’

  She looked from face to face and then stormed off. She turned into the lane and stopped halfway, her back against the wall.

  One foot was raised behind her, resting on the wall. She was wearing an elegant yellow skirt, a white high-necked blouse and ankle-strap heels. Her skirt was split at the side, and her short, fine legs were revealed by the pose. She was a girl who knew how to pose: she’d posed for every magazine in the country.

  I glanced at Naveen. He was studying her with the eyes of love: desire, stripped of hunger. We tough guys fall fast, and we fall hard, Didier had said. And there was no doubt that Naveen Adair, the Indian-Irishman, was a tough guy falling somewhere.

  Naveen let her have it. She was stubborn, and proud. He knew that he had to be brutally honest to have a chance of convincing her of the dangers she faced.

  Every twisted deal that untangled itself at the feet of a gangster, a crooked politician or a cop, gunning for him, spooled out in front of her. Her foot slid down the wall, and she straightened up, bracing herself.

  ‘The threat is very real, Miss Diva,’ Didier said gently. ‘We have all examined this matter, and we have all concluded that your safety is in peril.’

  ‘They’re bad guys,’ Naveen said. ‘And your dad’s surrounded by good guys he doesn’t trust. I think that’s why he gave me the job of making sure you’re safe, and told me not to bring you back to the mansion.’

  ‘Mummy,’ she moaned very softly, calling out to a ghost.

  ‘I recommend leaving, Miss Diva,’ Didier advised. ‘Fast, and far away. I would be honoured to arrange it. Lin can provide the false papers. There is sufficient money. You would be safe, until this matter is resolved.’

  ‘I won’t leave while my dad’s still here,’ she pouted. ‘What if he goes to jail? He’ll need me. No matter what else I have to do, I won’t leave Bombay while he’s here.’

  ‘The alternative is hiding here, in the slum nearby,’ Naveen said. ‘That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.’

  ‘The slum? First, you tell me that my dad is a crook, and that other crooks are trying to kill him, so they might kidnap me or kill me, which I’ve been dealing with all my life, and now –’

  ‘It’s . . . it’s really bad,’ Naveen said. ‘I mean, I told you, Diva. I’m scared myself. Please, listen to us.’

  ‘I lived there, Diva,’ I said. ‘You’ll be safe in the slum, and it shouldn’t be for long.’

  ‘The slum?’ she repeated, trying again, but there wasn’t much fight left in her.

  ‘Do you have someone close enough to you, to trust with your life?’ Didier asked.

  The slim socialite flinched as if he’d shocked her: more than her father’s misdeeds, or the threat to her own safety. She backed away half a step, and then regained her composure.

  ‘I’ve got a lot of distant relatives, but no-one close. My Mother was an only child, like me, and my father’s brother passed away two years ago. Since my Mother died, there’s only my dad and me. I’m not going anywhere.’

  ‘Hiding in this place, Miss Diva, will not be pleasant,’ Didier advised. ‘The people are civilised, but the circumstances are primitive. Do you not wish to reconsider?’

  ‘I’m not leaving.’

  ‘I told you so,’ Naveen said, adjusting the backpack.

  I left them talking, and went to check the end of the laneway.

  The street at the end of the alley led to the white arches and porthole windows of the World Trade Centre, and then to the slum beyond.

  It was quiet. The pavement dwellers had settled down for the night on footpaths. Frisky dogs, hungry for their own hour of power, jerked, jumped and barked. An almost empty bus swept around the corner in front of me. Movie posters adorned the sides like heralds, draped over a war elephant.

  Streetlamps showed the entrance to the slum, near the end of the street. I knew how hard the life was in that slum. I knew how rich the rewards were. The slum was a jellyfish, an empathic dome of common cause: filaments of love and common suffering touched every life.

  Diva walked toward me slowly, with Naveen and Didier. Naveen put his arm around her. She didn’t push it away.

  Maybe he’d told her that the backpack she’d been teasing him about was filled with her things, which he’d hastily gathered for her from the suite at the Mahesh. Maybe, as other loves closed for her, she was finally opening to him.

  She came into the light, and I saw that she was afraid.

  ‘It’s gonna be okay, kid,’ I said, making her look me in the eye. ‘You’ve got a pretty cool ride ahead of you, with pretty cool neighbours.’

  ‘I heard the neighbourhood improved a lot when you moved out,’ she said, but there was only a candle-fire in it. ‘So, tell me, slum dweller, is there anything I should know?’

  ‘The more you go with it,’ I said, as we neared the wide path beside the open latrine, leading to the slum, ‘the better it gets.’

  ‘That’s what my therapist said,’ she muttered, ‘before I sued him for harassment.’

  ‘You won’t be harassed by anything but love in the slum,’ I said. ‘But that takes some getting used to, as well.’

  ‘Bring it on,’ the brave, scared socialite said. ‘Tonight, I’ll take all the love I can get.’

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  The path was rough: dusty earth and stones. To the right, a long wire fence cordoned off the gleaming windows of showcased goods in the World Trade Centre. To the left was a wide field where women and children found a place to relieve themselves among the weeds, and shrubs, and piles of other people’s relief.

  A woman was squatting in the darkness, obscured by scrubby plants. Some kids were squatting in the stony grass beside the path. As Diva passed, the kids smiled, and said, Hello! What is your name?

  When the path began to descend toward the sea we caught our first glimpse of the slum: a tattered cloak, thrown over a fragment of coast beside the gleaming towers of the rich, across the little bay.

  ‘Holy fuck,’ Diva said.

  The slum, at night, was its own dark age. The light in the houses came from kerosene wick-lamps. There was no electricity, and no running water. Rats swept through the lanes in black waves every night, devouring piles of garbage left like dark offerings.

  That smell of kerosene, and mustard oil almost-burnt, and incense, and salt-wind from the sea close by, and the soap of desperate cleanliness, and honest sweat, and the scent of horses, goats, dogs, cats, monkeys and snakes: all those aromas assaulted Diva as we wound our way by torchlight to Johnny Cigar’s house.

  Her eyes were wide, but her lips were pressed into a determined frown. She held Naveen’s arm, but her high-heeled shoes staked out a sure path on the uneven ground.

  Johnny Cigar was waiting for us, dressed in his temple best.

  ‘Welcome, Aanu,’ he said, pressing his palms together, and bowing to Diva. ‘My name is Johnny Cigar. I hope you don’t mind it, that I’m calling you Aanu. I have told everyone that you are my cousin Aanu, visiting from London.’

  ‘Okay,’ Diva said uncertainly.

  ‘To help you settle in peacefully
here,’ Johnny added, ‘I told them that you are a little bit mad. That should explain your angry temperament.’

  ‘My angry temperament?’

  ‘Well, Shantaram said . . . ’

  ‘Shantaram, huh?’

  ‘I have also told everyone that some people are searching for you, because you stole something from them, so we must keep your stay with us a secret.’

  ‘Okay . . . I guess.’

  ‘Oh, yes. This is the safest place for thieves outside the parliament building.’

  ‘That’s reassuring,’ Diva replied, smiling. ‘I think.’

  ‘You may be surprised how many famous people hide in the slum with us. We had a cricket player hiding here, once. I can’t tell you his name, but when we played together, he told me –’

  ‘Shut up, Johnny!’

  Johnny’s wife, Sita, emerged from the house, her red and gold sari whirling sails around her slim figure.

  ‘You don’t even know what I was talking about,’ Johnny said, his feelings hurt.

  ‘Shut up anyway,’ Sita snapped. ‘And leave the poor girl alone.’

  Two other women joined her, and they led Diva to the hut reserved for her, a few paces away. Naveen and Didier followed. I looked at Johnny.

  ‘Coming along, Johnny?’

  ‘I’m . . . I’m going to give Sita a minute,’ he said.

  ‘Trouble in paradise?’ I asked, opening my big mouth.

  ‘You don’t know the half of it,’ he said, wiping a hand through his thick, brown hair. ‘Sita is driving me nuts.’

  ‘Listen, I’m gonna roll some joints. For Diva. I think she’ll need them more than blankets, if she sleeps here tonight. Why don’t we sit inside, and I’ll get to work, while you talk.’

  He talked. I learned more about Sita, in half an hour, than any man should know about another man’s wife. I tried to take her side, once, in fairness, but he cried, so I had to stop.

  It was all Johnny, after that. His suffering was measured in Stations of the Cross Wife, each one with a scolding image. In the end, it came down to one thing.

  ‘Contraception,’ I said, rolling joints for Diva’s slum orientation.

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘She wants another kid, and you don’t. Contraception.’

  ‘I’m practising contraception, at the moment,’ he pleaded, shifting uncomfortably on his seat. ‘We haven’t had sex in six months.’

  ‘That’s not contraception, Johnny, that’s disconception. No wonder she’s cranky.’

  ‘Sita believes that sex is for making children. I think sex is for making children, and for making love, sometimes. She won’t accept any birth control. When I tried to talk to her about condoms, she called me a pervert.’

  ‘That’s a little harsh.’

  ‘What am I going to do? You see how beautiful she is, na?’

  Sita was named after a kindly, self-sacrificing Goddess, and for the most part she lived up to the name. But she also had a temper, and a tongue that whipped it into shape. We thought about it, for a while, as Diva’s joints accumulated.

  ‘You could do the girl thing,’ I suggested, ‘and talk it out.’

  ‘Not . . . safe,’ he said. ‘Or?’

  ‘Or you could do the guy thing.’

  ‘The guy thing?’ he asked, his eyes squinting suspiciously.

  ‘The guy thing is to ignore it, and hope she gives in before you do.’

  ‘I’m going with the guy thing,’ Johnny said, punching his palm. ‘It’s so much safer than the truth.’

  ‘Don’t be too sure,’ I said, gathering up the rolled joints. ‘Women have a psychic witchy spooky talking-to-the-dead way of knowing everything you think. So, sooner or later, you’ve gotta do it their way anyway.’

  ‘Of course,’ he hissed. ‘That’s how women get back at men.’

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘By making men become women, for a while. It’s cruel, what they do, making us talk to them, Lin. It’s scary, and men have difficulty with scary. It makes them want to fight.’

  ‘Speaking of scary, let’s go find out how Diva’s doing.’

  Diva was surrounded by young girls up past their bedtimes, asking her about everything she wore, and everything that spilled from Naveen’s pack.

  Johnny and Sita had covered the earthen floor with a blue plastic sheet, and they’d covered that with patchwork quilts. There was a clay matka water pot in the corner, with an aluminium plate on top, and an upturned glass.

  That pot was all of Diva’s water for a day: all she had for drinking, cooking and doing the dishes. There was a kerosene pressure cooker in a corner, with two burners. A metal cabinet on high legs held two metal saucepans, some foodstuffs and a carton of milk. Another metal cabinet with three shelves was for her clothes.

  A kerosene lantern rested on that cabinet. The low light seemed to hover on faces and in corners. Apart from a decorative swirl of artificial flowers, hanging from one of the bamboo support poles, there was nothing else in the hut.

  The walls were made from woven reed matting, the gaps and chinks stuffed with sheets of newspaper. The roof was a bare plastic sheet, draped over the bamboo framework of the hut.

  The black plastic roof was so low that I had to stoop a little. I’d spent a lot of time in the humid swelter of a hut just like hers. I knew that an unpleasantly hot day on the city’s streets became an inferno in a small hut, each breath a struggle, and sweat dripping like rain from drooping leaves.

  I looked at her, the Bombay Diva, sitting on the patchwork blankets and talking with the girls.

  I hadn’t lied: it did get better, when I lived in the slum, but only after it got so bad that I thought I couldn’t stand another minute of teeming crowds, constant noise, lack of water, roaming cohorts of rats, and the constant background hum of hunger and fatally wounded hope.

  I couldn’t tell her that the better days only ever began after the worst day. And I couldn’t know that the worst day, for Diva, was only twenty-four hours away.

  ‘I brought you some supplies,’ I said, leaning over to hand her the little pile of rolled joints, and a quarter-bottle of local rum.

  ‘A man of taste and distinction,’ she smiled, accepting the gifts. ‘Sit down, Shantaram, and join us. The girls were just about to explain whose ass you have to kiss, just to take a shit around here.’

  ‘I’ll take a raincheck, Diva,’ I smiled, ‘but I’m gonna stick around for a bit with Naveen and Didier, until you sleep, so I won’t be far. Is there anything else I can get you?’

  ‘No, man,’ she said. ‘Not unless you can bring my dad here.’

  ‘That would be kinda defeating the purpose,’ I smiled again. ‘But as soon as this situation with your dad settles down, I’m sure Naveen will put you together again.’

  ‘I hope so,’ she said. ‘When I first looked at these skinny girls, I thought they could sell their slimming diet for millions, to my friends alone. But then I realised that they’re hungry. What the hell is going on here?’

  ‘Welcome to the other side.’

  ‘Well, if I stay here for a week, that’s more than enough time to change all that,’ Diva said.

  One of the girls translated her English words into Hindi, as she spoke. The girls all applauded and cheered. Diva was triumphant.

  ‘You see? The revolution has already started.’

  The impish rebel fire was still in her eyes, but her face couldn’t hide the fear that crouched in her heart.

  She was an intelligent girl. She knew that Naveen, Didier and I wouldn’t insist on something as drastic as a week in the slum, if we didn’t fear something more drastic on the open street.

  I was sure she missed the cosseting luxury of the family mansion, the only home she’d ever known. Naveen said it was always well stocked with friends, food
, drink, entertainment and servants. And maybe, in part, she felt that her father had deserted her, by banishing her to Naveen’s care.

  I watched her smiling that stiff, unflinching smile, and talking with the girls. She was afraid for her father, that much was clear: perhaps more than for herself. And she was alone, and in a different world: a foreign tourist in the city where she was born.

  I went to the hut next door, and settled down on a well-worn blue carpet beside Didier and Naveen. They were playing poker.

  ‘Will you play a hand, Lin?’ Didier asked.

  ‘I don’t think so, Didier. I’m kind of scattered tonight. Can’t think straight enough to play in your class.’

  ‘Very well,’ Didier smiled good-naturedly. ‘Then I shall continue the lesson. I am teaching Naveen how to cheat with honour.’

  ‘Honourable cheating?’

  ‘Cheating honourably,’ Didier corrected.

  ‘How to spot a cheat, as well,’ Naveen added. ‘Did you know there’s exactly one hundred and four ways to cheat? Two for every card in the deck. It’s fascinating stuff. Didier could teach a university course in this.’

  ‘Cheating at cards is simply magic,’ Didier said modestly. ‘And magic is simply cheating at cards.’

  I let them play, sitting beside them and sipping one of Didier’s emergency flasks. It was a difficult night for me, too, although not the mind-shock that it was for Diva.

  I felt the dome of the slum community beginning to close over me with sounds, smells and a swirl of defiant memories. I was back in the womb of mankind. I heard a cough nearby, a man crying out in sleep, a child waking, and a husband talking softly to his wife about their debts in Marathi. I could smell incense, burning in a dozen houses around us.

  My heartbeat was trying to find its synchrony with twenty-five thousand others, fireflies, uneven until they learn to flash and fade in the same waves of light. But I couldn’t connect. Something in my life or my heart had changed. The part of me that had settled so willingly in the lake of consciousness that was the slum, years before, was missing.

  When I escaped from prison I searched for a home, wandering from country to city, hoping that I’d recognise it when I found it. When I met Karla, I found love, instead. I didn’t know then that the search for one always leads to the other.