The Mountain Shadow

by Gregory David Roberts

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘Dominatrix, in a fake-leather sari. It’s a catalogue item.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘Then he got filmed, in a private booth, getting dominated.’

  ‘You and Kavita filmed him?’

  ‘Not just him. We also filmed a judge, a politician, a tycoon and a cop.’

  ‘You set all this up?’

  ‘Kavita and I had a woman on the inside.’

  ‘Who was that?’

  ‘The hostess.’

  ‘Who was?’

  ‘Diva,’ she said.

  ‘Diva, our Diva, who’s next door, with Randall?’

  ‘Our Diva, who left earlier, with Charu and Pari, while you were asleep,’ she said. ‘Some cars arrived to bring them home. Bodyguards were banging on the door. Jaswant thought the zombies were trying to break in. We pulled the barricade away and –’

  ‘Wait a minute, I slept through all that?’

  ‘Sure, soldier,’ she purred. ‘Diva said you looked cute.’

  ‘Diva said what?’

  ‘She wanted to talk to me, while Charu and Pari were getting ready to leave. It takes those girls a time to do anything. Diva came in here, and we sat on the bed.’

  ‘While I was asleep?’

  ‘Yeah. She was right, you’re cuter asleep than awake. It’s lucky I’ve got a weakness for awake.’

  ‘How long was Diva here?’

  ‘We smoked a joint,’ Karla said.

  ‘That long?’

  ‘And drank a glass of wine.’

  ‘While I was sleeping?’

  ‘Yeah, she came in to tell me that Kavita had a new secret admirer, and she’d been acting a bit nuts.’

  ‘Kavita is a bit nuts,’ I said. ‘She had a thing with Lisa, and it won’t let her go. She’s clever and capable, but she’s been acting nuts with me, too. I think that’s why Madame Zhou likes her – they’re as crazy as each other.’

  ‘Kavita did this whole thing with us, Lin,’ Karla said. ‘She was with us every step of the way.’

  ‘And you put her next in line to run a major daily newspaper.’

  ‘I won’t let you talk her down,’ she said. ‘I won’t let anyone talk her or any of my friends down. Just like I wouldn’t let anyone talk you down.’

  ‘Okay. Fair call. But it’s my job to tell you when I sense a threat.’

  ‘Your job?’ She laughed.

  ‘Yeah, and it’s your job to warn me,’ I smiled. ‘So, Diva left with the girls?’

  ‘The bodyguards escorted them away. They had some explaining to do, about staying out all night.’

  ‘And I slept through all of this?’

  ‘Sure did. We helped Jaswant put the barricade back, I showered, got back into bed, and you got very glad to see me. The girls said goodbye, by the way.’

  I was feeling strange. I was always the first up, no matter how tired I was, and if someone in a room next door dropped a pen on the floor, I started awake from deep sleep. But somehow, I’d slept through a conversation on my own bed.

  It was an unusual feeling, disorienting, all slow pulse rates and blurred edges, and negotiating it was like walking along the deck of a rolling ship. It took me a while to realise what it was: I was feeling peaceful.

  Peace, Idriss once said, is perfect forgiveness, and is the opposite of fear.

  ‘Are you with me, Shantaram?’ Karla smiled, shaking me by the chin.

  ‘I’m so with you, Karla.’

  ‘Okay,’ she laughed. ‘Where were we?’

  ‘You were telling me how you and Kavita put this together,’ I said, holding her close.

  ‘Kavita, Diva and me. Diva’s the richest girl in Bombay right now, and when she threw a fetish party, the rich rowed up in limousines.’

  ‘But Diva wasn’t even there.’

  ‘We set it up for her to be turned away at a roadblock, and pushed back into the city, with plausible deniability about anything that happened at the party.’

  ‘To cover her assets.’

  ‘To cover her assets,’ Karla said, tapping me on the chest in agreement.

  It was the first time she ever did it: the first time that little gesture born in who she was, when she was completely relaxed in love, made its way to my skin.

  ‘So, you set up fetish games, and cameras?’

  ‘We had seven targets, counting the editor, but only five of them turned up.’

  ‘Targets?’

  ‘Impediments to progress, that we wanted to make vessels of change.’

  ‘And now the five are –’

  ‘Vessels of change, and we’ll get slum resettlement, and more attention to women’s issues. Win–win, women style.’

  I sat up on the bed. She offered me a towel, scented with ginger, and we wiped our faces and hands.

  ‘If these guys are big shots, Karla, they’re dangerous, by definition. That film’s a bomb, and it’ll keep ticking as long as it exists.’

  ‘We’ve got intermediaries,’ she said, leaning into my arm again.

  ‘They’ll need to be bulletproof.’

  ‘They are,’ she said. ‘We’ve contracted the Cycle Killers to talk for us.’

  ‘Now, that makes things much saner. The Cycle Killers?’

  ‘I don’t do anything face to face with anyone but them. They do all the negotiating with the other side.’

  ‘How did that happen?’

  ‘You really wanna know?’

  ‘Of course I wanna know.’

  ‘Well,’ she said, sitting up and facing me, her legs lotus. ‘Randall and I noticed the Cycle Killers following you, twice, and I sent Randall to find out what they wanted.’

  ‘He fronted the Cycle Killers alone?’

  ‘No doubt.’

  ‘He’s a keeper,’ I smiled. ‘I’m glad he’s on board with you.’

  ‘With us,’ she corrected.

  ‘What do you make of it, Randall and Diva? I know Naveen is crazy about her, and I thought she liked him.’

  ‘It’s a lockdown, Shantaram. What happens in a lockdown, stays in a lockdown. Best we keep out of it.’

  ‘You’re right, I guess. Go back to the Cycle Killers.’

  ‘So, Randall found out that Abdullah had hired them to watch over you for a while, and he made a couple of friends.’

  ‘And when you found out they were for hire, you hired them.’

  ‘I did, and they were happy to do it.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘Yeah, they’re working on their image. They’d like to move into more public-minded areas than killing people for money.’

  ‘Like threatening people for money.’

  ‘Something like that,’ she said. ‘It’s an upward image step, but I think they’re serious. I think they wanna come in from the cold.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘When I had the Cycle Killers to negotiate for us, I had a plan. I couldn’t have done it without them, because I couldn’t trust anyone else not to buckle under the pressure, and give us up. When Fate put them behind you, I got them behind me.’

  ‘In front of you, actually.’

  ‘Exactly. Ishmeet, the boss, is the man talking to the vessels of change.’

  ‘I’ve met Ishmeet.’

  ‘He’s a true gentleman,’ she said.

  ‘Salt of the moon.’

  ‘And Pankaj, his friend, who really likes you, by the way, is a riot. I invited him to the fetish party.’

  ‘I bet you did. And did I have to be kept so deep in the dark, through this dark scheme?’

  ‘I was protecting you,’ she said. ‘I was keeping you away from the fire.’

  ‘Like a fool?’

  ‘Like a soul mate,’ she said. ‘If the whole thing blew
up, I wanted to make sure it didn’t reach out to you. You’re on the run too, remember?’

  She was beautiful, in a new way. She was defending me, guarding me with a part of her soul.

  She got up to light new incense, seven sticks, fireflies hovering in the coloured room, and put them in the mouths of clay dragons. I watched her moving around the bedroom, and my mind was fighting Time, trying to stop everything but This.

  She sat down beside me again, taking my hand.

  ‘If I’d told you that I wanted to move the whole city in the direction of humane slum resettlement,’ she asked, ‘would you have joined me in it, or would you have tried to stop me? Honestly?’

  ‘I would’ve tried to get you to leave, and set up again somewhere else, with me.’

  ‘That’s why I protected you,’ she said.

  ‘That’s why?’

  ‘You would’ve helped me, because you love me, but your intention wouldn’t have been pure, going in, and that would’ve made you vulnerable. And me, too, probably.’

  I thought about it, not really understanding it, but a different question asked itself.

  ‘Why did you do it, Karla?’

  ‘You don’t think the cause is important enough?’

  She was teasing me.

  ‘Why did you do it, Karla?’

  It was her turn to think. She smiled, and went with honesty.

  ‘To see if I could,’ she said. ‘I wanted to see if I could do it.’

  ‘I think you can do anything, Karla. But we should’ve done it together.’

  She laughed again.

  ‘You’re so loved,’ she said. ‘And I’m so glad to finally tell you.’

  It was too much, it was every dream. Doubt, the thing that fights love, pushed me to the cliff, daring me to jump. I jumped.

  ‘I love you so much, Karla, that I’m lost in it, and I always will be.’

  Men don’t like to be that honest about love: to put the gun in a woman’s hand, and hold it against their own hearts, and say, Here, this is how you kill me. But it was okay. It was okay.

  ‘I love you too, baby,’ she said, all green queens. ‘I always did, even when it looked like I didn’t. I’m stuck on you, and you better get used to it, because we’re inseparable from now on. You see that, right?’

  ‘I see that,’ I said, pulling her down to kiss me. ‘You thought all this out pretty long and hard, didn’t you?’

  ‘You know me,’ she purred. ‘I do everything long and hard.’

  Part Thirteen

  Chapter Seventy-Two

  I let Oleg have my rooms for a while. The rent was paid out for a year, and I was happy for him to have a home. Oleg was happier. He hugged me off the ground and kissed me. It’s a Russian thing, he said.

  Karla went everywhere with me, even on my black market rounds, and I went everywhere with Karla. We rode together, with Randall always following discreetly in the car.

  My round of the money changers was dangerous, but some of what Karla did was almost as dangerous. Her round of art and business contacts was disturbing, but some of what I did was almost as disturbing.

  People took a little while to get used to us as a double act, and they reacted in different ways. As it turned out, my friends in the Underworld took it better than her friends in the Overworld.

  ‘You’ll have tea with us, Miss Karla,’ my black market dealers said to her at every stop. ‘Please, have tea with us.’

  ‘No entry,’ her white market dealers said to me at every security desk. ‘Passes required, beyond this point.’

  Karla got me a security pass, and insisted that I sit by her side, everywhere. I got to attend meetings with powerful financial figures, in chambers and panelled rooms that all looked like the inside of the same coffin.

  A business suit, Didier once said to me, is nothing but a military uniform, stripped of its honour. And it seemed that honour was a word rarely heard in those boardrooms and exclusive club lounges: when Karla spoke it, insisting that her proxy would only be used to support honourable causes, the same waves of distress always passed through the room, puffer-fish faces gasping, and coloured ties flashing in revolving chairs like weeds in a dissonant sea.

  The artists were a different story, told by a tall, handsome sculptor, gathering fuel in vacant lots of millionaires.

  The gallery had flourished. Scandal is always a seller’s market. The scent of it, attached to works that fanatics had attacked, works that had been banned or threatened with bans, seared the sated senses of a wealthy clique of buyers. People with enough money not to queue anywhere waited for appointments, and paid in black market rupees. Taj, the sculptor, was managing the gallery, and making money faster than he could swing a mallet.

  He was talking to a ledger of patrons when I walked in with Karla one day, a few weeks after the lockdown. Rosanna was at a desk, working phones.

  Taj nodded to Karla, and continued his discourse to the patrons. We walked through to the back room. It had been transformed from motorcycle lights to red fluorescents, a dozen of them, strewn around the room.

  We sat on a black silk couch. There were paintings leaning against the walls, a sleeve of one becoming a frame for the other. Anushka brought us chai and biscuits.

  When she wasn’t in character as a body-language artist, Anushka was a shy young woman, eager to please, and the gallery was a second home for her.

  ‘What’s happening, Anush?’ Karla asked her, when she sat down on the carpet beside us.

  ‘Same old same old,’ she smiled.

  ‘Three days ago you said that the new show of Marathi artists was ready,’ Karla said. ‘And I don’t see it being prepped.’

  ‘There’s . . . there’s been some argument.’

  ‘Ar . . . gu . . . ment?’ Karla said, growling syllables.

  Taj walked in and sat down next to Anushka, folding his long legs under him elegantly.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I had to finish with those clients. Big sale. How are you, Karla?’

  ‘I’m hearing about some argument,’ she said, staring him down. ‘And feeling argumentative.’

  Taj looked away from her quickly.

  ‘How are you, Lin?’ he asked.

  Every time I looked at Taj, I thought of the two mysterious days he’d spent with Karla, somewhere outside Bombay: the days she’d never told me about, because I wouldn’t ask her about them.

  He was the kind of tall, dark, and handsome that makes the rest of us think jealous thoughts. It’s not their fault, the handsome guys. I’ve known quite a few handsome guys who were great guys, and great friends, and we ugly guys loved them, but even then we were still a little jealous of them, because they were so damn good looking.

  It’s our fault, of course, not theirs, and it was my fault with Taj, but every time I looked at him, I wanted to interrogate him.

  ‘I’m fine, Taj. How you doin’?’

  ‘Oh . . . great,’ he said uncertainly.

  ‘Argue me, Taj,’ Karla said, pulling his attention. ‘What’s the problem with the exhibition?’

  ‘Can we get stoned first?’ Taj asked, gesturing to Anushka, who rose immediately in search of psychic sustenance. ‘I’ve had back-to-back buyers for the last four hours, and my head is just spinning numbers.’

  ‘Where is it?’ Karla asked him.

  ‘Anushka’s bringing it,’ Taj said, pointing helplessly at the door.

  ‘Not the dope,’ Karla said. ‘The Marathi artists exhibition. Where is it?’

  ‘Still in storage,’ Taj said, looking at the door, and calling Anushka with his mind.

  ‘In storage?’

  Anushka returned, smoking a very large joint, which she passed to Taj urgently. The sculptor held his hand out to Karla, pleading with her to wait while he smoked his way into a small cloud, and finally offered t
he joint to me.

  ‘You know I don’t smoke with Karla on the bike,’ I said, not moving to take it. ‘I’ve told you that before. Stop offering it to me.’

  ‘I’ll take it,’ Karla said, swiping the joint from his hand. ‘And I’ll take that explanation, Taj.’

  ‘Look,’ Taj said, stoned enough to pretend well again. ‘People feel that devoting an exhibition to one group of artists, from one language group, is not the direction they want to go.’

  ‘People?’

  ‘People here at the gallery,’ Taj said. ‘They like the Marathi artists exhibition, but they’re just not comfortable with it.’

  ‘You’ve been running a Bengali artists exhibition here for the last two weeks,’ Karla said.

  ‘That’s a different context,’ Taj struggled.

  ‘Explain me the difference.’

  ‘Well, I, that is . . . ’

  ‘I love this city, and I’m damn glad to live here,’ Karla said, leaning toward him. ‘We’re on Marathi land, living in a Marathi city, by the grace of the Marathi people, who’ve given us a pretty fine place to live in. The exhibition is for them, Taj, not you.’

  ‘It’s so political,’ Taj replied.

  ‘No, it’s not. All of these artists are good, and some of them are terrific,’ she insisted. ‘You said so yourself. I hand-picked them, with Lisa.’

  ‘They’re good, of course, but that’s not really the point here.’

  ‘The point for you, and me, and Rosanna, and Anushka,’ she said, ‘and all the others in the team who weren’t born here in Bombay, is that it’s simply the right and grateful thing to showcase talent from the city that sustains us.’

  ‘Karla, you’re asking too much,’ Taj pleaded.

  ‘I want this show, Taj,’ Karla said. ‘It was my last project with Lisa.’

  ‘And I’d love to give it to you,’ Taj moaned. ‘But it’s just impossible.’

  ‘Where’s the art?’ Karla asked.

  ‘I told you. It’s still in the warehouse.’

  ‘Send it to the Jehangir gallery,’ she said.

  ‘The whole exhibition?’ he asked, stricken. ‘There are some fine paintings in there, Karla, and if they were put on the market, in the right way, one at a time –’