Gregory David Roberts - Shantaram

And I loved her. I loved her still so much, so hard, but with no heat or heart at all. That falling love, that helpless, dreaming, soaring love, was gone. And I suddenly knew in those seconds of ... cold adoration, I suppose... that the power she'd once held over me was also gone. Or, more than that, her power had moved into me, and had become mine. I held all the cards. And then I wanted to know. It wasn't good enough to just accept what had happened between us. I wanted to know everything.

"Why didn't you tell me, Karla?"

She gave an anguished little sigh, and stretched her legs out to bury her bare feet in the sand. Watching the small cascades of soft sand spill over her moving feet, she spoke in a dull, flat tone, as if she was composing a letter-or recalling a letter, perhaps, that she'd written once and never sent to me. "I knew you were going to ask me, and I think that's why I've waited so long to get in touch with you. I let people know that I was around, and I asked after you, but I didn't do anything, until today, because... I knew you'd ask me."

"If it makes it any easier," I interrupted, sounding harder than I'd intended, "I know you burned down Madame Zhou's place-"

"Did Ghani tell you that?"

"Ghani? No. I figured that one out myself."

"Ghani did it for me-he arranged it. That was the last time I spoke to him."

"The last time I spoke to him was about an hour before he died."

"Did he tell you anything about her?" she asked, perhaps hoping that there were some parts of it she wouldn't have to tell me.

"About Madame Zhou? No. He didn't say a word."

"He told me... a lot," she sighed. "He filled in a few gaps. I think it was Ghani who tipped me over the edge with her. He told me she had Rajan following you, and she only pulled her strings with the cops to get you arrested when Rajan told her you made love to me. I always hated her, but that did it. I just... it was one thing too many. She couldn't let me have it, that time with you. She wouldn't let me have it. So I called in some dues with Ghani, and he arranged it. The riot. It was a great fire. I lit some of it myself."

She broke off, staring at her feet in the sand, and clamped her jaw shut. Reflected lights gleamed in her eyes. For a moment I let myself imagine how those green eyes must've blazed with firelight as she'd watched the Palace burn.

"I know about the States, too," I said after a while. "I know what happened there."

She looked at me quickly, reading my eyes.

"Lisa," she said. I didn't answer. Then, knowing instantly, as women do, what she couldn't possibly know, she smiled. "That's good-Lisa and you. You and Lisa. That's... very good."

My expression didn't change, and her smile faded as she looked down at the sand once more.

"Did you kill anyone, Lin?"

"When?" I asked, not sure if she was talking about Afghanistan or the much-smaller war against Chuha and his gang. "Ever."

"No."

"I'm glad," she breathed, sighing again. "I wish..."

She was silent again for a while. From somewhere beyond the deserted beach we heard the sounds of the festival: happy, roaring laughter rising over the blare of a brass band. Much closer, ocean music gushed onto the soft assenting shore, and the palms above us trembled in the cooling breeze.

"When I went there... when I walked into his house, into the room where he was standing, he smiled at me. He was... actually ... happy to see me. And for a split second, I changed my mind, and I thought it was... over. Then, I saw something else, right there in the middle of his smile... something dirty, and... he said... I knew you'd be back for more, one of these days... or something like that. And he... he kind of, he started looking around like he was making sure nobody was gonna bust in on us ..."

"It's okay, Karla."

"When he saw the gun, it was worse, because he started... not begging... but apologising... and it was real clear, real clear, that he knew what he did to me... he knew... every part of it, and how bad it was. And that was much worse. And then he was dead. There wasn't a lot of blood. I thought there would be.

Maybe there was later. And I don't remember the rest, until I was in the plane with Khader's arm around me."

She was quiet. I leaned over to pick up a conical shell descending in spirals to a sharp, eroded point. I pressed it into my palm until it pierced the skin, and then threw it away across the rippled sand. When I looked at her again, I found that she was staring at me and frowning hard.

"What do you want?" she asked bluntly.

"I want to know why you never told me about Khaderbhai."

"Do you want it straight?"

"Of course I do."

"I couldn't trust you," she declared, looking away again. "That's not exactly right-I mean, I didn't know if I could trust you. I think... now-I know-I could've trusted you all along."

"Okay." My teeth were touching, and my lips didn't move.

"I tried to tell you. I tried to get you to stay with me in Goa.

You know that."

"It would've made a difference," I snapped, but then sighed just as she had, and relaxed my tone. "It might've made a difference if you'd told me that you worked for him-that you recruited me for him."

"When I ran away... when I went to Goa, I was in a bad way. The Sapna thing-that was my idea. Did you know that?"

"No. Jesus, Karla."

Her eyes narrowed as she read the angry disappointment in my face.

"Not the killing part," she explained, and her expression was shocked, I think, to realise that I'd misunderstood what she'd said, and that I believed her capable of devising the Sapna killings. "That was all Ghani's idea-his spin on it. They needed to get stuff in and out, through Bombay, and they needed help from people who didn't want to give it. My idea was to create a common enemy-Sapna-and to get everybody working with us to defeat him. It was supposed to be done with posters, and graffiti, and some harmless bomb hoaxes-to make it seem like there was a dangerous, charismatic leader out there. But Ghani didn't think it was scary enough. That's why he started the killings..."

"And you left... for Goa."

"Yeah. You know the very first place I heard about the killings- what Ghani was doing with my idea? It was at that Village in the Sky... that lunch you took me to. Your friends were talking about it. And it really shook me up that day. I stuck it out for a while, trying to stop it, somehow. But it was hopeless. And then Khader told me you were in jail-but you had to stay there until Madame Zhou did what he wanted her to do. And then he... he got me to work on the Pakistani, the young general. He was a contact of mine, and he liked me. So I... I did it. I worked him, while you were in there, until Khader got what he wanted.

And then I just... quit. I'd had enough."

"But you went back to him."

"I tried to get you to stay with me."

"Why?"

"What do you mean?"

She was frowning, and seemed irritated by the question.

"Why did you want me to stay with you?"

"Isn't that obvious?"

"No. I'm sorry. It's not. Did you love me, Karla? I'm not asking if you loved me like I loved you. I mean... did you love me at all? Did you love me at all, Karla?" "I liked you..."

"Yeah..."

"No, it's true. I liked you, more than anyone else I knew. That's a lot for me, Lin."

My jaw was locked tight, and I turned my head away from her. She waited for a few moments and then spoke again.

"I couldn't tell you about Khader. I couldn't. It would've felt like I was betraying him."

"Betraying me was different, I guess."

"Fuck, Lin, it wasn't like that. If you'd stayed with me, we both would've been out of that world, but even then I couldn't have told you. Anyway, it doesn't matter. You wouldn't stay with me, so I never thought I'd see you again. Then I got a message from Khader saying you were in Gupta's place, killing yourself with smack, and he needed me to help him get you out of there. That's how I got back into it. That's how I went back to him."