Gregory Roberts - The Mountain Shadow

‘And Diva?’

‘That’s something else. I wanted her to meet Idriss. I have plans for Diva, and something tells me that Idriss is a cosmic connection.’

‘Speaking of cosmic connections,’ I said, pulling her on top of me to kiss her.

Earth-smell through her hair. The sun touching us with warm light breaking through leaves, and winds rushing trees on the cliff with hot breath. Karla.

‘Can we sleep here tonight, Shantaram?’

‘We can sleep here now.’

‘Good. Then let’s go back to the kids, and play nice.’

‘Well… I… ’

We played nice with Naveen and the students. Idriss kept Diva in conversation for two hours, and then insisted that the poor little rich girl stay the night, in a poor little poor girl cave, with the other girls on the mountain.

Diva surprised me by agreeing immediately, and then unsurprised me by sending Naveen back to the car to fetch her essential supplies.

When we’d eaten dinner, and cleaned the dishes, some students left for the night, and others retired to the caves, to study or sleep. The night owls, my friends, sat around the fire, and sipped too-sweet black tea, laced with rum.

I stood to say goodnight to Idriss and Silvano, sitting with me, on the other side of the fire.

Naveen, Diva, and Karla talked and laughed together, firelight painting mysterious beauty.

‘That Diva is a remarkable young woman,’ Idriss said softly, as she laughed at something Karla said.

In her private conversation with Idriss, Diva had made the sage laugh so hard that he got the giggles, and couldn’t stop. Watching her laughing by the fire, the holy man chuckled again.

‘Don’t you think she’s remarkable?’

I looked at her, sitting next to Karla. I couldn’t see it.

‘I see a very spoilt girl,’ I said. ‘Smart, pretty, and spoilt.’

‘You might be right, now,’ Idriss laughed. ‘But think of what she will become, and what she could achieve.’

He retired for the night, Silvano at his side.

As I joined the others, Diva dragged Karla by the elbow, and they walked off together to sit in the canvas chairs that faced the eastern forest.

I could just see their profiles, dipping past the edges of the chairs as they talked. I sat down with Naveen.

‘Good to see you smiling, man,’ he observed.

‘Was I smiling?’

‘You were smiling. Well, before Karla left you were.’

He prodded at the fire with a stick, throwing up brittle sparks.

‘What’s on your mind, kid?’

‘It can wait till morning,’ he said, pestering the fire.

‘No time like the present. What’s up?’

‘I’m worried about her,’ he said, glancing up at the girls sitting in the canvas chairs, just out of hearing, except for their laughter.

‘Karla?’

‘No,’ he frowned. ‘Diva.’

‘What’s the problem?’

‘Her father got mixed up with some very bad guys. I’m talking supremely bad guys. It’s long money, and they’ve got short tempers.’

‘Wait a minute. Mukesh Devnani is one of the richest guys in Bombay.’

‘He took in a lot of black investment money from somewhere. He wanted to move from building convention centres to building whole towns and cities, straight off the plan. The only people with the real money to make that dream come true -’

‘- were the short-tempered guys. And now they want their money back, with interest.’

‘Right. It’s a weird thing that Ranjit is mixed up in this.’

‘Ranjit? How?’

‘He was running a campaign in his newspapers against one of the big new cities that Mukesh was set to build. The scare stories forced the government to change course, and cancel Mukesh’s permits. The whole thing started falling apart. It’s gotten so bad that when the cops come to his mansion, we never know if it’s to protect him or arrest him.’

‘He has to pay up, Naveen, even if it bankrupts him.’

‘That’s what I say. That’s what I told him, respectfully. But there’s some hitch. I don’t know what it is. I don’t get up to the mansion in Juhu very often now. I put this together in the few chances I got to rummage around in his office. I think Diva… I think she’s a kidnap, waiting to happen. Her Mother died six years ago. She’s his only child. His only heir. It’s a way for his enemies to hurt him. It’s just logic, in a twisted way. I’m worried, man.’

‘You really think it’s that bad?’

‘I do. I’m… a little freaked out. This is over my head, and I really care about this girl, even if I think her father is a prick.’

‘Take her out of the city.’

‘I’ve tried. She knows that something’s up with her dad. She won’t leave.’

‘You could hide her, for a while.’

‘How? Where? She’s famous, man. I spend more time dodging the press than I do dodging bad guys. And she loves it. I had to ban the phone. She was calling the paparazzi and telling them where she’d be. She knows them on a first name basis. She buys them rounds of drinks. She’s a godmother to one of their kids.’

I laughed, but then saw that he was still too serious for laughter.

‘She thinks discretion is anything that doesn’t involve skywriting, which she’s done, for her eighteenth birthday party. She told me. It’ll be the same wherever she goes.’

‘You could hide her in the slum,’ I suggested. ‘If she’s game for it. I hid there myself once, for eighteen months, and it’s one of the safest places I’ve ever been in my life.’

‘Would they take her in?’

‘The head man’s a friend. And he loves a party. He’s gonna love Diva. But it’s not for everybody, and Diva certainly isn’t everybody.’

‘Are you serious, about the slum?’

‘Unless you can think of a better place to hide a Bombay Diva from the madding crowd? But no promises. I have to run it by my friend, first.’

He looked again at the girls. Karla and Diva were honking with laughter, covering their mouths and noses to smother the noise.

They were drinking something. It looked good.

‘Listen, Naveen, if you still think it’s a good idea when I come down from the mountain, I’ll ask Johnny Cigar about it. Okay?’

‘I’m not sure how I’d to sell it to Diva, but okay. Yeah. Please do it, Lin. I want every choice I’ve got, if things go bad with her father’s friends.’

‘You got it, Naveen. Let’s find out what the girls are drinking.’

We talked together for a while, four friends bound in fear as much as in faith; in comradeship as much as companionship.

At the first break in laughing-talk, Karla and I said goodnight, gathered a batch of blankets, some water and a lunch box, and walked by torchlight to Silvano’s Point.

I set up a bower for us, using two blankets as lean-shelters, and padding the ground with the rest. We settled on hips and elbows. I opened the lunch box to show cold fried pakodas , pineapple, cashew and lentil cakes, a few handfuls of nuts, and Bengali custard in small clay pots.

She closed it again, and emptied her purse, throwing two hip flasks, a cigarette case and a gold cigarette lighter with a small watch set into it onto the blanket. The hands on the watch were set at twenty-three minutes past midnight.

‘The watch on your lighter has stopped,’ I said, reaching for it.

‘Don’t wind it,’ she said quickly. ‘I like it that way.’

‘Karla, I’ll be back in a week, and I’ve been -’

‘Let me go first,’ she said.

‘Okay.’

‘I’m putting some money into a business venture with Didier and Naveen. They’re going to expand the detective business, and I think they’re on to something.’

‘Okay, but I was actually thinking of a black market money franchise. I’ve got the contacts, and I can buy their cash, if not their loyalty. I can make a good living for us.’