Gregory Roberts - The Mountain Shadow

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.’

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.