Gregory Roberts - The Mountain Shadow

There were several people in the group. Naveen and Didier were standing in front of Naveen’s hut. Diva was with Johnny’s wife, Sita, and three girls from surrounding houses.

‘I -’ Naveen tried.

‘Imagine if someone told you that you can’t take a shit, all day, because you’re a man, and somebody might see you taking a shit. You’d totally freak out, right?’

‘I -’

‘Well, that’s what we get told, because we’re women. And when we are allowed to take a shit, when the sun goes down, we have to clamber around the rocks, and do it in some miserable fucking place in the total dark, because if we carry a torch, someone might see that we’re taking a shit !’

‘I -’

‘And women get molested, out there in the dark. There’s crazy guys hanging around. Guys who don’t mind that the place is full of shit. Guys who actually prefer it that way. I’m not kidding, and I’m not putting up with it. I waited till dark to take a shit, and I’m not doing that again. I’m the fuck out of here, and that means tonight! I’m leaving.’

Naveen was considering whether to say I again. He looked at Didier. Didier looked at me. I looked at the fascinating knot on the edge of a bamboo support pole.

There was a commotion, and Johnny rushed in from one of the narrower lanes we used for short cuts.

He saw us, and stopped. His mouth was open. His hands were out in front of him, as if he was holding a branch.

‘What is it, Johnny?’ Sita asked, in Marathi.

‘I… I can’t… ’

‘Johnny, what’s up?’ I asked.

He was stiff, as if he was ready to run somewhere. His face struggled. Sita went to him, and led him away. After a minute she returned, and called Naveen and me to her.

Didier and the girls remained with Diva.

‘What the fuck is going on?’ Diva said. ‘I’m leaving! Hello? Did everybody forget that part?’

Johnny was sitting in a plastic armchair, drinking from a bottle of chilled water.

‘They are all dead,’ he said.

‘Who’s dead?’ Naveen asked.

‘Aanu’s father, I mean Diva’s father, and everyone at his house. Everyone. Even the gardeners. Even the pets. It was a horrible massacre.’

‘When?’

‘Just now,’ Johnny said breathlessly. ‘Lin, how can we tell that girl? I can’t do it. I can’t.’

‘Did you check the story?’

‘Yes, Naveen, of course I did. The police and press are going mad. It will be on the news, very soon, and then she will know anyway. Should we just wait? What are we going to do?’

‘Turn on the radio, Johnny,’ I said.

Sita clicked on the local news channel.

Bad words like slaughter and massacre poured from the mouth of the radio. Mukesh Devnani and seven of his household had been killed. The household pets had been killed. Nothing, and no-one, was spared.

Divya Devnani, the words said, again and again, the sole heir to the Devnani fortune, might also have been killed in the slaughter, the massacre, the slaughter.

‘We can’t let her find out by hearing that,’ I said. ‘She’s gotta be told.’

‘ I’ll tell her,’ Naveen said, soft light in his eyes.

‘Good,’ I said. ‘It’s tough on you, but it should be you. But not here. Let’s go down to the rocks, and the sea. There’s a quiet place I know.’

She didn’t protest, when we walked through the slum, but as we stepped among the black stones on the shoreline, she tried to walk back into the slum. I think she sensed that bad news had found a place to drown itself.

Naveen held her in his arms, and told her. She broke the hug, walked a few uncertain steps on the rocky shore, and began to stagger away.

Naveen followed her closely, catching her a few times when her bare feet slipped between the rocks.

She stumbled on in a daze, her eyes blind, her legs moving in an instinct to flee suffering and fear.

I’d seen it before, during a prison riot: a man so scared that he walked into a stone wall, again and again, always hoping for a door. Her mind was somewhere else, searching for the vanished world.

Without her realising it, Naveen led her in a wide arc, and back to me. She sat placidly, then, on a boulder, and very slowly came back to herself. When she did, she started crying uncontrollably.

I left her with Naveen, who loved her, and returned to the huts to bring Sita and the girls to help. Sita was gone, but I found Karla and the Zodiac Georges instead.

I looked at Didier. Diva’s hiding place in the slum was a secret.

‘I thought it wise, that she have some support,’ Didier said. ‘Especially since we shall all be spending the night here to support her, in this… community facility, is it not so?’

Karla kissed me hello.

‘How is she?’

‘It hit her like an axe handle,’ I said, ‘but she came around okay. She’s a tough girl. Good that you’re here. She’s with Naveen, down by the sea. I’d give them a while yet. She’s pretty cut up, and Naveen knew her father.’

‘Didier is too much of a gentleman to keep a secret,’ Didier said, ‘and leave Diva without friends, on a night of such terrible disaster as this.’

‘And Didier is too scared of ghosts,’ Karla added, ‘to stay here alone.’

‘Ghosts?’

‘Clearly,’ Didier said, ‘the place is haunted. I am sensing presences.’

‘Whatever the reason, I’m glad you’re here.’

‘It’s been a while,’ she said, looking around at the slum huts. ‘Any special attractions this time? Cholera, typhoid?’

There’d been a cholera outbreak years before, while I was living in the slum. Karla had come to help me fight it. She’d accepted the local rats, nursed helpless people, and cleaned diarrhoea from earthen floors on her hands and knees.

‘It sounds crazy, I guess, but that time with you, back then, it’s one of my happiest memories.’

‘Mine, too,’ she said, glancing around. ‘And you’re right. It’s crazy. What are the girls doing to Diva’s place?’

‘They’re sprucing it up. Hoping to raise her spirits, I think.’

‘There are spirits being raised from the dead in this wild city tonight,’ she said. ‘That’s for sure.’

‘Terrible business,’ Scorpio added, joining us.

‘Poor little thing,’ Gemini said. ‘We’ve kept her suite open, at the Mahesh. It’s always there, if she wants it.’

‘Just keep this place to yourselves,’ I said. ‘Johnny and the others are taking a risk. Don’t let anyone know about Diva. Are we good?’

‘Good as gold, mate,’ Gemini replied.

‘Yes… ’ Scorpio hedged. ‘Unless… ’

‘Unless?’

‘Unless someone is forcing me to tell.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Well, suppose somebody started hitting me, to get me to tell, then I would tell. So, I can only promise confidentiality up to the point of physical harm.’

I looked at Gemini.

‘It’s one of Scorpio’s rules,’ he shrugged.

‘And a good one,’ Scorpio added. ‘If everyone in the world spilled their guts at the first sign of violence, there’d be no torture any more.’

‘SnitchWorld,’ Karla said. ‘I think you’re on to something, Scorp.’

A man came through the lanes toward us, wheeling a bicycle laden with parcels.

‘Ah!’ Didier cried. ‘The relief supplies!’

The man unloaded a sponge mattress, a suitcase, a folding card table, four folding canvas stools and two sacks of booze from the bicycle. I looked at the booze.

‘It is for Diva,’ Didier said, catching my eye as he was counting the bottles. ‘The girl will need to get very drunk tonight, if on no other night in her life.’

‘Alcohol isn’t the answer to everything, Didier.’