Gregory Roberts - The Mountain Shadow

She put her arms out to her sides. Very, very slowly she lowered herself onto the rope bed, her arms extended at her sides. Then she dripped her feet out of the slippers, and her legs went into action.

I didn’t know if it was yoga or contortionism, but Half-Moon Auntie’s legs were pythons, searching for something to constrict. They moved left and right, north and south, twirling above her head and extending wide enough to ford a stream, before settling underneath her on the silver quilt, the prehensile feet tucked up against Olympian thighs.

It took about thirty seconds. If it had been a show, I would’ve applauded. But it wasn’t a show, and I wasn’t a customer.

She began to roll her shoulders.

‘So, how’s business, Half-Moon Auntie?’ I tried.

Too late. She leaned toward me slowly, arching her back to feline fluidity. Her breasts fell into view, half a moon tattooed on each globe, and she didn’t stop until the moon was full.

Her exceptionally long hair fell to the bed around her folded knees, closing a curtain on the moon, and spilling almost to the blood-stained floor.

She raised her eyes, threatening me with mysteries and things we shouldn’t know, then curled her arms backwards around her until her hands clasped her own neck, the fingers wriggling like anemones, spawning in the light of that inverted moon.

No-one can say she didn’t have her charm. But I liked her, more than I liked her famous routine.

Half-Moon Auntie was always armed, which is invariably interesting, no matter which way you look at it. She had a small automatic pistol, presented to her by the Chief Commissioner. I wanted to know why. I wanted to know the story. I knew that she’d fired it twice, both times to save someone being bullied by thugs from other areas of the city.

She read fortunes in people’s hands, and made more money as a sorceress than she did as a fisherwoman and black banker combined.

And she won the girls’ wrestling championship in the fishermen’s slum, three years in a row. It was a girls-only event, strictly cordoned off by faces of husbands and brothers and fathers, their backs to the girls who wrestled alone. No-one ever got to see it but the girls who fought until they found a champion.

I wanted to know about the event. I wanted to know the story of how the Commissioner gave her the gun. What I didn’t want was a game, with a ten-minute deadline.

‘A woman always finds a way,’ she said, straightening up, and glancing at the clock. ‘At least once, when you are with this woman who has taken your heart, you will be thinking of me, while you make love to her.’

‘See, Half-Moon Auntie, you’re wrong. That’s not gonna happen.’

‘Are you so sure?’ she asked, holding my stare.

‘Completely. With all due respect, Half-Moon Auntie, my girlfriend kicks your ass. You’re a lovely woman, and all that, but my girlfriend is a goddess. And if it comes to an actual fight, she’d kick your ass there, too. She’d beat both of us together, with change, and have us thanking her for it, after she did it. I’m crazy about her, Auntie.’

She held my stare for a couple of seconds, testing me, maybe, then slapped her thighs and laughed. I liked it so much that I laughed with her.

‘All correct,’ her assistant called out, putting my bundle of rupees in a metal bin, locking it, and logging the amount in his ledger.

‘You’re not the first to say such words,’ Half-Moon Auntie said. ‘But not many do. A few. Most of them beg for their free show, and create lies, as reasons to consult with me.’

‘To be fair to them, you put on a great show, Auntie.’

She laughed.

‘Thank you, Shantaram. That’s how the legend of my palm-reading skills began. An adulterous husband invented it, so that he could hold my hand, and watch the phases of the moon. Some of them sweat with how much they need it. Even people you know. Your friend Didier sits with me every week.’

‘I’ll bet he does,’ I laughed. ‘Why do you do it, Half-Moon Auntie?’

I suddenly realised that the question might hurt her.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said quickly. ‘It was a writer’s question, so, you know, probably unforgivably rude.’

She laughed again.

‘Shantaram, you can only ask that question, when you have the power to do it. So, when you have the power to do it, ask yourself.’

‘My girlfriend is gonna love that line.’

‘Bring her with you, next time,’ she threatened.

‘What if she crosses ten minutes, and proposes to you?’

‘Of course she will propose to me, and so will you, one day.’

‘I thought we covered that,’ I frowned, not understanding.

‘You write stories, Shantaram,’ she smiled. ‘One day you will write about me, and that will be a declaration of love. And this woman who has your heart will propose to me, out of happy love, nothing more.’

‘Isn’t every love happy love?’

‘No,’ she laughed. ‘There is your kind of love. You, and the few like you, who have become my dearest friends.’

‘I don’t want unhappiness in love,’ I said, frowning. ‘I don’t want unhappiness at all.’

‘I’m talking about the real thing,’ she replied. ‘The real thing is always more painful and more rewarding than anything less.’

‘That’s… very confusing,’ I said. ‘But I’m so glad we had this talk, Half-Moon Auntie. If I’ve been unwittingly rude, and you’re not gonna shoot me, please give me about two minutes’ head start. It’ll take me that long to get to the door, on this surface.’

‘Go, now, Shantaram,’ she laughed. ‘You are a VIP customer, from this day. May the Goddess keep your weapons sharp, and your enemies afraid.’

I slowly skated away from her, sliding and slipping my way across slaughter’s floor until I reached the golden arch of sunlight leading to the open market beyond.

While I scraped my boots dry, I looked back at her, doing yoga exercises on the bed.

One foot was raised high and enclosed in her palm, like a flame resting in the space above her head. Half-Moon Auntie: businesswoman, gangster and Mistress of Minutes. She was right, I thought. Karla probably would propose to her.

My third bank, my Didier reserve, was the floating poker game that Gemini George ran from their penthouse apartment.

Games that turn over a lot of money need a bank to fund the house. The house takes a percentage of the game, win or lose, but the house also plays, because the margin you win, if you play well, is always bigger than the vig paid for running the game.

The best way to keep a house bankable is to have a good dealer who knows when to fold, and another player in the game, who appears independent but is actually giving his winnings to the house.

Even with improved odds like that, it’s always possible for some golden child to walk in and break the bank. It happens. Sometimes, it happens three nights in a row.

But a golden child event is rare enough to make a well-run game pay off, five nights from seven, and Gemini George knew how to run a game.

I put money into the bank, with Didier and Gemini, and the three of us primed the pump for the poker games. My winnings, on a weekly basis, were about equal to the interest I would’ve earned on my money in a well-run fund.

Gemini had given up cheating. It was a mandatory requirement, mandated by Didier and me. We had to run a straight game, or there was no point.

And Gemini did it. He played every game for the house as straight as the bridge between fear and anger. His honesty and skill won him a lot of new friends, and won a lot of money for us.

Gemini needed the game, because his millionaire friend, as it turned out, was stingy with a dollar. Scorpio paid all the bills for the penthouse floor at the Mahesh, because it was the only place in Bombay that he felt safe, and he didn’t feel safe enough to leave the city and go somewhere else, where millionaires live in safety.