Gregory Roberts - The Mountain Shadow

He looked me up and down for a while.

Am I right? Am I right, now, when I look back to that smile on my enemy’s face, and see reluctance, in a man who loved to fight?

‘Okay, if it’s a fight you want, Convict, then you’ve come to the right place. You don’t mind if I play a little music, do ya? I always play music, when I’m beatin’ a man black and blue. I’ve been thinking of bringin’ out an album, of my favourite hits, like.’

He snapped on a disc player, connected to speakers in the car. Irish music kicked from the red Pontiac. Concannon shaped up, his hands in front, on guard.

‘Let’s have at you, then,’ he said.

I ran at him, falling to the ground, and punching at his thigh, exactly where Abdullah had shot him. I got in two hard shots as I passed. He yelped in pain, and dropped his knee.

I scrambled up, and shoved in under his guard, reaching up for one of his eyes. I let him swing at the back of my head. I felt the blows hit, but didn’t feel any pain. I closed my fingers, digging into his eye socket.

He jerked away quickly. I scratched one socket enough to make him close it, blinking blood.

One eye closed, one knee bent, he swung at me in a combination from habit, just as Naveen had warned me. I dodged, ducked, and came in close enough to put my fingers in his collarbone. I pulled it down, putting all my bodyweight in a dead fall to the floor. The bone came loose and he screeched, his arm swaying in the pain.

Prison fighting isn’t about fighting. Prison fighting is about winning, and dead.

‘So, it’s like that , is it?’ he asked, trying to dance away from me, and rubbing at his eye.

‘Yeah. It’s like that.’

He danced back again, but I dropped to the floor and grabbed at his balls, twisting as I fell. I didn’t let go. He fell awkwardly, trying to protect his legacy.

I scrambled to my knees, and hit him as hard as I could. It wasn’t enough, so I hit him again.

He swayed in place, sitting on the floor. He was laughing, and still holding his balls with his good hand. He laughed, rocking back and forth like a baby on a blanket.

‘You cheated, as this man is my witness,’ he said, pointing at Oleg.

‘And that piece of lead you hit me with last time? What was that, Marquess of Londonderry rules? The twenty-four-hour contract you put on my life? That was fair and square? This is your chance to shut up and listen for a change. Leave me alone, Concannon.’

‘You cheated, son,’ he said, trying to laugh. ‘You’ll have to confess that sin, you know.’

‘If you don’t stop coming after me, I’ll have a bigger sin to confess.’

‘You know, boyo, I liked you a lot more when you were dead,’ he laughed, one eye closed and bloody. ‘Govinda, shoot this fucking convict. Shoot the cunt in the head.’

It happened fast. Govinda moved his hand. Oleg pulled a knife, slashed him across the face, and pulled the gun from his hand before shock hit the floor.

Govinda screamed in pain, knowing that his movie-hero face had been recast. Oleg hit him with his own gun, and he was quiet.

The Afghan still had his cards in his hand, like a tiny fan. I had my knife in my hand. Oleg had the gun.

‘If I were you, friend, I’d run,’ Oleg smiled, the gun at his side. ‘No matter how good your hand is.’

The Afghan dropped his cards and ran.

‘You’ve dislocated me collarbone, ya cunt,’ Concannon said, his head lolling to the side. ‘I can’t even raise me arm. If I could, I could knock you out with a single blow, we both know that.’

‘Leave… me… alone.’

‘Lovely, lovely, lovely Lisa,’ he said.

I hit him again. He went backwards until the floor stopped him, his arms at his sides, but he wasn’t out.

What do I do? I thought. Can I kill him? Not unless he’s trying to kill me. Concannon was lying on the floor with one eye closed and a busted collarbone. He hadn’t even tried to get up. He was still talking, though, and chuckling, as if it was a joke he couldn’t stop telling himself.

Oleg didn’t like it. He wanted to gag him, but I pointed out that the karmic burden would be his, if Concannon choked to death on the gag.

Oleg hit him, instead, and he was good at it. Concannon slumbered, and we left him in the care of the injured Govinda. I warned him that he’d lose more than a cheek, if I ever saw him in the south again.

‘I’m taking your gun,’ Oleg told him. ‘If you want it back, I’ll kill you with it.’

We jogged back to the bike in silence. I stopped him, when we reached it, to thank him.

‘The six thousand from tonight,’ I said, handing him the money. ‘I’ll have the rest, and a bonus, tomorrow. I’ll be at Leo’s at five. What you did back there, I owe you.’

‘I would hate to see that Irishman drunk,’ he said, glancing over his shoulder.

‘I hope I never see him again in any condition. You did really good, Oleg.’

‘Thank you,’ he said, smiling.

‘You smile a lot, don’t you?’

‘I’m happy, most of the time. It’s my cross, but I try to bear it with good humour. I have my sadness, but it doesn’t stop me from being happy. You want to work on a short story with me?’

‘Are you really a writer?’

‘Of course.’

‘Those were some pretty snappy lines, back there.’

‘Lines?’

‘Telling the Afghan to leave, no matter how good his hand was. Telling Krishna that you’d kill him with his own gun.’

‘Russian movies,’ he said, frowning. ‘You mean, you don’t know dialogue from Russian movies? You’ll love it. It’s great material.’

We rode back to Colaba. I shook Oleg’s hand, and left him outside a tourist hotel, on the strip.

Vanity hides in pride. I left Oleg standing by the side of the road, after he’d saved my life, telling myself that I didn’t need anyone, not even a good man like him. But the truth was that I left him because I liked him, and knew that Karla would probably like him as much as I did, or more. It’s a shame, my shame, to admit it, but I left that good man on the street because I was a little jealous of him, and Karla hadn’t even met him.

I had to find Abdullah. I had to know whatever he had or hadn’t done with Concannon. I rode to the Nabila mosque, and Null Bazaar, and all the other places where Abdullah found comfort in the comradeship of hardcore criminals. I was angry. My fists were bleeding. I wasn’t polite, even to people I liked.

‘Where’s Abdullah?’ I asked, again and again, the engine of my bike growling.

Hard men who put their lives on the line demand respect, and there was some blowback.

‘Fuck you, Lin. You wanna look down my gun? He might be hiding in there.’

‘Fuck you. Where’s Abdullah?’

I found him singing at an all-night festival of Sufi singers. They were doing a long chant of Ali Munna , and I knew it could go on for hours, the singers passing chillums in glowing baton circles.

I caught Abdullah’s eye, and he stood at once, threading his bare feet delicately among the seated singers.

We walked outside to a dusty, gravel parking area, bordered by trees.

‘ Salaam aleikum ,’ he said, greeting me with a kiss on the cheek.

‘ Wa aleikum salaam . What the fuck, Abdullah? Did you kill someone with that Irishman, Concannon? Is that why you shot him twice, that day? To shut him up?’

‘Come with me,’ Abdullah said gravely, leading me by the arm.

We walked a few paces to a space beneath a wide arch of magnolia branches, dancing the occasional breeze in slow time. We sat on a row of large stones, left in the open space as barriers for parked cars.