Gregory Roberts - The Mountain Shadow

I gestured with my right hand, giving the sign that it was okay to pass. The horn kept braying, so I slowed to a stop beneath a canopy of street-lit plane trees, still vivid green from the monsoon long gone.

There was a laneway beside me where I’d stopped. It was an escape route that a car couldn’t follow, if I needed it. Oleg pulled up close behind me. A limousine stopped beside us. I put my hand on a knife.

The tinted window slid down and I saw Diva, with the two Diva girls.

‘Hi, kid,’ I said. ‘How ya doin’?’

She got out of the car. The chauffeur scrambled to open the door for her but was too late, and she waved him away.

‘Don’t worry, Vinodbhai,’ she said, smiling at him. ‘I’m fine.’

He bowed, and glanced at the Diva girls quickly before lowering his eyes, as he waited beside the car.

It was significant that she’d added the honorific bhai to the end of his name. It was respectful, and probably the only other time he’d ever be addressed so respectfully, outside the circle of family and friends who knew the worth of the man inside the uniform.

It was superb, something beyond class, and I liked the young heiress for it.

‘Lin,’ she said, coming to hug me. ‘I’m so happy to see you.’

It was the first time she’d hugged me. It was the first time she hadn’t insulted me, in fact.

‘ Kruto ,’ I said. ‘Someone happy to see me, for a change.’

‘I just wanted to thank you,’ she said, placing her hand flat against my chest. ‘I never got to do it, after the fire, and getting back into Dad’s company and all. And I’ve been thinking about thanking you, and wanting to let you know how grateful I am to you, and Naveen, and Didier, and Johnny Cigar, and Sita, and Aanu, the real Aanu, and Priti, and Srinivasan the dudhwallah , and -’

‘You’re freaking me out, Diva,’ I said. ‘Where’s the tigress?’

She laughed. The Divas laughed, inside the air-conditioned limousine.

‘Who’s your friend?’ Diva asked, giving Oleg the twice over.

‘This is Oleg,’ I said. ‘He’s a Russian writer, and a field agent for the Lost Love Bureau.’

‘Diva Devnani,’ Diva smiled, offering her hand. ‘Very pleased to meet you.’

Oleg kissed her hand.

‘Oleg Zaminovic,’ he said. ‘We think our great grandfather made up the name, but, hey, he made all of us as well, so we don’t hold it against him.’

‘I’m Charu,’ one of the Divas said.

‘I’m Pari,’ the other said.

Oleg bowed gallantly from the seat of his motorcycle.

‘Get in,’ Charu said.

‘Absolutely,’ Pari said.

The door of the limousine opened silently, as if by an act of will.

‘What a splendid idea,’ Oleg said, looking at me hopefully.

‘Great!’ Diva said. ‘It’s all settled. I’ll go on ahead into the slum with Lin on the bike, and Oleg will go with the girls.’

‘Wait a minute,’ I said. ‘You’re forgetting something here.’

‘I’ll be fine, Lin,’ Diva said. ‘I rode on the petrol tank of our servant’s motorcycle from the age of three.’

‘I’m talking about the motorcycle he’s riding.’

Oleg looked into the limousine at the pretty girls, and their short dresses, much shorter on the back seat. He looked at me.

‘You don’t abandon a motorcycle, Oleg.’

‘Remember Didier’s advice?’ he asked limply, pleading with me, guy to guy. ‘You know what I mean, Lin. The smelly T-shirt thing. I think I should start tonight. What do… what do you think?’

He glanced back inside the limousine. They were undeniably pretty girls, and unambiguously interested in Oleg.

‘Park her over there on the footpath, next to that gate,’ I said. ‘Give the watchman a hundred roops to watch her, until I can pick her up.’

‘Great!’ he said, bristling the bike up onto the footpath, and smothering the watchman’s protest with a fair amount of money.

He sprinted back to the limousine, threw me the keys and ducked inside, pulling the door shut after him.

Diva was smiling at me. She was standing beside my bike. Night was a lizard crawling past us on the footpath. People recognised her, from time to time. Some of them stopped to look.

‘What are you smiling about?’ I asked her.

‘I’m smiling,’ she said, ‘because you have no idea what a nice man you are.’

I frowned. People, friends, enemies were changing too fast around me, as if I was the last man to wake during an attack.

‘Charu and Pari are single girls, with multiple minds,’ she said.

‘What the hell?’

‘They think you’re interesting, too,’ she said. ‘I haven’t disabused them of the notion.’

‘What?’

‘They think you’re interesting,’ she said. ‘That’s all I’m saying.’

‘Everybody’s interesting.’

‘You really do love Karla, don’t you?’ she asked, smiling again, not a tiger in sight.

‘Why are we going to the slum, Diva?’

‘There’s a women’s party. I’m the guest of honour, I’m honoured to say. I’d like you to come with me. Tell me that isn’t the best offer you’ve had in the last twenty minutes.’

My turn to laugh. Maybe she really had changed. People do.

‘Guest of honour, huh?’

‘Let’s go, Cisco,’ she smiled, swinging a leg behind me over the bike.

We parked the bike outside and walked through lanes decorated with flowers. Long, thick garlands linked every house. Johnny’s nephew, Eli, guided us with a torch in lamp-lit shadows. He paused at every spectacular bouquet, scanning the torch over the cordons of flowers, allowing us to admire every bloom. He was dressed in his finest clothes, suitable for devotion, as was everyone we passed in the lanes.

He finally led us to an open space, used in the slum for weddings and festival days. Plastic chairs had been arranged in a wide semicircle around a small stage. The space was becoming crowded.

Women gathered in a flame-lit garden of coloured dresses, their hair plaited with frangipani flowers, their talking laughter like birds at sunset.

Charu and Pari arrived with Oleg. Then Kavita joined the crowd, with Naveen and Karla a few steps behind.

Karla.

She saw me, and smiled. Those things inside, when the woman you love smiles at you: those spears of courage, that rain.

People called for Diva to speak. She found an open space, where all could see her short form, but her speech was even shorter.

‘I want to thank you all, so very, very much,’ she said in Hindi. ‘I know, because you saved my life here, that we can do anything, together. And from now on, I’m with you all the way. I’m supporting fair slum resettlement in decent, safe, comfortable homes across the city. I pledge myself to that, and I’m doing it with all the resources I have.’

The women cheered, the men cheered, and the children leapt about as if the earth was too hot to tolerate more than a frantic skip. The band played furiously until no-one could hear properly.

A place had been set out for a meal, with a long, blue plastic sheet on the ground. Authentic banana leaves were arranged, side by side, for guests to receive food. I’d already eaten, but it was impolite to refuse, and bad luck.

We all squatted beside one another. Charu and Pari had to sit side-saddle, because their designer skirts were too short, but they didn’t mind. Their eyes were as wide as if they were studying lions in Africa.

It was their first time on the wretched side of the line. They were repulsed, horrified, and terrified of germs in the food. But they were also fascinated: and a fascinated Indian is yours.

As Fate would have it, Kavita sat on my right, and Karla on my left.