Gregory Roberts - The Mountain Shadow

I almost had the door closed, but Didier pressed his hand against it from the other side, and pushed it open.

‘I have a problem,’ he said, throwing himself on the couch.

‘I should charge this couch by the hour,’ I said. ‘It’s busier than I am.’

‘There is a special party, tonight.’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘A costume party.’

‘I’m closing the door, Didier.’

‘There were only two costumes left, at the best costumier, and I have put them both on hold, but I cannot choose.’

‘What did they have?’

‘A gladiator, and a ballerina.’

‘I don’t see the problem.’

‘The problem ? You do not see the problem? Didier is perfect for both roles, quite obviously, so it is impossible to decide between them.’

‘I see.’

‘Lin, what shall I do?’

‘My advice,’ I said, channelling the energy of Oleg’s couch, ‘is to wear the gladiator to the waist, and the ballerina from the waist down. You’ll be a gladerina.’

‘A gladerina,’ he said, rushing to the door. ‘I must try it on, immediately.’

He shuffled down the steps, and I shuffled to the door, finally succeeding in closing it for a while. And I should’ve been happy, but I wasn’t. I didn’t like closed doors, pretty much anywhere. I didn’t like the closed doors in my dreams: the ones I pounded on, night after night.

I settled in my chair, but I couldn’t write. I stared at the locked door for a minute too long, and I was all the way back there in a cage.

Every blow struck against a chained man, every injection to pacify rebellion, every electrocution of will is an insult to what we’ll be, when we become what we’re destined to be. Time is a membrane, a connective tissue, and it can be bruised. Time can’t heal all wounds: Time is all wounds. Only love and forgiveness heal all wounds.

Hatred always leaves a stain on the veil. But sometimes the hatred isn’t your own. Sometimes you’re chained, and the hatred beaten into you is another man’s, grown in a different heart, and it takes longer than a fading bruise to forget.

Even if we find a way, some day, to weave the strands of love and faith we find along the way, a blemish always remains on the skin of what can’t be forgotten: the yesterday that stares back at you, when you look at a closed door.

For a while I was a lost son, drifting away from friends, drifting away from love, turning a key in memories of fear, anger, uprising, a prison riot, the chapel burning, guards in armour, men willing to die rather than put up with another day of it, just as I was ready to die, when I stood on the wall, and escaped.

Time, too, will die, just as we do, when the universe dies, and is born again. Time’s a living thing, just as we are, with birth, longevity, and extinction. Time has a heartbeat, but it isn’t ours, no matter how much of ourselves we sacrifice to it. We don’t need Time. Time needs us. Even Time loves company.

I looked away from the door, and ran instead into fields of Karla, lakes of Karla, shorelines and trees of Karla, clouds of Karla, storms of Karla tearing everything apart, and when I got there, I wrote verses about Karla and Time, fighting it out with love at stake.

It didn’t work. But I marked the page when I closed the journal, because some of the best writing comes from things that don’t work yet.

I went to the balcony, and smoked one of Didier’s joints.

The intersection below was relatively empty. The frantic insect cars had returned to their hives in hordes. It was time for my last round, and Naveen’s race with Benicia wasn’t long away, but I didn’t want to move.

Karla, Didier, Naveen, Diva, Vinson, the Zodiac Georges, Kavita: I couldn’t understand what was going on. There was so much change, so much uncertainty, so many times that I felt that I was on the wrong side of a wall I couldn’t see.

I was lost in the mess of it all. I’d spent the evening giving advice to others, and I couldn’t advise myself. I could only follow an instinct to make Karla choose, once and for all: life with me, somewhere else, or life in the Island City without me.

Whatever she was doing in Bombay, it didn’t include me, and I felt that it should. I was ready to ride away alone, and wait for her somewhere else, if she wouldn’t leave with me. I knew that she’d be at the race. I wanted to be there. I had to talk to her, even if it was just to say goodbye.

When your life has no plan but the straightest road out of town, and your heart has waited too long for the truth, or your soul has waited too long for a new song, Fate sometimes strikes the ground with a sacred staff, and fire stands in your way.

Cars rushed past me at killing speed. I saw Hussein men and Scorpion men, speeding in different directions. A rider was approaching me. His bike had very high handlebars. I recognised him from two blocks away. It was Ravi.

I put my bike on the side-stand, and waved him down.

‘What’s up?’

‘Fire, at Khaderbhai’s house,’ he said quickly, as he drew alongside.

‘The mansion?’

‘Yeah, man.’

‘Is Nazeer okay? And Tariq?’

‘Nobody knows. They’re trying to save the mosque. That’s all I heard. Only bikes can get through. They say it’s jammed up on Mohammed Ali Road. Stay off the streets tonight, Lin.’

Khaderbhai’s mansion, burning.

I saw the boy in the emperor chair, his head cocked to the side, his long fingers supporting his forehead. I saw my Afghan friend, Nazeer, his grizzled face lit by dawn prayers.

And something was pulled from my chest, some inner thing that wasn’t mine any more, and I felt the connection blur. I felt love slip away, draining from me, as if sorrow cut a vein. And I was afraid, for all of us.

Ravi rode off and I started my bike, swinging after him.

Sometimes, in those years, the call to die was as strong as the will to live. And sometimes I climbed the mast of fear on my heart, that boat on the sea, and opened my arms to the tempest, breaking the world.

Ravi was fast, but I was only a few beats behind him. We rode easily along the dragon spine of Mohammed Ali Road at first, but finally hit a wall of cars, trucks and buses, all of them with their engines turned off.

We had to use the footpaths, filled with people who couldn’t walk on the blocked road. I was glad that Ravi was in front, as he nudged people out of the way with the wheel of his motorcycle. He negotiated the legs and arms and children’s bobbing heads with fluid respect, harming no-one, but maintaining a walking pace. And he repeated only one word, as he rode.

Khaderbhai!

He shouted it again and again, as an incantation. And people moved out of the way each time they heard it.

The Company that Khaderbhai created had become the chrysalis of the Sanjay Company and the calyptra of the Vishnu Company, but when blood was in the fire, only Khaderbhai’s name had the colour of instinct, and the power to part waves of hurrying people.

I was so afraid of losing contact with Ravi, and having my own wave of people to negotiate, that I rode too close to him and bumped his fender several times.

He sounded his horn calmly, to tell me to calm down, and then he went back to shouting that unforgotten name.

Khaderbhai!

We reached a corner close the mosque, but a high wall of motorcycles, handcarts and bicycles blocked the way forward on the footpath. The tide of people surged away, branching off through gaps in the cars on the road.

Through the arches of the pavement awnings we could see smoke, flames and fire trucks. The road beside us was a solid building made of cars and buses.