Gregory Roberts - The Mountain Shadow

‘Speaking of riding,’ Karla said, ‘I’m two-up with Benicia tonight.’

‘You’re… what?’

‘Naveen is bringing Kavita to the costume party, and I’m on Benicia’s back. I hope you’re good with that?’

I was so bad with it, I wanted to pick up motorcycles and throw them at God.

‘You know what,’ Naveen said, watching Karla and me. ‘I’ll just be over there, when we’re ready to roll.’

He backed away a few steps, and then jogged to meet his friends.

‘If I have to get burned or beat up to talk to you, Karla,’ I said, when we were alone, ‘we probably need counselling.’

‘Speak for yourself,’ she said, leaning away from me. ‘Counselling is for people too bored to tell the truth.’

‘That’s funny, coming from someone who won’t tell me the truth right now.’

‘I can’t tell you all of the truth. I thought you understood that?’

‘I don’t understand anything. Are you really going with those people tonight?’

She glanced over her shoulder, and turned back to me again.

‘This party is something different. Do you believe me, that I’m going to this party, and I uninvited you, because I love you?’

‘What I mean is, you’re going to a party, any party, no matter how important it is, after what happened tonight?’

She flared her lips for a second, showing her teeth, locked together. Her eyes opened wide. I knew the look. It wasn’t threatening: it was biting back something that would hurt me. I didn’t care.

‘You knew them, Karla. We’re talking about Nazeer. I don’t know about you, but all I want to do right now is be with you.’

‘It’s hard, what happened to the boy -’

‘And to Nazeer.’

‘And to Nazeer. Sweet Nazeer.’

She stopped, memories of the burly Afghan rubbing at the edges of her resolution. Karla and I both lit the same lamp when we saw Nazeer’s deeply lined face and his fierce, scowling smile, as he opened the door of the mansion.

She took a deep breath, smiled at me, and took my hand in hers.

‘This party really is important, Lin. It will open a lot of secret doors, and it’s gonna let me close a door that I probably shouldn’t have opened in the first place.’

‘What door?’

‘It’s too soon. Please, trust me. Please. Just trust me when I say that this party could give me a chance to walk away from all of this, and live with it, for a long time afterwards, without looking back.’

‘Why is the party so important?’

‘God! You won’t leave it alone, will you? And you won’t trust me.’

‘You give me so little, Karla. And this is a bad night. I’m sorry. I guess I’m a little faith-challenged.’

She looked at me, maybe a little disappointed, maybe simply looking at the disappointment on my face.

‘Alright,’ she said. ‘It’s a fetish party.’

‘And… so what?’

‘It’s the first of its kind in Bombay, and the veils will come down on a lot of the people there.’

‘How many veils?’

‘All of them, of course,’ she said softly, her hand on my cheek. ‘That’s why I uninvited you.’

‘What?’

‘I like you the way you are. I love you the way you are. That’s what this is all about, one way and another. I’m not about to compromise that by letting you loose in Babylon.’

‘But you’re going.’

‘I’m not you, baby,’ she said. ‘And you’re not me.’

‘Come with me, Karla.’

‘I have to go, Lin,’ she said. ‘I’ve got things I have to finish. Just trust me.’

‘Everything’s finished. Come with me.’

‘I have to go,’ she said, standing to leave, but I put fingers on her wrist where a bracelet might rest.

‘In case you didn’t hear it, the trumpet blew. The walls have fallen. It’s -’

‘A biblical reference,’ she smiled. ‘Tempting, Shantaram. More tempting than the damn party, but I gotta go.’

‘I’m not kidding. It’s not a time to party. It’s a time to fortify, and defend. It’s gonna get messy. Places are gonna burn. Streets will burn. We should get in some supplies, wait this out, and then find another town.’

She looked at me so lovingly that I was swimming in a river of honest affection, and had no idea how I’d left the shore.

‘It’s the things that make us one, that make us one worth having,’ she said.

I was all out. She was too close. The lights from the hectic drive-in juice bar lit neon fire in her eyes, and I was burning, again.

‘What does that mean?’

‘Don’t give up on me,’ she whispered.

‘But -’

‘Don’t you dare give up on me,’ she said.

She kissed me. She kissed me so truly that she was already gone when I opened my eyes.

She ran to join the biker boys. They were revving their engines. She climbed up behind Benicia.

The Spanish racer girl pulled on a full-face helmet and shut the visor: a black curve of lights where her eyes had been. She took her privacy seriously, and you can’t object to that. But Karla was on the back of her bike, and I wanted to object to that. Benicia leaned over to grip the low-slung handlebars, and Karla leaned in close to her.

Then she sat upright and look around, her eyes finding mine without searching. She smiled.

Don’t give up on me.

She folded herself against Benicia’s back.

Kavita got up behind Naveen. He made an artful loop in front of the juice bar, and pulled up beside me.

‘Why aren’t you coming, Lin?’ he asked, as the other biker boys revved their engines.

There was a fire , I was thinking. People died. Nazeer died. Parts of the city are locked down. But he was happy. He was a winner. I couldn’t take that away.

‘Have fun, Naveen. I’ll see you in a couple of days.’

‘Sure thing.’

He started revving his engine.

‘Behold, the Uninvited,’ Kavita said, as Naveen prepared to leave. ‘What thing, inside you , was too terrible to invite to a weekend party, Lin?’

Naveen thumped the gas and skidded off under clutch, and the biker boys followed him.

Karla threw her arms wide, as Benicia roared away.

Don’t give up on me.

I was burned, scratched, beat up, covered in ashes, and alone with the dead in a city going into lockdown.

Don’t you dare give up on me.

I rode back to the Amritsar and climbed the stairs, one at a time, my body heavier than will.

‘You were right, Jaswant,’ I said, as I passed his desk on my way to my room. ‘I need a shower.’

‘I told you so! And there’s no hot water, now, and the whole city is going crazy, so serves you right, baba, and goodnight, sleep tight.’

I sat at my desk, opened my journal, and wrote what I felt and what I’d seen that night. Ash from my hand and arm smudged the pages. My left hand, pressing the journal flat, made fingerprints, perfectly arranged and deeply defined, while my right hand described the scene of the crime.

Black ink flames ran across the pages. Flames reflected in a policeman’s eye, flame reflecting chrome-blue off a wall of bicycles, neon flames from motorcycle exhausts and steel boots, scraping rebel sparks from the righteous roundabout of revenge.

When I couldn’t write any more I took a bottle and hit the shower prison style, with all my clothes on.

I drank some, and washed my dirty clothes, peeling them away one textured leaf at a time, and drank some more, and washed my dirtier body, my skin sour with the scents of fear, and her non-identical twin, violent fear.

They were shot. Killed. Burned. They’re dead .

Clean and dried and naked, I closed the curtains, banning the day to come, locked all my locks, put weapons around the room wherever I thought I might need them, played music on my bad sound system, said a prayer of thanks for my bad sound system, and I paced.