Gregory Roberts - The Mountain Shadow

‘I pay what it costs, Jaswant.’

‘Let me tell you something. You can’t opt out of that system, man, no matter how hard you try. Bargaining is the bedrock of business. Didn’t anyone ever teach you that?’

‘I don’t care what it costs.’

‘ Everybody cares what it costs.’

‘I don’t. If I can’t afford it, I don’t want it. If I want it, and I can afford it, I don’t care what it costs in money. That’s what money’s for, isn’t it?’

‘Money’s a river, man. Some of us go with the current, and some of us paddle to the shore.’

‘Enough with the old Sikh sayings.’

‘It’s a new Sikh saying. I just made it up.’

‘Wrap my stuff, Jaswant.’

Jaswant sighed.

‘I like you,’ he said. ‘I’ll never say that in public, because I’m not showy in public. Everybody knows that. But I like you, and I see some interesting qualities in you. I also see some errors in your spiritual thinking, and because I like you, I’d be happy to realign your chakras for you, so to speak.’

‘You’ve made that speech before, haven’t you?’ I asked, taking my two sacks of essential stuff.

‘A few times.’

‘How did it go over?’

‘I can sell a story, Lin. I once played Othello, in -’

‘Nice doing business with you, Jaswant.’

‘That’s it!’ he said. ‘That’s what I was trying to tell you before! I like you, see, but when you’re like a child, and you’re not a child, you take all the fun out of being an adult, see?’

Cue music. He punched the Bhangra music awake.

I stashed my supplies, ate two cans of cold tuna, sharpened my knives while the food settled, and then did push-ups and chin-ups until night gave me the chance to move across the city.

A full bandobast , or shutdown of the city, is impossible to negotiate by daylight. Anyone on High Street at high noon is a victim, or soon to be. The cops were scared. There weren’t enough of them to stop the people, when the people went to war with one another, or to save the banks. The shutdown made everything much clearer for the cops: if you’re on the street, you’re meat.

‘I’m going out, Jaswant,’ I said, just before midnight.

‘The fuck you are. That barricade stays.’

‘I’ll make a mess of it, if I pull it down,’ I said, moving to the barricade.

‘No way!’ he said, coming around his desk to ease the barricade away from the door. ‘This is an intricate defence. My Parsi friend could do it better, I wish he were here. But it’s good enough to keep the zombies out.’

‘Zombies?’

‘This is how it starts, man,’ he said anxiously. ‘Everybody knows that.’

He nudged the artwork of chairs and benches away from the door, and opened it a slender crack.

‘You’ll need a code word,’ he said.

‘What for?’

‘To get back in. So I’ll know it’s you.’

‘How about, Open the door .’

‘Something more personal, I was thinking.’

‘If I make it back, and you don’t open the door, I’ll break it down.’

‘How?’

‘The hinges are on the outside, Jaswant.’

‘Hinges!’ he hissed. ‘My Parsi friend would’ve thought of that. I’ll bet his zombie barricade is flawless.’

‘Just open the fucking door, Jaswant, when I come back.’

‘Come back uninfected please,’ he said, shoving the barricade against the door.

Night is Truth wearing a purple dress, and people dance differently there. The safest way to get around at night during a shutdown in Bombay, if you absolutely have to get around, is to ride on the back of a traffic cop’s motorcycle.

I knew a good cop, who needed the money. Corruption is a tax imposed on any society that doesn’t pay people enough to repel it themselves. His story, at roadblocks, was that I was a translator, a volunteer, who was warning tourists to stay off the streets at night.

And we did encounter a bewildered tourist, here and there, on the rounds: people with backpacks, not packed for barricaded hotels in a ghost city, and who were glad to see a cop, with a foreigner tagging along.

We drifted through most checkpoints on idle, answering questions with a shout and a wave, and I rode around the silent city behind a cop, with a gun, paying him by the hour to help me find Karla, on his rounds. I wanted to be at her side, or to know she was safe.

Legends are written in blood and fire, and the streets were red enough to write new ones. The traffic cop escorting me said that violent clashes had broken out near the Nabila mosque. Some had died, and many more had been wounded. The mosque was intact, with not a tile damaged. People called it a miracle, forgetting how many firemen had been injured to save the sacred space.

‘It is a nicely impressive time,’ Dominic the traffic cop said Indianly, calling over his shoulder as he rode just above stalling speed, on empty streets.

‘Impressively scary, Dominic.’

‘Exactly!’ he laughed.

‘Let’s try the Mahesh hotel,’ I suggested.

‘This is a time to tell your grandchildren about,’ Dominic said, veering toward the Mahesh, and staring through shadow curtains into every deserted laneway. ‘A time when ghosts roamed freely, in Bombay.’

We didn’t find Karla, but we found her car. When we drew alongside, we found Randall at the wheel, and Vinson in the back seat.

Randall hissed down the window. Vinson was hissing down a scotch.

‘Hi, Randall. Where’s Karla?’

‘I don’t know, sir. I haven’t seen her since she left on the motorcycle, with Miss Benicia.’

‘I found her!’ Vinson said from the back seat, a little drunk.

I turned to face him.

‘Where?’

‘In an ashram!’ he said happily.

‘Karla, in an ashram? Not unless she’s buying it.’

‘Not Karla. Rannveig . Naveen found her. She’s in an ashram, about a hundred miles from here. I’m gonna go there, as soon as all this calms down.’

I turned back to Randall.

‘What’s going on?’

‘My instruction was to meet Miss Karla at the Amritsar hotel,’ he said. ‘But the bandobast came down so fast, and the police wouldn’t allow me to move, and I wouldn’t abandon the vehicle, so I got stuck here, sir.’

‘And the passenger?’

‘Mr Vinson dived into the car when a looter, trying to steal a car like this one, was shot at in this street, at two o’clock this afternoon, sir.’

‘Lucky for me you opened the door, Randall,’ Vinson said, opening the liquor cabinet.

‘And you’ve been here ever since?’

‘Yes, sir, waiting for an opportunity to rendezvous with Miss Karla, at the Amritsar hotel.’

‘The Mahesh is only five hundred metres away, Randall,’ I said. ‘This isn’t a night to be out. You’d be safer in there.’

‘I will not abandon the vehicle, sir, unless my life is in the balance. I am perfectly comfortable. But, perhaps Mr Vinson would care to make a run for it.’

‘No way, man,’ Vinson slurred. ‘I wanna be alive, to find my girl. She’s in an ashram . That’s, like, heavy shit, man.’

I looked at Dominic.

This will cost you , his look said, and fair enough. I was asking a lot.

‘Make it a Press car,’ he said, wagging his head. ‘We’ll get through.’

‘Have you got a pen, and white paper?’ I asked. ‘Can you make a PRESS sign?’

They bickered about drawing the sign, as people do, even when very important things are at stake, but finally agreed on the draft.

Randall placed it on the dashboard, propped against the window by one of Karla’s shoes.

Dominic cruised us through checkpoint after checkpoint. Randall saluted. Vinson drank, impersonating the press.