Gregory Roberts - The Mountain Shadow

Laughter and stamping feet drummed through the door, tapping me on the back. I didn’t know if it was absolution or penance. I decided to call it even, and began to clean up my bedroom, in case any of the survivors in the next room needed a place to sleep.

I folded sheets and a blanket on the wooden bed base, to provide as much comfort as possible for any weary sleeper. I tidied the room, put my books in one corner, and my guitar in the other, and wiped the floors over with a damp cloth.

And somewhere in that unexpected service to unexpected guests, somewhere in the peace and simplicity and necessity of it, the stream of regret became a river, and I let Kavita and Lisa go.

Wherever they’d been, wherever they were going, living or dead, I let them go. I remembered how they laughed, how I’d made both of them laugh. And I smiled, thinking of it, and that smile opened the grated window, and set them free.

Life on the run strings its own fences. The living room was full of peaceful friends, but it was also full of dangerous weapons. I’d placed each weapon carefully, from every corner and piece of furniture, and from the balcony to the front door, considering every contingency of attack. I hadn’t considered that the room might be invaded by friends.

I went back into the room and picked up the notes and journals Jaswant had sacrificed for his stove.

‘Guys, guys,’ I said, interrupting them.

Everyone looked up. They were smiling.

‘I was planning for uninvited guests, and instead, tonight, I’ve got invited guests.’

They cheered and clapped.

‘No, wait, you’re all welcome, of course, and thanks to Jaswant’s foresight we’ve got plenty of food and water and other stuff to ride this out.’

They cheered and clapped.

‘No, wait, the thing is, I was expecting uninvited guests, see, so I left a few weapons around.’

They blinked at me. They thought it was a joke, I guess, and were waiting for the punchline.

I reached above the almost empty bookshelf, and brought down a hatchet.

‘Just go back to what you were doing,’ I said, hatchet in hand. ‘Relax. I’ll go around picking up the weapons, because I don’t want anyone to get accidentally hurt. Okay?’

They blinked at me again. Didier was wearing a mask, and even he was blinking.

‘Wow,’ Charu and Pari said.

I put the jungle-street weapon on my wooden bed and went back to the room, gathering up knives, a gun, two clubs and a nifty knuckleduster. The last weapon was a set of Vikrant’s throwing knives, which I’d hidden behind a corner balcony support, near where Diva was sitting.

‘You’re either tragically paranoid,’ Diva said, ‘or tragically right.’

‘I don’t have time to be paranoid,’ I laughed. ‘There are too many people out to get me.’

I kept the handgun in my vest pocket. I couldn’t hide it in the apartment, because I couldn’t trust any of them if they found it. It’s bad karma to let someone get killed with your gun , Farid, dead Farid the Fixer, once said to me. Right up there under killing someone with it yourself .

Didier and Oleg had their own guns, if guns were needed. And there was a chance, if things got worse, that they might. Riots burn city blocks in Bombay, and other Indian cities. And around the fire in rings of blades and clubs are some of the people who lit the fire, waiting for prey to run.

I’d made a deal with Dominic to make another tour, in two hours. He needed to go home, eat, take a nap, and report again for duty. With the city in lockdown, every cop worked every shift.

I’d planned to forget the food, and go straight to the nap, but with my place full of people and my mattress on the floor, the night had unplanned itself.

I went back into the main room and looted Jaswant’s supplies, heaped on the table beside the stove. I ate a banana off the bunch with one hand, and almonds with the other. I drank half a glass of honey from a pot. Then I cracked three eggs into a big glass, poured milk on it, threw in some turmeric powder, and drank it down.

The girls had been watching.

‘Eeeuw,’ Charu said.

She was a pretty girl. For a second, the vain part of me wanted to explain that I had to be on the road again, without any place to eat, and I didn’t have time to cook. But I was in love, and vanity, that little shadow of pride, couldn’t weaken me.

‘You want one?’ I asked, offering her the glass.

‘Eeeuw,’ Charu said.

‘Is that like a magic trick, or something?’ Pari asked.

‘If it’s tricks you like, Miss Pari,’ Didier said. ‘Look no further than Didier.’

‘Wow. I want to see every single trick, Didier,’ Charu said.

‘Make it thrilling, Didier,’ Pari added.

Things got back to unusual. Everybody said something essential, inessentially. I went back to my bedroom, racked my weapons into a roll, and stashed them on a window ledge, obscured by a dresser.

‘You know, if this was a horror movie,’ Oleg said, leaning in the doorway behind me, ‘the hidden weapons would be a tension point.’

‘Unless you knew,’ I said, tucking the roll out of sight. ‘Then you’d be the tension point.’

‘Damn!’ he said. ‘Have you ever played Dragon Quest ? They’re mad for it in Moscow.’

‘I’m taking off, Oleg,’ I said, turning to face him.

‘Wait a minute,’ he said quickly, ‘you’re taking off? I thought nobody was taking off. Never split up. That’s the first rule of crazy-time survival tactics.’

‘Strange as these words are, I’m leaving you in charge.’

‘In charge of what?’

‘In charge of my room, while I’m gone.’

‘Okay,’ he said, considering. ‘What do you want me to do with it?’

‘Don’t let anything happen to my journals. Make sure the rations hold out for everybody. And if Karla comes back before me, guard her.’

‘Sure you want to take a risk on me?’ he asked. ‘I’m a tension point, now, because I know where the weapons are.’

‘Cut it out, Oleg.’

‘Sorry,’ he smiled. ‘But it’s so much fun. Randall said that there were these creepy experiments in a lab near here, and one of the subjects escaped recently. It was in the newspaper. The girls are scared to death. I might get lucky tonight. Is that allowed, if it’s on the couch?’

I looked at him, thinking about burning buildings, and burning friends.

‘Is that look a yes , or a no ?’ he asked, smiling.

‘Are you writing this, Oleg, what’s happening tonight?’

‘Hell, yeah. Memorising it all like a time-camera. Aren’t you? It’s a pretty unusual situation, and a pretty unusual mix of people. I mean -’

‘Stay awake, Oleg. Buildings like this burn, when people burn things in Bombay. It’s not a joke. That’s why I haven’t been drinking. It’s why I haven’t had a smoke. This is the shit, and I need you to stay straight while I’m gone.’

‘Don’t worry about the lifeboat while you’re gone,’ he smiled. ‘They’ll all be here, when you swim back.’

‘You wrote that, just before, didn’t you?’

‘ Chert, da . Thank you so much for this, Lin,’ he said. ‘I really appreciate it.’

‘If Karla comes back before me, keep her here.’

‘You’re insulting me,’ he said. ‘You told me that already.’

‘I mean, guard her above everything, and anyone. You get that, right?’

‘I get that,’ he grinned. ‘This just gets better and better.’

I walked back into the room dressed for battle. Didier was playing rock-paper-scissors with Diva. Charu and Pari were trying to explain the rules to Vinson, who saw too many hands to make sense of it. Randall was keeping score with polite cheating. Everyone was laughing. I walked through to the entrance hall.