Gregory Roberts - The Mountain Shadow

The truck ran a second speed hump, and the singing men in the back bobbed up and down as the wheels bumped the hump, two waves passing through them from the first heads to the last men, jammed against the tailgate.

Ram! Ram! was the chant.

A horn sounded behind us and we turned to see another truck, approaching from the left. It was flying green banners.

Allah hu Akbar! was the chant.

We all glanced back at the orange truck, and then back to the green. It was clear that the trucks were going to pass one another pretty close to where we were standing, in the middle of the road.

‘Okay,’ Dominic said calmly, putting the motorcycle on the side-stand. ‘Hail Mary, full of grace.’

‘Narayani,’ Mahan muttered, also praying to the feminine Divine.

I stood together with the cops. We looked left and right at the approaching trucks, which were slowing down to a crawling pace.

Mahan, the cop who’d manned the wide intersection alone, had a police radio and a bamboo stick. I looked at him, and he caught my eye.

‘All is okay,’ he said. ‘Don’t take tension. Sir is there with us.’

‘And sir has us,’ I said in Marathi.

‘True!’ Mahan replied in Marathi. ‘Do you like country liquor?’

‘Nobody does,’ I laughed, and he laughed with me.

The drivers had decided to test their skill, passing one another as closely as they could. Truck-cabin helpers tilted mirrors and pulled banners upright. Others leaned over the sides, shouting instructions to the drivers, and banging the wooden panels.

The trucks, elephants on turtles, crawled turtle-slow toward one another, closer than anything but faith would tolerate. Not far from us the trucks paused and stopped beside one another, singers for singers. There were at least a hundred chanting men in the back of each truck. Their faith was frenzy. Their sweat baptised them. For a few bars, their chants enfolded and merged, the words echoing the words, and then becoming orange praising green, and green praising orange, singing one God.

I was tense, and ready for anything, but there was no anger in the trucks. The young students had no eyes but for their brothers, and devotion, and they chanted without pause.

They were on a mission. Fire brigade units had been prevented by mobs from responding to fires in Hindu and Muslim neighbourhoods. The young men in the trucks were citizen witnesses, putting their lives in harm’s way to make sure that harm didn’t stop civilian authorities from doing their jobs.

Their mission was sacred work, saving communities, and was beyond provocation. The trucks eased away from one another in frantic chanting, but without a single frown of violent intent.

As the trucks pulled away, driven on by chanting, she was there, Karla, standing alone on the far side of the intersection. She had hitched a ride on one of the trucks.

She was dressed in black jeans, a sleeveless black hot-rod shirt, and a thin red coat with a hood pulled over her black hair. Her carry bag was over her shoulder. Her ankle-strap shoes were clipped to the bag. She was barefoot.

I watched her wave the green banner truck away, and I ran.

‘I’m so glad to see you!’ she said, as I hugged her. ‘I thought it would take me forever.’

‘Take what forever?’ I asked, holding her close.

‘Finding you ,’ she said, streetlights on green queens. ‘I thought you might be stuck somewhere with unsavoury types. I came to rescue you.’

‘That’s funny. I thought you were stuck somewhere with savoury types, and I came to rescue you . Kiss me.’

She kissed me, and leaned back, looking at me again.

‘Have you been practising?’

‘Everything is practice, Karla.’

‘Fuck you, Shantaram. Holding my own lines against me. Shameful.’

‘That’s not all I’d like to hold against you.’

‘I might hold you to that,’ she laughed.

‘No, really. I don’t know what your plans are, or what you’ve gotta do, but until this all settles down, please come back with me, Karla. Just, you know, so you’re sure I’m safe.’

She laughed again.

‘You’re on. Lead the way.’

‘Come and meet Dominic. He’s a friend, and he’s been helping me.’

‘Where’s your bike?’

‘It’s a total lockdown,’ I said. ‘I’m double-up with Dominic. It’s the only way I could get around and keep looking for you.’

‘Are you really riding behind that traffic cop?’

She looked across the empty field of light at Mahan and Dominic.

‘He’s also our taxi home,’ I said, ‘if you don’t mind riding three-up.’

‘Long as I’m in the middle,’ she said, taking my arm.

‘How’d you hitch a ride on the truck?’

She stopped us in the deserted intersection before we reached Dominic. She grabbed the collars of my vest, and pulled me into another kiss.

When I came out of it she was a step away, and I was still leaning like there was a reason. The cops were whistling, singing and dancing.

I scooted back to them, and introduced her.

‘A pleasure, Miss Karla,’ Dominic said. ‘We have searched in places very high for you, and very low.’

Discreet, in India, means not interrupting you to tell you something indiscreet.

‘How nice, Dominic,’ Karla sultried. ‘I’d like to hear your report on those low places, whenever you’re not saving the city.’

We rode three-up. Karla had her back against my chest. She clung to me, her arms clutching at my vest to hold on, pulling us close. She put her head back on my chest, and closed her eyes. I would’ve felt better about it, if she didn’t have her legs around Dominic, and her feet on the tank of his motorcycle.

We passed through checkpoints as if charmed. Dominic only used one mantra to swerve around the police barricades. Don’t ask , he said in Marathi, as he passed through roadblocks with me on the back and Karla’s legs decorating the front.

None of the cops asked. None of them even blinked. You gotta like cops , a wise con once said to me. They think like us, act like us, and fight like us. They’re outlaws who sold out to rich people, but the outlaw is still in there .

Dominic dropped us at the lane behind the hotel.

‘Thanks, Dominic,’ Karla said, placing her hand over her heart. ‘Nice ride.’

I gave him all the cash I had in my pocket. It was mostly US dollars, but there was an emergency mix of other stuff I’d carried for contingencies. It was about twenty thousand dollars. That sum passed through my hands every other day, but it was a lot of money to a man who lived on fifty dollars a month. It was enough to buy a one-room house, which was his dream, because the cop saving the city during the lockdown, like too many of them, lived in threadbare barracks.

‘This is too much,’ he frowned, and I realised that I’d insulted him.

‘It’s all I’ve got in my pockets, Dominic,’ I said, pressing him to take it. ‘If I had more, I’d give it to you. I’m so happy, man. I owe you on this. Call me, if you ever need me, okay?’

‘Thanks, Lin,’ he said, stuffing the money into his shirt, his eyes wondering how fast he could rush home, after his duty rounds, to tell his wife.

He rode away, and Karla started into the arched lane, but I stopped her.

‘Whoa,’ I said, holding her elbow. ‘Madame Zhou has a habit of popping out of these shadows.’

Karla glanced at the new day, painting muddy grey horizons around the buildings.

‘I don’t think she comes out in daylight,’ Karla said, striding ahead. ‘It’s good for her skin.’

We climbed the stairs to the blocked door on our floor.

‘What’s the password?’ Jaswant called out.