Gregory Roberts - The Mountain Shadow

‘Ridiculousness,’ I shouted back.

‘What are you, fucking psychic , man?’ he replied, with no sign of the barricade moving. ‘How can you know that?’

‘Open the door, Jaswant. I’ve got an infected girl, here.’

‘Infected?’

‘Shift… the barricade… and open… the door!’

‘Baba, you have absolutely no sense of play,’ he said, shoving the artwork barricade aside.

He opened the door a crack, and Karla slipped through.

‘You don’t look infected at all, Miss Karla,’ Jaswant gushed. ‘You look radiant.’

‘Thank you, Jaswant,’ Karla said. ‘Did you stock up, for this catastrophe, by any chance?’

‘You know us Sikhs, ma’am,’ Jaswant said, twirling the threads of his beard.

‘A little more gap in the door , Jaswant,’ I said, still trying to squeeze through.

He eased the structure aside, I grabbled through, and he shoved it back into place again.

‘What do you have to report?’ he asked me, clapping dust from his hands.

‘Fuck you, Jaswant.’

‘Wait a minute!’ he said seriously. ‘I want to know what’s going on, out there. What’s your sit-rep?’

‘My sit-rep ?’ I said, trying to pass him and get to my room.

‘Wait,’ he said, blocking my path.

‘What is it?’

‘You haven’t given your report! What’s going on out there? You’re the only one who’s been outside for sixteen hours. How bad is it?’

He was earnest. He meant it. People had walked down public streets, after the anti-Sikh riots, with severed Sikh heads in their hands, strung by the hair like shopping bags. It was an Indian tragedy. It was a human tragedy.

‘Alright, alright,’ I said, playing along. ‘The bad news, depending on how you look at it, is that I didn’t see any zombies. Not one, anywhere, unless you count drunks, and politicians.’

‘Oh,’ he said, a little defeated.

‘But the good news is that the city’s infested with rivers of rats, and packs of ravenous dogs.’

‘Okay,’ he said, smacking his hands together. ‘I’m gonna call my Parsi friend. He’s been nagging me about a Rat Plague Plan for years. He’ll be thrilled to hear this.’

We left him, dialling his Parsi friend.

‘The bodyguard standby charge still applies,’ he called to me, as he dialled. ‘I was on standby, even though Miss Karla came back with you. I’ll put it on your bill.’

The door to my room was unlocked. We heard strange noises coming from inside. I quietly opened it wide. From the doorway we saw Didier, speaking tongues to Charu on my mattress, while Oleg gambled his scent on Pari and my couch.

The strange noise we’d heard was Vinson, trying to play my guitar upside down. He was lying on his back, with his legs resting upright on the wall. No-one noticed us.

We walked in a step to look into my bedroom. Diva and Randall were stretched out on my wooden bed. They were kissing each other with their hands, as well as their lips.

I wanted to slap Randall away from a girl that I knew Naveen loved, but slapping Randall away was Diva’s job, if slapping was required.

Karla pulled my vest.

‘You are not riding out the apocalypse here,’ she whispered, leading me away by the hand.

We walked back to the door of her room. My heart was beating. She put the key in the lock, then stopped, turned, and looked at me.

I never took Karla for granted. But the key was in a lock that opened the door to her Bedouin tent, and my heart was too flooded with hope to doubt. I was hoping that a citywide lockdown and the small satyricon in my rooms might be what it took to make her open the tent.

She smiled, opened the door, and gently pushed me inside. She lit secret lights, and put incense in the right places. She took the collars of my vest, while I was goggling at the banners of red and blue silk above my head, and walked me backwards to the foot of her bed.

She kissed me, and used the advantage to shove me back on the bed, leaving my feet dangling over the edge.

She pulled an ottoman to the foot of the bed, sat down, and began to unlace one of my boots. Her fingers fretted at the knots, then loosened the laces and pulled off one boot. It hit the floor with a boot-thud, and she started on the other. It thumped the floor a few seconds later.

She pulled my vest and T-shirt off, unbuckled my jeans, and dragged me naked.

‘You know what your problem is?’ she said, looking me over. ‘You’re harder than you need to be.’

‘That’s your fault,’ I said, my hands behind my head, on Karla’s pillows, in Karla’s Bedouin tent.

‘Who said it’s a fault? It’s just that sometimes, a girl likes to provoke.’

I was confused again, but that was okay. I was very happy to be looking up at haloes of silk above her head.

‘You really came back for me?’ I asked. ‘You left the fetish party, and came looking for me?’

She was standing with her feet apart, her hands on her hips.

‘I’d swim the Colaba Back Bay for you, baby,’ she said, smiling at my confusion. ‘I mean, I might ask Randall to come with me, because I’m not a great swimmer, but I’d come for you, baby.’

‘Indians can’t swim like Australians,’ I said. ‘Australia has more sharks.’

She unbuttoned her black shirt, and threw it aside.

‘You know,’ she said, slipping off her jeans, and stripping naked, ‘it might be a lot easier for everybody, if I just keep you in sight from now on.’

She cocked her head to the side to study my reaction.

‘I think we should never be apart again,’ I said seriously. ‘What do you think, Karla?’

‘You’ll know exactly what I think,’ she said, creeping along my body to kiss me, ‘in about sixteen minutes.’

King of everything, and a beggar at her banquet at the same time. Thrown at her, thrown at me, turning, moving, changing, touching, and sweating too-long-alone.

My hands against the wall, pushing shadows away. Her feet against my chest, speaking softly, soles and toes, while harsher tongues shouted everywhere else.

The world rolling off the bed. My back on the floor. Her knees on the carpet, the coloured tent behind her head, fan-blades whirling doves of smoke from sandalwood incense.

Karla leaning over me, pressing her forehead to mine, eye for eye, subliming me with connected light. Lost in her pleasure, forgetting my own, finding it again in her eyes, coming home: Karla’s eyes, without fear or fences, coming home to me.

Arms entangled, fingers sewn together, legs in carnal coincidence we lay breath against breath, curled into one another like runaways, sleeping in a forest.

Karla and I didn’t leave her tent again, during the lock-

down. On the first morning, I woke to see her walking toward me with coffee cups on a tray. I always woke before anybody, even in prison, especially in prison, and it was strange to wake with another consciousness already coffee-cool.

She was dressed in a kind of housecoat, but it was black, and completely sheer, and she was naked inside it. It was as if she was swimming in a shadow every time she moved, and I wanted to swim with her.

She set the tray down on a large street-drum she used as a night table, kissed me, and sat beside me on the bed.

‘Let me tell you what’s been going on,’ she said, her hand on my knee.

‘Going on now?’ I hoped.

‘Since the day I met Ranjit.’

‘I see. Not now.’

‘Not now. Do you know how Ranjit and I met?’

‘At a dog fight?’

‘You need this, Shantaram.’

‘No, Karla, I don’t. I just need you.’

‘Yes, you do need me, and you do need this.’