Gregory Roberts - The Mountain Shadow

‘No, let me.’

She brought us a platter of dates, cheese and apples, and wine in long, red glasses with feet like a hawk’s claws.

She talked about Kavita Singh, and how Ranjit’s disappearance gave Karla one last hand to play, because she had a proxy vote on Ranjit’s shares, which he couldn’t rescind without resurfacing. Karla elevated Kavita to deputy editor, in exchange for a promise from Kavita to make slum resettlement a banner issue.

Working together, Karla and Kavita developed a citywide beautification program to nudge public consensus toward humane resettlement of slum dwellers, as a matter of civic pride. They played it out on newspaper pages still technically owned by Ranjit.

‘The editor was a problem,’ Karla said. ‘We tried for weeks to get him on the team. He fought us to the fourth quarter on everything. But when he accepted an invitation to the fetish party, it was easy.’

‘What was easy?’

‘Compliance,’ she said. ‘Smoke a joint with me.’

‘Why were you on Benicia’s bike last night?’

‘Does it hurt more that I was with Benicia, or that I was on her very pretty motorcycle?’

‘It all hurts. I don’t ever want to see you on any motorcycle but mine, unless you’re riding it yourself.’

‘Then you’ll have to teach me to ride, renegade. You start with your legs wide, right?’

‘Wide enough to hold on,’ I smiled.

‘Smoke a joint with me,’ she said, lying back on the bed, her feet in my lap.

‘Now?’

‘Look, the city’s in lockdown. We can’t go anywhere. Jaswant has plenty of supplies. I’ve got a gun. Relax, and smoke a joint with me.’

‘I’m pretty relaxed, but okay, if you think it’s a good idea.’

‘Some doors,’ she said slowly, ‘can only be opened with the grace of pure desire.’

Some time later she brought us fruit on a blue glass tray, and fed me with her fingers, piece by piece. Love is connection, and happiness is the connected self. She kissed my hands, her hair like wings fanned for the sun. And an instant blessed by a woman’s love washed wounds away.

‘Compliance,’ Karla said, settling in beside me with a glass of wine.

‘Compliance?’

‘There’s nothing like a fetish, to get a man’s compliance point out in the open.’

‘The chief editor?’ I asked, still cocooned in the segue.

‘Are you zoning out?’ she asked. ‘Of course , the editor.’

‘How did you find out his fetish? Did he present a card, or something?’

‘When the guests arrived, we’d already supplied every fetish in the book, with girls in masks, dressed by damnation. We paraded them past him, until one got a reaction. It didn’t take long, actually.’

‘Which one?’

‘Dominatrix, in a fake-leather sari. It’s a catalogue item.’

‘Then what?’

‘Then he got filmed, in a private booth, getting dominated.’

‘You and Kavita filmed him?’

‘Not just him. We also filmed a judge, a politician, a tycoon and a cop.’

‘You set all this up?’

‘Kavita and I had a woman on the inside.’

‘Who was that?’

‘The hostess.’

‘Who was?’

‘Diva,’ she said.

‘ Diva , our Diva, who’s next door, with Randall?’

‘Our Diva, who left earlier, with Charu and Pari, while you were asleep,’ she said. ‘Some cars arrived to bring them home. Bodyguards were banging on the door. Jaswant thought the zombies were trying to break in. We pulled the barricade away and -’

‘Wait a minute, I slept through all that?’

‘Sure, soldier,’ she purred. ‘Diva said you looked cute.’

‘Diva said what ?’

‘She wanted to talk to me, while Charu and Pari were getting ready to leave. It takes those girls a time to do anything. Diva came in here, and we sat on the bed.’

‘While I was asleep?’

‘Yeah. She was right, you’re cuter asleep than awake. It’s lucky I’ve got a weakness for awake.’

‘How long was Diva here?’

‘We smoked a joint,’ Karla said.

‘That long?’

‘And drank a glass of wine.’

‘While I was sleeping?’

‘Yeah, she came in to tell me that Kavita had a new secret admirer, and she’d been acting a bit nuts.’

‘Kavita is a bit nuts,’ I said. ‘She had a thing with Lisa, and it won’t let her go. She’s clever and capable, but she’s been acting nuts with me, too. I think that’s why Madame Zhou likes her – they’re as crazy as each other.’

‘Kavita did this whole thing with us, Lin,’ Karla said. ‘She was with us every step of the way.’

‘And you put her next in line to run a major daily newspaper.’

‘I won’t let you talk her down,’ she said. ‘I won’t let anyone talk her or any of my friends down. Just like I wouldn’t let anyone talk you down.’

‘Okay. Fair call. But it’s my job to tell you when I sense a threat.’

‘Your job?’ She laughed.

‘Yeah, and it’s your job to warn me,’ I smiled. ‘So, Diva left with the girls?’

‘The bodyguards escorted them away. They had some explaining to do, about staying out all night.’

‘And I slept through all of this?’

‘Sure did. We helped Jaswant put the barricade back, I showered, got back into bed, and you got very glad to see me. The girls said goodbye, by the way.’

I was feeling strange. I was always the first up, no matter how tired I was, and if someone in a room next door dropped a pen on the floor, I started awake from deep sleep. But somehow, I’d slept through a conversation on my own bed.

It was an unusual feeling, disorienting, all slow pulse rates and blurred edges, and negotiating it was like walking along the deck of a rolling ship. It took me a while to realise what it was: I was feeling peaceful.

Peace , Idriss once said, is perfect forgiveness, and is the opposite of fear.

‘Are you with me, Shantaram?’ Karla smiled, shaking me by the chin.

‘I’m so with you, Karla.’

‘Okay,’ she laughed. ‘Where were we?’

‘You were telling me how you and Kavita put this together,’ I said, holding her close.

‘Kavita, Diva and me. Diva’s the richest girl in Bombay right now, and when she threw a fetish party, the rich rowed up in limousines.’

‘But Diva wasn’t even there.’

‘We set it up for her to be turned away at a roadblock, and pushed back into the city, with plausible deniability about anything that happened at the party.’

‘To cover her assets.’

‘To cover her assets,’ Karla said, tapping me on the chest in agreement.

It was the first time she ever did it: the first time that little gesture born in who she was, when she was completely relaxed in love, made its way to my skin.

‘So, you set up fetish games, and cameras?’

‘We had seven targets, counting the editor, but only five of them turned up.’

‘Targets?’

‘Impediments to progress, that we wanted to make vessels of change.’

‘And now the five are -’

‘Vessels of change, and we’ll get slum resettlement, and more attention to women’s issues. Win-win, women style.’

I sat up on the bed. She offered me a towel, scented with ginger, and we wiped our faces and hands.

‘If these guys are big shots, Karla, they’re dangerous, by definition. That film’s a bomb, and it’ll keep ticking as long as it exists.’

‘We’ve got intermediaries,’ she said, leaning into my arm again.

‘They’ll need to be bulletproof.’

‘They are,’ she said. ‘We’ve contracted the Cycle Killers to talk for us.’

‘Now, that makes things much saner. The Cycle Killers?’

‘I don’t do anything face to face with anyone but them. They do all the negotiating with the other side.’