Gregory Roberts - The Mountain Shadow

‘How did that happen?’

‘You really wanna know?’

‘Of course I wanna know.’

‘Well,’ she said, sitting up and facing me, her legs lotus. ‘Randall and I noticed the Cycle Killers following you, twice, and I sent Randall to find out what they wanted.’

‘He fronted the Cycle Killers alone?’

‘No doubt.’

‘He’s a keeper,’ I smiled. ‘I’m glad he’s on board with you.’

‘With us ,’ she corrected.

‘What do you make of it, Randall and Diva? I know Naveen is crazy about her, and I thought she liked him.’

‘It’s a lockdown, Shantaram. What happens in a lockdown, stays in a lockdown. Best we keep out of it.’

‘You’re right, I guess. Go back to the Cycle Killers.’

‘So, Randall found out that Abdullah had hired them to watch over you for a while, and he made a couple of friends.’

‘And when you found out they were for hire, you hired them.’

‘I did, and they were happy to do it.’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Yeah, they’re working on their image. They’d like to move into more public-minded areas than killing people for money.’

‘Like threatening people for money.’

‘Something like that,’ she said. ‘It’s an upward image step, but I think they’re serious. I think they wanna come in from the cold.’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘When I had the Cycle Killers to negotiate for us, I had a plan. I couldn’t have done it without them, because I couldn’t trust anyone else not to buckle under the pressure, and give us up. When Fate put them behind you, I got them behind me.’

‘In front of you, actually.’

‘Exactly. Ishmeet, the boss, is the man talking to the vessels of change.’

‘I’ve met Ishmeet.’

‘He’s a true gentleman,’ she said.

‘Salt of the moon.’

‘And Pankaj, his friend, who really likes you, by the way, is a riot. I invited him to the fetish party.’

‘I bet you did. And did I have to be kept so deep in the dark, through this dark scheme?’

‘I was protecting you,’ she said. ‘I was keeping you away from the fire.’

‘Like a fool?’

‘Like a soul mate,’ she said. ‘If the whole thing blew up, I wanted to make sure it didn’t reach out to you. You’re on the run too, remember?’

She was beautiful, in a new way. She was defending me, guarding me with a part of her soul.

She got up to light new incense, seven sticks, fireflies hovering in the coloured room, and put them in the mouths of clay dragons. I watched her moving around the bedroom, and my mind was fighting Time, trying to stop everything but This .

She sat down beside me again, taking my hand.

‘If I’d told you that I wanted to move the whole city in the direction of humane slum resettlement,’ she asked, ‘would you have joined me in it, or would you have tried to stop me? Honestly?’

‘I would’ve tried to get you to leave, and set up again somewhere else, with me.’

‘That’s why I protected you,’ she said.

‘That’s why?’

‘You would’ve helped me, because you love me, but your intention wouldn’t have been pure, going in, and that would’ve made you vulnerable. And me, too, probably.’

I thought about it, not really understanding it, but a different question asked itself.

‘Why did you do it, Karla?’

‘You don’t think the cause is important enough?’

She was teasing me.

‘Why did you do it, Karla?’

It was her turn to think. She smiled, and went with honesty.

‘To see if I could,’ she said. ‘I wanted to see if I could do it.’

‘I think you can do anything, Karla. But we should’ve done it together.’

She laughed again.

‘You’re so loved,’ she said. ‘And I’m so glad to finally tell you.’

It was too much, it was every dream. Doubt, the thing that fights love, pushed me to the cliff, daring me to jump. I jumped.

‘I love you so much, Karla, that I’m lost in it, and I always will be.’

Men don’t like to be that honest about love: to put the gun in a woman’s hand, and hold it against their own hearts, and say, Here, this is how you kill me . But it was okay. It was okay.

‘I love you too, baby,’ she said, all green queens. ‘I always did, even when it looked like I didn’t. I’m stuck on you, and you better get used to it, because we’re inseparable from now on. You see that, right?’

‘I see that,’ I said, pulling her down to kiss me. ‘You thought all this out pretty long and hard, didn’t you?’

‘You know me,’ she purred. ‘I do everything long and hard.’

I let Oleg have my rooms for a while. The rent was paid out for a year, and I was happy for him to have a home. Oleg was happier. He hugged me off the ground and kissed me. It’s a Russian thing , he said.

Karla went everywhere with me, even on my black market rounds, and I went everywhere with Karla. We rode together, with Randall always following discreetly in the car.

My round of the money changers was dangerous, but some of what Karla did was almost as dangerous. Her round of art and business contacts was disturbing, but some of what I did was almost as disturbing.

People took a little while to get used to us as a double act, and they reacted in different ways. As it turned out, my friends in the Underworld took it better than her friends in the Overworld.

‘You’ll have tea with us, Miss Karla,’ my black market dealers said to her at every stop. ‘Please, have tea with us.’

‘No entry,’ her white market dealers said to me at every security desk. ‘Passes required, beyond this point.’

Karla got me a security pass, and insisted that I sit by her side, everywhere. I got to attend meetings with powerful financial figures, in chambers and panelled rooms that all looked like the inside of the same coffin.

A business suit , Didier once said to me, is nothing but a military uniform, stripped of its honour . And it seemed that honour was a word rarely heard in those boardrooms and exclusive club lounges: when Karla spoke it, insisting that her proxy would only be used to support honourable causes, the same waves of distress always passed through the room, puffer-fish faces gasping, and coloured ties flashing in revolving chairs like weeds in a dissonant sea.

The artists were a different story, told by a tall, handsome sculptor, gathering fuel in vacant lots of millionaires.

The gallery had flourished. Scandal is always a seller’s market. The scent of it, attached to works that fanatics had attacked, works that had been banned or threatened with bans, seared the sated senses of a wealthy clique of buyers. People with enough money not to queue anywhere waited for appointments, and paid in black market rupees. Taj, the sculptor, was managing the gallery, and making money faster than he could swing a mallet.

He was talking to a ledger of patrons when I walked in with Karla one day, a few weeks after the lockdown. Rosanna was at a desk, working phones.

Taj nodded to Karla, and continued his discourse to the patrons. We walked through to the back room. It had been transformed from motorcycle lights to red fluorescents, a dozen of them, strewn around the room.

We sat on a black silk couch. There were paintings leaning against the walls, a sleeve of one becoming a frame for the other. Anushka brought us chai and biscuits.

When she wasn’t in character as a body-language artist, Anushka was a shy young woman, eager to please, and the gallery was a second home for her.

‘What’s happening, Anush?’ Karla asked her, when she sat down on the carpet beside us.