Gregory Roberts - The Mountain Shadow

We rode back to the south, and she cried, her cheek pressed against my back. When we stopped at a traffic light, Randall jumped from the car and offered her tissues from a red ceramic box. Karla accepted them, before the signal changed. And I think that little, thoughtful act saved her, because she stopped crying after that, and simply clung to me, and never cried for Ranjit again.

I took her back to the Amritsar hotel, and the Bedouin tent. She let me undress her and put her to bed: one of a lover’s treasures. And she slept through dawn and daylight, and violet evening, and woke under an exile moon.

She stretched, saw me, and looked around her.

‘How long have I been out?’

‘A day,’ I said. ‘It’s nearly midnight. You missed tomorrow.’

She sat upright quickly, messing her hair perfect.

‘Midnight?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Were you watching me, while I slept?’

‘I was too busy. I wrote out a pretty eloquent statement for the cops, and signed it for you, and delivered it. They liked it. You don’t have to go back.’

‘You did all that?’

‘How you feeling?’ I smiled.

‘I’m good,’ she said, wriggling off the bed. ‘I’m good. And I gotta pee.’

She came back showered, in a white silk robe, and I was trying to think of a way to let her talk about Ranjit, dead Ranjit, and what it felt like, seeing his body, when there was a knock on the door.

‘That’s Naveen’s knock,’ Karla said. ‘You wanna let him in?’

‘You know his knock?’

I opened the door and welcomed the young detective into the tent.

‘What’s up, kid?’ I asked.

‘I’m so sorry about Ranjit, Karla,’ he said.

‘Someone had to kill him,’ Karla replied, lighting a small joint. ‘I’m just glad it wasn’t me. It’s okay, Naveen. I slept it off, and I’m okay.’

‘Good,’ he said. ‘Glad to see you’re still punching.’

He stared at me, then at Karla, then at me again.

‘What’s up?’ I asked.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Just getting my head around the two of you being together all the time.’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘There’s a hotel pool, you know,’ he said happily, ‘on how long Oleg gets to keep your rooms. Oleg picked three -’

‘Any other news, Naveen?’ I asked, pulling on jeans.

‘Oh, yeah,’ he said. ‘Dennis is ending his trance, tonight. There’s gonna be a lot of people there. I thought… maybe… you need to get out in the air, Karla.’

Karla looked interested in seeing Dennis rise from his two-year sleep, but I wasn’t sure if she was ready for distraction. I wasn’t sure I was ready for it myself. I’d stayed up most of the night and day, watching over Karla and paying the cops to leave her alone. And the whole time I’d asked myself again and again the questions about Ranjit and Lisa, that only Ranjit, dead Ranjit, could answer.

‘You wanna go out, or stay in, girl?’

‘And miss a resurrection? I’ll be ready in five,’ she said.

‘Okay, I’m in,’ I said, pulling on a shirt. ‘It’s not every day someone rises from the dead.’

We walked down to the arch beneath the hotel and found Randall sitting in the back of the car. He was reading a copy of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee , the interior lights a blue-white blush on his face.

Karla had given him the car, because he refused to stop following her while she rode with me, just in case she needed him. He’d accepted the gift, and transformed the capacious rear seats into a sleeping lounge, complete with a small refrigerator running on battery power, and a sound system that was better than mine.

He was barefoot, in black trousers and a white, open-necked shirt. His bronze, Goan eyes, faded by generations of sun and sea, were filled with happy light. He stepped from the car, and slipped into his sandals.

He was handsome, tall, smart and brave. As he came to greet Karla, smiling teeth at her like shells on a perfect shore, I could see why Diva liked him so much.

‘How are you, Miss Karla?’ Randall asked, taking her hand for a moment.

‘I’m fine, Randall,’ she said. ‘Got a nip you can give me, from your well-stocked bar? I had a bad dream last night, and I’m thirsty.’

‘Coming up,’ Randall replied, opening the door of the car and fetching a small bottle of vodka.

‘To the spirits of the departed,’ Karla said, throwing it back in two gulps. ‘Now, let’s go raise the dead.’

‘Would this be the rise of Dennis the Sleeping Baba, Miss Karla?’

‘Indeed it is, Randall,’ she replied wistfully. ‘Instead of a wake, let’s have an awake, shall we?’

‘With unadulterated pleasure,’ he smiled, sad for what she’d been through, but glad that she was up and out again. ‘To the psychic resuscitation it is.’

‘And not a death certificate too soon,’ Naveen added.

I looked at the Indian-Irish detective, who was talking to Randall while he prepared the car, and wondered what thoughts roamed his mind: for three weeks, Randall had been dating the woman Naveen loved. I liked Randall, and I liked Naveen, almost as much as they seemed to like each other. Naveen hugged Randall, and Randall hugged Naveen. It looked genuine, and it was confusing: if things got ugly, I wouldn’t know which one to hit.

‘I’ll leave my bike, and ride with Randall,’ Naveen said, as Karla and I saddled up the bike.

We rode between satin banners of traffic to the Colaban hive of ancient housing, near Sassoon Dock. The night smell of dead and dying sea things followed us past the dock, and lingered to the colony of verandas where Dennis reposed.

There was a crowd on the street. Huge buses on the regular route ploughed fields of penitents, who moved aside in waves of heads and shoulders to let the metal whales swim through.

We worked our way to a place near the front with a view of the veranda where Dennis, it was expected, would emerge from his long self-induced coma.

People were holding candles and oil lamps. Some were holding bunches of incense. Others were chanting.

Dennis appeared, standing in the doorway of his rooms. He looked at the wide veranda for a moment as if it was a red-tiled river, and then looked up at the crowd of supplicants gathered on the street a few steps below.

‘Hello, all and everyone, here and there,’ he said. ‘It is quiet in death. I have been there, and I can tell you that it is very quiet, unless someone kills your high.’

People shouted and cheered, calling out names for the Divine. Dennis took tentative steps. The crowd screamed and chanted. He walked across the balcony, down the steps, onto the road, and then collapsed in the centre of the crowd.

‘Now, this is entertainment,’ Karla said.

‘You figure?’ I asked, watching believers rain tears on Dennis, who was horizontal again.

‘Oh, he’ll get up again,’ Karla replied, leaning against me. ‘I think the show only just started.’

Dennis sat up suddenly, scattering the crowd awaiting his blessing.

‘I have it,’ he said. ‘I know what I must do.’

‘What is it?’ several voices asked.

‘The dead,’ Dennis said, his deep voice clear in the hush. ‘I must serve them. They, too, need ministry.’

‘The dead, Dennis?’ someone asked.

‘Exclusively the dead,’ he replied.

‘But how to serve them?’ another voice asked.

‘First of all,’ Dennis appealed to them, ‘do you think I could smoke a very strong chillum? Being alive again is killing my high. Will someone prepare a chillum, please?’

Dozens attended to that, making the task more complex than required, until Billy Bhasu finally squatted beside the stricken monk of sleeping, and offered him a chillum.