Gregory Roberts - The Mountain Shadow

When not cooking, praying or studying, the devotees liked to eat, and not a crumb of Karla’s fragrant preparations remained when the feast ended. She didn’t eat much herself, but raised her glass to the many compliments, offering a toast at the sated end.

‘That’s it for me, for another year,’ she said. ‘To cooking once a year!’

‘To cooking once a year!’ devotees who cooked every day shouted.

When all was stacked in gleaming towers, and most of the devotees left the camp or went to sleep, the mountain sinners sat around the fire: Karla, Didier, Vinson, Randall, Ankit and me.

Didier suggested a suggestive game, where anyone who inadvertently said a suggestive word in the conversation had to take a drink. His theory was that the one who was most obsessed with sex would get drunk the fastest, and then we’d all know.

I already knew that it was Didier, who was also, as it happens, almost immune to alcohol. Karla knew it, too, and redirected the conversation.

‘How about this , guys,’ she suggested, standing to leave. ‘Why don’t you tell each other the true story of why you’re sitting here, and not sitting somewhere else, with the love of your life?’

‘Rannveig’s in an ashram,’ Vinson began without help. ‘And it’s my fault. I love her so much that I think I made her, like, holy , you know? And I don’t think there’s a reverse exorcism for that.’

‘I know exactly what you mean,’ Randall averred. ‘But I wish I didn’t.’

Karla and I said goodnight. I grabbed one of the rolls of carpet, a canvas sheet, a coil of rope, and my backpack of essential supplies. Karla carried two blankets and her own bag of indispensables. We walked by torchlight to the knoll, scaring ourselves with leaping shadows when the path turned suddenly.

‘You almost shot that shadow, didn’t you?’ I asked, tucked in beside her on the narrow path, the torch in her hand throwing circles of coherence on the dark canvas of night’s forest.

‘You’re the one who reached for a knife,’ she said, cuddling close.

I used the rope to set up a fairly decent shelter. With the right rope , the president of a trucker’s union once said to me, and enough of it, a trucker can do just about anything .

In my trucker’s tent we talked, and kissed, and went through every argument and reply we’d heard in the discourse.

‘You guys are so completely not getting it,’ Karla said sleepily, when we’d run through the valley of ideas together.

‘Us guys ?’

‘You guys.’

‘Not getting what?’

‘The truth,’ she said.

‘What truth?’

‘The big truth.’

‘About what?’

‘That’s the point, exactly,’ Karla said, her eyes green mirrors.

‘The point about what?’

‘You men are obsessed with the truth,’ Karla said. ‘But the truth isn’t such a big deal. The truth is just inhibition, after three drinks.’

‘I don’t need a drink,’ I smiled, ‘to be disinhibited with you.’

We kissed and loved and kept talking, and arguing, working our way back to the end of the beginning until we slept, as a half-moon proclaimed the sky with fuzzy brilliance.

I woke suddenly, aware that we weren’t alone. I lifted my head slowly and saw Idriss, with his back turned. He was standing at the edge of the knoll a few metres away, and staring at the silver cup of the moon.

I glanced at Karla. She was still sleeping beside me, wearing my T-shirt like a nightdress.

‘I am glad that you see me,’ Idriss said, not turning around.

‘I’m always glad to see you , Idriss,’ I whispered. ‘I’d stand up, but I’m not dressed for it.’

He chuckled, leaning on his staff to look at the stars.

‘I am very happy that you and Karla are here,’ he said. ‘And I want you to understand that you’re welcome to stay, for as long as it pleases you to remain.’

‘Thank you,’ I said.

Karla woke beside me, and saw Idriss.

‘Idriss,’ she said, sitting up. ‘Please, sit and be comfortable.’

‘I am always comfortable, Karla, wherever I am,’ he said cheerfully, still not turning to face us. ‘And, I suspect that this is true for both of you as well, isn’t it?’

‘Can we offer you something?’ Karla asked, rubbing her eyes awake. ‘Some water or juice?’

‘In offering something to me with those words,’ Idriss said, ‘I am nourished already.’

‘We’ll get dressed, and join you,’ I suggested. ‘I can make you a cup of tea by the fire.’

‘I will leave, in a minute or two,’ he replied. ‘But there is something that I must tell you both, and my mind will not allow me to ignore it, so I must apologise for the intrusion.’

‘We’re the intruders,’ Karla said.

He laughed again.

‘Did you wish that you were beside me today, Karla,’ he said, ‘when I was facing the inquisitors?’

‘I did, Idriss,’ she laughed. ‘Pencil me in, next time.’

‘Done,’ he replied, already leaving us in his mind. ‘Are you two ready to receive my instruction?’

‘Yes,’ Karla whispered uncertainly.

‘You must renounce violence, both of you, and do whatever it takes to live peacefully.’

‘It’s hard to be non-violent in a violent world, Idriss,’ Karla said.

‘Violence, tyranny, oppression, injustice, these are all mountains on the topography of life’s journey,’ Idriss said. ‘Life is an encounter with those mountains. The safest way to pass beyond the mountain is to walk around it. But if you choose that path it becomes the whole of your life, because walking around becomes a circle that never stops, and one of those mountains becomes your destiny. The only way onwards, to something else beyond the circle, and to see clearly enough to avoid new mountains, is to climb the mountain and cross it from the peak. But the thing about a mountain is that no part of the climb is less dangerous than the part you just completed.’

‘Which means?’ I asked.

‘I worry about you both,’ he said. ‘I worry about you often. The view from the top, after the dangerous climb, is something you can’t have if you take the safer path within the circle, but it has great risks. And you must rely on each other and help each other more than ever before. You are already climbing through the mountain shadow, both of you.’

‘Have you climbed all your mountains, Idriss?’ Karla asked.

‘I was married once,’ he said softly and slowly. ‘A long time ago. And my wife, may her soul know happiness, was a constant companion in the spiritual search, as you are for one another. I would be nothing, without all the many things we learned together. And now I climb through the mountain shadow alone.’

‘You’re never alone, Idriss,’ Karla said. ‘Everyone who knows you carries you inside.’

He laughed softly.

‘You remind me of her, Karla. And you remind me of myself, Lin, in another life. I was not always the peaceful man you know. Never give up on the love you feel for one another. Never stop searching for peace, within yourselves.’

He turned silently, and walked back toward the camp.

Night noises returned, and a bell tolled at a railway signal somewhere far away. Karla was silent, staring at the leaf shadows where Idriss had vanished.

‘We’ve got some stuff to work out, you and me, if we’re gonna get this right,’ she said, looking back at me, her eyes green moonlight. ‘And I want to get this right, for once, with you.’

‘I thought we already had it pretty right.’

‘We just got started,’ she smiled, stretching sleepily, and snuggling in beside me. ‘Couple of months up here, like this, we’ll work all the kinks in just right.’