Gregory Roberts - The Mountain Shadow

But there were no birds in the mansion, and the only sound I heard was a metal-to-metal stutter, like teeth chattering in a freezing wind: cartridges, being inserted into the magazine of a Kalashnikov, one brass burial chamber at a time.

Outside on the street early evening glowed on every face, as if the whole world was blushing to think what the night would bring. Abdullah was waiting for me, his bike parked beside mine. He gave a few rupees to the kids who’d stood guard over our bikes. They shouted their delight, and ran to the sweet shops on the corner to buy cigarettes.

Abdullah swung out beside me into the traffic. At a red light, I spoke for the first time.

‘I’m picking up Lisa, at the Mahesh. Wanna come?’

‘I’ll ride with you that far,’ he replied solemnly, ‘but I will not join you. I have some work.’

We rode in silence along the shopping boulevard of Mohammed Ali Road. The allure of the perfume bazaars gave way to the sugared scents of firni , rabri , and falooda sweet shops. The glittering splendour of bangle and bracelet shops surrendered to the gorgeous fractals of Persian carpets, displayed side to side for a city block.

As the long road ended in a thatch-work confusion of handcarts, near the vast Crawford Market complex, we took a short cut, riding the wrong way into streams of traffic, threading through the wide eye of another junction.

Back in the right flow of traffic again, we paused for the long signal at Metro theatre junction. A movie poster covered the first floor of the cinema. Bad Guy and Good Guy faces, drenched in green, yellow and purple, told their story of love and anguish from behind a thorny hedge of guns and swords.

Families jammed into cars and taxis stared up at the movie poster. A young boy in a car near to me waved, pointed at the poster, and made his hand into a gun, to fire at me. He pulled the trigger. I pretended that a bullet had struck my arm, and the boy laughed. His family laughed. People in other cars laughed.

The boy’s kindly faced Mother urged the boy to shoot me again. The boy pointed his finger-gun, aimed with a squinting eye, and fired. I did the-Bad-Guy-coming-to-a-bad-end, and sprawled out on the tank of my bike.

When I sat up again everyone in the cars clapped or waved or laughed.

I took a bow, and turned to see Abdullah’s ashen mortification.

We are Company men , I heard him thinking. Respect and fear. One or the other, and nothing else. Respect and fear.

Only the sea on the coast ride to the Mahesh hotel finally softened his stern expression. He rode slowly, one hand on the throttle, one hand on his hip. I rode up close beside him, resting my left hand on his shoulder.

When we shook hands goodbye, I asked one of the questions that had been on my mind throughout the ride.

‘Did you know about the sword?’

‘Everyone knows about it, Lin, my brother.’

Our hands parted, but he held my eyes.

‘Some of them,’ he said carefully, ‘they are jealous that Khaderbhai left the sword to you.’

‘Andrew.’

‘He is one. But he is not the only one.’

I was silent, my lips tight on the curse that was staining the inside of my mouth. Sanjay’s words, Don’t mistake your usefulness for your value , had forked through my heart like summer lightning, and a voice was calling me to go, to run, anywhere else, before it ended in bad blood. And then there was Sri Lanka.

‘I’ll see you tomorrow, Inshallah ,’ I said, standing to park my bike.

‘Tomorrow, Inshallah ,’ he replied, stepping his bike into gear and pulling away from the kerb.

Without looking back, he called out to me. ‘ Allah hafiz! ’ May Allah be your guardian!

‘ Allah hafiz ,’ I replied, to myself.

The Sikh security guards at the door of the Mahesh hotel looked with some interest at the sword-shaped parcel strapped to my back, but let me pass with a nod and a smile. They knew me well.

Passports, abandoned by guests who skipped out of the hotel without paying their bills, found their way to me through the security teams or desk managers at most of the hotels in the city.

It was a steady stream of books, as illegal passports were known, running to fifteen or more a month in the skip season. And they were the best kind of books: the kind that people who lose them don’t report.

Every security office in every five-star hotel in the world has a wall of pictures of people who skipped out on a hotel bill, some of them leaving their passports behind. Most people looked at that wall to identify criminals. For me, it was shopping.

In the lobby of the hotel, I scanned the open-plan coffee lounge and saw Lisa, still at a meeting with friends beside the wide, tall windows that looked at the sea.

I decided to wash some of the street dirt off my face and hands before greeting her, and made my way toward the men’s room. As I reached the door I heard a voice, speaking from behind me.

‘Is that a sword on your back, or are you just furious to see me?’

I turned to see Ranjit, the budding media tycoon, the handsome athlete and political activist: the man that Karla, my Karla, had married. He was smiling.

‘I’m always furious to see you, Ranjit. Goodbye.’

He smiled again. It looked like an honest, earnest smile. I didn’t look close enough to find out, because the man smiling at me was married to Karla.

‘Goodbye, Ranjit.’

‘What? No, wait!’ he said quickly. ‘I’d like to talk to you.’

‘We just did. Goodbye, Ranjit.’

‘No, really!’ he said, dodging in front of me, his smile almost intact. ‘I’ve just finished a meeting, and I was on my way out, but I’m damn glad that I ran into you.’

‘Run into someone else, Ranjit.’

‘Please. Please. That’s… that’s not a word I use every day.’

‘What do you want?’

‘There’s… there’s something I’ve been wanting to talk to you about.’

I glanced around toward Lisa, sitting with her friends. She looked up and caught my eye. I nodded. She understood, and nodded back, before returning her attention back to her friends.

‘What’s on your mind?’ I asked.

A ripple of surprise scudded across the flawless landscape of his fine features.

‘If it’s a bad time -’

‘We don’t have a good time, Ranjit. Get to the point.’

‘Lin… I’m sure we could be friends, if we just -’

‘Don’t make this about you and me, Ranjit. There is no you and me. I’d know it, if there was.’

‘You speak as if you don’t like me,’ Ranjit said. ‘But you don’t know me at all.’

‘I don’t like you. And that’s just already. If I know you better, it’s sure to get worse.’

‘Why?’

‘Why what?’

‘Why don’t you like me?’

‘You know, if you stand in the lobby stopping everyone who doesn’t like you, and asking them why, you better get a room, because you’ll be here all night.’

‘But, wait… it’s… I don’t understand.’

‘Your ambition is putting Karla at risk,’ I said quietly. ‘I don’t like it. I don’t like you , for doing it. Is that clear enough?’

‘It’s Karla that I wanted to talk to you about,’ he said, studying my face.

‘What about Karla?’

‘I want to be sure she’s safe, that’s all.’

‘What do you mean, safe?’

His brow furrowed into a discomfited frown. He fatigue-sighed, allowing his head to fall forward for a moment.

‘I don’t even know how to start this… ’

I looked around, and then directed him to a space in the wide foyer, with two empty chairs. Pulling the sword from my shoulders, I sat facing him, the calico-wrapped weapon resting on my knees.