Gregory Roberts - The Mountain Shadow

Jaswant himself was in a swanky suit, complete with a tie.

‘What the hell, Jaswant?’ I said.

‘You’ve got to embrace change , man,’ Jaswant said. ‘Hello, Miss Karla. How lovely to see you again.’

‘Nice suit, Jaswant,’ she replied.

‘Thank you, Miss Karla. Do you think it fits okay?’

‘Very slimming. Come, say hi. But be careful, I’m dripping wet.’

I was still frowning old doubt on the new desk.

‘What’s the matter?’ he asked.

‘Your reception desk looks like an airline counter.’

‘So?’

‘An airline counter is something you go to because you have to, not because you want to.’

‘You can visit the old desk, any time you want. Oleg bought it. It’s in your rooms.’

‘Oleg! Damn, he’s good. He beat me to it.’

‘The new desk’s okay, Jaswant,’ Karla said. ‘Put a plant on the top shelf, and a nice big shell beside it, and maybe a blown-glass paperweight on the second shelf. It’ll soften things. I’ve got a shell you can borrow, if you like, and a paperweight that has a dandelion in it.’

‘Really? I’d love that.’

‘There’s no rum in here,’ I said, wiping condensation off the glass door of his new refrigerated cabinet. ‘And no cheese.’

‘There’s a new menu,’ Jaswant said, flipping a laminated card on the laminated airline counter.

I didn’t look at it.

‘I liked the old menu.’

‘We didn’t have an old menu,’ Jaswant frowned.

‘Exactly.’

‘The Lost Love Bureau is bringing a lot of people through the door now, and I have to present the right corporate image. You’ve got to get with the times, Lin.’

‘I prefer it when the times get with me.’

‘Heads-up, Jaswant,’ Karla said. ‘I’ve been thinking of making some changes to my rooms.’

‘Changes?’ Jaswant asked, commerce tightening his new tie.

Karla dismantled the Bedouin tent over the next few days, and we painted her rooms red, with black trim on the doors and doorways. Jaswant couldn’t complain, because he’d sold us the paint.

She cut pictures from science magazines, and had them mounted in Bollywood-gold frames. She framed a feather, and a leaf, and a page from a book of poems that she found floating in the breeze in a quiet street:

The Begging Rain

Afterwards

when I am not with you

and you are alone enough

to count the nails in your heart,

studded like a treasure house door,

when you arrange your silence

in the vase of an hour,

memories of our hands,

and a spike of laughter

colouring of my eyes,

when you sit within the swell

of heartbeat,

the purple tide of daydream

lapping at the shores of love,

and your skin sings, perfume-pierced,

surrender to this thought of me:

as mimosas long for monsoon,

I long for you,

as crimson cactus flowers long for Moon

I long for you,

and in my afterwards,

when I am not with you,

my head turns to the window of life

and begs for rain.

She put up large pictures of Petra Kelly and Ida Lupino, two of her heroes, in black baroque frames. She took her balcony plants inside, and filled every corner with them, leaving a few outside to rotate in sunlight.

I think she tried to recreate the mountain forest in a hotel suite, and she did a good job. No matter where you sat in the main room you were looking at plants, or touched by them.

And she installed a long, thin, stylised sculpture of a Trojan soldier, sculpted by Taj. I tried to put a plant in front of it, but she wouldn’t let me.

‘Really? It’s because of this guy that you left the gallery.’

‘He’s a good sculptor,’ Karla said, arranging the doomed soldier, ‘even if he’s not a terrific guy.’

I used it as a hat stand. I had to buy a hat, but it was worth it. And little by little, things settled down to the semblance of peace that’s good enough, when you know enough about bad enough.

Oleg’s green rooms, as my rooms became to match the couch, were popular. Karla and I went to a few of his parties, and had a good time. We laughed our way through several more parties, listening to the crazy conversations being shouted next door, transmitted through our wall in high infidelity.

The young Russian had given up on Irina, the girl he called his Karlesha, and as the pictures he’d given to the waiters at Leopold’s faded and wrinkled, he stopped asking them if they’d seen her.

‘Why do you call Irina Karlesha ,’ I asked him once.

‘I was in love with another girl named Irina,’ he replied, his perpetual smile fading in the half-light of reflection. ‘She was my first love. It was the first time I ever really fell down, inside, with love for a girl. We were both sixteen, and it was over within a year, but I still felt unfaithful to her, the first Irina, by using the name. Karlesha was a pet name that my father used for his sister, my aunt, and I always liked it.’

‘So… you didn’t feel unfaithful to Elena by going with Irina, but you felt unfaithful to your childhood sweetheart, by using the same name?’

‘You can only be unfaithful to someone you love,’ he said, frowning at my ignorance. ‘And I was never in love with Elena. I was in love with Irina, and I’m in love with Karlesha.’

‘And the girls who come and go in your green room?’

‘I’ve given up hope that I will see Karlesha again,’ he replied, looking away. ‘Didier’s T-shirt strategy didn’t work. Maybe it’s just not meant to be.’

‘Do you think love might spark with one of these girls?’

‘No,’ he answered quickly, brightening again. ‘I’m Russian. We R-people love very hard and very deeply. It’s why our writing and our music is so mad with passion.’

He worked madly and passionately with Naveen, and they became an intuitive team. Didier worked with them on a case that drew publicity, when they reunited lost lovers and uncovered a slavery ring at the same time, leading to arrests and the break-up of the gang.

The dangerous, debonair Frenchman devoted more time and seriousness to the Lost Love Bureau after that, and when he wasn’t holding court at Leopold’s, he was always with the young detectives, working on a shockingly urgent case.

Vinson sold his drug racket to a competitor, and went back to the ashram with Rannveig. He sent a letter to Karla, after a few weeks of penitent floor scrubbing, saying that he didn’t really connect with the holy men at the ashram, but he got on well with the gardeners who grew their marijuana for them. He was happy, and he was working on a new business plan, with Rannveig.

The Khaled Company didn’t fund any movies, and when a cop was killed in the south the truce between the police gang and the mafia gang was broken. Lightning Dilip worked triple shifts, as the prisoner count grew.

A journalist was beaten on her doorstep for telling the truth, and a politician was beaten in his home for not telling a lie. Skirmishes between the police and the Khaled Company at court hearings were commonplace, and sometimes turned into riots. The Company blamed every prosecution on religious bias, and the cops blamed every punch on criminal intent.

Khaled’s crown was slipping, and Abdullah wasn’t there to set it straight. The mystic-turned-mafia-don was losing control: his unnecessary violence was an insult to dishonest lawlessness, and everyone on Back Street wanted him to stop.

We couldn’t stop Khaled, but we did stop Lightning Dilip. Karla said that she had a birthday present for me, and she wanted to give it to me early.