Gregory Roberts - The Mountain Shadow

‘Especially if it takes us out of Bombay.’

She drew the curtains to hide the day, and slipped off her robe to try out the mirror from Ahmed’s Old House of Style. They both looked good. She put some funk on her music system and funked at me, all mermaid arms and hips. I held her. She put her hands around my neck, and swayed in front of me.

‘Let’s go a little nuts,’ she said. ‘I think we deserve it.’

Love and faith, like hope and justice, are constellations in the infinity of truth. And they always pull a crowd. So many excited coffee devotees crowded into the Love & Faith café on its opening night that Rannveig called and told us to come a little later, because love and faith alone couldn’t guarantee a place.

We found Didier at Leo’s, happily insulted by two waiters at the same time, and giving the service that he got. Leopold’s was sit-down jumping. People laughed at anything and shouted at nothing with happy determination. It looked like fun, but we had somewhere to go.

‘Just one drink,’ Didier pleaded. ‘Love & Faith has no alcohol. Have you ever heard of such a thing?’

‘One drink,’ Karla said, sitting beside him. ‘And not a mood-fluctuation more.’

‘Waiter!’ Didier called.

‘You think you’re the only customer who ever got thirsty in this place?’ Sweetie asked, flicking a rag at the table.

‘Bring alcohol, you fool!’ Didier snapped. ‘I have a curfew.’

‘And I have a life,’ Sweetie said, slouching away.

‘Gotta give you credit, Didier,’ I said. ‘You got things back to normal. I’ve never seen Sweetie surlier.’

‘What is credit,’ Didier preened, ‘but something you have to give back, with interest.’

‘Lin’s unarmed, Didier, and naked to the world,’ Karla said. ‘He threw his knives into the sea this morning.’

‘The sea will throw them back again,’ Didier said. ‘The sea can’t get over it that we crawled onto the land. Mark my words, Lin. The sea is a jealous woman, without the charming personality.’

A man approached our table carrying a parcel. It was Vikrant, the knife-maker, and for a second I felt a twinge of guilt that his superbly made instruments, my knives, were on the bottom of a shallow sea.

‘Hi, Karla,’ he said. ‘I’ve been looking for you, Lin. Your sword is finished.’

He unwrapped the calico parcel, revealing Khaderbhai’s sword. It had been repaired with gold rivets, and they’d been moulded into the eyes of two dragons, meeting at the tail.

It was beautiful work, but it was a painful thing to remember the sword. I’d forgotten it, in the year of mountains and burning mansions, and it shamed me to know that I had.

‘I rest my case,’ Didier said. ‘The sea is a jealous woman. Didier is never wrong.’

‘You can take the boy from the sword,’ Karla said, ‘but you can’t take the sword from the boy.’

‘It’s beautiful work,’ I said. ‘How much do I owe you, Vikrant?’

‘That was a true labour of love,’ he said, moving away. ‘It’s on me. Don’t kill anyone with it. Bye, Karla.’

‘Bye, Vikrant.’

The drinks arrived, and we were about to toast, but I stopped us with a raised hand.

‘Take a look at that girl over there,’ I said.

‘Lin, it is hardly gallant to remark on another woman, when a woman is in your -’

‘Just take a good look at her, Didier.’

‘Do you think it’s her?’ Karla asked.

‘Oh, yeah.’

‘Who?’ Didier demanded.

‘Karlesha,’ Karla said. ‘It’s Oleg’s Karlesha.’

‘Is it really!’

The girl was tall and looked a little like Karla, with black hair and pale green eyes. She was wearing skin-tight black jeans, a black motorcycle shirt and cowboy boots.

‘Karlesha,’ Karla muttered. ‘Not bad style.’

‘Sweetie,’ I called, and the waiter shuffled over to me. ‘Have you still got that picture Oleg gave you?’

He scraped through his pockets petulantly, and produced a wrinkled photo. We held it up against the face of the girl, sitting five tables away.

‘Call Oleg, and get your reward,’ I said. ‘That’s the girl he’s been waiting for, over there.’

He goggled at the photograph for a while, looked at the girl, and scurried away to the phone.

‘Are we about done?’ I asked.

‘You don’t want to stay, and see Oleg and Karlesha reunited?’ Karla teased.

‘I’m tired of being Fate’s unwilling accomplice,’ I said.

‘I must see the reunion,’ Didier said. ‘And I will not move from this spot until I have witnessed it with my own eyes.’

‘Okay,’ I said, ready to leave.

A man approached our table. He was short, thin, dark-skinned and confident.

‘Excuse me,’ he said, ‘are you the one they call Shantaram?’

‘Who wants to know?’ Didier snapped.

‘My name is Tateef, and I have something to discuss with Mr Shantaram.’

‘Discuss away,’ Karla said, waving a hand at me.

‘I hear you are a man who will do anything for money,’ Tateef said.

‘That’s a mighty offensive thing to say, Tateef,’ Karla said, smiling.

‘It certainly is,’ Didier agreed. ‘How much money?’

I held up my hand to stop the auction.

‘We’ve got an appointment, Tateef,’ I said. ‘Come back at three, tomorrow. We’ll talk.’

‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Goodnight to all.’

He slipped between the tables, and out into the street.

‘You don’t even know what he has in mind, this, this, Tateef ,’ Didier warned.

‘I liked the look of him. Didn’t you?’

‘ I did,’ Karla said. ‘And I think we’re gonna see him again.’

‘Certainly not,’ Didier puffed. ‘Did you not see his shoes?’

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Military half-boot, white on the sides with salt, and on the edges of his jacket. My guess is that he’s spent a lot of time at sea, recently.’

‘I mean the style , Lin,’ Didier sighed. ‘They were hideous. I have seen taxidermy with more style.’

‘Bye, Didier,’ Karla said, standing. ‘See you at the opening.’

Karla and I rode beside the crowded night causeway, and found a bigger crowd a few blocks away at the opening of the Love & Faith coffee shop, spilling onto the footpath and a splash of the road. We parked the bike outside, and sat there for a while.

The sign over the door, showing symbols from all faiths and written in Hindi, Marathi and English, was lit with a circle of white magnolia lights.

A crimson halo of frangipani lights framed the street window, showing customers inside drinking espresso, while Vinson and Rannveig worked the Italian coffee machine, steam rising industrially.

There were three empty stools in the curved counter of fifteen. Rannveig had reserved them for us, but I wasn’t ready, yet, to go into that corner of affection they’d created.

My thoughts were of a girl from Norway, seen in a locket one hour, and seen standing in Fate’s shadow an hour later. I looked at her, smiling in love and faith’s window, already in her own forever. Vinson exchanged a quick glance with her, smiled quickly, and talked happily to a customer.

I didn’t want to go inside. There was a purity in the thing they’d become together that I didn’t want to disturb.

‘I’m staying here, for a minute,’ I said, standing beside the bike. ‘You can go ahead. I’ll be there in a minute.’

‘Always together,’ Karla said, sitting on the bike again, and lighting a joint.

Didier joined us, a calming hand against his breathless chest.

‘What happened?’ Karla asked.

Didier held a hand out to stop her, regaining his breath.