Gregory Roberts - The Mountain Shadow

‘Is… is… is my place still reserved, inside?’ Didier gasped.

‘Front and centre,’ I said. ‘What happened, with Oleg and Karlesha?’

‘Oleg ran inside,’ Didier replied, his heart slowing to medicated levels again, ‘and he just picked her up, like a sack of onions, and walked out with her into the night.’

‘You didn’t follow them?’ Karla asked, laughing.

‘Of course,’ Didier said. ‘Didier is a detective of the Lost Love Bureau, after all.’

‘Where did they go?’ I asked.

‘He disappeared,’ Didier hissed, ‘in Randall’s limousine. He is exasperating, that Randall.’

‘In the nicest possible ways,’ Karla said.

‘Are you not going inside?’ Didier asked, looking at the crowd laughing in the new café.

‘We’re gonna sit here for a while,’ Karla said. ‘Go ahead, Didier. Class the joint up.’

‘Then it is Didier who must raise the flag for love and faith,’ he said, draping his scarf over his shoulder. ‘We live in the age of opening your mouth as wide as you can. Watch me, as I scream and shout for us.’

He straightened his jacket, crossed the footpath and embraced his way inside. He sat beside a young businessman, stumbling into the handsome victim as he sat. The businessman liked it, and began talking brightly.

We sat down and we watched the bustling, successful opening for a while in silence, and then Karla leaned against me.

‘I like bike-talk,’ she said. ‘Even when we’re side by side.’

‘So do I.’

‘You wanna know who Kavita Singh’s new silent partner is?’ she asked softly.

‘Will it scare me?’

‘Probably,’ she replied.

‘Good. Tell me.’

‘Madame Zhou,’ Karla said.

‘How did that happen?’

‘Madame Zhou wanted to blackmail her former clients, and make a comeback as a power broker in Bombay. Fate, with a little help, brought her to Kavita. Zhou has a book, with a record of every customer she ever had, and every sexual preference. I’d like to read it, actually, when they’re done with it.’

‘Why did Zhou come to Kavita for help?’

‘I put the idea in her head.’

‘How?’

‘You want all the answers, don’t you?’

‘I want all the everything, when it comes to you,’ I laughed.

‘I knew about the book, and I knew she was weakened, without the Palace, but still ambitious. I also knew the name of her most loyal patron. He’s a businessman, and I bought his business. In exchange, he suggested that the ideal person to broker the blackmail ring was Kavita Singh. That’s when Madame Zhou started getting interested in Kavita.’

‘And when the twins were killed, she went to Kavita for help.’

‘Just as I’d hoped she would. Vices live in habits, and habits make people predictable.’

‘What does Kavita get out of it?’

‘Apart from the sex?’

‘Please, Karla, don’t -’

‘I’m kidding. I told Kavita, six weeks ago, that it was Madame Zhou who killed her boyfriend. Her fiancée, actually. He objected to Madame Zhou’s bribery of officials, in his area. He was getting a following. She killed him for it.’

‘How did you know who did it?’

‘Do you really wanna know?’

‘Well, I… ’

‘It was Lisa.’

‘Okay, Lisa? How did she know?’

‘She was working for Madame Zhou at the time, at the Palace of Happy. It was before I got her out of there.’

‘And burned the place down.’

‘And burned the place down. Lisa couldn’t tell Kavita what she knew, so she told me.’

‘Why couldn’t Lisa tell Kavita?’

‘You know how Lisa was. She couldn’t talk to anyone she was having sex with.’

‘I’m beginning to think you knew her better than I did.’

‘No,’ she said, smiling softly. ‘But we did have an understanding about you.’

‘She said something to me about that. How she met you at Kayani’s, and talked about us.’

She laughed gently.

‘You really wanna know what happened?’

‘Again, with the really wanna know?’ I smiled.

‘I kept tabs on you, from the moment you walked away from me. At first, I was happy for you, because you seemed to be happy with Lisa. But I knew Lisa, and I knew she’d mess it up.’

‘Wait a minute. You were checking on me, for two years?’

‘Of course. I love you.’

So clear, so light: trust in a human eye.

‘How does this… ’ I began, recollecting myself, ‘connect to your little understanding with Lisa?’

She smiled, sadly.

‘I heard that Lisa was back to her wicked ways, and was running around on you, a lot, and that you didn’t know about it.’

‘I didn’t ask about it.’

‘I know that,’ she said. ‘But everyone was talking about it. Everyone except you.’

‘It doesn’t matter. It didn’t matter.’

‘It wasn’t right, because you’re better than that, and you deserve better than that. So, I walked up behind her one day, at her favourite dress shop, and tapped her on the shoulder.’

‘And what did you say to her?’

‘I told her to tell you exactly what she was doing, and let you decide if you wanted to stay, or to stop slutting around.’

‘Slutting around? That’s pretty harsh.’

‘Harsh? There wasn’t a man or a woman safe at that art gallery, including the customers. I could have cared less, except that she was doing it to you.’

‘And you made some kind of agreement with her?’

‘Not then. I gave her a chance. I loved her. You know how easy it was to love her, when you were looking at her. But she didn’t change. So I sat down with her at Kayani’s and told her that I love you, and I didn’t want her to hurt you any more.’

‘What did she say?’

‘She agreed to let you go. She wasn’t in love with you, but she was deep in like with you. She said she wanted to do it a piece at a time, and not just disappear in a cold break.’

‘You broke us up, Lisa and me?’ I asked, disturbed by a gust of truth. ‘Is that what happened?’

‘Not exactly,’ she sighed. ‘I can see her face, when I found her, on the bed. I remember what I said to her. If you don’t tell the truth, and you keep on hurting him, I’ll stop you.’

‘And you meant it? Even though you loved her?’

‘Every dinner you went to with Lisa in that last year,’ she said quietly, ‘you were dining with her lovers, husband and wife both, sometimes, and you were the only one at the table who didn’t know it. I’m sorry.’

‘She was out a lot, and I never asked her. I was away a lot, and I couldn’t tell her where I’d been, or what I’d been smuggling. She was in trouble, and I didn’t realise it.’

‘She wasn’t in trouble, she was trouble. When she agreed to stop messing with you that day at Kayani’s, she made a pass at me.’

‘She did?’ I laughed.

‘Hell, yeah. She was Lisa. Beautiful, crazy and popular.’

‘That she was.’

‘You know, at first I thought you were naïve. But you’re not. You’re trusting, and I love that about you. I love being trusted. Trust is the soul’s drug of choice. It meant so much to me that you didn’t give up on me. It meant more to me that we did it apart on trust, than if we’d done it together. Do you know what I mean?’

‘I think I do. But we’re in it together from now on, Karla.’

‘In it together from now on,’ she repeated, leaning against me.

‘You really watched out for me, all that time?’

‘I did. And you never left the city, as you said you might.’

‘I couldn’t. Not while you were still here.’

In front of us people were laughing and joking on the footpath outside Love & Faith. I scanned the street for threats, taking in every pickpocket, drug dealer and racketeer working the edges of the herd. It was okay: illicitly quiet.