Gregory Roberts - The Mountain Shadow

‘Shut up!’

‘Stay cool, Danda,’ Vishnu soothed. ‘He’s just trying to keep the subject off the subject. Don’t let him bait you.’

‘A demigod,’ I mused. ‘Ever asked yourself how often you get the short stick around here, Danda?’

‘Shut up!’

‘You know what?’ Vishnu said, stifling a yawn. ‘Fuck him. Go ahead, Danda. Fuck his happiness, if you want.’

Danda rushed at me, swinging punches. As I moved my head quickly, left and right, he only connected with one in every three. Suddenly he stopped. When I held my head still long enough to glance up, I saw the big man, the man I’d hit on the point of the chin, pulling Danda away by the shoulder.

The big man punched at my face. He was wearing a brass ring on his middle finger. I felt it crunch along the curves of my cheek and jaw. The big man knew what he was doing. He didn’t break anything, he just made it unwell. Then he changed tactic, and smacked me hard on the sides of the head with open-handed slaps.

If you beat a man with your fists for long enough, your knuckles will shatter, or the man will die, or both. But if you break him up a little with your fists, to make sure that a good, hard slap is filled with pain, you can go on beating him all day long with an open hand.

Torture. It’s heavy and flat in that space. There’s a density to it, a centripetal pull so strong that there’s almost nothing you can take from it; so little you can learn that isn’t dark all the way through.

But one thing I came to know is that when the beating starts, you shut your mouth. You don’t speak. You keep your mouth shut, until it ends. And you don’t scream, if you can help it.

‘Okay,’ Vishnu said, when the month of two minutes ended.

The big man stepped back, accepted a towel from Danda and wiped his sweat-soaked face. Danda reached up to rub the big man’s shoulders.

‘Tell me about Pakistan,’ Vishnu demanded, holding a cigarette to my lips.

I drew in the smoke with dribbles of blood, and then puffed it out. I had no idea what he was talking about.

‘Tell me about Pakistan.’

I stared back at him.

‘We know you went to Goa,’ Vishnu said slowly. ‘We know you picked up some guns. So, I will ask you again. Tell me about Pakistan.’

Guns, Goa, Sanjay: it was all coming home with one turn of the karmic wheel. But there’s a voice inside my fear, and sooner or later it says, Let’s get it over with .

‘A lot of people think the capital of Pakistan is Karachi,’ I said, through swollen lips. ‘But it’s not.’

Vishnu laughed, and then stopped laughing.

‘Tell me about Pakistan.’

‘Great food, nice music,’ I said.

Vishnu glanced at the tip of his cigarette, and then raised his eyes to the big man.

And it started again. And I limped through thick mud as each new slap on the side of my head smacked me closer to the fog.

When the big man paused, resting his hands on his thighs, Danda seized the moment to flog me, with a thin bamboo rod. It left me soaking wet with suffered sweat, but woke me up.

‘How are your balls now , madachudh ?’ Danda screamed at me, kneeling so close that I could smell mustard oil and bad-fear sweat in the armpits of his shirt.

I started laughing, as you do sometimes, when you’re being

tortured.

Vishnu waved his hand.

The sudden silence that followed the gesture was so complete that it seemed the whole world had stopped for a moment.

Vishnu said something. I couldn’t hear him. I realised, slowly, that the silence was a ringing in my ears that only I could hear. He was staring at me, with a quizzical expression, as if he’d just noticed a stray dog, and was wondering whether to play with it or kick it with his Gucci loafers.

Another man wiped the blood from my face with a rag smelling of petrol and rotting mould. I spat out blood and bile.

‘How do you feel?’ Vishnu asked me, absently.

I knew the survivor’s rules. Don’t speak. Don’t say a word . But I couldn’t stop anger writing words, and couldn’t stop saying them once they were in my head.

‘Islamabad. The capital of Pakistan,’ I said. ‘It’s not Karachi.’

He walked toward me, drawing a small semi-automatic pistol from his jacket pocket. The star sapphire in his eyes showed a tiny image of my skull, already crushed.

The entry door of the warehouse opened. A chai wallah, a boy of perhaps twelve, stepped through from the bright light of the street, bringing six glasses of tea in one wire basket, and six glasses of water in another.

‘Ah, chai,’ Vishnu said, a sudden wide smile smoothing out wrinkles of rage.

He put the pistol away, and returned to his place near the long bench.

The chai boy handed out glasses. His ancient street-kid eyes drifted over me, but showed no reaction. Maybe he’d seen it before: a man tied to an acid-green and lemon-yellow banana lounge, and covered in blood.

The gangster who’d smeared some of the blood from my face untied my legs and hands. He took a glass of chai from the boy, and handed it to me. I struggled to hold it in both numbed hands.

Other gangsters took their glasses of chai, courteously working their way through the ritual of refusing, so that others could drink, and then accepting the compromise of half-shares, spilled into emptied water glasses.

It was a polite and convivial scene. We might’ve been friends, sitting together at Nariman Point, and admiring the sunset.

The boy hunted around the space for the empty glasses of the last round, filling his wire baskets as he went. He noticed that one of the glasses was missing.

‘Glass!’ he growled, in a feral percolation of whatever it was that accumulated in his throat.

He held up one of the baskets, showing the offending empty space where the last glass should’ve rested.

‘Glass!’

Gangsters immediately scrambled to find the missing glass, turning over empty cartons and shoving aside heaps of rags and rubbish. Danda found it.

‘ Hain! Hain! ’ he said, revealing the glass with a flourish. It’s here! It’s here!

He handed it to the boy, who snatched it suspiciously and left the warehouse. Danda looked at Vishnu quickly, his eyes bright with grovelling: Did you see that, boss? Did you see it was me who found the glass?

When I was sure that I could move without trembling, I put my glass of chai on the ground beside me. It wasn’t all pride and anger: my lips were split and swollen. I knew I’d be drinking blood as well as chai.

‘Can you stand?’ Vishnu asked, setting his empty glass aside.

I stood. I started to fall.

The big man who’d slapped me around rushed to catch me, his strong arms encircling my shoulders with solicitous care. With help, I stood again.

‘You can go,’ Vishnu said.

He shifted his eyes toward Danda.

‘Give him the keys to his bike, yaar.’

Danda fished the keys from his pocket on impulse, but approached Vishnu, rather than me.

‘Please,’ he begged. ‘He knows something. I know it. Just… just give me a little more time.’

‘It’s okay,’ Vishnu replied, smiling indulgently. ‘I already know what I need to know.’

He took the keys from Danda and threw them to me. I caught them against my chest with both numbed hands. I met his gaze.

‘Besides,’ Vishnu said, looking at me, ‘you don’t even know about Pakistan, do you? You don’t have any damn idea what we’re talking about, isn’t it?’

I didn’t answer.

‘That’s it, my friend. Ja! ’ Go!

I held his eyes for a moment, and then held out my hand, palm upwards.

‘My knives,’ I said.

Vishnu smiled, folding his arms again.