Gregory Roberts - The Mountain Shadow

He swung a wild punch trying to knock me out. He missed. I snapped a fist at the gash where the ragged flap of his ear was hanging by a tongue-tip of skin. He screamed, and it rained. Sudden rain spilled and splashed on us.

Danda ran, clutching at the side of his head, rain running red into his shirt. I turned to see Concannon swinging a kick at the other departing Scorpion. The man yelped, and joined Danda, stumbling toward a stand of taxis.

Hanuman groaned, wakened by the rain. He crawled to his knees, stood unsteadily, and realised that he was alone. He hesitated for a moment.

I turned to look at Concannon quickly. The Irishman was grinning widely, all clenched teeth.

‘Oh, Lord,’ he said softly. ‘Please make this man too stupid to run away.’

Hanuman lurched away, limping after his friends.

My knife was lying in the rain, still bleeding into the bitumen. Some way down the wide road, the Scorpions tumbled into a taxi as it sped away from the rank. I picked up the knife, cleaned it, closed it and slid it into the scabbard.

‘Fuckin’ grand fight!’ Concannon said, slapping me on the shoulder. ‘Let’s get stoned.’

I didn’t want to, but I owed him that, and more.

‘Okay.’

There was a chai shop beneath a very large tree, close to where we stood. I pushed my bike under the shelter of the tree. Accepting a rag from the chai stall owner, I dried the bike off. When the job was done, I began to walk back to the road.

‘Where the fuck are you goin’?’

‘I’ll be back in a minute.’

‘We’re havin’ a civilised cup of fuckin’ tea here, you Australian barbarian.’

‘I’ll be back in a minute.’

The abandoned Scorpion motorcycles were still lying in the rain by the side of the road, leaking petrol and oil. I picked them up, stood them on their stands in the cover of the stone wall, and returned to Concannon as the tea arrived.

‘Lucky for you I came along,’ he said, sipping at a glass of chai.

‘I was doin’ okay.’

‘The fuck you were,’ he laughed.

I looked at him. When a man’s right, he’s right.

‘The fuck I was,’ I laughed. ‘You really are one mad Irish motherfucker. What are you doing here, anyway?’

‘My favourite hash shop used to be near here,’ he said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of Cuffe Parade. ‘But somebody threw a fella off a building next door, and he landed right on top of the shop. And on top of Shining Patel, the owner.’

‘You don’t say.’

‘The upside is that a notorious singer was also hit, which saved me quite a bit. I used to pay him, regularly. It was the only way I could get him to stop singin’. Where was I?’

‘You were telling me what you’re doing here.’

‘Oh, so ya think I was followin’ ya? Is that it?’ Concannon asked. ‘You must have a mighty high opinion of yourself, boyo. I’m just here buyin’ hash.’

‘Uh-huh.’

Some time passed. It was a strangely brooding silence between men, brooding in strangely different directions.

‘Why did you help me?’

He looked at me with an expression that seemed genuinely hurt.

‘And why the fuck would one white man not help another white man, in a fuckin’ heathen place like this?’

‘There you go again.’

‘Alright, alright,’ he said quickly, putting a hand on my knee to calm me down. ‘I know you’ve got a soft heart. I know you’re a compassionate sort. That’s the beauty of ya, and there it is. You’ve even got compassion for motorcycles, may God have pity on you. But you don’t like my plain talk. You don’t like it when a man calls a spade a heathen, or a faggot a mincer.’

‘I think we’re done here, Concannon.’

‘Hear me out, man. I know it offends your sensibilities. I understand that. I truly do. I don’t like that about you, and I don’t respect it. I’ll be straight up about that. You can’t respect kindness. Not really. You know what I’m talkin’ about. You’ve done time behind the wall, on the other side of things, as I have. But you’re a compassionate man, even though you’re more like me than you think.’

‘Concannon -’

‘Wait. I’m not finished. Compassion’s a very strange thing. It comes from deep inside. People know it when they see it, because you can’t fake it. I know. I’ve tried. I was terrible at it. I got sick, when I tried. I had to go back to being a genuine, uncaring cunt, just to get well again. It’s genuine, see, even being an uncaring cunt, and I’m drawn to genuine things, even if I don’t like them. Do you see what I mean?’

‘You don’t know me at all,’ I said, meeting his eye.

‘Well, that’s where you’re wrong,’ he smiled. ‘I’ve been in Bombay for a while, you know. A few days after I got here, I heard your name in a conversation of unsavoury types at an opium den. Then I heard it again, twice in quick succession. At first, I thought it was two foreign fellas they were talkin’ about, until I figured out that Lin and Shantaram were one and the same bad-mannered miscreant. You.’

‘So you were following me.’

‘I didn’t say that. What I said was that I got intrigued. I started asking about you. I made it my business to get to know people you know, and people you do business with. I even know your girlfriend.’

‘What?’

‘She didn’t tell ya that she met me?’

He grinned. I was beginning not to like that grin.

‘I wonder why she didn’t tell you? Maybe she likes me.’

‘What the fuck are you talking about?’

‘It’s no big deal,’ he said. ‘I met her at an art exhibition.’

My raised eyebrow provoked him.

‘Oh, what ? Because I’m a big lump of a Northern Irish potato-muncher, I can’t be interested in art? Is that it?’

‘Get to the point.’

‘There is no point, boyo. I met Lisa – that’s her name, right? – at an exhibition. We talked, that’s all.’

‘Why?’

‘Look, I didn’t even know she was your girlfriend, until one of her friends mentioned your name, then I put two-and-you together, so to speak. I swear.’

‘Keep away from her, Concannon.’

‘Why? She seemed to like me. I think we hit it off, a little bit. I certainly liked her. You’ll have to let her go, one of these days, but I’m sure you already know that, don’t you?’

‘That’s it,’ I said, standing.

‘Wait a minute!’ he implored, standing with me and putting a hand gently on my arm. ‘Please. I don’t want to fight you, man. I didn’t… I mean… I’m not tryin’ to upset you. It’s just my way. I know it’s fucked up. I really do. But I don’t know any other way to be. It’s like I said before, about you. Even if you don’t like it, you have to see that it’s genuine. This is what me being genuine looks like. I truly don’t mean to hurt your feelings. And I truly would like to talk.’

I resisted, staring back at him and trying to read his eyes. The pupils were tiny: pinpoints vanishing in an ice-blue tide. I looked away.

On the road nearby, a traffic warden’s truck pulled up beside the Scorpion gang motorcycles. Leaping from the back, the team of lifters dragged the motorcycles to the side of the truck, then hoisted them onto the back, cramming them up against others that had been seized for parking illegally.

Concannon followed my gaze as I watched the operation.

‘If I hadn’t come along when I did,’ he said softly, ‘it might’ve been your dead body bein’ thrown onto the back of a truck.’

He was right. I didn’t like him, and I was pretty sure that he was crazy. But he’d stepped in at exactly the right time, and he’d saved me.