Gregory Roberts - The Mountain Shadow

‘That’s not advised,’ I said.

He released his grip on my arm.

‘Sorry, I… just… think about it,’ he said, the grin leaning in through the doorway of his eyes again. ‘I’ll talk to you in a few days. We won’t be alone in this, if you throw in with me. I’m already talkin’ with others, and there’s plenty of them that’s interested, make no mistake. Think about it. That’s not too much to ask for savin’ your talk softly arse today, is it? I’d like to have you in this with me. I’ll need someone to talk to. Someone I trust. Just think about it, that’s all I ask.’

I rode away, leaving him standing there under the blue plastic awning. I didn’t think about his offer, but I did think about him, that afternoon, as I made the rounds of cafés and bars we used as passport drops.

I talked with my contacts. I listened to gangster street music: gossip, slander, lies and denunciation. Always funny. But in every idle moment my thoughts returned to Concannon, and to those tears he resented so bitterly, but failed to stop.

What dream, what hope, what despair drives us to the things we do, just to desert us when the deed is done? What hollow things are they, motive and reason, born at night to fade so quickly in the sunlight of consequence? What we do in life lives on inside us, long after ambition and fear lie frosted and opaqued on forgotten shores. What we do in life, more than what we think or say, is what we are.

Concannon was running into crime, and I was already running away from it. For too long I’d done things because the fear of capture became a mirror, a face in the water, not really me, and I absolved myself of my own sins. But the waters were stirred, and the face I’d always put on the things that I did was blurred, and vanishing.

I waited for Lisa outside the Mahesh hotel, enjoying the city. It had rained intermittently but heavily through the afternoon, yet the early evening air was hot and dry beneath the brooding sky.

Occasional waves struck at the low sea wall, crashing up and over to splash across half the wide street. Children courted the waves, running from spray to spray, while couples skipped away.

Hopeful carriage drivers slowed beside the strollers, trying to entice them into their rickety, high-wheeled carts. Peanut sellers wandered among the walkers, fanning the glowing coals they carried in baskets around their necks. Smoke from the little fires, filled with the flavour of roasted peanuts, drifted among the strollers, temptation turning their heads.

The whole city, washed clean by the heavy rains, was more fragrant than usual. The cloud-soaked sky locked in scents of food cooking on hundreds of small street stalls, bhel puri , pav bhaji , pakodas , and sweet pungencies from paan sellers, incense traders, and the frangipani garlands being sold at every traffic signal.

I counted thoughts on perfumed strands, and then I heard her voice.

‘A penny,’ Lisa said.

I turned.

‘They don’t make pennies any more,’ I said, pulling her close to me and kissing her.

‘Are you forgetting this is Bombay?’ she asked, not resisting me. ‘People get arrested for kissing in public.’

‘Maybe they’ll put us in the same prison cell,’ I suggested, holding her close.

‘I… don’t think so,’ she laughed.

‘Then I’ll escape, and come bust you out.’

‘And then what?’

‘And then I’ll bring you back here, on an evening just like this, and kiss you again, just like this.’

‘Wait a minute,’ she said, studying my face. ‘You’ve been fighting again.’

‘Are you kidding?’

‘Come off it. You’re trying to distract me! That’s a dirty trick, buster.’

‘What?’

‘Jesus, Lin! Fighting again? What the fuck?’

‘Lisa, it’s cool. I’m fine. And I’m right here, with you.’

I kissed her face.

‘We better go,’ she said, as she frowned out of the kiss, ‘or we’ll miss him.’

‘Miss who?’

‘Miss whom , writer,’ she said. ‘You’ll find out, soon enough.’

She led me on the short walk from the seafront to the promenade that surrounded the nearby Air India building. The offices were closed, but the dim night-lights in the ground-floor reception area revealed the desks and doorways within.

When we reached a locked glass door, close to the back of the building, Lisa signalled me to wait. She glanced around nervously at the wedge of street we could see from the rear door, but there was no-one in sight.

‘So… what are we -’

‘We’re waiting,’ she interrupted me.

‘Waiting… for?’

‘For him .’

There was a flicker of light within the building. A security guard carrying a torch approached the door. He opened it with a key on a heavy chain, and held the door open for us. He urged us to enter quickly, and then locked the door again behind us.

‘This way,’ he said. ‘Follow me closely.’

Weaving his way along a series of corridors and between rows of silent desks, he brought us to a service elevator at the rear of the building.

‘Emergency lift,’ he said, smiling happily. ‘After stop at top, walk two floors to roof. My bonus, please.’

Lisa handed him a roll of notes. The guard saluted us, pressed the button to open the doors of the elevator, and waved us inside.

‘So, we’re gonna rob the Air India company,’ I said as we ascended in the lift. ‘And ten minutes ago, you were worried about a public kiss.’

‘I wasn’t worried,’ she laughed. ‘And we’re not here to rob the place. We’re here for a private party.’

The doors opened on a storage floor, with walls of filing cabinets and open shelves stacked with dusty folders.

‘Ah, the Kafka Room. Can’t wait to see the menu.’

‘Come on!’ Lisa said, rushing to the stairwell. ‘We have to hurry.’

Taking the steps two at a time, she led me up the stairs. At the top she hesitated, with her hand on the emergency release bar of the closed door.

‘I hope he remembered to leave this door unlocked,’ she said breathlessly, and then pushed on the bar.

We stepped through onto the roof of the building. It was a vast area, with several small metal huts on the periphery.

A huge structure towered ten metres over us, braced by heavy steel girders. It was the illuminated logo of the Air India company: a stylised archer, with a drawn bow, circled by a great disc.

The gigantic figure rose from a central support pylon, fixed to a rotating steel table, which was in turn supported by an array of girders and cables.

Like every other Mumbaikar, I’d seen the huge sign rotating above the Air India building hundreds of times, but standing so close to it, so high above the rolling sea, was a different truth.

‘ Damn! ’

‘We made it in time,’ Lisa grinned.

‘There’s a bad time for this? What a view!’

‘Wait,’ she said, staring up at the archer. ‘Wait.’

There was a whirring, grinding sound, as if a generator had started up nearby. The throb of an electric turbine began, building from a soft purr to a persistent whine. Then the click and stutter of a condenser, or several of them, chattered from somewhere very close, at the base of the immense sign.

Suddenly, in one burst of flickering crimson colour, the great circular logo lit up, bathing the whole space in blood-red light. Moments later, the crimson archer began to rotate on its pylon axis.

Lisa was dancing little excited steps, her arms wide.

‘Isn’t it great?’

She was laughing happily.

‘It’s brilliant. I love it.’

We watched the huge wheel of scarlet light turn for some time, and then shifted to face the open sea. The clouds had swollen together to fill the whole of heaven with black brooding. Distant lightning strikes forked through the darkness: ribs of cloud, rolling and shifting on the bed of night.