Gregory Roberts - The Mountain Shadow

‘ Ooperwale ,’ I replied. ‘Let’s go.’

‘Okay,’ he said, becoming serious as he launched into his iterations of the latest prices and rates.

I only needed the gold and currency exchange rates, but I let Kesh run through the whole of his repertoire. I liked him, and admired the subtle genius that allowed him to hold hundreds of facts in his current memory, adjusting them as often as three times in a single day, without a decimal point of error.

Most gangsters held fringe dwellers like Kesh in contempt. I never understood it. The small-scale street outlaws were harmless people, surviving through cleverness and adapted skills in a hostile environment that sometimes didn’t treat them well. I also had a soft spot for independent outlaws: men and women who refused to join the ranks of law-abiding citizens, no less resolutely than they rejected the violence of hardcore criminals.

When his recitation ended, I paid him twice the going rate for a Memory Man’s mantra, and he gave me a smile like sunlight streaming off the sea.

Inside the restaurant I sat with my back to a wall. I had a clear view of the street. A waiter nudged my shoulder with his belly. I ordered a vegetable sandwich and a coffee.

I didn’t have to signal anyone: I only had to wait. I knew that the information network of the street was already at work. One or more of the endlessly drifting street guys roaming the tourist beat would’ve seen me park my motorcycle, talk with Kesh, and enter the restaurant. Word would already be spreading through neighbouring lanes and dens: Linbaba is sitting at Trafalgar .

Before I finished my sandwich, the first contact arrived. It was Billy Bhasu. Hesitating close to my table, he glanced around nervously, and spoke very softly.

‘Hello, Mr Lin. My name is Billy Bhasu. I am working with Dennis, the Sleeping Baba. You might be remembering me?’

‘Sit down. You’re making the boss nervous.’

He glanced at the restaurant boss, leaning on the counter, his hand playing in the trays of change as if they were pebbles in a stream. Billy Bhasu sat down.

A waiter appeared immediately, slapping a grimy vinyl menu booklet in front of Billy. The rules in all the drop-off bars and restaurants were simple: no fighting or disturbances that might upset the civilians, and everyone buys lunch, whether they eat it or not.

I ordered tea and a takeaway sandwich parcel for Billy. When the waiter left us, Billy came to the point quickly.

‘I have a chain,’ he said, reaching into his pocket. ‘Solid gold it is, with a picture locket attached.’

He put the gold locket and chain on the table. I picked it up, running my thumb over the links of the chain, and then prised open the locket. I found two photographs: a young man and a young woman, facing each other and smiling happily across the hinge of their little world: a world that had found its way into my hand.

‘I don’t take stolen goods, Billy.’

‘What stolen , baba?’ he demanded indignantly. ‘This was a trade, a fair trade, the locket for dope. And good quality. Almost fifty per cent pure. All square and fair!’

I looked at the photographs of the young couple again. They were northern Europeans, bright-eyed and healthy; from the kind of social background that put perfect teeth in untroubled smiles. They looked about twenty years old.

‘How much do you want?’

‘Oh, baba,’ he grinned, beginning the Indian bargaining ritual. ‘That is for you to say, not me.’

‘I’ll give you five dollars American.’

‘But,’ he spluttered, ‘it’s much too less , for such a piece!’

‘You said it was for me to say.’

‘Yes, baba, but it is for you to say a fair price!’

‘I’ll give you sixty per cent of the gram weight price. Do you agree it’s eighteen carat gold?

‘It’s… it’s maybe twenty-two carats, baba. No?’

‘It’s eighteen. Sixty per cent. Or try your luck with the Marwaris, at Zaveri Bazaar.’

‘Oh, no, baba!’ he said quickly. ‘If I deal with the Marwaris, I’ll end up owing them money. They’re too smart. I’d rather deal with you. No offence.’

‘None taken. Fifty per cent.’

‘Done at sixty.’

I called the waiter, passed him the locket and chain, and told him to ask the manager to weigh it on his jewellery scale. The waiter slouched over to a desk, and handed over the chain.

Using a fine scale that he kept under the counter, the manager weighed the locket and chain, wrote the gram weight on a piece of paper, and handed them back to the waiter.

The waiter passed the paper to me, hefted the chain and locket in the bowl of his hand for a moment as if checking the accuracy of the scale, and then dropped them into my upturned palm.

I glanced at the figure on the paper, and then showed it to Billy Bhasu. He nodded. Using Kesh’s figure for the current rate, I rounded the amount to the nearest ten rupees, and wrote the figure on the same sheet of paper, showing it to Billy. He nodded again.

‘You know, baba,’ he said, as he put away the money, ‘I saw that Naveen Adair before, that Anglo detective fellow. He gave me a message, if I see you in any place today.’

‘As it happens, I’m in any place right now.’

‘Yes,’ he replied earnestly. ‘So, I can give you his message.’

There was a pause.

‘Would you like another sandwich parcel, Billy?’

‘Actually, yes, Linbaba. Jamal is waiting outside.’

I waved for another parcel.

‘Are we good for the message, now?’

‘Oh, yes. Naveen said, let me be exactly sure, Tell Linbaba, if you see him, that I have nothing new about the man in the suit. ’

‘That’s it? That’s the message?’

‘Yes, baba. It’s important, no?’

‘Critical. Let me ask you something, Billy.’

‘Yes, baba?’

‘If I didn’t buy your chain, were you gonna give me the message?’

‘Of course, baba,’ he grinned, ‘but for more than just two sandwiches.’

The sandwich parcels arrived. Billy Bhasu put his hand on them.

‘So… so now… I’ll take my leave?’

‘Sure.’

When he left the restaurant, I looked again at the photographs of the smiling young couple. I closed the locket, and dropped it into my shirt pocket.

For the next four hours, I worked my way through the other six drop-off restaurants and bars in my district, spending about forty minutes in each one.

It was an average day. I bought a passport, three pieces of jewellery, seven hundred and fifty US dollars in cash, an assortment of other currencies, and a fine watch.

That last item, in the last trade of the day, in the last of the bars, involved me in an angry dispute with two of the street guys.

The man who brought the watch to me, Deepak, settled the price quickly. It was a price far below the actual value of the watch, but far more than he could expect to receive from the professional buyers in the Fort area.

At the moment of the handover, a second man, Ishtiaq, entered the bar, shouting for a share of the money. Ishtiaq’s strategy was simple: make a big enough fuss to force a concession from Deepak, before the latter had the chance to slip away in the crowded street.

In other circumstances I’d have taken my money back, shoved both men out of the bar, and forgotten about them. My long-standing relationship with the bar’s owner was more important than any one transaction.

But when I’d put the watch to my ear, I’d heard the reassuring trip-click movement, twitching toward its rundown cycle: the mechanical heart beating its rhythm reward for the daily winding fidelity of its owner. It was, as it happened, my favourite watch.