Gregory Roberts: The Mountain Shadow

‘If reputations were votes, we’d be presidents of somewhere.’

‘True,’ he replied. ‘But this boy’s reputation carries a warning. A word to the wise , isn’t that the expression?’

‘It is, but I’ve always wondered why the wise need a word.’

‘It is said that he is very, very good with his fists. He was a boxing champion at his university. He could have been the champion of India. His fists are deadly weapons. And as I have heard, he is very quick, too quick perhaps, to provoke into using them.’

‘You’re no slouch in the provoking department, Didier. And it doesn’t take a stick through the bars to get me going.’

‘Many men have already fallen to their knees before that young life. It is not a good thing, in a man so young, to see so much submission. There is a lot of blood behind that charming young smile.’

‘There’s a lot of blood behind your charming smile, my friend.’

‘Thank you,’ he nodded, accepting the compliment with a little toss of the greying curls. ‘I’m simply saying that from what I have heard, I would very much prefer to shoot that handsome young fellow than to fight him.’

‘Then it’s a lucky thing you carry a gun.’

‘I’m… if you’ll excuse the lapse… being serious , Lin, and you know how much contempt I have for serious things.’

‘I’ll keep it in mind. Promise. I’d better go.’

‘You’re leaving me here to drink alone, and you’re going home to her ?’ Didier mocked. ‘You think she’s waiting for you, after almost three weeks in Goa? What makes you think she hasn’t left you for some greener pastures , as the English say, with such charming provincialism.’

‘I love you, too, brother,’ I said, shaking his hand.

I walked out into the breathing street, turning once to see him holding up the little bundle of love letters I’d retrieved for him, and waving goodbye.

It stopped me. I felt, as I too often did, that I was abandoning him. It was foolish, I knew: Didier was arguably the most self-sufficient contrabandist in the city. He was one of the last independent gangsters, owing nothing, not even fear, to the mafia Companies, cops and street gangs that controlled his illegal world.

But there are some people, some loves, that worry every goodbye, and leaving them is like leaving the country of your birth.

Didier, my old friend, Naveen, my new friend, and Bombay, my Island City, for so long as she’d have me: each of us dangerous, in our different ways.

The man I was, when I arrived in Bombay years before, was a stranger in a new jungle. The man I became looked out at strangers, from the cover of the jungle street. I was at home. I knew my way around. And I was harder, maybe, because something inside me was missing: something that should’ve been there, next to my heart.

I escaped from prison, Didier escaped from persecution, Naveen escaped from the street, and the southern city escaped from the sea, hurled into its island existence by working men and women, one stone at a time.

I waved goodbye, and Didier smiled, touching the love letters to his forehead. I smiled back, and it was okay: okay to leave him.

No smile would work, no goodbye would pray, no kindness would save, if the truth inside us wasn’t beautiful. And the true heart of us, our human kind, is that we’re connected, at our best, by purities of love found in no other creature.

It was a short ride from Leopold’s to my apartment. I left the busy tourist causeway, crossed the road past the Colaba police station, and cruised on to the corner known to every taxi driver in Bombay as Electric House.

A right turn down the leafy street beside the police station gave me a view into a corner of the cellblock. I’d spent time in those cells.

My rebel eyes found the high, barred windows as I rode by slowly. A little cascade, memories, the stink of open latrines, the mass of men fighting for a slightly cleaner place near the gate bullied through my mind.

At the next corner I turned through the gate that gave access to the courtyard of the Beaumont Villa building, and parked my bike. Nodding to the watchman, I took the stairs three at a time to the third-floor apartment.

I entered, ringing the bell a few times. I walked through the living room to the kitchen, dropping my bag and keys on the table as I passed. Not finding her there or in the bedroom, I moved back into the living room.

‘Hi, honey,’ I called out, in an American accent. ‘I’m home.’

Her laugh rippled from behind the swirling curtains on the terrace. When I shoved the curtains aside I found her kneeling, with her hands in the earth of a garden about the size of an open suitcase. A little flock of pigeons crowded around her, pecking for crumbs, and pestering one another fussily.

‘You go to all the trouble of making a garden out here, girl,’ I said, ‘and then you let the birds walk all over it.’

‘You don’t get it,’ Lisa replied, turning aquamarine eyes on me. ‘I made the garden to bring the birds. It’s the birds I wanted in the first place.’

‘You’re my flock of birds,’ I said, when she stood to kiss me.

‘Oh, great,’ she mocked. ‘The writer’s home again.’

‘And so damn pleased to see you,’ I smiled, beginning to drag her with me toward the bedroom.

‘My hands are dirty!’ she protested.

‘I hope so.’

‘No, really,’ she laughed, breaking away. ‘We’ve gotta take a shower -’

‘I hope so.’

‘ You’ve gotta take a shower,’ she persisted, circling away from me, ‘and change your clothes, right away.’

‘Clothes?’ I mocked back at her. ‘We don’t need no stinking clothes.’

‘Yes, we do. We’re going out.’

‘Lisa, I just got back. Two weeks.’

‘Nearly three weeks,’ she corrected me. ‘And there’ll be plenty of time to say hello, before we say goodnight. I promise.’

‘ Hello is sounding a lot like goodbye .’

‘Hello is always the first part of goodbye. Go get wet.’

‘Where are we going?’

‘You’ll love it.’

‘That means I’m gonna hate it, aren’t I?’

‘An art gallery.’

‘Oh. Great.’

‘Fuck you,’ she laughed. ‘These guys are good. They’re on the edge, Lin. They’re real-deal artists. You’re gonna love them. And it’s a really important show. And if we don’t hurry, we’ll be late. And I’m so glad you got back in time.’

I frowned.

‘Come on, Lin,’ she laughed. ‘Without art, what is there?’

‘Sex,’ I replied. ‘And food. And more sex.’

‘There’ll be plenty of food at the gallery,’ she said, shoving me toward the shower. ‘And just think how grateful your little flock of birds will be when you come home from the art gallery that she really , really , really wants you to take her to, and that we’ll miss, if you don’t hit the shower right now !’

I was pulling my shirt off over my head in the stall. She turned on the shower behind me. Water crashed onto my back and my jeans.

‘Hey!’ I shouted. ‘These are my best jeans!’

‘And you’ve been in them for weeks,’ she called back from the kitchen. ‘Second-best jeans tonight, please.’

‘And I’ve still got your present,’ I shouted. ‘Right here, in the pocket of these jeans you just got soaking wet!’

She was at the door.

‘You got me a present?’ she asked.

‘Of course.’

‘Good. Very sweet. Let’s look at it later.’

She slipped out of sight again.

‘Yeah,’ I called back. ‘Let’s do that. After all that fun at the gallery.’