Gregory Roberts - The Mountain Shadow

Clinging to branches, grasses and vines, we dragged ourselves up a steeper path that led to the summit.

It was a climb that might’ve been easy work in the dry season, with rocks and stones solidly embedded in the earthen cliff face and the narrow track. But in those twilight days of the long monsoon, it was a hard climb.

Halfway to the summit we encountered a young man, who was descending the same path. The incline at that point was so steep that he had to slide down backwards on weeds and vines.

He was carrying a large plastic water can. In the encounter with us on the narrow path, he had to crush against us, slipping shirt to shirt and grasping at us, as we did with him.

‘What fun!’ he said in Hindi, grinning happily. ‘Can I bring you something from down?’

‘Chocolate!’ Abdullah said, as the young man slipped below us, disappearing into the vegetation that crowded the vertical path. ‘I forgot to buy it! I’ll pay you, when you come up!’

‘ Thik! ’ the young man called back from somewhere below.

When Abdullah and I reached the summit, I discovered that it was a mesa, flat-topped and expansive, giving onto the last jagged half-peak of the mountain.

Several large caves, cut into that steep fragment of the peak, offered views of the mesa, and the many valleys rolling into one another below, and to the Island City, shrouded in mist and smoke on the horizon.

Still puffing I glanced around, trying to get a feel for the place. It was paved with small white pebbles. I hadn’t seen any of them in the valley below, or during the climb. They’d been carried to the summit, one sack at a time. As punishing as the work must’ve been, the effect was dazzling: serene and unsullied.

There was a kitchen area, open on three sides and covered with a stretched green canvas, faded to a colour that neatly matched the rain-bleached leaves of the surrounding trees.

Another area, completely obscured by canvas shrouds, looked to be a bathroom with several alcoves. A third covered area contained two desks and several canvas deck chairs, stacked in rows.

Beyond them, the open mouths of the four caves revealed a few details of their interiors: a wooden cabinet in the entrance to one, several metal trunks heaped inside another, and a large, blackened fireplace with a smouldering fire visible in a third.

As I was looking at the caves, a young man emerged from the smallest of them.

‘You are Mr Shantaram?’

I turned to Abdullah, frowning my surprise.

‘Master Idriss asked me to bring you here,’ Abdullah said. ‘It was Idriss who invited you here, through me.’

‘Me?’

He nodded. I turned back to the young man.

‘This is for you,’ he said, handing me a business card.

I read the short message: There are no Gurus

Mystified, I handed the card to Abdullah. He read it, laughed, and handed it back to me.

‘Quite a calling card,’ I said, reading it again. ‘It’s like a lawyer, saying there are no fees.’

‘Idriss will explain it himself, no doubt.’

‘But, perhaps, not tonight,’ the young man said, gesturing toward the cave that held a fireplace. ‘Master- ji is engaged with some philosophers tonight, in a temple below the mountain. So, please come. I have made tea, just now.’

I accepted the invitation gratefully, sat down on a handmade wooden stool some little way into the cave, and sipped at the tea when it arrived.

Lost in my thoughts, as I too often am, I guess, I let my mind worry itself back to the fight with Concannon.

Cooler and clearer after the long ride and the long climb to the summit, I looked back into Concannon’s eyes, as I sat there, sipping sweet tea in the cave of the sage, Idriss.

I suddenly realised it wasn’t anger that I’d felt after Concannon’s mindless and brutal attack: it was disappointment. It was the kind of disappointment that belongs to friends, not enemies.

But by joining the Scorpions, he’d made himself new enemies. Our guys had no choice but to hit back at the Scorpions: if they didn’t, the Scorpions would see it as weakness, and hit us again. The trouble had started. I had to get Karla out of the city: she was connected to the Sanjay Company.

And there it was. I didn’t think of Lisa, or Didier, or even myself. I thought of Karla. Lisa was at risk. Concannon knew her: he’d met her. I should’ve thought of Lisa first, but it was Karla; it was Karla.

In that twisted knot of love, staring at the scatter of ember-roses in the soft ashes of the fire, I became aware of a perfumed scent. I thought someone must’ve been offering frankincense at another fire, nearby. But I knew that perfume. I knew it well.

Then I heard Karla’s voice.

‘Tell me a joke, Shantaram.’

The skin on my face tightened. I felt the chill of fever. A blood-river rushed upwards through my body and shuddered in my chest until my eyes burned with it.

Snap out of it , I said to myself. Look at her. Break the spell.

I turned to look at her. It didn’t help.

She stood in the mouth of the cave, smiling at the wind, her profile defying everything, her black hair and silver scarf trailing banners of desire behind her. High, strong forehead, crescent eyes, fine sharp nose, and the gentle jut of a pointed chin protecting the broken promise of her lips: Karla.

‘So,’ she drawled, ‘you got a joke, or don’t you?’

‘How many Parsis does it take to change a light globe?’ I asked.

‘Two years, I don’t see you,’ she said, still not turning to face me, ‘and the best you can do is a light-bulb joke?’

‘It’s twenty-three months and sixteen days. You want a joke, or don’t you?’

‘Okay, so how many Parsis does it take to change a light globe?’

‘Parsis don’t change light globes, because they know they’ll never get another one as good as the old one.’

She threw her head back and laughed. It was a good laugh, a great laugh, from a great heart, strong and free, a hawk riding dusk: the laugh that broke every chain in my heart.

‘Come here,’ she said.

I wrapped my arms around her, pressing her against that hollow tree, my life, where I’d hidden the dream that she would love me, forever.

Everyone has one eye that’s softer and sadder, and one that’s hard and bright. Karla’s left eye was softer and sadder than her right, and maybe it was because I could only see that soft light, greener than new leaves, that I had no resistance to her. I couldn’t do anything but listen, and smile, and try to be funny now and then.

But it was alright. It was okay. It was a renegade peace, in those moments on the morning after the mountain brought her back to me; the morning of that softer, sadder eye.

We’d spent the night in separate caves. There were three other women on the mountain-top mesa, all of them young Indian students of the wise man, Idriss. The women’s cave was smaller, but cleaner and better appointed.

There were rope beds and mattresses, where we’d slept on blankets stretched over the bare ground, and there were several metal cupboards, suspended on blocks of stone to keep out rats and crawling insects. We’d made do with a few rusted hooks to keep our belongings off the dusty floor.

I hadn’t slept well. I’d only spoken to Karla for a few minutes after that first hug, that first sight of her for almost two years. And then she was gone, again.

Abdullah, bowing gallantly to Karla, had drawn me away to join the other men, gathered for a meal at the entrance to the men’s cave.

I was walking backwards, looking at her, and she was already laughing at me, two minutes after we re-met. Two years, in two minutes.