Gregory Roberts - The Mountain Shadow

As I finished the shower, I heard her humming, a song from a Hindi movie. By chance, or by the synchronicities that curl within the spiral chambers of love, it was the same song that I’d been singing on the street, walking with Vikram and Naveen only hours before.

And later, as we gathered our things for the ride, we hummed and sang the song together.

Bombay traffic is a system designed by acrobats for small elephants. Twenty minutes of motorcycle fun got us to Cumballa Hill, a money belt district hitched to the hips of South Bombay’s most prestigious mountain.

I pulled my motorcycle into a parking area opposite the fashionably controversial Backbeat Gallery, at the commencement of fashionably orthodox Carmichael Road. Expensive imported cars and expensive local personalities drew up outside the gallery.

Lisa led us inside, working her way through the densely packed crowd. The long room held perhaps twice the safety limit of one hundred and fifty persons, a number that was conspicuously displayed on a fire-safety sign near the entrance.

If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the burning building.

She found one of her friends at last, and pulled me into an anatomically close introduction.

‘This is Rosanna,’ Lisa said, squeezed in beside a short girl who wore a large, ornate gold crucifix, with the nailed feet of the Saviour nestled between her breasts. ‘This is Lin. He just got back from Goa.’

‘We meet at last,’ Rosanna said, her chest pressing against mine as she raised a hand to run it through her short, spiked hair.

Her accent was American, but with Indian vowels.

‘What took you to Goa?’

‘Love letters and rubies,’ I said.

Rosanna glanced quickly at Lisa.

‘Don’t look at me ,’ Lisa sighed, shrugging her shoulders.

‘You are so fucking weird , man!’ Rosanna cried out, in a voice like a parrot’s panic warning. ‘Come with me ! You’ve got to meet Taj. Weird is his favourite thing, yaar.’

Wriggling her way through the crowd, Rosanna took us to meet a tall, handsome young man with shoulder-length hair that was sleek with perfumed oil. He was standing in front of a large stone sculpture, some three metres tall, of a wild man-creature.

The plaque beside the sculpture pronounced its name: ENKIDU. The artist greeted Lisa with a kiss on the cheek, and then offered his hand to me.

‘Taj,’ he said, giving me a smile of open curiosity. ‘You must be Lin. Lisa’s told me a lot about you.’

I shook his hand, allowed my eyes to search his for a moment, and then shifted my gaze to the huge sculpture behind him. He turned his head slightly, following my eyes.

‘What do you think?’

‘I like him,’ I said. ‘If the ceiling in my apartment was a little higher, and the floor a little stronger, I’d buy him.’

‘Thanks,’ he laughed.

He reached upwards to put a hand on the chest of the stone warrior.

‘I really don’t know what he is. I just had a compulsion to see him, standing in front of me. It’s not any more complicated than that. No metaphor or psychology or anything.’

‘Goethe said that all things are metaphors.’

‘That’s pretty good,’ he said, laughing again, the soft bark-brown eyes swimming with light. ‘Can I quote that? I might print it out, and put it beside my friend here. It might help me to sell him.’

‘Of course. Writers never really die, until people stop quoting them.’

‘That’s quite enough for this corner,’ Rosanna interrupted, seizing my arm. ‘Now, come see some of my work.’

She guided Lisa and me through the smoking, drinking, laughing, shouting crowd to the wall opposite the tall sculpture. Spanning half the long wall at eye level was a series of plaster reliefs. The panels had been painted to mimic a classical bronze finish, and told a story in consecutive panels.

‘It’s about the Sapna killings,’ Rosanna explained, shouting into my ear. ‘You remember? A couple of years ago? This crazy guy was telling servants to rise up against their rich masters, and kill them. You remember? It was in all the papers.’

I remembered the Sapna killings. And I knew the truth of the story better than Rosanna did, and better than most in the Island City of Bombay. I walked slowly from panel to panel, examining the long tableaux depicting figures from the public story of Sapna.

I felt light-headed and off balance. They were stories of men I’d known: men who’d killed, and died, and had finally become tiny figures fixed in an artist’s frieze.

Lisa pulled on my sleeve.

‘What is it, Lisa?’

‘Let’s go to the green room!’ she shouted.

‘Okay. Okay.’

We followed Rosanna through a leafy hedge of kisses and outstretched arms as she hooted and screeched her way to the back of the gallery. She tapped on the door with a little rhythmic signal.

When the door opened she pushed us through into a dark room illuminated by red motorcycle lights strung on heavy cables.

The room held about twenty people, sitting on chairs, couches and the floor. It was much quieter there. The girl who approached me, offering a joint, spoke in a throaty whisper that ran a hand through my short hair.

‘You wanna get fucked up?’ she asked rhetorically, offering the joint in her supernaturally long fingers.

‘You’re too late,’ Lisa cut in quickly, taking the joint. ‘Fate beat you to it, Anush.’

She puffed the joint and passed it back to the girl.

‘This is Anushka,’ Lisa said.

As we shook hands, Anushka’s long fingers closed all the way around my palm.

‘Anushka’s a performance artist,’ Lisa said.

‘You don’t say,’ I did say.

Anushka leaned in close to kiss me softly on the neck, the fingers of one hand cupping the back of my head.

‘Tell me when to stop,’ she whispered.

As she kissed my neck, I slowly turned my head until my eyes met Lisa’s.

‘You know, Lisa, you were right. I do like your friends. And I am having fun at the gallery, even though I thought I wouldn’t.’

‘Okay,’ Lisa said, pulling Anushka away. ‘Show’s over.’

‘Encore!’ I tried.

‘No encores,’ Lisa said, bringing me to sit on the floor beside a man in his thirties.

His head was shaved to a bright polish, and he wore a burnt-orange kurta pyjama set.

‘This is Rish. He mounted the exhibition, and he’s exhibiting work as well. Rish, this is Lin.’

‘Hey, man,’ Rish said, shaking hands. ‘How do you like the show?’

‘The performance art is outstanding,’ I replied, looking around to see Anushka leaning in to bite an unresisting victim.

Lisa slapped me hard on the arm.

‘I’m kidding. It’s all good. And you got a big crowd. Congratulations.’

‘Hope they’re in a buying mood,’ Lisa said, thinking out loud.

‘If they’re not, Anushka could convince them.’

Lisa slapped me on the arm again.

‘Or you could always get Lisa to slap them.’

‘We were lucky,’ Rish smiled, offering me the joint.

‘No thanks. Never when I’ve got a passenger. Lucky how?’

‘It almost didn’t happen. Did you see the big Ram painting? The orange one?’

The large, mainly orange-coloured painting was hanging next to the stone sculpture of Enkidu. I hadn’t immediately realised that the striking central figure was a representation of the Hindu God.

‘The moral police from the lunatic religious right,’ Rish said, ‘the Spear of Karma, they call themselves, they heard about the painting and tried to shut us down. We got in touch with Taj’s dad. He’s a top lawyer, and connected to the Chief Minister. He got a court order, allowing us to put the show on.’