Gregory Roberts - The Mountain Shadow

‘There’s a very pretty girl waiting for me at home,’ I said.

‘But this girl -’

‘Forget it, Divya!’ I snapped, too harshly.

‘You should take a little time off from that Charm School, motherfucker,’ Divya said matter-of-factly. ‘You sweep a girl off her feet.’

‘I’m sorry, it’s been a rough -’

‘ I’ll meet the American girl with brown eyes,’ Scorpio said brightly.

We turned to look at him.

‘I mean… if Lin’s, you know, not going to be there at the party, and… ’

‘You spruced up some, Scorpio,’ I remarked.

His longish hair was pulled into a ponytail. He wore a yellow shirt, new jeans, a silver-buckled belt and cowboy boots. A ring on his middle finger featured a Greek helmet, in gold, gleaming from the centre of an onyx square.

‘Is it too much?’ he asked, checking himself quickly in the wall mirror. ‘It was Diva’s idea. She said -’

‘It’s good,’ I said. ‘You look like a million dollars. Kudos, Divya.’

‘ Thirty-five million dollars, actually,’ Divya replied. ‘And it’s Diva , remember? I swear, if you call me Divya again, I’ll punch you straight in the balls. And I’m short enough and mean enough to do it.’

‘That’s not hyperbole,’ Naveen averred.

‘Okay. You’re Diva, from now on.’

I looked down at her proud, pretty face. She was a short girl, who wore high-heeled shoes so often that it gave her a slightly forward-leaning stance, on the balls of her feet: a leopard-footed posture that made her look as if she was stalking prey. I liked it, and liked her, but just wanted to go home.

The doors opened on the lobby, and I stepped out quickly.

‘Sure we can’t tempt you?’ Naveen asked.

‘Not tonight.’

I pulled him close enough to whisper.

‘That thing at Leopold’s,’ I said quietly. ‘I’m glad you were there, Naveen.’

‘When there’s a reckoning,’ he said, just as quietly, ‘count me in.’

‘I will. Listen, if Didier asks you for any help, do me a good. He’s watching Lisa, while I’m away.’

‘Away?’

‘A week or so. I’ll check in with you, when I get back.’

‘ Thik .’

‘And, hey, Scorpio,’ I said, in a louder voice, as Naveen rejoined Diva. ‘Be careful with the girl.’

‘The blonde, with brown eyes?’

‘ Any girl,’ I said.

The doors closed, and the lift carried them back to the penthouse party.

I made my way to the bike, paid a tip to the security guards, and rode out into the coursing rain.

Soothing cleansing showers, cold so close to the sea, rolled with me as I rode the length of Marine Drive twice, before turning again and making my way home.

I didn’t know it then, but that fall of purging rain, drops as big as flowers, was the last heavy fall of the Bombay season. The torrents that had swamped the streets of the Island City, and left every patch of dusty earth lush with weeds, was drifting south toward Madras, before riding the sea lane up-drift to Sri Lanka, and the great oceans that had birthed them.

I took the steps two at a time, and rushed into the apartment, spilling water onto the silver-flecked marble of the hallway floor. Lisa wasn’t there.

I stripped off my sodden boots and clothes, scrubbed the cuts on my face clean with disinfectant, and stood in the shower, letting the cold water run on my back, the suburban penitent’s scourge.

I dressed, and was just about to make a pot of coffee, when Lisa walked in.

‘Lin! Where the hell have you been ? Are you okay? Oh, God, let me look at your face.’

‘I’m fine. How are you ? Has everything been quiet here?’

‘Are you proud of yourself?’

‘What?’

She shoved me, two hands on my chest, then picked up a metal vase, and threw it at me. I ducked, and it crashed into a wall unit, sending things clattering to the floor.

‘Coming home, all beat up like that!’

‘I -’

‘Gang wars in the street! Grow up , for God’s sake!’

‘It wasn’t -’

‘Shooting people at Leopold’s! Are you a complete asshole?’

‘I didn’t shoot any -’

‘Running off to the mountain with Karla.’

‘Okay, okay, so that’s what this is about.’

‘Of course it is!’ she shouted, throwing an ashtray at the wall unit.

She suddenly cried, then suddenly stopped crying and sat down on the couch, her hands folded in her lap.

‘I’m calm now,’ she said.

‘Okay… ’

‘I am.’

‘Okay.’

‘It’s not about you,’ she said.

‘Fair enough.’

‘No, really.’

‘Lisa, I didn’t even know she was there. But since you mention Karla, there’s something -’

‘Oh, Lin!’ she cried, pointing at the things that had fallen from the wall unit. ‘Look what happened to the sword! I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean that to happen.’

One of the things that had fallen from the cabinet was Khaderbhai’s sword: the sword that should’ve been willed to Tariq, the boy king, Khaderbhai’s nephew and heir. The sword was broken. The hilt had snapped completely free from the shaft of the sword. It lay in two pieces beside the scabbard.

I picked them up, wondering at the strange frailty of a weapon that had survived battles in the Afghan wars against the British.

‘Can you get it fixed?’ she asked anxiously.

‘I’ll do it when I get back,’ I said flatly, putting the pieces of the sword into the cabinet. ‘I’m going to Sri Lanka tomorrow, Lisa.’

‘Lin… no.’

I went to the bathroom, and showered again to cool down. Lisa showered, and joined me as I was drying off. I leaned into the mirror, and put a plaster on the ugly cut that Concannon’s lead sap had left on my cheek.

She talked, warning me about the dangers of going to Sri Lanka, telling me what she’d read in the newspaper, Ranjit’s newspaper, explaining to me that I had no obligation to go, and that I owed the Sanjay Council nothing, nothing, nothing.

When she finished, I pleaded with her to leave Bombay for a while, told her everything I knew about the Leopold’s incident, and warned her that things wouldn’t get better, until I reached some kind of an understanding with Concannon.

‘Enough horrible stuff,’ she said at last. ‘Is it my turn, now?’

I lay back against a stack of pillows on the bed. She was leaning against the doorjamb, her arms folded across her waist.

‘Okay, Lisa, your turn.’

‘If I can’t stop you leaving, it’s time to talk about other things.’

‘As a matter of fact -’

‘Women want to know,’ she said quickly. ‘You’re a writer. You’re supposed to know that.’

‘Women want to know… what?’

She joined me on the bed.

‘Everything,’ she said, a hand resting on my thigh. ‘All the stuff you never tell me, for example. The stuff you don’t tell any woman.’

I frowned.

‘Look, they say that women are emotional, and men are rational. Bullshit. If you saw the stuff you guys do, saw it from our point of view, the last thing you’d call it was rational.’

‘Okay.’

‘And women are actually pretty rational. They want clarity. They want an answer. Are you in this, or are you out? Women want to know. Anything less has no guts, and women like guts. That’s rational, in our book, if you’ll forgive the literary metaphor.’

‘Forgiven. What are you talking about?’

‘Karla, of course.’

‘I’ve been trying to talk to you about -’

‘You and Karla,’ she said. ‘Karla and you. On the mountain, and off it. I get it. And I’m cool with it.’

And suddenly it was done: we were two minds, two ways of being, two paradigms whirling apart, leaving phantom limbs where once they’d touched.