Gregory Roberts - The Mountain Shadow

‘I can’t shake it, Lisa,’ I said. ‘It’s not Karla, it’s me, and I -’

‘Karla and I have an understanding about you,’ she said impatiently.

‘An… understanding?’

‘That’s what the lunch with her at Kayani’s was all about. Weren’t you paying attention?’

Feynman once said that if you understand quantum theory, you don’t. I had no idea what Lisa was talking about.

‘What are you talking about?’

‘It’s not about her, and it’s not about you. It’s about me.’

‘That’s what I was trying to talk about.’

‘No, you weren’t. You were talking about you and Karla. Fine. I get that. But this isn’t about that. This is about me.’

‘This… what?’

‘This conversation.’

‘Didn’t I start this conversation?’

‘No, I did,’ she frowned.

‘Was I there, when you did?’

‘Here it is. You can’t love two people, Lin. Not in the right way. Nobody can. She can’t do it, and neither can you. I get that. I really do. But sad and romantic and fucked up and thrilling and wonderful as all that is, it’s irrelevant. This isn’t about her, and it’s not about you. It’s my turn. It’s about me. It’s my shot at the mike, Lin.’

‘It’s what about you?’

‘It’s all about me.’

‘You think you could start this conversation again?’

She looked directly into my eyes, challenging me to stay with her.

‘See, women need to know, it’s that simple.’

‘I got that bit.’

‘And once they know, they can deal with anything.’

‘Deal with… what?’

‘Stop beating yourself up, Lin. You’re good at beating yourself up. You could get a prize, if they gave prizes for beating yourself up, and I kinda love that about you, but it’s not needed here. I’m breaking up with you, tonight, and I wanted to talk about it, because I thought you should know why.’

‘I… sure… of course. What? ’

‘I really think you should know.’

‘Can I pretend to know?’

‘Stop kidding around, Lin.’

‘I’m not kidding, I’m just lost.’

‘Okay. It’s like this – I don’t want to explain you any more.’

‘Explain me to your friends, or my enemies?’

‘I don’t give a shit what anybody says about you,’ she said, burning blue into my eyes. ‘And I wouldn’t listen to it. You know that. What I don’t like about what you do is that you like it.’

‘Lisa -’

‘You like having two guns and six false passports and six currencies in the drawer. And you can’t say you do it to survive. You’re smarter than that. I’m smarter than that. The fact is, you like it. You like it a lot. And I don’t want to explain that to myself any more. I don’t like that you. I can’t like that you. I won’t like that you. I’m sorry.’

A man’s a prison. I should’ve told her that I’d quit the Sanjay Company, and the Sri Lanka run was my ticket home. I’d taken a step away from the me that she didn’t like. It wouldn’t have changed her mind, but it was something she had a right to hear. A man’s a prison. I didn’t speak.

‘Karla likes that you,’ she said casually. ‘I think she likes that you even more than you do.’

‘Where did you go, Lisa?’

She laughed, and pretty hard.

‘You really want to know?’

‘Enough with the wanting to know, Lisa.’

She sat up on the bed, her legs crossed. Her blonde hair was tied into a swallowtail, dipping and shaking as she spoke.

‘You know Rish, my partner in the gallery?’

‘How many partners have you got now?’

‘Six. Well -’

‘Six?’

‘So, anyway -’

‘Six?’

‘So, anyway, Rish has been doing a lot of meditation -’

‘Oh, no.’

‘And a lot of yoga studies -’

‘Okay, Lisa, stop. If you tell me there’s a guru behind all this, I’ll be obliged to slap him.’

‘He’s not my guru, he’s Rish’s guru, and that’s not the point. It wasn’t said by a guru, and Rish didn’t say it. A woman said it, I think. I don’t know who she is, actually. But Johnny Cigar gave me a self-help book, and Rish gave me exactly the same book, on the same day. And the quote was in that book – the thing she said.’

‘What thing?’

‘The thing that Rish heard from somewhere, and said to me.’

‘What thing?’

‘ Resentment is unmet need or desire ,’ she said. ‘That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.’

I thought about it. A writer’s worst instinct, and too often the first, is to look for the flaw in any written or spoken thing that looks good. I didn’t find it.

‘That’s pretty good,’ I conceded.

‘Pretty good ! She should get the Nobel Prize for Saying Cool Shit.’

‘Okay,’ I smiled.

‘It ripped my mind apart, Lin, I gotta tell ya. It made so much sense. I suddenly understood exactly why I was feeling so resentful , these last months. I was really out of it on resentment, you know? Like, when you get to the stage where you get irritated by things that used to be cute, only now they’re not cute any more?’

‘How much not cute are we talking about?’

‘A lot not cute.’

‘A lot?’

‘I was muttering,’ she confessed.

‘You were muttering?’

‘I was.’

‘Muttering?’

‘I thought you must’ve heard me, a couple times.’

‘About irritating things I did?’

‘Yes.’

‘Like what?’

‘Well, for starters -’

‘No, don’t tell me. I don’t wanna know.’

‘It might be helpful to your process,’ she suggested.

‘No, I’m good. I’ve already been processed. Go on. You were muttering.’

‘See,’ she said, smoothing out the bedcover in front of her folded legs, her feet asleep against her calves. ‘When I heard those words, resentment is unmet need or desire , I knew how to think about what I was feeling . Do you get that?’

‘Think-feeling. I… think I get it.’

‘I had a frame, you know, for the painting of me. I knew what my unmet need was. I knew what my unmet desire was. And when I knew that, I knew it all.’

‘Can you divulge the unmet need?’

‘I need to be free of you,’ she said flatly, her hands pressed into stars on the bed.

‘The new you gave up sugar.’

‘I don’t need it. Not any more,’ she said, tracing a circle on the bedcover with her finger. ‘I don’t have to sugar anything, especially not what I tell myself.’

‘And the unmet desire?’

‘I want to be one hundred per cent inside my own now . I want to be the moment, instead of just watching the moment pass. You know what I’m talking about, right? You get me?’

‘Maybe.’

‘Now. This now. My now. All my nows. That’s what I want. Do you get that?’

‘You’re in the now. I get it. I swear, Leese, if there’s a guru involved in this -’

‘This is all me. This is all mine.’

‘And it’s what you want?’

‘It’s the beginning of what I want, and I’m completely sure of it.’

She was tough. She was superb.

‘Then, if it’s really what you want, I love it, Lisa.’

‘You do?’

‘Of course. You can do anything you put your heart into.’

‘You really think so?’

‘It’s great, Lisa.’

‘I knew you’d get it,’ she said, her eyes blue pools of relief. ‘It’s just that I want a special now, one that’s mine , instead of a constant now, that I constantly share with someone else’s now.’

A constant now, that you constantly share with someone else’s now. It was a pretty good definition of prison.