The Mountain Shadow

Chapter Sixty-Eight

I woke to find that it wasn’t Karla’s kisses burning my skin: I’d fallen asleep with my face on a statue of Lord Shiva, and His trident had carved a mark on my cheek. I hit the shower and washed up again, determined to keep the door locked for a couple of days, and maybe continue my wake for the dead. But when I dried off and looked in the mirror, the trident mark was still there. It seemed as if it would last a few days before fading. And I knew, staring at that folly, that if I got so wasted that I branded my own face, when there were enemies who’d happily scar it for me, it was time to stop getting wasted.

And with that sobering thought, it occurred to me that Karla might’ve left her fetish party early, and could be stranded somewhere in the Island City, because of the rioting. I dressed in battle gear, did a pocket check, and walked into the entry hall. There was a barricade of furniture against the door leading to the stairs. It was common practice in hotels during a police lockdown of the city, in those years, to keep guests safe on one side of a barricade, and looters or rioters on the other.

‘The whole of South Bombay is locked down,’ Jaswant said, reading his newspaper. ‘I was lucky to get this newspaper. And no, you can’t have it until I’m finished.’

‘Where?’

‘You can’t have it anywhere. There’s a line before you, baba.’

‘I mean, where’s the lockdown?’

‘Everywhere.’

A lockdown meant that I couldn’t travel anywhere in the city during daylight: nobody could.

‘For how long?’

‘What the fuck do you care?’

‘Fuck it, Jaswant. What’s your hunch? One day, or four?’

‘Given all the fires and rioting last night, I’ve got the bookies on three days,’ he replied. ‘And I repeat, what the fuck do you care?’

‘Three days? I don’t think I’ve got enough inspiration for three days.’

‘Inspiration!’ Jaswant said, putting down the newspaper and swinging his swanky new executive chair round to face me.

He threw a switch on his desk, and a panel slid open in the wall beside me. It was a secret cupboard filled with alcohol, cigarettes, snack foods, tiny cereal packets, cartons of milk, boxes of sugar cubes, pots of honey, tuna fish, baked beans, matches, candles, first aid kits, and indiscernible things pickled in jars.

He threw another switch, and a cascade of tiny coloured lights rotated around the cupboard.

‘Hey,’ he asked, peering at the trident on my face, illuminated by his coloured lights. ‘Do you know you’ve got a Trishula mark on your face?’

‘Let’s not get too personal, Jaswant.’

He waved a hand at his cupboard of pleasures.

‘Always happy to keep things on a business level, baba,’ he said, raising his eyebrows in sequence. ‘There’s music, too.’

He threw another switch, and Bhangra dance music stomped out of speakers on his desk. The paperweight danced with the stapler on the glass-topped surface, jittering back and forth across Jaswant’s reflected smile.

‘We Sikhs have learned to adapt,’ he shouted, over the music. ‘You wanna survive World War Three, move into a Sikh neighbourhood.’

He let the song play to the end, and it was a pretty long song.

‘I never get tired of that,’ he sighed. ‘Wanna hear it again?’

‘No. Thanks. I wanna buy your booze, before Didier does.’

‘Didier’s not here.’

‘I don’t wanna take the risk.’

‘That’s… just about the smartest thing you ever said to me.’

‘People don’t lay smart on you, Jaswant, because your attitude is wrong.’

‘Fuck attitude,’ he said.

‘The prosecution rests.’

‘Attitude doesn’t pay my rent.’

‘Wrap up some rent for me, Jaswant.’

‘Alright, alright, keep your wrinkly fucking shirt on, baba,’ he said, joining me at the window and bagging the supplies I pointed out.

‘Have you got any pre-rolled joints?’ I asked.

‘Sure, I’ve got fives, tens, fifteens -’

‘I’ll take them.’

‘What them?’

‘All of them.’

‘Chee, chee! Didn’t anyone ever teach you the art of business, man?’

‘Gimme the stuff, Jaswant.’

‘You don’t even know what it costs, man.’

‘How much does it cost, Jaswant?’

‘A fucking bundle, man.’

‘Done. Wrap it up.’

‘There you go again. You’ve got to fight for the price, or it isn’t really the price. You’re cheating me, when you don’t bargain me to the fair price, even if I come out in front. It’s how it’s done, man.’

‘Tell me the fair price, Jaswant, and I’ll pay that.’

‘You’re not getting me,’ he said patiently, teaching an ape. ‘The game, for both of us, is to discover the fair price. That’s the only way to know what anything costs. If we don’t all do that, we’ll be fucked. It’s spoilers like you who mess everything up, because you’ll pay anything, for anything.’

‘I pay what it costs, Jaswant.’

‘Let me tell you something. You can’t opt out of that system, man, no matter how hard you try. Bargaining is the bedrock of business. Didn’t anyone ever teach you that?’

‘I don’t care what it costs.’

‘Everybody cares what it costs.’

‘I don’t. If I can’t afford it, I don’t want it. If I want it, and I can afford it, I don’t care what it costs in money. That’s what money’s for, isn’t it?’

‘Money’s a river, man. Some of us go with the current, and some of us paddle to the shore.’

‘Enough with the old Sikh sayings.’

‘It’s a new Sikh saying. I just made it up.’

‘Wrap my stuff, Jaswant.’

Jaswant sighed.

‘I like you,’ he said. ‘I’ll never say that in public, because I’m not showy in public. Everybody knows that. But I like you, and I see some interesting qualities in you. I also see some errors in your spiritual thinking, and because I like you, I’d be happy to realign your chakras for you, so to speak.’

‘You’ve made that speech before, haven’t you?’ I asked, taking my two sacks of essential stuff.

‘A few times.’

‘How did it go over?’

‘I can sell a story, Lin. I once played Othello, in -’

‘Nice doing business with you, Jaswant.’

‘That’s it!’ he said. ‘That’s what I was trying to tell you before! I like you, see, but when you’re like a child, and you’re not a child, you take all the fun out of being an adult, see?’

Cue music. He punched the Bhangra music awake.

I stashed my supplies, ate two cans of cold tuna, sharpened my knives while the food settled, and then did push-ups and chin-ups until night gave me the chance to move across the city.

A full bandobast, or shutdown of the city, is impossible to negotiate by daylight. Anyone on High Street at high noon is a victim, or soon to be. The cops were scared. There weren’t enough of them to stop the people, when the people went to war with one another, or to save the banks. The shutdown made everything much clearer for the cops: if you’re on the street, you’re meat.

‘I’m going out, Jaswant,’ I said, just before midnight.

‘The fuck you are. That barricade stays.’

‘I’ll make a mess of it, if I pull it down,’ I said, moving to the barricade.

‘No way!’ he said, coming around his desk to ease the barricade away from the door. ‘This is an intricate defence. My Parsi friend could do it better, I wish he were here. But it’s good enough to keep the zombies out.’

‘Zombies?’

‘This is how it starts, man,’ he said anxiously. ‘Everybody knows that.’

He nudged the artwork of chairs and benches away from the door, and opened it a slender crack.

‘You’ll need a code word,’ he said.

‘What for?’

‘To get back in. So I’ll know it’s you.’

‘How about, Open the door.’

‘Something more personal, I was thinking.’

‘If I make it back, and you don’t open the door, I’ll break it down.’

‘How?’

‘The hinges are on the outside, Jaswant.’

‘Hinges!’ he hissed. ‘My Parsi friend would’ve thought of that. I’ll bet his zombie barricade is flawless.’

‘Just open the fucking door, Jaswant, when I come back.’

‘Come back uninfected please,’ he said, shoving the barricade against the door.

Night is Truth wearing a purple dress, and people dance differently there. The safest way to get around at night during a shutdown in Bombay, if you absolutely have to get around, is to ride on the back of a traffic cop’s motorcycle.

I knew a good cop, who needed the money. Corruption is a tax imposed on any society that doesn’t pay people enough to repel it themselves. His story, at roadblocks, was that I was a translator, a volunteer, who was warning tourists to stay off the streets at night.

And we did encounter a bewildered tourist, here and there, on the rounds: people with backpacks, not packed for barricaded hotels in a ghost city, and who were glad to see a cop, with a foreigner tagging along.

We drifted through most checkpoints on idle, answering questions with a shout and a wave, and I rode around the silent city behind a cop, with a gun, paying him by the hour to help me find Karla, on his rounds. I wanted to be at her side, or to know she was safe.

Legends are written in blood and fire, and the streets were red enough to write new ones. The traffic cop escorting me said that violent clashes had broken out near the Nabila mosque. Some had died, and many more had been wounded. The mosque was intact, with not a tile damaged. People called it a miracle, forgetting how many firemen had been injured to save the sacred space.

‘It is a nicely impressive time,’ Dominic the traffic cop said Indianly, calling over his shoulder as he rode just above stalling speed, on empty streets.

‘Impressively scary, Dominic.’

‘Exactly!’ he laughed.

‘Let’s try the Mahesh hotel,’ I suggested.

‘This is a time to tell your grandchildren about,’ Dominic said, veering toward the Mahesh, and staring through shadow curtains into every deserted laneway. ‘A time when ghosts roamed freely, in Bombay.’

We didn’t find Karla, but we found her car. When we drew alongside, we found Randall at the wheel, and Vinson in the back seat.

Randall hissed down the window. Vinson was hissing down a scotch.

‘Hi, Randall. Where’s Karla?’

‘I don’t know, sir. I haven’t seen her since she left on the motorcycle, with Miss Benicia.’

‘I found her!’ Vinson said from the back seat, a little drunk.

I turned to face him.

‘Where?’

‘In an ashram!’ he said happily.

‘Karla, in an ashram? Not unless she’s buying it.’

‘Not Karla. Rannveig. Naveen found her. She’s in an ashram, about a hundred miles from here. I’m gonna go there, as soon as all this calms down.’

I turned back to Randall.

‘What’s going on?’

‘My instruction was to meet Miss Karla at the Amritsar hotel,’ he said. ‘But the bandobast came down so fast, and the police wouldn’t allow me to move, and I wouldn’t abandon the vehicle, so I got stuck here, sir.’

‘And the passenger?’

‘Mr Vinson dived into the car when a looter, trying to steal a car like this one, was shot at in this street, at two o’clock this afternoon, sir.’

‘Lucky for me you opened the door, Randall,’ Vinson said, opening the liquor cabinet.

‘And you’ve been here ever since?’

‘Yes, sir, waiting for an opportunity to rendezvous with Miss Karla, at the Amritsar hotel.’

‘The Mahesh is only five hundred metres away, Randall,’ I said. ‘This isn’t a night to be out. You’d be safer in there.’

‘I will not abandon the vehicle, sir, unless my life is in the balance. I am perfectly comfortable. But, perhaps Mr Vinson would care to make a run for it.’

‘No way, man,’ Vinson slurred. ‘I wanna be alive, to find my girl. She’s in an ashram. That’s, like, heavy shit, man.’

I looked at Dominic.

This will cost you, his look said, and fair enough. I was asking a lot.

‘Make it a Press car,’ he said, wagging his head. ‘We’ll get through.’

‘Have you got a pen, and white paper?’ I asked. ‘Can you make a PRESS sign?’

They bickered about drawing the sign, as people do, even when very important things are at stake, but finally agreed on the draft.

Randall placed it on the dashboard, propped against the window by one of Karla’s shoes.

Dominic cruised us through checkpoint after checkpoint. Randall saluted. Vinson drank, impersonating the press.

At the alley behind the Amritsar, I paid Dominic and thanked him for his help.

‘You’re a good guy, Lin,’ he smiled, pocketing the money. ‘If I thought you were a bad guy, I’d shoot you. See you in two hours. Don’t worry. We’ll find your girl. This is Bombay, yaar. Bombay always finds a way to love. Get some rest.’

He rode away, the thrum of the motorcycle reminding those behind shutters and doors that someone was there: a brave man, maintaining order.

Chapter Sixty-Nine

When Dominic left, Randall slipped around the car to open the door for Vinson. Before he could reach it there was a voice from the alleyway, and we both stopped.

‘I warned you,’ Madame Zhou said. ‘I warned you to stay away from Kavita Singh.’

Her goons, the twins and the acid throwers, peeled off their skin of shadows. I was about to answer, but Randall stepped forward, standing beside me.

‘Please,’ he said, quietly.

‘I got this, Randall,’ I said, trying to watch five dangerous minds at the same time. ‘Madame Zhou does a regular show in this alley, and somehow I always get a ticket.’

She laughed, but she was the only one.

‘Please, allow me to speak,’ Randall said softly. ‘I’ve been waiting for this.’

He meant it. I allowed him.

‘Permit me to present myself to you, Madame,’ he said, addressing the veiled figure. ‘I am Randall Soares, one of two men who stand here for the Woman. If any harm comes to the Woman, I will kill you, and all your pets. This is your last warning, Madame. Leave us alone, or die.’

He had guts. It was more than I’d have said, in his place, because I knew that Madame Zhou’s specialty was second-hand revenge. I was hoping that Randall didn’t have a family that could be traced through his name.

Randall had his hand in the pocket of his jacket. The acid throwers had their hands in their pockets. I had my hands on my knives. Madame Zhou moved backwards into the alleyway until shadows ate her again.

‘Randall Soares,’ she said, the last word a rattlesnake’s hiss. ‘Randall Soares.’

The pets backed into the shadows. The alley was silent.

‘Get in touch with any Soares that you know,’ I advised him. ‘That woman is all grudge.’

‘I have no family,’ Randall said. ‘I am an orphan, given up at birth, and never adopted from the orphanage that I left, at the age of sixteen. Madame Zhou cannot hurt a family I don’t have.’

‘You’d really kill them?’

‘Wouldn’t you, sir?’

‘I’m hoping to stop it before it comes to that. Are you ex-army?’

‘No, sir, Indian Navy Marines.’

‘Marines, huh? For how long?’

‘Six years, sir.’

‘What happened?’ Vinson called from the car.

‘Bat’s in the wrong belfry, sir,’ Randall said, opening the door for him. ‘A small fist, knocking on Hell’s gate.’

‘So fricking great to get out in the air,’ Vinson said, stretching. ‘I was in that car for hours. I gotta piss, man, like urgently.’

He made for the nearest wall.

‘Get civilised, Vinson,’ I said. ‘Hold it in, until you get upstairs. There are motorcycles parked here.’

Randall put the car close to a wall in the arched alleyway, permitting traffic through the lane but allowing for a quick getaway.

‘No-one will mess with it,’ I said, as Randall locked the car. ‘You can come upstairs, and stretch your legs.’

‘Wonderful, sir.’

‘Enough with the sir bullshit, Randall. My name is Lin, or Shantaram, if you prefer, but never sir. You might as well call me boss.’

‘Thank you, Mr Shantaram,’ he smiled, Goan sunsets gleaming in his eyes.

‘Can I piss somewhere?’ Vinson asked, riding waves on the footpath.

Randall and I shuffled Vinson up the stairs, and I banged on the door.

‘Open up, Jaswant.’

‘What’s the password?’ Jaswant called from the other side of the door.

‘Open the fucking door, you motherfucker,’ I said, supporting Vinson.

‘Lin!’ Jaswant said, from behind the door. ‘What do you want?’

‘What do I want, you landlord’s excuse for a Punjabi? I want to strangle you with your turban, and stab you with your own kirpan.’

‘Over my baptised ass,’ he said. ‘What do you really want?’

I looked at Randall, who seemed to be enjoying himself. I looked at Vinson, drooling off my arm. He was certainly enjoying himself. I looked at the locked door to my own hotel.

‘I would like to come in please, Jaswant,’ I said, as sweetly as possible with clenched teeth.

‘No problem,’ he said. ‘Do you have any infected with you?’

‘Open the fucking door, Jaswant.’

The barricade scraped and shuddered away from the door, and we scrambled inside. Jaswant shoved the sculpture back into place, turned quickly and pointed at Vinson, who was swirling drunk.

‘He looks infected,’ Jaswant said.

‘I have so gotta piss,’ Vinson said.

‘Is he leaking fluids?’ Jaswant said, stepping back a pace.

‘He’ll leak them on the floor, if you don’t stop talking,’ I said, trying to escape.

‘Did you see any infected out there?’ Jaswant asked.

‘Enough with the zombies,’ I said, leading Vinson to my room. ‘This is Randall.’

‘Hi, Randall. I’m Jaswant. How was it out there?’

‘Quiet for now,’ Randall said. ‘But I’m completely with you on zombie vigilance. Prudence is the only wisdom, where the undead are concerned.’

‘Exactly!’ Jaswant said, returning to his chair. ‘I keep telling them. Plagues. Chaos. Situations like this. It’s always how it begins.’

‘Jaswant,’ I said, trying to keep Vinson vertical and open the door to my rooms, which was surprisingly difficult. ‘I’m gonna need more supplies. As you can see, I’ve got guests.’

‘You bet your foreigner ass you have,’ he laughed.

I opened the door and found Didier in my room, with Oleg, Diva, and the Diva girls, Charu and Pari.

They were all in costume. Diva was in a leopard-print bodysuit. Didier had abandoned his gladiator torso, except for a leather mask, but kept the tutu and tights. Oleg was a Roman senator, in sandals, and a toga made from one of my sheets. Charu and Pari were cat people, complete with tiny ears and long tails. Charu was Persian grey, and Pari was night black.

‘Lin!’ Didier said from his place beside Diva on a mattress on the wooden floor. ‘We were being fashionably late for the party, and we were stopped at a police roadblock before we got there, so we returned here, just as the whole city went into lockdown.’

‘Hi, Lin,’ Diva said. ‘Do you mind that we’re here?’

‘Of course, not. Happy to see you. This is -’

‘Randall, Miss Diva,’ Randall said. ‘And your beautiful face begs no introduction.’

‘Wow,’ Charu and Pari said.

‘Hi, I’m Vinson,’ Vinson said, ‘and I found my girlfriend. She’s in an ashram.’

‘Wow,’ Charu and Pari said.

‘This is Charu,’ Diva said. ‘And this is Pari.’

‘She’s in an ashram,’ Vinson said, shaking hands with Pari.

‘Is she like, possessed?’ Pari asked.

‘Or dying of an incurable disease?’ Charu offered.

‘What?’ Vinson asked, swaying as he tried to focus on them. ‘You know, I really gotta pee.’

I steered him to the bathroom and shut the door.

‘You look messed up, Shantaram,’ Diva said, standing up and offering her arms. ‘Gimme a hug, yaar.’

She hugged me, and sat down again next to Didier on the mattress. I looked at the mattress. It was familiar. I glanced through my bedroom door at my bed. The mattress was gone. The bare wooden bed was a coffin. My mattress was on the floor.

‘I hope you do not object, Lin,’ Didier said, drinking my zombie rations. ‘Since we are all stuck here for the Devil knows how long, it seemed like the only viable solution, to move the mattress here.’

‘Jaswant!’ I called out to the manager. ‘I have more guests. I’ll take everything you’ve got!’

‘That’s not how it’s done, baba,’ he called back. ‘You know that.’

‘Jaswant, it’s either me, or I’m sending Didier out there to negotiate.’

‘Apology accepted,’ he said. ‘The stuff is yours.’

He brought cardboard boxes into the room, and cases of bottled water. He returned with a gas bottle and a two-burner stove.

He shoved my journals and notes to the side, and installed the stove, lighting it with a battery-powered sparker shaped like a pistol. He turned the gas high and low and high again, as if releasing fireflies from a bottle.

‘Wow,’ Charu and Pari said.

Jaswant bowed.

‘Restaurants are closed,’ he said, ‘and there’s no take-out, no deliveries, and nothing but what you cook yourselves, for who knows how long.’

‘We’re gonna need more to smoke,’ I said, at the door to my room.

‘That can be arranged, but it won’t be cheap, with this lockdown.’

‘I’ll take it all.’

‘There you go again. Haven’t you learned anything? You’re a menace to honest business.’

‘Didier!’

‘Apology accepted. I’ll bring the stuff along later. It’s in the tunnel.’

‘The tunnel?’

‘Yes.’

‘There’s a tunnel, underneath this hotel?’

‘Of course there’s a tunnel. That’s why I bought it. Sikhs, surviving World War Three, remember?’

‘Can I see it?’

His eyes narrowed.

‘I’m afraid… that’s above your pay grade,’ he said.

‘Fuck you, Jaswant.’

‘Unless -’

‘Fuck you, Jaswant.’

‘Unless,’ he persisted, ‘the zombies break through, and it’s our final option. If I had that phaser pistol, we’d be on easy street.’

‘Enough with the zombies.’

‘You’re no fun at all,’ he said, walking back to his desk. ‘The stove is a rental. I’ve put it on your bill.’

I took a look at the barricade, thinking of Karla, waiting for the time to search again, and glanced back at the people in my room.

Oleg was going through the boxes. He pulled out some pots and pans.

‘Very useful,’ he said.

‘If only we’d saved a servant,’ Pari said.

Diva lost it, laughing so hard that she pulled her knees up to her chest and rolled herself into a very tight in-joke.

‘No need for servants,’ Oleg smiled. ‘Have you ever tried Russian food? You’ll go mad for it, I promise you.’

‘Wow,’ Charu and Pari said.

Oleg had sent the T-shirts to Moscow, one to each non-identical twin, and by Didier’s rules he was free to get re-scented while he waited for Irina, his pheromone pilgrim, to respond.

The Diva girls liked him. Everybody liked him. Hell, I liked him. But all I could think of was Karla, out there, stuck in a building somewhere, with no security but her own.

‘Can I help with the cooking?’ Vinson chimed in as he drunk-shuffled out of the bathroom.

‘Inadvisable, Mr Vinson,’ Randall intoned. ‘I suspect that Mr Oleg’s culinary skills are a spectator sport, not a blood sport.’

‘Who are you again?’ Diva asked, leaning against Didier on the mattress.

‘He’s Randall,’ Didier said. ‘I told you about him. He’s a mystery, explained in clever phrases.’

‘I’m Randall, Miss Diva,’ Randall said. ‘And honoured to make your re-acquaintance.’

‘Please, come and sit with us, Randall,’ she said, patting the bed.

‘May I respectfully request, Miss Diva, that Mr Vinson be permitted to join me? He seems to have been left in my charge, and I think he should gently recline.’

‘Of course,’ Diva said, patting the mattress. ‘Put it here, Vinson.’

‘Thank you so much,’ Vinson said, as Randall eased him into a semi-slump on my mattress, one of my pillows behind his head. ‘My girlfriend is in an ashram, you know. I’m afraid I got a little tight, tonight, and actually even yesternight, because she’s in an ashram, you know, and that means, like, God is her boyfriend now or something, and how can I fight that? How can anyone fight God? And, like, if He’s so powerful, why doesn’t He get His own girl? It’s got me beat. It really has.’

‘It’s got you bad, baby,’ Diva said.

‘It’s got everybody bad, if you’ll pardon me, Miss Diva,’ Randall said. ‘It’s the fight or flight of affection.’

Diva reached across Didier to put her hand on Randall’s arm.

‘If I said I’d double what Karla is paying you, would you jump ship, Randall?’

‘Working for Miss Karla is beyond price,’ Randall smiled. ‘It is a privilege, so, with respect, I will remain on board, and help Miss Karla man a lifeboat, if required.’

Diva sized him up, wandering through his smile.

‘We’re going to get to know one another considerably better,’ she said, ‘if we stay locked up here all night.’

‘Every minute in your company is an honour, Miss Diva.’

I left that minute with them, honoured to be alone for a minute in my bedroom, but Diva quickly followed me, spun me around, and grabbed the lapels of my vest.

‘Is there something between Randall and Karla?’ she whispered.

‘What?’

‘If there is, I wouldn’t poach on her territory. I like Karla.’

‘Poach?’

‘But if there isn’t, I tell you, Lin, this guy is so hot. He’s like melting fucking hot, yaar.’

Places in our beautiful Bombay are burning, I thought. Places are gone. People are gone.

‘Right,’ I said, staring at her, not understanding why she wasn’t preparing for a lockdown of the city that could last for days, but glad to see a tiger-growl of the old Diva.

‘So, it’s cool, then?’

She was searching my eyes innocently.

‘Yeah.’

‘And there’s absolutely nothing between Karla and Randall? Because, I mean, he’s so hot, it’s like pretty hard to believe, you know?’

Worlds aren’t meant to change so quickly, so strangely, but they always do. I couldn’t understand any of it. Karla riding with Benicia, Naveen riding with Kavita, Diva dancing with Randall, my room filled with people riding out the storm. I only had one rope in that storm: Karla, maybe stuck somewhere, waiting for me to come.

‘You’re cool, Diva. It’s okay.’

She skipped from the bedroom, and I shut the door behind her, leaning against it without locking it. I didn’t want them to hear the sound of the lock turning, and feel unwelcome. They were welcome to stay for a month, as far as I was concerned. I pushed against the door with my back, expecting someone to open it at any minute, but needing a minute to myself.

Kavita was right. Karla never moved from the altar inside, even while I lit candles of devotion with Lisa. Karla was the altar inside, from the first second that I saw her.

Is it a sin to give your love to someone, when you can’t give your heart? Did we die inside, for a while, or did we keep love alive? Did she cut her wings, that dove, when she threw the window open? Was the happy life I thought we had, just the happy life I thought I had? Did I live a lie with Lisa, or lie a life?

Laughter rollicked in the rollicking room next door: a lifeboat, adrift on irresistibility. And for some peaceful minute of unwelcome truth, the door against my back was the wall of a confessional, and all my sins of omission and commission tumbled through my heart: Nazeer and Tariq, neglected friends burned and shot, and Lisa, neglected love lost forever. Remorse for my selfishness crawled across my skin. And I begged the dead to forgive me.

Laughter and stamping feet drummed through the door, tapping me on the back. I didn’t know if it was absolution or penance. I decided to call it even, and began to clean up my bedroom, in case any of the survivors in the next room needed a place to sleep.

I folded sheets and a blanket on the wooden bed base, to provide as much comfort as possible for any weary sleeper. I tidied the room, put my books in one corner, and my guitar in the other, and wiped the floors over with a damp cloth.

And somewhere in that unexpected service to unexpected guests, somewhere in the peace and simplicity and necessity of it, the stream of regret became a river, and I let Kavita and Lisa go.

Wherever they’d been, wherever they were going, living or dead, I let them go. I remembered how they laughed, how I’d made both of them laugh. And I smiled, thinking of it, and that smile opened the grated window, and set them free.

Chapter Seventy

Life on the run strings its own fences. The living room was full of peaceful friends, but it was also full of dangerous weapons. I’d placed each weapon carefully, from every corner and piece of furniture, and from the balcony to the front door, considering every contingency of attack. I hadn’t considered that the room might be invaded by friends.

I went back into the room and picked up the notes and journals Jaswant had sacrificed for his stove.

‘Guys, guys,’ I said, interrupting them.

Everyone looked up. They were smiling.

‘I was planning for uninvited guests, and instead, tonight, I’ve got invited guests.’

They cheered and clapped.

‘No, wait, you’re all welcome, of course, and thanks to Jaswant’s foresight we’ve got plenty of food and water and other stuff to ride this out.’

They cheered and clapped.

‘No, wait, the thing is, I was expecting uninvited guests, see, so I left a few weapons around.’

They blinked at me. They thought it was a joke, I guess, and were waiting for the punchline.

I reached above the almost empty bookshelf, and brought down a hatchet.

‘Just go back to what you were doing,’ I said, hatchet in hand. ‘Relax. I’ll go around picking up the weapons, because I don’t want anyone to get accidentally hurt. Okay?’

They blinked at me again. Didier was wearing a mask, and even he was blinking.

‘Wow,’ Charu and Pari said.

I put the jungle-street weapon on my wooden bed and went back to the room, gathering up knives, a gun, two clubs and a nifty knuckleduster. The last weapon was a set of Vikrant’s throwing knives, which I’d hidden behind a corner balcony support, near where Diva was sitting.

‘You’re either tragically paranoid,’ Diva said, ‘or tragically right.’

‘I don’t have time to be paranoid,’ I laughed. ‘There are too many people out to get me.’

I kept the handgun in my vest pocket. I couldn’t hide it in the apartment, because I couldn’t trust any of them if they found it. It’s bad karma to let someone get killed with your gun, Farid, dead Farid the Fixer, once said to me. Right up there under killing someone with it yourself.

Didier and Oleg had their own guns, if guns were needed. And there was a chance, if things got worse, that they might. Riots burn city blocks in Bombay, and other Indian cities. And around the fire in rings of blades and clubs are some of the people who lit the fire, waiting for prey to run.

I’d made a deal with Dominic to make another tour, in two hours. He needed to go home, eat, take a nap, and report again for duty. With the city in lockdown, every cop worked every shift.

I’d planned to forget the food, and go straight to the nap, but with my place full of people and my mattress on the floor, the night had unplanned itself.

I went back into the main room and looted Jaswant’s supplies, heaped on the table beside the stove. I ate a banana off the bunch with one hand, and almonds with the other. I drank half a glass of honey from a pot. Then I cracked three eggs into a big glass, poured milk on it, threw in some turmeric powder, and drank it down.

The girls had been watching.

‘Eeeuw,’ Charu said.

She was a pretty girl. For a second, the vain part of me wanted to explain that I had to be on the road again, without any place to eat, and I didn’t have time to cook. But I was in love, and vanity, that little shadow of pride, couldn’t weaken me.

‘You want one?’ I asked, offering her the glass.

‘Eeeuw,’ Charu said.

‘Is that like a magic trick, or something?’ Pari asked.

‘If it’s tricks you like, Miss Pari,’ Didier said. ‘Look no further than Didier.’

‘Wow. I want to see every single trick, Didier,’ Charu said.

‘Make it thrilling, Didier,’ Pari added.

Things got back to unusual. Everybody said something essential, inessentially. I went back to my bedroom, racked my weapons into a roll, and stashed them on a window ledge, obscured by a dresser.

‘You know, if this was a horror movie,’ Oleg said, leaning in the doorway behind me, ‘the hidden weapons would be a tension point.’

‘Unless you knew,’ I said, tucking the roll out of sight. ‘Then you’d be the tension point.’

‘Damn!’ he said. ‘Have you ever played Dragon Quest? They’re mad for it in Moscow.’

‘I’m taking off, Oleg,’ I said, turning to face him.

‘Wait a minute,’ he said quickly, ‘you’re taking off? I thought nobody was taking off. Never split up. That’s the first rule of crazy-time survival tactics.’

‘Strange as these words are, I’m leaving you in charge.’

‘In charge of what?’

‘In charge of my room, while I’m gone.’

‘Okay,’ he said, considering. ‘What do you want me to do with it?’

‘Don’t let anything happen to my journals. Make sure the rations hold out for everybody. And if Karla comes back before me, guard her.’

‘Sure you want to take a risk on me?’ he asked. ‘I’m a tension point, now, because I know where the weapons are.’

‘Cut it out, Oleg.’

‘Sorry,’ he smiled. ‘But it’s so much fun. Randall said that there were these creepy experiments in a lab near here, and one of the subjects escaped recently. It was in the newspaper. The girls are scared to death. I might get lucky tonight. Is that allowed, if it’s on the couch?’

I looked at him, thinking about burning buildings, and burning friends.

‘Is that look a yes, or a no?’ he asked, smiling.

‘Are you writing this, Oleg, what’s happening tonight?’

‘Hell, yeah. Memorising it all like a time-camera. Aren’t you? It’s a pretty unusual situation, and a pretty unusual mix of people. I mean -’

‘Stay awake, Oleg. Buildings like this burn, when people burn things in Bombay. It’s not a joke. That’s why I haven’t been drinking. It’s why I haven’t had a smoke. This is the shit, and I need you to stay straight while I’m gone.’

‘Don’t worry about the lifeboat while you’re gone,’ he smiled. ‘They’ll all be here, when you swim back.’

‘You wrote that, just before, didn’t you?’

‘Chert, da. Thank you so much for this, Lin,’ he said. ‘I really appreciate it.’

‘If Karla comes back before me, keep her here.’

‘You’re insulting me,’ he said. ‘You told me that already.’

‘I mean, guard her above everything, and anyone. You get that, right?’

‘I get that,’ he grinned. ‘This just gets better and better.’

I walked back into the room dressed for battle. Didier was playing rock-paper-scissors with Diva. Charu and Pari were trying to explain the rules to Vinson, who saw too many hands to make sense of it. Randall was keeping score with polite cheating. Everyone was laughing. I walked through to the entrance hall.

‘Again, with the fucking barricade?’ Jaswant complained.

‘Open it, Jaswant.’

‘It’s a bandobast, idiot! It’ll be dawn in a couple of hours, and then you’ll be a sitting goose.’

‘A duck. A sitting duck. Open up.’

‘Don’t you realise,’ he asked patiently, ‘that every time you open the barricade, you weaken the barricade?’

‘Please, Jaswant.’

‘If my Parsi friend was here, he would’ve devised a moveable barricade for contingencies like this, but -’

‘Jaswant, open the barricade, and if you ask me for a code word when I come back, I’ll get a jeweller to write it on your kara.’

‘My fat Punjabi ass, you will,’ he said, shifting his considerable belly to his considerable chest. ‘And apology accepted.’

He eased the barricade away from the door, but as I was slipping through he stopped me.

‘If Miss Karla comes back,’ he said, ‘she’ll be safe, with me.’

‘You just became a friend, Jaswant.’

‘There’s a security fee,’ he said, as I squeezed through the gap in the door. ‘For my services as a bodyguard. I’ll just put it on your bill.’

I ran the steps in jumps, sliding along the wall, to find Dominic waiting impatiently for me in the alley underneath the hotel’s arch.

‘You took your time,’ he said, as we rode away. ‘You’re hard enough to explain as it is, Shantaram, without having to explain why I’m late on my rounds.’

‘Did you get any sleep?’ I called over his shoulder.

‘An hour. You?’

‘I had company. What’s the latest? How bad is it?’

‘Very bad,’ he said, images of the bike shooting forward and backward in streetlight windows as we passed. ‘There were fires in Dongri, Malad, and Andheri. Hundreds have lost their homes and shops. VT station is packed with refugees, finding shelter or leaving the city.’

‘Has there been any fighting?’

‘Youth leaders from Hindu and Muslim communities have rallied their people. When a fire starts in a Hindu area, Hindu students arrive in trucks. They make a cordon of witnesses, so that no violence can begin. It’s the same on the Muslim side. They don’t want it to be like the last riots in Bombay.’

‘How’s that working out?’

‘So far, the students are doing a pretty good job of keeping the peace. We should do a recruiting drive among them. We need kids like that in the police.’

‘Who’s starting the fires?’

‘When a fire takes a street in Bombay,’ he said, spitting on the road, ‘a shopping mall or apartment block takes its place.’

Profiteers sometimes used communal tension as an opportunity to burn down streets of small shops standing in the way of their profit schemes. They hired thugs, tied orange headbands on their heads when they were burning Muslim shops, and green headbands when they burned Hindu streets.

Dominic wasn’t being cynical about that truth: he was defeated by it. He was thirty years old, a father of three, two girls, ten and eight, and a four-year-old boy: he was an honest, hard-working man who risked his life day and night in the uniform that he wore, and he’d stopped believing in the system that dressed him in it, and gave him a gun to defend it.

He talked bitterly, as he rode, and I’d heard it before, many times, in slums, on the streets and in small shops. It was the voice of resentment at the double unfairness of a social inequity that preys upon the poor, while telling them that it’s their karma to be deprived.

Dominic’s family had been Hindus, in his grandfather’s time. They’d converted to Christianity in the wave of conversions summoned by the elegant, ethically indelible speeches of Dr Ambedkar, India’s first law minister and a champion of the Untouchables.

The family suffered after the conversion at first, but by the time that Dominic and his wife were making their own family, they were fully integrated into the Christian community, just as many others had become Buddhists or Muslims to slip the chain of caste.

They were the same people, the same neighbours, simply going to different places to connect with the Source. But each religion resented, and sometimes violently resisted, attrition from its own faith franchise, and conversions remained a fiercely contested issue.

We made his circuit of the city, from Navy Nagar to Worli Junction, through every route possible. Trucks of chanting Hindus and Muslims passed us, their banners rippling, orange for Hindus and green for Muslims.

Politicians and the rich defied the lockdown, riding in armed escorts on the empty roads, always passing at speed as if being chased. A few people dared to risk the streets, here and there. When we saw them, they saw us, and ran away. Apart from that, the city near dawn was empty.

There weren’t any zombies, but the dogs and rats were plentiful, and hungry, without humans leaving refuse for them to eat. They took over many deserted streets, howling and squeaking for scraps.

Dominic was very careful. Indian people like dogs and rats. Indian people like just about everything. He stopped once, when there was a swarm of rats in front of us, blocking the way like sheep on a country road.

He revved the engine, flashed the high-beam headlight, and sounded the horn. The rats didn’t move.

‘Any ideas?’ Dominic asked.

‘You could fire your gun in the air to disperse them. Cops do that with people, when they stand on the road.’

‘Not an option,’ Dominic said.

A thin pariah dog approached, jittering, its thin legs jerking as it walked. The Indian street dog has been around for thousands of years, and this dog knew its way around. It stopped, and began a complicated growling, barking message.

The rats scurried, scrambled and slithered away, a thick grey pelt looking somewhere else for trash. The dog barked at us.

Get outta here, I think he said.

We rode on.

‘Nice dog,’ Dominic said over his shoulder.

‘Yeah, and I’m glad he didn’t have any friends. Thirty-five thousand people die of rabies every year in India.’

‘You really think on the dark side,’ he said, swinging the bike toward Worli Naka.

‘I think on the survival side, Dominic.’

‘You should let Jesus in your heart.’

‘Jesus is in every heart, brother.’

‘Are you serious?’

‘Of course. I love that guy. Who doesn’t?’

‘A lot of people don’t,’ he laughed. ‘Some people hate Jesus.’

‘No. Brilliant mind, loving heart, significant penance: Jesus was the real deal. They might know Christians they don’t like, but nobody hates Jesus.’

‘Let’s hope that nobody hates Him tonight,’ he said, glancing in alleyways as we passed them.

We reached Worli Naka, a five-way junction under bright lights, with a football field of open space around a single cop, standing on the beat.

Dominic pulled up beside him, and turned off the engine.

‘All alone, Mahan?’ he asked in Marathi.

‘Yes, sir. But, not now, sir. Because you are here your good self, sir. Who’s the white guy?’

‘He’s a translator. A volunteer.’

‘A volunteer?’

Mahan gave me the once-over, watching me carefully in case I made any funny moves, because only a crazy person would volunteer to be on the street.

‘A volunteer? Is he mad?’

‘Give me a fucking report, Mahan,’ Dominic snapped.

‘Sir! All is quiet, sir, since my shift commenced, at -’

There was a heavy double-thump, as a fully loaded truck crested a speed breaker. We turned and saw it approaching from the right.

The huge truck had a wooden tray at the back, with sides that reached chest-height on the men who were crammed into it. Orange banners were flashes of sun-coloured light as the truck passed beneath streetlamps.

The truck ran a second speed hump, and the singing men in the back bobbed up and down as the wheels bumped the hump, two waves passing through them from the first heads to the last men, jammed against the tailgate.

Ram! Ram! was the chant.

A horn sounded behind us and we turned to see another truck, approaching from the left. It was flying green banners.

Allah hu Akbar! was the chant.

We all glanced back at the orange truck, and then back to the green. It was clear that the trucks were going to pass one another pretty close to where we were standing, in the middle of the road.

‘Okay,’ Dominic said calmly, putting the motorcycle on the side-stand. ‘Hail Mary, full of grace.’

‘Narayani,’ Mahan muttered, also praying to the feminine Divine.

I stood together with the cops. We looked left and right at the approaching trucks, which were slowing down to a crawling pace.

Mahan, the cop who’d manned the wide intersection alone, had a police radio and a bamboo stick. I looked at him, and he caught my eye.

‘All is okay,’ he said. ‘Don’t take tension. Sir is there with us.’

‘And sir has us,’ I said in Marathi.

‘True!’ Mahan replied in Marathi. ‘Do you like country liquor?’

‘Nobody does,’ I laughed, and he laughed with me.

The drivers had decided to test their skill, passing one another as closely as they could. Truck-cabin helpers tilted mirrors and pulled banners upright. Others leaned over the sides, shouting instructions to the drivers, and banging the wooden panels.

The trucks, elephants on turtles, crawled turtle-slow toward one another, closer than anything but faith would tolerate. Not far from us the trucks paused and stopped beside one another, singers for singers. There were at least a hundred chanting men in the back of each truck. Their faith was frenzy. Their sweat baptised them. For a few bars, their chants enfolded and merged, the words echoing the words, and then becoming orange praising green, and green praising orange, singing one God.

I was tense, and ready for anything, but there was no anger in the trucks. The young students had no eyes but for their brothers, and devotion, and they chanted without pause.

They were on a mission. Fire brigade units had been prevented by mobs from responding to fires in Hindu and Muslim neighbourhoods. The young men in the trucks were citizen witnesses, putting their lives in harm’s way to make sure that harm didn’t stop civilian authorities from doing their jobs.

Their mission was sacred work, saving communities, and was beyond provocation. The trucks eased away from one another in frantic chanting, but without a single frown of violent intent.

As the trucks pulled away, driven on by chanting, she was there, Karla, standing alone on the far side of the intersection. She had hitched a ride on one of the trucks.

She was dressed in black jeans, a sleeveless black hot-rod shirt, and a thin red coat with a hood pulled over her black hair. Her carry bag was over her shoulder. Her ankle-strap shoes were clipped to the bag. She was barefoot.

I watched her wave the green banner truck away, and I ran.

‘I’m so glad to see you!’ she said, as I hugged her. ‘I thought it would take me forever.’

‘Take what forever?’ I asked, holding her close.

‘Finding you,’ she said, streetlights on green queens. ‘I thought you might be stuck somewhere with unsavoury types. I came to rescue you.’

‘That’s funny. I thought you were stuck somewhere with savoury types, and I came to rescue you. Kiss me.’

She kissed me, and leaned back, looking at me again.

‘Have you been practising?’

‘Everything is practice, Karla.’

‘Fuck you, Shantaram. Holding my own lines against me. Shameful.’

‘That’s not all I’d like to hold against you.’

‘I might hold you to that,’ she laughed.

‘No, really. I don’t know what your plans are, or what you’ve gotta do, but until this all settles down, please come back with me, Karla. Just, you know, so you’re sure I’m safe.’

She laughed again.

‘You’re on. Lead the way.’

‘Come and meet Dominic. He’s a friend, and he’s been helping me.’

‘Where’s your bike?’

‘It’s a total lockdown,’ I said. ‘I’m double-up with Dominic. It’s the only way I could get around and keep looking for you.’

‘Are you really riding behind that traffic cop?’

She looked across the empty field of light at Mahan and Dominic.

‘He’s also our taxi home,’ I said, ‘if you don’t mind riding three-up.’

‘Long as I’m in the middle,’ she said, taking my arm.

‘How’d you hitch a ride on the truck?’

She stopped us in the deserted intersection before we reached Dominic. She grabbed the collars of my vest, and pulled me into another kiss.

When I came out of it she was a step away, and I was still leaning like there was a reason. The cops were whistling, singing and dancing.

I scooted back to them, and introduced her.

‘A pleasure, Miss Karla,’ Dominic said. ‘We have searched in places very high for you, and very low.’

Discreet, in India, means not interrupting you to tell you something indiscreet.

‘How nice, Dominic,’ Karla sultried. ‘I’d like to hear your report on those low places, whenever you’re not saving the city.’

We rode three-up. Karla had her back against my chest. She clung to me, her arms clutching at my vest to hold on, pulling us close. She put her head back on my chest, and closed her eyes. I would’ve felt better about it, if she didn’t have her legs around Dominic, and her feet on the tank of his motorcycle.

We passed through checkpoints as if charmed. Dominic only used one mantra to swerve around the police barricades. Don’t ask, he said in Marathi, as he passed through roadblocks with me on the back and Karla’s legs decorating the front.

None of the cops asked. None of them even blinked. You gotta like cops, a wise con once said to me. They think like us, act like us, and fight like us. They’re outlaws who sold out to rich people, but the outlaw is still in there.

Dominic dropped us at the lane behind the hotel.

‘Thanks, Dominic,’ Karla said, placing her hand over her heart. ‘Nice ride.’

I gave him all the cash I had in my pocket. It was mostly US dollars, but there was an emergency mix of other stuff I’d carried for contingencies. It was about twenty thousand dollars. That sum passed through my hands every other day, but it was a lot of money to a man who lived on fifty dollars a month. It was enough to buy a one-room house, which was his dream, because the cop saving the city during the lockdown, like too many of them, lived in threadbare barracks.

‘This is too much,’ he frowned, and I realised that I’d insulted him.

‘It’s all I’ve got in my pockets, Dominic,’ I said, pressing him to take it. ‘If I had more, I’d give it to you. I’m so happy, man. I owe you on this. Call me, if you ever need me, okay?’

‘Thanks, Lin,’ he said, stuffing the money into his shirt, his eyes wondering how fast he could rush home, after his duty rounds, to tell his wife.

He rode away, and Karla started into the arched lane, but I stopped her.

‘Whoa,’ I said, holding her elbow. ‘Madame Zhou has a habit of popping out of these shadows.’

Karla glanced at the new day, painting muddy grey horizons around the buildings.

‘I don’t think she comes out in daylight,’ Karla said, striding ahead. ‘It’s good for her skin.’

We climbed the stairs to the blocked door on our floor.

‘What’s the password?’ Jaswant called out.

‘Ridiculousness,’ I shouted back.

‘What are you, fucking psychic, man?’ he replied, with no sign of the barricade moving. ‘How can you know that?’

‘Open the door, Jaswant. I’ve got an infected girl, here.’

‘Infected?’

‘Shift… the barricade… and open… the door!’

‘Baba, you have absolutely no sense of play,’ he said, shoving the artwork barricade aside.

He opened the door a crack, and Karla slipped through.

‘You don’t look infected at all, Miss Karla,’ Jaswant gushed. ‘You look radiant.’

‘Thank you, Jaswant,’ Karla said. ‘Did you stock up, for this catastrophe, by any chance?’

‘You know us Sikhs, ma’am,’ Jaswant said, twirling the threads of his beard.

‘A little more gap in the door, Jaswant,’ I said, still trying to squeeze through.

He eased the structure aside, I grabbled through, and he shoved it back into place again.

‘What do you have to report?’ he asked me, clapping dust from his hands.

‘Fuck you, Jaswant.’

‘Wait a minute!’ he said seriously. ‘I want to know what’s going on, out there. What’s your sit-rep?’

‘My sit-rep?’ I said, trying to pass him and get to my room.

‘Wait,’ he said, blocking my path.

‘What is it?’

‘You haven’t given your report! What’s going on out there? You’re the only one who’s been outside for sixteen hours. How bad is it?’

He was earnest. He meant it. People had walked down public streets, after the anti-Sikh riots, with severed Sikh heads in their hands, strung by the hair like shopping bags. It was an Indian tragedy. It was a human tragedy.

‘Alright, alright,’ I said, playing along. ‘The bad news, depending on how you look at it, is that I didn’t see any zombies. Not one, anywhere, unless you count drunks, and politicians.’

‘Oh,’ he said, a little defeated.

‘But the good news is that the city’s infested with rivers of rats, and packs of ravenous dogs.’

‘Okay,’ he said, smacking his hands together. ‘I’m gonna call my Parsi friend. He’s been nagging me about a Rat Plague Plan for years. He’ll be thrilled to hear this.’

We left him, dialling his Parsi friend.

‘The bodyguard standby charge still applies,’ he called to me, as he dialled. ‘I was on standby, even though Miss Karla came back with you. I’ll put it on your bill.’

The door to my room was unlocked. We heard strange noises coming from inside. I quietly opened it wide. From the doorway we saw Didier, speaking tongues to Charu on my mattress, while Oleg gambled his scent on Pari and my couch.

The strange noise we’d heard was Vinson, trying to play my guitar upside down. He was lying on his back, with his legs resting upright on the wall. No-one noticed us.

We walked in a step to look into my bedroom. Diva and Randall were stretched out on my wooden bed. They were kissing each other with their hands, as well as their lips.

I wanted to slap Randall away from a girl that I knew Naveen loved, but slapping Randall away was Diva’s job, if slapping was required.

Karla pulled my vest.

‘You are not riding out the apocalypse here,’ she whispered, leading me away by the hand.

We walked back to the door of her room. My heart was beating. She put the key in the lock, then stopped, turned, and looked at me.

I never took Karla for granted. But the key was in a lock that opened the door to her Bedouin tent, and my heart was too flooded with hope to doubt. I was hoping that a citywide lockdown and the small satyricon in my rooms might be what it took to make her open the tent.

She smiled, opened the door, and gently pushed me inside. She lit secret lights, and put incense in the right places. She took the collars of my vest, while I was goggling at the banners of red and blue silk above my head, and walked me backwards to the foot of her bed.

She kissed me, and used the advantage to shove me back on the bed, leaving my feet dangling over the edge.

She pulled an ottoman to the foot of the bed, sat down, and began to unlace one of my boots. Her fingers fretted at the knots, then loosened the laces and pulled off one boot. It hit the floor with a boot-thud, and she started on the other. It thumped the floor a few seconds later.

She pulled my vest and T-shirt off, unbuckled my jeans, and dragged me naked.

‘You know what your problem is?’ she said, looking me over. ‘You’re harder than you need to be.’

‘That’s your fault,’ I said, my hands behind my head, on Karla’s pillows, in Karla’s Bedouin tent.

‘Who said it’s a fault? It’s just that sometimes, a girl likes to provoke.’

I was confused again, but that was okay. I was very happy to be looking up at haloes of silk above her head.

‘You really came back for me?’ I asked. ‘You left the fetish party, and came looking for me?’

She was standing with her feet apart, her hands on her hips.

‘I’d swim the Colaba Back Bay for you, baby,’ she said, smiling at my confusion. ‘I mean, I might ask Randall to come with me, because I’m not a great swimmer, but I’d come for you, baby.’

‘Indians can’t swim like Australians,’ I said. ‘Australia has more sharks.’

She unbuttoned her black shirt, and threw it aside.

‘You know,’ she said, slipping off her jeans, and stripping naked, ‘it might be a lot easier for everybody, if I just keep you in sight from now on.’

She cocked her head to the side to study my reaction.

‘I think we should never be apart again,’ I said seriously. ‘What do you think, Karla?’

‘You’ll know exactly what I think,’ she said, creeping along my body to kiss me, ‘in about sixteen minutes.’

King of everything, and a beggar at her banquet at the same time. Thrown at her, thrown at me, turning, moving, changing, touching, and sweating too-long-alone.

My hands against the wall, pushing shadows away. Her feet against my chest, speaking softly, soles and toes, while harsher tongues shouted everywhere else.

The world rolling off the bed. My back on the floor. Her knees on the carpet, the coloured tent behind her head, fan-blades whirling doves of smoke from sandalwood incense.

Karla leaning over me, pressing her forehead to mine, eye for eye, subliming me with connected light. Lost in her pleasure, forgetting my own, finding it again in her eyes, coming home: Karla’s eyes, without fear or fences, coming home to me.

Arms entangled, fingers sewn together, legs in carnal coincidence we lay breath against breath, curled into one another like runaways, sleeping in a forest.

Chapter Seventy-One

Karla and I didn’t leave her tent again, during the lock-

down. On the first morning, I woke to see her walking toward me with coffee cups on a tray. I always woke before anybody, even in prison, especially in prison, and it was strange to wake with another consciousness already coffee-cool.

She was dressed in a kind of housecoat, but it was black, and completely sheer, and she was naked inside it. It was as if she was swimming in a shadow every time she moved, and I wanted to swim with her.

She set the tray down on a large street-drum she used as a night table, kissed me, and sat beside me on the bed.

‘Let me tell you what’s been going on,’ she said, her hand on my knee.

‘Going on now?’ I hoped.

‘Since the day I met Ranjit.’

‘I see. Not now.’

‘Not now. Do you know how Ranjit and I met?’

‘At a dog fight?’

‘You need this, Shantaram.’

‘No, Karla, I don’t. I just need you.’

‘Yes, you do need me, and you do need this.’

‘Why?’

‘Why do you need me, or why do you need this?’

‘I know why I need you – you’re the other half of everything. Why do I need to go back to you and Ranjit?’

‘The other half of everything,’ she smiled. ‘I like it. You need this talk because I’ve treated you bad, and I feel bad, even though I did the right thing, for you I mean, all the way along the line.’

‘Okay, but -’

‘I don’t like feeling bad, especially about you, so that has to be squared up, somehow. And the only way is for you to know what I’ve been doing, so you completely understand.’

‘I don’t care what you’ve been doing.’

‘You deserve to know.’

‘I don’t want to know. And I really don’t care.’

She laughed, and ran her hand up to my chest.

‘Sometimes, you’re funnier than the truth.’

‘And happier,’ I added, kissing her, and swimming in the black shadow with her.

Some time later she brought new cups of coffee to the bedside, and started again.

‘I wanted to get slum resettlement on the political agenda in Bombay.’

‘This is really good coffee,’ I said. ‘Italian?’

‘Of course, and stay on the subject.’

‘Slum resettlement,’ I said. ‘I get it. I’m just not sure I want to get it.’

‘Want to get what?’

‘Karla, I love you. I honestly don’t care what you’ve been -’

‘Humane, well-compensated resettlement for slum dwellers,’ she said. ‘You get that, right?’

She was imitating me, and doing a pretty good job.

‘I get that. I just -’

‘Ranjit and I met in an elevator,’ Karla said.

‘Karla -’

‘In a stuck elevator, to be precise.’

‘That’s a pretty good Ranjit metaphor. A stuck elevator.’

‘The elevator got stuck between the seventh and eighth floors for an hour,’ she said, crowding me into her memory.

‘An hour?’

‘Sixty long minutes. There was just the two of us, Ranjit and me.’

‘Did he make a pass at you?’

‘Of course. He flirted with me, and made a pass, and I slapped it away. So he made another pass, and I slapped it a lot harder, and then he sat on the floor and asked me what I wanted to achieve in life.’

I drank coffee, slapping Ranjit twice, in my mind.

‘It was the first time in my life that anyone ever asked me that question,’ she said.

‘I’ve asked you that question. I’ve asked you more than once.’

‘You asked me what I want to do,’ she said, ‘just like I ask you what you want to do. He asked me what I want to achieve in life. It’s a different question.’

‘It’s the same question, in a different elevator.’

She laughed, and then shook her head.

‘I’m not getting into that now, much as I’d love to kick your koans in the ass.’

‘The ass kicks,’ I said, straight-faced. ‘When the burden is great.’

‘I’m not doing this, Lin. I’m going to tell you what you need to know, and then I’ll aphorism your ass so bad you’ll think you’re drunk on homemade wine.’

‘Promise?’

‘Go with me, here.’

‘Okay, so you’re locked in a marriage, sorry, an elevator, with Ranjit, and when he can’t achieve you, he asks you what you want to achieve. What did you say?’

‘I answered it without thinking. I said I want to achieve decent resettlement for slum dwellers.’

‘What did he say?’

‘He said This is a fated connection. I’m going into politics, and I’ll make your program a priority, if you’ll marry me.’

‘He said this in the elevator?’

‘He did.’

‘And you accepted?’

‘I did.’

‘After an hour in an elevator?’

‘Yeah,’ she said, frowning.

She scanned my eyes, green queens prowling through my grey skies.

‘Hold it a minute,’ she demanded. ‘You don’t think a man would propose to me after an hour in a stuck elevator, is that it?’

‘I didn’t say -’

‘My fastest proposal was five minutes flat,’ she said.

‘I didn’t say -’

‘I’d defy you to beat that, but I know you can’t, and I wouldn’t let you try.’

‘No offence, but apart from you, what was his angle?’

‘He said that he wanted to piss off his family, and there was no better way. He’d been looking for someone just like me.’

‘Why did he want to piss off his family?’

‘Ranjit had control of the money, his family estate, but he had brothers and sisters who were snapping at his crooked deals. They’d taken him to court three times, trying to get control of the money he was misappropriating. He’d been looking for a wife he could weaponise.’

‘To antagonise them?’

‘Exactly. He couldn’t cut them off without a reason, and he knew they couldn’t keep their mouths shut about his foreign wife, especially if his foreign wife couldn’t keep her mouth shut about them.’

‘You cooked this up in an hour? You fix his problems, and he fixes yours. Strangers on an elevator, huh?’

‘Exactly. Each time I provoked one of them to insult me, he cut them off. I was his reverse pension plan.’

‘You’re pretty cute, even when you’re trying not to be,’ I smiled. ‘How did you get them to dislike you so much?’

‘They’re a nasty bunch. They hate easy. And Ranjit told me all their dirty secrets. I took an honesty pill every time I saw them. It made them sick.’

‘So, when you and Ranjit got all the way down to the ground floor, you married him?’

She was suddenly serious.

‘After what I did to you, with Khaderbhai, I thought you’d never speak to me again. And I was right, kind of. We were apart for two years without a word.’

‘I gave you space, because you married Ranjit.’

‘I married Ranjit to give you space,’ she said. ‘And I spent two years helping him cut family ties, and pushing him up a political hill that he was ill-equipped in anything but ambition to climb.’

‘So, you inappropriately alienated his family, so that he could misappropriate the family fortune, and in exchange he pushed your slum resettlement agenda? Am I getting this right?’

‘Substantially. At least, that was the deal, if he’d stuck to it.’

‘Karla, that’s… kinda nuts, what you were doing with Ranjit.’

‘And living with Lisa wasn’t nuts, in its own way?’

‘Not… every day.’

She laughed, and then looked away.

‘At the last moment, Ranjit ditched the resettlement program, and pulled out of the race, because of a few scares the other side threw at him.’

‘When did that happen?’ I asked, thinking that his withdrawal from politics might’ve had something to do with Lisa’s death.

‘That day at his office when you came in growling for me, I’d just had it out with him. It was all over. Everything I’d worked for. He’d withdrawn his nomination. He was shaking and sweating. He quit, and you know I can’t stand a quitter. I went and sat in the corner while he settled down, and I told him that if we ever found ourselves in the same room again, so long as we lived, we’d sit as far apart as possible.’

‘Neither one of us knew he was so scared that day because he thought I knew he’d been with Lisa at the end.’

‘I was so happy when you walked in.’

‘As happy as I am now?’ I asked, kissing her.

‘Happier,’ she purred. ‘I was sitting in the corner, with everything I’d planned and worked for in ruins around me, and then you walked in. I was never more glad to see anyone in my life. I thought, My hero.’

‘Let me get you something heroic to eat. I don’t know about you, but I’m starved.’

‘No, let me.’

She brought us a platter of dates, cheese and apples, and wine in long, red glasses with feet like a hawk’s claws.

She talked about Kavita Singh, and how Ranjit’s disappearance gave Karla one last hand to play, because she had a proxy vote on Ranjit’s shares, which he couldn’t rescind without resurfacing. Karla elevated Kavita to deputy editor, in exchange for a promise from Kavita to make slum resettlement a banner issue.

Working together, Karla and Kavita developed a citywide beautification program to nudge public consensus toward humane resettlement of slum dwellers, as a matter of civic pride. They played it out on newspaper pages still technically owned by Ranjit.

‘The editor was a problem,’ Karla said. ‘We tried for weeks to get him on the team. He fought us to the fourth quarter on everything. But when he accepted an invitation to the fetish party, it was easy.’

‘What was easy?’

‘Compliance,’ she said. ‘Smoke a joint with me.’

‘Why were you on Benicia’s bike last night?’

‘Does it hurt more that I was with Benicia, or that I was on her very pretty motorcycle?’

‘It all hurts. I don’t ever want to see you on any motorcycle but mine, unless you’re riding it yourself.’

‘Then you’ll have to teach me to ride, renegade. You start with your legs wide, right?’

‘Wide enough to hold on,’ I smiled.

‘Smoke a joint with me,’ she said, lying back on the bed, her feet in my lap.

‘Now?’

‘Look, the city’s in lockdown. We can’t go anywhere. Jaswant has plenty of supplies. I’ve got a gun. Relax, and smoke a joint with me.’

‘I’m pretty relaxed, but okay, if you think it’s a good idea.’

‘Some doors,’ she said slowly, ‘can only be opened with the grace of pure desire.’

Some time later she brought us fruit on a blue glass tray, and fed me with her fingers, piece by piece. Love is connection, and happiness is the connected self. She kissed my hands, her hair like wings fanned for the sun. And an instant blessed by a woman’s love washed wounds away.

‘Compliance,’ Karla said, settling in beside me with a glass of wine.

‘Compliance?’

‘There’s nothing like a fetish, to get a man’s compliance point out in the open.’

‘The chief editor?’ I asked, still cocooned in the segue.

‘Are you zoning out?’ she asked. ‘Of course, the editor.’

‘How did you find out his fetish? Did he present a card, or something?’

‘When the guests arrived, we’d already supplied every fetish in the book, with girls in masks, dressed by damnation. We paraded them past him, until one got a reaction. It didn’t take long, actually.’

‘Which one?’

‘Dominatrix, in a fake-leather sari. It’s a catalogue item.’

‘Then what?’

‘Then he got filmed, in a private booth, getting dominated.’

‘You and Kavita filmed him?’

‘Not just him. We also filmed a judge, a politician, a tycoon and a cop.’

‘You set all this up?’

‘Kavita and I had a woman on the inside.’

‘Who was that?’

‘The hostess.’

‘Who was?’

‘Diva,’ she said.

‘Diva, our Diva, who’s next door, with Randall?’

‘Our Diva, who left earlier, with Charu and Pari, while you were asleep,’ she said. ‘Some cars arrived to bring them home. Bodyguards were banging on the door. Jaswant thought the zombies were trying to break in. We pulled the barricade away and -’

‘Wait a minute, I slept through all that?’

‘Sure, soldier,’ she purred. ‘Diva said you looked cute.’

‘Diva said what?’

‘She wanted to talk to me, while Charu and Pari were getting ready to leave. It takes those girls a time to do anything. Diva came in here, and we sat on the bed.’

‘While I was asleep?’

‘Yeah. She was right, you’re cuter asleep than awake. It’s lucky I’ve got a weakness for awake.’

‘How long was Diva here?’

‘We smoked a joint,’ Karla said.

‘That long?’

‘And drank a glass of wine.’

‘While I was sleeping?’

‘Yeah, she came in to tell me that Kavita had a new secret admirer, and she’d been acting a bit nuts.’

‘Kavita is a bit nuts,’ I said. ‘She had a thing with Lisa, and it won’t let her go. She’s clever and capable, but she’s been acting nuts with me, too. I think that’s why Madame Zhou likes her – they’re as crazy as each other.’

‘Kavita did this whole thing with us, Lin,’ Karla said. ‘She was with us every step of the way.’

‘And you put her next in line to run a major daily newspaper.’

‘I won’t let you talk her down,’ she said. ‘I won’t let anyone talk her or any of my friends down. Just like I wouldn’t let anyone talk you down.’

‘Okay. Fair call. But it’s my job to tell you when I sense a threat.’

‘Your job?’ She laughed.

‘Yeah, and it’s your job to warn me,’ I smiled. ‘So, Diva left with the girls?’

‘The bodyguards escorted them away. They had some explaining to do, about staying out all night.’

‘And I slept through all of this?’

‘Sure did. We helped Jaswant put the barricade back, I showered, got back into bed, and you got very glad to see me. The girls said goodbye, by the way.’

I was feeling strange. I was always the first up, no matter how tired I was, and if someone in a room next door dropped a pen on the floor, I started awake from deep sleep. But somehow, I’d slept through a conversation on my own bed.

It was an unusual feeling, disorienting, all slow pulse rates and blurred edges, and negotiating it was like walking along the deck of a rolling ship. It took me a while to realise what it was: I was feeling peaceful.

Peace, Idriss once said, is perfect forgiveness, and is the opposite of fear.

‘Are you with me, Shantaram?’ Karla smiled, shaking me by the chin.

‘I’m so with you, Karla.’

‘Okay,’ she laughed. ‘Where were we?’

‘You were telling me how you and Kavita put this together,’ I said, holding her close.

‘Kavita, Diva and me. Diva’s the richest girl in Bombay right now, and when she threw a fetish party, the rich rowed up in limousines.’

‘But Diva wasn’t even there.’

‘We set it up for her to be turned away at a roadblock, and pushed back into the city, with plausible deniability about anything that happened at the party.’

‘To cover her assets.’

‘To cover her assets,’ Karla said, tapping me on the chest in agreement.

It was the first time she ever did it: the first time that little gesture born in who she was, when she was completely relaxed in love, made its way to my skin.

‘So, you set up fetish games, and cameras?’

‘We had seven targets, counting the editor, but only five of them turned up.’

‘Targets?’

‘Impediments to progress, that we wanted to make vessels of change.’

‘And now the five are -’

‘Vessels of change, and we’ll get slum resettlement, and more attention to women’s issues. Win-win, women style.’

I sat up on the bed. She offered me a towel, scented with ginger, and we wiped our faces and hands.

‘If these guys are big shots, Karla, they’re dangerous, by definition. That film’s a bomb, and it’ll keep ticking as long as it exists.’

‘We’ve got intermediaries,’ she said, leaning into my arm again.

‘They’ll need to be bulletproof.’

‘They are,’ she said. ‘We’ve contracted the Cycle Killers to talk for us.’

‘Now, that makes things much saner. The Cycle Killers?’

‘I don’t do anything face to face with anyone but them. They do all the negotiating with the other side.’

‘How did that happen?’

‘You really wanna know?’

‘Of course I wanna know.’

‘Well,’ she said, sitting up and facing me, her legs lotus. ‘Randall and I noticed the Cycle Killers following you, twice, and I sent Randall to find out what they wanted.’

‘He fronted the Cycle Killers alone?’

‘No doubt.’

‘He’s a keeper,’ I smiled. ‘I’m glad he’s on board with you.’

‘With us,’ she corrected.

‘What do you make of it, Randall and Diva? I know Naveen is crazy about her, and I thought she liked him.’

‘It’s a lockdown, Shantaram. What happens in a lockdown, stays in a lockdown. Best we keep out of it.’

‘You’re right, I guess. Go back to the Cycle Killers.’

‘So, Randall found out that Abdullah had hired them to watch over you for a while, and he made a couple of friends.’

‘And when you found out they were for hire, you hired them.’

‘I did, and they were happy to do it.’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Yeah, they’re working on their image. They’d like to move into more public-minded areas than killing people for money.’

‘Like threatening people for money.’

‘Something like that,’ she said. ‘It’s an upward image step, but I think they’re serious. I think they wanna come in from the cold.’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘When I had the Cycle Killers to negotiate for us, I had a plan. I couldn’t have done it without them, because I couldn’t trust anyone else not to buckle under the pressure, and give us up. When Fate put them behind you, I got them behind me.’

‘In front of you, actually.’

‘Exactly. Ishmeet, the boss, is the man talking to the vessels of change.’

‘I’ve met Ishmeet.’

‘He’s a true gentleman,’ she said.

‘Salt of the moon.’

‘And Pankaj, his friend, who really likes you, by the way, is a riot. I invited him to the fetish party.’

‘I bet you did. And did I have to be kept so deep in the dark, through this dark scheme?’

‘I was protecting you,’ she said. ‘I was keeping you away from the fire.’

‘Like a fool?’

‘Like a soul mate,’ she said. ‘If the whole thing blew up, I wanted to make sure it didn’t reach out to you. You’re on the run too, remember?’

She was beautiful, in a new way. She was defending me, guarding me with a part of her soul.

She got up to light new incense, seven sticks, fireflies hovering in the coloured room, and put them in the mouths of clay dragons. I watched her moving around the bedroom, and my mind was fighting Time, trying to stop everything but This.

She sat down beside me again, taking my hand.

‘If I’d told you that I wanted to move the whole city in the direction of humane slum resettlement,’ she asked, ‘would you have joined me in it, or would you have tried to stop me? Honestly?’

‘I would’ve tried to get you to leave, and set up again somewhere else, with me.’

‘That’s why I protected you,’ she said.

‘That’s why?’

‘You would’ve helped me, because you love me, but your intention wouldn’t have been pure, going in, and that would’ve made you vulnerable. And me, too, probably.’

I thought about it, not really understanding it, but a different question asked itself.

‘Why did you do it, Karla?’

‘You don’t think the cause is important enough?’

She was teasing me.

‘Why did you do it, Karla?’

It was her turn to think. She smiled, and went with honesty.

‘To see if I could,’ she said. ‘I wanted to see if I could do it.’

‘I think you can do anything, Karla. But we should’ve done it together.’

She laughed again.

‘You’re so loved,’ she said. ‘And I’m so glad to finally tell you.’

It was too much, it was every dream. Doubt, the thing that fights love, pushed me to the cliff, daring me to jump. I jumped.

‘I love you so much, Karla, that I’m lost in it, and I always will be.’

Men don’t like to be that honest about love: to put the gun in a woman’s hand, and hold it against their own hearts, and say, Here, this is how you kill me. But it was okay. It was okay.

‘I love you too, baby,’ she said, all green queens. ‘I always did, even when it looked like I didn’t. I’m stuck on you, and you better get used to it, because we’re inseparable from now on. You see that, right?’

‘I see that,’ I said, pulling her down to kiss me. ‘You thought all this out pretty long and hard, didn’t you?’

‘You know me,’ she purred. ‘I do everything long and hard.’