The Mountain Shadow

Chapter Twenty-Six

Refreshed and prepared we rode the hot monsoon highway between lumbering trucks loaded with high, lopsided bundles, swaying at us at every curve. I was glad of the ride, and glad that Abdullah was racing for once. I needed the speed. Reaction times between speeding cars from lane to lane were so small that fierce concentration killed the pain. I knew pain would come. Pain can be deferred, but never denied. After the ride, let it come, I thought. Pain is just proof of life.

In two hours we reached the turnoff that led into the Sanjay Gandhi National Park. We paid the entrance fees and began the long, slow ride through the jungle-thick forest at the foot of the mountain.

The winding road leading to the tallest peak in the reserve was in surprisingly good condition. Recent storms had shaken branches loose from trees close to the road, but local forest dwellers, whose huts and hand-built compounds could be seen here and there through the lush undergrowth, quickly swept them up for firewood.

We passed groups of women dressed in flower-garden saris, walking single file and carrying bundles of sticks on their heads. Small children dragging their own sticks and bunches of twigs trailed behind the women.

The park was wild with rain-soaked life. Weeds rose to shoulder height, vines writhed and squirmed across the treillage of branches. Lichens, mosses and mushrooms flourished in every damp shadow.

Pink, mazarine blue and Van Gogh yellow wildflowers trailed across the leafy waterlogged carpet of the forest. Leaves burned red by rain covered the road like petals in a temple courtyard. Earth’s frayed-bark perfume saturated the air, drawn up into every sodden stem, stalk and trunk.

Councils of monkeys, meeting in assembly on the open road, scattered as we approached. They scampered to nearby rocky outcrops and boulders, their mouths pinched in simian outrage at our intrusion.

When one particularly large troop of animals scattered into the trees, making me start with fright, Abdullah caught my eye and allowed himself a rare smile.

He was the bravest and most loyal man I’d ever known. He was hard on others, but much harder on himself. And he had a confidence that all men admired or envied.

The great, square forehead loomed over the ceaselessly questioning arc of his eyebrows. A deep, black beard covered everything but his mouth. The deep-set eyes, the colour of honey in a terracotta dish, were sad: too sad and kind for the wide, proud nose, high cheekbones and lock-firm jaw that gave his face its fearsome set.

He’d grown his hair long again. It descended to his broad, thick shoulders, a mane that became the strength prowling in his long arms and legs.

Men followed his face, form and character into war. But something in him, humble reticence or cautious wisdom, pulled him back from the power that some men in the Sanjay Company urged him to take. They begged him, but he refused to lead. And that, of course, made them urge him all the more.

I rode the jungle road beside him, loving him, fearing for him, fearing for myself if ever I lost him, and not thinking about what had happened to me in that fight, and how it might be working on my body, if not my mind.

As we reached the cleared gravel parking space at the foot of the mountain, and turned off our bikes, I heard Concannon’s voice.

The devil’s got a crush on you, boy.

‘Are you alright, Lin brother?’

‘Yeah.’

The drift of my eyes found a phone, on the counter of a small shop.

‘Should we call Sanjay again?’

‘Yes. I will do it.’

He spoke to Sanjay for twenty minutes, answering the mafia don’s many questions.

It was quiet, at the foot of the mountain. A small shop, the only structure in the gravel parking lot, sold soft drinks, crisps and sweets. The attendant, a bored youth with a dreamy expression, lashed out now and then with a handkerchief tied to a small bamboo stick. The swarm of mites and flies scattered, for a second or two, but always returned to the sugar-stained counter of the shop.

No-one else approached the parking area, or descended from the mountain. I was glad. I was shaking so hard that it took me all of those twenty minutes to get myself together.

Abdullah hung up the phone, and signalled for me to follow him. I couldn’t tell him that I felt too weak and beat up to climb a mountain: sometimes, all the guts you have is the guts you pretend, because you love someone too much to lose their respect.

We climbed up some steep but wide and well-made stone steps to the first plateau of the mountain. There was a large cave that featured heavy, squat columns supporting a massive granite plinth. The arched entrance led to a chambered sanctum.

Further along the upward path, we stood before the largest and most spectacular cave. At the high, arched entrance to the main cave, two enormous statues of the Buddha, five times the height of a man, stood guard in alcoves, left and right. There were no fences or railings to protect them, but they were remarkably well preserved.

After climbing for some twenty minutes past dozens of caves, we entered a small plateau where the path widened into several well-trodden tracks. The summit was still some distance above.

Through a glade of tall, slender trees and sea-drift lantanas, we came upon a temple courtyard. Paved in large, white marble squares and covered by a solid dome, the columned space ended in a small, discreet shrine to a sage.

Sombre, and perhaps a little sorrowful, the stony gaze of the bearded saint peered into the surrounding jungle. Abdullah stopped for a moment, looking around him in the centre of the white marble courtyard. His hands were on his hips, and a small smile dimpled his eyes.

‘A special place?’

‘It is, Lin brother. This is where Khaderbhai received most of his lessons from the sage, Idriss. It was my privilege to be with them, for some of those lessons.’

We stood in silence for a while, remembering the dead Khan, Khaderbhai, each of us pulling a different cloak of recollections over our shoulders.

‘Is it far from here?’

‘Not far,’ he said, leading the way out of the courtyard. ‘But it is the hardest part of the climb.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘You are Mr Shantaram?’

I turned to Abdullah, frowning my surprise.

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

‘Me?’

He nodded. I turned back to the young man.

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

I read the short message: There are no Gurus

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

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

‘Idriss will explain it himself, no doubt.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then I heard Karla’s voice.

‘Tell me a joke, Shantaram.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Come here,’ she said.

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

Chapter Twenty-Seven

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

During the meal, we met six young devotees and students, who exchanged stories of what it was that had brought them to the top of the mountain. Abdullah and I listened, without comment.

By the time we’d finished eating the modest meal of daal and rice, it was late. We cleaned our teeth, washed our faces, and settled down to sleep. But my little sleep drowned in a nightmare that choked me awake before dawn.

I decided to beat the early risers to the simple bathroom. I used the long-drop toilet, then took a small pot of water and a piece of soap, and washed myself with half a bucket of water, standing on the pallet floor of the canvas-screen bathroom.

Dried and dressed and cold awake, I made my way through the dark camp to sit by the guttering fire. I’d just built the embers into a flame with twigs of kindling around a battered coffee pot, when Karla came to stand beside me.

‘What are you doing here?’ Karla purred.

‘If I don’t get coffee soon, I’m gonna bite a tree.’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘Oh, you mean, on the mountain? I could ask you the same thing.’

‘I asked you first.’

I laughed gently.

‘You’re better than that, Karla.’

‘Maybe I’m not what I used to be.’

‘We’re all what we used to be, even when we’re not.’

‘That’s not telling me what you’re doing here,’ she said.

‘What we tell, is rarely what we do.’

‘I’m not doing an aphorism contest,’ she said, frowning a smile and sitting down beside me.

‘We are the art, that sees us as art.’

‘No way,’ she said. ‘Keep your lines to yourself.’

‘Fanaticism means that if you’re not against me, you’re against me.’

‘I could report you for aphorism harassment, do you know that?’

‘Honour is the art of being humble,’ I replied, deadpan.

We were speaking softly, but our eyes were sharp.

‘Okay,’ she whispered, ‘you’re on. My turn?’

‘Of course it’s your turn. I’m already three up on you.’

‘Every goodbye is a dress rehearsal for the last goodbye,’ she said.

‘Not bad. Hello can lie, sometimes, but goodbye always tells the truth.’

‘Fiction is fact, made stranger. The truth about anything is a lie about something else. Come on, step it up, Shantaram.’

‘What’s the rush? There’s plenty more where they came from.’

‘You got somethin’ or not?’

‘Oh, I see, it’s to throw me off, and put me off my game. Okay, tough girl, here we go. Inspiration is the grace of peace. Truth is the warden in the prison of the soul. Slavery can’t be unchained from the system: slavery is the system.’

‘Truth is the shovel,’ she fired back. ‘Your mission is the hole.’

I laughed.

‘Every fragment is the whole entire,’ Karla said, firing at will.

‘The whole cannot be divided,’ I said, ‘without a tyranny of parts.’

‘Tyranny is privilege, unrestrained.’

‘We’re privileged by Fate,’ I said, ‘because we’re damned by Fate.’

‘Fate,’ she grinned. ‘One of my favourites. Fate plays poker, and only wins by bluffing. Fate is the magician, and Time is the trick. Fate is the spider, and Time is the web. Shall I go on?’

‘Dark funny,’ I said, happier than I’d been in a while. ‘Nice. Try this – all men become their fathers, but only when they’re not looking.’

She laughed. I don’t know where Karla was, but I was with her, at last, in a thing we both loved, and she was my heaven.

‘The truth is a bully we all pretend to like.’

‘That’s on old one!’ I protested.

‘But a good one, and worth a second run. Whaddaya got?’

‘Fear is the friend who warns you,’ I offered.

‘Loneliness is the friend who tells you to get out more,’ she countered. ‘Come on, let’s move it along here.’

‘There’s no country too unjust, too corrupt, or too inept to afford itself a stirring national anthem.’

‘Big political,’ she smiled. ‘I like it. Try this on for size – tyranny is fear, in human form.’

I laughed.

‘Music is death, made sublime.’

‘Grief is ghost empathy,’ she hit back quickly.

‘Damn!’

‘You give up?’

‘No way. The way to love, is to love the way.’

‘Koans,’ she said. ‘Grasping at straws, Shantaram. No problem. I’m always ready to give love a kick in the ass. How about this – love is a mountain that kills you, every time you climb it.’

‘Courage -’

‘Courage defines us. Anyone who doesn’t give up, and that’s just about everybody, is a man or woman of courage. Stop with the courage, already.’

‘Happiness is -’

‘Happiness is the hyperactive child of contentment.’

‘Justice means -’

‘Justice, like love and power, is measured in mercies.’

‘War -’

‘All wars are culture wars, and all cultures are written on the bodies of women.’

‘Life -’

‘If you’re not living for something, you’re dying for nothing!’ she parried, her forefinger on my chest.

‘Damn.’

‘Damn, what?’

‘Damn… you got… better, girl.’

‘So, you’re saying I won?’

‘I’m saying… you got… a lot better.’

‘And I won, right? Because I can do this all day long, you know.’

She was serious, her eyes filled with tiger-light.

‘I love you,’ I said.

She looked away. After a time she spoke to the fire.

‘You still haven’t answered my question. What are you doing here?’

We’d been husky-whispering in the contest, trying not to wake the others. The sky was dark, but a ridge of dawn the colour of faded leaves hovered over the distant, cloudy horizon.

‘Oh, wait a minute,’ I frowned, realising at last. ‘You think I came up here, because you’re here? You think I set this up?’

‘Did you?’

‘Would you want me to?’

She turned the half-profile on me, that sadder, softer eye searching my face as if she was reading a map. Red-yellow fire shadows played with her features: firelight writing faith and hope on her face, as fire does on every human face, because we’re creatures of fire.

I looked away.

‘I had no idea you were here,’ I said. ‘It was Abdullah’s idea.’

She laughed softly. Was she disappointed, or relieved? I couldn’t tell.

‘What about you?’ I asked, throwing a few sticks on the fire. ‘You didn’t suddenly get religion. Say it ain’t so.’

‘I bring Idriss hash,’ she said. ‘He’s got a taste for Kashmiri.’

It was my turn to laugh.

‘How long has this been going on?’

‘About… a year.’

She was dreaming something, looking out at the dawning forest.

‘What’s he like?’

She looked at me again.

‘He’s… authentic. You’ll meet him later.’

‘How did you meet him?’

‘I didn’t come up here to meet him. I came to meet Khaled. He’s the one who told me that Idriss was here.’

‘Khaled? Which Khaled?’

‘Your Khaled,’ she said softly. ‘Our Khaled.’

‘He’s alive?’

‘Very much so.’

‘Alhamdulillah. And he’s up here?’

‘I’d pay good money to see Khaled up here. No, he’s got an ashram, down in the valley.’

The hard-fisted, uncompromising Palestinian had been a member of the Khader Council. He’d been with us on the smuggling run into Afghanistan. He killed a man, a close friend, because the friend endangered us all, and then he walked alone and unarmed into the snow.

I’d been a friend, a close friend, but I’d heard nothing of Khaled’s return to the city, or anything about an ashram.

‘An ashram?’

‘Yeah,’ she sighed.

Her face and manner had changed. She seemed to be bored.

‘What kind of ashram?’

‘The profitable kind,’ she said. ‘It has a majestic menu. That, you’ve got to give him. Meditation rooms, yoga, massage, aromatherapies and chanting. They chant a lot. It’s like they never heard of funk.’

‘And it’s at the base of this mountain?’

‘At the start of the valley, on the west side.’

She frowned a yawn at me.

‘Abdullah goes there all the time,’ she said. ‘Didn’t he talk to you about it?’

Something staggered inside me. I was glad to know that Khaled was alive and well, but the cherished friendship felt betrayed, and my heart stumbled.

‘It can’t be true.’

‘The truth comes in two kinds,’ she laughed gently. ‘The one you want to hear, and the one you should.’

‘Don’t start that again.’

‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Sucker punch. Couldn’t resist it.’

I was suddenly angry. Maybe it was that sense of betrayal. Maybe it was old crying, finally forcing its way past the shield of softness, gleaming in her kinder eye.

‘Do you love Ranjit?’

She looked at me, both eyes, soft and hard, staring into mine.

‘I thought I admired him, once upon a time,’ she said, ‘not that it’s any of your business.’

‘And you don’t admire me?’

‘Why would you ask that?’

‘Are you afraid to tell me what you think?’

‘Of course not,’ she said evenly. ‘I’m wondering why you don’t already know what I think of you.’

‘I don’t know what that means, so how about you just answer my question?’

‘Mine first. Why do you want to know? Is it disappointment in yourself, or jealousy of him?’

‘You know, the thing about disappointment, Karla, is that it never lets you down. But it’s not about that. I want to know what you think, because it matters to me.’

‘Okay, you asked for it. No, I don’t admire you. Not today.’

We were silent for a while.

‘You know what I’m talking about,’ she said at last.

‘I don’t, actually.’

I frowned again and she laughed: the little laugh that bubbles up from an in-joke.

‘Look at your face,’ she said. ‘What happened to you? Fell off your pride again, right?’

‘Happily, the fall’s not too far.’

She laughed again, but it quickly became a frown.

‘Can you even explain it? Why you’ve been fighting? Why a fight always finds you?’

Of course I couldn’t. Being kidnapped and strapped to a banana lounge by the Scorpion gang: how could I explain that? I didn’t understand it myself, not any of it, not even Concannon. Especially not Concannon. I didn’t know, then, that I was standing on a tattered corner of a bloody carpet that would soon cover most of the world.

‘Who says I have to explain it?’

‘Can you?’ she repeated.

‘Can you explain the things you did to us back then, Karla?’

She flinched.

‘Don’t hold back, Karla.’

‘Maybe I should chase to the cut, so to speak, and tell you the answer.’

‘Go ahead.’

‘Sure you’ve got the stomach for it?’

‘Sure.’

‘Okay then, the -’

‘No, wait!’

‘Wait what?’

‘My conversation sub-routine is crying out for that coffee.’

‘You’re kidding, right?’

‘No, I’m grievously coffee-deprived. That’s how you kicked my ass.’

‘So I did win?’

‘You won. Can I have the coffee now?’

I used my sleeve to snatch the pot from the fire and pour some coffee into a chipped mug. I offered it to Karla, but she wrinkled her lip in a proscenium arch of disgust.

‘I’m reading a no,’ I guessed.

‘How’s that magic act workin’ out? Drink the damn coffee, yaar.’

I sipped at the coffee. It was too strong and too sweet and too bitter, all at the same time. Perfect.

‘Okay, good,’ I croaked, coffee shivering hello. ‘I’m good.’

‘The -’

‘No, wait!’

I found a joint.

‘Okay,’ I said, puffing it alight. ‘I’m good. Lemme have it.’

‘Sure you don’t need a manicure, or a massage?’ Karla growled.

‘I’m so good, now. Smack me around all you like, Karla.’

‘Okay, here goes. The marks on your face, and all the scars on your body, are like graffiti, scrawled by your own delinquent talent.’

‘Not bad.’

‘I’m not finished. Your heart’s a tenant, in the broken-down tenement of your life.’

‘Anything else?’

‘The slumlord’s coming to collect the rent, Lin,’ she said, a little more softly. ‘Soon.’

I knew her well enough to know that she’d written and rehearsed those lines. I’d seen her journals, filled with notes for the clever things she said. Rehearsed or not, she was right.

‘Karla, look -’

‘You’re playing Russian roulette with Fate,’ she said. ‘You know that.’

‘And your money’s on Fate? Is that what this is about?’

‘Fate loads the gun. Fate loads every gun in the world.’

‘Anything else?’

‘While you do this,’ she said, even more softly, ‘you’re only breaking things.’

It was just true enough to hurt, no matter how softly she said it.

‘You know, if you keep coming on to me like this… ’

‘You got funnier,’ she said, laughing a little.

‘I’m still what I used to be.’

We stared at one another for a few moments.

‘Look, Karla, I don’t know what it is with Ranjit, and I don’t know how it’s two whole years since I looked at you and heard your voice. I just know that when I’m with you, it’s wild horse right. I love you, and I’ll always be there for you.’

Emotions were leaves in a storm on her face. There were too many different feelings for me to read. I hadn’t seen her. I hadn’t been with her. She looked happy and angry, satisfied and sad, all at the same time. And she didn’t speak. Karla, lost for words. It hurt her, in some way, and I had to break the mood.

‘Sure you don’t want to try that coffee?’

She raised a rattlesnake eyebrow, and was about to fang me, but sounds from the caves alerted us to the presence of others, waking with the dawn.

We breakfasted with the happy devotees and were drinking our second mug of chai, when a young student appeared at the ridge of the camp where the steep climb from the forest ended. He accepted a chai gratefully, and announced that the master wouldn’t be joining us until after lunch.

‘That’s it,’ Karla muttered, moving to the open kitchen, where she rinsed out her cup and set it on a stand to dry.

‘That’s what?’ I asked, joining her at the sink.

‘I’ve got time to go down, visit Khaled, and be back before Idriss gets here.’

‘I’m coming with,’ I said quickly.

‘Wait a minute. Call off the myrmidons. Why are you coming?’

It wasn’t an idle question. Karla didn’t idle.

‘Why? Because Khaled’s my friend. And I haven’t seen him since he walked into the snow, nearly three years ago.’

‘A good friend would leave him the hell alone, right now,’ she said.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

She fixed me with that look: hunger burning in a tiger’s eyes, staring at prey. I loved it.

‘He’s happy,’ she said quietly.

‘And?’

She glanced at Abdullah, who’d come up to stand beside me.

‘Happy’s hard to find,’ she said at last.

‘I’ve got absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.’

‘Happiness has a sign on it,’ she said. ‘It says Do Not Disturb, but everybody does.’

‘Interfering is what we do,’ I insisted, ‘if we care about someone. Weren’t you interfering, when you ripped some skin off me just now?’

‘And were you interfering, between Ranjit and me?’

‘How?’

‘When you asked me if I love him.’

Abdullah coughed politely.

‘Perhaps I should leave you for some time,’ he suggested.

‘No secrets from you, Abdullah,’ Karla said.

‘But you keep plenty of your own, brother,’ I said. ‘Not telling me that Khaled is here?’

‘Fire away at Abdullah, Lin,’ Karla interjected. ‘But answer my question first.’

‘When you know where we are in this conversation, come get me.’

‘You were answering a question.’

‘What question?’

‘Why?’

‘Why what?’

‘Why do you love me?’

‘Dammit, Karla! You’re the most indiscernible woman who ever spoke a common language.’

‘Give me a ten-minute head start,’ she laughed. ‘No, make it fifteen.’

‘What are you planning?’

She laughed again, and pretty hard.

‘I want to warn Khaled that you’re coming, and give him a chance to escape. You know how important that is, don’t you? A chance to escape?’

She walked to the edge of the mesa, then slipped out of sight on the steep path. I waited for the essential fifteen minutes to pass. Abdullah was looking at me. I didn’t bite. I didn’t want to know.

‘Perhaps… she is right in this,’ he said, at last.

‘Not you, too?’

‘If Khaled looks at what he has through your eyes, instead of his own eyes, he may believe in himself less than he does now. And I need him to be strong.’

‘Is that why you never told me Khaled was here in Bombay?’

‘Yes, that was a part of it. To protect his little happiness. He was never a very happy man. You remember that, I am certain.’

He was, in fact, the most dour and stern man I’d ever known. Every member of his family had been killed in the wars and purges that pursued the Palestinian diaspora into Lebanon. He was so callused by hatred and sorrow that the most vicious insult in his Hindi vocabulary was the word Kshama, meaning forgiveness.

‘I still don’t get it, Abdullah.’

‘You have an influence over our brother Khaled,’ he said solemnly.

‘What influence?’

‘Your opinion matters very much to him. It always did. And your opinion of him will change, when you come to know of his life now.’

‘Why don’t we cross that bridge, before we blow it up?’

‘But another part,’ Abdullah said, his hand on my arm, ‘the biggest part, was to protect him from harm.’

‘What do you mean? He was a Council member. That’s for life. No-one can touch him.’

‘Yes, but Khaled is the only man who has the authority to challenge Sanjay for the leadership of the Council. That can make some resent him, or fear him.’

‘Only if he challenged Sanjay.’

‘In fact, I have asked him to do just that.’

Abdullah, the most loyal man I knew, was planning a coup. Men would die. Friends would die.

‘Why are you doing this?’

‘We need Khaled, perhaps more than you know. He has refused, but I will ask him again, and keep on asking him, until he agrees. For now, please keep his presence here a secret, just as I have done.’

It was a long speech for the taciturn Iranian.

‘Abdullah, none of this applies to me any more. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. I’ve been trying to find a way to bring this up with you since we got here.’

‘Is it too much to ask of you?’

‘No, brother,’ I replied, moving half a step away from him. ‘It’s not too much to ask, but it has nothing to do with me any more. I made a decision, and I’ve been waiting for a chance to tell you. It’s such a big thing that I’ve pushed it away, after Concannon and the Scorpions, and then seeing Karla up here, after so long. I guess… now is the right time to face it, and get it out there.’

‘What decision? Has anyone talked to you about my plan?’

I let out a heavy sigh. Straightening up, I smiled, and leaned back against a squared-off boulder.

‘No, Abdullah, nobody talked about your plan. I never heard about it, until you told me just now. I made the decision to leave after Lightning Dilip told me that three kids cancelled on the dope that DaSilva and his crew are selling.’

‘But you do not have anything to do with that, and I do not. It is not our operation. We both disagreed with Sanjay, when he started garad and girls in South Bombay. It was not our decision to make.’

‘No, it’s more than that, man,’ I said, looking out at the spirals of storm swirling over the distant city. ‘I can give you ten good reasons why I should leave, and why I have to leave, but they’re not important, because I can’t think of one good reason to stay. Bottom line is, I’m just done, that’s all. I’m out.’

The Iranian warrior frowned, his eyes searching left and right through an invisible battlefield for the Lin he knew, while his mind made war on his heart.

‘Will you permit me to persuade you?’

‘Trying to persuade isn’t just permitted, among good friends,’ I said, ‘it’s required. But please, let me spare you the kindness. I don’t want to hear you plead a lost cause for me. I know how you feel, because I feel it myself. The truth is, my mind’s made up. I’m already gone, Abdullah. I’m long gone.’

‘Sanjay won’t like it.’

‘You’re right about that,’ I laughed. ‘But I don’t have any family ties to the Company. I don’t have any family, so he doesn’t have the mafia card to play against me. And Sanjay knows I’m good with passports. I could always be useful, sometime down the line. He’s a cautious guy. He likes options. I’m guessing he won’t put fire in my way.’

‘That is a dangerous guess,’ Abdullah mused.

‘Yeah. That it is.’

‘If I kill him, your odds will improve.’

‘I don’t know why I even have to say these words, Abdullah, but here goes, Please don’t kill Sanjay, for me. Are we clear on that? It would ruin my appetite for a month, man.’

‘Granted. When I take his life, I will purge your benefit from my mind.’

‘How about not killing Sanjay at all?’ I asked. ‘For any reason. And why are we talking about killing Sanjay? How did you let this happen, Abdullah? No, no, don’t tell me. I’m out. I don’t want to know.’

Abdullah mulled it over for a while, his jaw locked, and his lips twitching with the tide of reflection.

‘What will you do?’

‘I think I’ll freelance,’ I answered him, my eyes following a shadow of thoughts across his wind-shaped face. ‘I thought I might string with Didier for a while. He’s been asking me to throw in with him for years.’

‘Very dangerous,’ he mumbled.

‘More dangerous than this?’ I asked, and when he opened his mouth to speak, I stopped him. ‘Don’t even try, brother.’

‘Have you told anyone else about this?’

‘No.’

‘Make no mistake, Lin,’ he said, suddenly stern. ‘I am starting a war, and I must win it. Your belief in Sanjay’s leadership has been lost, as has mine, and you are no longer with the Company. Very well. But I hope that your loyalty to me will ensure your silence, concerning my plans.’

‘I wish you hadn’t told me about it, Abdullah. Conspiracies contaminate, and I’m contaminated now. But you’re my brother, man, and if it’s a choice between them and you, I’ll stand with you every time. Just don’t tell me any more about the plan, okay? Didn’t anyone ever tell you, there’s no curse as cruel as another man’s plans?’

‘Thank you, Lin,’ he said, smiling softly. ‘I will do what I can to ensure that the war does not come to your door.’

‘I’d prefer it didn’t come to my subcontinent. Why war, Abdullah? Walk away, man. I’ll stand with you, out here, outside the Company, no matter what they throw at us. A war will kill our friends, as well as our enemies. Is anything worth that?’

He leaned back against the squared stone beside me, his shoulder touching mine. We both looked out over the forest canopy, and then he rested his head on the stone to look into the troubled sky.

I lay back against the stone, lifting my face to fields of cloud, ploughed by the storm.

‘I cannot leave, Lin,’ he sighed. ‘We would be good partners, it is true, but I cannot leave.’

‘The boy, Tariq.’

‘Yes. He is Khaderbhai’s nephew, and my responsibility.’

‘Why? You never told me.’

His face softened in the sad smile we reserve for the memory of a bitter failure that brought eventual success.

‘Khaderbhai saved my life,’ he said at last. ‘I was young, an Iranian soldier running away from the war with Iraq. I got into bad trouble, here in Bombay. Khaderbhai intervened. I could not understand why a mighty don would reach out to save me, from a death that my pride and my temper had earned.’

His head was close to mine, but his voice seemed to be coming from somewhere else, somewhere beyond the great stones at our backs.

‘When he granted me an audience, and told me the matter was resolved, assuring me that I was safe from harm, I asked him how I could repay him,’ Abdullah continued. ‘Khaderbhai smiled at me for a long time. You know that smile so well, Lin brother.’

‘I do. Still feel it, sometimes.’

‘And then he made me spill my blood, with my own knife, and swear on that flowing blood to watch his nephew, Tariq, as a protector, offering my life, if necessary, for as long as I or the boy should live.’

‘He was a master of the devil’s compact.’

‘Ah, yes,’ Abdullah said quietly, as we sat up and turned to face one another. ‘But that is why I cannot simply walk away from what Sanjay is doing. There are things you do not understand. Things I cannot tell you. But Sanjay is bringing fire on our heads, maybe even on the city itself. Terrible fire. The boy, Tariq, is in danger, and I will do whatever it takes to keep him safe.’

We stared at one another for a while, not smiling but at peace, somehow. At last he stood up, and slapped me on the shoulder.

‘You will need more guns,’ he said.

‘I’ve got two guns.’

‘Exactly. You need more guns. Leave it to me.’

‘I have enough guns,’ I said, starting to catch up.

‘Leave it to me.’

‘I don’t need new guns.’

‘Everybody needs new guns. Even armies need new guns, and armies have many guns. Leave it to me.’

‘Tell you what. If you can find a gun that makes people go to sleep for a couple of days without hurting them, get me one, and a lot of ammunition.’

Abdullah stopped, and drew me close to whisper.

‘This will be bad, before it is good, Lin. It is not a joke. Please know that I value your silence very highly, the silence of friendship, because I know that you are risking your life, should Sanjay come to know of it. Be prepared for war, the more so if you despise war.’

‘Okay, Abdullah, okay.’

‘Let us go to Khaled,’ he said, walking away.

‘Oh, so now it’s okay to disturb his little happiness, huh?’ I said, following him.

‘You are not family now, Lin brother,’ he said quietly, as I drew alongside him at the edge of the mesa. ‘Your opinion no longer has influence.’

I stared into his eyes, and it was there: the blur of indifference, the diminishment of love’s light and friendship’s bright trust, the subtle change in the aura of affections when one still inside the fold looks into the eyes of what lives outside.

I’d found a home, a broken home, in the Sanjay Company, but the gates were closed there forever. I loved Abdullah, but love is a loyalty of one, and he was still in a band of brothers, loyal to all. That’s why I’d waited to tell him: why I’d let myself drift inside the other tides of Karla’s soft-eyed cleverness and Concannon’s martial madness.

I was losing Abdullah. I struck the tree-inside, what we were together in the Company, with the axe of separation. And my friend, his eyes drifting on stranger currents, led us over the mesa on the downward path, as thunder tumbled in that threatening sea, the drowning sky.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

At the base of the mountain Abdullah led me away behind the valley of the sandstone Buddhas and its well-cleared paths. We followed a jungle track through thick forest for a few minutes, and then entered a tree-lined approach, rising on a gentle slope to meet a concrete and hardwood house, three storeys tall.

Before we reached the steps leading up to the wide ground-floor veranda, Khaled walked out of the vestibule to greet us.

Dressed in a voluminous yellow silk robe, and with garlands of red and yellow flowers around his neck, he stood with his fists locked onto his hips.

‘Shantaram!’ he shouted. ‘Welcome to Shangri-La!’

He’d changed. He’d changed so much in the years since I’d seen him. His hair had thinned to the point that he was almost bald. The fighter’s frame had expanded until his hips and belly were wider than his shoulders. The handsome face that had frowned its rage and recrimination at the world was swollen, from temple to vanishing jaw, and his smile all but concealed his golden-brown eyes.

It was Khaled, my friend. I rushed the steps to greet him.

He extended his hands, holding me two steps below. A young man in a yellow kurta took a photograph of us, let the camera fall to a strap around his neck, and pulled a notebook and pen from his shirt pocket.

‘Don’t mind Tarun,’ Khaled said, nodding his head toward the young man. ‘He keeps a record of everyone I meet, and everything I do and say. I’ve told him not to do it, but the naughty lad won’t listen. And hey, people always do what their hearts tell them to do, isn’t it so?’

‘Well -’

‘I got fat,’ he said.

It wasn’t regretful or ironic. It was a flat statement of fact.

‘Well -’

‘But you look very fit. What have you been doing, to get all those bruises? Boxing with Abdullah? Looks like he got the better of you. No surprise, eh? Certainly, you both look fit enough to make that climb up my mountain, to see Idriss.’

‘Your mountain?’

‘Well… this part of it is mine, na? It’s actually Idriss who thinks he owns the whole mountain. He’s such a chudh. Anyway, come here, let me give you a hug, and then we’ll take a look around.’

I climbed the last two steps, and fell into a fleshy cloud. Tarun flashed a photograph. When Khaled released me he shook hands with Abdullah, and led the way inside.

‘Where’s Karla?’ I asked, a step behind him.

‘She said that she will meet you again on the path,’ Khaled replied breezily. ‘She is jogging, I think, to clear her mind. I am not sure whether it is you or me that disturbs her peace, but my money is on you, old friend.’

The entrance to the huge old house opened into a wide vestibule, with staircases left and right, and archways leading to the main rooms of the ground floor.

‘This was a Britisher’s monsoon retreat,’ Khaled announced, as we moved beyond the vestibule to a sitting room featuring walls of books, two writing desks, and several comfortable leather chairs. ‘It passed to a businessman, but when the national park was established here, he was forced to sell it to the city. A rich friend of mine, one of my students, has rented it from the city for some years, and he gave it to me, to use.’

‘Your students?’

‘Indeed.’

‘Oh, I see. Is this where you learn how not to contact your friends, when you come back from the dead?’

‘Very funny, Lin,’ he replied, in that flat tone he’d used when he’d described himself as fat. ‘But I think you’ll understand my need for discretion.’

‘Fuck discretion. You’re not dead, Khaled, and I want to know why I didn’t know that.’

‘Things are not as simple as you think, Lin. And anyway, what I teach people here has nothing to do with the outside world. I teach love. Specifically, I teach people how to love themselves. I think you’re not surprised that for some people, that’s not easy.’

We walked through the sitting room, opened the louvred French doors and entered a wide sunroom, running the whole width of the house. There were many wicker armchairs, with glass-topped tables between them.

Softly whirring overhead fans disturbed the slender leaves of potted palms. A wall of glass panels looked out into an English-style garden of rosebushes, and neatly clipped hedges.

Two pretty young Western girls dressed in tunics approached us, bowing to Khaled, their palms pressed together.

‘Please, take a seat,’ Khaled invited, pointing toward two of the wicker chairs. ‘What will you have, hot drinks, or cold?’

‘Cold,’ Abdullah answered.

‘The same.’

Khaled nodded at the girls. They backed up a few steps, before walking away out of sight. Khaled watched them leave.

‘Good help is so easy to find these days,’ he sighed contentedly, as he lowered himself into a chair.

Tarun made notes.

‘What happened?’ I asked.

‘What… happened?’ Khaled repeated, mystified.

‘The last time I saw you there was a dead lunatic on the ground, and you walked into a snow storm, without a gun. Now you’re here. What happened?’

‘Oh,’ he smiled. ‘I see. We’re back to that.’

‘Yeah. We’re back to that.’

‘You know, Lin, you got harder, since I saw you last.’

‘Maybe I did, Khaled. Maybe I just like the truth, when I can get it.’

‘The truth,’ he mused.

He glanced up at Tarun, who was still making notes. The assistant stopped, caught Khaled’s eye, sighed, and put his notebook away.

‘Well,’ Khaled continued, ‘I walked from Afghanistan. And I walked. And I walked. It’s surprising, really, how far you can walk, when you don’t care if you live, or if you die. To be precise, when you don’t love yourself.’

‘You walked where, exactly?’

‘I walked to Pakistan.’

Tell me about Pakistan, a voice said in my head.

‘And after Pakistan?’

‘After Pakistan, I walked to India. Then I walked through India, to Varanasi. By the time I got there, word had spread about me. A lot of people were talking about the Silent Walking Baba, who never spoke a word to anyone. It took me a while to realise they were talking about me. I didn’t speak, because by then I actually couldn’t speak. Physically, I mean. I was quite sick, from malnutrition. Almost died from it. The hunger, for so many starving months, caused my hair to fall out, and many of my teeth. My mouth was swollen with ulcers. I couldn’t say a word, to save my life.’

He laughed softly, chuckling motes in a sunbeam of memory.

‘But people took my silence for wisdom, you see? Less really is more, sometimes. And in Varanasi, I met an Englishman, Lord Bob, who claimed me as his guru. As it happens, he was very rich. A lot of my students have been rich, in fact, which is funny, when you think about it.’

He paused, staring out into the English garden, a smile of wonderment pulling at the edges of his mouth.

‘Lord Bob… ’ I prompted.

‘Oh, yes. Lord Bob. He was such a kind and caring man, but he was in need of something. Desperately in need. He spent his whole life searching in vain for the one thing that would give his life meaning, and then he finally came to me for an answer.’

‘What was it?’ I asked.

‘I have no idea,’ Khaled replied. ‘I had no idea what he was searching for, frankly. Not a clue. He was stinking rich, after all. What could he possibly want? But I don’t think it mattered much to Lord Bob that I couldn’t help him, because he left me everything, when he died.’

The girls returned with two trays, and set them down on tables near us. There were drinks in long glasses, and several dishes of dried papaya, pineapple and mango, and three varieties of shelled nuts.

Bowing deeply to Khaled, their hands pressed together reverently, the girls backed away and then turned, gliding across the tiled veranda on bare feet.

I watched the girls out of sight, and turned to see Khaled, staring dreamily at the garden, and Abdullah staring fixedly at Khaled.

‘I was there, in Varanasi, for nearly two years,’ Khaled reflected. ‘And I miss it, sometimes.’

He looked around then, and picked up one of the glasses. He handed it to me, passed another to Abdullah, and took a long sip himself.

‘They were good years,’ he said. ‘I learned a lot from Lord Bob’s willingness to subjugate himself, and surrender to me.’

He chuckled. I glanced at Abdullah. Did he say subjugate? Did he say surrender? It was a strange moment, in an already strange hour. We sipped our drinks.

‘And he wasn’t the only one, of course,’ Khaled continued. ‘There were many others, even elderly sadhus, all of them too happy to kneel and touch my feet, even though I said nothing at all. And that’s when I understood the power that comes into us when another man, even if it’s only one other, bends his knee in devotion. I understood that men sell the power of that dream to women, every time they propose.’

He laughed. I stared at my drink, at the lines of moisture that zigzagged through the silver filigree design on the surface of the ruby-red glass. I was becoming increasingly uneasy. The Khaled who spoke so complacently about others kneeling before him wasn’t the friend I’d loved.

Khaled turned to Abdullah.

‘I think our brother, Lin, is rather surprised that while my English has improved, in the years with Lord Bob, my American sensibility has declined, wouldn’t you say?’

‘Every man is responsible for his own actions,’ Abdullah replied. ‘That law applies to you, and to those who choose to kneel before you, as it does to Lin, and to me.’

‘Well said, old friend!’ Khaled cried.

He placed his glass on the table, and lifted himself with some grunting effort from the chair.

‘Come! I want to show you something.’

We followed him back into the house and through to the staircases flanking the entrance vestibule. Khaled paused at the foot of the stairs for a moment, his hand resting on the turned wooden pommel.

‘I hope you liked the juice,’ he asked earnestly.

‘Sure.’

‘It’s the drop of maple syrup that makes the difference,’ he pressed.

There was a pause. I understood, at last, that he wanted a reply.

‘The juice was fine, Khaled,’ I said.

‘Good juice,’ Abdullah echoed.

‘I’m so glad,’ Khaled said flatly. ‘You’ve got no idea how long it took me to train the kitchen staff on the juices. I had to flog one of them with a spatula. And the drama I had with the desserts, don’t let me go there.’

‘You have my word,’ I said.

He took one step, but then turned quickly to speak to Tarun, who’d been following us.

‘You can wait here, Tarun,’ Khaled said. ‘In fact, take a break. Get yourself a biscuit.’

Crushed, Tarun ambled away. Khaled watched him leave, suspicion squinting in his eyes.

The old Khaled could’ve taken the steps three at a time, and beaten any man in Bombay to the top floor. The new Khaled paused twice on the first flight.

‘This floor,’ he puffed, as we reached the first floor, ‘has all of our main meditation and yoga halls.’

‘Do a lot of yoga, then?’ I asked, channelling the impish spirit of Gemini George for a moment.

‘No, no!’ Khaled replied seriously. ‘I’m much too fat and unfit for that. I was always a boxing and karate man, anyway. You remember that, Lin.’

I remembered. I remembered when Khaled could fight any man in the city but Abdullah into the ground, and still have energy to spare.

‘Uh-huh.’

‘But yoga is very popular, with my people. They’re at it all the time. They’d do it all night, if I let them. I practically have to hose them down to make them stop.’

Through the nearest door in the corridor, we could see a class of a dozen people, sitting on mats. Flute music came from speakers fixed to the walls.

Regaining his breath, Khaled led us to the second floor.

The corridor at that level showed many closed doors, running the length of the building.

‘Dormitories,’ Khaled wheezed. ‘And single rooms.’

He gently eased open the door to the nearest room. We saw several girls, sleeping on single beds under tent-pole mosquito nets. The girls were naked.

‘My most devoted students,’ Khaled said, in that same bewilderingly flat tone.

‘What the fuck, Khaled?’ I snapped, but he put his finger to his lips, silencing me.

‘Please, Lin, be quiet! We won’t get a minute’s peace, if you wake them up.’

‘Okay, bye, Khaled,’ I said, leaving.

‘What are you doing?’ Khaled asked, a puzzle stamped on his forehead.

‘Well, I’m gonna keep on walking until I’m not here. That’s what goodbye means.’

‘No, Lin, what’s the matter?’ he asked, pulling the door closed gently.

‘The matter?’ I said, stopping at the top of the stairs. ‘What’s that in there, a harem? Have you gone nuts, Khaled? Who do you think you are?’

‘Everyone here is free to leave, Lin,’ he said flatly, his frown darkening at the edges. ‘Including you.’

‘What a coincidence,’ I sighed, turning to go. ‘I was just leaving.’

‘No, no, I’m sorry,’ he said, rushing forward and putting a hand on my shoulder to stop me. ‘There’s something you have to see! Something I must show you! It’s a secret. A secret I want to share with you.’

‘I’ve had enough secrets for one day, Khaled. Call me, when you come down off the mountain.’

‘But Abdullah hasn’t seen the secret yet. You can’t deprive him, as well, can you? That would be cruel. Abdullah, wouldn’t you like to know the secret?’

‘I would, Khaled,’ Abdullah replied, all fascinated innocence.

‘Then, tell Lin. Convince him to stay. Whatever the case, I’m going up to see the secret, and you’re welcome to come along, if you want, my brothers.’

He released his grip on my shoulder, braced himself with a deep breath for the climb to the third floor, and then trudged up the stairs.

I held Abdullah back.

‘What are we doin’ here, Abdullah?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘A room full of naked girls? What’s the matter with him? There’s plenty of girls. The world’s full of girls. Having your own roomful of girls is what gives creepy a bad name. Come on, brother. Let’s go.’

‘But, Lin,’ Abdullah whispered. ‘What about the secret?’

‘Are you kidding?’

‘It is a secret. A real secret.’

‘I don’t like the secret I heard already, Abdullah.’

‘How can you not want to know?’

‘Let’s just say I’ve got psychic asthma, and right now, I need fresh air. It’s medicinal. Let’s go.’

‘Please stay with me, Lin, just until the secret is unveiled.’

I sighed.

‘Are you guys coming?’ Khaled called out from his resting place, halfway up the flight of stairs. ‘These stairs are killing me. I’m getting an elevator installed next week.’

Abdullah gave me his pleading frown.

‘Okay, okay,’ I called back, heading up the stairs.

Plodding wearily, Khaled followed the elbow turn of the stairs and finally came to a closed door. Fetching a key from the folds of his kaftan, he opened the door, and ushered us inside.

It was dark. The light from the stairwell revealed an attic room, with the folded arms of roof beams above our heads. Khaled closed the door, locked it, and clicked on a suspended light bulb.

It was a hoard of objects in gold and silver: jewelled necklaces and chains, spilling from little wooden chests, scattered across several tables.

There were candlesticks and mirrors, picture frames, hairbrushes, strings of pearls, jewelled bracelets, watches, necklaces, brooches, rings, earrings, nose-rings, toe rings and even several black and gold wedding necklaces.

And there was money. A lot of money.

‘No matter how I tried to explain this,’ Khaled said, breathing through his open mouth, ‘nothing could ever be clearer than seeing it for yourself, na? This is the power of the bended knee. Do you see? Do you see?’

There was a softly breathing silence. Pigeons brooded in a distant corner of the roofline, their warbled comments echoing in the long, closed room.

Finally, Khaled spoke again.

‘Tax free,’ he wheezed.

He looked from Abdullah, to me, and back again.

‘Well? What do you think?’

‘You need more security,’ Abdullah observed.

‘Ha!’ Khaled laughed, clapping the tall Iranian on the back. ‘Are you volunteering for the job, my old friend?’

‘I have a job,’ he replied, even more seriously.

‘Yes, yes, of course you do, but -’

‘Your students gave you all this stuff?’ I asked.

‘Actually, I call them students, but they refer to themselves as devotees,’ Khaled said, staring at the hoard. ‘There was even more than this.’

‘More than this?’

‘Oh, yes. A lot of other gifts from my devotees in Varanasi. But I had to leave there rather quickly, and I lost everything.’

‘Lost it how?’

‘To the police, as a bribe,’ Khaled replied. ‘That’s why Lord Bob set me up here, in this house, just before he died.’

‘Why did you have to leave Varanasi so quickly?’

‘Why do you want to know, Lin, my old friend?’

The jewels from the treasure were glittering in his eyes.

‘You brought it up, man.’

He stared at me for a while, hesitating on the glacial edge of cold-hearted truth. He decided to trust me, I guess.

‘There was a girl,’ he said. ‘A devotee, a very sincere devotee, who came from a prominent Brahmin family. She was beautiful, and ultimately devoted to me, body and soul. I didn’t know she was below the age.’

‘Come on, Khaled.’

‘I couldn’t know. You live here, Lin, you know how precocious these young Indian girls can be. She looked eighteen, I swear. Her breasts were swollen like ripe mangoes. And the sex was fully mature. But, alas, she was only fourteen.’

‘Khaled, you just officially freaked me out.’

‘No, Lin, understand me -’

‘Understand sex with kids? You want me to see it your way? Is that it, Khaled?’

‘But it won’t happen again.’

‘Again?’

‘It can’t happen again. I’ve taken measures.’

‘You’re making this worse every time you open your mouth, Khaled.’

‘Listen to me! I make every one of them show me a birth certificate now, especially the younger ones. I’m protected, now.’

‘You’re protected?’

‘Let’s stop all this serious talk, yaar. We all have things in the past that we regret, no? We have a saying, in Arabic. Take counsel from he who makes you weep, not from he who makes you laugh. I haven’t made you laugh today, Lin, but that doesn’t mean my counsel is worthless.’

‘Khaled -’

‘I want you to know that you, and Abdullah, my only remaining brothers, will always be safe, now. This power, this money and my inheritance, it’s all ours.’

‘What are you talking about, Khaled?’

‘Money, to expand the business,’ he unexplained.

‘What business?’

‘This business. The ashram. The time has come to franchise. We can run this together, and spread out through India, and eventually to America. The sky’s the limit. Literally, in fact.’

‘Khaled -’

‘That’s why I’ve waited so long to contact you. I had to accumulate this fund base. I brought you here to show you something that’s yours, as much as it is mine.’

‘You’re right about that,’ I said.

‘I’m so glad you understand.’

‘I mean that this stuff you’ve got here isn’t ours, Khaled, and it isn’t yours.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘It was given to something bigger than we are, and you know it.’

‘But, you don’t understand,’ he insisted. ‘I want you both in this with me. We can make millions. But the spiritual industry is a vicious business. I’ll need you, as we move on.’

‘I’ve already moved on, Khaled.’

‘But we can franchise!’ Khaled hissed, all teeth. ‘We can franchise!’

‘Khaled, I must leave the city,’ Abdullah said suddenly, urgency rasping his voice.

‘What?’ Khaled asked, shaken from a tree of plans.

‘I want to ask you, one more time, to leave this place, and these people, and come back to Bombay with me.’

‘Again, Abdullah?’ Khaled said.

‘Take your rightful place at the head of the Council that was Khaderbhai’s. We are in a time of trouble, and it will become much worse. We need you to lead us. We need you to push Sanjay aside, and lead us. If you come now, Sanjay will live. If you don’t, one of us will kill him, and then you will have to lead anyway, for the sake of the Company.’

In that new avatar, Khaled was the opposite of what I considered to be a leader of men. But Abdullah, an Iranian who’d tuned his heart to the music of Bombay’s streets, didn’t see the man who stood with us in the attic room. Abdullah saw the prestige that attached itself to Khaled’s long and intimate friendship with Khaderbhai, and the authority that bled from the many battles and gang wars Khaled had presided over, and won, for the Company.

I was done with the Sanjay Company, my mind was made up, but I knew that New Khaled’s taste for subjugation would add fire to Old Khaled’s unhesitating use of power.

Crime mixed with anything is fatal, which is why we’re fascinated by it. Crime mixed with religion redeems saviours with the sacrifice of sinners. I didn’t want Khaled to accept Abdullah’s offer.

‘Once more, I tell you that I can’t accept,’ Khaled smiled. ‘But with friendship and respect, I want you to consider my offer. It’s a golden opportunity to get in on the ground floor, before the spiritual industry really takes off. We can make millions from yoga alone.’

‘You must think of the Company, Khaled,’ Abdullah pressed. ‘You must follow your destiny.’

‘It will not happen,’ Khaled responded, the little smile still on his lips. ‘But I do appreciate your kindness, in considering me again. Now, before you take a final decision, I ask you to think on all my treasures, and join me at lunch. I’m starved, I don’t mind telling you.’

‘I’m done,’ I said.

‘You’re… what?’

‘Khaled, I was already done when you showed me the harem. I’m leaving.’

‘Does that mean you won’t be taking any food?’ Khaled asked, locking the door.

‘It means goodbye, again, Khaled.’

‘But, it’s bad luck not to eat food that has been prepared for you!’ he warned.

‘I’ll have to risk it.’

‘But it’s Kashmiri sweets. A Kashmiri sweet chef is one of my devotees. You have no idea how hard they are to get.’

I crossed the entry hall, Khaled bustling behind me. Tarun joined us, trotting at his master’s side.

‘Oh, well,’ he puffed, walking with us onto the front veranda.

He gave me a damp, spongy hug, shook hands with Abdullah, and waved as we walked the gravel path.

‘Come back any time!’ he called. ‘You’re always welcome! We show movies, on Wednesday nights! We serve ice-cold firni! And we dance, on Thursdays! I’m learning to dance. Can you believe it?’

Beside him, Tarun made new entries in his notebook.

At the first bend in the path we found Karla waiting for us. She was sitting on a fallen tree, and smoking a cigarette.

‘So, did you piss on his pilgrimage, Shantaram?’

‘You could’ve given me a little more warning, before I saw him,’ I said, feeling beaten by the truth. ‘What the hell happened to him?’

‘He got happy, more or less,’ she answered softly. ‘In his case, a little more than less.’

‘Are you happy to see him like this?’

They both stared at me.

‘Oh, come on!’

They continued to stare.

‘Okay, okay,’ I conceded. ‘Maybe… maybe I just want my friend back. Don’t you miss him?’

‘Khaled is here, Lin,’ Abdullah replied.

‘But -’

‘Save your breath for the climb,’ Karla said, heading back toward the path. ‘Do you gangsters ever shut up?’

We approached the ascent to the first caves, and she began to run at a slow jog. When we reached the steep climb she was still ahead of us.

As we struggled upwards, I couldn’t help staring at the sand-line curves of her body, contoured by the climb.

Men are dogs, Didier once said to me, without the manners.

‘Are you staring at my ass?’ she asked.

‘Afraid so.’

‘Forgive him, Karla.’ Abdullah said to cover somebody’s embarrassment. ‘He simply stares, because you are climbing like an ape.’

Karla laughed, clutching at the vines on the path to hold her place. That big, true laugh rang through domes of branches risen with the cliff. She held her free hand out to Abdullah, warning him not to say another word until the laughter rushed away from her.

‘Thank you, Abdullah,’ she said at last.

‘Don’t mention.’

And laughing, and joking, we three exiles climbed the mountain that would change everything, for each of us, forever.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

When we reached the summit there was just enough time to freshen up. Karla changed into a sky-blue salwar kameez, and joined us for the last of the lunch that had been served. As we finished, an announcement was made that Idriss was on the mountain. I looked back toward the steep slope, but everyone else turned to stare at the caves.

‘There’s another way up this mountain?’ I asked Karla.

‘There’s another way up every mountain,’ she purred. ‘Everybody knows that.’

‘O… kay.’

Within seconds an older man I assumed to be Idriss and a younger man, both of them wearing white kurta tops and loose, sky-blue calico pants, appeared on a path that led past the women’s cave. The younger man, a foreigner, carried a hunting rifle slung over his shoulder.

‘Who’s the gun?’

‘That’s Silvano,’ Karla replied.

‘What’s the rifle for?’

‘To frighten tigers away.’

‘There are tigers?’

‘Of course. On the next mountain.’

I wanted to ask how close the next mountain was, but Idriss spoke.

‘Dear friends,’ he said, clearing his throat. ‘That’s quite a climb, even on the easy path. I apologise for being late. A squabble of philosophers set upon me this morning.’

His deep, gentle voice tumbled from his chest and hummed into the air. It seemed to roll around us on the mesa. It was a voice that comforts: a voice that could wake you softly from a nightmare.

‘What was their dilemma, master-ji?’ a student asked.

‘One of them,’ he replied, fishing a handkerchief from the pocket of his kurta and wiping his forehead, ‘had produced an argument to prove that happiness was the greatest of all evils. The others couldn’t defeat his argument. So, naturally, they became desperately unhappy. They wanted me to relieve them of their distress by refuting the argument.’

‘Did you do it, Idriss?’ another student asked.

‘Of course. But it took forever. Would anyone but philosophers fight so hard against the proposition that happiness is a good thing? And then, when their minds were convinced that happiness was a good thing, the sudden surge of all their pent-up happiness was too much for them. They lost control. Has anyone here seen hysterical philosophers?’

The students looked around at one another.

‘No?’ Idriss prodded. ‘Just as well. And there’s a lesson. The more slender your grip on reality, the more dangerous the world becomes. On the other hand, the more rational the world you find yourself in, the more carefully it must be questioned. But enough of that, let’s get started. Gather around, and get comfortable.’

The devotees and students brought stools and chairs, ranging them in a semicircle around Idriss, who lowered himself gently into an easy chair. The young man with the rifle, Silvano, sat a little behind Idriss and to his right. He sat on a hard wooden stool, his back rigid and his eyes passing back and forth among us. Very often his eyes stopped on me.

Abdullah leaned in to speak to me.

‘The Italian with the rifle, Silvano, is watching you,’ he whispered, with a little flick of his head.

‘Thanks.’

‘Don’t mention,’ he replied gravely.

‘I see that we have a new visitor to our little study group,’ Idriss said, looking at me.

I turned to see if he wasn’t staring at someone behind me.

‘It’s a pleasure to have you with us, Lin. Khaderbhai spoke of you quite often, and I’m very glad you could come.’

Everyone turned to look at me. They smiled and nodded, welcoming me. I looked back at the holy man, resisting the temptation to say that Khaderbhai, for all the many conversations on philosophy we’d shared, had never once mentioned Idriss to me.

‘Tell us, Lin,’ he asked, smiling widely, ‘are you looking for enlightenment?’

‘I didn’t know anyone lost it,’ I replied.

It wasn’t exactly rude, but it wasn’t as respectful of the famous teacher’s dignity as it should’ve been. Silvano bristled, clutching reflexively at the barrel of the rifle.

‘Please, Master,’ he said, his deep voice riffling spiky malice. ‘Allow me to enlighten him.’

‘Put the rifle down, Romeo,’ I replied, ‘and we’ll find out who sees the light first.’

Silvano had a lightly muscled, athletic frame and moved it gracefully. Square-jawed and square-shouldered, with soft brown eyes and an expressive mouth, he looked more like an Italian fashion model or movie star than a holy man’s acolyte, or so it seemed to me then.

I didn’t know why he didn’t like me. Maybe the cuts and bruises on my face made him think he had to prove something. I didn’t care: I was so angry at Khaled and Fate that any fight would do.

Silvano stood. I stood. Idriss waved his right hand gently. Silvano sat, and I slowly sat down again.

‘Please forgive Silvano,’ Idriss said gently. ‘Loyalty is his way of loving. I think the same might be said of you, isn’t it so?’

Loyalty. Lisa and I couldn’t find a way to be in love with each other. I was in love with Karla, a woman who was married to someone else. I’d resigned my heart from the brotherhood of the Sanjay Company, and had a conversation about murdering Sanjay in the same day. Loyalty is something you need for things you don’t love enough. When you love enough, loyalty isn’t even a question.

Everyone was staring at me.

‘Sorry, Silvano, rough decade,’ I said.

‘Good. Very good,’ Idriss said. ‘Now, I want, no, I need you two boys to be friends. So, I will ask you to come here, both of you, in front of me, and shake hands with one another. Bad vibrations will not help us move toward enlightenment, will they, boys?’

Silvano’s square jaw clenched on his reluctance, but he stood up quickly and took a step to stand before Idriss. His left hand held the rifle. His right hand was free.

A foolish impulse to resist being told what to do held me in place. The students began to murmur, their hushed voices buzzing between them. Idriss looked at me. He seemed to be suppressing a smile. His brown eyes glittered, more brilliant than the jewels in Khaled’s attic.

Silvano squirmed, anger and humiliation pressing his lips together hard. White ridges formed around his mouth.

I didn’t care, in that empty instant. The Italian had started it, by asking for permission to enlighten me. I was happy to show him some lights of my own. And I was happy to leave the mountain, the sage, Abdullah and Karla, that minute.

Karla slammed an elbow into my ribs. I stood, and shook hands with Silvano. He made a contest of it.

‘Thank you,’ Idriss said at last, and we released our knuckle-crushing grip. ‘That was… enlightening. Now, take your places, and let’s get started.’

I returned to my chair. Abdullah was shaking his head slowly. Karla hissed a single word at me.

‘Idiot!’

I tried to frown, but couldn’t, because she was right.

‘Okay,’ Idriss said, his eyes glittering. ‘For the benefit of our visitor, what is Rule Number One?’

‘Rule Number One – there are no gurus!’ the entire group responded, quickly and firmly.

‘And Rule Number Two?’

‘Rule Number Two – you are your own guru!’

‘And Rule Number Three?’

‘Rule Number Three – never surrender the freedom of your mind.’

‘And Rule Number Four?’

‘Rule Number Four – inform your mind with everything, without prejudice!’

‘Okay, okay,’ Idriss laughed. ‘That’s enough. Personally, I don’t like rules. They’re like the map of a place, rather than the place itself. But I know some people do like rules, and need them, so there you are. Four more damn rules. Maybe Rule Number Five, if you get there, should be There are no rules.’

The group laughed with him, settling more comfortably on their stools and chairs.

Idriss was something more than seventy years old. Although he walked with the help of a long staff, his thin but healthy frame was flexible. From time to time he crossed his legs effortlessly on the easy chair, without the assistance of his hands.

His curly, grey hair was cut close to the scalp, throwing all of the attention to his eloquent brown eyes, the magnificent swoop of his hooked nose, and the swollen crest and quiver of his dark, full lips.

‘If I recall correctly, Karla,’ he began softly, ‘our last discussion was on the subject of obedience. Is that right?’

‘It is, master-ji.’

‘Please, Karla, and all of you. We are one searching mind here, and one heart in friendship. Call me Idriss, as I also call you by your names. Now, tell us your opinion on the subject, Karla, finally.’

Karla looked back at the teacher, her eyes a forest on fire.

‘You really wanna know, Idriss?’

‘Of course.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes.’

‘Okay. Adore me. Worship me. Obey me. Me, Me, Me, that’s all God ever says.’

The students gasped, but Idriss laughed with open delight.

‘Ha! And now you see, my young seekers after wisdom, why I so highly prize Karla’s opinion!’

The students murmured among themselves.

Karla stood, walked to the edge of the mesa, and lit a cigarette. She stared out at the surrounding hills and valleys. I knew why she’d left. She was uncomfortable with being told that she was right; she’d rather be considered clever or funny, even if she was wrong.

‘Adoration is submission,’ Idriss said. ‘All religions, like all kingdoms, require you to submit, and obey. Of all the tens of thousands of faiths that have existed since the beginning of human time, only those that could enforce obedience have survived. And when obedience decays, the devotion that depended on it becomes as remote as the once great religion of Zeus, Apollo, and Venus, which for so long ruled all the world it knew.’

‘But, Idriss, are you saying we should be proud, and not obedient?’ a young man asked.

‘No, I’m not. Of course not,’ Idriss replied softly. ‘And you’re quite right to raise the point, Arjun. What I’m saying has nothing to do with pride. There is much to be gained by lowering your head and falling to your knees once in every while. None of us should ever be so proud that we cannot fall on our knees and admit that we do not know everything, and that we are not the centre of the universe, and that there are things for which we should be justly ashamed, and also happily grateful. Do you agree?’

‘Yes, Idriss,’ several students replied.

‘And pride, the good pride that we need to survive in a brutal world, what is it? Good pride does not say I am better than someone else, which is what bad pride says. Good pride says For all my faults, I have a born right to exist, and I have a will, which is the instrument I can use to improve myself. In fact, it is quite impossible to change and improve yourself without a measure of good pride. Do you agree?’

‘Yes, Idriss.’

‘Good. What I’m telling you is this: kneel in humility, kneel in the knowledge that we are all connected, every one of us, and every living thing, kneel in the knowledge that we are all together in this struggle to understand and belong, but don’t blindly obey anyone, ever. Do you young people have anything to offer on this point?’

There was a pause, as the students looked at one another.

‘Lin. Our new visitor,’ Idriss asked me quickly. ‘What do you say?’

I was already there, thinking of prison guards who’d beaten men in prison.

‘Enough obedience will let people do just about anything to other people,’ I said.

‘I like that answer,’ Idriss said.

Praise from the wise is the sweetest wine. I felt the warmth of it inside.

‘Obedience is the assassin of conscience,’ Idriss said softly, ‘and that is why every lasting institution demands it.’

‘But surely we must obey something?’ the Parsi student asked.

‘Obey the laws of the land, Zubin,’ Idriss replied, ‘except where they would cause you to act in a manner that is not honourable. Obey the Golden Rules. Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you, and do not do to others, what you would not have them do to you. Obey your instinct to create and love and learn. Obey the universal law of consciousness, that everything you think or say or do has an effect greater than zero, even if it’s only an effect on yourself, which is why you must try to minimise the negative in what you think and say and do, and maximise the positive. Obey the instinct to forgive, and to share with others. Obey your faith. And obey your heart. Your heart will never lie to you.’

He paused, looking around at the students, many of them writing notes on what he’d said. He smiled, then shook his head, and began to cry.

I looked at Abdullah. Is he crying? Abdullah nodded, and then flicked his head at the students. Several of them were crying, too. After a while, Idriss spoke though his tears.

‘It took so long, fourteen billion years, for this part of the universe to bring into being a consciousness, right here, capable of knowing and actually calculating that it took fourteen thousand million years to make the calculation. We don’t have the right to throw those fourteen billion years away. We don’t have the moral right to waste or damage or kill this consciousness. And we don’t have the right to surrender its will, the most precious and beautiful thing in the universe. We have a duty to study, to learn, to question, to be fair and honest and positive citizens. And above all, we have a duty to unite our consciousness, freely, with any free consciousness, in the common cause of love.’

I came to hear that speech many times from Idriss, and in modified forms from some of his students, and I liked it, in all its forms. I liked Idriss the mind: but what he said immediately after that speech made me like Idriss the man.

‘Let’s tell jokes,’ he said. ‘I’ll go first. I’ve been wanting to tell this all day. Why did the Zen Buddhist keep an empty bottle of milk in his refrigerator? Anyone? No? Give up? It was for guests who drink black tea!’

Idriss and the students laughed. Abdullah was laughing out loud, happily and freely, something I’d never seen in all the years that I knew him. I painted that laugh on a wall of my heart. And in a small, simple way I loved Idriss for releasing that happiness in my stern friend.

‘Okay, okay, my turn!’ Arjun said excitedly, standing to tell his joke.

One by one the other students stood to tell their jokes. I left, threading my way through the rows of students to find Karla, at the edge of the mesa.

She was writing notes from the lecture Idriss had given, but she wasn’t using a notepad. She was writing the notes on her left hand.

Long sentences looped their way back and forth across her hand, up along the length of each finger to the nail, and down again to the knuckle, and then in between the fingers, across the webbing and up again, between two more fingers.

The words continued on the palm-side of her hand, until the whole span of skin, hand and fingers, was covered with a tattooed web of words, like henna decorations on the hands of a Bombay bride.

It was the sexiest thing I’d ever seen in my life: I’m a writer. I found the strength at last to move my eyes and stare out at the forest, already smothered by the heavy swell of cloud.

‘So that’s why you asked me to tell you a joke,’ I said.

‘It’s one of his things,’ she replied, raising her eyes to stare ahead. ‘He says that the one sure sign of a fanatic is that he has no sense of humour. So, he gets us to laugh, at least once every day.’

‘Are you buying it?’

‘He’s not selling anything, Lin. That’s why I like him.’

‘Okay, what do you think of him?’

‘Does it matter, what I think?’

‘Everything about you matters, Karla.’

We faced one another. I couldn’t tell what she was thinking. I wanted to kiss her.

‘You’ve been talking to Ranjit,’ she said, a frown searching my eyes.

I stopped thinking about kissing her.

‘He’s a talkative guy, your husband.’

‘What did he talk about?’

‘What would he talk to me about?’

‘Don’t play games with me!’

She was speaking softly, but it was still like a trapped animal’s cry. She calmed down.

‘What, exactly, did he tell you?’

‘Lemme guess,’ I murmured. ‘You and Ranjit do this to people for kicks, right?’

She smiled.

‘Ranjit and I do have an understanding, but not about everything.’

I smiled.

‘You know what,’ I said. ‘To hell with Ranjit.’

‘I’d agree with you,’ she said, ‘if I didn’t think I might have to join him there one day.’

She looked away at the clouds, churning over the distant city, and the first rain showers simmering and frothing at the edges of the forest.

I was confused, but I was mostly confused when I talked to Karla. I didn’t know if she was telling me something intimate about her and Ranjit, or talking about us. If she was talking about Ranjit, I didn’t want to know.

‘Big storm,’ I said.

She looked back at me quickly.

‘It was because of me, wasn’t it?’

‘What was because of you?’

She shook her head, and then stared at me again, her green eyes the only bright things left in the grey-sky world.

‘What Ranjit talked to you about,’ she said, suddenly determined and clear. ‘He’s worried about me, I know. But the fact is, he’s the one who needs help, not me. He’s the one in danger.’

She stared into my eyes, trying to read my thoughts. I was reading what looked like pure and honest concern for her husband. It hurt more, somehow, than Concannon’s club.

‘What do you want, Karla?’

She frowned, let her eyes fall from mine, and then raised them to stare at me again.

‘I want you to help him,’ she said, almost as if it were an admission of guilt. ‘I’d like him to stay alive, for a few more months, and that’s not a sure thing.’

‘A few months?’

‘Years would be acceptable, but a few months are essential.’

‘Essential for what?’

She looked at me, trying out emotional responses, before relaxing in a smile.

‘My peace of mind,’ she said, not telling me anything.

‘He’s a big boy, Karla, with a big bank account.’

‘I’m serious.’

I stared back at her for a moment, and then smiled my way into a soft laugh.

‘You’re something, Karla. You’re really something.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘All that stuff, this morning, asking me if I came up here because of you, just to throw me off the track, because you came up here to ask me to help Ranjit.’

‘Do you think I’m lying to you?’

‘Talking about keeping Ranjit alive for a few months, is the same as talking about him being dead in a few months. It’s pretty cute, Karla.’

‘You think I’m manipulating you?’

‘It wouldn’t be the first time.’

‘That’s not -’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said, not smiling. ‘It never did. I love you.’

She tried to speak, but I put my fingers across her lips.

‘I’ll ask around, about Ranjit.’

Thunder silenced her reply: thunder rumbling into blasts, shaking the forest trees.

‘I gotta go,’ I said, ‘if I’m gonna beat that storm back to the city. I have to make sure that Lisa’s okay.’

I turned to leave, but she held my wrist. It was the tattooed hand: the hand covered with a tracery of words.

‘Let me ride with you,’ she said.

I hesitated. Instinct flinched.

‘Just that,’ she said. ‘Let me ride back to town with you.’

‘Okay. Okay.’

We collected our things and made the rounds of the students, saying our goodbyes.

The students liked Karla. Everyone liked Karla, even when they didn’t want to understand her.

At the edge of the mesa, Idriss and Silvano came to say goodbye. Silvano still had the rifle slung over his shoulder.

‘No hard feelings, Silvano,’ I said, offering my hand.

He spat on the ground.

Nice, I thought. Okay, rise above.

‘Your name, Silvano, means forest.’

‘And what if it does?’ he demanded, his jaw jutting on the words.

‘I know it,’ I smiled, ‘because an Italian friend of mine changed his name from Silvano, to Forest. Forest Marconi. And I remember thinking that it’s a beautiful name, in both languages.’

‘What?’ Silvano frowned.

‘I’m just saying, I have a friend, whose name is Silvano, and I like him very much. I’m sorry we got off on the wrong foot. I hope you’ll accept my apology.’

‘Well, yes, of course,’ Silvano agreed quickly, reaching out to accept my hand.

There was no contest in it, and the young Italian smiled at me for the first time.

‘You speak Italian?’ he asked.

‘I can swear, if it’s required.’

Idriss laughed.

‘You must come back, Lin!’ he demanded. ‘You must hear my little talk on the animal nature, and the human nature. You’ll get a kick out of it. Maybe two kicks!’

Lightning forked a cobra-strike through the black clouds. The teacher’s face and body were illuminated for an instant with blue-silver light.

‘I’d like that,’ I replied, when the flashes of lightning had passed. ‘I’ll make sure to bring my animal nature along.’

‘You’re always most welcome.’

Abdullah, Karla and I made our way down the slopes, clinging to one another from time to time on slippery paths.

At the gravel parking area, Abdullah used the phone. Waiting for him, I looked around at the brooding sky.

‘We might not make it before the storm. It might hit us on the highway.’

‘With any luck,’ she grinned. ‘Say, that was a pretty fast turnaround back there with Silvano.’

‘He’s okay. It was my fault. I’ve got a lot on my mind.’

‘Fuck you, Lin. Why do you do that?’

‘What?’

‘Allude to things on your mind, but then never tell anyone what they are.’

‘That’s a glass house you’re throwing stones at,’ I replied, but she was right, again, and I knew it.

I wanted to tell her. It was all upside down. Lisa and I were lost. Ranjit was attracting bombers. I was leaving the Sanjay Company. Wars had started between gangs and within them, and the only safe place in the city was somewhere else.

‘You should leave town for a while, Karla. I should, too.’

‘Not a chance of that yet, Shantaram,’ she laughed, and walked over to the small shop to talk with the attendant.

Abdullah returned and spoke softly, his head close to mine.

‘Sanjay has paid everyone,’ he said. ‘There will be no trouble. But it is as I expected. I must go north to the brothers in Delhi for at least a week. I must go tonight.’

‘A week?’

‘Not a day less, out of the city.’

‘I’m coming with you. You’ve got enemies in Delhi.’

‘I have enemies everywhere,’ he said softly, lowering his eyes. ‘As I have friends. You cannot come with me. You will leave for Sri Lanka, and complete your mission there, while this matter of the shooting at Leopold’s is resolved.’

‘Slow down, brother. I’m quitting the Sanjay Company, remember?’

‘I told that to Sanjay, and -’

‘You what?’

‘I told Sanjay that you want to leave.’

‘It should’ve been me who told him,’ I said, quietly angry.

‘I know, I know,’ he replied. ‘But I have to leave for Delhi, tonight. I will not be there, when you tell Sanjay, and that would be too dangerous without me. I decided to do it now, to see if his reaction presents any danger to you.’

‘Did it?’

‘Yes, and no. He was surprised, and very angry, but then he calmed down enough to say that if you complete this last mission for the Company, he will allow you to leave. What do you think, Lin?’

‘That’s all he said?’

‘He also said that if you had any family here, they would already be dead.’

‘And?’

‘And that he will throw you to the dogs, very happily, when your mission is completed.’

‘Is that it?’

‘All but the cursing. He is a foul-mouthed man, and he will die cursing, Inshallah.’

‘When do they want me to leave?’

‘Tomorrow morning,’ he sighed. ‘You take the train to Madras. Then you will leave by cargo ship, for Trincomalee. Company men will be waiting at VT station tomorrow morning, at seven. They will have all of your tickets and instructions.’

Sri Lanka, cargo ship, instructions: I took a deep breath, and let it out slowly.

‘Sri Lanka?’

‘You gave your word, that you would do it.’

‘I did, and I regret it.’

‘After this mission, you will be free. It is a clean way out. I think it is wise for you to agree. I will not be able to remove Sanjay for some time, and this way, you will be safe.’

‘Okay. Okay. Okay, Inshallah. Let’s ride.’

‘Wait,’ he said, leaning in close. ‘In the next weeks of your life, my brother, you must walk and talk very carefully.’

‘You know me,’ I smiled.

‘I do know you,’ he said solemnly. ‘And I know the demon inside you.’

‘Uh-huh?’

‘There are demons in all of us. Some of them do not mean us any harm. They just want to live inside us. Some of them want more. They want to eat the souls that hold them.’

‘You know, Abdullah, I’m not really same-page with you on the demon thing.’

He looked at me for a while, wind-worried leaves drifting in his amber eyes.

‘Hey, it’s okay -’ I began, but he cut me off.

‘I have heard you say that there are no bad or good men. That the deeds we do are good and bad, not the people who do them.’

‘It was Khaderbhai who said that,’ I replied, looking away.

‘Because he heard it from Idriss,’ Abdullah said quickly, and I looked back at him. ‘Every wise thing Khaderbhai said, was first said by Idriss. But in this, I do not agree with Idriss or Khaderbhai or you. There are bad men in this world, Shantaram brother. And in the end, there is only one way to deal with them.’

He started his bike and rode away slowly, knowing I’d catch him.

Karla joined me, and I kicked the bike to life. She got up behind me. That perfume: cinnamon, and pure oud. For a satin second her hair was against my neck.

The engine rumbled, warming. She leaned close, one arm over my right shoulder, and one under my left. Her word-tattoo hand was on my chest.

I heard the music, inside. Home. Home is the heart you’re born to love.

We rode gentle curves and slopes, as the shadow of the mountain that brought us together vanished in the praying hands of trees. I had to brake hard on the dark road to avoid a fallen branch. She fell into me softly and held me. I didn’t know where her body ended, and I began. I didn’t want to know.

I pulled away at speed to make the steep climb over the next hill. She braced herself, her hands hard on me. At exactly the right moment her palms and fingers slid across my ribs to find my heart, and held me as we crested the last dome of trees.

When we reached the main road I swung shakily, love-clumsy, into fast clever traffic. A prodigal wind kissed her hair around my neck. And she clove to me, her starfish hand on my chest, as we rode through splashes of light streamed from desire, dying on billboards along the stingray tail highway home.

Chapter Thirty

‘That was a long goodbye,’ Karla said, watching Abdullah ride away from the wide space in front of the Mahesh hotel.

‘It was a long ride,’ I said.

‘Yeah, but, Abdullah, emotional. That’s not something you see every day.’

‘What can I tell you, Karla?’

‘What you can tell me is what you’re not telling me.’

Khaled’s money will buy many guns, Abdullah had whispered to me in goodbye. It wasn’t especially emotional.

‘It’s complicated,’ I said.

‘Still not telling me.’

She was still sitting behind me on the bike. In one hand she held the bag that Abdullah had carried for her on his bike. The other hand was on my hip. For once, I was glad to be on the other hand.

‘You know,’ I said happily, ‘I like this.’

‘Still not telling me.’

‘But I really do like this.’

‘What?’

‘Sitting here, on the bike, and having a conversation with you like this.’

‘We’re not having a conversation.’

‘Technically, I think we are.’

‘Not telling me something doesn’t qualify as any kind of conversation, technically or otherwise.’

‘Maybe it’s a reverse conversation.’

‘There’s a forward step.’

There was a little pause. The space around us was clear and free. The storm had passed, and fresh monsoon winds cooled the coast behind us.

‘You know, it really is damn nice, talking to you like this, I gotta say.’

‘Since you gotta say it, does the bike have to be a part of the conversation?’

I turned the bike off.

‘So, what is it about this you like so much?’ she asked. ‘That we’re sitting so close, or that I can’t see your face?’

‘It’s because I can’t see your face. And… because we’re sitting so close.’

‘I thought so. Hey, wait a minute. My face is the problem?’

‘Your eyes, actually,’ I said, watching people, cars and horse-drawn carriages passing back and forth in front of the hotel.

‘My eyes, huh?’

I felt her voice everywhere that her body touched mine.

‘If I can’t see your eyes, it’s like we’re playing chess, and you just lost your queen.’

‘Is that so?’

‘Oh yeah.’

‘And I’m powerless and defenceless?’

‘Not defenceless. But there’s definitely some lessness here.’

‘Lessness?’

‘The opposite of moreness.’

‘And that turns you on?’

‘Kinda.’

‘Because you like lessness in a woman?’

‘Of course not. It’s because looking at you is like we’re playing chess, and I’ve got one queen, and you’ve got four queens, eight queens, sixteen queens -’

‘I’ve got sixteen queens in the game?’

‘Oh yeah. All green. Sixteen green queens. And I can’t see any of them right now, in this bike-talk. And I love it. It’s liberating.’

There was a pause. It didn’t last long.

‘This is the quality of your motorcycle conversation?’

‘It’s just a fact. A recently discovered fact, in fact. For now, sitting here like this, all your queens are locked in a box, Karla, and I’m loving it.’

‘You’re messed up, you know that?’

‘Oh yeah.’

‘My eyes are nothing,’ she said after a while, some puzzle in her voice.

‘Well, your eyes, and the heart behind them, are everything to me.’

She thought about it, maybe.

‘No, my will is everything.’

She repeated the last word, as if pushing it from her body.

‘Everything.’

‘I’m with you and Idriss on will, but it’s the direction it takes that interests me.’

She rested her forearms on my back.

‘When you were in prison,’ she asked slowly, ‘did you ever lose your will?’

‘Does getting chained to a wall and kicked unconscious count?’

‘Maybe. But when it happened, did you ever lose your will? Did they ever take your will from you?’

I thought about it for a while. Once again, I wasn’t sure where she was leading the conversation, or whether I’d like it when we got there. But her big question had a small answer.

‘Yeah. You could say that. For a while.’

‘I had my will taken from me, too,’ she said. ‘I’d rather kill, than let that happen again. I killed the man who did it to stop it from happening to some other me, somewhere else. I’ll never let anyone take my will again.’

The rebel yell: you’ll never take me alive.

‘I love you, Karla.’

She was silent, even her breathing soundless.

‘Did that freak you out?’ I asked after a while, staring ahead at the moving street.

‘Of course not. Honesty is my only addiction.’

She moved away from me, resting on her hands, and was silent again.

‘This bike-talk is fun,’ I said after a while. ‘You gotta admit.’

‘Then try holding up your end of the conversation. It’s tumbleweeds back here, Shantaram.’

‘Okay. Here goes. You talked about Ranjit, on the mountain. I didn’t say much then, but now that we’re bike-talking, I have a question. Why doesn’t Ranjit, who must keep living for a few months, just sell up and take you a long way from anywhere?’

‘He told you about the bomb, didn’t he?’

‘What did he tell you?’

‘He said you told him to fire the chauffeur. You were right, by the way. The guy was crooked.’

‘Ranjit went to a lot of trouble, asking me not to tell you, and then he went home and told you all about it.’

‘He’s a politician. Politics isn’t lying. It’s the art of knowing who’s lying.’

‘That still doesn’t answer the question. Why doesn’t he take the money and run? He’s a rich man.’

She laughed, surprising me, because I couldn’t read her face, and because I didn’t think any part of it was funny.

‘You can’t run away from the game, Lin,’ she said.

‘I like this conversation. What are we talking about?’

‘Wherever you find it,’ she said, leaning in close, her breath on my neck. ‘Whatever it looks like, when you find the game that hooks you, there’s nowhere else you can be. Am I right?’

‘Are we talking about Ranjit, or Karla?’

‘We’re both players.’

‘I don’t like games. You know that.’

‘Some games might be worth the play.’

‘Like being king of Bombay, for instance?’

I felt the tension move through her as she pushed away again.

‘How do you know that?’

‘He’s ambitious,’ I said. ‘It shows. He has enemies.’

She was silent for a while, and I had no clue to her thoughts. Bike-talking had its drawbacks.

‘Ranjit’s an imitation good guy,’ she said, ‘in a cast of genuine bad guys.’

‘An imitation good guy? They’re usually the ones who give genuine bad guys a bad name.’

‘Bad guys do a pretty good job of that on their own,’ she replied, laughing a little.

‘Why play games, Karla? Get out of this, now.’

‘I game, because I’m good at it. I game good.’

‘Walk away. If Ranjit’s so determined to be political, you’ve gotta be the one to walk away.’

‘Is this about Ranjit and me, or about you and me?’

‘This is about you. If we weren’t doing bike-talk, I probably wouldn’t be able to say it at all. Not to your eyes. I don’t like what’s going on. I don’t think Ranjit has any right to put you at risk. No ambition’s worth that.’

‘I’ll buy a bike,’ she said, leaning close again, and smiling on my back. ‘You’ll teach me to ride.’

‘I mean it, Karla. He’s rattling the unfriendly cage. Sooner or later, whatever’s inside the cage is gonna get out.’

‘Why are we talking about this?’

‘It’s like this. Ranjit can do politics, and I’ll ask friends to watch out for him, but you don’t have to be Ranjit’s wife here. You can be Ranjit’s wife a long way away from here. In London, for example.’

‘London?’

‘A lot of Indian wives escape to London.’

‘But I’m a Bombay girl, yaar. What would I do in London?’

‘You’re also American, and Swiss, and a lot of other nice places. You could set up a house in London for Ranjit, with Ranjit’s money, and hope he rarely visits it. Make it cool. Bombay cool. But make it so you can walk away, and never look back.’

‘And I’m still asking, what would I do there?’

‘You’d keep a low profile. And you’d use any extra money to make money for yourself, until you don’t need anyone else’s extra money any more.’

‘Uh-huh?’

‘Yeah. The real reason why so many people want to be rich is because they want to be free. Freedom means that you don’t need anyone else’s money.’

‘How does that work again?’ she asked, laughing.

‘Maybe you shave your lifestyle, save some money, and put a down payment on a house for yourself. You’re smart. In no time, you’ll turn one house into five.’

‘My lifestyle?’

‘What do I know? But whatever you do in London or anywhere would be safer than what you’re doing here, with Ranjit. Someone’s gonna hit him, and hit him hard, because he won’t shut up, and his political ambitions are making people nervous. Hell, I want to hit him, and I hardly even know him.’

‘His mouth is what put him in the game. That’s his table stake. If he wins this fight, his face will be on the political poster of his choice. He’ll get elected, too. I’m sure of it. And anyway, why the hell should he shut up, when he’s right?’

‘It’s not safe for you, that’s why.’

‘Let me tell you a little something about safety,’ she murmured, her face against the pillow of my back. ‘Safety is a cave, a nice warm cave, but the light is where the adventure is.’

‘Karla,’ I said, careful not to move, ‘you’ve got no idea how cool this is, listening to you, but not seeing you.’

‘You’re such an ass,’ she said, not moving.

‘No, really, it’s just great. And I was listening. I heard every word. Look, in my view, but who am I, the right woman is a big enough dream. If a guy wants a whole city, there’s something wrong with him.’

‘Less wrong than you, or more wrong than you, on a scale of you?’ she laughed.

‘You can’t go back home,’ I said firmly, my hands tight on the handlebars, ‘because you don’t know what’s waiting for you. And you can’t stay here, because you do know what’s waiting for you.’

I was glad she couldn’t see my face, and glad she didn’t pull away.

‘Look, you’re probably on a most-wanted list, Karla. And I’m definitely most-wanted. We’re who we are, and who we are has no place in lives of public ambition. It’s bad for them, and it’s a lot worse for us if it falls down, and they’re looking for someone to blame for it.’

‘I’m okay,’ she murmured. ‘I know exactly what I’m doing.’

‘I don’t want to think of something happening to you, Karla. Ranjit’s making me think of it. A lot. I don’t like him for it. One way or another, this guy puts himself on everybody’s hurt list. Have mercy. Send me a postcard from London, and give me some peace of mind.’

‘Mercy,’ she said softly. ‘My favourite inessential virtue. I think you’ve done this motorcycle talk before.’

‘I was right about this, wasn’t I? It’s damn cool.’

‘It’s okay,’ she murmured. ‘Is it my turn now?’

‘Your turn?’

‘Yeah.’

‘For motorcycle talk?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Sure, talk away,’ I said confidently, not careful what I wished for.

She nestled in tighter, her lips close.

‘Are you ready?’

‘Ready for what?’

‘You don’t need coffee, or a joint?’

‘I’m good. I’m so good.’

‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Gimme a dramatic pause.’

‘But -’

‘Shut up! You’re dramatic pausing.’

There was a dramatic pause.

‘That… truly… fucking… transcendent ride home,’ she said at last, murmuring the words onto my skin, ‘was a rip through space and time, baby. When you crashed down two gears and gunned it, passing between the passenger bus and the water tanker, my soul left my body. When we slid the closing gap and roared through, a voice in my head said Oh yeah… Oh yeah… Oh God… Oh God… all the way home.’

She stopped, and stopped my heart.

‘How am I doin’ here, Shantaram, without all of my queens?’

Fine. She was doing fine. I turned in the saddle until I could see a corner of her face.

‘I thought you didn’t believe in God, Karla,’ I smiled.

‘Who are we to believe in God?’ she said, her lips only lashes from my face. ‘It should be enough for anyone that God believes in us.’

We could’ve kissed. We should’ve kissed.

‘I’m thinking that I have to talk to Lisa,’ I said, words cutting my own throat. ‘Are you thinking that you have to talk to Ranjit?’

She drew away slowly, until shadows took her face. I turned to the front again. She didn’t say anything, so I spoke.

‘I have to talk to her.’

‘Well, you can do that here,’ she said quietly.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Lisa’s here, at the hotel. Gemini and Scorpio are throwing a party, in the penthouse suite. They’ve taken the whole floor, in fact. Tonight’s the official housewarming. Everyone in town is up there. That’s why the limos are prowling. That’s why I asked you to drop me here.’

‘But… why didn’t you mention this before?’

‘Why didn’t you know?’

It was a good question. I couldn’t answer it.

‘Are you going?’ I asked her, still staring ahead.

‘I was going to ask you to be my door date.’

‘Ranjit isn’t here?’

‘Ranjit is otherwise detained, this evening. A monthly meeting with the City Council. Didier agreed days ago to walk me out, and have a drink with me at home. But I’d like you to walk me in. Are you up for it?’

I wanted to see Lisa, and know that she was safe. I wanted to see Didier for a report about the fallout from the shooting at Leopold’s. Good reasons to go. But I was afraid of spending more time with Karla. I hadn’t seen her for two years, but she’d been as close to me on the ride home to the Island City as wings on my back. And it was Karla, so there wasn’t an easy way to anything. She wanted to keep her husband alive for at least a few months more: it was cold-blooded, but I didn’t care. She’d been hurt, and she hurt back, but I knew there was nothing bad in her, just as I knew that she wouldn’t harm Ranjit or anyone else without reason. She was too strong for the world she knew, and I loved that about her, and I thought that if I looked at her again, I wouldn’t have the courage to leave her side.

‘I’d be honoured to escort you to the party, Karla,’ I said, staring straight ahead.

‘I’d be honoured to accompany you, Shantaram. Let’s get moving. I wanna see if you dance like you ride, or ride like you dance.’

Chapter Thirty-One

I parked the bike under the shelter at the entrance to the hotel, and when I turned to look at her all sixteen queens stared back at me. I froze.

‘Are you okay?’

‘Sure, why?’

‘You look like somebody stood on your foot,’ she said.

‘No, I’m fine.’

‘Sure?’

‘Yeah,’ I said, glancing away from checkmate. ‘I’m good.’

‘Okay, let’s go to the party. There’ll be plenty of people to stand on our feet there.’

We crossed the lobby, found a lucky elevator, and pressed for the penthouse.

‘Every time an elevator door closes on me,’ she said, as the elevator doors closed, ‘I want a drink.’

The doors opened on a drinking party, already bumpy happy. Guests had spilled from crowded suites into the corridor, where they sat in groups or stumbled back and forth, laughing and shouting.

We made our way inside and found Gemini George, dancing with Didier to music just loud enough to ruin a shout. Didier had a table cover over his head and was holding the edge in his teeth, as a woman might with her shawl.

‘Lin! Karla! Rescue me! I am watching an Englishman dance. I am in pain.’

‘French git,’ Gemini called back, laughing happily.

He was having, quite literally, the time of his life.

‘Come, Lin! Karla! Dance with me!’ Didier shouted.

‘I’m looking for Lisa!’ I called back. ‘Have you seen her?’

‘Not… recently,’ Didier replied, frowning questions of his own at me, then at Karla, then at me again. ‘That is to say… not… recently.’

Karla leaned in close to kiss him on the cheek. I kissed him on the other cheek.

‘Hey! I’m havin’ some of that!’ Gemini shouted, offering his cheek to Karla, who obliged with a kiss.

‘I’m so glad to see you both!’ Didier shouted.

‘Likewise! Got a minute, Didier?’

‘Certainly.’

I left Karla with Gemini, and followed Didier back into the hallway. We crossed the corridor stream on patches of bare carpet, stepping over flowing groups of people smoking, drinking, and laughing out their other selves.

Didier opened the door to one of the adjoining suites with a key and led me inside.

‘Some of these party people know no boundaries,’ he said, locking the door behind him.

The main room was well appointed, but untouched. There was a tray on the writing desk: brandy and two glasses. Didier gestured with the brandy bottle.

‘No, thanks. But I’ll smoke a joint with you, if you’ve got one.’

‘Lin!’ he gasped. ‘When have you ever known Didier not to have one?’

He poured himself a thumb of brandy, selected a slender joint from a polished brass cigarette case, lit it, and passed it to me. As I smoked, he raised his glass in a toast.

‘To battles lived,’ he said, drinking a sip.

‘How’s Lisa?’

‘She is very well. She is happy, I think.’

‘Where is she now?’

‘She stayed with me, until just a few hours ago,’ he replied, drinking the measure of brandy. ‘She said she was returning to your apartment.’

‘How bad was it, after Abdullah and I left?’

‘Well, I wouldn’t go back to Leopold’s for a while, even with my influence.’

My thoughts went back to the fight at Leopold’s, Concannon cracking the lead sap into the fallen Sikh head waiter.

‘Dhirendra took a beating. He’s a good man. How is he?’

‘He recuperates. Leopold’s is not the same without him, but we must go on.’

‘Anyone else get hurt?’

‘A few,’ he sighed.

‘What about the cops?’

‘Lightning Dilip rounded up all the witnesses who had any money, myself included, and fined us all.’

‘What about the street?’

‘From what I know, nobody’s talking about this. It died, in the newspapers, after the first day. I think… Karla used her influence with Ranjit to kill the story, as they say. And those who are not scared of the Sanjay Company are scared of the Scorpions. It is quiet now, but it cost Sanjay a lot of money, I am sure. A lot of people had to piss on this fire.’

‘I’m sorry you got dragged into this, Didier. And in Leopold’s, of all places. It’s sacred ground.’

‘Didier is never dragged,’ he sniffed, ‘even when he is unconscious. He freely marches, or he is transported.’

‘Still… ’

‘An American friend of mine has a saying, for occasions like this. It’s a mess, but we didn’t make it. Yes, it’s a mess, but Concannon made it happen. The question is, what are we going to do about it?’

‘Got any ideas?’

‘My first impulse is that we should kill him.’

‘I love you, Didier.’

‘I love you, too, Lin. So we will kill him, yes?’

‘No, that was a no. I’m travelling tomorrow. I’ll be away for a week, maybe a day or two more, and we’ll work this out somehow, when I get back. We’ll have to find a way without killing anybody, Didier.’

‘As solutions go,’ he mused, ‘killing is a winning hand. Anything less, at this point, is only bluff.’

‘Concannon’s a man. There must be a way to reach him.’

‘Through his chest,’ Didier observed. ‘With an axe. But I suppose you’re right. We should be aiming higher. The head, perhaps?’

‘I’ve spoken to him, I’ve listened to him. I met a dozen Concannons with a dozen different faces in prison. I’m not saying I like him. I’m saying that if he was born into a different life, Concannon could be an amazing man. In his own way, he already is an amazing man. There must be a way to reach him, and stop all of this.’

‘Men like Concannon don’t change, Lin,’ he said, letting out a gust of sighs. ‘And the proof is very simple. Did you change, when you went to prison? Did you change, when you joined the Company? In your true self, deep inside yourself, did you change? Are you not the man you always were?’

‘Didier -’

‘You are. You did not change. You could not change, and neither do the Concannons of this world. They are born to harm and destroy, Lin, until time or temper stops them. And now that this one wants to harm and destroy us, the kindest thing we can do is to kill him, take the karmic burden on ourselves, and hope that the good we cause, by saving the world all the future harm this man will do, if he lives, is enough to save our souls for a better incarnation. Although I cannot think of a better incarnation than the one you see before you, so I would only ask that Didier may come back as Didier is, and do it all again.’

‘Just don’t do anything until I get back, okay? We’ll talk first, then we’ll do whatever else we have to do, okay? In the meantime, watch Lisa for me, while I’m away. When I see her, I’ll try to talk her into going to Goa for a while, but we both know Lisa.’

‘Not a chance,’ he shrugged.

‘I know -’

‘She’s a clever fox, my friend,’ he said. ‘And she knows what she wants, and how to get it.’

‘Look after her for me, until I get back. Ask Naveen to give you whatever time he can spare from Divya, if you need extra eyes. I’ll speak to him, if I can find him.’

‘I need no help, of course, but I have come to like Naveen,’ Didier said thoughtfully.

‘I like him, too. You make a good team, the two of you. Speaking of teams, I’d like to join you, Didier, when I get back, if you still want me.’

‘Lin… you mean… to work together?’

‘We’ll talk about it when I get back.’

‘But, you’re leaving the Sanjay Company?’

‘I am. I did.’

‘You did? Sanjay let you go?’

‘After this job, I have Sanjay’s blessing. Actually, I think he’s glad to see me leave.’

‘You are not afraid to disagree with him. There are only two kinds of leaders, those who welcome the truth, and those who despise it. Sanjay is a despiser, I am afraid.’

‘That he is,’ I smiled.

‘I am very happy to hear you are leaving him. Are you happy?’

‘I am. Just keep an eye on Lisa.’

‘I will, I will, and with pleasure.’

‘Shall we head back to the others?’

‘Yes! This is wonderful news, Lin, and it calls for celebration. But… ’

‘But what?’

‘You and Karla.’

‘What, me and Karla? There’s no me and Karla.’

‘Lin, this is Didier. No fleeting suspicion of love is hidden from Didier. I saw you together. I know everything.’

‘Forget Karla.’

‘I can, if you can,’ he said, a half-worried smile confusing his face. ‘Whatever you do, I am with you.’

‘Thanks, brother,’ I said, sharing a hug that pressed his curly hair into my face.

We made our way back to Karla and Gemini. Karla looked from Didier to me, and then back again, smiling just enough condescension to put a bite in her affection.

Two young foreign girls, carrying drinks in each hand, danced their way up to Didier and Gemini, who took the drinks, still dancing.

‘Are you with someone?’ one of the girls asked Gemini.

‘I’m with myself,’ Gemini replied. ‘I don’t know if that qualifies. I’m Gemini. What’s your name then?’

‘Hey!’ the girl shouted back. ‘I’m a Gemini, too.’

‘That’s great, you’ll get this – what did one Gemini say to the other?’

‘What?’

‘Nothing. The other Gemini already left.’

They laughed, spilling wine and bumping together.

Karla and I made our way through party-sway to shout at friends as we were shouted unto, until we found the deserted bar.

‘Nice bar,’ Karla said, greeting the bartender. ‘Free, well-stocked and empty.’

‘Welcome,’ the barman said.

‘I’d shoot three men for a glass of champagne,’ Karla said, waving an elegant wrist.

‘Certainly, ma’am,’ the bartender replied. ‘And for sir?’

‘Plain soda, no ice,’ I said. ‘How’s it been, tonight?’

‘At the end of the road, there are only two questions,’ the bartender said, inscrutably, preparing the drinks. ‘What did I do? and What did I miss?’

‘Unless,’ I offered, ‘the last question is, Who the hell turned off my life support?’

‘Life is short,’ the tall young bartender said, easing the cork from the bottle with a fist. ‘But made of long nights.’

‘That’s why it’s so lonely at the top,’ Karla put in.

‘It’s lonely at the top,’ he replied quickly, filling Karla’s glass, ‘because it’s so crowded at the bottom.’

‘What’s your name?’ Karla asked, laughing.

‘Randall, ma’am.’

‘Randall,’ she said, accepting the glass, ‘This is Lin, I’m Karla, and I couldn’t agree with you more. Where’s your family place?’

‘My parents are from Goa,’ he said, handing me the soda. ‘But I’m from here.’

‘We’re from here too, for as long as here lasts,’ I said. ‘What’s with the one-liners, Randall?’

‘It’s not that interesting a story,’ he replied.

‘Why don’t you let us judge that, Randall?’ Karla suggested.

‘Well, at first, I used to talk,’ he said, washing a glass. ‘I used to ask questions. Are you here on a business trip? Do you have any kids? Why do you think your wife doesn’t understand you? But, after a while, I started breaking my part of the conversation down into little pieces of the truth. Barmen never get more than a line or two. It’s a narrative rule, I’m afraid. Am I boring you folks?’

‘No,’ we said together.

‘So, I don’t converse any more. I’m making this exception, tonight, because my shift has ended, and because I like you. I liked both of you, from the moment you walked in. And when I like something, I’m never wrong about it.’

‘Nice talent to have up your sleeve,’ Karla smiled. ‘Go on, about the one-liners.’

‘Most of the time, I prune the conversation tree. It’s all bonsai. It’s all punchlines now. And it’s better that way, in little pieces of the truth. It’s like a code, the truth. When people hear it, the doors unlock.’

‘Randall,’ Karla said, her eyes gleaming coloured glass, ‘if you stop conversing, I’ll never darken this joint again. A refill, if you please.’

He poured two fresh glasses of champagne, and another long soda.

‘My replacement hasn’t arrived, but my shift was officially over half an hour ago, so I’d like to join you folks in a toast,’ he said, offering Karla the champagne and the soda to me. ‘May words never fail you.’

‘Can’t drink to that, because words never fail,’ she said quickly. ‘This is the first toast that Shantaram and I have shared in two years, Randall, and I think this is a fated meeting. Let’s make this toast to the three of us.’

I moved to clink glasses with them, but she swerved away from me.

‘No! It’s bad luck to toast with water,’ she said.

‘Oh, come on.’

‘I’m serious.’

‘You’re kidding, right?’

‘Just because you don’t believe it, that’s no reason to mess with it, Lin. Do you need any more bad luck?’

‘You’ve got me there.’

‘I always get you there.’

A newcomer to the bar bumped Karla into me, and our glasses clashed together anyway.

‘Looks like we’ve done that toast after all,’ I said.

She stared at me from a hard frown for a moment, but then she smiled again.

‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Make another toast, without drinking water yourself. That should keep us safe.’

‘To green eyes – may they always be protected.’

‘I’ll certainly drink to that,’ Randall said, sipping champagne.

‘To green queens,’ she said, smiling light at me.

She raised her glass, took a small sip, and stared back at me. It was the moment to break through, and we both knew it. It was perfect.

‘Lin!’ Vinson said, bouncing against me and slapping his long, strong fingers onto my back, Rannveig at his side. ‘Good to see you, man!’

I was still looking at Karla. She was looking at me.

‘Vinson,’ I said, the voice in my ears sounding like something hard, breaking. ‘I don’t think you’ve met. This is Karla. Karla, this is Stuart Vinson. And this is Rannveig, like the thing at the airport.’

‘Say, Karla!’ Vinson shouted. ‘I’m damn glad to finally meet you.’

‘It won’t do any good,’ Karla replied, playing it straight.

‘It… it won’t?’ Vinson smiled, already confused.

‘No. Anything you heard is out of date.’

‘Out of… what?’

‘I reinvented myself.’

Vinson laughed.

‘Oh. Wow. Like, when did this happen?’

‘It’s happening now,’ Karla said, holding his gaze. ‘Try to keep up.’

My heart stumbled like a drunk dancing. God, I loved her. There was no-one like her.

Then she turned to the girl, Rannveig, and asked her if she was okay. I looked at the girl. She wasn’t okay.

‘She’s fine!’ Vinson said, clapping an arm around her.

Rannveig’s face was drawn and pale.

‘I told her,’ Vinson continued, ‘I said, hey, you’ve been through a lot. Time to get out and see people, have a few laughs, you know? The best medicine, they say.’

He hugged her to him, shaking her. Her arms flapped at her sides.

‘How you doing, kid?’ I asked.

She looked up quickly, ice-chips glittering in her blue eyes.

‘I’m not a kid!’ she snapped.

‘O… kay.’

‘Don’t take it personally,’ Karla said. ‘He’s a writer. He thinks he’s older than his grandfather.’

‘That’s pretty funny,’ Vinson laughed.

‘And as for you,’ Karla said. ‘Let that girl out of your armpit, right now.’

Surprised, Vinson allowed Karla to peel Rannveig away from him.

‘Randall,’ Karla said, ‘I know you’re off duty, but this in an emergency. I want your cleanest glasses and your dirtiest jokes, and make it snappy.’

‘Your command is my wish, ma’am,’ Randall said, glasses like eels swimming in his hands.

‘How ’bout that?’ Vinson mumbled. ‘She stole my girl.’

‘She’s your girl now?’

‘Oh, man,’ he said, turning a big, open-mouthed smile on me. ‘I told you, didn’t I, back there at the station house? I told you she was the one. I’m crazy about her. She’s really something, isn’t she? My heart beats faster every time I look at her.’

‘She’s been in a plane crash,’ I said.

‘A plane? But… what?’

‘You know what I mean. She woke up a few days ago with a dead boyfriend in the bed. That’s a big fire to put out. Go easy, man.’

‘Oh, sure, sure. I mean, like – hey, wait a minute! You don’t think I’m taking advantage of her situation, do you? I’m… I’m not that kinda guy.’

‘I know.’

‘I haven’t put a hand on her.’

‘I know.’

‘I wouldn’t do that.’

‘I know.’

‘I’m not that kinda guy,’ he said again gruffly.

I was suddenly tired: the kind of angry-tired that’s irritated by everything that isn’t flat, and white, and has a pillow at one end.

‘If I thought you were that kinda guy, I wouldn’t have let you get near her, or any girl I know.’

He bristled, young manhood straightening his spine.

‘Any time you think you’re good enough, sport.’

‘I really haven’t got time for this shit, Vinson. I met Rannveig before you did. And I got her out of jail, remember? That gives me the right to tell you not to push her too hard. If you don’t like it, and you want to get slappy, I’ll be downstairs by my bike, in about five minutes.’

We stared at one another, his pride riding out to meet my irritation. Men. I liked Vinson, and he liked me, and we were ready to fight.

‘When did you meet her?’ he asked, after a long stare.

‘Before that day at the police station.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘Why didn’t she? Maybe because it’s none of your business. Look, I met her once, on the street, outside Leo’s. She was waiting for her boyfriend to score. Ask her about it.’

‘Okay, okay. But I care about her. Don’t you see that?’

‘Of course I do. I’m glad she’s with you. That’s what I was trying to tell you before, maybe in the wrong way. You’re a nice guy. She’ll be safe with you. I know that. Just ease up a little. She had a boyfriend. He’s dead. What she needs is a friend. The boy-part can wait, while the friend-part does the work. You see that, right?’

He relaxed, letting out a gush of air.

‘Wow! You really had me going there, Lin. Jesus! I thought -’

‘Listen, the best thing you can do for that girl, right now, is to tell her that her boyfriend didn’t commit suicide. She feels guilty, but she had nothing to do with it. The dope was too strong. Three kids died in the same week. Check on it. Make sure she understands that, and clear her mind.’

‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘Hey, I’m sorry we got off on the wrong -’

‘It’s my fault. Got a lot on my mind. Have you seen Lisa anywhere?’

‘She was with that artist, last time I saw her. The tall guy, with the slicked-back hair.’

‘Thanks. He’s one of the partners in her gallery. If I can’t find her, I’m gonna go home. If you see her or the artist, please tell her that. You take care.’

‘Wait!’ Vinson said, reaching out to offer his hand. ‘Thanks. Thanks. I mean… I’ll take care of Rannveig. I mean -’

‘It’s good,’ I said, shaking hands with him, smiling at him, liking him, wishing happiness for him and the girl, and not really caring, so long as they were happy, if I ever saw either one of them again. ‘It’s good.’

Little tornadoes of laughing-drinking people whirled in every room. I went from whirl to whirl, searching for Lisa. Nobody had seen her for a while at the party. I finally made my way to the door.

Karla was dancing with Rannveig. For a minute, I watched: her hips the sea, her eyes the flute, her hands the cobra. Karla.

Chapter Thirty-Two

When the elevator doors opened, Scorpio George, Naveen Adair and Divya Devnani stepped out.

‘Lin!’ Naveen cried. ‘Where are you going, man? The party’s just getting started!’

‘I’m beat,’ I said, stepping into the elevator and holding the button to keep the doors open. ‘But can you give me a minute?’

‘Oh, please come with us!’ Scorpio pleaded. ‘I want you to tell me about that shooting incident at Leopold’s. Nobody’s talking, and I’m dying to know what happened.’

‘Another time, Scorp.’

‘Okay, then we’ll ride back down with you,’ Naveen said, pulling the others into the elevator with him.

The doors closed, leaving us with our reflected selves in the mirrored walls.

‘There was a very pretty American girl, all blonde hair and brown eyes, waiting upstairs,’ Divya said. ‘Did you meet her?’

‘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.

‘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.

‘I hear you.’

‘I want to know what it’s like to be me, when it’s just me.’

‘Go get ’em, Lisa.’

She smiled, and let out a weary sigh.

‘It sounds so selfish, but it wasn’t. It was generous, you know, not just to me, but to you and Karla, too. It let me see us all clearly, for the first time. It let me see how much you’re alike, you and her, and how different you both are than me. Do you understand that?’

In a damning way, in a kind and loving way, she was telling me that Karla and I were made for each other: Karla’s edges fitting my scars. True or not, strangely hurtful or not, it didn’t matter, because those minutes weren’t Karla’s or mine: they were hers.

The fall and summit within, what we do, and what we choose to become, are ours alone, as they should be, and must be. Lisa was deep in that serene, uncontradictable stillness born in resolution, and she was gloriously alone with it. She was clear, determined, brave and hopeful.

‘The new you is really something,’ I said quietly.

‘Thank you,’ she said softly. ‘And the new me, broken up with old you, and not sleeping in the same bed as the new you, needs to rent the guest bedroom to sleep in.’

‘Well,’ I laughed, ‘if your now isn’t too compromised by it, no problem.’

‘Oh, no,’ she said seriously, snuggling in beside me, her head on my chest. ‘But I do think, now that we’re separated under the same roof, we should have a few rules.’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘Like with sleepovers. We should have a sleepover rule.’

‘Sleepovers? Your now is getting more crowded by the minute.’

‘We could hang a sign on the front door.’

‘A sign?’

‘I mean, a sign that only we understand. Like a garden gnome, for example. If the garden gnome is on the left side of the door, one of us has a sleepover guest. If it’s on the right side of the door, no sleepovers.’

‘We don’t have a garden gnome. We don’t have a garden.’

‘We could use that cat statue you don’t like.’

‘I didn’t say I didn’t like it. I like it plenty. I said it didn’t seem to like me.’

‘And you’ll have to forgive the rent, for at least six months.’

‘Just to be clear on the sleepover cat signal,’ I asked. ‘Was it the left side of the door, or the right?’

‘The left. And you’ll have to forgive the rent.’

‘The rent’s already paid for a year, Lisa.’

‘No, I mean my rent, for the guest room. I’ll pay the market rate. I insist. But I put everything I have into the next show, and I’m skinned alive. I won’t be able to pay you for at least six months.’

‘Forget about it.’

‘No, really, I insist on paying,’ she said, punching me in the ribs.

‘Forget about it.’

She hit me again.

‘I give up. I’ll let you pay me back.’

‘And… I’ll need an advance,’ she added.

‘An advance?’

‘Yeah.’

‘You don’t work for me, Lisa.’

‘Yes, but I hate the word loan. It sounds like the noise a dog makes, when it’s in pain. I’ve decided, from now on, that when I need a loan I’ll ask for an advance. It’s a much more inspiring word.’

‘Advanced thinking.’

‘But I won’t be able to pay for food, electricity, phone or laundry bills for a while. Every penny of my advance will be tied up.’

‘Covered.’

‘I insist on paying it, when I have enough to spare from my next advance.’

‘Right.’

‘And I’ll need a car, but we can talk about that when you get back.’

‘Sure. Is that it, with the house rules?’

‘There is one other thing.’

‘Let’s have it.’

‘I don’t know. I mean -’

‘Let’s have it.’

‘I’m not cooking any more,’ she said, pressing her lips together until the bottom lip pouted free.

She’d cooked three times, in two years, and it wasn’t pleasant eating.

‘Okay.’

‘To be brutally honest, I absolutely hate cooking. I can’t stand it. I only did it to please you. It was a living hell for me every time, from beginning to end. I’m not doing it any more. I’m sorry, but that’s just how it is, even as a roommate.’

‘Okay.’

‘I don’t want to hurt you, but I don’t want you to get any expectations, either. I’m big into expectations at the moment, as part of my process, and I hose them down before they become -’

‘Resentments?’

‘Exactly! Oh, God, I feel so much better. Do you?’

‘I feel okay,’ I said.

‘You do? Really? It’s important to me. I don’t want to drag any guilt or shame into my now with me. It’s important to me that you care enough to let me do this, and that you feel good about it.’

Good is only half the truth, and truth is only half the story. A small part of me was aggrieved that she was demanding so much and taking so much from the little that we had left. But the bigger part of me had always supposed or expected, however silently and reluctantly, that we’d part from one another one day, and probably with little more than we could hold in our hands. And then there was Karla, always Karla. I had no right to shade a minute of Lisa’s happiness. Good is only half the truth, and truth is only half the story.

‘I’m good, Lisa. I just want you to be happy.’

‘I’m so glad,’ she said, smiling through her lashes. ‘I was dreading this, you know.’

‘Why? When have I ever not listened to you, or not supported you?’

‘It’s not that. It’s more complicated than that.’

‘How?’

‘There are other things and other people to consider.’

‘What things, Lisa? What people?’

‘I don’t want to go into it, now.’

Women want to know? I thought. Men want to know, too.

‘Come on, Lisa -’

‘Look, you’re leaving tomorrow, and I want us to keep feeling happy about how far we’ve come tonight, okay?’

‘If that’s the way you want it.’

‘I do. I’m happy, Lin, and don’t want to spoil it.’

‘I’ll be back soon, a week or so, and we’ll talk again. Whatever help you need, it’s yours. If you want a new place, I’ll set it up, and clear the rent for a year. Whatever you want. Don’t worry.’

‘You’ve really evolved, you know,’ she said wistfully.

‘From what?’

‘From what I met,’ she said.

She looked up at me with an expression I couldn’t recognise, at first, and then I did. It was endearment; the kind of endearment we reserve for very dear friends.

‘Do you remember our first kiss?’ she asked.

‘Afghan Church. They chased us out. We almost got arrested.’

‘Let’s find out,’ she said, moving to sit across me, ‘how we’ll remember our last kiss.’

She kissed me, but the kiss dissolved in whispers and we talked, lying side by side in the dark, until the storm softened and died. When she slept, I rose and packed a bag for the morning’s train ride.

I put my guns, ammunition, long knives, some passports and a few bundles of money in a compartment I’d had made in the back of a heavy chest of drawers. I left extra money for Lisa in the top drawer of the dresser, where she’d find it.

When everything was set, I went to the window and sat in the wicker chair I’d bought for her, high enough to give a view of the street below.

The last lonely chai seller walked past our window, gently ringing the bell on his bicycle to attract the attention of dozing nightwatchmen. Little by little the thring-thring of the bell faded, until the street was silent.

All life orbits that sun, Fate’s heart. Ranjit, Vikram, Dennis the Sleeping Baba, Naveen Adair, Abdullah, Sanjay, Diva Devnani, Didier, Johnny Cigar, Concannon, Vinson, Rannveig, Scorpio, Gemini, Sri Lanka, Lisa: my thoughts, a voyager, sailed from sea to sea, with one star in the black-ink sky, Karla.

Lisa was still asleep when I left, at dawn. I walked, contrition-brisk, to a taxi stand on the causeway. My shadow played like a laughing dog in the yellow morning. A sleepy taxi driver reluctantly accepted double the fare. The empty streets we drove were bright, cleaned by light.

The station, Bombay’s pagan cathedral, urged porters, passengers and burdens into passageways of crucial consequence, every seat precious; every seat important; every seat essential to someone’s destiny.

And when the Madras Express pulled out, at last, my window woke the streets for me, all the way through rain-stained suburbs to the tree line of green mountains and valleys, beyond the city’s grey hunger.

Again-and-again, again-and-again, the train’s rhythm chanted. I felt good: bad and good at the same time. My heart was a question; my head was a command.

Sri Lanka was risky. Lisa was right about that. But Abdullah had spoken to Sanjay, wresting my freedom from him in exchange for the mission I’d promised to do. And one job, like fifty others I’d done, was a small price to pay for a clean exit from the Company.

I was happy for Lisa, happy that she was free of me, if that was what she wanted. I was still feeling the same worried affection for her, but I had to start getting used to the fact that she was already gone: she was gone, and I was on a war train.

Lisa found her truth, and I found mine. I was still in love with Karla, and I couldn’t love anyone else.

It didn’t matter what intrigues Karla was plotting, with Ranjit or against him. It didn’t matter that she’d married someone else, or that I’d tried to love someone else. It didn’t matter if we couldn’t be more than friends. I loved her, and I always would.

I felt good, and bad: one bad mission away from good.

Again-and-again, the train wheels sang, again-and-again, again-and-again, as farms and fields and towns of dreams streamed past my window, and a shawl of sky misted distant mountains with the last of that year’s rain.