The Mountain Shadow (32 page)

Hathoda, the man who’d taught me for two years, had also taught Ishmeet, the leader of the Cycle Killers, who’d passed on the skills to his own men. The knife master was just leaving the corridor with a young street fighter named Tricky as I approached.

They both greeted me with smiles and warm handshakes. The young gangster, exhausted but happy, excused himself quickly, and headed for the shower.

‘A good kid,’ Hathoda said in Hindi, as we watched him leave. ‘And a natural with the knife,
may he never use it in shame
.’

The last phrase was a kind of incantation that Hathoda taught his students. I repeated it instinctively, as we all did, in the plural.

‘
May we never use it in shame.
’

Hathoda was a Sikh, from the holy city of Amritsar. As a young man, he’d fallen in with a tough crowd. Eventually, he’d abandoned his studies, and spent almost all of his time with the local gang. When a violent robbery led to conflict with community leaders, Hathoda’s family disowned him. As part of the price of peace, his gang had been compelled to cast him out as well.

Alone and penniless, he made his way to Bombay, and was recruited by Khaderbhai. He apprenticed the young Sikh to Ganeshbhai, the last of the master knife fighters, who’d started with Khaderbhai in the early 1960s.

Hathoda never left the master’s side, and through years of study became a master himself. He was, in fact, the last knife teacher in South Bombay, but none of us knew that then, in those years before the glamour of the gun.

He was a tall man, something of a disadvantage for a knife fighter, with a thick mane of oiled hair coiled into a permanent topknot. His almond-shaped eyes, the same Punjabi eyes that with a single, smouldering stare, had seduced travellers to India for centuries, glowed with fearlessness and honour.

His name, the one that everyone in South Bombay knew him by,
Hathoda
, meant
Hammer
in Hindi.

‘So, Lin, you want to practise with me? I was just leaving, but I’m happy to stay for another session, if your reflexes are up to it?’

‘I don’t want to put you out, master-
ji
,’ I demurred.

‘It’s no trouble,’ he insisted. ‘I’ll just drink water, and we’ll begin.’

‘I’ll train with him,’ a voice from behind me said, speaking in Hindi. ‘The
gora
can work out with me.’

It was Andrew DaSilva, the young Goan member of the Sanjay Company Council. His use of the term
gora
, meaning
white man
, though very common in Bombay, was insulting in the context. He knew it, of course, and leered at me, his mouth open and his lower jaw thrust out.

It was also a strange thing to say. Andrew was very fair-skinned, his part-Portuguese ancestry evident in his reddish-brown hair and honey-coloured eyes. Because I spent so much time riding my motorcycle in the sunlight, without a helmet, my face and arms were darker than his.

‘That is,’ Andrew added, when I didn’t respond, ‘if the
gora
isn’t afraid that I might embarrass him.’

It was the right moment, on the wrong day.

‘What level do you want?’ I asked, returning his stare.

‘Level four,’ Andrew said, his leer widening.

‘Four it is,’ I agreed.

All training in the knife-fighting arts was done with hammer handles: the reason for Hathoda’s enduring nickname. The wooden handles, without their hammerheads, approximated the hilt and heft of a knife, and could be used for practice, without causing the grievous injuries of real knives.

Level one used the blunt end of a basic hammer handle. Level four training used handles shaved to points, sharp enough to draw blood.

Training bouts were usually conducted in five one-minute rounds, with a thirty-second recovery period between them. Stripped down to jeans and bare chests, we entered the training corridor. Hathoda, standing in the entrance to referee the session, handed us one sharpened handle each.

The space was tight, with only a few centimetres of movement possible to left or right. The aim was to teach men how to fight in close quarters, surrounded by enemies. The end of the padded corridor was blocked off: the way in, was the only way out.

Andrew held his sharpened handle in the underhand grip, as if he was holding the hilt of a sword. I held mine with the blade downward, and adopted a boxer’s stance. Hathoda nodded to check that we were ready, glanced at the stopwatch hanging around his neck, and gave the signal.

‘
Begin!
’

Andrew rushed at me, trying for a surprise early strike. It was an easy sidestep. He stumbled past me, and I gave him a shove that sent him into Hathoda at the open end of the corridor.

A young gangster watching from behind the master began to laugh, but the master silenced him.

Andrew spun around, and stepped toward me more cautiously. I closed the gap between us quickly, and we exchanged a flurry of jabs, thrusts and counter-moves.

For a moment we were locked in a tight clinch, heads knocking together. Using some main strength, I shoved Andrew off balance, and he lurched backward into the closed end of the corridor to regain his footing.

Attacking again, Andrew feinted jabs, lunging at me. Each time I arched my back, pulling out of range, and slapped at his face with my free left hand.

Several of the young gangsters training in the gym had gathered near the entrance to the corridor to watch. They laughed with each slap, infuriating Andrew. He was a full member of the Sanjay Company Council, and the position, if not the man, demanded respect.

‘Shut the fuck up!’ Andrew screamed at the onlookers.

They fell silent at once.

Andrew glared at me, his teeth clenched on the hatred he felt for me. His shoulders arched around the anger pumping outward from his heart. The muscles stiffened in his arms, and he began to shiver with the strain of suppressing his rage.

It hurt him not to win. He thought he was good with a knife, and I was making him realise that he wasn’t.

I should’ve let him win. It would’ve cost me nothing. And he was my boss, in a sense. But I couldn’t do it. There’s a corner of contempt we reserve for those who hate us, when we’ve done them no wrong: those who resent us without cause, and revile us without reason. Andrew was corralled into that corner of my disdain as surely as he was trapped in the dead end of the training corridor. And contempt almost always conquers caution.

He lunged. I swung around, avoiding the blow, and brought my pointed handle down into his back, between the shoulder blades.

‘Three points!’ Hathoda called.

Andrew lashed out with his handle, swinging round to face me. He was off balance again, and a sweep of my foot brought him down beside me. Landing heavily on top of him, I jabbed the hammer handle into his chest and kidneys.

‘Six more points!’ Hathoda called out. ‘And stop! Time to rest!’

I stepped back from Andrew. Ignoring Hathoda’s command, he stood and rushed at me, jabbing with his wooden blade.

‘Stop!’ Hathoda shouted. ‘Rest period!’

Andrew pressed on, slashing at me, trying to draw blood. Against the rules of training, he was trying to stab me in the throat and the face.

I parried and protected myself, stepping further into the dead-end corridor. Countering with my fists and handle, I struck back at him through every opening. Within seconds our hands and forearms were bleeding. Strikes against our chests and shoulders sent thin streams of blood down our bodies.

We bounced off the padded walls and into one another, fists and handles flashing, breathing hard and fast as our feet began to slip on the stone floor, until the wrestling struggle sent us both to the ground.

Luckier in the fall, I closed an arm around Andrew’s neck, locking him in a chokehold. His back was to my chest. As he tried to wriggle free I wrapped my legs around his thighs, holding him immobile. He thrashed around, making us slither on the slippery stone, but my grip on his throat was solid, and he couldn’t shake me off or twist himself free.

‘Do you quit?’

‘Fuck you!’ he spluttered.

A voice spoke from a place of ancient instinct.

This is a wolf in a trap. If you let it go, sooner or later, it’ll come back.

‘
Lin!
’ a different voice said. ‘Lin brother! Let him go!’

It was Abdullah. The strength drained from my arms and legs, and I let Andrew slide away from me, onto his side. He gasped, choking and coughing, as Hathoda and several young gangsters crowded into the corridor to assist him.

Abdullah reached out and pulled me to my feet. Breathing hard, I followed him to the rows of hooks where I’d left my things.

‘
Salaam aleikum
,’ I greeted him. ‘Where the fuck did you come from?’

‘
Wa aleikum salaam.
From heaven, it seems, and just in time.’

‘Heaven?’

‘It would certainly have been hell, if you had finished him, Lin. They would have sent someone like me to kill you for it.’

I gathered my shirt, knives, money and watch. In the entrance to the gym I used a wet towel to wipe down my face, chest and back. Strapping on the knives, I threw the shirt over my shoulders, and nodded to Abdullah.

‘Let us ride, my brother,’ he said softly, ‘and clear our minds.’

Andrew DaSilva approached me, stopping two paces away.

‘This isn’t over,’ he said.

I stepped in close and whispered, so that no-one else could hear.

‘You know what, Andy, there’s a lane at the back of this gym. Let’s get it over with, right now. Just nod your head, and we’ll get it done. No witnesses. Just us. Nod your head, big mouth.’

I leaned back to look at his face. He didn’t move or speak. I leaned in again.

‘I didn’t think so. And now we both know. So back the fuck off, and leave me alone.’

I gathered my things, and left the gym with Abdullah, knowing that it was a foolish thing to humiliate Andrew DaSilva, even privately. A wolf had escaped: a wolf that would probably return, when the moon was bad enough.

Chapter Nineteen

W
E RODE TOGETHER IN SILENCE TO
L
EOPOLD’S.
Breaking with the discipline that usually kept him out of any place that served alcohol, Abdullah parked his bike next to mine, and walked inside with me.

We found Didier at his usual table near the small northern door, facing the two wide entrance arches, showing the busy causeway.

‘Lin!’ he cried, as we approached. ‘I was so
alone
here! And drinking alone is like making love alone, don’t you think so?’

‘Don’t take me there, Didier,’ I said.

‘You are an unordained priest of denied pleasures, my friend,’ he laughed.

He gave me a hug, shook hands with Abdullah, and called for the waiter.

‘Beer! Two glasses! And a pomegranate juice, for our Iranian friend! No ice! Hurry!’

‘Oh, yes sir, I’ll rush, and give myself a heart attack just to serve you,’ Sweetie growled, slouching away.

He was on my list of top five waiters, and I knew some good ones. He ran the black market franchise in goods that moved through one door at Leopold’s and went out the other, without the owners knowing. He took franchise fees from every store on the street, hustled a couple of pimps, and ran a small betting ring. And somehow, he drove the whole thing on nothing more than surliness and pessimism.

Didier, Abdullah and I sat side by side with our backs to the wall, watching the wide bar and the crowded street beyond.

‘So, how are you, Abdullah?’ Didier asked. ‘It has been too long since I’ve seen your fearsome, handsome face.’

‘
Alhamdulillah
,’ Abdullah replied, using the expression that meant
Thanks and praise to God
. ‘And how goes it with you?’

‘I never complain,’ Didier sighed. ‘It is one of my
sterling
qualities, as the English say. Mind you, if I
did
complain, I could be a master of the complaining arts.’

‘So . . . ’ Abdullah frowned. ‘It means . . . you are well?’

‘Yes, my friend,’ Didier smiled. ‘I am well.’

The drinks arrived. Sweetie slammed the beers in front of us, but carefully wiped every trace of moisture from Abdullah’s glass of juice, placing it in front of him with a generous portion of paper napkins to the side.

As Sweetie backed away from Abdullah he bowed, slightly, with each backward step, as if he were leaving the tomb of a saint.

Didier’s mouth wrinkled with irritation. He caught my eye, and I laughed, spluttering beer foam from the top of my glass.