The Mountain Shadow (45 page)

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

E
VERYONE 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.’