For his part, Abdullah never told me what the fight was about, and I never asked him. The one time we did talk of it, years later, he told me that he began to love me on that day. He loved me, he said, not because I joined the fight, but because I never once asked him what it was about. He admired that, he said, more than anything else he ever knew about me.
In the Colaba Causeway near my home, I asked Abdullah to slow down. I’d noticed a girl who was walking on the road, like a local, to avoid the crowds on the footpath. She looked different, changed somehow, but I recognised the blonde hair, the long, shapely legs, and hip-roll walk instantly. It was Lisa Carter. I told Abdullah to pull up just in front of her.
‘Hi, Lisa.’
‘Ah,’ she sighed, lifting her sunglasses to rest them on the top of her head. ‘It’s Gilbert. How’s things at the embassy?’
‘Oh, you know,’ I laughed. A crisis here, a rescue there. You look great, Lisa.’
Her blonde hair was longer and thicker than when I’d last seen her. Her face was fuller and healthier, but her figure was trim and more athletic. She was wearing a white halter-neck top, a white mini-skirt, and Roman sandals. Her legs and slender arms were tanned to a golden chestnut. She looked beautiful. She was beautiful.
‘I stopped being a fuck-up, and took the cure,’ she snarled, scowling through a bright, false smile. ‘What can I tell ya? It’s either one or the other, and you can’t have it both ways. When you’re sober and fit, it’s the world that’s fucked.’
‘That’s the spirit,’ I replied, laughing until she laughed with me.
‘Who’s your friend?’
‘Abdullah Taheri, this is Lisa Carter. Lisa, this is Abdullah.’
‘Nice bike,’ she purred.
‘Would you like to … ride it?’ he asked, smiling with all of his white, strong teeth.
She looked at me, and I raised my hands in a gesture that said, You’re on your own, kid. I got off the bike and joined her on the road.
‘This is my stop,’ I said. Lisa and Abdullah were still staring at one another. ‘There’s a free seat, if you want it.’
‘Okay’ she smiled. ‘Let’s do it.’
She hitched up her skirt and climbed onto the back of the bike. The two or three men, out of several hundred on the street, who weren’t already looking at her, joined in the chorus of stares. Abdullah shook hands with me, grinning like a schoolboy. He kicked the bike into gear, and roared off into the meandering traffic.
‘Nice bike,’ a voice behind me said. It was Gemini George.
‘Not real safe, though, those Enfields,’ answered another voice, with a strong Canadian accent. It was Scorpio George.
They lived on the street, sleeping in doorways and foraging for commissions among the tourists who wanted to buy hard drugs. And it showed. They were unshaven, unwashed, and unkempt in appearance. They were also intelligent, honest, and unconditionally loyal to one another.
‘Hi, guys. How’s it going?’
‘Well, son, very well,’ Gemini George answered, the song of Liverpool in his accent, ‘We’ve got a client, you know, at about six o’clock tonight.’
‘Touch wood,’ Scorpio added, his dour frown already focusing on the troubles the evening might bring.
‘Should do all right out of it,’ Gemini said cheerily. ‘Nice client. Nice little earner.’
‘If it all goes okay, and nothing goes wrong,’ Scorpio mused fretfully.
‘Must be something in the water,’ I muttered, watching the tiny white speck of Abdullah’s shirt, or Lisa’s skirt, disappear in the distance.
‘How’s that?’ Gemini asked.
‘Oh, nothing. Just, everyone seems to be falling in love lately.’
I was thinking of Prabaker, Vikram, and Johnny Cigar. And I knew the look I’d seen in Abdullah’s eyes as he’d ridden off. He was a long way more than interested.
‘Funny you should mention that—what do you make of sexual motivation, Lin?’ Scorpio asked me.
‘Come again?’
‘In a manner of speakin’,’ Gemini innuendoed, winking indecently.
‘C’mon, be serious for a minute,’ Scorpio scolded. ‘Sexual motivation, Lin—what do you make of it?’
‘What, exactly, do you mean?’
‘Well, we’re having a debate, you know—’
‘A discussion,’ Gemini interrupted. ‘Not a debate. I’m discussin’ with you, not debatin’ you.’
‘We’re having this discussion, about what it is that motivates people.’
‘I give you fair warnin’, Lin,’ Gemini said, sighing mightily. ‘We’ve been having this discussion for two weeks, and Scorpio still won’t see reason.’
‘As I said, we’re having this discussion about what it is that motivates people,’ Scorpio George pressed on, his Canadian accent and professorial manner combining in the documentary voice-over style that most irritated his English friend. ‘Y’see, Freud said we’re motivated by the drive for sex. Adler disagreed, and said that it was the drive for power. Then Victor Frankl, he said sex and power were important drives, but when you can’t get either one—no sex and no power—there’s still something else that drives us on and keeps us goin’—’
‘Yes, yes, the drive for meaning,’ Gemini added. ‘Which is really just the same thing in different words. We have a drive for power because power gives us sex, and we have a drive for meaning because that helps us to understand sex. It all comes down to sex in the end, no matter what you call it. Those other ideas, they’re just the clothes, like. And when you get the clothes off, it’s all about sex, innit?’
‘No, you’re wrong,’ Scorpio contradicted him. ‘We’re all driven by a desire to find meaning in life. We have to know what it’s all about. If it was just sex or power we’d still be chimpanzees. It’s meaning that makes us human beings.’
‘It’s sex that makes human beings, Scorpio,’ Gemini put in, his wicked leer working even harder. ‘But it’s been so long, you’ve probably forgotten that.’
A taxi pulled up beside us. The passenger in the back seat waited in a band of shadow for a moment, and then slowly leaned closer to the window. It was Ulla.
‘Lin,’ she gasped, ‘I need your help.’
She was wearing black-framed sunglasses, and there was a scarf tied around her head, covering her ash-blonde hair. Her face was pale and drawn and thin.
‘This … has a vaguely familiar ring to it, Ulla,’ I replied, not moving toward the cab.
‘Please. I mean it. Please, get in. I have something to tell you … something you want to know.’
I didn’t move.
‘Please, Lin. I know where Karla is. I will tell you, if you help me.’
I turned and shook hands with the Georges. In the handshake with Scorpio, I passed over an American twenty-dollar bill. I’d taken it from my pocket when I first heard their voices, and I’d kept it ready to hand over when we parted. In their world, I knew, it was enough money—if their nice little earner client fell through—to make them rich men for the night.
I opened the door and got into the cab. The driver pulled away into the traffic, checking me out often in his rear vision mirror.
‘I don’t know why you’re angry with me,’ Ulla whined, removing her sunglasses and stealing glances at me. ‘Please don’t be angry, Lin. Please don’t be angry.’
I wasn’t angry. For the first time in too long, I wasn’t angry. Scorpio’s right, I thought: it’s meaning that makes us human. There I was, with just the mention of a name, diving into the ocean of feeling again. I was looking for a woman, looking for Karla. I was involving myself in the world, and taking risks. I had a reason. I had a quest.
And then I knew, in the excited moment, what it was that had caused my desolate mood at Madjid’s, and put so much anger in me that day. I knew with perfect understanding that the momentary dream—the little boy’s wish that Khader really was my father—had plunged me into that restless, tide-rip of despair that fathers and sons too
often let their love become. And seeing it, realising it, remembering it, I found the strength to lift the darkness from my heart. I looked at Ulla. I stared into the blue labyrinth of her eyes and I wondered, without anger or sorrow, if she’d played a part in betraying me, and having me put in prison.
She reached out to put a hand on my knee. The grip was strong, but her hand was shaking. I felt the scent-filled seconds expand around us. We were trapped, both of us, held fast, each in our different ways. And once again, we were about to set the web of our connection trembling.
‘Relax. I’ll help you if I can,’ I said, calmly and firmly. ‘Now, tell me about Karla.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
AT MIDNIGHT’S HORIZON the great milky wheel of stars rose wet and shivering from the waves, and the silver yellow light of a gibbous moon settled on the sea, glistening the tinsel-crested swell. It was a warm, still, and perfectly clear night. The deck of the Goa ferry was crowded, but I’d managed to stake out a clear space a little distance apart from a large group of young tourists. They were stoned, most of them, on grass, hash, and acid. Dance music thumped from the black, shouting mouths of a portable hi-fi. Sitting among their backpacks, they swayed and clapped in time, called out to one another over the music, and laughed, often. They were happy, on their way to Goa. The first-time tourists were moving toward a dream. The old hands were returning to the one place in the world where they felt truly free.
Sailing toward Karla, looking out at the stars, listening to the kids who’d bought spaces on the deck of the ferry, I understood their hopeful, innocent excitement, and in a small and distant way I even shared it. But my face was hard. My eyes were hard. And that hardness divided my feelings from theirs as cleanly and inviolably as the metre-wide space on the deck separated me from their tangled, high-spirited party. And as I sat there, on the swaying, gently plunging ferry, I thought about Ulla: I thought about the fear that had glittered in her sapphire-blue eyes when she’d talked to me in the back of the cab.
Ulla needed money that night, a thousand dollars, and I gave it to her. She needed me to accompany her to the hotel room where she’d left her clothes and personal belongings. We went there together and, despite her trembling fear, we collected her things and paid the bill without incident. She was in trouble, through some business deal involving Modena and Maurizio. The deal, like too many of Maurizio’s quick scams, had soured. The men who’d lost their money weren’t content, as others had been, to accept the loss and let the matter ride. They wanted their money, and they wanted someone to bleed, and not necessarily in that order.
She didn’t tell me who they were. She didn’t tell me why they considered her a target, or what they planned to do with her if they caught her. I didn’t ask. I should’ve asked her, of course. It would’ve saved me a lot of trouble. In the long run, it might’ve saved a life or two. But I wasn’t really interested in Ulla. I wanted to know about Karla.
‘She’s in Goa,’ Ulla said, when we’d checked her out of her hotel.
‘Where in Goa?’
‘I don’t know. One of the beaches.’
‘There’s a lot of beaches in Goa, Ulla.’
‘I know, I know,’ she whined, flinching at my irritated tone.
‘You said you know where she is.’
‘I do. She’s in Goa. I know she’s in Goa. She wrote to me, from Mapusa. I got her last letter only yesterday. She’s somewhere near Mapusa.’
I relaxed a little. We loaded her belongings into the waiting cab, and I gave the driver directions to Abdullah’s apartment in Breach Candy. I checked the streets around us carefully, and was fairly sure that we weren’t being watched. When the cab moved off I sat back in silence for a while, watching the dark streets run in the window.
‘Why did she leave?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘She must’ve said something to you. She’s a talkative girl.’
Ulla laughed.
‘She didn’t say to me anything about leaving. If you want to know what I think, I am in the opinion that she left because of you.’
My love for Karla cringed at the thought. My vanity preened itself in the flattery. I smothered the conflict in a harsher tone.
‘There must be more to it. Was she afraid of something?’
Ulla laughed again.
‘Karla’s not afraid of anything.’
‘Everyone’s afraid of something.’
‘What are you afraid of, Lin?’
I turned, slowly, to stare at her, searching in the faint light for some hint of spite, some hidden meaning or allusion in the question.
‘What happened on the night you were supposed to meet me at Leopold’s?’ I asked her.
‘I couldn’t make it that night. I was prevented from coming there. Modena, him and Maurizio, they changed their plans at the last minute, and they stopped me.’
‘I seem to recall that you wanted me there because you didn’t trust them.’
‘That’s true. Well, I trust Modena, you know, kind of, but he is not strong against Maurizio. He can’t stay in his own mind, when Maurizio tells him what to do.’
‘That still doesn’t explain it,’ I grumbled.
‘I know,’ she sighed, clearly upset. ‘I’m trying to explain it. Maurizio, he had a deal planned—well, actually, he had a rip-off planned—and I was the one in the middle. Maurizio was using me because the men he was planning to steal money from, they liked me, and they kind of trusted me, you know how it is.’
‘Yeah, I know how it is.’
‘Oh, please, Lin, it wasn’t my fault that I wasn’t there that night. They wanted me to meet the customers, alone. I was afraid of those men, because I knew what Maurizio was planning to do, and that’s why I asked you to be with me, as my friend. Then, they changed their plans and we had the meeting all together, in another place, and I couldn’t get away to let you know about it. I tried to find you the next day, to explain to you and make an apology, but … you were gone. I looked everywhere, I promise you I did. I was very sorry that I didn’t go there to meet you at Leopold’s, like I promised you that night.’
‘When did you find out that I was in jail?’
‘After you got out. I saw Didier, and he told me that you looked terrible. That was the first thing that I … just a moment … do you … do you think I had something to do with you going in the prison? Is that what you think?’
I held the stare for a few seconds before replying.
‘Did you?’
‘Oh, fuck! Oh, God!’ she moaned, creasing her lovely face in miserable distress. She rocked her head from side to side swiftly, as if trying to prevent a thought or feeling from taking root. ‘Stop the car! Driver! Band karo! Abi, abi! Band karo!’ Now, now! Stop!
The cab driver pulled over to the pavement beside a row of shuttered shops. The street was deserted. He switched off the cab, and watched us in his rear-vision mirror.
Ulla tried to wrestle open the door. She was crying. In her agitation, she jammed the door handle, and the door wouldn’t open.
‘Take it easy,’ I said, prizing her hands gently from the handle and holding them in my own. ‘It’s okay. Take it easy.’
‘Nothing’s okay’ she sobbed. ‘I don’t know how we got in this mess. Modena, he’s not good at business. They messed everything up, him and Maurizio. They were cheating a lot of people, you know, and they just were always getting away with it. But not with these guys. They’re different. I’m so scared. I don’t know what to do. They’re going to kill us. All of us. And you think I put the police on you? For what reason, Lin? Do you think I am such a person? Am I so bad that you can think such a thing about me? What do you think I am?’
I reached across to open the door. She stepped out, and leaned against the side of the car. I got out and joined her. She was trembling and sobbing. I held her in my arms until she cried it out.
‘It’s okay, Ulla. I don’t think you had anything to do with it. I didn’t ever think you did—no
t really—not even when you weren’t there, at Leopold’s that night. Asking you … it was just a way of closing a door on it. It’s just something I had to ask. Do you understand?’
She looked up into my face. Streetlights arced in her large, blue eyes. Her mouth was slack with exhaustion and fear, but her eyes were drawn to a distant, ineradicable hope.
‘You really love her, don’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s good,’ she said dreamily, wistfully, looking away. ‘Love is a good thing. And Karla—she needs love, very much. Modena loves me too, you know. He really and truly loves me …’
She drifted in that reverie for a few moments and then snapped her head back to stare at me. Her hands gripped my arms as I held her.
‘You’ll find her. Start at Mapusa, and you’ll find her. She will stay in Goa for some little time yet. She told me so, in her letter. She is somewhere exactly on the beach. In her letter she told me she can see the ocean from her front door. Go there, Lin, and find her. Look for her, and find her. There is only love, you know, in the whole world. There is only love …’
And they remained with me, Ulla’s tears, swarming with light, until they dissolved in the glittering, moonlit sea off the ferry. And her words, there is only love, passed like prayer-bead wishes on a thread of possibility as the music and laughter crashed around me.
When the light on that long night became the dawn, and the ferry docked at the Goan capital of Panjim, I was the first to board a bus to Mapusa. The fifteen-kilometre journey from Panjim to Mapusa, pronounced as Muppsa, wound through lush, leafy groves, past mansions built to the styles and tastes of four hundred years of Portuguese colonial rule. Mapusa was a transportation and communication centre for the northern region of Goa. I arrived on a Friday, market day, and the morning crowds were already busy with business and bargains. I made my way to the taxi and motorcycle stands. After a bout of bartering that invoked an august assembly of deities from at least three religions, and incorporated spirited, carnal references to the sisters of our respective friends and acquantainces, a dealer agreed to hire out an Enfield Bullet motorcycle for a reasonable rental. I paid a bond and a week’s rent in advance, kick-started the bike, and set off through the market’s maul toward the beaches.
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