‘Come on, Lin,’ she laughed. ‘Without art, what is there?’
‘Sex,’ I replied. ‘And food. And more sex.’
‘There’ll be plenty of food at the gallery,’ she said, shoving me toward the shower. ‘And just think how grateful your little flock of birds will be when you come home from the art gallery that she really, really, really wants you to take her to, and that we’ll miss, if you don’t hit the shower right now!’
I was pulling my shirt off over my head in the stall. She turned on the shower behind me. Water crashed onto my back and my jeans.
‘Hey!’ I shouted. ‘These are my best jeans!’
‘And you’ve been in them for weeks,’ she called back from the kitchen. ‘Second-best jeans tonight, please.’
‘And I’ve still got your present,’ I shouted. ‘Right here, in the pocket of these jeans you just got soaking wet!’
She was at the door.
‘You got me a present?’ she asked.
‘Of course.’
‘Good. Very sweet. Let’s look at it later.’
She slipped out of sight again.
‘Yeah,’ I called back. ‘Let’s do that. After all that fun at the gallery.’
As I finished the shower, I heard her humming, a song from a Hindi movie. By chance, or by the synchronicities that curl within the spiral chambers of love, it was the same song that I’d been singing on the street, walking with Vikram and Naveen only hours before.
And later, as we gathered our things for the ride, we hummed and sang the song together.
Bombay traffic is a system designed by acrobats for small elephants. Twenty minutes of motorcycle fun got us to Cumballa Hill, a money belt district hitched to the hips of South Bombay’s most prestigious mountain.
I pulled my motorcycle into a parking area opposite the fashionably controversial Backbeat Gallery, at the commencement of fashionably orthodox Carmichael Road. Expensive imported cars and expensive local personalities drew up outside the gallery.
Lisa led us inside, working her way through the densely packed crowd. The long room held perhaps twice the safety limit of one hundred and fifty persons, a number that was conspicuously displayed on a fire-safety sign near the entrance.
If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the burning building.
She found one of her friends at last, and pulled me into an anatomically close introduction.
‘This is Rosanna,’ Lisa said, squeezed in beside a short girl who wore a large, ornate gold crucifix, with the nailed feet of the Saviour nestled between her breasts. ‘This is Lin. He just got back from Goa.’
‘We meet at last,’ Rosanna said, her chest pressing against mine as she raised a hand to run it through her short, spiked hair.
Her accent was American, but with Indian vowels.
‘What took you to Goa?’
‘Love letters and rubies,’ I said.
Rosanna glanced quickly at Lisa.
‘Don’t look at me,’ Lisa sighed, shrugging her shoulders.
‘You are so fucking weird, man!’ Rosanna cried out, in a voice like a parrot’s panic warning. ‘Come with me! You’ve got to meet Taj. Weird is his favourite thing, yaar.’
Wriggling her way through the crowd, Rosanna took us to meet a tall, handsome young man with shoulder-length hair that was sleek with perfumed oil. He was standing in front of a large stone sculpture, some three metres tall, of a wild man-creature.
The plaque beside the sculpture pronounced its name: ENKIDU. The artist greeted Lisa with a kiss on the cheek, and then offered his hand to me.
‘Taj,’ he said, giving me a smile of open curiosity. ‘You must be Lin. Lisa’s told me a lot about you.’
I shook his hand, allowed my eyes to search his for a moment, and then shifted my gaze to the huge sculpture behind him. He turned his head slightly, following my eyes.
‘What do you think?’
‘I like him,’ I said. ‘If the ceiling in my apartment was a little higher, and the floor a little stronger, I’d buy him.’
‘Thanks,’ he laughed.
He reached upwards to put a hand on the chest of the stone warrior.
‘I really don’t know what he is. I just had a compulsion to see him, standing in front of me. It’s not any more complicated than that. No metaphor or psychology or anything.’
‘Goethe said that all things are metaphors.’
‘That’s pretty good,’ he said, laughing again, the soft bark-brown eyes swimming with light. ‘Can I quote that? I might print it out, and put it beside my friend here. It might help me to sell him.’
‘Of course. Writers never really die, until people stop quoting them.’
‘That’s quite enough for this corner,’ Rosanna interrupted, seizing my arm. ‘Now, come see some of my work.’
She guided Lisa and me through the smoking, drinking, laughing, shouting crowd to the wall opposite the tall sculpture. Spanning half the long wall at eye level was a series of plaster reliefs. The panels had been painted to mimic a classical bronze finish, and told a story in consecutive panels.
‘It’s about the Sapna killings,’ Rosanna explained, shouting into my ear. ‘You remember? A couple of years ago? This crazy guy was telling servants to rise up against their rich masters, and kill them. You remember? It was in all the papers.’
I remembered the Sapna killings. And I knew the truth of the story better than Rosanna did, and better than most in the Island City of Bombay. I walked slowly from panel to panel, examining the long tableaux depicting figures from the public story of Sapna.
I felt light-headed and off balance. They were stories of men I’d known: men who’d killed, and died, and had finally become tiny figures fixed in an artist’s frieze.
Lisa pulled on my sleeve.
‘What is it, Lisa?’
‘Let’s go to the green room!’ she shouted.
‘Okay. Okay.’
We followed Rosanna through a leafy hedge of kisses and outstretched arms as she hooted and screeched her way to the back of the gallery. She tapped on the door with a little rhythmic signal.
When the door opened she pushed us through into a dark room illuminated by red motorcycle lights strung on heavy cables.
The room held about twenty people, sitting on chairs, couches and the floor. It was much quieter there. The girl who approached me, offering a joint, spoke in a throaty whisper that ran a hand through my short hair.
‘You wanna get fucked up?’ she asked rhetorically, offering the joint in her supernaturally long fingers.
‘You’re too late,’ Lisa cut in quickly, taking the joint. ‘Fate beat you to it, Anush.’
She puffed the joint and passed it back to the girl.
‘This is Anushka,’ Lisa said.
As we shook hands, Anushka’s long fingers closed all the way around my palm.
‘Anushka’s a performance artist,’ Lisa said.
‘You don’t say,’ I did say.
Anushka leaned in close to kiss me softly on the neck, the fingers of one hand cupping the back of my head.
‘Tell me when to stop,’ she whispered.
As she kissed my neck, I slowly turned my head until my eyes met Lisa’s.
‘You know, Lisa, you were right. I do like your friends. And I am having fun at the gallery, even though I thought I wouldn’t.’
‘Okay,’ Lisa said, pulling Anushka away. ‘Show’s over.’
‘Encore!’ I tried.
‘No encores,’ Lisa said, bringing me to sit on the floor beside a man in his thirties.
His head was shaved to a bright polish, and he wore a burnt-orange kurta pyjama set.
‘This is Rish. He mounted the exhibition, and he’s exhibiting work as well. Rish, this is Lin.’
‘Hey, man,’ Rish said, shaking hands. ‘How do you
like the show?’
‘The performance art is outstanding,’ I replied, looking around to see Anushka leaning in to bite an unresisting victim.
Lisa slapped me hard on the arm.
‘I’m kidding. It’s all good. And you got a big crowd. Congratulations.’
‘Hope they’re in a buying mood,’ Lisa said, thinking out loud.
‘If they’re not, Anushka could convince them.’
Lisa slapped me on the arm again.
‘Or you could always get Lisa to slap them.’
‘We were lucky,’ Rish smiled, offering me the joint.
‘No thanks. Never when I’ve got a passenger. Lucky how?’
‘It almost didn’t happen. Did you see the big Ram painting? The orange one?’
The large, mainly orange-coloured painting was hanging next to the stone sculpture of Enkidu. I hadn’t immediately realised that the striking central figure was a representation of the Hindu God.
‘The moral police from the lunatic religious right,’ Rish said, ‘the Spear of Karma, they call themselves, they heard about the painting and tried to shut us down. We got in touch with Taj’s dad. He’s a top lawyer, and connected to the Chief Minister. He got a court order, allowing us to put the show on.’
‘Who painted it?’
‘I did,’ Rish said. ‘Why?’
‘What made you want to paint it in the first place?’
‘Are you saying that there are things I shouldn’t paint?’
‘I’m asking you why you chose to do it.’
‘For the freedom of art,’ Rish said.
‘Viva la revolution,’ Anushka purred, sitting down beside Rish and leaning into his lap.
‘Whose freedom?’ I asked. ‘Yours, or theirs?’
‘Spear of Karma?’ Rosanna sneered. ‘Crazy fascist fuckers, all of them. They’re nothing. Just a fringe group. Nobody listens to them.’
‘The fringe usually works its way to the centre that ignores or insults it.’
‘What?’ Rosanna spluttered.
‘That’s true, Lin,’ Rish agreed, ‘and they’ve done some violent stuff. No doubt. But they’re mainly in the regional centres and the villages. Beating up priests, and burning down a church here and there, that’s their thing. They’ll never get a big following in Bombay.’
‘Vicious fucking fanatics!’ a bearded young man wearing a pink shirt spat out viciously. ‘They’re the stupidest people in the world!’
‘I don’t think you can say that,’ I said softly.
‘I just did!’ the young man shot back. ‘So fuck you. I just said it. So I can say it.’
‘Okay. I meant that you can’t say it with any validity. Sure, you can say it. You can say that the moon is a Diwali decoration, but it wouldn’t have any validity. It’s simply not valid to say that all the people who oppose you are stupid.’
‘Then what are they?’ Rish asked.
‘I think you probably know them and their way of thinking better than I do.’
‘No, really, make your point, please.’
‘Okay, I think they’re devout. And not just devout, but fervently devout. I think they’re in love with God, infatuated with God, actually, and when their God is depicted without faith, it’s felt as an insult to the faith inside themselves.’
‘So, you’re saying I shouldn’t have been allowed to put on this show?’ Rish pressed.
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘Who the fuck is this guy?’ the bearded youth asked no-one.
‘Please,’ Rish continued. ‘Tell me what you did say.’
‘I stand for your right to create and present art, but I think that rights come with responsibilities, and that we, as artists, have a responsibility not to cause feelings of hurt and injury in the name of art. In the name of truth, maybe. In the name of justice and freedom. But not in the name of art.’
‘Why not?’
‘We stand on tall shoulders, when we express ourselves as artists, and we have to stay true to the best in the artists who came before us. It’s a duty.’
‘Who the fuck is this guy?’ the bearded youth asked the string of red motorcycle lights.
‘So, if those people are offended, it’s my fault?’ Rish asked softly and earnestly.
I was beginning to like him.
‘I repeat,’ the bearded youth demanded, ‘who the fuck is this guy?’
I already didn’t like the bearded youth.
‘I’m the guy who’s gonna rearrange your grammar,’ I said quietly, ‘if you address me in the third person again.’
‘He’s a writer,’ Anushka yawned. ‘They argue, because –’
‘Because they can,’ Lisa interjected, tugging at my arm to lift me to my feet. ‘C’mon, Lin. Time to dance.’
Loud music thumped from heavy floor-mounted speakers.
‘I love this song!’ Anushka growled, jumping up and pulling Rish to his feet. ‘Dance with me, Rish!’
I held Lisa for a moment, and kissed her neck.
‘Go ahead,’ I smiled. ‘Dance your brains out. I’m gonna take another look at the exhibition. I’ll meet you outside.’
Lisa kissed me and joined the dancing crowd. I moved through the dancers, resisting the tidal roll of the music.
In the gallery room I stood before the bronze plaster reliefs that purported to tell the story of the Sapna killings. I tried to decide whether it was the artist’s nightmare, or mine.
I lost it all. I lost the custody of my daughter. I sleepwalked into heroin addiction and armed robbery. When I was caught, I was sentenced to serve ten years at hard labour, in a maximum-security prison.
I could tell you I was beaten during the first two and a half years of that sentence. I could give you half a dozen other sane reasons for escaping from an insane prison, but the truth of it’s simply that one day, freedom was more important to me than my life. And I refused, that day, to be caged. Not today. Not any more. I escaped, and became a wanted man.
The fugitive life took me from Australia, through New Zealand, to India. Six months in a remote village in Maharashtra gave me the language of farmers. Eighteen months in a city slum gave me the language of the street.
I went to prison again, in Bombay, as you do sometimes, when you’re on the run. The man who paid my freedom-ransom to the authorities was a mafia boss, Khaderbhai. He had a use for me. He had a use for everyone. And when I worked for him, no cop persecuted me in Bombay, and no prison offered hospitality.
Counterfeiting passports, smuggling, black market gold, illegal currency trading, protection rackets, gang wars, Afghanistan, vendettas: one way or another, the mafia life filled the months and years. And none of it mattered much to me, because the bridge to the past, to my family and friends, to my name and my nation and whatever I’d been before Bombay was gone, like the dead men prowling through Rosanna’s bronze-coloured frieze.
I left the gallery, made my way through the thinning crowd, and went outside to sit on my motorcycle. I was across the street from the entrance.
A crowd of people had gathered on the footpath, near my bike. Most of them were local people from servants’ quarters in the surrounding streets. They’d gathered in the cool nightfall to admire the fine cars and elegantly dressed guests entering and leaving the exhibition.
I heard people speaking in Marathi and Hindi. They commented on the cars and jewellery and dresses with genuine admiration and pleasure. No voice spoke with jealousy or resentment. They were poor people, living the hard, fear-streaked life crushed into the little word poor, but they admired the jewels and silks of the rich guests with joyful, unenvious innocence.
When a well-known industrialist and his movie-star wife emerged from the gallery, a little chorus of admiring sighs rose from the group. She wore a bejewelled yellow and white sari. I turned my head to lo
ok at the people, smiling and murmuring their appreciation, as if the woman were one of their own neighbours, and I noticed three men standing apart from the group.
Their stone-silent stares were grim. Malevolence rippled outward from their dark, staring eyes: waves so intense that it seemed I could feel them settle on my skin, like misted rain.
And then, as if they sensed my awareness of them, they turned as one and stared directly into my eyes, with clear, unreasoning hatred. We held the stare, while the happy crowd cooed and murmured their pleasure, while limousines drew up in front of us, and cameras flashed.
I thought of Lisa, still inside the gallery. The men stared, willing darkness at me. My hands moved slowly toward the two knives fixed in canvas scabbards in the small of my back.
‘Hey!’ Rosanna said, slapping me on the shoulder.
Reflex sent my hand whipping around to grab her wrist, while the other hand shoved her backwards a step.
‘Whoa! Take it easy!’ she said, her eyes wide with surprise.
‘I’m sorry.’ I frowned, releasing her wrist.
I turned quickly to search for the hate-filled eyes. The three men were gone.
‘Are you okay?’ Rosanna asked.
‘Sure,’ I said, turning to face her again. ‘Sure. Sorry. Is it about done in there?’
‘Just about,’ she said. ‘When the big stars leave, the lights go out. Lisa says you’re not a Goa fan. Why not? I’m from there, you know.’
‘I guessed.’
‘So, what have you got against Goa?’
‘Nothing. It’s just that every time I go there, somebody asks me to pick up their dirty laundry.’
‘That’s not my Goa,’ she countered.
It wasn’t defensive. It was simply a statement of fact.
‘Maybe not,’ I smiled. ‘And Goa’s a big place. I only know a couple of beaches and towns.’
She was studying my face.
‘What did you say it was?’ she asked. ‘Rubies and what?’
‘Rubies and love letters.’
‘But you weren’t in Goa just for that, were you?’
‘Sure,’ I lied.
‘If I said you were down there for black market business, would I be close to the mark?’
I’d gone to Goa to collect ten handguns. I’d dropped them off with my mafia contact in Bombay, before searching for Vikram to return the necklace. Black market business was close to the mark.
The Mountain Shadow Page 4