The Mountain Shadow

by Gregory David Roberts

  It was a daring commercial venture. He had no experience in the industry, and was working with borrowed funds. But Vikram’s charm and belief in himself made it a success. Lisa, his first business partner, had begun to discover her talents in their work together.

  When the English rose left Vikram without warning or explanation, the confidence that had seen him dance on the top of a moving train, to propose to her, drained from his life like blood from a whittled vein.

  ‘And he’s begun to take things,’ Vikram’s father had whispered, while Vikram slept. ‘Little things. His mother’s pearl brooch, and one of my pens, the good one, presented to me by the company, when I retired. When we asked him about it, he flew into a rage and blamed the servants. But it’s him. We know. He is selling the things he is stealing, to feed his habit for this drug.’

  I nodded.

  ‘It’s a shame,’ the elderly man had sighed, his eyes filling with tears. ‘It’s a damn shame.’

  It was sorrow and dread as well, because love had become a stranger in their home. I was that stranger, once. I was addicted to heroin: so addicted that I stole money to feed my habit. I stopped, twenty-five years ago, and I despise the drug more every year. I feel heart-crushing compassion every time I see or hear of someone still addicted: still shooting in a war against themselves. But I was that stranger in my parents’ house of love. I know how hard it is to find the line between helping someone out, and helping someone in. I know that all suffer and die inside, again and again, from the addiction of one. And I know that sometimes, if love doesn’t harden itself, love doesn’t survive at all.

  And that day, in that runaway year before I knew what cards Fate would throw at me, I prayed for all of us: for Vikram and his family and all the slaves of oblivion.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  I parked the bike opposite Kayani’s to meet Lisa. Watching the signal, I took two deep breaths and surfed my second-favourite pedestrian-killer Bombay traffic. Madness machines rushed at me, turning and weaving unpredictably. If you don’t dance in that, you die.

  Across the suicide road I used the hanging rope in the doorway of the restaurant to assist me on the steep marble steps, and entered the café. Perhaps the most famous of Bombay’s deservedly famous Parsi tea and coffee houses, Kayani’s offered hot chilli omelettes, meat and vegetable pasties, toasted sandwiches, and the largest selection of home-baked cakes and biscuits in the area.

  Lisa was waiting at the table she preferred, toward the back of the ground-floor space, with a view of the busy kitchen, seven steps away beyond a serving counter.

  Several waiters smiled and nodded as I made my way to her table. Kayani’s was one of our places: in the two years since we’d been a couple, we’d had lunch or afternoon tea there every couple of weeks.

  I kissed her, and sat close to her on a corner of the table, our legs touching.

  ‘Bun musca?’ I asked her, not looking at the menu.

  It was her favourite snack at Kayani’s: a freshly made buttered bun, cut into three slices that can be neatly dunked into a cup of hot, sweet tea. She nodded.

  ‘Do bun musca, do chai,’ I said to the waiter. Two buttered buns, and two cups of tea.

  The waiter, named Atif, collected the unused menus and shuffled away toward the serving counter, shouting the order.

  ‘Sorry I’m late, Lisa. I got this message about Vikram, so I went to Dennis’s place, and took him home.’

  ‘Dennis? Is that the Sleeping Baba?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I’d like to meet him. I’ve heard a lot about him. He’s getting kind of a cult status. Rish was talking about making an installation, based around his trance.’

  ‘I can take you there, but you don’t actually meet him, unless you’re lucky. You sort of stand there, trying not to kill his high.’

  ‘Not killing his high?’

  ‘That’s about it.’

  ‘I like this guy,’ she laughed.

  I knew her sense of humour, and her quick love for unusual people who did unusual things.

  ‘Oh, yeah. Dennis is a very Lisa kind of guy.’

  ‘If you’re gonna do something, make an art of it,’ she replied.

  The tea and buttered buns arrived. We took chunks of the bread, dipped them into our tea until the butter began to run, and ate them hungrily.

  ‘So, how was Vikram?’

  ‘He’s not good.’

  ‘That not good?’

  ‘That not good.’

  She frowned. We both knew addiction, and its python grip.

  ‘D’you think we should do an intervention?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe. I told his parents they should pay for him to stay at a private clinic for a while. They’re gonna try it.’

  ‘Can they afford it?’

  ‘Can they afford not to?’

  ‘Point,’ she agreed.

  ‘Problem is, even if he goes there, he’s not ready for help yet. Not even close.’

  She thought for a moment.

  ‘We’re not good, you and me, are we?’

  ‘Where did that come from?’

  ‘You and me,’ she repeated softly. ‘We’re not good, are we?’

  ‘Define good.’

  I tried smiling, but it didn’t work.

  ‘Good is more,’ she said.

  ‘Okay,’ I said softly. ‘Let’s do more.’

  ‘You’re nuts, you know that?’

  I was lost, and not sure I wanted to know where we were going.

  ‘When I was arrested,’ I said, ‘I had to undergo a psychiatric evaluation. So, I’ve actually been certified sane enough to stand trial, which is more than I can say for most of the people I know, including the psychiatrist who certified me. In fact, to get convicted in a court of law, you’ve gotta be declared sane. Which means that every convict in the world, in a jail cell, is sane, A-Grade and Certified. And with so many people on the outside seeing therapists and counsellors and all, pretty soon the only people who’ll be able to prove they’re sane will be the people behind bars.’

  She looked up at me. The searchlight smile in her eyes tried to cut through.

  ‘Pretty heavy conversation,’ she said, ‘with a buttered bun in your hand.’

  ‘These days, Lisa, even when I try to make you laugh, it’s a heavy conversation.’

  ‘Are you saying it’s my fault?’ she demanded fiercely.

  ‘No. I was just –’

  ‘It’s not always about you,’ she snapped.

  ‘Okay. Okay.’

  Atif arrived to clear the dishes and take the next order. When we had a lot to discuss, we had two or even three buns with tea, but I told him just to bring the tea.

  ‘No bun musca?’ Atif asked.

  ‘No bun musca. Sirf chai.’ Only tea.

  ‘Maybe, you’ll be having, just one bun musca?’ Atif tempted, waggling his shaggy eyebrows. ‘To be sharing?’

  ‘No bun musca. Just chai.’

  ‘Thik,’ he mumbled, deeply concerned.

  He took a deep breath, and shouted to the staff in the kitchen.

  ‘Do chai! Do chai lao! No bun musca! Repeating, no bun musca!’

  ‘No bun musca?’ a voice called back from the kitchen.

  I looked at Lisa, and then at Atif, then at Vishal the fast-food cook, glowering from the serving window. I raised my hand, one finger extended.

  ‘One bun musca!’ I shouted.

  ‘Yes!’ Atif shouted triumphantly. ‘Ek bun musca, do chai!’

  Vishal wagged his head in the serving widow enthusiastically, his wide grin revealing pearl-white teeth.

  ‘Ek bun musca, do chai!’ he shouted happily, banging his saucepan of boiling chai on its gas-ring fire.

  ‘I’m glad we got that settled,’ I said, trying to shake Lis
a happy.

  It was the kind of silly, lovely thing that Bombay does every day, and normally we would’ve enjoyed it together.

  ‘You know, it’s kinda weird,’ Lisa said.

  ‘Not really. Atif is –’

  ‘I was here yesterday,’ she said. ‘With Karla.’

  ‘You . . . what?’

  ‘And exactly the same thing happened with that waiter.’

  ‘Wait a minute. You were here with Karla, yesterday, and you didn’t say anything?’

  ‘Why would I? Do you tell me who you see, and who you fight with?’

  ‘There’s a reason for that, and you know it.’

  ‘Anyway, when I was here with Karla, the same thing happened with that waiter –’

  ‘Atif?’

  ‘See? She knew his name, too.’

  ‘He’s my favourite waiter here. Not surprised she likes him. He should be running the place.’

  ‘No, you’re not getting me.’

  ‘Do we have to talk about Karla?’

  ‘Talk about her,’ she said quietly, ‘or think about her?’

  ‘Are you thinking about her? Because I’m not. I’m thinking about you, and us. What there is of us.’

  She flicked a frown at me, and then went back to folding and refolding the napkin.

  The bun musca and chai arrived at the table. I ignored it for a moment, but Atif lingered near my elbow, watching me, so I picked up a piece of the bread and took a bite. He wagged his head approvingly, and walked away.

  ‘I guess it’s just my busted-up life, you know?’ Lisa said, creasing lines in the napkin with her fingers.

  I did know. I’d heard her story many times. It was always differently the same, and I always wanted her to tell it again.

  ‘I wasn’t, you know, mistreated, or anything. It wasn’t anything like that. My parents are kinda great, you know. They really are. The fault is in me. You know that.’

  ‘There’s no fault in you, Lisa.’

  ‘Yes, there is.’

  ‘Even if there was, there’s no fault that can’t be loved away.’

  She paused, sipped at the chai, and found another way into whatever it was she was trying to tell me.

  ‘Did I ever tell you about the parade?’

  ‘Not at Kayani’s,’ I smiled. ‘Tell me again.’

  ‘We used to have this Founders’ Day Parade every year, right down the whole of Main Street. Everybody for fifty miles around got involved, or came to watch the show. My high school band marched in the parade, and we had this big barge –’

  ‘A float.’

  ‘Yeah, the school had this big float that the parents’ committee made, with a different theme every year. One year, they picked me to be the one sitting high up on a kind of throne, as the central attraction. The theme that year was The Fruits of Liberty, and the barge –’

  ‘The float.’

  ‘The float was filled with produce from the local farms. I was the Liberty Belle, get it?’

  ‘You must’ve looked damn cute.’

  She smiled.

  ‘I had to sit on the top, while the whole mountain of fruit and potatoes and beets and all rolled along between the crowds. And I had to wave, regally, like this, all the way down Main Street.’

  She waved her hand gently, palm upwards, her fingers curved around the majestic memory.

  Atif cleared the table again. He looked at me, posing the question with one raised eyebrow. I held my hand over the table palm downwards, and gestured toward the table twice. It was the signal to wait for a time. He wagged his head from side to side, and checked on the neighbouring tables.

  ‘It was really something. Kind of a big honour, if you know what I mean. Everybody said so. Everybody kept on saying so, over and over again. You know how irritating it is, when people keep telling you how honoured you should be?’

  ‘I know the dishonoured version, but I get your drift.’

  ‘The thing was, I didn’t really feel honoured, you know? I was kinda glad, of course, when they picked me from all the other girls, some of them way prettier than me. And I didn’t even do anything to get picked. Some of the girls tried every devious trick they could think of. You don’t know how many tricks a girl can find up her sleeve, until you see a bunch of them trying to get picked to be on top of the truck in the Founders’ Day Parade.’

  ‘What kind of tricks?’ I asked hopefully.

  ‘Me, I didn’t do anything,’ she said. ‘And I was as surprised as anyone when the committee picked me. But . . . I didn’t really feel anything. I waved my hand, as regal as Marie Antoinette, getting a little drunk on the smell of those apples heating up in the sun, but I looked at all the faces smiling at me, and all those hands clapping me, and I didn’t feel anything at all.’

  Shafts of sunlight pierced the subdued monsoon shade of Kayani’s. One ray of light crossed our table, striking her face and dividing it between the sky-blue eyes in shadow and the lips, wet with white light.

  ‘I just didn’t feel anything at all,’ the light-struck lips said. ‘And I never did. I never felt like I belonged there, in that town, or in that school, or even with my own family. I never did. I never have.’

  ‘Lisa –’

  ‘You don’t feel like that,’ she said flatly. ‘You and Karla. You belong where you are. I finally get it, and it took the waiter to show it to me. I finally get it.’

  She looked up from the wrinkled napkin to stare into my eyes, her face emptied of expression.

  ‘I never do,’ she said flatly. ‘I never belong anywhere. Not even with you. I like you, Lin. I’ve had a thing for you for a long time. But I never felt anything more than that. Did you know that? I never felt anything for you.’

  There’d always been a knife in my chest when I tried to love Lisa. The knife was those words, when she spoke them, because she spoke them for both of us.

  ‘People don’t belong to one another,’ I said softly. ‘They can’t. That’s the first rule of freedom.’

  She tried to smile. She didn’t make it.

  ‘Why do people fall apart?’ she asked, frowning into a truth.

  ‘Why do people fall in?’

  ‘What are you, a psychiatrist now, answering a question with a question?’

  ‘Fair enough. Okay. If you really want me to say it, I think people fall apart when they weren’t really together in the first place.’

  ‘Well,’ she continued, her eyes drifting down to the table, ‘what if you’re afraid of being together with someone? Or with everyone?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Lately I feel like the committee picked me for the parade all over again, and I didn’t even try. Do you see?’

  ‘No, Lisa.’

  ‘You don’t?’

  ‘Whatever we are, or we’re not, all I know is that you beat the curse, and got back on your feet. That’s something to be proud of, Lisa. You’re doing what you love, working with artists you respect. And I’m your friend, no matter what happens. It’s good, Lisa. You’re good.’

  She looked up again. She wanted to speak. Her mouth opened. Her lips twitched, tricked into movement by flickering thoughts.

  ‘I gotta go,’ she said quickly, standing to leave. ‘There’s a new show. A new artist. He’s . . . he’s pretty good. We’re mounting it in a couple of days.’

  ‘Okay. We’ll –’

  ‘No. I’ll get a cab.’

  ‘I’m faster than any cab in this city,’ I smiled.

  ‘That you are, and cheaper too, cowboy, but I’ll get a cab.’

  I paid and walked out with her, descending to the sun-streaked street. There were taxis parked opposite, and we made for the first in line. She stooped to enter the cab, but I held her back.

  She met my eyes for a moment, and then threw her glance
away again.

  ‘Don’t wait up for me tonight,’ she said. ‘This new installation we’re setting up, it’s pretty complicated. We’re gonna work around the clock for a couple days, to –’

  ‘A couple of days?’

  ‘Yeah. I . . . I’ll probably sleep there tonight, and tomorrow, just . . . just to bring the show in on time, you know?’

  ‘What’s happening here, Lisa?’

  ‘Nothing’s happening here,’ she said, and got into the cab.

  It took off at once. She turned to look at me as the taxi pulled away, staring back at me until I lost her.

  The rapture, born in seconds, is a frail thing. And when rapture dies, no power can restore it to a lover’s eye. Lisa and I were staring at one another from a deeper place: the place where rapture lands when it falls.

  A light had dimmed, and a shadow moved across the garden of what was. I waited on the footpath for half an hour, thinking hard.

  I was missing something, a conflict more fundamental than Lisa’s objection to my life on the edge of the Sanjay Company, or even her desire to be with others. Something else was happening, and I couldn’t see it right or even feel it right, of course, because it was happening to me.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  The street was happily larcenous as I parked my bike outside Leopold’s beside a lounge of street touts, their salamander eyes roving for business. I looked left, slowly, and then right, taking in every threat or opportunity on the street around me. I’d begun to turn my thoughts away from that shadow, Lisa’s shadow, moving across the garden of what was, when I heard a voice.

  ‘Lin! This is great, man! I’ve been trying to find you.’

  It was Stuart Vinson, and he was agitated. That was good. After the talk with Lisa that I didn’t understand, agitation from a man I almost never understood seemed like the right distraction.

  ‘Vinson. What’s up?’

  ‘There’s this girl. She’s . . . I need your help. You’ve got some pull with the Colaba cops, right?’

  ‘Define pull.’

  ‘You can get things done, man. That’s right?’