The Mountain Shadow

‘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.’