The Mountain Shadow

‘I am,’ I said. ‘She’s quotable.’

‘I’ll bet she is,’ she said bitterly.

There was an aggressive edge to her voice and her tone. I didn’t see it, then, for what it was.

I’d come to Leopold’s to warn her about Madame Zhou’s new obsession with her. I hadn’t given any thought to the game that she and Didier were playing, because I was just waiting for a break in the conversation to tell her what I knew. If I’d paid closer attention, I might’ve been prepared for her next remark.

‘Sin? Love? How can you even say those words, without being struck down?’

‘Whoa, Kavita, wait a minute. What do you mean?’

‘I mean that Karla was never out of your mind, not even for a minute, when you were in bed with Lisa.’

‘Where the hell is that coming from?’

Didier hustled to avert the storm.

‘Naveen’s second favourite crime was Harbouring a fugitive. It completes his profile. Would you like to hear it?’

‘Shut up, Didier!’ Kavita snapped.

‘Kavita,’ I said, ‘if you’ve got something to say, spit it out.’

‘I’d like to spit it into your face,’ she said, putting down her glass.

‘Go ahead.’

‘Lisa was leaving you for me, Lin,’ Kavita said. ‘She’d been with Rosanna, at the art gallery, for a while before me, trying things out, but we’d been lovers for months. And if she’d left you sooner, to be with me, she’d be alive today.’

Okay, I thought, so now we know. The irony of accusing me of thinking about Karla while I was with Lisa, when she was with Lisa while Lisa was with me, was obviously lost on her. Jealousy has no mirror, and resentment has a tin ear for the truth.

‘Okay, Kavita,’ I said, standing to leave. ‘I came here to tell you that I ran into an unlicensed maniac the other night, named Madame Zhou, and she warned me to stay away from you. I can see that won’t be a problem.’

I walked out of the bar.

‘Lin, please!’ Didier called.

I started the bike and rode from my money changers to the black bank, and back again. I rode to my private stashes of funds. Hours passed, and I talked to a dozen people, but my thoughts couldn’t leave Lisa. Lovely Lisa.

Love is always a lotus, no matter where you find it. If Lisa found love or even fun with Kavita Singh, a girl I’d always liked, I’d have been happy for her.

Were we so far apart, she couldn’t tell me that she was involved with Kavita?

Lisa was always surprising, and always at least a little confusing. But I’d rolled with the kisses, and I’d always supported her, no matter which direction her Aquarian mind led her. It hurt to think that we hadn’t been close enough. It hurt more to think that Kavita might be right, and that Lisa might still be alive and happy, if she’d left me sooner and made a life with Kavita: if I’d been more honest, maybe, and she’d been more willing to tell the truth.

It hurt so much, in fact, that I was glad when I received a message from the Tuareg. It obliged me to ride for good hours in bad traffic to visit one of the city’s most dangerous minds.

Chapter Fifty-Eight

The Tuareg was a retired specialist, who’d worked for years in the Khaderbhai Company. He was a full Council member, with a vote, but was never present at Council meetings, because he was the Company torturer.

His job was to ensure compliance, and extract information. It was a job that a lot of people in the Company wanted done, and nobody but the Tuareg wanted to do. But the Tuareg wasn’t a torturer by sadistic inclination: he’d simply discovered that he had a talent for it.

He’d been a psychiatrist, of the Freudian persuasion, in northern Africa. Nobody knew exactly where. He arrived in Bombay, and went to work for the Khaderbhai Company. He used his skills as a psychiatrist to discover his subjects’ deepest fears, and then magnified those fears until the subjects complied. His success rate, he quietly boasted, was better than Freudian psychoanalysis alone.

I hadn’t seen him for years; not since he’d retired from torture, and moved to Khar. I’d heard that he was operating a lottery-racket franchise from a children’s toy store.

The note asking me to visit him might’ve troubled me, on any other day: the Tuareg was a troubling man. On that day, I was glad to have something disturbing, to clear my mind.

I headed north to what was then the relatively remote suburb of Khar. Bombay was growing so fast that South Bombay, which had been the creative heart of the city, was itself becoming a remote pulse of the action and activity beating in the bigger heart, the northern suburbs.

Vacant land was already cluttered with new housing and commercial developments. New fashion factories were starting up, designing fame on the debris of construction. Brash brand stores on main roads competed with brash brand-thieves in knock-off street stalls, reflected in the bright windows of the brand stores they copied.