The Mountain Shadow

‘With you?’ he asked, suspiciously.

I rode away again and reached Nariman Point before I turned back, and drew up beside him again.

‘Yes! I’d love to get drunk,’ he said.

‘Get on the bike, Oleg.’

‘Can I drive?’

‘Don’t ever talk about my motorcycle like that again.’

‘Okay,’ he said, climbing up behind me, the guitar slung at his side. ‘Just so long as we know where the boundaries are.’

‘Hang on tight.’

‘Are we going to fight someone, when we get drunk?’

‘No.’

‘Not even each other?’

‘Get off the bike, Oleg.’

‘No, no,’ he said. ‘It’s just that I’ll stay sober if we’re going to fight each other, because you fight dirty.’

‘Fuck you.’

‘We Russians can’t fight dirty. That’s why we’re such pushovers.’

‘Oleg, if you say the word Russian once more, I’ll throw you off in a curve.’

‘What am I supposed to say? I’m Russian, after all.’

‘Let’s call them R-people.’

‘Got it,’ he said, holding on. ‘We R-people are quick on the uptake.’

He was a good passenger, and it was fun, riding with him. I was in a good mood as we parked the bike and climbed the stairs to my rooms at the Amritsar hotel.

Just as we approached my door, Karla opened hers, going somewhere else.

She was in a sleeveless evening dress, and high sneakers. Her hair was twisted into a knot, and fixed with a swordfish rib-bone she’d bought at the fish market. She’d cleaned it, polished it, and fixed one of her jewelled rings to the wider end. It reflected the lights of the room behind her.

‘Wow,’ Oleg said, peering into the Bedouin tent.

‘Karla, this is Oleg. He’s a Russian writer, and a good man in a bad corner. Oleg, this is Karla.’

Karla looked me up and down, her head tilting like the woman in the glittering black burkha in the Tuareg’s house of arches. Something was wrong: more wrong than usual. She looked at Oleg. She smiled.

‘Bad corners, huh?’

‘Karla,’ Oleg said, kissing her hand. ‘What a lovely name. I have a special love, and I call her Karlesha. It’s my love name for her. It’s an honour to meet you. And if I flirt with you, your boyfriend says he will cut me.’

‘Oh, he will, huh?’ Karla smiled.

‘You know what,’ I said, ‘Oleg and I came here tonight to get drunk, in my room. It’s been a long night. A rough night. Would you like to join us?’

‘Would I like to, or would I be willing to?’

‘Karla.’

‘It’s a fair question,’ Oleg said.

I looked at him.

‘I’m only saying . . . ’

‘No, thanks,’ Karla said, switching off the lights, slamming shut the door to her room and locking several locks. ‘But, you know what, I’ve got an offer for you, Oleg.’

She turned to face him, all sixteen queens.

‘What kind of an offer?’ Oleg asked amiably.

‘We need field agents, and you look right.’

‘Field agents?’

‘Let’s open that bottle of oblivion, Oleg,’ I suggested. ‘And get drunk.’

‘We’ve got a bureau, one door along from mine,’ Karla said, leaning against the doorframe. ‘And we need field agents with spike. Have you got spike, Oleg?’

‘I can be spiky,’ Oleg said. ‘But what makes you think I’ve got the right stuff?’

She jerked her thumb at me.

‘He wouldn’t introduce you to me, if you didn’t. Are you in?’

He looked at me.

‘Will you cut me, if I accept?’

‘Of course he won’t,’ Karla said.

He looked back at Karla.

‘Great!’ Oleg said. ‘Fired and employed twice, in the same day. I knew I’d get rich in this city. When do I start?’

‘Ten,’ Karla said. ‘Put on a nice shirt.’

Oleg smiled engagingly. Karla smiled back. I wanted to choke Oleg with a nice shirt.

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘So, I’ll see you soon.’

I went to kiss her, to hug her, to smell the ocean, to go home, but she held me back, her hands on my chest.

‘Go inside, Oleg,’ I said, throwing him the keys.

He opened the door, and gasped.

‘Holy minimalism,’ he said, alone with my decor. ‘It’s Solzhenitsyn in here, man!’

‘What’s going on, Karla?’ I asked her, when we were alone with whatever was going on.

She looked at my face as if it was a maze, and she’d found her way out of it before. She stared at my lips, my forehead, and my eyes.

‘I’m going away for a couple of weeks,’ she said.

‘Where?’

‘Do you know that it’s lovable and maddening at the same time, that I knew you’d ask me that?’

‘Stop trying to put me off. Where are you going?’

‘You don’t want to know,’ she said, burning queens.

‘I do want to know. I wanna know where to break the door down, if you need me.’

She laughed. People laugh so often, when I’m being serious.

‘I’m gonna spend a couple weeks with Kavita,’ she said. ‘Alone.’

‘What the hell?’ I said, speaking my think.

She cocked her head to the side again.

‘Are you jealous, Shantaram?’

I wasn’t. I think back, now, and I know I was more jealous of the Russian writer, because he was a pretty cool guy, than I was of Kavita.

But Kavita had spoken harm at me, and I suddenly realised that it still hurt me. Karla wasn’t going to another lover, in my mind: she was going to someone who hated me.

I didn’t tell Karla then, that night, what Kavita had said to me. I should’ve said something. I should’ve told her. But it had been a rough night.