The Mountain Shadow

‘God! You won’t leave it alone, will you? And you won’t trust me.’

‘You give me so little, Karla. And this is a bad night. I’m sorry. I guess I’m a little faith-challenged.’

She looked at me, maybe a little disappointed, maybe simply looking at the disappointment on my face.

‘Alright,’ she said. ‘It’s a fetish party.’

‘And . . . so what?’

‘It’s the first of its kind in Bombay, and the veils will come down on a lot of the people there.’

‘How many veils?’

‘All of them, of course,’ she said softly, her hand on my cheek. ‘That’s why I uninvited you.’

‘What?’

‘I like you the way you are. I love you the way you are. That’s what this is all about, one way and another. I’m not about to compromise that by letting you loose in Babylon.’

‘But you’re going.’

‘I’m not you, baby,’ she said. ‘And you’re not me.’

‘Come with me, Karla.’

‘I have to go, Lin,’ she said. ‘I’ve got things I have to finish. Just trust me.’

‘Everything’s finished. Come with me.’

‘I have to go,’ she said, standing to leave, but I put fingers on her wrist where a bracelet might rest.

‘In case you didn’t hear it, the trumpet blew. The walls have fallen. It’s –’

‘A biblical reference,’ she smiled. ‘Tempting, Shantaram. More tempting than the damn party, but I gotta go.’

‘I’m not kidding. It’s not a time to party. It’s a time to fortify, and defend. It’s gonna get messy. Places are gonna burn. Streets will burn. We should get in some supplies, wait this out, and then find another town.’

She looked at me so lovingly that I was swimming in a river of honest affection, and had no idea how I’d left the shore.

‘It’s the things that make us one, that make us one worth having,’ she said.

I was all out. She was too close. The lights from the hectic drive-in juice bar lit neon fire in her eyes, and I was burning, again.

‘What does that mean?’

‘Don’t give up on me,’ she whispered.

‘But –’

‘Don’t you dare give up on me,’ she said.

She kissed me. She kissed me so truly that she was already gone when I opened my eyes.

She ran to join the biker boys. They were revving their engines. She climbed up behind Benicia.

The Spanish racer girl pulled on a full-face helmet and shut the visor: a black curve of lights where her eyes had been. She took her privacy seriously, and you can’t object to that. But Karla was on the back of her bike, and I wanted to object to that. Benicia leaned over to grip the low-slung handlebars, and Karla leaned in close to her.

Then she sat upright and look around, her eyes finding mine without searching. She smiled.

Don’t give up on me.

She folded herself against Benicia’s back.

Kavita got up behind Naveen. He made an artful loop in front of the juice bar, and pulled up beside me.

‘Why aren’t you coming, Lin?’ he asked, as the other biker boys revved their engines.

There was a fire, I was thinking. People died. Nazeer died. Parts of the city are locked down. But he was happy. He was a winner. I couldn’t take that away.

‘Have fun, Naveen. I’ll see you in a couple of days.’

‘Sure thing.’

He started revving his engine.

‘Behold, the Uninvited,’ Kavita said, as Naveen prepared to leave. ‘What thing, inside you, was too terrible to invite to a weekend party, Lin?’

Naveen thumped the gas and skidded off under clutch, and the biker boys followed him.

Karla threw her arms wide, as Benicia roared away.

Don’t give up on me.

I was burned, scratched, beat up, covered in ashes, and alone with the dead in a city going into lockdown.

Don’t you dare give up on me.

Chapter Sixty-Seven

I rode back to the Amritsar and climbed the stairs, one at a time, my body heavier than will.

‘You were right, Jaswant,’ I said, as I passed his desk on my way to my room. ‘I need a shower.’

‘I told you so! And there’s no hot water, now, and the whole city is going crazy, so serves you right, baba, and goodnight, sleep tight.’

I sat at my desk, opened my journal, and wrote what I felt and what I’d seen that night. Ash from my hand and arm smudged the pages. My left hand, pressing the journal flat, made fingerprints, perfectly arranged and deeply defined, while my right hand described the scene of the crime.

Black ink flames ran across the pages. Flames reflected in a policeman’s eye, flame reflecting chrome-blue off a wall of bicycles, neon flames from motorcycle exhausts and steel boots, scraping rebel sparks from the righteous roundabout of revenge.

When I couldn’t write any more I took a bottle and hit the shower prison style, with all my clothes on.

I drank some, and washed my dirty clothes, peeling them away one textured leaf at a time, and drank some more, and washed my dirtier body, my skin sour with the scents of fear, and her non-identical twin, violent fear.

They were shot. Killed. Burned. They’re dead.