The Mountain Shadow

‘Inspiration!’ Jaswant said, putting down the newspaper and swinging his swanky new executive chair round to face me.

He threw a switch on his desk, and a panel slid open in the wall beside me. It was a secret cupboard filled with alcohol, cigarettes, snack foods, tiny cereal packets, cartons of milk, boxes of sugar cubes, pots of honey, tuna fish, baked beans, matches, candles, first aid kits, and indiscernible things pickled in jars.

He threw another switch, and a cascade of tiny coloured lights rotated around the cupboard.

‘Hey,’ he asked, peering at the trident on my face, illuminated by his coloured lights. ‘Do you know you’ve got a Trishula mark on your face?’

‘Let’s not get too personal, Jaswant.’

He waved a hand at his cupboard of pleasures.

‘Always happy to keep things on a business level, baba,’ he said, raising his eyebrows in sequence. ‘There’s music, too.’

He threw another switch, and Bhangra dance music stomped out of speakers on his desk. The paperweight danced with the stapler on the glass-topped surface, jittering back and forth across Jaswant’s reflected smile.

‘We Sikhs have learned to adapt,’ he shouted, over the music. ‘You wanna survive World War Three, move into a Sikh neighbourhood.’

He let the song play to the end, and it was a pretty long song.

‘I never get tired of that,’ he sighed. ‘Wanna hear it again?’

‘No. Thanks. I wanna buy your booze, before Didier does.’

‘Didier’s not here.’

‘I don’t wanna take the risk.’

‘That’s . . . just about the smartest thing you ever said to me.’

‘People don’t lay smart on you, Jaswant, because your attitude is wrong.’

‘Fuck attitude,’ he said.

‘The prosecution rests.’

‘Attitude doesn’t pay my rent.’

‘Wrap up some rent for me, Jaswant.’

‘Alright, alright, keep your wrinkly fucking shirt on, baba,’ he said, joining me at the window and bagging the supplies I pointed out.

‘Have you got any pre-rolled joints?’ I asked.

‘Sure, I’ve got fives, tens, fifteens –’

‘I’ll take them.’

‘What them?’

‘All of them.’

‘Chee, chee! Didn’t anyone ever teach you the art of business, man?’

‘Gimme the stuff, Jaswant.’

‘You don’t even know what it costs, man.’

‘How much does it cost, Jaswant?’

‘A fucking bundle, man.’

‘Done. Wrap it up.’

‘There you go again. You’ve got to fight for the price, or it isn’t really the price. You’re cheating me, when you don’t bargain me to the fair price, even if I come out in front. It’s how it’s done, man.’

‘Tell me the fair price, Jaswant, and I’ll pay that.’

‘You’re not getting me,’ he said patiently, teaching an ape. ‘The game, for both of us, is to discover the fair price. That’s the only way to know what anything costs. If we don’t all do that, we’ll be fucked. It’s spoilers like you who mess everything up, because you’ll pay anything, for anything.’

‘I pay what it costs, Jaswant.’

‘Let me tell you something. You can’t opt out of that system, man, no matter how hard you try. Bargaining is the bedrock of business. Didn’t anyone ever teach you that?’

‘I don’t care what it costs.’

‘Everybody cares what it costs.’

‘I don’t. If I can’t afford it, I don’t want it. If I want it, and I can afford it, I don’t care what it costs in money. That’s what money’s for, isn’t it?’

‘Money’s a river, man. Some of us go with the current, and some of us paddle to the shore.’

‘Enough with the old Sikh sayings.’

‘It’s a new Sikh saying. I just made it up.’

‘Wrap my stuff, Jaswant.’

Jaswant sighed.

‘I like you,’ he said. ‘I’ll never say that in public, because I’m not showy in public. Everybody knows that. But I like you, and I see some interesting qualities in you. I also see some errors in your spiritual thinking, and because I like you, I’d be happy to realign your chakras for you, so to speak.’

‘You’ve made that speech before, haven’t you?’ I asked, taking my two sacks of essential stuff.

‘A few times.’

‘How did it go over?’

‘I can sell a story, Lin. I once played Othello, in –’

‘Nice doing business with you, Jaswant.’

‘That’s it!’ he said. ‘That’s what I was trying to tell you before! I like you, see, but when you’re like a child, and you’re not a child, you take all the fun out of being an adult, see?’

Cue music. He punched the Bhangra music awake.

I stashed my supplies, ate two cans of cold tuna, sharpened my knives while the food settled, and then did push-ups and chin-ups until night gave me the chance to move across the city.

A full bandobast, or shutdown of the city, is impossible to negotiate by daylight. Anyone on High Street at high noon is a victim, or soon to be. The cops were scared. There weren’t enough of them to stop the people, when the people went to war with one another, or to save the banks. The shutdown made everything much clearer for the cops: if you’re on the street, you’re meat.

‘I’m going out, Jaswant,’ I said, just before midnight.

‘The fuck you are. That barricade stays.’

‘I’ll make a mess of it, if I pull it down,’ I said, moving to the barricade.