The Mountain Shadow

‘Or, very early,’ Karla said, standing next to me and leaning against my shoulder. ‘What brings you out at this time of not-working, postman-ji?’

‘It is my penance, Madame,’ the postman said, stowing the clipboard in his shoulder sack.

‘Penance,’ Karla smiled. ‘The innocence of adults. What’s your name, postman-ji?’

‘Hitesh, Madame,’ he said.

‘A Good Person,’ she said, translating the name.

‘Unfortunately not, Madame,’ he replied, handing me the letter.

I stuffed it into my pocket.

‘Why are you doing penance, may I ask?’ Karla asked.

‘I became a drunkard, Madame.’

‘But you’re not a drunkard now.’

‘No, Madame, I am not. But I was, and I neglected my duty.’

‘How?’

‘I was so drunk, sometimes,’ he said, speaking quietly, ‘that I hid a few sacks of letters, because I could not deliver them. The postal department made me enter a program, and after I completed it, they offered me my job back if I deliver all of the undelivered letters on my own time, and with an apology to the people I betrayed.’

‘And that brings you here,’ she said.

‘Yes, Madame. I start with the hotels, because they are open at this hour. So, please accept my apology, Mr Shantaram, for delivering your letter so late.’

‘Apology accepted, Hitesh,’ we said, at the same time.

‘Thank you. Good night and good morning to you,’ he said, a sombre look pulling him down the stairs to his next appointment.

‘India,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘I love you.’

‘Aren’t you going to read it?’ Karla asked. ‘A letter delivered by Fate, in the person of a reformed man?’

‘You mean, aren’t you going to read it, right?’

‘Curiosity is its own reward,’ she said.

‘I don’t want to read it.’

‘Why not?’

‘A letter is just Fate, nagging. I don’t have great luck with letters.’

‘Come on,’ she said. ‘You wrote me two letters, and they’re the two best letters I ever got.’

‘I don’t mind writing them, now and then, but I don’t like getting them. One of my ideas of hell is a world where you don’t just get a letter every week or so, but you get one every minute, of every day, forever. It’s the stuff of nightmares.’

She looked at me, and then at the corner of the letter, poking from my pocket, and back at me.

‘You can read it, Karla, if you want to,’ I said, giving her the letter. ‘Please do. If there’s anything I need to know, you’ll tell me. If there’s not, tear it up.’

‘You don’t even know who sent it,’ she said, reading the envelope.

‘I don’t care who it’s from. I have bad luck with letters. Just tell me if there’s something I should know.’

She tapped the envelope against her cheek thoughtfully.

‘It’s already out of date, so I think I’ll read this later,’ she said, sliding it inside her shirt. ‘After we find Ankit, and make sure he’s okay.’

‘Ankit’s fine. He can take care of himself. He’s a dangerous communist, trained by Palestinians in Libya. I’d rather go into your tent, and make sure everything’s okay up here.’

‘Let’s go down there first,’ she smiled, ‘before we come up here.’

Chapter Seventy-Seven

We went down, thinking of up, and heard Randall and Ankit laughing before we turned into the archway, behind the façade of the hotel.

When we reached the converted limousine, parked against the wall, we found Randall and Ankit stretched out in the back, Vinson sitting on the mattress between them, and Naveen in the driver’s cabin with Didier.

‘Nice,’ Karla said, smiling wide. ‘How you doin’, guys?’

‘Karla!’ Didier shouted. ‘You must come and join us!’

‘Hi, Karla!’ other voices called.

‘What’s the occasion?’ Karla asked, leaning on the open rear door of the car.

‘We are commiserating,’ Didier said. ‘We are all abandoned men, or tragically separated men, and you will enjoy our masculine misery immensely.’

‘Abandoned?’ Karla scoffed. ‘Et tu, Didier?’

‘Taj broke it off with me, tonight,’ he sobbed.

‘Imagine,’ Karla replied. ‘Chiselled out of love by a sculptor.’

‘Miss Diva broke it off with me, too,’ Randall added.

‘And with me,’ Naveen said. ‘Strictly friends, from now on, she told me.’

‘I have never found love,’ Ankit said. ‘My search has not yet ended, but I have been alone in it for a very long time, and have my own bubbles of sorrow in the glass we raise.’

‘Rannveig kicked me out of the ashram,’ Vinson said. ‘I found her, and I lost her again. She said I had to stay there with her for like another month. A whole month. My business would go to hell, man, if I did that. She didn’t get it. She kicked me out. Lucky I found these guys.’

They were drinking Ankit’s anaesthetic in cocktail glasses. Vinson was loading the bowl of a bong. The glass reservoir was shaped like a skull. A small mother-of-pearl snake emblem was swimming in it.

He offered it to me, but I deflected it to Karla.

‘If I’m gonna do that, and try Ankit’s famous cocktails,’ she said, waving it away, ‘I’ve gotta sit inside that car, guys.’

‘Sit here between us, Karla,’ Didier pleaded.

‘Come on, Lin,’ she asked me. ‘Where do you want to sit?’