The Mountain Shadow

‘Can’t play cards yet, although I’d love to. I’m in this plastic tent for a few weeks, you see, and they daren’t take it off. My immune system’s down, they say. I think the machines are just for show. They’re keeping me alive with rubber bands and kindness. Me organs are shuttin’ down, one by one, like people leaving a train, you know?’

‘Are you in pain, Gemini?’ Karla asked.

He smiled, very slowly: sunlight burning shadows from a meadow.

‘I’m right as rain, love,’ he said. ‘They’ve got me on a drip. That’s when you know you’re dyin’, innit? When all the best drugs are suddenly legal, and you can have as much as you want. It’s the upside of the downside, so to speak.’

‘I’d still like to play a few hands,’ Karla smiled, ‘while we’re all on the upside.’

‘Like I said, it’s my immune system that’s up the spout. That’s why I got this tent. It’s actually you that could hurt me. Funny, innit?’

‘Gemini George, a quitter?’ Karla teased. ‘Of course you can play cards with us. We’ll deal you a hand, and I’ll hold the cards up for you without looking. You trust me, don’t you?’

Karla never cheated at any game, and Gemini knew it.

‘You’ll have to clear it with them first,’ Gemini said, nodding at the nurses. ‘They’ve got me on a pretty tight rein.’

‘Why don’t we start?’ Karla replied, winking at the nurses. ‘And if they get worried, we’ll stop. Where are the cards?’

‘In the top drawer of the cabinet, just beside you.’

I opened the drawer. There was a deck of cards, a cheap watch, a small bell from a charm bracelet, a war medal that might’ve been his father’s, a cross on a chain, and a wallet worn thin with patient penury.

Karla pulled three chairs close to the bed. I gave her the cards, and she shuffled them, spilling out hands on the spare chair. She held Gemini’s hand up to the plastic shield.

The nurses checked the hand as closely as Gemini did.

‘We’ll call your cards one-to-five, your left to your right,’ Karla said. ‘Anything you want to throw, call it by number. When you have your hand, call it by number, and I’ll rearrange it for you, okay?’

‘Got it,’ Gemini said. ‘I sit pat.’

One of the nurses made a noise, clicking her tongue against her teeth. Gemini turned to her. Both nurses were shaking their heads. Gemini turned back again.

‘On second thoughts,’ he said, ‘throw one and four, and give me two cards, please, Karla.’

The nurses nodded. Karla withdrew the unwanted cards, dealt two more into his hand, and showed them to him. They must’ve been good cards, because Gemini and the nurses poker-faced us.

‘I bet fifty,’ Gemini said. ‘Fight it out and stretch it out for me, Karla. I’ve got nowhere else to be, but in this game.’

‘I’ll see your fifty, and raise you a hundred,’ Karla said, ‘if you’ve got the stomach tubes for it.’

‘I’m out,’ I said, throwing in my cards, and leaving the duel to Karla and Gemini.

‘I’m so ready for this,’ Gemini laughed, and coughed. ‘Do your worst.’

‘I only play to win, Gemini. You know that.’

‘You remember that night,’ Gemini said, his smile a sunset in the valley of yesterday. ‘The housewarming party we threw, me and Scorpio? Remember that night?’

‘Great party,’ I said.

‘Good fun,’ Karla added.

‘That was a great party. The best ever. That was the time of my life.’

‘You’ll pull through,’ Karla said. ‘There’s plenty of pavement left in you, Gemini. Money time. Put up or shut up, street guy.’

We did the best we could for Gemini, and with a little help from his nurses he managed to cheat, for old times’ sake, every time we played.

We visited often, but at the end of every visit, away from Gemini’s room, we argued with Scorpio that his Zodiac twin should be in a hospital. Every time, Scorpio refused. Love has its own logic, just as it has its own foolishness.

In another room of life and death, across the city, Farzad, the young forger, responded to treatment. As the blood clot on his brain dissolved, he recovered his speech and movement.

A tremor that twitched his left eye closed, from time to time, reminded him that making cheeky remarks to vicious men ends viciously. The mysterious disappearance of Lightning Dilip reminded him, with a happier smile, that no-one escapes karma.

The three families shared the treasure, leaving a portion in a collective account to pay for the redecoration of their combined homes. They retained the domed space as the common area it had been, but took down the scaffolding, one freshly painted or remodelled section at a time, revealing the small basilica that it had become in the search.

Karla liked the scatter of catwalks, reaching three floors above us, and she liked the happy mix of Parsis, Hindus and Muslims even more.

While I went through paperwork with Arshan, once a week, bringing the illegal documents I’d created for him into line with his newly legal ones, Karla worked on the scaffolding with the families, paintbrush or power drill in hand.