The Mountain Shadow

He smiled, and for a few seconds the old Vikram was there: the Vikram who would’ve gone to Goa for the necklace without any help from me, or anyone else; the Vikram who wouldn’t have left a piece of his mother’s wedding jewellery with a loan shark in the first place.

The smile folded from his eyes as he got into the taxi. I watched him away, worried for the danger in what he was: an optimist, ruined by love.

I started walking again, and Naveen fell in beside me.

‘He talks about that girl, the English girl, a lot,’ Naveen said.

‘It’s one of those things that should’ve worked out, but rarely do.’

‘He talks about you a lot, too,’ Naveen said.

‘He talks too much.’

‘He talks about Karla and Didier and Lisa. But mostly he talks about you.’

‘He talks too much.’

‘He told me you escaped from prison,’ he said. ‘And that you’re on the run.’

I stopped walking.

‘Now you’re talking too much. What is this, an epidemic?’

‘No, let me explain. You helped a friend of mine, Aslan . . . ’

‘What?’

‘A friend of mine –’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘It was near Ballard Pier one night, late, a couple of weeks ago. You helped him out of a tight spot.’

A young man, running toward me through Ballard Estate after midnight, the wide street a merchant’s bluff of locked buildings on both sides, no escape when the others came, and the young man stopping, streetlights throwing tree shadows on the road, the young man standing to fight them alone, and then not alone.

‘What about it?’

‘He died. Three days ago. I’ve been trying to find you, but you were in Goa. I’m taking my chance to tell you now.’

‘Tell me what?’

He flinched. I was hard-faced on him, because he’d talked about the prison break, and I wanted him to get to the point.

‘He was my friend, in college,’ he said evenly. ‘He liked roaming, at night, in dangerous places. Like I do. Like you do, or else you wouldn’t have been there, to help him out that night. I thought, maybe, you’d like to know.’

‘Are you kidding?’

We were standing in thin shade. We were inches apart, while the churn of the causeway wound around us.

‘What do you mean?’

‘You put prison escape on the table, just so you can bring me the sad tidings of Aslan’s demise? Is that what you’re telling me? Are you nuts, or are you really that nice?’

‘I guess,’ he said, hurt and getting angry, ‘I’m really that nice. Too nice to think you’d take what I’m saying for anything but what it is. I regret that I troubled you. It’s the last thing I would want to do. I apologise. I’ll take my leave.’

I stopped him.

‘Wait!’ I said. ‘Wait.’

Everything about him was right: the honest stare, the confident stance, and the light in his smile. Instinct chooses her own children. My instincts liked the kid, the young man standing in front of me looking so brave and hurt. Everything about him was right, and you don’t see that often.

‘Okay, my fault,’ I said, raising a hand.

‘No problem,’ he replied, relaxing again.

‘So, let’s go back to Vikram telling you about a prison break. See, that’s the kind of information that might raise Interpol’s interest, and always raises my interest. You see that, right?’

It wasn’t a question, and he knew it.

‘Fuck Interpol.’

‘You’re a detective.’

‘Fuck detectives, too. This is the kind of information about a friend that you don’t hide from a friend, when you come to know it. Didn’t anybody ever teach you that? I grew up on these streets, right here, and I know that.’

‘But we’re not friends.’

‘Not yet,’ Naveen smiled.

I looked at him for a while.

‘You like walking?’

‘I like walking and talking,’ he said, falling into step with me in the serpent lines of people traffic.

‘Fuck Interpol,’ he said again, after a while.

‘You really do like talking, don’t you?’

‘And walking.’

‘Okay, so tell me three very short walking stories.’

‘Sure. Fine. Walking story number one?’

‘Dennis.’

‘You know,’ Naveen laughed, dodging a woman carrying a huge bundle of scrap papers on her head, ‘that was my first time there, too. Other than what you saw with your own eyes, I can only tell you what I’ve heard.’

‘So heard me.’

‘His parents died. Hit him pretty hard, they say. They were loaded. They had the patent for something, and it was worth a lot. Sixty million, to Dennis.’

‘That’s not a sixty-million-dollar room back there.’

‘His money’s in trust,’ he replied, ‘while he’s in his trance.’

‘While he’s lying down, you mean?’

‘It’s more than lying down. Dennis is in a state of Samadhi when he sleeps. His heartbeat and his breathing slow down until they approach zero. Quite often, he’s technically dead.’

‘You’re fuckin’ with me, detective.’

‘No,’ he laughed. ‘Several doctors have signed death certificates in the last year, but Dennis always woke up again. Jamal, the One Man Show, has a collection of them.’

‘Okay, so Dennis is occasionally technically dead. That must be tough on his priest, and his accountant.’