The Mountain Shadow

It was an average day. I bought a passport, three pieces of jewellery, seven hundred and fifty US dollars in cash, an assortment of other currencies, and a fine watch.

That last item, in the last trade of the day, in the last of the bars, involved me in an angry dispute with two of the street guys.

The man who brought the watch to me, Deepak, settled the price quickly. It was a price far below the actual value of the watch, but far more than he could expect to receive from the professional buyers in the Fort area.

At the moment of the handover, a second man, Ishtiaq, entered the bar, shouting for a share of the money. Ishtiaq’s strategy was simple: make a big enough fuss to force a concession from Deepak, before the latter had the chance to slip away in the crowded street.

In other circumstances I’d have taken my money back, shoved both men out of the bar, and forgotten about them. My long-standing relationship with the bar’s owner was more important than any one transaction.

But when I’d put the watch to my ear, I’d heard the reassuring trip-click movement, twitching toward its rundown cycle: the mechanical heart beating its rhythm reward for the daily winding fidelity of its owner. It was, as it happened, my favourite watch.

Ignoring my instincts, I tried to placate Ishtiaq. The momentary weakness ignited impudence, and he shouted all the harder. Diners at other tables began to stare at us, and it wasn’t a big place.

Speaking quickly, I soothed Ishtiaq, pulled some money from my pocket and paid him off. He snatched at the notes, snarled at Deepak, and left the bar. Deepak gave me an apologetic shrug, and slipped out onto the street.

I slid the metal bracelet of the watch over my hand, onto my wrist. I snapped the catch shut. It was a perfect fit. Then I looked up to see the manager and his waiters staring at me. The short story written in their eyes was clear: I’d lost face. Men in my position didn’t placate street touts like Ishtiaq.

I glanced again at the watch on my wrist. My greed had weakened me. Greed is human Kryptonite, Karla once said to me, as she pocketed all of the commission we’d just made together on a deal.

I needed to work out, and swung the bike through traffic, heading for the mafia boxing gym at Ballard Pier.

The manager of the gym, Hussein, was a veteran gangster who’d lost an arm to a machete blow in a battle with another gang. His long, scarred face found its way into a biblical beard that rested on the prodigious mound of his chest. He was brave, kind, funny, tough, and a match for any of the young gangsters who trained at the gym. Every time I looked into his laughing, dangerous eyes I wondered what he and Khaderbhai must’ve been like: the young fighters who created a gang that became a mafia Company.

Let my enemy see the tiger, they used to say, before he dies.

There was no doubt that Hussein and Khaderbhai had shown the tiger many times, as they’d prowled the city, young and fearless, all those years before. And something of that striped menace lingered in the burnt-clay eyes of the gym master.

‘Wah, wah, Linbaba,’ he said, as I entered the gym. ‘Salaam aleikum.’

‘Wa aleikum salaam, One Hussein.’

Because another Hussein joined Khaderbhai in those early years, and went on to hold a position on the Council, they were sometimes known as One Hussein and Two Hussein, for the number of arms they possessed.

‘Kya hal hain?’ How are you going?

‘Busier than a one-armed man in a bar fight,’ I replied in Hindi.

It was an old joke between us, but he laughed every time.

‘How are you, One Husseinbhai?’

‘Still swinging the punches, Linbaba. If you keep punching, you stay hard. If you stop the windmill, there’s no flour.’

‘You got that right.’

‘Are you training full session, Lin?’

‘No, One Husseinbhai, just loading the guns.’

Loading the guns was gangster slang for a workout that pumped the biceps and triceps in the same session of supersets.

‘Damn good!’ he laughed. ‘Keep the guns loaded, yaar. You know the two rules of combat. Make sure they know they’ve been hit, and –’

‘Make sure they stay hit,’ I finished for him.

‘Jarur!’

He handed me a towel as I walked past into the main training room. The gym, which at first had been a small, dirty space where large, dirty gangsters learned the arts of street fighting, had proven so popular with the young men of the Sanjay Company that it had been expanded to include the whole of the neighbouring warehouse.

In the foreground there was an assortment of weight-training equipment: benches, lat and rowing machines, incline and decline presses, squat bars, chin-up and dip bars, and stacks of heavy plates and dumbbells. Beyond that area, lined with mirrors, was the blood-stained boxing ring.