The Mountain Shadow

When we shook hands goodbye, I asked one of the questions that had been on my mind throughout the ride.

‘Did you know about the sword?’

‘Everyone knows about it, Lin, my brother.’

Our hands parted, but he held my eyes.

‘Some of them,’ he said carefully, ‘they are jealous that Khaderbhai left the sword to you.’

‘Andrew.’

‘He is one. But he is not the only one.’

I was silent, my lips tight on the curse that was staining the inside of my mouth. Sanjay’s words, Don’t mistake your usefulness for your value, had forked through my heart like summer lightning, and a voice was calling me to go, to run, anywhere else, before it ended in bad blood. And then there was Sri Lanka.

‘I’ll see you tomorrow, Inshallah,’ I said, standing to park my bike.

‘Tomorrow, Inshallah,’ he replied, stepping his bike into gear and pulling away from the kerb.

Without looking back, he called out to me. ‘Allah hafiz!’ May Allah be your guardian!

‘Allah hafiz,’ I replied, to myself.

The Sikh security guards at the door of the Mahesh hotel looked with some interest at the sword-shaped parcel strapped to my back, but let me pass with a nod and a smile. They knew me well.

Passports, abandoned by guests who skipped out of the hotel without paying their bills, found their way to me through the security teams or desk managers at most of the hotels in the city.

It was a steady stream of books, as illegal passports were known, running to fifteen or more a month in the skip season. And they were the best kind of books: the kind that people who lose them don’t report.

Every security office in every five-star hotel in the world has a wall of pictures of people who skipped out on a hotel bill, some of them leaving their passports behind. Most people looked at that wall to identify criminals. For me, it was shopping.

In the lobby of the hotel, I scanned the open-plan coffee lounge and saw Lisa, still at a meeting with friends beside the wide, tall windows that looked at the sea.

I decided to wash some of the street dirt off my face and hands before greeting her, and made my way toward the men’s room. As I reached the door I heard a voice, speaking from behind me.

‘Is that a sword on your back, or are you just furious to see me?’

I turned to see Ranjit, the budding media tycoon, the handsome athlete and political activist: the man that Karla, my Karla, had married. He was smiling.

‘I’m always furious to see you, Ranjit. Goodbye.’

He smiled again. It looked like an honest, earnest smile. I didn’t look close enough to find out, because the man smiling at me was married to Karla.

‘Goodbye, Ranjit.’

‘What? No, wait!’ he said quickly. ‘I’d like to talk to you.’

‘We just did. Goodbye, Ranjit.’

‘No, really!’ he said, dodging in front of me, his smile almost intact. ‘I’ve just finished a meeting, and I was on my way out, but I’m damn glad that I ran into you.’

‘Run into someone else, Ranjit.’

‘Please. Please. That’s . . . that’s not a word I use every day.’

‘What do you want?’

‘There’s . . . there’s something I’ve been wanting to talk to you about.’

I glanced around toward Lisa, sitting with her friends. She looked up and caught my eye. I nodded. She understood, and nodded back, before returning her attention back to her friends.

‘What’s on your mind?’ I asked.

A ripple of surprise scudded across the flawless landscape of his fine features.

‘If it’s a bad time –’

‘We don’t have a good time, Ranjit. Get to the point.’

‘Lin . . . I’m sure we could be friends, if we just –’

‘Don’t make this about you and me, Ranjit. There is no you and me. I’d know it, if there was.’

‘You speak as if you don’t like me,’ Ranjit said. ‘But you don’t know me at all.’

‘I don’t like you. And that’s just already. If I know you better, it’s sure to get worse.’

‘Why?’

‘Why what?’

‘Why don’t you like me?’

‘You know, if you stand in the lobby stopping everyone who doesn’t like you, and asking them why, you better get a room, because you’ll be here all night.’

‘But, wait . . . it’s . . . I don’t understand.’

‘Your ambition is putting Karla at risk,’ I said quietly. ‘I don’t like it. I don’t like you, for doing it. Is that clear enough?’

‘It’s Karla that I wanted to talk to you about,’ he said, studying my face.

‘What about Karla?’

‘I want to be sure she’s safe, that’s all.’

‘What do you mean, safe?’

His brow furrowed into a discomfited frown. He fatigue-sighed, allowing his head to fall forward for a moment.

‘I don’t even know how to start this . . . ’

I looked around, and then directed him to a space in the wide foyer, with two empty chairs. Pulling the sword from my shoulders, I sat facing him, the calico-wrapped weapon resting on my knees.

A waiter approached us immediately, but I smiled him away. Ranjit hung his head for a time, staring at the carpet, but then shrugged himself together.