The Mountain Shadow

A photograph of her father in a silver frame rested on the piano-desk. Flowers trailed over the picture, spilling yellow against lacquered black. Incense burned in a tray shaped like a peacock’s tail.

It was a big room, but there were only two chairs facing her desk. All those blank-eyed businessmen had stood, during the meeting with Diva. Tough girl, I thought, and who can blame her?

‘That was something,’ she said. ‘Can I get you guys a drink? God knows, I need one.’

She pressed a button on a console, and the door opened a second later. A very pretty girl walked across the large room, stalking the slippery floor on hysterical heels. She stopped at the desk with a flourish of her short skirt, long legs stiff.

‘Martini,’ Diva said, ‘I want you to meet Miss Karla and Mr Shantaram.’

Karla waved hello. I stood, put my right hand over my chest, and inclined my head. It’s the most polite way to greet any woman in India, because many women don’t like to shake hands. Martini inclined her head at me, and I sat down again.

‘I’ll have a Manhattan,’ Diva said. ‘What about you, Karla?’

‘Two jiggers of vodka over two cubes, please.’

‘A lime soda, for me.’

Martini spun on a fifty-calibre heel, and stalked away slowly, a giraffe in a glass zoo.

‘I suppose you’re wondering why I called you here,’ Diva said, giving me a different wondering, because I wasn’t.

‘I’m wondering,’ Karla said, ‘but not about that. You’ll get to the point when it’s sharp enough, right? How are you, Diva? It’s been weeks.’

‘I’m good,’ she smiled, straightening up in the chair that looked like half a bed for her small frame. ‘I’m tired, but I’ve been working on that. I sold everything today. Just about everything. That was the last, in a very long line of meetings I’ve had, yesterday and today.’

‘Sold everything how?’ Karla asked.

‘All the men who actually run the companies, in my portfolios, have tranches of shares as bonuses. I told them that if I sold my portfolio in one hit, their shares would be worthless. But if they gave the shares back to me, they could take the companies and run them with their own boards, and give themselves sweaty-palm bonuses, without spending a dollar, and I would resign.’

‘Smart move,’ Karla said. ‘As principal shareholder, you have an annual general meeting to use against them. But you skip the day-to-day. It’s like getting drunk without the hangover.’

‘Precisely,’ Diva said, as Martini arrived with the drinks.

‘Have you got a joint?’ Diva asked.

‘Yes,’ Karla and Martini said at the same time, turning their heads instantly to look at one another.

It looked tense, to me. But silent struggles between beautiful women are feminal magician’s tricks, faster and subtler than male eyes and instincts can follow. I couldn’t be sure what was going on, so I smiled at everybody.

Karla took a slender joint from her case, and passed it to Diva. Martini glowered, all legs and no pockets, and whirled away, the frills of her skirt like a creature designed by a reef.

‘Thanks, Karla,’ Diva said. ‘I’m a free woman, as of this minute. If the sun was down, I’d be drinking champagne. I can drink cocktails all day, but when I start on champagne my IQ drops twenty points, and that’s a stupidity I’m keeping in reserve, for later tonight. Meanwhile, to freedom for women!’

‘Freedom for women!’ Karla toasted.

Diva was silent for a while. Karla brought her back.

‘How bad was it?’

‘They all wanted control,’ Diva said, turning her drink in her hands. ‘They couldn’t bear to see it, a woman in control, when they’d all happily licked a man’s boot.’

‘They let you know?’ Karla asked.

‘I saw it in their eyes, at every meeting. And the whispering always came back to me, from men who betrayed men. Power, in my hands, was a declaration of war to them. These parasites that my father let infest the companies, these men who looked the other way when black money almost ruined us, they started getting nasty. Even threatening. You know what I mean, Karla?’

‘Men like that you crush, or you leave behind,’ Karla said. ‘You could’ve crushed them, Diva, because your father left you the power to do it. Why are you walking away?’

‘My dad was into energy stocks in a big way. That’s all we’ve got left, while the construction business pays off debts, and those stocks are still paying well. I wouldn’t have made those bets on oil and coal, but he did, and he locked me onto a wheel that thousands of people are running on. I can’t just turn it off.’

‘So you’re still in the game?’ Karla asked.

‘I’m stepping out, but I told the new managers that for every year they get cleaner, and better at what they do, they get a tranche of their shares back.’

‘What are your plans?’ I asked.

‘I kept one company, and quarantined it from the sale. I kept the combined modelling agency and bridal boutique, the one I told you about. I added a wedding advice service, and I’ve renamed it. I’m going to run it.’

‘Ah,’ I said, ‘so the girls you’ve got here are models, waiting for assignments.’