The Mountain Shadow

‘I . . . I think we’re on the edge of a truly big change in the way we think, and act, and maybe even the way we dream in this country. If better minds win, if India becomes a truly modern, secular democracy, with rights and freedoms for all, the next century will be the Indian century, and we’ll lead the world.’

He looked into my eyes and saw the scepticism. He was right about India’s future, everyone in Bombay knew it and felt it in those years, but what he’d given me was a speech, and one he’d delivered before.

‘You know,’ I said, ‘every guy on every side makes the same speech.’

He opened his mouth to protest, but I stopped him with a raised palm.

‘I don’t do politics, but I know hatred when I see it, and I know that poking hatred with a stick will get you bit.’

‘I’m glad you understand,’ he sighed, letting his shoulders sag.

‘I’m not the one who has to understand.’

His back straightened again.

‘I’m not afraid of them, you know?’

‘It was a bomb, Ranjit. Of course you’re afraid. I’m afraid just talking to you. I’ll prefer it when you’re far away.’

‘If I knew you’d be there for her, with your . . . your friends, I’d be able to face this situation with a quiet heart.’

I frowned at him, wondering if he understood all the ironies that were packed into his request. I decided to throw one back.

‘Couple weeks back, your afternoon newspaper carried a pretty rough article about the Bombay mafia. One of those friends of mine was mentioned by name. The article called for him to be arrested, or banned from the city. And he’s a man who hasn’t been charged with anything. What happened to innocent before guilty? What happened to journalism?’

‘I know.’

‘And as I recall, some other articles in your newspaper called for the death penalty to be applied, in a case involving another one of my friends.’

‘Yes –’

‘And now you’re asking me –’

‘For protection for Karla, you’re right, from the same men. I know it’s hypocritical. The fact is, I’ve got nowhere else to turn. These fanatics have got people everywhere. The cops, the army, teachers, the unions, government services. The only people in Bombay not contaminated by them are . . . ’

‘My people.’

‘That’s right.’

It was pretty funny, in its own way. I stood up, holding the sword in my left hand. He stood with me.

‘Tell Karla everything,’ I said. ‘Anything you’ve hidden from her about this, tell her. Let her make up her own mind about staying or leaving.’

‘I’ll . . . yes, of course. And about our arrangement? For Karla?’

‘We don’t have an arrangement. There’s no our. There’s no you and me, remember?’

He smiled, opened his mouth to speak, but then pulled me into a hug with surprising passion.

‘I know I can count on you to do the right thing,’ he said. ‘No matter what happens.’

My face was close to his neck. There was a powerful perfume: a woman’s perfume, that had settled on his shirt not long before. It was a cheap perfume. It wasn’t Karla’s perfume.

He’d been with a woman in a suite at the hotel, minutes before he asked me to watch over his wife, the woman I still loved.

And there it was: the truth, suspended on a thread of suspicion between our eyes as I shoved him from the hug. I still loved Karla. I still loved her. It had taken that, a different woman’s scent on Ranjit’s skin, to make me face a truth that had circled my life for two years, like a wolf circling a campfire.

I stared at Ranjit. I was thinking murder, and feeling shamed love for Lisa in equal measure: not a peaceful combination. He shifted his feet awkwardly, trying to read my eyes.

‘Well . . . okay,’ he said, taking a step away from me. ‘I’ll . . . I’ll get going.’

I watched as he walked to the doors of the hotel. When he climbed into the back seat of his Mercedes sedan, I saw him glance around nervously, a man who made enemies too easily, and too often.

I looked back to see Lisa, sitting at the table near the window, and reaching out to shake hands with a young man who’d stopped to say hello.

I knew she didn’t like him. She’d once described him as more slippery than a squid in the pocket of a plastic raincoat on a rainy night. He was the son of a successful diamond trader, and he was buying an upper berth in the movie industry, shredding careers along the way.

He was kissing her hand. She withdrew her hand quickly, but the smile she gave him was radiant.

She once told me that every woman has four smiles.

‘Only four?’

‘The First Smile,’ she’d said, ignoring me, ‘is the unconscious one that happens without thinking about it, like smiling at a kid in the street, or smiling back at someone who’s smiling at us from a TV screen.’

‘I don’t smile at the TV.’

‘Everybody smiles at the TV. That’s why we have them.’

‘I don’t smile at the TV.’

‘The Second Smile,’ she’d persisted, ‘is the polite one, the kind we use to invite friends into a house when they come to the door, or to greet them in a restaurant.’

‘Are they paying?’ I’d asked.

‘You wanna hear this, or not?’

‘If I say not, will you stop?’