Shantaram (107 page)

I stepped into an attic room lit by a row of four stained-glass dormer windows that peaked like little chapels and reached out over the external roof of the house. The fire had reached the room, but it had failed to destroy it. The walls were darkened, splashed with streaky burn-shadows, and the floor was holed in places to reveal a deep sandwich layer between it and the ceiling of the room below. Parts of the long room, however, were quite solid and untouched by the flames. In those islands of exotically carpeted floor and unblemished wall-space, furniture still stood intact and unmarked. And in the stiff, enwrapping arms of a throne-like chair, her face twisted in a manic stare, was Madame Zhou.

As I approached her I realised that the malevolent stare wasn't directed at me. She was staring with hatred and spite at some point in the past, some place or person or event that held her mind as firmly as a chain holds a dancing bear. Her face was made up with a thick smear and powdering of cosmetics. It was a mask- more tragic, for all its deluded exaggerations, than grotesque.

The painted mouth was bigger than her own lips. The scrawled eyebrows were larger than the real ones. The daubed cheeks were higher than the bones beneath them. When I stood near enough, I saw that there was a trickle of drool dripping, dripping, from the corner of her mouth into her lap. The smell of alcohol, undiluted gin, wreathed her and coiled into other smells, more foul and sickening. Her hair was almost concealed by a wig. The thick coils of the black, pompadour wig hung slightly askew, revealing the short, sparse grey hair beneath. She was dressed in a green silk cheongsam. The neck of the dress covered her throat almost to her chin. Her legs were folded, with her feet resting on the seat of the chair beside her. They were tiny feet-the size of a small child's feet-enclosed in soft, silk slippers.

Her hands, as limp and expressionless as her slack mouth, lay in her lap like things washed up on a deserted shore.

It was impossible for me to tell her age or her nationality. She might've been Spanish. She might've been Russian. She might've been Indian, in part, or Chinese, or even Greek. And Karla was right-she had been beautiful once. It was the kind of beauty that grows from the sum of its parts rather than from any one outstanding feature: a beauty that strikes the eye rather than the heart, and a beauty that sours if it isn't nourished by some goodness from within. And she wasn't beautiful then, in that moment. She was ugly. And Didier was right, too: she was beaten and broken and finished. She was floating on the black lake, and soon the dark water would drag her under. There was a deep silence where her mind used to be, and a blank, uncraving emptiness where once her cruel and scheming life had ruled.

Standing there, invisible to her, I was astonished and bewildered to realise that I felt not angry or vengeful, but ashamed. I felt ashamed that I'd filled my heart with revenge. The part of me that had wanted to-What? Had I really wanted to kill her?-was the very part that was like her. I looked at her, and I knew that I was looking at myself, my own future, my destiny, if I couldn't rid my heart of its vindictiveness.

And I knew, as well, that the revenge I'd fed myself with and planned through the weeks of my recuperation in Pakistan was not merely hers, not only hers. I was striking out at myself, and at a guilt I could only face in that moment of shame as I looked at her. It was the guilt I felt for Khader's death. I was his American-his guarantee against the warlords and pirates. If I'd been with him, as I was supposed to be, when he'd tried to take the horses to his village, the enemy might not have fired on him.

It was foolish and, like most guilt, it only told one half of the story. There were Russian uniforms and weapons on some of the dead around Khader's body: Nazeer had told me that. My being there probably wouldn't have changed a thing. They would've captured me or killed me, and the result for Khader would've been the same. But reason didn't play a big part in the guilt I'd felt, deep in my heart, since the moment I'd seen his dead face beneath its shroud of snow. Once I'd faced it, I couldn't shake the shame. And somehow, the blame and repining sorrow changed me. I felt the vengeful stone fall from the hating hand that had wanted to throw it. I felt light, as if light itself filled me and lifted me up.

And I felt free-free enough to pity Madame Zhou, and even to forgive her. And then I heard the scream.

A heart-piercing shriek, as shrill as a wild pig's, pulled me round just in time to see Rajan, Madame Zhou's eunuch servant, running at me at full speed. Caught off balance by the charge, I stumbled backward with his arms wrapped around my chest, and we crashed into and then through one of the attic windows. I was leaning out backwards, looking up under blue sky at the crazed servant and the eaves of the house behind his head. I felt the unmistakable cold trickle of blood on the top and the back of my head where the broken glass had made deep cuts. More glass fell in jagged shards as we wrestled in the smashed window, and I shook my head from side to side to save my eyes. Rajan clung to me and drove forward with his feet in a weird, running shuffle that gained him no space at all. It took me a moment to understand that he was trying to push me out through the window- to push us both out, into the big fall. And it was working. I felt my feet beginning to lift off the floor under the pressure of his effort, and I slipped further out through the little steeple of the dormer window.

Growling with fury and desperation, I clutched at the window frame and dragged us back into the attic with all my strength.

Rajan fell backward, and scrambled to his feet with astonishing speed to run shrieking at me again. There was no way to step around his quick charge, so we closed again in a murderous grapple. His hands locked on my throat. My left hand clawed at his face, looking for the eye. His long, curved fingernails were sharp, and they pierced the skin of my neck. Shouting from the pain, I found his ear with the fingers of my left hand, and used it to pull his head close enough to punch with my right. I hammered my fist into his face, six, seven, eight times until he wrenched free from me, tearing the ear half away from his head.

He fell back a step and stood there, panting heavily and glaring at me with a hatred that was beyond reason or fear. His face was bloody. His lips were split into a broken tooth, and the skin over one eye, where the eyebrow had been shaved off, had opened up in an ugly cut. His bald head was cut and bleeding where he'd crashed through the glass. The blood was in one eye, and I guessed that his nose was broken. He should've quit. He had to quit. He didn't.

Shrieking, shrill and weird, he ran at me. I sidestepped and slammed a hard, short right hand into the side of his head, but he reached out with his clawed hand as he fell, and clutched at my trousers. His momentum pulled us both down and then he scrambled, crab-like, to cover me, reaching out for my neck. Once more the claws bit into my shoulder and my throat.

He was lean, but he was strong and tall. I'd lost so much weight in Khader's war that we were evenly matched for strength. I rolled once, twice, but couldn't shake him. His head was tucked in close to mine, and I couldn't punch at him. I felt his mouth and his teeth against my neck. He was straining forward, butting heads with me and biting. His long, sharp claws punctured my throat to the stubs of his fingers.

I reached down and found my knife. I pulled it out and around, and rammed it into his body. The blade went into his thigh, high up near the hip. He raised his head in a howl of pain, and I stabbed him in the neck, close to the shoulder. The knife went in through the front and deep into the shoulder, crunching an edge of bone and gristle on the way. He scrabbled at his throat, and rolled away from me until his body met the wall. He was beaten.

There was no fight left in him. It was over. And then I heard the scream.

I jerked my head around to see Rajan creeping out of the gap between the broken floor and the ceiling of the room below. It was the same man, or so it seemed, but whole and unharmed: the same bald head, shaved eyebrows, decorated eyes, and clawed fingernails painted as green as a grass snake. I swung round quickly to see that Rajan was still there, curled in a moaning heap against the wall. It's a twin, I thought stupidly. There's two of them. Why didn't anyone tell me? And I turned again, just as the screeching twin rushed at me. The second one had a knife in his hand.

He held the thin, curved blade like a sword, sweeping it in a vicious arc as he ran. I allowed his frenzied sweep to pass and then stepped in close, jabbing downward with my own knife. It cut his arm and shoulder, but he was still free to move. His knife slashed backward toward me. He was fast-fast enough to cut my forearm. Blood ran quickly from the wound, and rage pulled me into him with my right fist punching and jabbing with the knife. Then a sudden black, blood tasting pain crashed into the back of my head, and I knew I'd been hit from behind. I scrambled past the twin, and twisted round to see wounded Rajan, his shirt painted on his skin with his own blood. There was a lump of wood in his hand. My head was ringing with the force of the blow he'd struck. Blood was running from wounds on my head, my neck, my shoulder, and the soft inside of my forearm. The twins began wailing again, and I knew they were about to make a new charge. A tiny seed of doubt ripened and burst open in my mind for the first time since the bizarre contest had begun: I might not win this...

I grinned at them, shaping up for their charge with my fists high and my left foot forward. Okay, I thought. Let's go. Let's finish it. They ran at me, keening that high-pitched scream again. The one with the lump of wood, Rajan, swung it at me. I raised my left arm to block the blow. It came down hard on my shoulder, but I rammed my right fist into his face and he fell backward, his knees folding before he hit the floor. His brother slashed at my face with the knife. I ducked and weaved, but the knife cut my head at the back, above the neck. I came up under his guard and jammed my knife into his shoulder, all the way to the crank. I'd aimed for his chest, but it was still a useful wound because his arm below the knife went as limp as seaweed, and he screeched away from me in panic.

Years of anger broke through: all the prison-anger I'd buried in the shallow grave of my resentful self-control. The blood running down my face from the cuts and gashes on my head was liquid anger, thick and red and spilling from my mind. A furious strength ripped the muscles of my arms, shoulders, and back. I looked from Rajan and his twin to the imbecile in the chair. Kill them all, I thought, dragging the air in through clenched teeth, and growling it out again. I'll kill them all.

I heard someone calling me, calling me, calling me back from the edge of the abyss into which Habib, and all those like him, had plunged.

"Lin! Where are you, Lin?"

"In here, Didier!" I shouted back. "In the attic! You're very close! Can you hear me?"

"I hear you!" he shouted. "I'm coming at once."

"Be careful!" I called back, panting. "There's two guys up here, and they're... fuck, man... they're none too friendly!"

I heard the sound of his footsteps, and I heard him curse as he stumbled in the dark. He pushed open the little door and stooped to enter the room. There was a gun in his hand, and I was glad to see him. I watched his face as he quickly took in the scene-the blood on my face and arms, the blood on the bodies of the twins, the drooling figure in the chair. I saw his shocked surprise harden and settle into the grim, angry line of his mouth. Then he heard the scream.

Rajan's brother, the one with the knife, let out that blood numbing waul and ran at Didier, who swung his pistol round without hesitation and shot the man in the groin, near the hip.

He crumpled and flung himself sideways, yowling sobs of pain as he rolled on the floor, doubled over his bleeding wound. Rajan limped to the throne-like chair and draped his body in front of Madame Zhou, shielding her with his bare chest. He stared his hatred into Didier's eyes, and we knew that he was willing to take a bullet to protect her. Didier took a step towards him, and levelled the pistol at Rajan's heart. The Frenchman's face was set in a severe frown, but his pale eyes were calm, and gleaming with his cool and absolute dominion. That was the real man, the steel blade within the shabby, rusting scabbard. Didier Levy: one of the most capable and dangerous men in Bombay.

"Do you want to do it?" he asked me, his face harder than anything else in the room.

"No."

"No?" he breathed, his eyes never leaving Rajan. "Take a look at yourself. Look at what they did, Lin. You should shoot them."

"No."

"You should wound them, at the very least."

"No."

"It is dangerous to let them live. Your history with these people is... not good."

"It's okay," I muttered.

"You should shoot at least one of them, non?"

"No."

"Very well. Then I will shoot them for you."

"No," I insisted. I was grateful that he'd stopped them from killing me, but far more thankful that he'd arrived in time to prevent me from killing them. Surging waves of nausea and relief crashed into my blood red mind, draining the rage from me. I shivered as the last smile of shame trembled in my eyes. "I don't want to shoot them... and I don't want you to shoot them, either. I didn't want to fight them in the first place. I wouldn't have, if they hadn't attacked me first. They're only doing what I'd do, if I loved her. They're only trying to protect her. They're not against me. It's not about me. It's about her. Leave them alone."

"And what about her?"

"You were right," I said quietly. "She's finished. She's already dead. I'm sorry I didn't listen to you. I guess... I had to see it for myself..."

I reached out to cover the gun in Didier's hand. Rajan flinched and flexed. His twin, crying out in pain, began to drag himself away from us along the edge of the wall. Then I slowly pushed Didier's hand downward until the gun was at his side. Rajan met my eyes. I saw the surprise and fear in his black eyes soften into relief. He held the stare a moment longer and then limped to his brother's side.