Shantaram (121 page)

One by one the men spoke, quickly, most of them using the one word, Abi, meaning now. Salman nodded, then closed his eyes and muttered a prayer in Arabic. When he looked up again, he was committed, fully committed for the first time. His eyes were blazing with hatred and the fearsome killing rage he'd kept at bay.

"_Saatch... _aur _himmat," he said, looking each man in the eye.

_Truth... _and _courage.

"Saatch aur himmat," they replied.

Without another word, the men claimed their guns, climbed into the two cars, and drove the few short minutes to Chuha's home on fashionable Sardar Patel Road. Before I could order my thoughts and even consider, clearly, what I was doing, I found myself creeping along a narrow lane with Abdullah in a darkness deep enough for me to feel the widening of my straining eyes. Then we climbed over a sheer wooden fence and dropped down into the backyard of the enemy's house.

We stood together in the dark for a few moments, checking the luminous dials on our watches, and listening hard as we let our eyes adjust. Abdullah whispered beside me, and I almost jumped at the sound.

"Nothing," he breathed, his voice like the rustle of a woollen blanket. "There's no-one here, no-one near."

"Looks okay," I answered, aware that my whispering voice was raspy with hard-breathing fear. There were no lights at the windows or behind the blue door at the rear of the house.

"Well, I kept my promise," Abdullah whispered mysteriously. "What?"

"You made me promise to take you with me, when I kill Chuha.

Remember?"

"Yeah," I answered, my heart beating faster than a healthy heart should. "You gotta be careful, I guess."

"I will be careful, Lin brother."

"No-I mean, you gotta be careful what you wish for in life, na?"

"I will try to open that door," Abdullah breathed, close to my ear. "If it will open, I will go inside."

"What?"

"You wait here, and stay near the door."

"What?"

"You wait here, and-"

"We're both supposed to stay here!" I hissed.

"I know," he replied, creeping with leopard stealth toward the door.

In my clumsier way, looking more like a cat waking stiffly from a long sleep, I crept after him. As I reached the two wide steps leading down to the blue door, I saw him open it and slip inside the house like a shadow thrown by a swooping bird. He pushed the door shut soundlessly behind him.

Alone, in the dark, I took my knife from the sheath in the small of my back, and enclosed the hilt in my right fist, dagger-point down. Staring out into the darkness, I put all of my focus on the beating of my heart, trying by force of will to slow its too rapid pace. It worked, after a time. I felt the count reducing, calming me further in turn as the meditative loop closed around a single, still thought. That thought was of Khaderbhai, and the formula he'd made me repeat so often: The wrong thing, for the right reasons. And I knew, as I repeated the words in the fearing dark, that the fight with Chuha, the war, the struggle for power, was always the same, everywhere, and it was always wrong.

Salman and the others, no less than Chuha and the Sapna killers and all the rest of them, were pretending that their little kingdoms made them kings; that their power struggles made them powerful. And they didn't. They couldn't. I saw that then so clearly that it was like understanding a mathematical theorem for the first time. The only kingdom that makes any man a king is the kingdom of his own soul. The only power that has any real meaning is the power to better the world. And only men like Qasim Ali Hussein and Johnny Cigar were such kings and had such power.

Unnerved and afraid, I pressed my ear to the door and strained to hear anything of Abdullah or the others within. The fear that twisted in me wasn't the fear of death. I wasn't afraid to die. I was afraid of being so injured or wounded that I couldn't walk, or couldn't see or, for some other reason, couldn't run from capture. Above all things I was afraid of that-of being captured and caged again. As I pressed my ear to the door, I prayed that no wound would weaken me. Let it happen here, I prayed. Let me get through this, or let me die here...

I don't know where they came from. I felt the hands on me before I heard a single sound. Two men slammed me round and hard up against the door. Instinctively, I struck out with my right hand.

"Chaku! Chaku!" one of the men shouted. Knife! Knife!

I couldn't swing the knife up quickly enough to stop them. One man pinned me to the door by the throat. He was a big man, and very strong. The other man used two hands, trying to force me to drop the knife. He wasn't quite so strong, and he couldn't make me drop the weapon. Then a third man hopped down the steps from the darkness, and with those extra hands they twisted my grip and forced me to drop the knife.

"Gora kaun hai?" the new man asked. Who's the white guy?

"Bahinchudh! Malum nahi," the strong man replied. The sisterfucker! I don't know.

He stared at me, obviously bewildered to have stumbled on a foreigner who was listening at the door and armed with a knife.

"Kaun hai tum?" he asked in an almost friendly tone. Who are you?

I didn't reply. All I could think was that I had to warn Abdullah somehow. I couldn't understand how they'd reached that spot without making a sound. The back gate must've swung silently on its hinges. Their shoes or chappals must've been soled with soft rubber. Whatever. I'd let them sneak up on me, and I had to warn Abdullah.

I suddenly struggled as if I was trying to break free. The feint had its effect. The men all shouted at me, and three pairs of hands slammed me against the blue door. One of the smaller men scrambled to my left side, pinning my left arm to the door. The other short man held my right arm. In the wrestle, I managed to kick my boots hard against the door three times. Abdullah must've heard it, I thought. It's okay... I've warned him... He must know something's wrong...

"Kaun hai tum?" the big man asked again. He took one hand from my throat, and bunched it into a fist poised menacingly close to my head, just below the line of sight of my eyes. Who are you?

Again I refused to answer, staring at him. Their hands, as hard as shackles, held me to the door.

He slammed his fist into my face. I managed to move my head, just slightly, but I felt the blow on my jaw and cheek. He had rings on his fingers, or he was using a knuckleduster. I couldn't see it, but I could feel the hard metal chipping bone.

"What you are doing here?" he asked in English. "Who you are?"

I kept silent, and he struck me again, the fist ramming into my face three times. _I know this... I thought. _I know this... I was back in prison, in Australia, in the punishment unit-the fists and boots and batons... I know this...

He paused, waiting for me to speak. The two smaller men grinned at him, then at me. Aur, one of them said. More. Hit him again.

The big man drew back and punched at my body. They were slow, deliberate, professional punches. I felt the wind empty from my body, and it was as if my life itself was draining from me. He moved up the body to my chest and throat and face. I felt myself wading into that black water where beaten boxers stagger and fall. I was done. I was finished.

I wasn't angry with them. I'd fucked up. I'd let them sneak up on me-walk up on me, probably. I'd gone there to fight, and I should've been on guard. It was my fault. Somehow, I'd missed them, and messed up, and it was my own fault. All I wanted to do was warn Abdullah. I kicked back feebly at the door, hoping he would hear it and get away, get away, get away...

I fell through perfect darkness, and the weight of all the world fell with me. When I hit the floor I heard shouts, and I realised that Abdullah had wrenched open the door, letting us fall into him. In the dark, bloody-eyed and swollen, I heard a gun firing twice, and saw the flashes. Then light filled the world, and I blinked into the glare as another door opened somewhere, and I saw men rushing in on us. The gun fired again twice, three times, and I rolled out from under the big man to see my knife, close to my eyes, shining on the ground near the open blue door.

I grabbed for the knife just as one of the smaller men tried to crawl over me and out the door. Without thinking, I swept it backwards and into his hip. He screamed, and I scrambled up to him, slashing the knife across his face near the eyes.

It's amazing how a little of the other guy's blood, or a lot of it, if you can manage it, puts power in your arms and pain killing adrenaline in your aching wounds. Wild with rage, I swung round to see Abdullah locked in a struggle with two men. There were bodies on the floor of the room. I couldn't tell how many.

Gunshots cracked and drummed from all around and above us in the other rooms of the building. They seemed to come from several places in the house at the same time. There were shouts and screams. I could smell shit and piss and blood in the room.

Someone had a gut wound. I hoped that it wasn't me. My left hand slapped at my belly and searched, frisking myself for wounds.

Abdullah was punching it out with the two men. They were wrestling, gouging, biting. I began to crawl toward them, but I felt a hand on my leg pulling me backward. It was a strong hand.

A very strong hand. It was the big guy.

He'd been shot, I was sure, but I couldn't see any blood on his shirt or his pants. He dragged me in as if I was a turtle caught in a net. When I reached him, I raised the knife to stab him, but he beat me to it. He slammed his fist into the right side of my groin. He'd missed the killing blow, a direct hit, but it was still enough to make me curl and roll over in agonising pain. I felt him lurch past me, actually using my body for leverage as he pushed himself to his feet. I rolled back, retching bile, to see him stand and take a step toward Abdullah.

I couldn't let it happen. Too many times, my heart had withered on the thought of Abdullah's death: alone, in a circle of guns. I thrashed against the pain, and in a scrabble of bloody, slipping movements I sprang up and plunged my knife into the big guy's back. It was high, just under the scapula. I felt the bone shiver under the blade, diverting the point sideways toward the shoulder. He was strong. He took two more steps, dragging my body with him on the hook of the knife, before he crumpled and fell. I fell on top of him, looking up to see Abdullah. He had his fingers in a man's eyes. The man's head was bent backwards against Abdullah's knee. The man's jaw gave way, and his neck cracked like a piece of kindling.

Hands pulled at me, dragging me toward the back door. I struck out, but strong, gentle hands twisted the knife from my fingers.

Then I heard the voice, Mahmoud Melbaaf's voice, and I knew we were safe.

"Come on, Lin," the Iranian said, quickly and too quietly, it seemed, for the bloody violence that had just roared around us.

"I need a gun," I mumbled.

"No, Lin. It is over."

"Abdullah?" I asked, as Mahmoud dragged me into the yard.

"He's working," he replied. I heard the screams inside the house ending, one by one, like birds falling silent as night moves across the stillness of a lake. "Can you stand? Can you walk? We must leave now!"

"Fuck, yes! I can make it."

As we reached the back gate, a column of our men rushed past us.

Faisal and Hussein carried one man between them. Farid and Little Tony carried another. Sanjay had a man's body on his right shoulder. He was sobbing as he clutched the body to his chest and shoulder.

"We lost Salman," Mahmoud announced, following my gaze as we let the men rush past us. "And Raj, also. Amir is bad-alive, but hurt bad."

Salman. The last voice of reason in the Khader council. The last Khader man. I hurried down the lane to the waiting cars and I felt the life draining from me, just as it had when the big man was hitting me at the blue door. It was over. The old mafia council was gone with Salman. Everything had changed. I looked at the others in my car: Mahmoud, Farid, and the wounded Amir.

They'd won their war. The Sapna killers were gone at last. A chapter, a book of life and death that had opened with Sapna's name, was closed forever. Khader was avenged. Abdul Ghani's mutinous betrayal was finally defeated. And the Iranians, Abdullah's enemies, were no more: as silent as that bloody, unscreaming house where Abdullah was... working. And Chuha's gang was crushed. The border war was over. It was over. The wheel had turned through one full revolution, and nothing would ever be the same. They'd won, but they were all crying. All of them.

Crying.

I let my head fall back on the seat of the car. Night, that tunnel of lights joining promise to prayer, flew with us at the windows. Slowly, desolately, the fist of what we'd done unclenched the clawed palm of what we'd become. Anger softened into sorrow, as it always does, as it always must. And no part of what we'd wanted, just an hour's life before, was as rich in hope or meaning as a single teardrop's fall.

"What?" Mahmoud asked, his face close to mine. "What did you say?" "I hope that bear got away," I mumbled through broken, bleeding lips as the stricken spirit began to rise from my wounded body, and sleep, like fog in morning forests, moved through my sorrowing mind. "I hope that bear got away."

____________________

TWO

Sunlight shattered on the water, shedding streaks in crystal brilliant slivers across waves rolling swollen on the broad meniscus of the bay. Birds of fire in the approaching sunset wheeled and turned as one in their flocks, like banners of waving silk. From a low-walled courtyard on the white marble island of Haji Ali Mosque, I watched pilgrims and pious local residents wend and weave, leaving the shrine for the shore along the flat stone path. The incoming tide would submerge the path, they knew, and then only boats could bring them home. Those who'd sorrowed or repented, like others on previous days, had cast garlands of flowers upon the shallower, receding sea. Riding the returning tide, those orange-red and faded grey-white flowers floated back, garlanding the path itself with the love, loss, and longing that was prayed upon the water by a thousand broken hearts each wave determined day.

And we, that band of brothers, had come to the shrine to pay our last respects, as they say, and pray for the soul of our friend Salman Mustaan. It was the first time since the night he'd been killed that we'd gathered as a group. For weeks after the battle with Chuha and his gang we'd separated, to hide and to heal our wounds. There'd been an outcry in the press, of course. The words carnage and massacre were spread across the pages of the Bombay dailies like butter on a prison guard's sugared bun. Calls had rung out for justice, undefined, and punishment, unremitting. And there was no doubt that the Bombay police could've made arrests.

They certainly knew which gang was responsible for the little heaps of bodies they'd found in Chuha's house. But there were four good reasons not to act: reasons that were more compelling, for the city's cops, than the unrighteous indignation of the press.

First, there was no-one from inside the house, on the streets outside, or anywhere else in Bombay who was willing to testify against us, even off the record. Second, the battle had put an end to the Sapna killers, which was something the cops would've been very glad to take care of personally. Third, the Walidlalla gang under Chuha's leadership had killed a policeman, months before, when he'd stumbled into one of their major drug deals near Flora Fountain.

The case had remained unsolved, officially, because the cops had nothing they could take into court. But they'd known, almost from the day it had happened, that Chuha's men had spilled the blood.

The bloodshed in Chuha's house was very close to what the cops themselves had wanted to do to the Rat and his men-and would've accomplished, sooner or later, if Salman hadn't beaten them to it. And fourth, the payment of a crore of rupees, appropriated from Chuha's operations and applied in liberal smears to a small multitude of forensic palms, had put a helpless shrug in all the right constabulary shoulders.

Privately, the cops told Sanjay, who was the new leader of the Khader Khan council, that the clock was ticking on him, and he'd used up all his chances on that one throw of the dice. They wanted peace-and continued prosperity, of course-and, if he didn't pull his men into line, they would do it for him. And by the way, they told him after accepting his ten-million-rupee bribe, and just before they threw him back onto the street, that guy Abdullah, in your outfit, we don't want to see him again.

Ever. He was dead once, in Bombay. He'll be dead again, for good this time, if we see him...

One by one, after weeks of lying low, we'd made our way back into the city and back to the jobs we'd done in the Sanjay gang, as it had become known. I returned from hiding in Goa and took up my position in the passport operation with Villu and Krishna. When the call finally went out for us to gather at Haji Ali, I rode to the shrine on my Enfield bike, and walked with Abdullah and Mahmoud Melbaaf across the rippling wavelets of the bay.

Mahmoud led the prayers, kneeling at the front of our group. The little balcony, one of many surrounding the island mosque, was ours alone. Facing toward Mecca, and with the breeze filling and then falling from his white shirt, Mahmoud spoke for all the men who knelt or stood behind him:

Praise be to God, Lord of the Universe, The Compassionate, the Merciful, Sovereign of the Day of Judgement! You alone we worship, and to You alone we turn for help.

Guide us to the straight path...

Farid, Abdullah, Amir, Faisal, and Nazeer-the Muslim core of the council-knelt behind Mahmoud. Sanjay was a Hindu. Andrew was a Christian. They knelt beside me and behind the praying group. I stood with my head bowed and my hands clasped in front of me. I knew the words of the prayers and I knew the simple standing, kneeling, and bowing observations. I could've joined in. I knew that Mahmoud and the others would've been delighted if I had. But I couldn't bring myself to kneel with them. The separation that they found so easy and instinctual-this is my criminal life, over here, and that's my religious life, over there-was impossible for me. I did speak to Salman, whispering my hope that he'd found peace, wherever he was. Yet I was too self-consciously aware of the darkness in my heart to offer more than that tiny prayer. So I stood in silence, feeling like an impostor, a spy on that island of devotions, as the amethyst evening blessed the balcony of praying men with gold-and-lilac light. And the words of Mahmoud's prayer seemed a perfect fit for my withered honour and my thinning pride: those who have incurred your wrath... those who have gone astray...

At the end of prayers we hugged one another, according to custom, and made our way back along the path toward the shore. Mahmoud was leading the way. We'd all prayed, in our own ways, and we'd all cried for Salman, but we didn't look the part of devout visitors to the holy shrine. We all wore sunglasses. We all wore new clothes. Everyone, except me, carried a year or more of smuggler's wages in gold chains, first-tier watches, rings, and bracelets. And we swaggered. We walked the walk: the little dance-step that fighting-fit gangsters do when they're armed and dangerous. It was a bizarre procession, and one so menacing that we had to work hard to make the professional beggars on the island pathway take the sheaves of rupee notes we'd brought as alms.

The men had three cars parked near the sea wall. It was almost exactly where I'd stood with Abdullah on the night I met Khaderbhai. My bike was parked beyond them, and at the cars I paused to say goodbye.

"Come and have a meal with us, Lin," Sanjay offered, putting real affection in the invitation.

I knew the meal would be fun, after the melancholy observations at the shrine, and that it would include a choice of drugs and a choice of happy, silly, pretty girls. I was grateful for the offer, but I refused.

"Thanks, man, but I'm meeting someone."

"Arrey, bring her along, yaar," Sanjay suggested. "It's a girl, isn't it?"

"Yeah. It's a girl. But... we have to talk. I'll see you guys later."

Abdullah and Nazeer wanted to walk me to my bike. We'd only taken a few steps when Andrew ran up behind us and called me to stop.

"Lin," he said quickly, nervously, "what happened with us in the car park and all. I... I just want to say... I'm sorry, yaar.

I've been wanting to make-well-an apology, you know?"

"It's okay."

"No-it's not okay."

He pulled at my arm, near the elbow, leading me away from Nazeer and just out of his hearing. Leaning in close to me, he spoke softly and quickly.

"I'm not sorry for what I said about Khaderbhai. I know he was the boss and all, and I know you... you kind of loved him..."

"Yeah. I kinda did."

"But still, I'm not sorry for what I said about him. You know, all his holy preaching, it didn't stop him from handing old Madjid over to Ghani and his Sapna guys when he needed someone to take the fuckin' fall, and keep the cops off his back. Madjid was supposed to be his friend, yaar. But he let them cut him up, just to throw the cops off the case."

"Well..."

"And all those rules, about this and that and what-all, you know, they came to nothing-Sanjay has put me in charge of Chuha's girls, and the videos. And Faisal and Amir, they're running the garad. We're gonna make fuckin' crores out of it. I'm getting my place on the council, and so are they. So, Khaderbhai's day is over, just like I said it was."

I looked back into Andrew's camel-brown eyes, and let out a deep breath. Dislike had been simmering since the night in the car park. I hadn't forgotten what he'd said, and how close we'd come to fighting it out. His little speech had made me angrier still.

If we hadn't just been to a funeral service for a friend we'd both liked, I probably would've hit him already.

"You know, Andrew," I muttered, not smiling, "I gotta tell ya, I'm not gettin' much comfort from this little apology of yours."

"That's not the apology, Lin," he explained, frowning in puzzlement. "The apology is for your mother, and for what I said about her. I'm sorry, man. I'm really, really, sorry for what I said. It was a very shitty thing to say-about your mother, or anybody's mother. Nobody should say shitty things like that about a guy's mother. You would've been well within your rights, yaar, to take a fuckin' shot at me. And... I'm damn glad you didn't.

Mothers are sacred, yaar, and I'm sure your mother is a very fine lady. So, please, I'm asking you, like-please accept my apology."

"It's okay," I said, putting out my hand. He seized the hand in both of his, and shook it vigorously.

Abdullah, Nazeer, and I turned away and walked to the bike.

Abdullah was unusually quiet. The silence he carried with him was ominous and unsettling.

"Are you going back to Delhi tonight?" I asked.

"Yes," he answered. "At midnight."

"You want me to go to the airport with you?"

"No. Thank you. It is better not. There should be no police looking at me. If you are there, they will look at us. But maybe I will see you in Delhi. There is a job in Sri Lanka-you should do it with me."

"I don't know, man," I demurred, grinning in surprise at his earnestness. "There's a war on in Sri Lanka."

"There is no man, and no place, without war," he replied, and it struck me that it was the most profound thing he'd ever said to me. "The only thing we can do is choose a side, and fight. That is the only choice we get-who we fight for, who we fight against. That is life."

"I... I hope there's more to it than that, brother. But, shit, maybe you're right."

"I think you can do this with me," he pressed, clearly troubled by what he was asking me to do. "This is the last work for Khaderbhai."

"What do you mean?"

"Khader Khan, he asked me to do this job for him, when the... what is it-the sign, I think, or the message-when it comes from Sri Lanka. Now, the message, it has come."

"I'm sorry, brother, I don't know what you're talking about," I stated softly, not wanting to make it harder for him. "Just take it easy, and explain it to me. What message?"

He spoke to Nazeer quickly, in Urdu. The older man nodded several times and then said something about names, or not mentioning names. Nazeer turned his head to face me, and favoured me with a wide, warm smile.

"In the Sri Lanka war," Abdullah explained, "there is fighting- Tamil Tigers against Sri Lanka army. Tigers are Hindus.

Sinhalese, they are Buddhist. But in the middle of them, there are the others-Tamil Muslims-with no guns and no army.

Everybody kill them, and nobody fight for them. They need passports and money-gold money. We go to help them."

"Khaderbhai," Nazeer added, "he make this plan. Only three men.

Abdullah, and me, and one gora-you. Three men. We go."

I owed him. Nazeer would never mention that fact, I knew, and he wouldn't hold it against me if I didn't go with him. We'd been through too much together. But I did owe him my life. It would be very hard to refuse him. And there was something else-something wise, perhaps, and fervently generous-in that rare, wide smile he'd given me. It seemed that he was offering me more than just the chance to work with him, and work off my debt. He blamed himself for Khader's death, but he knew that I still felt guilty and ashamed that I hadn't been there with him, pretending to be his American, when Khader had died. He's giving me a chance, I thought, as I let my eyes move from his to Abdullah's and back again. He's giving me a way to close the book on it.

"So, when would you be going on this trip? Roughly speaking?"

"Soon," Abdullah laughed. "A few months, no more than that. I am going to Delhi. I will send someone to bring you, when the time is coming. Two, three months, Lin brother."

I heard a voice in my head-or not a voice, really, but just words in whispered echoes like stones hissing across the still surface of a lake-Killer... He's a killer... Don't do it...

Get away... Get away now... And the voice was right, of course.

Dead right. And I wish I could say that it took me more than those few heartbeats to make up my mind to join him.

"Two, three months," I replied, offering my hand. He shook it, putting both of his hands over mine. I looked at Nazeer and smiled as I spoke into his eyes. "We'll do Khader's job. We'll finish it."

Nazeer's jaw locked tight, bunching the muscles of his cheeks and exaggerating the downward curve of his mouth. He frowned at his sandaled feet as if they were disobedient puppies. Then he suddenly hurled himself at me, and locked his hands behind me in a punishing hug. It was the violent, wrestler's hug of a man whose body had never learned to speak the language of his heart-except when he was dancing-and it ended as abruptly and furiously as it had begun. He whipped his thick arms away and shoved me backward with his chest, shaking his head and shuddering as if a shark had passed him in shallow water. He looked up quickly, and the warmth that reddened his eyes vied with a grim warning clamped in the bad-luck horseshoe of his mouth. I knew that if I ever raised that moment of affection with him, or referred to it in any way, I would lose his friendship forever.

I kicked the bike to life and straddled it, pushing away from the kerb with my legs and pointing it in the direction of Nana Chowk and Colaba.

"Saatch aur himmat," Abdullah called out as I rode past him.