Shantaram (123 page)

"When I went there... when I walked into his house, into the room where he was standing, he smiled at me. He was... actually ... happy to see me. And for a split second, I changed my mind, and I thought it was... over. Then, I saw something else, right there in the middle of his smile... something dirty, and... he said... I knew you'd be back for more, one of these days... or something like that. And he... he kind of, he started looking around like he was making sure nobody was gonna bust in on us ..."

"It's okay, Karla."

"When he saw the gun, it was worse, because he started... not begging... but apologising... and it was real clear, real clear, that he knew what he did to me... he knew... every part of it, and how bad it was. And that was much worse. And then he was dead. There wasn't a lot of blood. I thought there would be.

Maybe there was later. And I don't remember the rest, until I was in the plane with Khader's arm around me."

She was quiet. I leaned over to pick up a conical shell descending in spirals to a sharp, eroded point. I pressed it into my palm until it pierced the skin, and then threw it away across the rippled sand. When I looked at her again, I found that she was staring at me and frowning hard.

"What do you want?" she asked bluntly.

"I want to know why you never told me about Khaderbhai."

"Do you want it straight?"

"Of course I do."

"I couldn't trust you," she declared, looking away again. "That's not exactly right-I mean, I didn't know if I could trust you. I think... now-I know-I could've trusted you all along."

"Okay." My teeth were touching, and my lips didn't move.

"I tried to tell you. I tried to get you to stay with me in Goa.

You know that."

"It would've made a difference," I snapped, but then sighed just as she had, and relaxed my tone. "It might've made a difference if you'd told me that you worked for him-that you recruited me for him."

"When I ran away... when I went to Goa, I was in a bad way. The Sapna thing-that was my idea. Did you know that?"

"No. Jesus, Karla."

Her eyes narrowed as she read the angry disappointment in my face.

"Not the killing part," she explained, and her expression was shocked, I think, to realise that I'd misunderstood what she'd said, and that I believed her capable of devising the Sapna killings. "That was all Ghani's idea-his spin on it. They needed to get stuff in and out, through Bombay, and they needed help from people who didn't want to give it. My idea was to create a common enemy-Sapna-and to get everybody working with us to defeat him. It was supposed to be done with posters, and graffiti, and some harmless bomb hoaxes-to make it seem like there was a dangerous, charismatic leader out there. But Ghani didn't think it was scary enough. That's why he started the killings..."

"And you left... for Goa."

"Yeah. You know the very first place I heard about the killings- what Ghani was doing with my idea? It was at that Village in the Sky... that lunch you took me to. Your friends were talking about it. And it really shook me up that day. I stuck it out for a while, trying to stop it, somehow. But it was hopeless. And then Khader told me you were in jail-but you had to stay there until Madame Zhou did what he wanted her to do. And then he... he got me to work on the Pakistani, the young general. He was a contact of mine, and he liked me. So I... I did it. I worked him, while you were in there, until Khader got what he wanted.

And then I just... quit. I'd had enough."

"But you went back to him."

"I tried to get you to stay with me."

"Why?"

"What do you mean?"

She was frowning, and seemed irritated by the question.

"Why did you want me to stay with you?"

"Isn't that obvious?"

"No. I'm sorry. It's not. Did you love me, Karla? I'm not asking if you loved me like I loved you. I mean... did you love me at all? Did you love me at all, Karla?" "I liked you..."

"Yeah..."

"No, it's true. I liked you, more than anyone else I knew. That's a lot for me, Lin."

My jaw was locked tight, and I turned my head away from her. She waited for a few moments and then spoke again.

"I couldn't tell you about Khader. I couldn't. It would've felt like I was betraying him."

"Betraying me was different, I guess."

"Fuck, Lin, it wasn't like that. If you'd stayed with me, we both would've been out of that world, but even then I couldn't have told you. Anyway, it doesn't matter. You wouldn't stay with me, so I never thought I'd see you again. Then I got a message from Khader saying you were in Gupta's place, killing yourself with smack, and he needed me to help him get you out of there. That's how I got back into it. That's how I went back to him."

"I just don't get it, Karla."

"What don't you get?"

"You worked for him, and Ghani, for how long-before the Sapna thing?"

"About four years."

"So, you must've seen a lot of other stuff go down-you must've heard about it, at the very least. You're working for the Bombay mafia, for fuck's sake, or a goddamn branch of it. You're working for one of Bombay's biggest gangsters, like I was. You knew they killed people, before Ghani went psycho with his Sapna gang. Why ... after all that, did you suddenly get freaked out with the Sapna thing? I don't get it."

She'd been watching me closely. I knew she was clever enough to see that I was striking back at her with the questions, but her eyes told me that she saw more than that. Although I'd tried to hide it, I knew she'd picked up the scepticism barbed with righteous censure in my tone. When I finished she took a breath, and seemed about to speak, but then she paused as if reconsidering her reply.

"You think I left them," she began at last, with a little frown of surprise, "and went to Goa because I wanted to be... what... forgiven, for what I'd done? Or for what I'd been part of? Is that it?"

"Did you?" "No. I wanted to be forgiven, and I still do, but not for that. I left them because I didn't feel anything at all about the Sapna killings. I was stunned... and... sort of, freaked out, at first, that Ghani had turned the idea around so much. And I didn't like it. I thought it was stupid. I thought it was unnecessary and it would get us all into trouble we didn't need.

And I tried to talk Khaderbhai out of it. I tried to get them to stop. But I didn't feel anything about it, even when they killed Madjid. And I... I used to like him, you know? I liked old Madjid. He was the best of them, in a way. But I didn't feel anything when he died. And I didn't feel it, not even a bit, when Khader told me he had to leave you in jail and let you get beaten up. I liked you-more than I liked anyone else-but I didn't feel bad or sorry. I kind of understood it-that it had to happen, and it was just bad luck that it was happening to _you. I felt nothing. And that's when it hit me-that's when I knew I had to get away."

"What about Goa? You can't tell me that was nothing."

"No. When you came to Goa and you found me, like I knew you would, it was... pretty good. I started to think,
this
is what it's like... this is what they're talking _about... But then you wouldn't stay. You had to go back-back to _him-and I knew he wanted you, maybe even needed you. And I couldn't tell you what I knew about him, because I owed him, and I didn't know if I could trust you. So I let you go. And when you left, I didn't feel anything at all. Not a thing. I didn't want to be forgiven because of what I did. I wanted to be forgiven-and I still want it, and that's why I'm going to Khaled and Idriss-because I don't feel sorry for any of it, and I don't regret a thing. I'm cold inside, Lin. I like people, and I like things, but I don't love any of them-not even myself-and I don't really care about them. And, you know, the strange thing is, I don't really wish that I did care."

And there it was. I had it all-all the truth and detail that I'd needed to know since that day on the mountain, in the withering snow, when Khader had told me about her. I think I'd expected to feel... nourished, perhaps, and vindicated, by forcing her to tell me what she'd done and why she'd done it. I think I'd hoped to be released by it, and solaced, just by hearing her tell me.

But it wasn't like that. I felt empty: the kind of emptiness that's sad but not distressed, pitying but not broken-hearted, and damaged, somehow, but clearer and cleaner for it. And then I knew what it was, that emptiness: there's a name for it, a word we use often, without realising the universe of peace that's enfolded in it.

The word is free.

"For what it's worth," I said, reaching out to put my hand against her cheek, "I forgive you, Karla. I forgive you, and I love you, and I always will."

Our lips met like waves that crest and merge the whirl of storming seas. I felt that I was falling: free and falling at last from the love that had opened, lotus-layered, within me. And together we did fall the length of her black hair to the still warm sand in the hollow of the sunken boat.

When our lips parted, stars rushed through that kiss into her sea-green eyes. An age of longing passed from those eyes into mine. An age of passion passed from my grey eyes into hers. All the hunger, all the fleshed and hope-starved craving, streamed from eye to eye: the moment we met; the laughing wit of Leopold's; the Standing Babas; the Village in the Sky; the cholera; the swarm of rats; the secrets that she'd whispered near exhausted sleep; the singing boat on the flood beneath the Gateway; the storm when we made love the first time; the joy and loneliness in Goa; and our love reflecting shadows into glass, on the last night before the war.

And there were no more words. There was no more cleverness as I walked her to a taxi parked nearby. I kissed her again. A long kiss, goodbye. She smiled at me. It was a good smile, a beautiful smile, and almost her best. I watched the red lights of the taxi fuzz and blur and then vanish in the furtherness of night.

Alone on the strangely quiet street, I began to walk back to Prabaker's slum-I always thought of it as Prabaker's slum, and I still do-to retrieve my bike. My shadows twirled with every street light, dragging loath behind me and then rushing on ahead.

Ocean songs receded. The road moved beyond the span of coast and into the wide, tree-lined streets of the new peninsula reclaimed from the sea, stone on mortared stone, by the ever-expanding island city.

Sounds of celebration streamed into the road from streets around me. The festival had ended, and the people were beginning to return. Daring boys on bicycles flashed between the walkers much too fast, but never touching so much as a flap of sleeve.

Impossibly beautiful girls in bright new saris glided between the glances of young men who'd scented their shirts, as well as their skin, with sandalwood soap. Children slept on shoulders, their unwilled arms and legs hanging limp as wet washing on a line. Someone sang a love song, and a dozen voices joined the choruses for each verse. Every man and woman, walking home to slum hut or fine apartment, smiled, listening to the romantic, foolish words.

Three young men singing near me saw my smile, and raised the palms of their hands in question. I lifted my arms and sang the chorus, joining my voice to theirs, and shocking and delighting them with what I knew. They threw their strangers' arms around me and swept our song-connected souls toward the unvanquishable ruin of the slum. Everyone in the whole world, Karla once said, was Indian in at least one past life. And I laughed to think of her.

I didn't know what I would do. The first part of it was clear enough-"! was the debt to the burly Afghan, Nazeer. He'd said to me once, when I'd talked to him of the guilt I continued to feel for Khader's death: Good gun, good horse, good friend, good battle-you know better way that Great Khan, he can die? And a tiny fragment of that thought or feeling applied to me, too. It was right, somehow-although I couldn't have explained it, even to myself-and fitting for me to risk my life in the company of good friends, and in the course of an important mission.

And there was so much more that I had to learn, so much that Khaderbhai had wanted to teach me. I knew that his physics teacher, the man he'd told me about in Afghanistan, was in Bombay. And the other teacher, Idriss, was in Varanasi. If I made it back to Bombay from Nazeer's mission to Sri Lanka, there was a world of learning to discover and enjoy.

In the meanwhile, in the city, my place with Sanjay's council was assured. There was work there, and money, and a little power. For a while there was safety, in the brotherhood, from the long reach of Australian law. There were friends on the council, and at Leopold's, and in the slum. And, yes, maybe there was even a chance for love.

When I reached the bike I kept walking on into the slum. I wasn't sure why. I was following an instinct, and drawn, perhaps, by the swollen moon. The narrow lanes, those writhing alleys of struggle and dream, were so familiar to me and so comfortingly safe that I marvelled at the fear I'd once felt there. I wandered without purpose or plan, and moved from smile to smile as men and women and children who'd been my patients and neighbours looked up to see me pass. I moved in mists of cooking scent and shower soap, of animal stalls and kerosene lamps, of frankincense and sandalwood streaming upward from a thousand tiny temples in a thousand tiny homes.

At a corner of one lane I bumped into a man, and as our faces rose to their apologies we recognised one another in the same instant. It was Mukesh, the young thief who'd helped me in the Colaba lock-up and the Arthur Road jail: the man whose freedom I'd demanded when Vikram had paid me out of prison.

"Linbaba!" he cried, seizing my upper arms in his hands. "So good to see you! Arrey! What's happening?"

"I'm just visiting," I answered, laughing with him. "What are you doing here? You look great! How the hell are you?"

"No problem, baba! Bilkul fit, hain!" I'm absolutely fit!

"Have you eaten? Will you take chai?"

"Thank you, baba, no. I am late for a meeting."

"_Achcha?" I muttered. Oh, yes?

He leaned in close to whisper.

"It is a secret, but I know I can trust you, Linbaba. We are meeting with some of those fellows who are with Sapna, the king of thieves."