The Mountain Shadow (112 page)

Chapter Seventy-Two

I
LET
O
LEG HAVE MY ROOMS FOR A WHILE.
The rent was paid out for a year, and I was happy for him to have a home. Oleg was happier. He hugged me off the ground and kissed me.
It’s a Russian thing
, he said.

Karla went everywhere with me, even on my black market rounds, and I went everywhere with Karla. We rode together, with Randall always following discreetly in the car.

My round of the money changers was dangerous, but some of what Karla did was almost as dangerous. Her round of art and business contacts was disturbing, but some of what I did was almost as disturbing.

People took a little while to get used to us as a double act, and they reacted in different ways. As it turned out, my friends in the Underworld took it better than her friends in the Overworld.

‘You’ll have tea with us, Miss Karla,’ my black market dealers said to her at every stop. ‘Please, have tea with us.’

‘No entry,’ her white market dealers said to me at every security desk. ‘Passes required, beyond this point.’

Karla got me a security pass, and insisted that I sit by her side, everywhere. I got to attend meetings with powerful financial figures, in chambers and panelled rooms that all looked like the inside of the same coffin.

A business suit
, Didier once said to me,
is nothing but a military uniform, stripped of its honour
. And it seemed that honour was a word rarely heard in those boardrooms and exclusive club lounges: when Karla spoke it, insisting that her proxy would only be used to support honourable causes, the same waves of distress always passed through the room, puffer-fish faces gasping, and coloured ties flashing in revolving chairs like weeds in a dissonant sea.

The artists were a different story, told by a tall, handsome sculptor, gathering fuel in vacant lots of millionaires.

The gallery had flourished. Scandal is always a seller’s market. The scent of it, attached to works that fanatics had attacked, works that had been banned or threatened with bans, seared the sated senses of a wealthy clique of buyers. People with enough money not to queue anywhere waited for appointments, and paid in black market rupees. Taj, the sculptor, was managing the gallery, and making money faster than he could swing a mallet.

He was talking to a ledger of patrons when I walked in with Karla one day, a few weeks after the lockdown. Rosanna was at a desk, working phones.

Taj nodded to Karla, and continued his discourse to the patrons. We walked through to the back room. It had been transformed from motorcycle lights to red fluorescents, a dozen of them, strewn around the room.

We sat on a black silk couch. There were paintings leaning against the walls, a sleeve of one becoming a frame for the other. Anushka brought us chai and biscuits.

When she wasn’t in character as a body-language artist, Anushka was a shy young woman, eager to please, and the gallery was a second home for her.

‘What’s happening, Anush?’ Karla asked her, when she sat down on the carpet beside us.

‘Same old same old,’ she smiled.

‘Three days ago you said that the new show of Marathi artists was ready,’ Karla said. ‘And I don’t see it being prepped.’

‘There’s . . . there’s been some argument.’

‘
Ar . . . gu . . . ment?
’ Karla said, growling syllables.

Taj walked in and sat down next to Anushka, folding his long legs under him elegantly.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I had to finish with those clients. Big sale. How are you, Karla?’

‘I’m hearing about some argument,’ she said, staring him down. ‘And feeling argumentative.’

Taj looked away from her quickly.

‘How are you, Lin?’ he asked.

Every time I looked at Taj, I thought of the two mysterious days he’d spent with Karla, somewhere outside Bombay: the days she’d never told me about, because I wouldn’t ask her about them.

He was the kind of tall, dark, and handsome that makes the rest of us think jealous thoughts. It’s not their fault, the handsome guys. I’ve known quite a few handsome guys who were great guys, and great friends, and we ugly guys loved them, but even then we were still a little jealous of them, because they were so damn good looking.

It’s our fault, of course, not theirs, and it was my fault with Taj, but every time I looked at him, I wanted to interrogate him.

‘I’m fine, Taj. How
you
doin’?’

‘Oh . . . great,’ he said uncertainly.

‘Argue me, Taj,’ Karla said, pulling his attention. ‘What’s the problem with the exhibition?’

‘Can we get stoned first?’ Taj asked, gesturing to Anushka, who rose immediately in search of psychic sustenance. ‘I’ve had back-to-back buyers for the last four hours, and my head is just
spinning
numbers.’

‘Where is it?’ Karla asked him.

‘Anushka’s bringing it,’ Taj said, pointing helplessly at the door.

‘Not the dope,’ Karla said. ‘The Marathi artists exhibition. Where is it?’

‘Still in storage,’ Taj said, looking at the door, and calling Anushka with his mind.

‘In storage?’

Anushka returned, smoking a very large joint, which she passed to Taj urgently. The sculptor held his hand out to Karla, pleading with her to wait while he smoked his way into a small cloud, and finally offered the joint to me.

‘You know I don’t smoke with Karla on the bike,’ I said, not moving to take it. ‘I’ve told you that before. Stop offering it to me.’

‘
I’ll
take it,’ Karla said, swiping the joint from his hand. ‘And I’ll take that explanation, Taj.’

‘Look,’ Taj said, stoned enough to pretend well again. ‘People feel that devoting an exhibition to one group of artists, from one language group, is not the direction they want to go.’

‘People?’

‘People here at the gallery,’ Taj said. ‘They
like
the Marathi artists exhibition, but they’re just not
comfortable
with it.’

‘You’ve been running a Bengali artists exhibition here for the last two weeks,’ Karla said.

‘That’s a different context,’ Taj struggled.

‘Explain me the difference.’

‘Well, I, that is . . . ’

‘I love this city, and I’m damn glad to live here,’ Karla said, leaning toward him. ‘We’re on Marathi land, living in a Marathi city, by the grace of the Marathi people, who’ve given us a pretty fine place to live in. The exhibition is for them, Taj, not you.’

‘It’s so political,’ Taj replied.

‘No, it’s not. All of these artists are good, and some of them are terrific,’ she insisted. ‘You said so yourself. I hand-picked them, with Lisa.’

‘They’re good, of course, but that’s not really the point here.’

‘The point for you, and me, and Rosanna, and Anushka,’ she said, ‘and all the others in the team who weren’t born here in Bombay, is that it’s simply the right and grateful thing to showcase talent from the city that sustains us.’

‘Karla, you’re asking too much,’ Taj pleaded.

‘I want this show, Taj,’ Karla said. ‘It was my last project with Lisa.’

‘And I’d love to give it to you,’ Taj moaned. ‘But it’s just impossible.’

‘Where’s the art?’ Karla asked.

‘I told you. It’s still in the warehouse.’

‘Send it to the Jehangir gallery,’ she said.

‘The whole exhibition?’ he asked, stricken. ‘There are some fine paintings in there, Karla, and if they were put on the market, in the right way, one at a time –’

‘Send it to the Jehangir gallery,’ she said. ‘They’ve got the integrity to run it, and they deserve it more than you do.’

‘But, Karla,’ he pleaded.

‘I think we’re done here,’ she said to me, standing up.

Taj unfolded his tall frame to stand in front of her.

‘Please reconsider this, Karla,’ he said.

He grabbed her arm.

I shoved him away.

‘Stay back, Taj,’ I said quietly.

‘You’re making a mistake, Karla,’ he said. ‘We’re really moving into big money, here at the gallery.’

‘I’ve
got
money,’ Karla said. ‘What I
want
is respect. I’m done here, Taj. The gallery is yours, from now on. Be as apolitical as you like. I’m walking out. The exhibition insurance is on you, while you send the Marathi show to me, so make sure nothing happens before it reaches the Jehangir. Good luck, and goodbye.’

We rode away, switching to one of my rounds.

‘You know he’s gay, right?’ Karla asked as we rode, her arm over my shoulder.

‘I know
who’s
gay?’

‘Taj.’

‘Taj is gay?’

‘You didn’t know, did you?’

‘Unless people tell me, I almost never know.’

‘And you were jealous, right?’

I thought about it for a kilometre or so.

‘Are you saying you can’t be attracted to a gay man?’

She thought about it, for a kilometre or so.

‘Good point,’ she said. ‘But not
that
gay man.’

‘But you went away with him for two days.’

‘To a spa,’ she said. ‘To drink juices, and get myself recharged for the fight. Taj just came along for company, to work out gallery stuff.’

‘And I couldn’t have come along for company, to work out stuff?’

‘I was protecting you from my schemes, remember?’ she said, whispering into my ear. ‘And anyway, Didier likes him.’

‘Didier and the sculptor?’

‘Taj has already done some nude studies of Didier. They’re pretty good.’

‘He’s going to make a statue of Didier?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I’ll never hear the end of this.’

‘Oh, yeah. I promised we’d be there for the unveiling.’

‘I might pass. I’ve already seen Didier unveiled.’

‘He’s doing Didier as Michelangelo’s
David
, at forty-nine years old.’

‘I’m definitely not going.’

I slowed the bike and stopped at the kerb of a wide, relatively empty boulevard. When you ride the Island City’s streets for long enough, you get to feel them.

‘What’s up?’ she asked.

‘The traffic’s not right,’ I said, looking around.

‘What’s not right about it?’

‘There isn’t any. The cops are holding it back for some reason.’

A fleet of cars passed us at speed, lights flashing red as new blood. A second cavalcade followed, and a third. We watched them rush lines of light into the night until the street was quiet again, and the normal traffic resumed.

‘They’re heading to Bandra in a hurry,’ I said, as I put the bike into gear, and rode away slowly. ‘Cops and journalists. Must be something big.’

‘Do you care?’ she said, her arm around my shoulder.

‘No,’ I called back. ‘Come and meet somebody cool. I have to drop some money off at a bank.’

Half-Moon Auntie excelled herself for Karla. At one point she sent me away, telling me that the next portion of her performance was for women only.

I slipped and slid away at slow speed on the fish-oil floor, resisting the impulse to glance back.

‘Nice,’ Karla said, when she joined me in the Colaba market. ‘That’s some serious yoga. Someone absolutely has to paint that woman.’

‘Maybe one of your young painters?’

‘Good idea,’ she laughed. ‘I think we’re going to do some pretty interesting stuff together, Shantaram.’

‘You got that right.’

A young prostitute, from the Regal Circle sex roundabout, was returning home through the market to her hut in the fishermen’s slum. Her name was Circe, and she was a handful.

Her bing, if she hadn’t made enough money, was to pester men to have sex with her until they did, or until they paid her to stop pestering.

‘Hey, Shantaram,’ she said. ‘Fuck me long, double price.’

‘Hi, Circe,’ I said, trying to pass her, but she scampered into my path, her hands on her hips.

‘Fuck me quick, fuck me long, you shit!’

‘Bye, Circe,’ I said, dodging away again, but she grabbed her yellow sari in her hands, and ran around to face me again.

‘You fuck, or you pay,’ she said, seizing my arm mid-pester, and trying to rub against me.

Karla shoved her in the chest with both hands, sending her reeling away.

‘Stay back, Circe,’ she growled in Hindi, her fists raised.

Circe brushed her sari into place and walked away, avoiding Karla’s eyes.