The Mountain Shadow (6 page)

Lisa slapped me hard on the arm.

‘I’m kidding. It’s all good. And you got a big crowd. Congratulations.’

‘Hope they’re in a buying mood,’ Lisa said, thinking out loud.

‘If they’re not, Anushka could convince them.’

Lisa slapped me on the arm again.

‘Or you could always get Lisa to slap them.’

‘We were lucky,’ Rish smiled, offering me the joint.

‘No thanks. Never when I’ve got a passenger. Lucky how?’

‘It almost didn’t happen. Did you see the big Ram painting? The orange one?’

The large, mainly orange-coloured painting was hanging next to the stone sculpture of Enkidu. I hadn’t immediately realised that the striking central figure was a representation of the Hindu God.

‘The moral police from the lunatic religious right,’ Rish said, ‘the Spear of Karma, they call themselves, they heard about the painting and tried to shut us down. We got in touch with Taj’s dad. He’s a top lawyer, and connected to the Chief Minister. He got a court order, allowing us to put the show on.’

‘Who painted it?’

‘I did,’ Rish said. ‘Why?’

‘What made you want to paint it in the first place?’

‘Are you saying that there are things I shouldn’t paint?’

‘I’m asking you why you chose to do it.’

‘For the freedom of art,’ Rish said.

‘Viva la revolution,’ Anushka purred, sitting down beside Rish and leaning into his lap.

‘Whose freedom?’ I asked. ‘Yours, or theirs?’

‘Spear of Karma?’ Rosanna sneered. ‘Crazy fascist fuckers, all of them. They’re nothing. Just a fringe group. Nobody listens to them.’

‘The fringe usually works its way to the centre that ignores or insults it.’

‘What?’ Rosanna spluttered.

‘That’s true, Lin,’ Rish agreed, ‘and they’ve done some violent stuff. No doubt. But they’re mainly in the regional centres and the villages. Beating up priests, and burning down a church here and there, that’s their thing. They’ll never get a big following in Bombay.’

‘Vicious fucking fanatics!’ a bearded young man wearing a pink shirt spat out viciously. ‘They’re the stupidest people in the world!’

‘I don’t think you can say that,’ I said softly.

‘I just did!’ the young man shot back. ‘So fuck you. I just said it. So I
can
say it.’

‘Okay. I meant that you can’t say it with any
validity
. Sure, you can say it. You can say that the moon is a Diwali decoration, but it wouldn’t have any validity. It’s simply not valid to say that all the people who oppose you are stupid.’

‘Then what are they?’ Rish asked.

‘I think you probably know them and their way of thinking better than I do.’

‘No, really, make your point, please.’

‘Okay, I think they’re devout. And not just devout, but
fervently
devout. I think they’re in love with God,
infatuated
with God, actually, and when their God is depicted without faith, it’s felt as an insult to the faith inside themselves.’

‘So, you’re saying I shouldn’t have been allowed to put on this show?’ Rish pressed.

‘I didn’t say that.’

‘Who the fuck is this guy?’ the bearded youth asked no-one.

‘Please,’ Rish continued. ‘Tell me what you
did
say.’

‘I stand for your right to create and present art, but I think that rights come with responsibilities, and that we, as artists, have a responsibility not to cause feelings of hurt and injury in the name of art. In the name of truth, maybe. In the name of justice and freedom. But not in the name of art.’

‘Why not?’

‘We stand on tall shoulders, when we express ourselves as artists, and we have to stay true to the best in the artists who came before us. It’s a duty.’

‘Who the fuck is this guy?’ the bearded youth asked the string of red motorcycle lights.

‘So, if those people are offended, it’s
my
fault?’ Rish asked softly and earnestly.

I was beginning to like him.

‘I repeat,’ the bearded youth demanded, ‘who the fuck is
this
guy?’

I already didn’t like the bearded youth.

‘I’m the guy who’s gonna rearrange your grammar,’ I said quietly, ‘if you address me in the third person again.’

‘He’s a
writer
,’ Anushka yawned. ‘They argue, because –’

‘Because they can,’ Lisa interjected, tugging at my arm to lift me to my feet. ‘C’mon, Lin. Time to dance.’

Loud music thumped from heavy floor-mounted speakers.

‘I
love
this song!’ Anushka growled, jumping up and pulling Rish to his feet. ‘Dance with me, Rish!’

I held Lisa for a moment, and kissed her neck.

‘Go ahead,’ I smiled. ‘Dance your brains out. I’m gonna take another look at the exhibition. I’ll meet you outside.’

Lisa kissed me and joined the dancing crowd. I moved through the dancers, resisting the tidal roll of the music.

In the gallery room I stood before the bronze plaster reliefs that purported to tell the story of the Sapna killings. I tried to decide whether it was the artist’s nightmare, or mine.

I lost it all. I lost the custody of my daughter. I sleepwalked into heroin addiction and armed robbery. When I was caught, I was sentenced to serve ten years at hard labour, in a maximum-security prison.

I could tell you I was beaten during the first two and a half years of that sentence. I could give you half a dozen other sane reasons for escaping from an insane prison, but the truth of it’s simply that one day, freedom was more important to me than my life. And I refused, that day, to be caged.
Not today. Not any more.
I escaped, and became a wanted man.

The fugitive life took me from Australia, through New Zealand, to India. Six months in a remote village in Maharashtra gave me the language of farmers. Eighteen months in a city slum gave me the language of the street.

I went to prison again, in Bombay, as you do sometimes, when you’re on the run. The man who paid my freedom-ransom to the authorities was a mafia boss, Khaderbhai. He had a use for me. He had a use for everyone. And when I worked for him, no cop persecuted me in Bombay, and no prison offered hospitality.

Counterfeiting passports, smuggling, black market gold, illegal currency trading, protection rackets, gang wars, Afghanistan, vendettas: one way or another, the mafia life filled the months and years. And none of it mattered much to me, because the bridge to the past, to my family and friends, to my name and my nation and whatever I’d been before Bombay was gone, like the dead men prowling through Rosanna’s bronze-coloured frieze.

I left the gallery, made my way through the thinning crowd, and went outside to sit on my motorcycle. I was across the street from the entrance.

A crowd of people had gathered on the footpath, near my bike. Most of them were local people from servants’ quarters in the surrounding streets. They’d gathered in the cool nightfall to admire the fine cars and elegantly dressed guests entering and leaving the exhibition.

I heard people speaking in Marathi and Hindi. They commented on the cars and jewellery and dresses with genuine admiration and pleasure. No voice spoke with jealousy or resentment. They were poor people, living the hard, fear-streaked life crushed into the little word
poor
, but they admired the jewels and silks of the rich guests with joyful, unenvious innocence.

When a well-known industrialist and his movie-star wife emerged from the gallery, a little chorus of admiring sighs rose from the group. She wore a bejewelled yellow and white sari. I turned my head to look at the people, smiling and murmuring their appreciation, as if the woman were one of their own neighbours, and I noticed three men standing apart from the group.

Their stone-silent stares were grim. Malevolence rippled outward from their dark, staring eyes: waves so intense that it seemed I could feel them settle on my skin, like misted rain.

And then, as if they sensed my awareness of them, they turned as one and stared directly into my eyes, with clear, unreasoning hatred. We held the stare, while the happy crowd cooed and murmured their pleasure, while limousines drew up in front of us, and cameras flashed.

I thought of Lisa, still inside the gallery. The men stared, willing darkness at me. My hands moved slowly toward the two knives fixed in canvas scabbards in the small of my back.

‘Hey!’ Rosanna said, slapping me on the shoulder.

Reflex sent my hand whipping around to grab her wrist, while the other hand shoved her backwards a step.

‘Whoa! Take it easy!’ she said, her eyes wide with surprise.

‘I’m sorry.’ I frowned, releasing her wrist.

I turned quickly to search for the hate-filled eyes. The three men were gone.

‘Are you okay?’ Rosanna asked.

‘Sure,’ I said, turning to face her again. ‘Sure. Sorry. Is it about done in there?’

‘Just about,’ she said. ‘When the big stars leave, the lights go out. Lisa says you’re not a Goa fan. Why not? I’m
from
there, you know.’

‘I guessed.’

‘So, what have you got against Goa?’

‘Nothing. It’s just that every time I go there, somebody asks me to pick up their dirty laundry.’

‘That’s not
my
Goa,’ she countered.

It wasn’t defensive. It was simply a statement of fact.

‘Maybe not,’ I smiled. ‘And Goa’s a big place. I only know a couple of beaches and towns.’

She was studying my face.

‘What did you say it was?’ she asked. ‘Rubies and
what
?’

‘Rubies and love letters.’

‘But you weren’t in Goa just for that, were you?’

‘Sure,’ I lied.

‘If I said you were down there for black market business, would I be close to the mark?’

I’d gone to Goa to collect ten handguns. I’d dropped them off with my mafia contact in Bombay, before searching for Vikram to return the necklace. Black market business was close to the mark.

‘Look, Rosanna –’

‘Has it occurred to you that
you’re
the problem here? People like you, who come to India and bring trouble we don’t need?’

‘There was a lotta trouble here before I came, and there’ll be plenty left when I’m gone.’

‘We’re talking about
you
, not India.’

She was right: the two knives pressing against the small of my back made the point.

‘You’re right,’ I conceded.

‘I am?’

‘Yeah. I’m trouble, alright. And so are you, at the moment, if you don’t mind me saying it.’

‘Lisa doesn’t need trouble from you,’ she said, frowning hard.

‘No,’ I said evenly. ‘Nobody needs trouble.’

She studied my face a little longer, her brown eyes searching for something wide enough or deep enough to give the conversation a context. Finally she laughed, and looked away, running a ringed hand through her spiked hair.

‘How many days does the show run?’ I asked.

‘We’re supposed to have another week of this,’ she remarked, looking at the last guests leaving the exhibition. ‘If the crazies don’t close us down, that is.’

‘If I were you, I’d pay for some security. I’d put a couple of big, sharp guys on the door. Moonlight a few guys from one of the five-star hotels. They’re pretty good, some of those guys, and the ones who aren’t still
look
good enough.’

‘You know something about the show?’

‘Not really. I saw some men out here before. Seriously unhappy men. I think they’re seriously unhappy with your show.’

‘I
hate
those fucking fanatics!’ she hissed.

‘I think it’s mutual.’

I glanced toward the gallery to see Lisa kissing Rish and Taj goodbye.

‘Here’s Lisa.’

I swung a leg over the bike, and kick-started the engine. It growled to life, settling into a low, bubbling throb. Lisa came to hug Rosanna, and took her place on the back of my bike.

‘
Phir milenge
,’ I said.
Until we meet again.

‘Not if I see you first.’

We rode down the long slope to the sea, but when we stopped at a traffic signal, a black van pulled up beside us, and I turned to see the men with the hateful stares. They were arguing among themselves.

I let them pull away when the signal changed. There were political stickers and religious symbols on the rear window of the van. I turned off the main road at the first corner.