The Mountain Shadow (99 page)

Part Eleven

Chapter Sixty-Two

O
LEG MOVED IN.
He asked if he could sleep on my couch, and I agreed, which meant that I had to buy a couch. He went with me, and it took him a long time to make up my mind. The one he chose was in green leather and long enough to stretch out on, which he often did, soon after it was delivered.

When he wasn’t a field agent, with spike, chasing down lost loves with Naveen and Didier, he was on the couch, his hands folded across his chest, and talking issues out of his own psychological steppes. The Tuareg would’ve loved it.

‘Did you say that you could change your dreams, the other day?’ he asked me, stretched out on the couch, a week after he started at the bureau. ‘Actually
in
the dream, while you’re dreaming it?’

‘Of course.’

‘You mean, while you’re dreaming, and completely asleep, you can alter the course of your dream?’

‘Yes. Can’t you?’

‘No. I don’t think many people can.’

‘Let me put it this way, a nightmare is a dream I can’t control, and a dream is a nightmare I can control.’

‘Wow. How does it work?’

‘I’m writing a story here, Oleg.’

‘Oh, sorry,’ he said, his bare feet tapping against one another at the other end of the couch. ‘Go back to work. Utter silence from me.’

I was working on a new story. I’d thrown the happy story away. It didn’t end well. I was sketching some paragraphs about Abdullah, and thinking about a couple of stories built around him. There were eagles of narrative in him, each tale a winged contradiction, but I’d never written anything about him.

That afternoon I felt compelled to capture him, to paint him with words, and the writing came fast. Paragraphs bloomed like hydrangeas on the pages of my journal.

Years after that sunny afternoon at the Amritsar hotel, a writer told me that it was bad luck for the living, to write about the living. I didn’t know that then, and I was happy, in the pages I had on Abdullah: happy enough to forget about threats and felonies, enemies who hide in a smile, Kavita and Karla, and everything in the world, so long as nothing disturbed me, and I could keep writing.

‘What’s the story about?’ Oleg asked.

I put the pen down.

‘It’s a murder mystery,’ I said.

‘What’s it about?’

‘It’s about a writer, who kills someone for interrupting him while he’s writing. You wanna know the mystery part?’

He swung his legs around, and sat with his forearms on his thighs.

‘I love mysteries,’ he said.

‘The mystery is why it took the writer so long.’

‘Sarcasm,’ he said. ‘You should read Lermontov. The Caucasus is notorious for its sarcasm.’

‘You don’t say?’ I said, picking up the pen.

‘Can you really change your dreams?’

The pen in my hand drifted toward him, hovering above my elbow on the desk. I was hoping that it would turn into a caduceus, and I could use it to make him go to sleep.

‘I mean, how does that work? I’d love to change my dreams. I have
some
dreams, you know, that I’d really, really like to put on repeat.’

I closed the pen, closed the journal and got two cold beers, throwing one to him. I sat back in my chair, and raised my can in a toast.

‘To mysteries,’ I said.

‘To mysteries!’

‘Now, sit back, relax, and tell me what’s up, Oleg.’

‘Your Karla,’ he said, taking a sip of beer. ‘I know what you’re feeling, because I have my Karlesha, back in Moscow.’

‘Why aren’t
you
back in Moscow?’

‘I don’t like Moscow,’ he said, taking another sip. ‘I’m a St Petersburg boy.’

‘But you love the girl.’

‘Yes. But she hates me.’

‘She
hates
you?’

‘Hates me.’

‘How do you know?’

‘She paid her father to have me killed.’

‘She had to
pay
him? What is he, a banker?’

‘No, he’s a cop. A pretty big cop.’

‘What happened?’

‘It’s a long story,’ he sighed, looking toward the breeze of white curtains, fluttering on the sunlit balcony.

‘Fuck you, Oleg. You killed my short story. You can fill the space with your long story.’

He laughed bitterly. One of our purest expressions, a thing of our human kind: the bitter laugh.

‘I slept with her sister,’ he said, staring at his beer.

‘Okay. Not classy, but there are worse things that people do to people’s sisters.’

‘No, it’s complicated. They’re twins. Non-identical twins.’

‘Where are you going with this, Oleg?’

There was a call from the hallway. It was Didier.

‘Hello? Are you home, Lin?’ he said, as he walked through the open door.

‘Didier!’ I said happily. ‘Grab a seat, and have a beer. Oleg is venturing into territory beyond my couch, and you’re just the man to guide the way.’

‘Lin, I am afraid that I have many appointments, and –’

‘My girlfriend in Moscow hates me,’ Oleg said flatly, helplessly, ‘because she’s a non-identical twin, and I slept with her and her non-identical sister, at the same time.’

‘Fascinating,’ Didier said, settling himself into a chair. ‘If it is not an indelicate question, Oleg, did they have the same . . . aroma?’

‘Indelicate?’ I mocked. ‘You, Didier?’

‘Funny you should say that,’ Oleg muttered, searching Didier’s face. ‘They
did
have the same smell. Exactly the same smell. I mean, the same smell . . . everywhere.’

‘That is indeed a rare phenomenon,’ Didier mused. ‘Exceedingly rare. Did you happen to notice the length of their ring fingers, compared to their index fingers?’

‘Can we get to the part where her father tried to kill you?’ I suggested, thinking that I had writing to do.

‘Marvellous,’ Didier said. ‘Tried to kill you, eh?’

‘Sure. See, it happened this way. I was in love with Elena, and nothing ever happened between me and her sister, Irina, until one night, when I was very drunk, totally
razbit
.’

‘
Razbit
?’ Didier asked.

‘Smashed, man, I was totally smashed, and Irina sneaked into my bed, naked, while Elena was at the neighbour’s place.’

‘Wonderful,’ Didier enthused.

‘It was completely dark,’ Oleg continued. ‘Very dark. We had blackout blinds on the windows. She smelled like Elena. She felt like Elena.’

‘Did she kiss you?’ Didier asked, a master of sexual forensics.

‘No. And she didn’t speak.’

‘Precisely. That would have given her away. She’s a clever girl.’

‘Elena didn’t think so, when she came back, switched the light on, and found us making love.’

‘No talking your way out of that one,’ I said.

‘She threw me out of my own apartment,’ he said. ‘I’m not sure that’s even legal. I mean, I’m still paying the rent from here. And her father put up the threat of prison bars, between me and the woman I love.’

‘I don’t think Elena felt very loved, Oleg.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘I mean
Irina
. When we made love, drunk and all as I was, it was the best thing that ever happened to me. She was a maniac, in all the right ways. I was mad for her. I still am.’

‘Marvellous,’ Didier smiled. ‘But what happened?’

‘I managed to get a message to Irina, asking her to run away with me. She agreed, and we planned to meet at midnight, at Paveletsky Terminal. But she told Elena our plans, and Elena came to see me, asking me not to take Irina away. I talked to her, but I refused. I met Irina at the station, and we were running away together, then she stopped me and asked me if I was really sure that it was
her
I loved, and not her twin.’

He paused, searching for the right way through his hedge of recollection.

‘Yes?’ Didier asked, stamping his foot a little. ‘What happened?’

‘We were standing together, in the shadows. She asked me how I could be so sure that it was really her and not Elena that I loved. And, you know that moment when a woman asks you for the truth? And you know, you really, clearly know that it’s the last thing you should do?’

‘Yeah,’ we both agreed.

‘I told the truth.’

‘How bad?’ I asked.

‘I told her that I was absolutely
sure
that it was her I loved, because just to be completely certain, I had slept with Elena again, when she’d come to see me, two hours before. And it was nothing, with Elena. I hardly enjoyed it at all. So, I was certain that Irina was the one for me, and it wasn’t just the fact that I was pretty drunk that night, and I kind of hallucinated how good she was.’

‘Oh, shit.’

‘
Merde
,’ Didier agreed.

‘She took a swing at me,’ he said.

‘I want to swing at you myself,’ Didier said. ‘It is a disgrace to tell any woman the unembellished truth.’

‘You dug that grave yourself, Oleg,’ I laughed. ‘And neither one forgave you?’

‘Their father put professional bad people on my case. I had to run, and run fast.’

‘Tough break,’ I said. ‘Serves you right, for falling in love with a policeman’s daughters.’

I turned to Didier, who was sitting back in his chair, his legs crossed, and his hand supporting his chin.

‘Any advice?’

‘Didier has a solution,’ he declared. ‘You must wear two of those T-shirts, that common people wear, under your shirt, for two weeks. You must not wash with soap, or hair products. Only water. You must not wear scent of any kind, and you must not brush against any person wearing scent. And you must not wash the shirts.’

‘And then?’ Oleg asked.

‘And then you mail the T-shirts in two packages, one to each of the twins, with only two words on the back –
Leopold’s, Bombay
.’

‘And then?’

‘And then you give copies of Irina’s photograph to the waiters at Leopold’s, and offer a reward to the first man who identifies her, and calls you.’

‘What makes you think she’ll come?’ Oleg asked.

He had the same expression shining in his smile that the students on the mountain had, when they listened to Idriss.

‘The scent,’ Didier smiled back at him. ‘If she is yours, the power of your scent will bring her. She will come to you, like a pheromone pilgrim. But only if she is yours, and you are hers.’

‘Wow, Didier!’ Oleg said, slapping his hands together. ‘I’ll start right away.’

He jumped up, pulled my second T-shirt from my wardrobe, and pulled it on over my other one, which he was wearing.

‘Why a photograph of Irina, and not Elena?’ I asked Didier. ‘Or, why not photos of both?’

‘The sex,’ Didier frowned. ‘Did you not pay attention? Irina is Elena, without inhibitions.’

‘You got that right,’ Oleg said, straightening his T-shirts.

‘Exactly,’ Didier said, sniffing Oleg to make sure he wasn’t wearing scent. ‘The sex you had with Irina was exceptional. Do I need to say more?’

He stood up, brushing at his sleeves.

‘My work is done here,’ he said, pausing at the door. ‘Do physical sport, Oleg. Climb to high, dangerous places, jump off things, provoke a policeman, start a fight with a bully, and above all, flirt with women, but have sex with none of them, until you send the shirts. She must smell tiger on you, and wolf, and ape, and a man hungry for sex, and women hungry for him.
Bonne chance
.’

He swept out, flourishing his grey-blue scarf.