Abdullah hung up the phone, and signalled for me to follow him. I couldn’t tell him that I felt too weak and beat up to climb a mountain: sometimes, all the guts you have is the guts you pretend, because you love someone too much to lose their respect.
We climbed up some steep but wide and well-made stone steps to the first plateau of the mountain. There was a large cave that featured heavy, squat columns supporting a massive granite plinth. The arched entrance led to a chambered sanctum.
Further along the upward path, we stood before the largest and most spectacular cave. At the high, arched entrance to the main cave, two enormous statues of the Buddha, five times the height of a man, stood guard in alcoves, left and right. There were no fences or railings to protect them, but they were remarkably well preserved.
After climbing for some twenty minutes past dozens of caves, we entered a small plateau where the path widened into several well-trodden tracks. The summit was still some distance above.
Through a glade of tall, slender trees and sea-drift lantanas, we came upon a temple courtyard. Paved in large, white marble squares and covered by a solid dome, the columned space ended in a small, discreet shrine to a sage.
Sombre, and perhaps a little sorrowful, the stony gaze of the bearded saint peered into the surrounding jungle. Abdullah stopped for a moment, looking around him in the centre of the white marble courtyard. His hands were on his hips, and a small smile dimpled his eyes.
‘A special place?’
‘It is, Lin brother. This is where Khaderbhai received most of his lessons from the sage, Idriss. It was my privilege to be with them, for some of those lessons.’
We stood in silence for a while, remembering the dead Khan, Khaderbhai, each of us pulling a different cloak of recollections over our shoulders.
‘Is it far from here?’
‘Not far,’ he said, leading the way out of the courtyard. ‘But it is the hardest part of the climb.’
Clinging to branches, grasses and vines, we dragged ourselves up a steeper path that led to the summit.
It was a climb that might’ve been easy work in the dry season, with rocks and stones solidly embedded in the earthen cliff face and the narrow track. But in those twilight days of the long monsoon, it was a hard climb.
Halfway to the summit we encountered a young man, who was descending the same path. The incline at that point was so steep that he had to slide down backwards on weeds and vines.
He was carrying a large plastic water can. In the encounter with us on the narrow path, he had to crush against us, slipping shirt to shirt and grasping at us, as we did with him.
‘What fun!’ he said in Hindi, grinning happily. ‘Can I bring you something from down?’
‘Chocolate!’ Abdullah said, as the young man slipped below us, disappearing into the vegetation that crowded the vertical path. ‘I forgot to buy it! I’ll pay you, when you come up!’
‘Thik!’ the young man called back from somewhere below.
When Abdullah and I reached the summit, I discovered that it was a mesa, flat-topped and expansive, giving onto the last jagged half-peak of the mountain.
Several large caves, cut into that steep fragment of the peak, offered views of the mesa, and the many valleys rolling into one another below, and to the Island City, shrouded in mist and smoke on the horizon.
Still puffing I glanced around, trying to get a feel for the place. It was paved with small white pebbles. I hadn’t seen any of them in the valley below, or during the climb. They’d been carried to the summit, one sack at a time. As punishing as the work must’ve been, the effect was dazzling: serene and unsullied.
There was a kitchen area, open on three sides and covered with a stretched green canvas, faded to a colour that neatly matched the rain-bleached leaves of the surrounding trees.
Another area, completely obscured by canvas shrouds, looked to be a bathroom with several alcoves. A third covered area contained two desks and several canvas deck chairs, stacked in rows.
Beyond them, the open mouths of the four caves revealed a few details of their interiors: a wooden cabinet in the entrance to one, several metal trunks heaped inside another, and a large, blackened fireplace with a smouldering fire visible in a third.
As I was looking at the caves, a young man emerged from the smallest of them.
‘You are Mr Shantaram?’
I turned to Abdullah, frowning my surprise.
‘Master Idriss asked me to bring you here,’ Abdullah said. ‘It was Idriss who invited you here, through me.’
‘Me?’
He nodded. I turned back to the young man.
‘This is for you,’ he said, handing me a business card.
I read the short message: There are no Gurus
Mystified, I handed the card to Abdullah. He read it, laughed, and handed it back to me.
‘Quite a calling card,’ I said, reading it again. ‘It’s like a lawyer, saying there are no fees.’
‘Idriss will explain it himself, no doubt.’
‘But, perhaps, not tonight,’ the young man said, gesturing toward the cave that held a fireplace. ‘Master-ji is engaged with some philosophers tonight, in a temple below the mountain. So, please come. I have made tea, just now.’
I accepted the invitation gratefully, sat down on a handmade wooden stool some little way into the cave, and sipped at the tea when it arrived.
Lost in my thoughts, as I too often am, I guess, I let my mind worry itself back to the fight with Concannon.
Cooler and clearer after the long ride and the long climb to the summit, I looked back into Concannon’s eyes, as I sat there, sipping sweet tea in the cave of the sage, Idriss.
I suddenly realised it wasn’t anger that I’d felt after Concannon’s mindless and brutal attack: it was disappointment. It was the kind of disappointment that belongs to friends, not enemies.
But by joining the Scorpions, he’d made himself new enemies. Our guys had no choice but to hit back at the Scorpions: if they didn’t, the Scorpions would see it as weakness, and hit us again. The trouble had started. I had to get Karla out of the city: she was connected to the Sanjay Company.
And there it was. I didn’t think of Lisa, or Didier, or even myself. I thought of Karla. Lisa was at risk. Concannon knew her: he’d met her. I should’ve thought of Lisa first, but it was Karla; it was Karla.
In that twisted knot of love, staring at the scatter of ember-roses in the soft ashes of the fire, I became aware of a perfumed scent. I thought someone must’ve been offering frankincense at another fire, nearby. But I knew that perfume. I knew it well.
Then I heard Karla’s voice.
‘Tell me a joke, Shantaram.’
The skin on my face tightened. I felt the chill of fever. A blood-river rushed upwards through my body and shuddered in my chest until my eyes burned with it.
Snap out of it, I said to myself. Look at her. Break the spell.
I turned to look at her. It didn’t help.
She stood in the mouth of the cave, smiling at the wind, her profile defying everything, her black hair and silver scarf trailing banners of desire behind her. High, strong forehead, crescent eyes, fine sharp nose, and the gentle jut of a pointed chin protecting the broken promise of her lips: Karla.
‘So,’ she drawled, ‘you got a joke, or don’t you?’
‘How many Parsis does it take to change a light globe?’ I asked.
‘Two years, I don’t see you,’ she said, still not turning to face me, ‘and the best you can do is a light-bulb joke?’
‘It’s twenty-three months and sixteen days. You want a joke, or don’t you?’
‘Okay, so how many Parsis does it take to change a light globe?’
‘Parsis don’t change light globes, because they know they’ll never get another one as good as the old one.’
She threw her head back and laughed. It was a good laugh, a great laugh, from a great heart, strong and free, a hawk riding dusk: the laugh that broke every chain in my heart.
‘Come here,’ she said.
I wrapped my arms around her, pressing her against that hollow tree, my life, where I’d hidden the dream that she would love me, forever.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Everyone has one eye that’s softer and sadder, and one that’s hard and bright. Karla’s left eye was softer and sadder than her right, and maybe it was because I could only see that soft light, greener than new leaves, that I had no resistance to her. I couldn’t do anything but listen, and smile, and try to be funny now and then.
But it was alright. It was okay. It was a renegade peace, in those moments on the morning after the mountain brought her back to me; the morning of that softer, sadder eye.
We’d spent the night in separate caves. There were three other women on the mountain-top mesa, all of them young Indian students of the wise man, Idriss. The women’s cave was smaller, but cleaner and better appointed.
There were rope beds and mattresses, where we’d slept on blankets stretched over the bare ground, and there were several metal cupboards, suspended on blocks of stone to keep out rats and crawling insects. We’d made do with a few rusted hooks to keep our belongings off the dusty floor.
I hadn’t slept well. I’d only spoken to Karla for a few minutes after that first hug, that first sight of her for almost two years. And then she was gone, again.
Abdullah, bowing gallantly to Karla, had drawn me away to join the other men, gathered for a meal at the entrance to the men’s cave.
I was walking backwards, looking at her, and she was already laughing at me, two minutes after we re-met. Two years, in two minutes.
During the meal, we met six young devotees and students, who exchanged stories of what it was that had brought them to the top of the mountain. Abdullah and I listened, without comment.
By the time we’d finished eating the modest meal of daal and rice, it was late. We cleaned our teeth, washed our faces, and settled down to sleep. But my little sleep drowned in a nightmare that choked me awake before dawn.
I decided to beat the early risers to the simple bathroom. I used the long-drop toilet, then took a small pot of water and a piece of soap, and washed myself with half a bucket of water, standing on the pallet floor of the canvas-screen bathroom.
Dried and dressed and cold awake, I made my way through the dark camp to sit by the guttering fire. I’d just built the embers into a flame with twigs of kindling around a battered coffee pot, when Karla came to stand beside me.
‘What are you doing here?’ Karla purred.
‘If I don’t get coffee soon, I’m gonna bite a tree.’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘Oh, you mean, on the mountain? I could ask you the same thing.’
‘I asked you first.’
I laughed gently.
‘You’re better than that, Karla.’
‘Maybe I’m not what I used to be.’
‘We’re all what we used to be, even when we’re not.’
‘That’s not telling me what you’re doing here,’ she said.
‘What we tell, is rarely what we do.’
‘I’m not doing an aphorism contest,’ she said, frowning a smile and sitting down beside me.
‘We are the art, that sees us as art.’
‘No way,’ she said. ‘Keep your lines to yourself.’
‘Fanaticism means that if you’re not against me, you’re against me.’
‘I could report you for aphorism harassment, do you know that?’
‘Honour is the art of being humble,’ I replied, deadpan.
We were speaking softly, but our eyes were sharp.
‘Okay,’ she whispered, ‘you’re on. My turn?’
‘Of course it’s your turn. I’m already three up on you.’
‘Every goodbye is a dress rehearsal for the last goodbye,’ she said.
‘Not bad. Hello can lie, sometimes, but goodbye always tells the truth.’
‘Fiction is fact, made stranger. The truth about anything is a lie about something else. Come on, step it up, Shantaram.’
‘What’s the rush? There’s plenty more where they came from.’
‘You got somethin’ or not?’
‘Oh, I see, it’s to throw me off, and put me off my game. Okay, tough girl, here we go. Inspiration is the grace of peace. Truth is the warden in the prison of the soul. Slavery can’t be unchained from the system: slavery is the system.’
‘Truth is the shovel,’ she fired back. ‘Your mission is the hole.’
I laughed.
‘Every fragment is the whole entire,’ Karla said, firing at will.
‘The whole cannot be divided,’ I said, ‘without a tyranny of parts.’
‘Tyranny is privilege, unrestrained.’
‘We’re privileged by Fate,’ I said, ‘because we’re damned by Fate.’
‘Fate,’ she grinned. ‘One of my favourites. Fate plays poker, and only wins by bluffing. Fate is the magician, and Time is the trick. Fate is the spider, and Time is the web. Shall I go on?’
‘Dark funny,’ I said, happier than I’d been in a while. ‘Nice. Try this – all men become their fathers, but only when they’re not looking.’
She laughed. I don’t know where Karla was, but I was with her, at last, in a thing we both loved, and she was my heaven.
‘The truth is a bully we all pretend to like.’
‘That’s on old one!’ I protested.
‘But a good one, and worth a second run. Whaddaya got?’
‘Fear is the friend who warns you,’ I offered.
‘Loneliness is the friend who tells you to get out more,’ she countered. ‘Come on, let’s move it along here.’
‘There’s no country too unjust, too corrupt, or too inept to afford itself a stirring national anthem.’
‘Big political,’ she smiled. ‘I like it. Try this on for size – tyranny is fear, in human form.’
I laughed.
‘Music is death, made sublime.’
‘Grief is ghost empathy,’ she hit back quickly.
‘Damn!’
‘You give up?’
‘No way. The way to love, is to love the way.’
‘Koans,’ she said. ‘Grasping at straws, Shantaram. No problem. I’m always ready to give love a kick in the ass. How about this – love is a mountain that kills you, every time you climb it.’
‘Courage –’
‘Courage defines us. Anyone who doesn’t give up, and that’s just about everybody, is a man or woman of courage. Stop with the courage, already.’
‘Happiness is –’
‘Happiness is the hyperactive child of contentment.’
‘Justice means –’
‘Justice, like love and power, is measured in mercies.’
‘War –’
‘All wars are culture wars, and all cultures are written on the bodies of women.’
‘Life –’
‘If you’re not living for something, you’re dying for nothing!’ she parried, her forefinger on my chest.
‘Damn.’
‘Damn, what?’
‘Damn . . . you got . . . better, girl.’
‘So, you’re saying I won?’
‘I’m saying . . . you got . . . a lot better.’
‘And I won, right? Because I can do this all day long, you know.’
She was serious, her eyes filled with tiger-light.
‘I love you,’ I said.
She looked away. After a time she spoke to the fire.
‘You still haven’t answered my question. What are you doing here?’ r />
We’d been husky-whispering in the contest, trying not to wake the others. The sky was dark, but a ridge of dawn the colour of faded leaves hovered over the distant, cloudy horizon.
‘Oh, wait a minute,’ I frowned, realising at last. ‘You think I came up here, because you’re here? You think I set this up?’
‘Did you?’
‘Would you want me to?’
She turned the half-profile on me, that sadder, softer eye searching my face as if she was reading a map. Red-yellow fire shadows played with her features: firelight writing faith and hope on her face, as fire does on every human face, because we’re creatures of fire.
I looked away.
‘I had no idea you were here,’ I said. ‘It was Abdullah’s idea.’
She laughed softly. Was she disappointed, or relieved? I couldn’t tell.
‘What about you?’ I asked, throwing a few sticks on the fire. ‘You didn’t suddenly get religion. Say it ain’t so.’
‘I bring Idriss hash,’ she said. ‘He’s got a taste for Kashmiri.’
It was my turn to laugh.
‘How long has this been going on?’
‘About . . . a year.’
She was dreaming something, looking out at the dawning forest.
‘What’s he like?’
She looked at me again.
‘He’s . . . authentic. You’ll meet him later.’
‘How did you meet him?’
‘I didn’t come up here to meet him. I came to meet Khaled. He’s the one who told me that Idriss was here.’
‘Khaled? Which Khaled?’
‘Your Khaled,’ she said softly. ‘Our Khaled.’
‘He’s alive?’
‘Very much so.’
‘Alhamdulillah. And he’s up here?’
‘I’d pay good money to see Khaled up here. No, he’s got an ashram, down in the valley.’
The hard-fisted, uncompromising Palestinian had been a member of the Khader Council. He’d been with us on the smuggling run into Afghanistan. He killed a man, a close friend, because the friend endangered us all, and then he walked alone and unarmed into the snow.