At midnight's horizon the great milky wheel of stars rose wet and shivering from the waves, and the silver yellow light of a gibbous moon settled on the sea, glistening the tinsel-crested swell. It was a warm, still, and perfectly clear night. The deck of the Goa ferry was crowded, but I'd managed to stake out a clear space a little distance apart from a large group of young tourists. They were stoned, most of them, on grass, hash, and acid. Dance music thumped from the black, shouting mouths of a portable hi-fi. Sitting among their backpacks, they swayed and clapped in time, called out to one another over the music, and laughed, often. They were happy, on their way to Goa. The first time tourists were moving toward a dream. The old hands were returning to the one place in the world where they felt truly free.
Sailing toward Karla, looking out at the stars, listening to the kids who'd bought spaces on the deck of the ferry, I understood their hopeful, innocent excitement, and in a small and distant way I even shared it. But my face was hard. My eyes were hard.
And that hardness divided my feelings from theirs as cleanly and inviolably as the metre-wide space on the deck separated me from their tangled, high-spirited party. And as I sat there, on the swaying, gently plunging ferry, I thought about Ulla: I thought about the fear that had glittered in her sapphire-blue eyes when she'd talked to me in the back of the cab.
Ulla needed money that night, a thousand dollars, and I gave it to her. She needed me to accompany her to the hotel room where she'd left her clothes and personal belongings. We went there together and, despite her trembling fear, we collected her things and paid the bill without incident. She was in trouble, through some business deal involving Modena and Maurizio. The deal, like too many of Maurizio's quick scams, had soured. The men who'd lost their money weren't content, as others had been, to accept the loss and let the matter ride. They wanted their money, and they wanted someone to bleed, and not necessarily in that order.
She didn't tell me who they were. She didn't tell me why they considered her a target, or what they planned to do with her if they caught her. I didn't ask. I should've asked her, of course.
It would've saved me a lot of trouble. In the long run, it mightVe saved a life or two. But I wasn't really interested in Ulla. I wanted to know about Karla.
"She's in Goa," Ulla said, when we'd checked her out of her hotel.
"Where in Goa?"
"I don't know. One of the beaches."
"There's a lot of beaches in Goa, Ulla."
"I know, I know," she whined, flinching at my irritated tone.
"You said you know where she is."
"I do. She's in Goa. I know she's in Goa. She wrote to me, from Mapusa. I got her last letter only yesterday. She's somewhere near Mapusa."
I relaxed a little. We loaded her belongings into the waiting cab, and I gave the driver directions to Abdullah's apartment in Breach Candy. I checked the streets around us carefully, and was fairly sure that we weren't being watched. When the cab moved off I sat back in silence for a while, watching the dark streets run in the window.
"Why did she leave?"
"I don't know."
"She must've said something to you. She's a talkative girl."
Ulla laughed.
"She didn't say to me anything about leaving. If you want to know what I think, I am in the opinion that she left because of you."
My love for Karla cringed at the thought. My vanity preened itself in the flattery. I smothered the conflict in a harsher tone.
"There must be more to it. Was she afraid of something?"
Ulla laughed again.
"Karla's not afraid of anything."
"Everyone's afraid of something."
"What are you afraid of, Lin?"
I turned, slowly, to stare at her, searching in the faint light for some hint of spite, some hidden meaning or allusion in the question.
"What happened on the night you were supposed to meet me at Leopold's?" I asked her. "I couldn't make it that night. I was prevented from coming there. Modena, him and Maurizio, they changed their plans at the last minute, and they stopped me."
"I seem to recall that you wanted me there because you didn't trust them."
"That's true. Well, I trust Modena, you know, kind of, but he is not strong against Maurizio. He can't stay in his own mind, when Maurizio tells him what to do."
"That still doesn't explain it," I grumbled.
"I know," she sighed, clearly upset. "I'm trying to explain it.
Maurizio, he had a deal planned-well, actually, he had a rip-off planned-and I was the one in the middle. Maurizio was using me because the men he was planning to steal money from, they liked me, and they kind of trusted me, you know how it is."
"Yeah, I know how it is."
"Oh, please, Lin, it wasn't my fault that I wasn't there that night. They wanted me to meet the customers, alone. I was afraid of those men, because I knew what Maurizio was planning to do, and that's why I asked you to be with me, as my friend. Then, they changed their plans and we had the meeting all together, in another place, and I couldn't get away to let you know about it.
I tried to find you the next day, to explain to you and make an apology, but... you were gone. I looked everywhere, I promise you I did. I was very sorry that I didn't go there to meet you at Leopold's, like I promised you that night."
"When did you find out that I was in jail?"
"After you got out. I saw Didier, and he told me that you looked terrible. That was the first thing that I... just a moment... do you... do you think _I had something to do with you going in the prison? Is that what you think?"
I held the stare for a few seconds before replying.
"Did you?"
"Oh, fuck! Oh, God!" she moaned, creasing her lovely face in miserable distress. She rocked her head from side to side swiftly, as if trying to prevent a thought or feeling from taking root. "Stop the car! Driver! Band karo! Abi, abi! Band karo!"
Now, now! Stop!
The cab driver pulled over to the pavement beside a row of shuttered shops. The street was deserted. He switched off the cab, and watched us in his rear-vision mirror. Ulla tried to wrestle open the door. She was crying. In her agitation, she jammed the door handle, and the door wouldn't open.
"Take it easy," I said, prizing her hands gently from the handle and holding them in my own. "It's okay. Take it easy."
"Nothing's okay," she sobbed. "I don't know how we got in this mess. Modena, he's not good at business. They messed everything up, him and Maurizio. They were cheating a lot of people, you know, and they just were always getting away with it. But not with these guys. They're different. I'm so scared. I don't know what to do. They're going to kill us. All of us. And you think I put the police on you? For what reason, Lin? Do you think I am such a person? Am I so bad that you can think such a thing about me? What do you think I am?"
I reached across to open the door. She stepped out, and leaned against the side of the car. I got out and joined her. She was trembling and sobbing. I held her in my arms until she cried it out.
"It's okay, Ulla. I don't think you had anything to do with it. I didn't ever think you did-not really-not even when you weren't there, at Leopold's that night. Asking you... it was just a way of closing a door on it. It's just something I had to ask. Do you understand?"
She looked up into my face. Streetlights arced in her large, blue eyes. Her mouth was slack with exhaustion and fear, but her eyes were drawn to a distant, ineradicable hope.
"You really love her, don't you?"
"Yes."
"That's good," she said dreamily, wistfully, looking away. "Love is a good thing. And Karla-she needs love, very much. Modena loves me too, you know. He really and truly loves me..."
She drifted in that reverie for a few moments and then snapped her head back to stare at me. Her hands gripped my arms as I held her.
"You'll find her. Start at Mapusa, and you'll find her. She will stay in Goa for some little time yet. She told me so, in her letter. She is somewhere exactly on the beach. In her letter she told me she can see the ocean from her front door. Go there, Lin, and find her. Look for her, and find her. There is only love, you know, in the whole world. There is only love..."
And they remained with me, Ulla's tears, swarming with light, until they dissolved in the glittering, moonlit sea off the ferry. And her words, there is only love, passed like prayer-bead wishes on a thread of possibility as the music and laughter crashed around me.
When the light on that long night became the dawn, and the ferry docked at the Goan capital of Panjim, I was the first to board a bus to Mapusa. The fifteen-kilometre journey from Panjim to Mapusa, pronounced as Muppsa, wound through lush, leafy groves, past mansions built to the styles and tastes of four hundred years of Portuguese colonial rule. Mapusa was a transportation and communication centre for the northern region of Goa. I arrived on a Friday, market day, and the morning crowds were already busy with business and bargains. I made my way to the taxi and motorcycle stands. After a bout of bartering that invoked an august assembly of deities from at least three religions, and incorporated spirited, carnal references to the sisters of our respective friends and acquantainces, a dealer agreed to hire out an Enfield Bullet motorcycle for a reasonable rental. I paid a bond and a week's rent in advance, kick-started the bike, and set off through the market's maul toward the beaches.
The Enfield of India 350cc Bullet was a single-cylinder, four stroke motorcycle, constructed to the plans of the original 1950s' model of the British Royal Enfield. Renowned for its idiosyncratic handling as much as for its reliability and durability, the Bullet was a bike that demanded a relationship with its rider. That relationship involved tolerance, patience, and understanding on the part of the rider. In exchange, the Bullet provided the kind of soaring, celestial, wind-weaving pleasure that birds must know, punctuated by not infrequent near death experiences.
I spent the day cruising the beaches, from Calangute to Chapora.
I checked every hotel and guesthouse, sprinkling the arid ground with a shower of small but tempting bribes. I found local moneychangers, drug dealers, tour guides, thieves, and gigolos at each of the beaches. Most of them had seen foreign girls who answered her description, but none could be sure that he'd seen Karla. I stopped for tea or juice or a snack at the main beach restaurants, asking waiters and managers. They were all helpful, or tried to be helpful, because I spoke to them in Marathi and Hindi. None of them had seen her, however, and when the few leads I did get came to nothing, the first day of my search ended in disappointment.
The owner of the Seashore Restaurant in Anjuna, a heavy-set young Maharashtrian named Dashrant, was the last local I spoke to, as the sun began to set. He prepared a hearty meal of cabbage leaves stuffed with potatoes, green beans with ginger, aubergines with sour green chutney, and crisp-fried okra. When the meal was ready, he brought his own plate to my table, and sat with me to eat it. He insisted that we finish the meal with a long glass of the locally brewed coconut feni, and followed that with an equally long glass of cashew feni. Refusing to accept payment for the meal from a gora who spoke his native Marathi, Dashrant locked the restaurant and left with me, as my guide, on the back of my motorcycle. He saw my quest to find Karla as very romantic-very Indian, he said - and he wanted me to stay nearby, as his guest.
"There are a few pretty foreign girls in the area," he told me.
"One of them, if the Bhagwan wills it, might be your lost love.
You sleep first, and search tomorrow-with a clean mind, isn't it?"
Paddling, with our legs outstretched from the bike, along a soft, sandy avenue between tall palms, I followed his directions to a small house. The square structure was made from bamboo, coconut poles, and palm leaves. It stood within sight of his restaurant, and with a wide view of the dark sea. I entered to find a single room, which he lit with candles and lamps. The floor was sand.
There was a table and two chairs, a bed with a bare rubber mattress, and a metal rack for hanging clothes. A large matka was filled with clean water. He announced, with pride, that the water had been drawn that day from a local well. There was a bottle of coconut feni on the table, with two glasses. Assuring me that the bike and I would be safe there, because it was known by all in the area to be his house, Dashrant handed me the key to the door's chain and padlock, and told me to stay until I found my girl. Winking a smile at me, he left. I heard him singing as he walked back between the slender palms to his restaurant.
I pulled the bike in against the hut, and tied a length of cord from it to the leg of the bed, covering it with sand. I hoped that if someone tried to steal the bike, the movement would wake me. Exhausted and disappointed, I fell onto the bed and was asleep in seconds. It was a nourishing, dreamless sleep, but I woke after four hours, and I was too alert, too restless, to find sleep again. I pulled my boots on, took a can of water, and visited the toilet at the back of the hut. Like many toilets in Goa, it was nothing more than a smooth, steep slope behind the squatting keyhole. Waste matter rolled down the slope to a narrow lane. Wild, hairy, black Goan pigs roamed the lanes, eating the waste. As I walked back to the house to wash my hands, I saw a herd of the black swine trotting along the lane. It was an efficient and environmentally benign method of waste disposal, but the sight of those pigs, feasting, was an eloquent argument in favor of vegetarianism.
I walked down to the beach, only fifty paces from Dashrant's hut, and sat on the dunes to smoke a cigarette. It was close to midnight, and the beach was deserted. The moon, almost full, was pinned like a medal to the chest of the sky. A medal for what? I thought. Wounded in action, maybe. A Purple Heart. Moonlight rushed with every rolling wave to the shore, as if the light itself was pulling the waves, as if the great net of silver light cast by the moon had gathered up the whole of the sea, and was hauling it to the shore, wave by wave.
A woman approached me, carrying a basket on her head. Her hips rolled and swayed in time to the running wavelets that lapped at her feet. She turned from the sea toward me and dropped the basket at my feet, squatting to look into my eyes. She was a watermelon seller, about thirty-five years old, and clearly familiar with tourists and their ways. Chewing forcefully on a mouthful of betel nut, she gestured with an open palm toward the half watermelon that remained in her large basket. It was very late for her to be on the beach. I guessed that she'd been baby sitting, or nursing a relative, and was returning home. When she saw me sitting alone, she'd hoped for one lucky-last sale for the night.
I told her, in Marathi, that I would be glad to buy a slice of melon. She reacted with happy surprise and, when the routine questions about where and how I'd learned Marathi were resolved, she cut me a generous slice. I ate the delicious sweet kalinga, spitting the seeds onto the sand. She watched me eat, and tried to resist when I forced a note rather than a coin into her basket. As she rose, lifting the basket to her head, I began to sing an old, sad, and much-loved song from a Hindi movie.
Ye doonia, ye mehfil Mere ham, ki nahi...
All the world, all its people Mean nothing to me...
She yelped in appreciation, and danced a few slick moves before walking away slowly along the beach.
"This is why I like you, you know," Karla said, sitting down beside me in one quick, graceful movement. The sound of her voice and the sight of her face pulled all the air from my lungs, and set my heart thumping. So much had happened since the last time I'd seen her, the first time we'd made love, that a fevered squall of emotion stung my eyes. If I'd been a different man, a better man, I would've cried. And who knows, it might've made the difference.
"I thought you didn't believe in love," I answered, straining against my feelings, and determined not to let her know the effect that she had on me, the power she had over me.
"What do you mean, _love?"
"I... I thought that's what you were talking about."
"No, I said that's why I like you," she said, laughing and looking up at the moon. "But I do believe in love. Everyone believes in love."
"I'm not so sure. I think a lot of people have stopped believing in love."
"People haven't stopped believing in love. They haven't stopped wanting to be in love. They just don't believe in a happy ending anymore. They still believe in love, and falling in love, but they know now that... they know that romances almost never end as well as they begin."
"I thought you hated love. Isn't that what you said, at the Village in the Sky?"
"I do hate love, just like I hate hate. But that doesn't mean I don't believe in them."
"There's no-one in the world like you, Karla," I said softly, smiling at her profile as she stared at the night and the sea.
She didn't reply. "So... why do you?"
"Why do I what?"
"Why do you like me-you know, what you said before."
"Oh, that," she smiled, facing me, and raising one eyebrow as her eyes met mine. "Because I knew you'd find me. I knew I didn't have to send you any message, or let you know where I was. I knew you'd find me. I knew you'd come. I don't know how I knew, but I just knew. And then, when I saw you singing to that woman on the beach-you're a very crazy guy, Lin. I love that. I think that's where your goodness comes from-your craziness." "My goodness?" I asked, genuinely surprised.
"Yes. There's a lot of goodness in you, Lin. It's very... it's a very hard thing to resist, real goodness, in a tough man. I didn't tell you, did I, when we worked together, in the slum-I was so proud of you. I knew you must've been scared, and very worried, but you only smiled for me, and you were always there, every time I woke up, every time I went to sleep. I admire what you did there, as much as anything I've ever seen in my life. And I don't admire much."
"What are you doing here in Goa, Karla? Why did you leave?"
"It would make more sense to ask why you stay there."
"I've got my reasons."
"Exactly. And I had my reasons for leaving."
She turned her head to watch a lone, distant figure on the beach.
It seemed to be a wandering holy man, carrying a long staff. I watched her watching the holy man, and I wanted to ask her again, to find out what had driven her from Bombay, but the set of her features was so tense that I decided to wait.
"How much do you know about my stint at Arthur Road?" I asked.
She flinched, or perhaps it was a shiver in response to the breeze from the sea. She was wearing a loose, yellow singlet top, and a green lungi. Her bare feet were buried in the sand, and she hugged her knees.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, the cops picked me up the night I left your place to meet Ulla. They got me, right after I left you. What did you think happened to me when I didn't come back?"
"I didn't know, that night. I couldn't guess."
"Did you think I... did you think I just ditched you?"
She paused, frowning pensively.
"At first, I did think that. Something like that. And I think I hated you. Then I started asking around. When I found out you didn't even come back to the slum clinic, and that nobody saw you, I thought you must've been... doing something... important."
"Important," I laughed. It wasn't a good laugh. It was bitter, and angry. I tried to push those feelings away. "I'm sorry, Karla. I couldn't get a message out. I couldn't let you know. I was out of my mind with worry that you... that... you'd hate me, for leaving you like that."
"When I heard about it-that you were in the jail-it kind of broke my heart. It was a very bad time for me. This... business, I was doing... it was starting to go wrong. It was so wrong, so bad, Lin, that I think I'll never come back from it. And then, I heard about you. And I was so... well... everything changed, just like that. Everything."
I couldn't understand what she'd said. I was sure it was important, and I wanted to ask her more, but the lone figure was only a few metres away, and he approached us with slow, dignified steps. The moment was lost.
He was indeed a holy man. Tall, lean, and tanned to a dark, earth-brown, he wore a loincloth and was adorned with dozens of necklaces, amulets, and decorative bracelets. His hair was matted in dreadlocks that reached to his waist. Balancing the long staff against his shoulder, he clasped his hands together in a greeting and a blessing. We greeted him in turn, and invited him to sit with us.
"Do you have any charras?" he asked, in Hindi. "I would like to smoke on this beautiful night."
I fished a lump of charras from my pocket, and tossed it to him, with a filter cigarette.
"The Bhagwan's blessing be upon your kindness," he intoned.
"And a blessing of the Bhagwan upon you also," Karla replied in perfect Hindi. "We are very happy to see a devotee of the Lord Shiva at this full moon."
He grinned, showing gaps in his teeth, and set to preparing a chillum. When the clay pipe was ready, he raised his palms to gain our attention.
"Now, before we smoke, I want to give you a gift in return," he said. "Do you understand?"
"Yes, we understand," I said, smiling to match the light in his eyes.
"Good. I give you both a blessing. My blessing will always stay with you. I give you this blessing in this way..."
He raised his arms above his head, and then bent over on his knees, touching his forehead to the sand, with his arms outstretched. Kneeling upright again and raising his hands, he repeated the gesture several times while mumbling indistinct words.
Eventually, he sat back on his feet, smiled the gap-toothed smile at us, and nodded for me to light the pipe. We smoked in silence.
When the pipe was finished, I refused to accept the return of the lump of charras. Acknowledging the gift with a solemn bow of his head, the holy man stood to leave. As we looked up at him, he slowly raised his staff to point it at the almost full moon. At once, we saw and understood what he meant-the pattern on the surface of the moon, that in some cultures is called the rabbit, suddenly looked to both of us like a kneeling figure raising his arms in prayer. Chuckling happily, the sadhu walked away along the gentle dunes.
"I love you, Karla," I said when we were alone again. "I loved you the first second I saw you. I think I've loved you for as long as there's been love in the world. I love your voice. I love your face. I love your hands. I love everything you do, and I love the way you do everything. It feels like magic when you touch me. I love the way your mind works, and the things you say.
And even though it's all true, all that, I don't really understand it, and I can't explain it-to you or to myself. I just love you. I just love you with all my heart. You do what God should do: you give me a reason to live. You give me a reason to love the world."
She kissed me, and our bodies settled together on the yielding sand. She clasped her hands in mine, and with our arms outstretched above our heads we made love while the praying moon seduced the sea, luring the waves to crash and crumble on the charmed, unfailing shore.
And for a week, then, we played at being tourists in Goa. We visited all the beaches on the coast of the Arabian Sea, from Chapora to Cape Rama. We slept for two nights on the white gold wonder of Colva Beach. We inspected all the churches in the Old Goa settlement. The Festival of St. Francis Xavier, held on the anniversary of the saint's death, every year, bound us in immense crowds of happy, hysterical pilgrims. The streets were thronged with people in their Sunday-best clothes. Merchants and street stall operators came from all over the territory. Processions of the blind, the lame, and the afflicted, hoping for a miracle, rambled toward the basilica of the saint. Xavier, a Spanish monk, was one of the seven original Jesuits in the order founded by his friend Ignatius Loyola. Xavier died in 1552. He was just forty six years old, but his spectacular proselytising missions to India, and what was then called the Far East, established his enduring legend. After numerous burials and disinterments, the much-exhumed body of St. Francis was finally installed in the Basilica of Bom Jesus, in Goa, in the early seventeenth century.
Still remarkably-some would say miraculously-well preserved, the body was exposed to public view once in every ten years.
While seemingly immune to decay, the saint's body had suffered various amputations and subtractions over the centuries. A Portuguese woman had bitten off one of the saint's toes, in the sixteenth century, in the hope of keeping it as a relic. Parts of the right hand had been sent to religious centres, as had chunks of the holy intestines. Karla and I offered outrageously extravagant bribes to the caretakers of the basilica, laughing all the while, but they steadfastly refused to allow us a peek at the venerable corpse.
"Why did you do the robberies?" she asked me on one of those warm nights of satin sky and rolling, mellisonant surf.
"I told you. My marriage broke up, and I lost my daughter. I cracked up, and got into drugs. Then I did the robberies to feed my heroin habit."
"No, I mean why robberies? Why not something else?"
It was a good question, and one that no-one in the justice system - cops, lawyers, judge, psychiatrist, or prison governors-had ever asked me.
"I've thought about it. I've thought about it a lot. It sounds weird, I know, but I think TV had a lot to do with it. Every hero on TV had a gun. And there was something... brave... about armed robbery. I know there really isn't anything brave about it - it's a gutless thing to do, scaring people with a gun-but it seemed the bravest way to steal money, then. I couldn't bring myself to hit old ladies over the head and steal their handbags, or break into people's private houses. Robbery seemed fair, somehow, as if I took a fair chance, every time I did it, of being shot dead-by the people I robbed, or by the cops."
She watched me in silence, almost matching her breathing to mine.
"And something else-there's this one special hero in Australia ..."
"Go on," she urged.
"His name was Ned Kelly. He was a young guy who found himself on the wrong side of the local lawmen. He was tough, but he wasn't really a hard man. He was young and wild. He was set up, mostly, by cops who had a grudge against him. A drunken cop had a crush on his sister, and tried to molest her. Ned stopped it, and that's when his trouble started. But there was more to it than that. They hated him for a lot of reasons-mostly for what he represented, which was a kind of spirit of rebellion. And I related to him, because I was a revolutionary."
"They have revolutions, in Australia?" she asked, with a puzzled laugh. "I never heard this."
"Not revolutions," I corrected her, "just revolutionaries. I was one of them. I was an anarchist. I learned how to shoot, and how to make bombs. We were ready to fight, when the revolution came-which it didn't, of course. And we were trying to stop our government from fighting the Vietnam War."
"Australia was in the Vietnam War?"
It was my turn to laugh.
"Yeah. Most people outside Australia don't know it, but we were in the war, all the way with the USA. Australian soldiers died beside American soldiers in Vietnam, and Australian boys were drafted to fight. Some of us refused to go, just like the American draft resisters. A lot of guys went to jail because they wouldn't fight. I didn't go to jail. I made bombs, and organised marches, and fought the cops at the barricades, until the government changed and they pulled us out of the war."
"Are you still one?"
"Still one what?"
"Are you still an anarchist?"
It was a hard question to answer, because it forced me to compare the man I'd once been with the man I'd allowed myself to become.
"Anarchists..." I began and then faltered. "No political philosophy I ever heard of loves the human race as much as anarchism. Every other way of looking at the world says that people have to be controlled, and ordered around, and governed.
Only the anarchists trust human beings enough to let them work it out for themselves. And I used to be that optimistic once. I used to believe and think like that. But I don't, any more. So, no-I guess I'm not an anarchist now."
"And that hero-when you did the armed robberies, you identified with him?"
"With Kelly, Ned Kelly, yeah. I think I did. He had a gang of young guys-his younger brother, and his two best friends-and they did these hold-ups, robbing people. The cops sent a hit squad after him, but he beat them, and a couple of cops got killed."
"What happened to him?"
"They caught him. There was a shoot-out. The government declared war on him. They sent a trainload of cops after him, and they surrounded his gang, at a hotel in the bush."
"A hotel, in a bush?"
"The bush-it's what we call the countryside, in Australia.
Anyway, Ned and his guys were surrounded by this army of cops. His best friend was shot in the throat, and killed. His kid brother, and another kid named Steve Hart, shot each other with their last bullets rather than let themselves be captured. They were nineteen years old. Ned had this armour made from steel-a helmet and a chest plate. He came at them, the army of cops, with both guns blazing. He frightened the shit out of them, at first, and they ran away. But their officers drove them back to the fight.
They shot Ned's legs out from under him. After a phoney trial, with false statements from witnesses, Ned Kelly was sentenced to death."
"Did they do it?"
"Yeah. His last words were, Such is life. That was the last thing he said. They hanged him, and then cut off his head, and used it as a paperweight. Before he died, he told the judge who'd sentenced him that they'd meet, very soon, in a higher court. The judge died not long after."
She was watching the story in my face as I told it. I reached out for a handful of sand, and let it run through my fingers. Two large bats passed over our heads. They were close enough for us to hear the dry-leaf rustle of their wings.
"I loved the Ned Kelly story when I was a kid. I wasn't the only one. Artists and writers and musicians and actors have all worked on the story, in one way or another. He put himself inside us, in the Australian psyche. He's the nearest thing we've got to Che Guevara, or Emiliano Zapata. When my brain got scrambled on heroin, I think I started to drown in a fantasy of his life and mine. But it was a messed-up version of the story. He was a thief who became a revolutionary. I was a revolutionary who became a thief. Every time I did a robbery-and I did a lot of them-I was sure the cops would be there, and I'd be killed. I was hoping it would happen. I played it out in my mind. I could see them calling me to stop, and I'd reach for a gun, and they'd shoot me dead. I was hoping the cops would shoot me down in the street. I wanted to die that way..."
She reached out to put an arm around my shoulders. With her free hand, she held my chin, and turned my head to face her smile.
"What are the women like, in Australia?" she asked, running her hand through my short, blonde hair.
I laughed, and she punched me in the ribs.
"I mean it! Tell me what they're like."
"Well, they're beautiful," I said, looking at _her beautiful face. "There's a lot of beautiful women in Australia. And they like to talk, and they like to party-they're pretty wild. And they're very direct.
They hate bullshit. There's nothing like an Australian woman for taking the piss out of you."
"Taking your piss?"
"Taking the piss," I laughed. "Letting the air out of your chest, you know, ridiculing you, stopping you from getting too many big ideas about yourself. They're great at it. And if they stick a pin in you, to let a bit of hot air out, you can be pretty certain you had it coming."
She lay back on the sand, with her hands clasped behind her head.
"I think Australians are very crazy," she said. "And I would like very much to go there."
And it should've been as happy, it should've been as easy, it should've been as good for ever as it was in those Goan days and nights of love. We should've built a life from the stars and the sea and the sand. And I should've listened to her-she told me almost nothing, but she did give me clues, and I know now that she put signs in her words and expressions that were as clear as the constellations over our heads. But i didn't listen. It's a fact of being in love that we often pay no attention whatsoever to the substance of what a lover says, while being intoxicated to ecstasy by the way it's said. I was in love with her eyes, but I didn't read them. I loved her voice, but I didn't really hear the fear and the anguish in it.
And when the last night came, and went, and I woke at dawn to prepare for the trip back to Bombay, I found her standing at the doorway, staring at the great shimmering pearl of the sea.
"Don't go back," she said as I put my hands on her shoulders and kissed her neck.
"What?" I laughed.
"Don't go back to Bombay."
"Why not?"
"I don't want you to."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Just what I said-I don't want you to go."
I laughed, because I thought it had to be a joke.
"Okay," I said, smiling and waiting for the punch line. "So, why don't you want me to go?"
"Do I have to have a reason?" she demanded.
"Well... _yeah." "It just so happens, I do have reasons. But I'm not going to tell you."
"You're not?"
"No. I don't think I should have to. If I tell you I've got reasons, it should be enough-if you love me, like you say you do."
Her manner was so vehement, and the stand she was taking so inflexible and unexpected, that I was too surprised to be angry.
"Okay, okay," I said reasonably, "let's try this again. I have to go back to Bombay. So, why don't you come with me, and then we'll be together, for ever and ever, amen."
"I won't go back," she said flatly.
"Why the hell not?"
"I can't... I just don't want to, and I don't want you to, either."
"Well, I don't see the problem. I can do what I have to do in Bombay, and you can wait here. I'll come back when it's all done."
"I don't want you to go," she repeated in that same monotone.
"Come on, Karla. I have to go back."
"No, you don't."
My smile curled into a frown.
"Yes, I do. I promised Ulla I'd be back in ten days. She's still in trouble. You know that."
"Ulla can look after herself," she hissed, still refusing to turn and look at me.
"Are you jealous of Ulla?" I asked, grinning, as I reached out to stroke her hair.
"Oh, don't be stupid!" she snapped. She turned, and there was fury in her eyes. "I like Ulla, but I'm telling you she can take care of herself."
"Take it easy. What's the matter? You knew I was going back.
We've talked about this. I'm getting into the passport business.
You know how important that is for me."
"I'll get you a passport. I'll get you five passports!"
My stubbornness began to rouse itself.
"I don't want you to get me a passport. I want to learn how to make them and change them myself. I want to learn it all- everything I can. They're going to teach me how to fix passports, and forge them. If I learn that, I'll be free. And I want to be free, Karla. Free. That's what I want."
"Why should you be any different?" she demanded.
"What do you mean?" "Nobody gets what they want," she said, "Nobody does. Nobody."
Her fury dimmed into something worse, something I'd never seen in her: a resigned and defeated sorrow. I knew it was a sin to put such a feeling in such a woman, in any woman. And I knew, watching her little smile fade and die, that sooner or later I would pay for it.
I spoke to her softly, slowly, trying to win her agreement.
"I sent Ulla to my friend Abdullah's. He's looking after her. I can't just leave her there. I have to go back."
"I won't be here, when you look for me next time," she said, turning to lean against the doorway once more.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"Just what I said."
"Is that some kind of threat? Is that an ultimatum?"
"You can call it what you like," she answered dully, as if waking from a dream. "It's just a fact. If you go back to Bombay, I'll give up on you. I won't go with you, and I won't wait for you.
Stay with me now, here, or go back alone. The choice is yours.
But if you go back, it will finish us."
I stared at her, bewildered and angry and in love.
"You have to give me more than that," I said, more softly.
"You've gotta tell me why. You've gotta talk to me, Karla. You can't just give me an ultimatum, without any reason, and expect me to go along with it. There's a difference between a choice and an ultimatum: a choice means that you know what's going on, and why, before you decide. I'm not the kind of man you can give an ultimatum to. If I was, I wouldn't have escaped from jail. You can't tell me what to do, Karla. You can't order me to do something, without an explanation. I'm not that kind of man.
You've gotta tell me what's going on."
"I can't."
I sighed, and spoke evenly, but my teeth were clenched.
"I don't think I'm... doing a very good job... of explaining this. The fact is, there isn't a lot that I respect about myself.
But the little bit that I've still got left-it's all I've got. A man has to respect himself, Karla, before he can respect anyone else. If I just give in, and do whatever you want me to do, without any kind of reason, I wouldn't respect myself. And if you tell the truth, you wouldn't respect me, either. So, I'm asking you again. What's this all about?"
"I... can't." "You mean, you won't."
"I mean, I can't," she said softly, and then she looked straight into my eyes. "And I won't. That's just how it is. You told me, just a little while ago, that you would do anything for me. I want you to stay here. I don't want you to go back to Bombay. If you do go back, it's all over between us."
"What kind of man would I be," I asked, trying to smile, "if I went along with that?"
"I guess that's your answer, and you've made your choice," she sighed, pushing past me to walk out of the hut.
I packed my bag and strapped it to the bike. When all was ready, I went down to the sea. She rose from the waves and walked toward me slowly, dragging her feet through the shifting sand. The singlet and lungi clung to her body. Her black hair gleamed sleek and wet under the soaring sun. The most beautiful woman I'd ever seen.
"I love you," I said, as she came into my arms and we kissed. I spoke the words against her lips, her face, her eyes. I held her close to me. "I love you. It'll be okay. You'll see. I'll be back soon."
"No," she answered woodenly, her body not stiff, but utterly still, the life and the love drained out of it. "It won't be all right. It won't be okay. It's over. And I won't be here, after today."
I looked into her eyes, and felt my own body harden, hollowed out by pride. My hands fell from her shoulders. I turned, and walked back to the bike. Riding to the last little cliff that gave a view of the beach, our beach, I stopped the bike and shielded my eyes to look for her. But she was gone. There was nothing but the waves breaking like the curved spines of playful porpoises, and the traceless, empty, tousled sheets of sand.