Sunlight shattered on the water, shedding streaks in crystal brilliant slivers across waves rolling swollen on the broad meniscus of the bay. Birds of fire in the approaching sunset wheeled and turned as one in their flocks, like banners of waving silk. From a low-walled courtyard on the white marble island of Haji Ali Mosque, I watched pilgrims and pious local residents wend and weave, leaving the shrine for the shore along the flat stone path. The incoming tide would submerge the path, they knew, and then only boats could bring them home. Those who'd sorrowed or repented, like others on previous days, had cast garlands of flowers upon the shallower, receding sea. Riding the returning tide, those orange-red and faded grey-white flowers floated back, garlanding the path itself with the love, loss, and longing that was prayed upon the water by a thousand broken hearts each wave determined day.
And we, that band of brothers, had come to the shrine to pay our last respects, as they say, and pray for the soul of our friend Salman Mustaan. It was the first time since the night he'd been killed that we'd gathered as a group. For weeks after the battle with Chuha and his gang we'd separated, to hide and to heal our wounds. There'd been an outcry in the press, of course. The words carnage and massacre were spread across the pages of the Bombay dailies like butter on a prison guard's sugared bun. Calls had rung out for justice, undefined, and punishment, unremitting. And there was no doubt that the Bombay police could've made arrests.
They certainly knew which gang was responsible for the little heaps of bodies they'd found in Chuha's house. But there were four good reasons not to act: reasons that were more compelling, for the city's cops, than the unrighteous indignation of the press.
First, there was no-one from inside the house, on the streets outside, or anywhere else in Bombay who was willing to testify against us, even off the record. Second, the battle had put an end to the Sapna killers, which was something the cops would've been very glad to take care of personally. Third, the Walidlalla gang under Chuha's leadership had killed a policeman, months before, when he'd stumbled into one of their major drug deals near Flora Fountain.
The case had remained unsolved, officially, because the cops had nothing they could take into court. But they'd known, almost from the day it had happened, that Chuha's men had spilled the blood.
The bloodshed in Chuha's house was very close to what the cops themselves had wanted to do to the Rat and his men-and would've accomplished, sooner or later, if Salman hadn't beaten them to it. And fourth, the payment of a crore of rupees, appropriated from Chuha's operations and applied in liberal smears to a small multitude of forensic palms, had put a helpless shrug in all the right constabulary shoulders.
Privately, the cops told Sanjay, who was the new leader of the Khader Khan council, that the clock was ticking on him, and he'd used up all his chances on that one throw of the dice. They wanted peace-and continued prosperity, of course-and, if he didn't pull his men into line, they would do it for him. And by the way, they told him after accepting his ten-million-rupee bribe, and just before they threw him back onto the street, that guy Abdullah, in your outfit, we don't want to see him again.
Ever. He was dead once, in Bombay. He'll be dead again, for good this time, if we see him...
One by one, after weeks of lying low, we'd made our way back into the city and back to the jobs we'd done in the Sanjay gang, as it had become known. I returned from hiding in Goa and took up my position in the passport operation with Villu and Krishna. When the call finally went out for us to gather at Haji Ali, I rode to the shrine on my Enfield bike, and walked with Abdullah and Mahmoud Melbaaf across the rippling wavelets of the bay.
Mahmoud led the prayers, kneeling at the front of our group. The little balcony, one of many surrounding the island mosque, was ours alone. Facing toward Mecca, and with the breeze filling and then falling from his white shirt, Mahmoud spoke for all the men who knelt or stood behind him:
Praise be to God, Lord of the Universe, The Compassionate, the Merciful, Sovereign of the Day of Judgement! You alone we worship, and to You alone we turn for help.
Guide us to the straight path...
Farid, Abdullah, Amir, Faisal, and Nazeer-the Muslim core of the council-knelt behind Mahmoud. Sanjay was a Hindu. Andrew was a Christian. They knelt beside me and behind the praying group. I stood with my head bowed and my hands clasped in front of me. I knew the words of the prayers and I knew the simple standing, kneeling, and bowing observations. I could've joined in. I knew that Mahmoud and the others would've been delighted if I had. But I couldn't bring myself to kneel with them. The separation that they found so easy and instinctual-this is my criminal life, over here, and that's my religious life, over there-was impossible for me. I did speak to Salman, whispering my hope that he'd found peace, wherever he was. Yet I was too self-consciously aware of the darkness in my heart to offer more than that tiny prayer. So I stood in silence, feeling like an impostor, a spy on that island of devotions, as the amethyst evening blessed the balcony of praying men with gold-and-lilac light. And the words of Mahmoud's prayer seemed a perfect fit for my withered honour and my thinning pride: those who have incurred your wrath... those who have gone astray...
At the end of prayers we hugged one another, according to custom, and made our way back along the path toward the shore. Mahmoud was leading the way. We'd all prayed, in our own ways, and we'd all cried for Salman, but we didn't look the part of devout visitors to the holy shrine. We all wore sunglasses. We all wore new clothes. Everyone, except me, carried a year or more of smuggler's wages in gold chains, first-tier watches, rings, and bracelets. And we swaggered. We walked the walk: the little dance-step that fighting-fit gangsters do when they're armed and dangerous. It was a bizarre procession, and one so menacing that we had to work hard to make the professional beggars on the island pathway take the sheaves of rupee notes we'd brought as alms.
The men had three cars parked near the sea wall. It was almost exactly where I'd stood with Abdullah on the night I met Khaderbhai. My bike was parked beyond them, and at the cars I paused to say goodbye.
"Come and have a meal with us, Lin," Sanjay offered, putting real affection in the invitation.
I knew the meal would be fun, after the melancholy observations at the shrine, and that it would include a choice of drugs and a choice of happy, silly, pretty girls. I was grateful for the offer, but I refused.
"Thanks, man, but I'm meeting someone."
"Arrey, bring her along, yaar," Sanjay suggested. "It's a girl, isn't it?"
"Yeah. It's a girl. But... we have to talk. I'll see you guys later."
Abdullah and Nazeer wanted to walk me to my bike. We'd only taken a few steps when Andrew ran up behind us and called me to stop.
"Lin," he said quickly, nervously, "what happened with us in the car park and all. I... I just want to say... I'm sorry, yaar.
I've been wanting to make-well-an apology, you know?"
"It's okay."
"No-it's not okay."
He pulled at my arm, near the elbow, leading me away from Nazeer and just out of his hearing. Leaning in close to me, he spoke softly and quickly.
"I'm not sorry for what I said about Khaderbhai. I know he was the boss and all, and I know you... you kind of loved him..."
"Yeah. I kinda did."
"But still, I'm not sorry for what I said about him. You know, all his holy preaching, it didn't stop him from handing old Madjid over to Ghani and his Sapna guys when he needed someone to take the fuckin' fall, and keep the cops off his back. Madjid was supposed to be his friend, yaar. But he let them cut him up, just to throw the cops off the case."
"Well..."
"And all those rules, about this and that and what-all, you know, they came to nothing-Sanjay has put me in charge of Chuha's girls, and the videos. And Faisal and Amir, they're running the garad. We're gonna make fuckin' crores out of it. I'm getting my place on the council, and so are they. So, Khaderbhai's day is over, just like I said it was."
I looked back into Andrew's camel-brown eyes, and let out a deep breath. Dislike had been simmering since the night in the car park. I hadn't forgotten what he'd said, and how close we'd come to fighting it out. His little speech had made me angrier still.
If we hadn't just been to a funeral service for a friend we'd both liked, I probably would've hit him already.
"You know, Andrew," I muttered, not smiling, "I gotta tell ya, I'm not gettin' much comfort from this little apology of yours."
"That's not the apology, Lin," he explained, frowning in puzzlement. "The apology is for your mother, and for what I said about her. I'm sorry, man. I'm really, really, sorry for what I said. It was a very shitty thing to say-about your mother, or anybody's mother. Nobody should say shitty things like that about a guy's mother. You would've been well within your rights, yaar, to take a fuckin' shot at me. And... I'm damn glad you didn't.
Mothers are sacred, yaar, and I'm sure your mother is a very fine lady. So, please, I'm asking you, like-please accept my apology."
"It's okay," I said, putting out my hand. He seized the hand in both of his, and shook it vigorously.
Abdullah, Nazeer, and I turned away and walked to the bike.
Abdullah was unusually quiet. The silence he carried with him was ominous and unsettling.
"Are you going back to Delhi tonight?" I asked.
"Yes," he answered. "At midnight."
"You want me to go to the airport with you?"
"No. Thank you. It is better not. There should be no police looking at me. If you are there, they will look at us. But maybe I will see you in Delhi. There is a job in Sri Lanka-you should do it with me."
"I don't know, man," I demurred, grinning in surprise at his earnestness. "There's a war on in Sri Lanka."
"There is no man, and no place, without war," he replied, and it struck me that it was the most profound thing he'd ever said to me. "The only thing we can do is choose a side, and fight. That is the only choice we get-who we fight for, who we fight against. That is life."
"I... I hope there's more to it than that, brother. But, shit, maybe you're right."
"I think you can do this with me," he pressed, clearly troubled by what he was asking me to do. "This is the last work for Khaderbhai."
"What do you mean?"
"Khader Khan, he asked me to do this job for him, when the... what is it-the sign, I think, or the message-when it comes from Sri Lanka. Now, the message, it has come."
"I'm sorry, brother, I don't know what you're talking about," I stated softly, not wanting to make it harder for him. "Just take it easy, and explain it to me. What message?"
He spoke to Nazeer quickly, in Urdu. The older man nodded several times and then said something about names, or not mentioning names. Nazeer turned his head to face me, and favoured me with a wide, warm smile.
"In the Sri Lanka war," Abdullah explained, "there is fighting- Tamil Tigers against Sri Lanka army. Tigers are Hindus.
Sinhalese, they are Buddhist. But in the middle of them, there are the others-Tamil Muslims-with no guns and no army.
Everybody kill them, and nobody fight for them. They need passports and money-gold money. We go to help them."
"Khaderbhai," Nazeer added, "he make this plan. Only three men.
Abdullah, and me, and one gora-you. Three men. We go."
I owed him. Nazeer would never mention that fact, I knew, and he wouldn't hold it against me if I didn't go with him. We'd been through too much together. But I did owe him my life. It would be very hard to refuse him. And there was something else-something wise, perhaps, and fervently generous-in that rare, wide smile he'd given me. It seemed that he was offering me more than just the chance to work with him, and work off my debt. He blamed himself for Khader's death, but he knew that I still felt guilty and ashamed that I hadn't been there with him, pretending to be his American, when Khader had died. He's giving me a chance, I thought, as I let my eyes move from his to Abdullah's and back again. He's giving me a way to close the book on it.
"So, when would you be going on this trip? Roughly speaking?"
"Soon," Abdullah laughed. "A few months, no more than that. I am going to Delhi. I will send someone to bring you, when the time is coming. Two, three months, Lin brother."
I heard a voice in my head-or not a voice, really, but just words in whispered echoes like stones hissing across the still surface of a lake-Killer... He's a killer... Don't do it...
Get away... Get away now... And the voice was right, of course.
Dead right. And I wish I could say that it took me more than those few heartbeats to make up my mind to join him.
"Two, three months," I replied, offering my hand. He shook it, putting both of his hands over mine. I looked at Nazeer and smiled as I spoke into his eyes. "We'll do Khader's job. We'll finish it."
Nazeer's jaw locked tight, bunching the muscles of his cheeks and exaggerating the downward curve of his mouth. He frowned at his sandaled feet as if they were disobedient puppies. Then he suddenly hurled himself at me, and locked his hands behind me in a punishing hug. It was the violent, wrestler's hug of a man whose body had never learned to speak the language of his heart-except when he was dancing-and it ended as abruptly and furiously as it had begun. He whipped his thick arms away and shoved me backward with his chest, shaking his head and shuddering as if a shark had passed him in shallow water. He looked up quickly, and the warmth that reddened his eyes vied with a grim warning clamped in the bad-luck horseshoe of his mouth. I knew that if I ever raised that moment of affection with him, or referred to it in any way, I would lose his friendship forever.
I kicked the bike to life and straddled it, pushing away from the kerb with my legs and pointing it in the direction of Nana Chowk and Colaba.
"Saatch aur himmat," Abdullah called out as I rode past him.
I waved, and nodded, but I couldn't give the answering call to the slogan. I didn't know how much truth or courage was in my decision to join them on their mission to Sri Lanka. Not much, it seemed to me, as I rode away from them, from all of them, and surrendered to the warm night, and the press and pause of traffic.
A blood-red moon was rising from the sea as I reached the Back Bay road leading to Nariman Point. I parked the bike beside a cold-drink stall, locked it, and threw the keys to the manager, who was a friend from the slum. With the moon behind me, I set out along the footpath beside a long curve of sandy beach where fishermen often repaired their nets and battered boats. There was a festival on that night in the Sassoon Dock area. The celebrations had drawn most of the local people from the huts and shelters on the beach. The road where I walked was almost deserted.
And then I saw her. She was sitting on the edge of an old fishing boat that was half-buried on the beach. Only the prow and a few metres of the long boat's gunnels protruded from the surrounding waves of sand. She was wearing a long, salwar top over loose pants. Her knees were drawn up, and she was resting her chin on her arms as she stared out at the dark water.
"This is why I like you, you know," I said, sitting down beside her on the rail of the beached fishing boat.
"Hello, Lin," she replied, smiling, her green eyes as dark as the water. "I'm glad to see you. I thought you weren't coming."
"Your message sounded kind of... urgent. I nearly didn't get it.
It was just lucky that I ran into Didier on his way to the airport, and he told me."
"Luck is what happens to you when fate gets tired of waiting," she murmured.
"Fuck you, Karla," I replied, laughing.
"Old habits," she grinned, "die hard-and lie harder."
Her eyes moved across my features for a moment, as if she was searching a map for a familiar reference point. Her smile slowly faded.
"I'm going to miss Didier."
"Me, too," I muttered, thinking that he was probably in the air already, and on his way to Italy. "But I think he'll be back before too long."
"Why?"
"I put the Zodiac Georges in his apartment, to look after it."
"Ooooh!" she winced, making a perfect kiss of her perfect mouth.
"Yeah. If that doesn't bring him back quick, nothing will. You know how he loves that apartment."
She didn't answer, but her stare tightened in the intensity of her concentration.
"Khaled's here, in India," she remarked flatly, watching my eyes.
"Where?"
"In Delhi-well, near Delhi, actually."
"When?"
"The report came in two days ago. I had it checked. I think it's him."
"What report?"
She looked away, towards the sea, and breathed a long, slow sigh.
"Jeet has access to all the wire services. One of them sent a report about a new spiritual leader named Khaled Ansari, who walked all the way from Afghanistan, and was pulling in big crowds of followers wherever he went. When I saw it, I asked Jeet to check it out for me. His people sent a description, and it fits."
"Wow... thank God... thank God."
"Yeah, maybe," she murmured. Something of the old mischief and mystery flared in her eyes.
"And you're sure it's him?"
"Sure enough to go there myself," she answered, looking at me once more.
"Do you know where he is-now, I mean?"
"Not exactly, but I think I know where he's going." "Where?"
"Varanasi. Khaderbhai's teacher, Idriss, lives there. He's very old now, but he still teaches there."
"Khaderbhai's teacher?" I asked, stunned to think that in all the hundreds of hours I'd spent with Khader, listening to his philosophy lectures, he'd never mentioned the name.
"Yes. I met him once, right at the start, when I first came to India, with Khader. I was... I don't know... I guess you'd call it a nervous breakdown. There was this plane, going to Singapore.
I don't even know how I got on it. And I broke down-just, kind of, cracked up. And Khader, he was on the same plane. And he put his arm around me. I told him everything... absolutely... everything. And next thing, I'm in this cave with a giant Buddha statue and this teacher named Idriss-Khader's teacher."
There was a pause while she let those memories pull her into the past, but then she shook herself free, and back into the moment.
"I think that's where Khaled is going-to see Idriss. The old guru fascinated him. He was obsessed about meeting him. I don't know why he never got around to it then, but I think that's where he's headed now. Or maybe he's already there. He used to ask me about him all the time. Idriss taught Khader everything he knew about Resolution theory, and-"
"About what?"
"Resolution theory. That's what Khader called it, but he said it was Idriss who gave it that name. It was his philosophy of life, Khader's philosophy, about how the universe is always moving toward-"
"Complexity," I interrupted. "I know. I talked about it a lot with him. But he never called it Resolution theory. And he never talked about Idriss."
"That's funny, because I think he loved Idriss, you know, like a father. Once, he called him the teacher of all teachers. And I know he wanted to retire up there, not far from Varanasi, with Idriss. Anyway, that's where I'm going to start looking for Khaled."
"When?"
"Tomorrow."
"O-kay," I responded, avoiding her eyes. "Is this... is this anything to do with... well, you and Khaled, from before?"
"You can be such a fuck sometimes, Lin, you know that?"
I looked up sharply, but I didn't respond. "Did you know Ulla's in town?" she asked after a while.
"No. When did she get in? Have you seen her?"
"That's just it. I got a message from her. She was at the President, and she wanted to see me right away."
"Did you go?"
"I didn't want to," she mused. "If you got the message, would you have gone?"
"I guess," I answered, staring out at the bay where moonlight crested on the serpent curves of a gently rolling sea. "But not for her. For Modena. I saw him a while ago. He's still nuts about her."
"I saw him tonight," she said quietly.
"Tonight?"
"Yes. Just before. With her. It freaked me out. I went to the hotel and up to her room. There was another guy there, a guy named Ramesh-"
"Modena told me about him. They're friends."
"So, he opens the door, and I walk in, and I see Ulla, sitting on the bed, resting her back against the wall. And Modena, he's lying across her legs, with his head back near her shoulder. That face..."
"I know. It's a hell of a mess."
"It was weird. It was freaking me out, the whole scene. I'm not sure why. And Ulla, she tells me she inherited a lot of money from her father-they're very rich, you know, Ulla's family. They practically own the town in Germany where she was born, but they cut her off cold when she was heavy into drugs. She never got a thing from them for years-not until her father died. So when she inherited the money, she got this idea to come back and look for Modena. She felt guilty, she said, and she couldn't live with herself. And she found him. He was waiting for her. And they were together, when I went to see her, like some... some kind of a love story."
"Damn, if he wasn't right about her," I said softly. "He told me - he knew she'd come back for him, and she really did. I never believed it for a second. I thought he was just crazy."
"The way they were sitting together, with him across her legs.
You know the Pieta? Michelangelo? It looked exactly like that. It was so strange. It really shook me up. Some things are so weird they make you angry, you know?"
"What did she want?" "What do you mean?"
"Why did she call you to the hotel?"
"Oh, I get it," she said, with a little smile. "Ulla always wants something."
I raised an eyebrow, returning her stare, but said nothing.
"She wanted me to arrange a passport for Modena. He's been here for years. He's an overstayer. And he's got a few problems with the Spanish police, under his own name. He needs a new passport to get back into Europe. He could pass for Italian. Or maybe Portuguese."
"Leave it to me," I said calmly, thinking that I knew the reason, at last, why she'd asked me to meet with her. "I'll get on it tomorrow. I know how to get in touch with him, for photos and whatever-although there'd be no mistaking his face at a customs check. I'll fix it."
"Thanks," she said, meeting my eyes with such fervent intensity that my heart began to beat hard against my chest. It is always a fool's mistake, Didier once said to me, to be alone with someone you shouldn't have loved. "What are you doing, Lin?"
"Sitting here with you," I replied, smiling.
"No, I mean, what are you going to do? Are you going to stay in Bombay?"
"Why?"
"I was going to ask you... if you want to come with me, to find Khaled."
I laughed, but she didn't laugh with me.
"That's the second-best offer I've had today."
"The second best?" she drawled. "What was the first?"
"Someone invited me to go to the war, in Sri Lanka."
She clamped her lips tightly around an angry response, but I held my hands up in surrender, and spoke quickly.
"I'm just kidding, Karla, just kidding. Take it easy. I mean, it's true about the invitation to go to Sri Lanka, but I'm just ... you know."
She relaxed, smiling again.
"I'm out of practice. It's been a long time, Lin."
"So... why the invitation now?"
"Why not?"
"That's not good enough, Karla, and you know it."
"Okay," she sighed, glancing at me and then looking away to follow the breeze weaving wave-patterns on the sand. "I guess I was hoping to find something like... like what we had in Goa."
"What about... Jeet?" I asked, ignoring the opening she'd given me. "How does he feel about you going off to find Khaled?"
"We lead separate lives. We do what we want. We go where we want."
"Sounds... breezy," I offered, struggling to find a word that wasn't a lie, but wouldn't offend. "Didier made it sound more serious than that-told me the guy asked you to marry him."
"He did," she said flatly.
"And?"
"And what?"
"And will you-marry him, I mean?"
"Yes. I think I will."
"Why?"
"Why not?"
"Don't start that again."
"Sorry," she said, sighing through a tired smile. "I've been running with a different crowd. Why marry Jeet? He's a nice guy, he's healthy, and he's loaded. And, hey, I think I'll do a better job of spending his money than he does."
"So what you're telling me is that you're ready to die for this love."
She laughed and then turned to me, suddenly serious again. Her eyes, pale with moonlight; her eyes, the green of water lilies after the rain; her long hair, black as forest river stones; her hair that was like holding the night itself in the wrap of my fingers; her lips, starred with incandescent light; lips of camellia-petal softness warmed with secret whispers. Beautiful.
And I loved her. I loved her still so much, so hard, but with no heat or heart at all. That falling love, that helpless, dreaming, soaring love, was gone. And I suddenly knew in those seconds of ... cold adoration, I suppose... that the power she'd once held over me was also gone. Or, more than that, her power had moved into me, and had become mine. I held all the cards. And then I wanted to know. It wasn't good enough to just accept what had happened between us. I wanted to know everything.
"Why didn't you tell me, Karla?"
She gave an anguished little sigh, and stretched her legs out to bury her bare feet in the sand. Watching the small cascades of soft sand spill over her moving feet, she spoke in a dull, flat tone, as if she was composing a letter-or recalling a letter, perhaps, that she'd written once and never sent to me. "I knew you were going to ask me, and I think that's why I've waited so long to get in touch with you. I let people know that I was around, and I asked after you, but I didn't do anything, until today, because... I knew you'd ask me."
"If it makes it any easier," I interrupted, sounding harder than I'd intended, "I know you burned down Madame Zhou's place-"
"Did Ghani tell you that?"
"Ghani? No. I figured that one out myself."
"Ghani did it for me-he arranged it. That was the last time I spoke to him."
"The last time I spoke to him was about an hour before he died."
"Did he tell you anything about her?" she asked, perhaps hoping that there were some parts of it she wouldn't have to tell me.
"About Madame Zhou? No. He didn't say a word."
"He told me... a lot," she sighed. "He filled in a few gaps. I think it was Ghani who tipped me over the edge with her. He told me she had Rajan following you, and she only pulled her strings with the cops to get you arrested when Rajan told her you made love to me. I always hated her, but that did it. I just... it was one thing too many. She couldn't let me have it, that time with you. She wouldn't let me have it. So I called in some dues with Ghani, and he arranged it. The riot. It was a great fire. I lit some of it myself."
She broke off, staring at her feet in the sand, and clamped her jaw shut. Reflected lights gleamed in her eyes. For a moment I let myself imagine how those green eyes must've blazed with firelight as she'd watched the Palace burn.
"I know about the States, too," I said after a while. "I know what happened there."
She looked at me quickly, reading my eyes.
"Lisa," she said. I didn't answer. Then, knowing instantly, as women do, what she couldn't possibly know, she smiled. "That's good-Lisa and you. You and Lisa. That's... very good."
My expression didn't change, and her smile faded as she looked down at the sand once more.
"Did you kill anyone, Lin?"
"When?" I asked, not sure if she was talking about Afghanistan or the much-smaller war against Chuha and his gang. "Ever."
"No."
"I'm glad," she breathed, sighing again. "I wish..."
She was silent again for a while. From somewhere beyond the deserted beach we heard the sounds of the festival: happy, roaring laughter rising over the blare of a brass band. Much closer, ocean music gushed onto the soft assenting shore, and the palms above us trembled in the cooling breeze.
"When I went there... when I walked into his house, into the room where he was standing, he smiled at me. He was... actually ... happy to see me. And for a split second, I changed my mind, and I thought it was... over. Then, I saw something else, right there in the middle of his smile... something dirty, and... he said... I knew you'd be back for more, one of these days... or something like that. And he... he kind of, he started looking around like he was making sure nobody was gonna bust in on us ..."
"It's okay, Karla."
"When he saw the gun, it was worse, because he started... not begging... but apologising... and it was real clear, real clear, that he knew what he did to me... he knew... every part of it, and how bad it was. And that was much worse. And then he was dead. There wasn't a lot of blood. I thought there would be.
Maybe there was later. And I don't remember the rest, until I was in the plane with Khader's arm around me."
She was quiet. I leaned over to pick up a conical shell descending in spirals to a sharp, eroded point. I pressed it into my palm until it pierced the skin, and then threw it away across the rippled sand. When I looked at her again, I found that she was staring at me and frowning hard.
"What do you want?" she asked bluntly.
"I want to know why you never told me about Khaderbhai."
"Do you want it straight?"
"Of course I do."
"I couldn't trust you," she declared, looking away again. "That's not exactly right-I mean, I didn't know if I could trust you. I think... now-I know-I could've trusted you all along."
"Okay." My teeth were touching, and my lips didn't move.
"I tried to tell you. I tried to get you to stay with me in Goa.
You know that."
"It would've made a difference," I snapped, but then sighed just as she had, and relaxed my tone. "It might've made a difference if you'd told me that you worked for him-that you recruited me for him."
"When I ran away... when I went to Goa, I was in a bad way. The Sapna thing-that was my idea. Did you know that?"
"No. Jesus, Karla."
Her eyes narrowed as she read the angry disappointment in my face.
"Not the killing part," she explained, and her expression was shocked, I think, to realise that I'd misunderstood what she'd said, and that I believed her capable of devising the Sapna killings. "That was all Ghani's idea-his spin on it. They needed to get stuff in and out, through Bombay, and they needed help from people who didn't want to give it. My idea was to create a common enemy-Sapna-and to get everybody working with us to defeat him. It was supposed to be done with posters, and graffiti, and some harmless bomb hoaxes-to make it seem like there was a dangerous, charismatic leader out there. But Ghani didn't think it was scary enough. That's why he started the killings..."
"And you left... for Goa."
"Yeah. You know the very first place I heard about the killings- what Ghani was doing with my idea? It was at that Village in the Sky... that lunch you took me to. Your friends were talking about it. And it really shook me up that day. I stuck it out for a while, trying to stop it, somehow. But it was hopeless. And then Khader told me you were in jail-but you had to stay there until Madame Zhou did what he wanted her to do. And then he... he got me to work on the Pakistani, the young general. He was a contact of mine, and he liked me. So I... I did it. I worked him, while you were in there, until Khader got what he wanted.
And then I just... quit. I'd had enough."
"But you went back to him."
"I tried to get you to stay with me."
"Why?"
"What do you mean?"
She was frowning, and seemed irritated by the question.
"Why did you want me to stay with you?"
"Isn't that obvious?"
"No. I'm sorry. It's not. Did you love me, Karla? I'm not asking if you loved me like I loved you. I mean... did you love me at all? Did you love me at all, Karla?" "I liked you..."
"Yeah..."
"No, it's true. I liked you, more than anyone else I knew. That's a lot for me, Lin."
My jaw was locked tight, and I turned my head away from her. She waited for a few moments and then spoke again.
"I couldn't tell you about Khader. I couldn't. It would've felt like I was betraying him."
"Betraying me was different, I guess."
"Fuck, Lin, it wasn't like that. If you'd stayed with me, we both would've been out of that world, but even then I couldn't have told you. Anyway, it doesn't matter. You wouldn't stay with me, so I never thought I'd see you again. Then I got a message from Khader saying you were in Gupta's place, killing yourself with smack, and he needed me to help him get you out of there. That's how I got back into it. That's how I went back to him."
"I just don't get it, Karla."
"What don't you get?"
"You worked for him, and Ghani, for how long-before the Sapna thing?"
"About four years."
"So, you must've seen a lot of other stuff go down-you must've heard about it, at the very least. You're working for the Bombay mafia, for fuck's sake, or a goddamn branch of it. You're working for one of Bombay's biggest gangsters, like I was. You knew they killed people, before Ghani went psycho with his Sapna gang. Why ... after all that, did you suddenly get freaked out with the Sapna thing? I don't get it."
She'd been watching me closely. I knew she was clever enough to see that I was striking back at her with the questions, but her eyes told me that she saw more than that. Although I'd tried to hide it, I knew she'd picked up the scepticism barbed with righteous censure in my tone. When I finished she took a breath, and seemed about to speak, but then she paused as if reconsidering her reply.
"You think I left them," she began at last, with a little frown of surprise, "and went to Goa because I wanted to be... what... forgiven, for what I'd done? Or for what I'd been part of? Is that it?"
"Did you?" "No. I wanted to be forgiven, and I still do, but not for that. I left them because I didn't feel anything at all about the Sapna killings. I was stunned... and... sort of, freaked out, at first, that Ghani had turned the idea around so much. And I didn't like it. I thought it was stupid. I thought it was unnecessary and it would get us all into trouble we didn't need.
And I tried to talk Khaderbhai out of it. I tried to get them to stop. But I didn't feel anything about it, even when they killed Madjid. And I... I used to like him, you know? I liked old Madjid. He was the best of them, in a way. But I didn't feel anything when he died. And I didn't feel it, not even a bit, when Khader told me he had to leave you in jail and let you get beaten up. I liked you-more than I liked anyone else-but I didn't feel bad or sorry. I kind of understood it-that it had to happen, and it was just bad luck that it was happening to _you. I felt nothing. And that's when it hit me-that's when I knew I had to get away."
"What about Goa? You can't tell me that was nothing."
"No. When you came to Goa and you found me, like I knew you would, it was... pretty good. I started to think, this is what it's like... this is what they're talking _about... But then you wouldn't stay. You had to go back-back to _him-and I knew he wanted you, maybe even needed you. And I couldn't tell you what I knew about him, because I owed him, and I didn't know if I could trust you. So I let you go. And when you left, I didn't feel anything at all. Not a thing. I didn't want to be forgiven because of what I did. I wanted to be forgiven-and I still want it, and that's why I'm going to Khaled and Idriss-because I don't feel sorry for any of it, and I don't regret a thing. I'm cold inside, Lin. I like people, and I like things, but I don't love any of them-not even myself-and I don't really care about them. And, you know, the strange thing is, I don't really wish that I did care."
And there it was. I had it all-all the truth and detail that I'd needed to know since that day on the mountain, in the withering snow, when Khader had told me about her. I think I'd expected to feel... nourished, perhaps, and vindicated, by forcing her to tell me what she'd done and why she'd done it. I think I'd hoped to be released by it, and solaced, just by hearing her tell me.
But it wasn't like that. I felt empty: the kind of emptiness that's sad but not distressed, pitying but not broken-hearted, and damaged, somehow, but clearer and cleaner for it. And then I knew what it was, that emptiness: there's a name for it, a word we use often, without realising the universe of peace that's enfolded in it.
The word is free.
"For what it's worth," I said, reaching out to put my hand against her cheek, "I forgive you, Karla. I forgive you, and I love you, and I always will."
Our lips met like waves that crest and merge the whirl of storming seas. I felt that I was falling: free and falling at last from the love that had opened, lotus-layered, within me. And together we did fall the length of her black hair to the still warm sand in the hollow of the sunken boat.
When our lips parted, stars rushed through that kiss into her sea-green eyes. An age of longing passed from those eyes into mine. An age of passion passed from my grey eyes into hers. All the hunger, all the fleshed and hope-starved craving, streamed from eye to eye: the moment we met; the laughing wit of Leopold's; the Standing Babas; the Village in the Sky; the cholera; the swarm of rats; the secrets that she'd whispered near exhausted sleep; the singing boat on the flood beneath the Gateway; the storm when we made love the first time; the joy and loneliness in Goa; and our love reflecting shadows into glass, on the last night before the war.
And there were no more words. There was no more cleverness as I walked her to a taxi parked nearby. I kissed her again. A long kiss, goodbye. She smiled at me. It was a good smile, a beautiful smile, and almost her best. I watched the red lights of the taxi fuzz and blur and then vanish in the furtherness of night.
Alone on the strangely quiet street, I began to walk back to Prabaker's slum-I always thought of it as Prabaker's slum, and I still do-to retrieve my bike. My shadows twirled with every street light, dragging loath behind me and then rushing on ahead.
Ocean songs receded. The road moved beyond the span of coast and into the wide, tree-lined streets of the new peninsula reclaimed from the sea, stone on mortared stone, by the ever-expanding island city.
Sounds of celebration streamed into the road from streets around me. The festival had ended, and the people were beginning to return. Daring boys on bicycles flashed between the walkers much too fast, but never touching so much as a flap of sleeve.
Impossibly beautiful girls in bright new saris glided between the glances of young men who'd scented their shirts, as well as their skin, with sandalwood soap. Children slept on shoulders, their unwilled arms and legs hanging limp as wet washing on a line. Someone sang a love song, and a dozen voices joined the choruses for each verse. Every man and woman, walking home to slum hut or fine apartment, smiled, listening to the romantic, foolish words.
Three young men singing near me saw my smile, and raised the palms of their hands in question. I lifted my arms and sang the chorus, joining my voice to theirs, and shocking and delighting them with what I knew. They threw their strangers' arms around me and swept our song-connected souls toward the unvanquishable ruin of the slum. Everyone in the whole world, Karla once said, was Indian in at least one past life. And I laughed to think of her.
I didn't know what I would do. The first part of it was clear enough-"! was the debt to the burly Afghan, Nazeer. He'd said to me once, when I'd talked to him of the guilt I continued to feel for Khader's death: Good gun, good horse, good friend, good battle-you know better way that Great Khan, he can die? And a tiny fragment of that thought or feeling applied to me, too. It was right, somehow-although I couldn't have explained it, even to myself-and fitting for me to risk my life in the company of good friends, and in the course of an important mission.
And there was so much more that I had to learn, so much that Khaderbhai had wanted to teach me. I knew that his physics teacher, the man he'd told me about in Afghanistan, was in Bombay. And the other teacher, Idriss, was in Varanasi. If I made it back to Bombay from Nazeer's mission to Sri Lanka, there was a world of learning to discover and enjoy.
In the meanwhile, in the city, my place with Sanjay's council was assured. There was work there, and money, and a little power. For a while there was safety, in the brotherhood, from the long reach of Australian law. There were friends on the council, and at Leopold's, and in the slum. And, yes, maybe there was even a chance for love.
When I reached the bike I kept walking on into the slum. I wasn't sure why. I was following an instinct, and drawn, perhaps, by the swollen moon. The narrow lanes, those writhing alleys of struggle and dream, were so familiar to me and so comfortingly safe that I marvelled at the fear I'd once felt there. I wandered without purpose or plan, and moved from smile to smile as men and women and children who'd been my patients and neighbours looked up to see me pass. I moved in mists of cooking scent and shower soap, of animal stalls and kerosene lamps, of frankincense and sandalwood streaming upward from a thousand tiny temples in a thousand tiny homes.
At a corner of one lane I bumped into a man, and as our faces rose to their apologies we recognised one another in the same instant. It was Mukesh, the young thief who'd helped me in the Colaba lock-up and the Arthur Road jail: the man whose freedom I'd demanded when Vikram had paid me out of prison.
"Linbaba!" he cried, seizing my upper arms in his hands. "So good to see you! Arrey! What's happening?"
"I'm just visiting," I answered, laughing with him. "What are you doing here? You look great! How the hell are you?"
"No problem, baba! Bilkul fit, hain!" I'm absolutely fit!
"Have you eaten? Will you take chai?"
"Thank you, baba, no. I am late for a meeting."
"_Achcha?" I muttered. Oh, yes?
He leaned in close to whisper.
"It is a secret, but I know I can trust you, Linbaba. We are meeting with some of those fellows who are with Sapna, the king of thieves."
"What?"
"Yes," he whispered. "These fellows, they actually know that Sapna. They speak to him almost of every day."
"That's not possible," I said.
"Oh yes, Linbaba. They are his friends. And we are making the army-the army of poor fellows. We will teach those Muslims who is the real boss here in Maharashtra! That Sapna, he killed the mafia boss, Abdul Ghani, in his own mansion, and put the pieces of his body all around his house! And the Muslims, after that they are learning how to fear us. I must go now. We will see us, before too much time, isn't it? Goodbye, Linbaba!"
He ran off through the lanes. I turned away, to walk unsmiling into a sudden mood that was anxious and angry and forlorn. And then, as it always did, the city, Bombay, my Mumbai, held me up on the broad back of a nourishing constancy. I found myself at the edge of a devoted crowd gathered before the new, large hut belonging to the Blue Sisters. Men and women stood at the rear of the crowd, while others sat or knelt in a semi-circle of soft light at the threshold of the hut. And there in the doorway, framed by haloes of lamplight and wreathed about with streamers of blue incense smoke, were the Blue Sisters themselves. Radiant.
Serene. Beings of such lambent compassion, such sublime equanimity, that in my broken, exiled heart I pledged to love them, as every man and woman who saw them did.
At that moment I felt a tug at my shirtsleeve and I turned my head to see what seemed to be the ghost of a gigantic smile with a very small man attached to it. The ghost shook me, grinning happily, and I reached out to enclose it in a hug and then bent forward quickly to touch its feet, in the traditional greeting to a father or mother. It was Kishan, Prabaker's father. He explained that he was in the city for a holiday with Rukhmabai, Prabaker's mother, and Parvati, his widow.
"Shantaram!" he admonished me when I started speaking to him in Hindi. "Have you forgotten all your lovely Marathi?"
"Sorry, father!" I laughed, switching to Marathi. "I'm just so happy to see you. Where is Rukhmabai?"
"Come!" he answered, taking my hand as if I was a child, and leading me through the slum.
We arrived at the little group of huts, including my own, that clustered around Kumar's chai shop near the crescent of the sea.
Johnny Cigar was there, with Jeetendra, Qasim Ali Hussein, and Joseph's wife, Maria.
"We were just talking about you!" Johnny cried as I shook hands and nodded my greetings. "We were just saying that your hut is empty again-and we were remembering the fire, on that first day.
It was a big one, na?"
"It was," I muttered, thinking of Raju and the others who'd died in that fire.
"So, Shantaram," a voice scolded in Marathi from behind me, "now you are too big a fellow to speak to your simple village mother?"
I swung round to see Rukhmabai standing close to us. I bent to touch her feet, but she restrained me, and joined her hands together in a greeting. She looked sadder and older within the soft endearments of her smile, and grieving had put a swipe of grey in the black pelt of her hair. But the hair was growing back. The long hair I'd seen falling like a shadow dying was growing back, and there was living hope in the thick, upward sweep of it.
Then she directed my gaze to the woman in widow's white standing beside her. It was Parvati, and a child, a son, was standing with her. He was clinging to her sari skirt for support. I greeted Parvati, and when I gave my attention to the boy and looked into his face I was so shocked that my jaw dropped open. I turned to the adults and they all smiled, waggling their heads in the same wonder, for the child was the image of Prabaker. More than merely resembling him, the boy was the exact duplicate of the man we'd all loved more than any other we knew. And when he smiled at me it was his smile, Prabaker's vast, world-encompassing smile, that I saw in that small, perfectly round face.
"Baby dijiye?" I asked. Can I hold him?
Parvati nodded. I held my arms out to him, and he came to me without protest.
"What's his name?" I asked, jigging the boy on my hip and watching him smile.
"Prabu," Parvati answered. "We called him Prabaker."
"Oh Prabu," Rukhmabai commanded, "give Shantaram-uncle a kiss."
The boy kissed me on the cheek, quickly, and then wrapped his tiny arms around my neck with impetuous strength, and squeezed me. I hugged him in return, and held him to my heart.
"You know, Shantu," Kishan suggested, patting at his round belly, and smiling to fill the world, "your house is empty. We are all here. You could stay with us tonight. You could sleep here."
"Think hard, Lin," Johnny Cigar warned, grinning at me. The full moon was in his eyes, and pearling his strong white teeth. "If you stay, word will get out. First, there'll be a party tonight, and then, when you wake up, there'll be a damn long line of patients, yaar, waiting to see you."
I gave the boy back into Parvati's arms, and wiped a hand across my face and into my hair. Looking at the people, listening to the breathing, heaving, laughing, struggling music of the slum, all around me, I remembered one of Khaderbhai's favourite phrases.
Every human heartbeat, he'd said many times, is a universe of possibilities. And it seemed to me that I finally understood exactly what he'd meant. He'd been trying to tell me that every human will has the power to transform its fate. I'd always thought that fate was something unchangeable: fixed for every one of us at birth, and as constant as the circuit of the stars. But I suddenly realised that life is stranger and more beautiful than that. The truth is that, no matter what kind of game you find yourself in, no matter how good or bad the luck, you can change your life completely with a single thought or a single act of love.
"Well, I'm out of practice sleeping on the ground," I said, smiling at Rukhmabai.
"You can have my bed," Kishan offered.
"Oh no you don't!" I protested.
"Oh yes I do!" he insisted, dragging his cot from outside his hut to mine while Johnny, Jeetendra, and the others hugged and mock wrestled me into submission, and our cries and laughter rolled away toward the time-dissolving everness of the sea.
For this is what we do. Put one foot forward and then the other.
Lift our eyes to the snarl and smile of the world once more.
Think. Act. Feel. Add our little consequence to the tides of good and evil that flood and drain the world. Drag our shadowed crosses into the hope of another night. Push our brave hearts into the promise of a new day. With love: the passionate search for a truth other than our own. With longing: the pure, ineffable yearning to be saved. For so long as fate keeps waiting, we live on. God help us. God forgive us. We live on.