Shantaram (114 page)

I walked out, with Sanjay's protests and his friends' laughter rattling above the clatter of cups and glasses.

"Bahinchudh! Gandu!" Sanjay shouted. "You can't fuck up my rave like that and then walk out, yaar! Come back here!"

As I approached him, Abdullah kick-started the bike and straightened it from the side stand, ready to ride.

"You're in a hurry for your workout," I said, settling myself onto the saddle of the bike behind him. "Relax. No matter how fast we get there, I'm still going to beat you, brother."

For nine months, we'd trained together at a small, dark, sweaty, and very serious gym near the Elephant Gate section of Ballard Pier. It was a goonda's gym set up by Hussein, the one-armed survivor of Khader's battle with the Sapna assassins. There were weights and benches, a judo mat, and a boxing ring. The smell of man-sweat, both fresh and fouled into the stitching of leather gloves and belts and turnbuckles, was so eye-wateringly rancid that the gym was the only building in the city block that rats and cockroaches spurned. There were bloodstains on the walls and the wooden floor, and the young gangsters who trained there accumulated more wounds and injuries in a workout week than the emergency ward of a city hospital on a hot Saturday night.

"Not today," Abdullah laughed over his shoulder, pulling the bike into a faster lane of traffic. "No fighting today, Lin. I am taking you for a surprise. A good surprise!" "Now I'm worried," I called back. "What kind of surprise?"

"You remember when I took you to see Doctor Hamid? You remember that surprise?"

"Yeah, I remember."

"Well, it is better than that. Much better."

"U-huh. Well, I'm still not very relaxed about it. Gimme another hint."

"You remember when I sent you the bear, for hugging?"

"Kano, sure, I remember."

"Well, it is much better than that!"

"A doctor and a bear," I called out above the growl of the engine. "There's a lot of space between them, brother. One more hint."

"Ha!" he laughed, coming to a stop at a set of traffic lights. "I will say to you this-the surprise is so good that you will forgive me for all that you suffered when you thought I was dead."

"I do forgive you, Abdullah."

"No, Lin brother. I know you do not forgive me. I have too many bruises, and I am too much sore from our boxing and karate."

It wasn't true: I never hit him as hard as he hit me. Although he was healing well, and he was very fit, he'd never fully recovered the uncanny strength and charismatic vitality he'd known before the police shooting. And when he removed his shirt to box with me, the sight of his scarred body-it was as if he'd been savaged by the claws of wild animals and burned with hot iron brands- always made me pull my punches. Still, I never admitted that to _him.

"Okay," I laughed. "If that's the way you're gonna play it, I don't forgive you!"

"But when you see this surprise," he called out, laughing with me, "you will forgive me completely, with a full heart. Now, come on! Stop asking me about it, and tell me, what did Salman say to Sanjay about that pig-that Chuha?"

"How did you know that's what we were talking about?"

"I can see the look in Salman's face," he shouted back. "And Sanjay, he told me, this morning, that he wants to ask Salman- again-to make business with Chuha. So, what did Salman say?"

"You know the answer to that one," I replied a little more quietly as we stopped in traffic.

"Good! Nushkur'Allah." Thanks be to God. "You really hate Chuha, don't you?"

"I don't hate him," he clarified, moving off with the flow of cars. "I just want to kill him."

We were silent for a while, breathing the warm wind and watching the black business unfold on the streets we'd both roamed so often. There were a hundred large and small scams and deals going down around us every minute, and we knew them all.

When we found ourselves twisted into a knot of traffic behind a stalled bus, I looked along the footpath and noticed Taj Raj, a pickpocket who usually worked the Gateway area near the Taj Mahal Hotel. He'd survived a machete attack years before that had all but severed his neck. The wound caused him to speak in a rattling whisper, and his head was set at such an ill-balanced angle that when he wagged it to agree with someone he almost fell over. He was working the stumble-fall-pilfer game with his friend Indra serving as the stumbler. Indra, known as the Poet, spoke almost all of his sentences in rhyming couplets. They were deeply moving in their beauty, for the first few stanzas, but always found their way into sexual descriptions and allusions so perverse and abhorrent that strong, wicked men winced to hear them. Legend had it that Indra had once recited his poetry through a microphone during a street festival, and had cleared the entire Colaba Market of shoppers and traders alike. Even the police, it was said, had shrunk back in horror until exhaustion overcame the Poet, and then they'd rushed him as he paused for breath. I knew both men, and liked them, though I never let them get closer than an arm's stretch from my pockets. And sure enough, as the bus finally grumbled to life and the traffic began to ease forward, I watched Indra pretending to be blind-not his best performance, but good enough-and stumbling into a foreigner. And Taj Raj, the helpful passer-by, assisted both of them to their feet, and relieved the foreigner of his burdensome wallet.

"Why?" I asked, when we were moving through free space again.

"Why what?"

"Why do you want to kill Chuha?"

"I know he had a meeting... with the men from Iran," Abdullah shouted over his shoulder. "People say it was just business- Sanjay, he says it was just business. But I think more than business. I think he work with them, against Khader Khan. Against us. For that reason, Lin."

"Okay," I called back, pleased to have my own instincts about Chuha confirmed, but worried for my wild, Iranian friend. "But don't do anything without me, okay?"

He laughed, and turned his head to show me the white teeth of his smile.

"I'm serious, Abdullah. Promise me!"

"Thik hain, Lin brother!" he shouted in reply. "I will call you, when the time is right!"

He coasted the bike to a stop and parked it outside the Strand Coffee House, one of my favourite breakfast dives, near the Colaba Market.

"What the hell's going on?" I demanded as we walked toward the market. "Some surprise-I come here nearly every day."

"I know," he answered, grinning enigmatically. "And I am not the only one who knows it."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"You will find out, Lin brother. Here are your friends."

We came upon Vikram Patel and the Zodiac Georges, Scorpio and Gemini, sitting comfortably on bulging sacks of lentils beside a pulses stall, and drinking chai from glasses.

"Hey, man!" Vikram greeted me. "Pull up a sack and make yourself at home."

Abdullah and I shook hands all round and, as we sat down on the row of sacks, Scorpio George signalled a chai-runner to bring two more glasses. The passport work was often keeping me busy at night because Krishna and Villu-both of them with young children in their growing families-had taken to staggering their shifts, giving themselves valuable hours at home during the day. That work with the books, and other commitments to the Salman council, prevented me from going to Leopold's as often as I once had.

Whenever I could, I'd met with Vikram and the Georges near Vikram's apartment on the edge of the Colaba Market. Vikram was there most days, after his lunch with Lettie. He kept me up to date with the news from Leopold's-Didier had fallen in love, again, and Ranjit, Karla's new boyfriend, was becoming popular- and the Georges filled me in on what was going down on the streets.

"We thought you weren't coming today, man," Vikram said as the chai arrived.

"Abdullah gave me a lift," I replied, frowning at my friend's mysterious smile, "and we got stuck in traffic. It was worth it, though. I had a front row seat for Taj Raj and Indra doing their stumble routine on MG Road. It was quite a show."

"He's not what he used to be, our Taj Raj," Gemini commented, hurling South London at us in the vowels of the last two words.

"Not as nimble, like. Since the accident, y'know, his timing's a bit off. I mean, it's only reasonable, innit? His whole bleedin' head was damn near off, an' all, so it's no wonder his timing's got a kink in it."

"At this point," Scorpio George interrupted, lowering his head and assuming the solemn piety we all knew well and dreaded more, "I think we should all bow our heads in prayer."

We glanced at one another, our eyes widening with alarm. There was no escape. We were too comfortable to move, and Scorpio knew it. We were trapped.

"Oh, Lord," Scorpio began.

"Oh, Gawd," Gemini grumbled.

"And Lady," Scorpio continued, "infinite yin-yang spirit in the sky, we humbly ask you to hear the prayers, today, of five souls that you put into the world, and left in the temporary care of Scorpio, Gemini, Abdullah, Vikram, and Lin."

"What does he mean, temporary?" Vikram whispered to me, and I shrugged in reply.

"Please help us, Lord," Scorpio intoned, his eyes shut and his face raised to heaven, which seemed, roughly, to be in the middle of the balcony on the third floor of the Veejay Premnaath Academy of Hair Colouring and Ear Boring. "Please guide us to know what's right, and to do the right thing. And you can start, God, if you're of a mind, by helping out with the little business deal we're doing with the Belgian couple tonight. I don't have to tell you, Lord and Lady, how tricky it is to supply customers with good-quality cocaine in Bombay. But, thanks to your providence, we managed to find ten grams of A-grade snow-and, given the real bad drought on the streets, that was a mighty slick piece of work on your part, God, if you'll accept my professional admiration.

Anyway, Gemini and me, we sure could use the commission on that deal, and it would be kinda nice not to get ripped off, or beaten up, or maimed, or killed-unless, of course, that's in your plan.

So, please light the way, and fill our hearts with love. Signing off now, but keeping the line open, as always, I'll say Amen."

"Amen!" Gemini responded, clearly relieved that the prayer was far shorter than Scorpio's more usual efforts.

"Amen," Vikram sobbed, nudging a tear from his eye with the knuckles of a balled fist.

"Astagfirullah," Abdullah muttered. Forgive me, Allah.

"So how about a bite to eat then?" Gemini suggested cheerily.

"There's nothing like a bit of religion to put you in the frame of mind to make a pig of yourself, is there?"

At that moment Abdullah leaned forward to whisper into my left ear.

"Look slowly-no, slowly! Look over there, behind the peanuts shop, near the corner. Do you see him? Your surprise, brother Lin. Do you see him?"

And then, still smiling, my eyes were drawn to a stooped figure watching us from the shadows beneath an awning.

"He is here every day," Abdullah whispered. "And not only here- in some other places that you go, also. He watches you. He waits, and he watches you."

"Vikram!" I mumbled, wanting some other testament to what I was seeing. "Look! There, on the corner!"

"Look at what, man?"

With my attention upon him, the figure drew back into the shadows and then turned and loped away, limping, as if the whole left side of his body was damaged.

"Didn't you see him?"

"No, man. See who?" Vikram complained, standing with me to squint in the direction of my frantic stare.

"It's Modena!" I shouted, running after the limping Spaniard. I didn't look back at Vikram, Abdullah, and the Zodiacs. I didn't answer Vikram's call. I didn't think about what I was doing or why I was pursuing him. My mind was only one thought, one image, and one word. Modena...

He was fast, and he knew the streets well. It occurred to me, as he ducked into hidden doorways and all but invisible gaps between buildings, that I was probably the only foreigner in the city who knew those streets as well as he did. For that matter, there were few Indians-only touts and thieves and junkies-who could've kept up with him. He scrambled into a hole that someone had knocked through a high stone wall to create an access hatch from one street to another. He stepped around a partition that seemed as solid as brick, but was made from stretched and painted canvas. He took short cuts through improvised shops in sheltering archways, and weaved his way along the labyrinth lines of washed, brightly coloured saris hung out to dry.

And then he made a mistake. He ran into a narrow lane that had been commandeered by homeless pavement dwellers and extended families that were crowded out of local apartments. I knew it well. About a hundred men, women, and children were living in the converted lane. They slept in shifts, in a loft space they'd built above the cobbled lane and between the walls of adjacent buildings. They did everything else in the long, dark, narrow room that the lane had become. Modena dodged between the seated and standing groups; between cooking stoves and bathing stalls and a blanket of card players. Then, at the end of the lane-room, he turned left instead of right. It was a cul-de-sac surrounded by high sheer walls. It was completely dark, and it ended in a little dogleg where the space curved around the blind corner of another building. We'd used it, sometimes, to make buys with drug dealers we didn't completely trust, because there was only one way in or out. I rounded the corner, only a few steps behind him, and stood there, panting and straining my eyes to pierce the darkness. I couldn't see him, but I knew he had to be in there.

"Modena," I said softly into the black echoes. "It's Lin. I just want to talk to you. I'm not trying to... I know you're in here.

I'll just put my bag down, and light us up a beedie, okay? One for you. One for me."

I put the bag down slowly, expecting him to make a rush past me.

I took a bundle of beedies from my shirt pocket, and extracted two from the pack. Holding them between my third and fourth fingers, thick ends inwards, as every poor man in the city did, I worked open a box of matches and struck one. With the flame playing over the ends of the cigarettes, I allowed myself a glimpse upward and I saw him, cringing away from the little arc of light thrown by the match. Just as the match died, I extended my arm to offer him one of the glowing beedie cigarettes. In the new dark, after the match failed, I waited for a second, two seconds, three seconds, and then I felt his fingers, softer and more delicate in their grasp than I would've believed, close around my own and accept the cigarette.