The Mountain Shadow (118 page)

We had a crew with us: Randall, Vinson, Ankit and Didier. Naveen and Oleg wanted to come, but the two lost lovers were holding down the fort at the Lost Love Bureau. When we reached the first steep climb, Didier asked if there was an alternative route.

Karla was about to tell him, I think, but I cut her off. I knew how sceptical and belligerent Didier could be in the presence of sanctity. I wanted him to sweat his way into Idriss’s camp on the summit, not stroll into it.

‘Are you saying you can’t
make
this climb?’ I challenged.

‘Certainly not!’ Didier snapped. ‘Show me the most difficult path. There is no mountain taller than Didier’s determination.’

We set off with Karla in the lead, me following, then Didier, Randall, Vinson and Ankit. Didier climbed well, with my hand pulling from above, and Randall pushing him from below.

Vinson clambered his way past us, enjoying the climb. I was surprised to see Ankit only a few steps behind him, vanishing above us in the seaweed smother of grass, bushes and vines.

Karla laughed at one point in the climb, and I thought of Abdullah, complimenting her by telling her that she was as agile as an ape.

‘Abdullah,’ I called out to her.

‘Exactly what I was thinking,’ she laughed.

Then we both shut down, thinking of the tall, brave, violent friend we loved. He’d vanished again, just as he’d done before. I wondered when we’d see him, and if we were ready for what we’d find, when we did.

We reached the summit in silence, joining Vinson and Ankit, who were standing with their hands on their hips, looking at the mesa, the school for the sage, Idriss.

There were strands of flowers strung from a new temporary pagoda made of bamboo poles. A canvas sheet in orange, white and green, the tricolour of the Indian flag, repeated itself in waves of wind in the canopy.

The pagoda provided a wide area of shade in the centre of the courtyard, which had been covered with fine carpets. Four wide, comfortable cushions were arranged in a semicircle around a small, fist-high wooden stage.

Beyond the pagoda, students were busy preparing for a significant event.

‘Is it always like this?’ Randall asked.

‘No,’ I said. ‘It must be some special occasion. I hope we’re not intruding.’

‘I hope they have a bar,’ Didier said.

I caught Karla’s eye.

‘You’re wondering who brought those carpets and bamboo poles up here, aren’t you?’ Karla asked me quietly, as our crew of city sinners took in the scene.

‘Someone had to drag that beauty up here for big shots to sit on,’ I smiled. ‘Even on the easy path, that’s either a lot of deference, or a lot of respect. I’m wondering which.’

Silvano came through the groups of people who were setting out decorations and preparing food on trays.

‘
Come va, ragazzo pazzo?
’ he asked me, as he approached.
How you doing, crazy guy?

‘
Respiro ancora
,’ I replied.
Still breathing
.

He kissed Karla on both cheeks, and then hugged me.

‘It’s wonderful you’re here today, Lin,’ he said happily. ‘I’m so happy to see you. Who are your friends?’

I introduced Silvano, and he greeted everyone, his smile devotion-bright.

‘It’s the Divine that brought you all here today, Lin,’ Silvano said.

‘Oh, yeah? I thought it was Karla’s idea.’

‘No, I mean that there is a great debate today. Great sages, from four districts, have challenged Idriss to a discourse.’

‘A discourse on philosophy?’ Karla asked. ‘It’s the first one in more than a year, isn’t it?’

‘Indeed,’ Silvano answered. ‘And today we will have all the big questions at once, and all the answers. It is a great challenge, by great holy men.’

‘When does it start?’ Karla asked, queens warming up for battle.

‘It should be about an hour from now. We are still getting ready. There is plenty of time to get fresh, after your climb, and eat a snack, before the challenge begins.’

‘Is the bar open yet?’ Didier asked.

Silvano stared back at him, uncomprehending.

‘Yes, sir,’ Ankit said, rattling the backpack that he’d carried up the ragged slope.

‘Thank God,’ Didier sighed. ‘Where is the bathroom?’

I left Karla with Didier and the others, took a pot of water into the forest, found a secluded space that didn’t seem to mind too much, and washed myself.

As soon as Karla detached from me, after that long ride to the mountain, I began to hear the shriek of something breaking, somewhere. Climbing to the camp on the mesa with Karla, I realised that the shrieking I heard, and couldn’t stop hearing, was the acid throwers, breaking on revenge.

From the moment that Blue Hijab told me about the capture, and torture, and death of the acid throwers, I’d been feeling that red tide of burning souls, lapping at my feet.

On the ride to the mountain with Karla holding me, I’d drifted in love, a leaf on a Sunday pond. But when we detached, and as we climbed, memories crawled deeper into the flinch of fear. The bruise of the chain, worse than the bite: screams of surrender, always louder than screams of defiance.

At the summit, while everyone was getting ready for the great debate of wise thinkers, I went to the wise forest to clean myself, and to be alone, with memories of torture and submission.

I was hurting for Blue Hijab and her friend, the horribly burned comrade, and all the cousins and neighbours who were so outraged and angry that they did to the torturers what the torturers had done to them.

But every execution kills justice, because no life deserves to be killed. I survived the desert-inside of prison beatings, and stumbled on, because I forgave the men who tortured me. I learned that trick from tortured men, who felt it their duty to pass it on, when I was chained and beaten in my turn.

Let it go
, those different wise men said
. Hating them, like they hate us, will ruin your mind, and that’s the one thing they can’t hit.

‘Are you good, baby?’ Karla’s voice called from behind the trees. ‘The debate starts soon, and I’m gonna reserve seats for us.’

‘I’m good,’ I called back, not good, not even not-good-okay. ‘I’m good.’

‘Two minutes,’ she called back. ‘We can’t miss this. It’s made for us, Shantaram.’

I knew why Karla had brought us to the mountain and the fabled sage: she wanted to heal me. She wanted to save me. I was breaking inside, and she could see it. And maybe she was, too. Like Karla and every other soldier I knew, I joked and laughed about things that made other less wounded hearts weep, and I’d learned to harden myself against loss and death. I look back now, and the past is a slaughter: almost everyone I’ve ever loved is dead. And the only way to live with the constant cull of what you love is to take a little of that cold grave into yourself, every time.

When she left, I let my eyes drift into the maze of leaves that only trees understand. Hatred has its gravitational web, locking stray specks of confusion into spirals of violence. I had my own reasons to hate the acid throwers, if I wanted to hate them, and I wasn’t immune to the tremble in the web. But it wasn’t hatred that I tried to clean off myself, in that forest, on the mountain: it was a shame I didn’t create, but didn’t stop.

Sometimes, for some reason, I couldn’t stop it, or I didn’t stop it. Sometimes, for some reason, I was a part of something wrong, before I knew that I wasn’t right any more.

In the forest, alone, I forgave what was done to me. In the kneeling place within my own faults I forgave them for what they did, and hoped that someone, somewhere, would forgive me. And the wind in lavish leaves said,
Surrender. One is all, and all is one. Surrender
.

Chapter Seventy-Nine

F
AITH IS HONESTY INSIDE,
a renegade priest once said to me.
So, fill up whenever you can, son
. Faithful students of the mystic teacher Idriss hoping that the exchange with his inquisitors would fill them with wisdom, gathered on the white-stone mesa in late-afternoon sunlight.

Some unfaithful observers gathered as well: a few followers of the great sages, who were hoping to see Idriss, the arrogantly humble thinker, tumble from a cliff of contumacy. Faith is also its own challenge, like sincerity, and purity draws swords in fearful hearts.

Didier, faithful to his own pleasures, found a hammock strung between trees, and wrestled with the alligator of knotted rope for a while, hoping to find a way to stay on it beneath a shady tree for the duration of the discourse.

Karla wouldn’t let him.

‘If you miss this,’ she said, pulling his jacket, ‘I won’t be able to talk to you about it. So you can’t miss it.’

She put our group together with a view of the questioning faces and the interrogated sage.

The spectators had made an arena of cushions, arranged around the pagoda close enough to hear every inflection or inference. Expectation, the ghost of reputation, moved through the crowd as students swapped stories about the legendary sages who’d challenged Idriss.

The holy men emerged from the largest cave, where they’d meditated together in preparation for the thought contest. They were senior gurus with their own followings, the youngest of them thirty-five, and the eldest perhaps seventy, a few years younger than Idriss.

They were dressed in identical white
dhoti
garments, wrapped luxuriously about their skin, and wore rudraksha beads in chains around their necks. The beads were reputed to have significant spiritual powers to detect positive and negative substances. As legend has it, rudraksha beads held over a pure substance rotate in a clockwise direction, and in an anticlockwise direction over negative substances, which is one of the reasons why no guru is far from a high-quality strand.

They also wore rings and amulets to maximise the power of friendly planets in their astrological charts, and minimise the harm of unfriendly spheres, far away, but never powerless.

The students had whispered that we were forbidden from speaking the names of the famous sages, because they wanted their challenge to Idriss to remain anonymous, out of modesty.

In my mind, as I saw them walk out to take their places on the large cushions, with students throwing rose petals in their path, I called them Grumpy, for the youngest one, Doubtful, for the next, Ambitious for the third, and Let Me See for the eldest in the group, who was the quickest to find his seat, and the first to reach for a lime juice and a piece of fresh papaya.

‘How long will this take?’ Vinson whispered.

‘Okay,’ Karla said, holding frustration at bay with very tight lips. ‘Do you want to spend seven years studying philosophy, and theology, and cosmology, Vinson?’

‘I’m gonna say
No
,’ he replied, uncertainly.

‘Do you wanna
sound
to Rannveig like you’ve done seven years of study?’

‘I’m gonna say
Yes
.’

‘Good, then be quiet, and listen. These challenges to Idriss only happen once a year or so, and this is my first. It’s a chance to get all of it in one shot, and I’m gonna hear it, from start to finish.’

‘Will there be an intermission?’ Didier asked.

Idriss knelt at the feet of each sage, eldest to youngest, and took their blessings before he took the small stage, settled himself, and greeted the assembly.

‘Let us smoke,’ he suggested gently. ‘Before we begin.’

Students brought a large hookah pipe into the pagoda, and gave a smoking hose to each of the sages. The longest hose reached to Idriss, who puffed the bowl alight.

‘Now,’ he said, when all had smoked, including Didier, who kept pace with the holy men on a finely tapered joint. ‘Please, challenge me with your questions.’

The sages looked at Let Me See, offering him the first assail. The elderly sage smiled, drew a breath, and waded into the shallows to skip a semantic stone across the water.

‘What is God?’ Let Me See asked.

‘God is the perfect expression of all the positive characteristics,’ Idriss answered.

‘Only the positive characteristics?’

‘Exclusively.’

‘Can God not do evil, then, or commit sin?’ Let Me See asked.

‘Of course not. Are you suggesting that God can commit suicide, or lie to an innocent heart?’

There was a conference among the holy men. I could see their problem. Gods in all ages, according to many sacred texts, kill human beings. Some gods torture human souls eternally, or permit it. Idriss’s version of a God incapable of evil was difficult to reconcile with some of the great books of faith.

The conference broke up, with the baton still in Let Me See’s hands.

‘And what is life, great sage?’ Let Me See asked.