Chapter Ninety-One
Love and faith, like hope and justice, are constellations in the infinity of truth. And they always pull a crowd. So many excited coffee devotees crowded into the Love & Faith café on its opening night that Rannveig called and told us to come a little later, because love and faith alone couldn’t guarantee a place.
We found Didier at Leo’s, happily insulted by two waiters at the same time, and giving the service that he got. Leopold’s was sit-down jumping. People laughed at anything and shouted at nothing with happy determination. It looked like fun, but we had somewhere to go.
‘Just one drink,’ Didier pleaded. ‘Love & Faith has no alcohol. Have you ever heard of such a thing?’
‘One drink,’ Karla said, sitting beside him. ‘And not a mood-fluctuation more.’
‘Waiter!’ Didier called.
‘You think you’re the only customer who ever got thirsty in this place?’ Sweetie asked, flicking a rag at the table.
‘Bring alcohol, you fool!’ Didier snapped. ‘I have a curfew.’
‘And I have a life,’ Sweetie said, slouching away.
‘Gotta give you credit, Didier,’ I said. ‘You got things back to normal. I’ve never seen Sweetie surlier.’
‘What is credit,’ Didier preened, ‘but something you have to give back, with interest.’
‘Lin’s unarmed, Didier, and naked to the world,’ Karla said. ‘He threw his knives into the sea this morning.’
‘The sea will throw them back again,’ Didier said. ‘The sea can’t get over it that we crawled onto the land. Mark my words, Lin. The sea is a jealous woman, without the charming personality.’
A man approached our table carrying a parcel. It was Vikrant, the knife-maker, and for a second I felt a twinge of guilt that his superbly made instruments, my knives, were on the bottom of a shallow sea.
‘Hi, Karla,’ he said. ‘I’ve been looking for you, Lin. Your sword is finished.’
He unwrapped the calico parcel, revealing Khaderbhai’s sword. It had been repaired with gold rivets, and they’d been moulded into the eyes of two dragons, meeting at the tail.
It was beautiful work, but it was a painful thing to remember the sword. I’d forgotten it, in the year of mountains and burning mansions, and it shamed me to know that I had.
‘I rest my case,’ Didier said. ‘The sea is a jealous woman. Didier is never wrong.’
‘You can take the boy from the sword,’ Karla said, ‘but you can’t take the sword from the boy.’
‘It’s beautiful work,’ I said. ‘How much do I owe you, Vikrant?’
‘That was a true labour of love,’ he said, moving away. ‘It’s on me. Don’t kill anyone with it. Bye, Karla.’
‘Bye, Vikrant.’
The drinks arrived, and we were about to toast, but I stopped us with a raised hand.
‘Take a look at that girl over there,’ I said.
‘Lin, it is hardly gallant to remark on another woman, when a woman is in your –’
‘Just take a good look at her, Didier.’
‘Do you think it’s her?’ Karla asked.
‘Oh, yeah.’
‘Who?’ Didier demanded.
‘Karlesha,’ Karla said. ‘It’s Oleg’s Karlesha.’
‘Is it really!’
The girl was tall and looked a little like Karla, with black hair and pale green eyes. She was wearing skin-tight black jeans, a black motorcycle shirt and cowboy boots.
‘Karlesha,’ Karla muttered. ‘Not bad style.’
‘Sweetie,’ I called, and the waiter shuffled over to me. ‘Have you still got that picture Oleg gave you?’
He scraped through his pockets petulantly, and produced a wrinkled photo. We held it up against the face of the girl, sitting five tables away.
‘Call Oleg, and get your reward,’ I said. ‘That’s the girl he’s been waiting for, over there.’
He goggled at the photograph for a while, looked at the girl, and scurried away to the phone.
‘Are we about done?’ I asked.
‘You don’t want to stay, and see Oleg and Karlesha reunited?’ Karla teased.
‘I’m tired of being Fate’s unwilling accomplice,’ I said.
‘I must see the reunion,’ Didier said. ‘And I will not move from this spot until I have witnessed it with my own eyes.’
‘Okay,’ I said, ready to leave.
A man approached our table. He was short, thin, dark-skinned and confident.
‘Excuse me,’ he said, ‘are you the one they call Shantaram?’
‘Who wants to know?’ Didier snapped.
‘My name is Tateef, and I have something to discuss with Mr Shantaram.’
‘Discuss away,’ Karla said, waving a hand at me.
‘I hear you are a man who will do anything for money,’ Tateef said.
‘That’s a mighty offensive thing to say, Tateef,’ Karla said, smiling.
‘It certainly is,’ Didier agreed. ‘How much money?’
I held up my hand to stop the auction.
‘We’ve got an appointment, Tateef,’ I said. ‘Come back at three, tomorrow. We’ll talk.’
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Goodnight to all.’
He slipped between the tables, and out into the street.
‘You don’t even know what he has in mind, this, this, Tateef,’ Didier warned.
‘I liked the look of him. Didn’t you?’
‘I did,’ Karla said. ‘And I think we’re gonna see him again.’
‘Certainly not,’ Didier puffed. ‘Did you not see his shoes?’
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Military half-boot, white on the sides with salt, and on the edges of his jacket. My guess is that he’s spent a lot of time at sea, recently.’
‘I mean the style, Lin,’ Didier sighed. ‘They were hideous. I have seen taxidermy with more style.’
‘Bye, Didier,’ Karla said, standing. ‘See you at the opening.’
Karla and I rode beside the crowded night causeway, and found a bigger crowd a few blocks away at the opening of the Love & Faith coffee shop, spilling onto the footpath and a splash of the road. We parked the bike outside, and sat there for a while.
The sign over the door, showing symbols from all faiths and written in Hindi, Marathi and English, was lit with a circle of white magnolia lights.
A crimson halo of frangipani lights framed the street window, showing customers inside drinking espresso, while Vinson and Rannveig worked the Italian coffee machine, steam rising industrially.
There were three empty stools in the curved counter of fifteen. Rannveig had reserved them for us, but I wasn’t ready, yet, to go into that corner of affection they’d created.
My thoughts were of a girl from Norway, seen in a locket one hour, and seen standing in Fate’s shadow an hour later. I looked at her, smiling in love and faith’s window, already in her own forever. Vinson exchanged a quick glance with her, smiled quickly, and talked happily to a customer.
I didn’t want to go inside. There was a purity in the thing they’d become together that I didn’t want to disturb.
‘I’m staying here, for a minute,’ I said, standing beside the bike. ‘You can go ahead. I’ll be there in a minute.’
‘Always together,’ Karla said, sitting on the bike again, and lighting a joint.
Didier joined us, a calming hand against his breathless chest.
‘What happened?’ Karla asked.
Didier held a hand out to stop her, regaining his breath.
‘Is . . . is . . . is my place still reserved, inside?’ Didier gasped.
‘Front and centre,’ I said. ‘What happened, with Oleg and Karlesha?’
‘Oleg ran inside,’ Didier replied, his heart slowing to medicated levels again, ‘and he just picked her up, like a sack of onions, and walked out with her into the night.’
‘You didn’t follow them?’ Karla asked, laughing.
‘Of course,’ Didier said. ‘Didier is a detective of the Lost Love Bureau, after all.’
‘Where did they go?’ I asked.
‘He disappeared,’ Didier hissed, ‘in Randall’s limousine. He is exasperating, that Randall.’
‘In the nicest possible ways,’ Karla said.
‘Are you not going inside?’ Didier asked, looking at the crowd laughing in the new café.
‘We’re gonna sit here for a while,’ Karla said. ‘Go ahead, Didier. Class the joint up.’
‘Then it is Didier who must raise the flag for love and faith,’ he said, draping his scarf over his shoulder. ‘We live in the age of opening your mouth as wide as you can. Watch me, as I scream and shout for us.’
He straightened his jacket, crossed the footpath and embraced his way inside. He sat beside a young businessman, stumbling into the handsome victim as he sat. The businessman liked it, and began talking brightly.
We sat down and we watched the bustling, successful opening for a while in silence, and then Karla leaned against me.
‘I like bike-talk,’ she said. ‘Even when we’re side by side.’
‘So do I.’
‘You wanna know who Kavita Singh’s new silent partner is?’ she asked softly.
‘Will it scare me?’
‘Probably,’ she replied.
‘Good. Tell me.’
‘Madame Zhou,’ Karla said.
‘How did that happen?’
‘Madame Zhou wanted to blackmail her former clients, and make a comeback as a power broker in Bombay. Fate, with a little help, brought her to Kavita. Zhou has a book, with a record of every customer she ever had, and every sexual preference. I’d like to read it, actually, when they’re done with it.’
‘Why did Zhou come to Kavita for help?’
‘I put the idea in her head.’
‘How?’
‘You want all the answers, don’t you?’
‘I want all the everything, when it comes to you,’ I laughed.
‘I knew about the book, and I knew she was weakened, without the Palace, but still ambitious. I also knew the name of her most loyal patron. He’s a businessman, and I bought his business. In exchange, he suggested that the ideal person to broker the blackmail ring was Kavita Singh. That’s when Madame Zhou started getting interested in Kavita.’
‘And when the twins were killed, she went to Kavita for help.’
‘Just as I’d hoped she would. Vices live in habits, and habits make people predictable.’
‘What does Kavita get out of it?’
‘Apart from the sex?’
‘Please, Karla, don’t –’
‘I’m kidding. I told Kavita, six weeks ago, that it was Madame Zhou who killed her boyfriend. Her fiancée, actually. He objected to Madame Zhou’s bribery of officials, in his area. He was getting a following. She killed him for it.’
‘How did you know who did it?’
‘Do you really wanna know?’
‘Well, I . . . ’
‘It was Lisa.’
‘Okay, Lisa? How did she know?’
‘She was working for Madame Zhou at the time, at the Palace of Happy. It was before I got her out of there.’
‘And burned the place down.’
‘And burned the place down. Lisa couldn’t tell Kavita what she knew, so she told me.’
‘Why couldn’t Lisa tell Kavita?’
‘You know how Lisa was. She couldn’t talk to anyone she was having sex with.’
‘I’m beginning to think you knew her better than I did.’
‘No,’ she said, smiling softly. ‘But we did have an understanding about you.’
‘She said something to me about that. How she met you at Kayani’s, and talked about us.’
She laughed gently.
‘You really wanna know what happened?’
‘Again, with the really wanna know?’ I smiled.
‘I kept tabs on you, from the moment you walked away from me. At first, I was happy for you, because you seemed to be happy with Lisa. But I knew Lisa, and I knew she’d mess it up.’
‘Wait a minute. You were checking on me, for two years?’
‘Of course. I love you.’
So clear, so light: trust in a human eye.
‘How does this . . . ’ I began, recollecting myself, ‘connect to your little understanding with Lisa?’
She smiled, sadly.
‘I heard that Lisa was back to her wicked ways, and was running around on you, a lot, and that you didn’t know about it.’
‘I didn’t ask about it.’
‘I know that,’ she said. ‘But everyone was talking about it. Everyone except you.’
‘It doesn’t matter. It didn’t matter.’
‘It wasn’t right, because you’re better than that, and you deserve better than that. So, I walked up behind her one day, at her favourite dress shop, and tapped her on the shoulder.’
‘And what did you say to her?’
‘I told her to tell you exactly what she was doing, and let you decide if you wanted to stay, or to stop slutting around.’
‘Slutting around? That’s pretty harsh.’
‘Harsh? There wasn’t a man or a woman safe at that art gallery, including the customers. I could have cared less, except that she was doing it to you.’
‘And you made some kind of agreement with her?’
‘Not then. I gave her a chance. I loved her. You know how easy it was to love her, when you were looking at her. But she didn’t change. So I sat down with her at Kayani’s and told her that I love you, and I didn’t want her to hurt you any more.’
‘What did she say?’
‘She agreed to let you go. She wasn’t in love with you, but she was deep in like with you. She said she wanted to do it a piece at a time, and not just disappear in a cold break.’
‘You broke us up, Lisa and me?’ I asked, disturbed by a gust of truth. ‘Is that what happened?’
‘Not exactly,’ she sighed. ‘I can see her face, when I found her, on the bed. I remember what I said to her. If you don’t tell the truth, and you keep on hurting him, I’ll stop you.’
‘And you meant it? Even though you loved her?’
‘Every dinner you went to with Lisa in that last year,’ she said quietly, ‘you were dining with her lovers, husband and wife both, sometimes, and you were the only one at the table who didn’t know it. I’m sorry.’
‘She was out a lot, and I never asked her. I was away a lot, and I couldn’t tell her where I’d been, or what I’d been smuggling. She was in trouble, and I didn’t realise it.’
‘She wasn’t in trouble, she was trouble. When she agreed to stop messing with you that day at Kayani’s, she made a pass at me.’
‘She did?’ I laughed.
‘Hell, yeah. She was Lisa. Beautiful, crazy and popular.’
‘That she was.’
‘You know, at first I thought you were naïve. But you’re not. You’re trusting, and I love that about you. I love being trusted. Trust is the soul’s drug of choice. It meant so much to me that you didn’t give up on me. It meant more to me that we did it apart on trust, than if we’d done it together. Do you know what I mean?’
‘I think I do. But we’re in it together from now on, Karla.’
‘In it together from now on,’ she repeated, leaning against me.
‘You really watched out for me, all that time?’
‘I did. And you never left the city, as you said you might.’
‘I couldn’t. Not while you were still here.’
In front of us people were laughing and joking on the footpath outside Love & Faith. I scanned the street for threats, taking in every pickpocket, drug dealer and racketeer working the edges of the herd. It was okay: illicitly quiet.
‘You never told anyone what Lisa said, that Madame Zhou ordered the killing?’
‘I kept the secret to myself, until the time was right. Now Kavita knows, and she’ll keep Madame Zhou close, until she has the book. Then she’ll introduce Madame Zhou to her little friend, karma.’
Madame Zhou and Kavita? It seemed to me like a double-headed coin, fixed to hurt someone no matter how it landed.
‘Let me get this straight: Madame Zhou doesn’t know that Kavita is the fiancée of a guy she killed, what, four years ago?’
‘That’s right. Kavita Singh isn’t her real name. She was in London, freelancing, when her boyfriend was killed. She came back, used a byline name, and worked for Ranjit. She always hoped to find out what happened to her boyfriend one day, working as a journalist. I waited until Kavita was strong enough to confront and defeat Madame Zhou, and get away with it. I built her up, and gave her power. And then, the day she was waiting for came knocking, and I told her.’
‘So, Kavita’s watching Madame Zhou, who’s using her to shake down people in the book to get back the power she lost, and when Kavita gets the book, she’ll get rid of Madame Zhou?’
‘That’s it. Chess, played by dangerous women.’
‘How long till Kavita gets that book?’
‘Not long.’
‘Will Kavita use the book, once she gets it?’
‘Oh, yeah,’ Karla laughed. ‘Making ocean-going vessels of change.’
‘I don’t know which one of them is scarier, Kavita or Madame Zhou.’
‘I told you that you misjudged Kavita,’ she said.
‘I don’t judge anyone. I want a world without stones, or people to throw them at.’
‘I know that,’ she laughed.
‘What’s so funny?’
‘Something Didier said, about you.’
‘What?’
‘Lin has a good heart, which is inexcusable.’
‘Thank you, I think.’
‘You wanna know who’s got the third office, downstairs?’
‘This is certainly a night for revelations. You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?’
‘Absolutely,’ she said. ‘You wanna know who’s behind door number three, or don’t ya?’
‘Of course I do. I wanna see the tunnel, which I still haven’t seen.’
‘You won’t sign the non-disclosure agreement.’
‘Every time you sign a legal document, Fate takes a day off.’
‘It’s Johnny Cigar,’ she said.
‘In room number three?’
‘Yeah.’
‘When will you stop stealing my characters? You’ve got half a novel at the Amritsar, and I haven’t even written it yet.’
‘Johnny’s starting a real estate business,’ she said, ignoring me adorably. ‘He’s specialising in slum relocation.’
‘Here comes the neighbourhood.’
‘I financed him,’ she said. ‘With the last of Ranjit’s baptism money.’
I thought for a while about the multiplying ménage at the Amritsar hotel.
‘Even with Karlesha back,’ I said, ‘Oleg’s not leaving, is he?’
‘I hope not,’ she smiled. ‘And so do you. You like that guy.’
‘I do like him. And I’d like him better one degree less chirpy.’
‘Is Naveen coming tonight?’
‘He’s working on a case, for Diva. One way or another, that girl manages to keep Naveen busy, and close.’
‘You think they’ll get together?’
‘I don’t know,’ I replied, trying not to hope for something I wasn’t sure they wanted. ‘But I know Naveen will never give up on Diva. No matter what he says, he’s crazy about her. And if you put an Indian and an Irishman together, like him, you get a guy who can’t give up on love.’
Customers of Love & Faith gathered on the footpath, holding up T-shirts, and occasionally exchanging them.
‘What’s that about?’
‘Remember the T-shirt version of what Idriss was saying? The one that we gave Vinson?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Vinson and Rannveig used Randall’s notes, from what Idriss said, and they put his quotes on T-shirts. They’re giving them away as opening-night gifts.’
A young man, not far from us, was holding a T-shirt up to read it. I read it with him, over his shoulder.
A heart
filled with greed, pride or hateful feelings
is not free.
When I heard Idriss say it, on the mountain, I agreed with it, and I was glad to see it preserved and living, somehow, in the world, even just on a T-shirt. And I also had to admit that I’d found shares of greed and pride inside myself, and too often.
But I wasn’t alone any more. As Rannveig said, I’d reconnected.
‘What do you think?’ Karla asked me, watching people swap quotations from Idriss on their free T-shirts.
‘Teachers, like writers, never die while people still quote them.’
‘I love you, Shantaram,’ she said, cuddling in beside me.
I looked at the happy, laughing group, crammed into the narrow coffee shop. The people we’d lost, in our Island City years, would fill the same space.
Too many, too many dead who were still alive, whenever I thought of them. And almost all of them were lives that humility or generosity would’ve saved. Vikram, Nazeer, Tariq, Sanjay, Vishnu, and all the other names chanted at me, always ending in Abdullah, my brother, Abdullah, my brother.
Karla relaxed against me, her foot tapping to the music coming from Love & Faith. I tipped her face to the light until she was the light, and kissed her, and we were one.
Truth is the freedom of the soul. We’re very young, in this young universe, and we often fail, and dishonour ourselves, even if only in the caves of the mind. We fight, when we should dance. We compete, cheat and punish innocent nature.
But that isn’t what we are, it’s simply what we do in the world that we made for ourselves, and we can freely change what we do, and the world we made, every second that we live.
In all the things that really matter, we are one. Love and faith, trust and empathy, family and friendship, sunsets and songs of awe: in every wish born in our humanity we are one. Our humankind, at this moment in our destiny, is a child blowing on a dandelion, without thought or understanding. But the wonder in the child is the wonder in us, and there’s no limit to the good we can do when human hearts connect. It’s the truth of us. It’s the story of us. It’s the meaning of the word God: we are one. We are one. We are one.