Chapter Seventy-One
Karla and I didn’t leave her tent again, during the lock- down. On the first morning, I woke to see her walking toward me with coffee cups on a tray. I always woke before anybody, even in prison, especially in prison, and it was strange to wake with another consciousness already coffee-cool.
She was dressed in a kind of housecoat, but it was black, and completely sheer, and she was naked inside it. It was as if she was swimming in a shadow every time she moved, and I wanted to swim with her.
She set the tray down on a large street-drum she used as a night table, kissed me, and sat beside me on the bed.
‘Let me tell you what’s been going on,’ she said, her hand on my knee.
‘Going on now?’ I hoped.
‘Since the day I met Ranjit.’
‘I see. Not now.’
‘Not now. Do you know how Ranjit and I met?’
‘At a dog fight?’
‘You need this, Shantaram.’
‘No, Karla, I don’t. I just need you.’
‘Yes, you do need me, and you do need this.’
‘Why?’
‘Why do you need me, or why do you need this?’
‘I know why I need you – you’re the other half of everything. Why do I need to go back to you and Ranjit?’
‘The other half of everything,’ she smiled. ‘I like it. You need this talk because I’ve treated you bad, and I feel bad, even though I did the right thing, for you I mean, all the way along the line.’
‘Okay, but –’
‘I don’t like feeling bad, especially about you, so that has to be squared up, somehow. And the only way is for you to know what I’ve been doing, so you completely understand.’
‘I don’t care what you’ve been doing.’
‘You deserve to know.’
‘I don’t want to know. And I really don’t care.’
She laughed, and ran her hand up to my chest.
‘Sometimes, you’re funnier than the truth.’
‘And happier,’ I added, kissing her, and swimming in the black shadow with her.
Some time later she brought new cups of coffee to the bedside, and started again.
‘I wanted to get slum resettlement on the political agenda in Bombay.’
‘This is really good coffee,’ I said. ‘Italian?’
‘Of course, and stay on the subject.’
‘Slum resettlement,’ I said. ‘I get it. I’m just not sure I want to get it.’
‘Want to get what?’
‘Karla, I love you. I honestly don’t care what you’ve been –’
‘Humane, well-compensated resettlement for slum dwellers,’ she said. ‘You get that, right?’
She was imitating me, and doing a pretty good job.
‘I get that. I just –’
‘Ranjit and I met in an elevator,’ Karla said.
‘Karla –’
‘In a stuck elevator, to be precise.’
‘That’s a pretty good Ranjit metaphor. A stuck elevator.’
‘The elevator got stuck between the seventh and eighth floors for an hour,’ she said, crowding me into her memory.
‘An hour?’
‘Sixty long minutes. There was just the two of us, Ranjit and me.’
‘Did he make a pass at you?’
‘Of course. He flirted with me, and made a pass, and I slapped it away. So he made another pass, and I slapped it a lot harder, and then he sat on the floor and asked me what I wanted to achieve in life.’
I drank coffee, slapping Ranjit twice, in my mind.
‘It was the first time in my life that anyone ever asked me that question,’ she said.
‘I’ve asked you that question. I’ve asked you more than once.’
‘You asked me what I want to do,’ she said, ‘just like I ask you what you want to do. He asked me what I want to achieve in life. It’s a different question.’
‘It’s the same question, in a different elevator.’
She laughed, and then shook her head.
‘I’m not getting into that now, much as I’d love to kick your koans in the ass.’
‘The ass kicks,’ I said, straight-faced. ‘When the burden is great.’
‘I’m not doing this, Lin. I’m going to tell you what you need to know, and then I’ll aphorism your ass so bad you’ll think you’re drunk on homemade wine.’
‘Promise?’
‘Go with me, here.’
‘Okay, so you’re locked in a marriage, sorry, an elevator, with Ranjit, and when he can’t achieve you, he asks you what you want to achieve. What did you say?’
‘I answered it without thinking. I said I want to achieve decent resettlement for slum dwellers.’
‘What did he say?’
‘He said This is a fated connection. I’m going into politics, and I’ll make your program a priority, if you’ll marry me.’
‘He said this in the elevator?’
‘He did.’
‘And you accepted?’
‘I did.’
‘After an hour in an elevator?’
‘Yeah,’ she said, frowning.
She scanned my eyes, green queens prowling through my grey skies.
‘Hold it a minute,’ she demanded. ‘You don’t think a man would propose to me after an hour in a stuck elevator, is that it?’
‘I didn’t say –’
‘My fastest proposal was five minutes flat,’ she said.
‘I didn’t say –’
‘I’d defy you to beat that, but I know you can’t, and I wouldn’t let you try.’
‘No offence, but apart from you, what was his angle?’
‘He said that he wanted to piss off his family, and there was no better way. He’d been looking for someone just like me.’
‘Why did he want to piss off his family?’
‘Ranjit had control of the money, his family estate, but he had brothers and sisters who were snapping at his crooked deals. They’d taken him to court three times, trying to get control of the money he was misappropriating. He’d been looking for a wife he could weaponise.’
‘To antagonise them?’
‘Exactly. He couldn’t cut them off without a reason, and he knew they couldn’t keep their mouths shut about his foreign wife, especially if his foreign wife couldn’t keep her mouth shut about them.’
‘You cooked this up in an hour? You fix his problems, and he fixes yours. Strangers on an elevator, huh?’
‘Exactly. Each time I provoked one of them to insult me, he cut them off. I was his reverse pension plan.’
‘You’re pretty cute, even when you’re trying not to be,’ I smiled. ‘How did you get them to dislike you so much?’
‘They’re a nasty bunch. They hate easy. And Ranjit told me all their dirty secrets. I took an honesty pill every time I saw them. It made them sick.’
‘So, when you and Ranjit got all the way down to the ground floor, you married him?’
She was suddenly serious.
‘After what I did to you, with Khaderbhai, I thought you’d never speak to me again. And I was right, kind of. We were apart for two years without a word.’
‘I gave you space, because you married Ranjit.’
‘I married Ranjit to give you space,’ she said. ‘And I spent two years helping him cut family ties, and pushing him up a political hill that he was ill-equipped in anything but ambition to climb.’
‘So, you inappropriately alienated his family, so that he could misappropriate the family fortune, and in exchange he pushed your slum resettlement agenda? Am I getting this right?’
‘Substantially. At least, that was the deal, if he’d stuck to it.’
‘Karla, that’s . . . kinda nuts, what you were doing with Ranjit.’
‘And living with Lisa wasn’t nuts, in its own way?’
‘Not . . . every day.’
She laughed, and then looked away.
‘At the last moment, Ranjit ditched the resettlement program, and pulled out of the race, because of a few scares the other side threw at him.’
‘When did that happen?’ I asked, thinking that his withdrawal from politics might’ve had something to do with Lisa’s death.
‘That day at his office when you came in growling for me, I’d just had it out with him. It was all over. Everything I’d worked for. He’d withdrawn his nomination. He was shaking and sweating. He quit, and you know I can’t stand a quitter. I went and sat in the corner while he settled down, and I told him that if we ever found ourselves in the same room again, so long as we lived, we’d sit as far apart as possible.’
‘Neither one of us knew he was so scared that day because he thought I knew he’d been with Lisa at the end.’
‘I was so happy when you walked in.’
‘As happy as I am now?’ I asked, kissing her.
‘Happier,’ she purred. ‘I was sitting in the corner, with everything I’d planned and worked for in ruins around me, and then you walked in. I was never more glad to see anyone in my life. I thought, My hero.’
‘Let me get you something heroic to eat. I don’t know about you, but I’m starved.’
‘No, let me.’
She brought us a platter of dates, cheese and apples, and wine in long, red glasses with feet like a hawk’s claws.
She talked about Kavita Singh, and how Ranjit’s disappearance gave Karla one last hand to play, because she had a proxy vote on Ranjit’s shares, which he couldn’t rescind without resurfacing. Karla elevated Kavita to deputy editor, in exchange for a promise from Kavita to make slum resettlement a banner issue.
Working together, Karla and Kavita developed a citywide beautification program to nudge public consensus toward humane resettlement of slum dwellers, as a matter of civic pride. They played it out on newspaper pages still technically owned by Ranjit.
‘The editor was a problem,’ Karla said. ‘We tried for weeks to get him on the team. He fought us to the fourth quarter on everything. But when he accepted an invitation to the fetish party, it was easy.’
‘What was easy?’
‘Compliance,’ she said. ‘Smoke a joint with me.’
‘Why were you on Benicia’s bike last night?’
‘Does it hurt more that I was with Benicia, or that I was on her very pretty motorcycle?’
‘It all hurts. I don’t ever want to see you on any motorcycle but mine, unless you’re riding it yourself.’
‘Then you’ll have to teach me to ride, renegade. You start with your legs wide, right?’
‘Wide enough to hold on,’ I smiled.
‘Smoke a joint with me,’ she said, lying back on the bed, her feet in my lap.
‘Now?’
‘Look, the city’s in lockdown. We can’t go anywhere. Jaswant has plenty of supplies. I’ve got a gun. Relax, and smoke a joint with me.’
‘I’m pretty relaxed, but okay, if you think it’s a good idea.’
‘Some doors,’ she said slowly, ‘can only be opened with the grace of pure desire.’
Some time later she brought us fruit on a blue glass tray, and fed me with her fingers, piece by piece. Love is connection, and happiness is the connected self. She kissed my hands, her hair like wings fanned for the sun. And an instant blessed by a woman’s love washed wounds away.
‘Compliance,’ Karla said, settling in beside me with a glass of wine.
‘Compliance?’
‘There’s nothing like a fetish, to get a man’s compliance point out in the open.’
‘The chief editor?’ I asked, still cocooned in the segue.
‘Are you zoning out?’ she asked. ‘Of course, the editor.’
‘How did you find out his fetish? Did he present a card, or something?’
‘When the guests arrived, we’d already supplied every fetish in the book, with girls in masks, dressed by damnation. We paraded them past him, until one got a reaction. It didn’t take long, actually.’
‘Which one?’
‘Dominatrix, in a fake-leather sari. It’s a catalogue item.’
‘Then what?’
‘Then he got filmed, in a private booth, getting dominated.’
‘You and Kavita filmed him?’
‘Not just him. We also filmed a judge, a politician, a tycoon and a cop.’
‘You set all this up?’
‘Kavita and I had a woman on the inside.’
‘Who was that?’
‘The hostess.’
‘Who was?’
‘Diva,’ she said.
‘Diva, our Diva, who’s next door, with Randall?’
‘Our Diva, who left earlier, with Charu and Pari, while you were asleep,’ she said. ‘Some cars arrived to bring them home. Bodyguards were banging on the door. Jaswant thought the zombies were trying to break in. We pulled the barricade away and –’
‘Wait a minute, I slept through all that?’
‘Sure, soldier,’ she purred. ‘Diva said you looked cute.’
‘Diva said what?’
‘She wanted to talk to me, while Charu and Pari were getting ready to leave. It takes those girls a time to do anything. Diva came in here, and we sat on the bed.’
‘While I was asleep?’
‘Yeah. She was right, you’re cuter asleep than awake. It’s lucky I’ve got a weakness for awake.’
‘How long was Diva here?’
‘We smoked a joint,’ Karla said.
‘That long?’
‘And drank a glass of wine.’
‘While I was sleeping?’
‘Yeah, she came in to tell me that Kavita had a new secret admirer, and she’d been acting a bit nuts.’
‘Kavita is a bit nuts,’ I said. ‘She had a thing with Lisa, and it won’t let her go. She’s clever and capable, but she’s been acting nuts with me, too. I think that’s why Madame Zhou likes her – they’re as crazy as each other.’
‘Kavita did this whole thing with us, Lin,’ Karla said. ‘She was with us every step of the way.’
‘And you put her next in line to run a major daily newspaper.’
‘I won’t let you talk her down,’ she said. ‘I won’t let anyone talk her or any of my friends down. Just like I wouldn’t let anyone talk you down.’
‘Okay. Fair call. But it’s my job to tell you when I sense a threat.’
‘Your job?’ She laughed.
‘Yeah, and it’s your job to warn me,’ I smiled. ‘So, Diva left with the girls?’
‘The bodyguards escorted them away. They had some explaining to do, about staying out all night.’
‘And I slept through all of this?’
‘Sure did. We helped Jaswant put the barricade back, I showered, got back into bed, and you got very glad to see me. The girls said goodbye, by the way.’
I was feeling strange. I was always the first up, no matter how tired I was, and if someone in a room next door dropped a pen on the floor, I started awake from deep sleep. But somehow, I’d slept through a conversation on my own bed.
It was an unusual feeling, disorienting, all slow pulse rates and blurred edges, and negotiating it was like walking along the deck of a rolling ship. It took me a while to realise what it was: I was feeling peaceful.
Peace, Idriss once said, is perfect forgiveness, and is the opposite of fear.
‘Are you with me, Shantaram?’ Karla smiled, shaking me by the chin.
‘I’m so with you, Karla.’
‘Okay,’ she laughed. ‘Where were we?’
‘You were telling me how you and Kavita put this together,’ I said, holding her close.
‘Kavita, Diva and me. Diva’s the richest girl in Bombay right now, and when she threw a fetish party, the rich rowed up in limousines.’
‘But Diva wasn’t even there.’
‘We set it up for her to be turned away at a roadblock, and pushed back into the city, with plausible deniability about anything that happened at the party.’
‘To cover her assets.’
‘To cover her assets,’ Karla said, tapping me on the chest in agreement.
It was the first time she ever did it: the first time that little gesture born in who she was, when she was completely relaxed in love, made its way to my skin.
‘So, you set up fetish games, and cameras?’
‘We had seven targets, counting the editor, but only five of them turned up.’
‘Targets?’
‘Impediments to progress, that we wanted to make vessels of change.’
‘And now the five are –’
‘Vessels of change, and we’ll get slum resettlement, and more attention to women’s issues. Win–win, women style.’
I sat up on the bed. She offered me a towel, scented with ginger, and we wiped our faces and hands.
‘If these guys are big shots, Karla, they’re dangerous, by definition. That film’s a bomb, and it’ll keep ticking as long as it exists.’
‘We’ve got intermediaries,’ she said, leaning into my arm again.
‘They’ll need to be bulletproof.’
‘They are,’ she said. ‘We’ve contracted the Cycle Killers to talk for us.’
‘Now, that makes things much saner. The Cycle Killers?’
‘I don’t do anything face to face with anyone but them. They do all the negotiating with the other side.’
‘How did that happen?’
‘You really wanna know?’
‘Of course I wanna know.’
‘Well,’ she said, sitting up and facing me, her legs lotus. ‘Randall and I noticed the Cycle Killers following you, twice, and I sent Randall to find out what they wanted.’
‘He fronted the Cycle Killers alone?’
‘No doubt.’
‘He’s a keeper,’ I smiled. ‘I’m glad he’s on board with you.’
‘With us,’ she corrected.
‘What do you make of it, Randall and Diva? I know Naveen is crazy about her, and I thought she liked him.’
‘It’s a lockdown, Shantaram. What happens in a lockdown, stays in a lockdown. Best we keep out of it.’
‘You’re right, I guess. Go back to the Cycle Killers.’
‘So, Randall found out that Abdullah had hired them to watch over you for a while, and he made a couple of friends.’
‘And when you found out they were for hire, you hired them.’
‘I did, and they were happy to do it.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Yeah, they’re working on their image. They’d like to move into more public-minded areas than killing people for money.’
‘Like threatening people for money.’
‘Something like that,’ she said. ‘It’s an upward image step, but I think they’re serious. I think they wanna come in from the cold.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘When I had the Cycle Killers to negotiate for us, I had a plan. I couldn’t have done it without them, because I couldn’t trust anyone else not to buckle under the pressure, and give us up. When Fate put them behind you, I got them behind me.’
‘In front of you, actually.’
‘Exactly. Ishmeet, the boss, is the man talking to the vessels of change.’
‘I’ve met Ishmeet.’
‘He’s a true gentleman,’ she said.
‘Salt of the moon.’
‘And Pankaj, his friend, who really likes you, by the way, is a riot. I invited him to the fetish party.’
‘I bet you did. And did I have to be kept so deep in the dark, through this dark scheme?’
‘I was protecting you,’ she said. ‘I was keeping you away from the fire.’
‘Like a fool?’
‘Like a soul mate,’ she said. ‘If the whole thing blew up, I wanted to make sure it didn’t reach out to you. You’re on the run too, remember?’
She was beautiful, in a new way. She was defending me, guarding me with a part of her soul.
She got up to light new incense, seven sticks, fireflies hovering in the coloured room, and put them in the mouths of clay dragons. I watched her moving around the bedroom, and my mind was fighting Time, trying to stop everything but This.
She sat down beside me again, taking my hand.
‘If I’d told you that I wanted to move the whole city in the direction of humane slum resettlement,’ she asked, ‘would you have joined me in it, or would you have tried to stop me? Honestly?’
‘I would’ve tried to get you to leave, and set up again somewhere else, with me.’
‘That’s why I protected you,’ she said.
‘That’s why?’
‘You would’ve helped me, because you love me, but your intention wouldn’t have been pure, going in, and that would’ve made you vulnerable. And me, too, probably.’
I thought about it, not really understanding it, but a different question asked itself.
‘Why did you do it, Karla?’
‘You don’t think the cause is important enough?’
She was teasing me.
‘Why did you do it, Karla?’
It was her turn to think. She smiled, and went with honesty.
‘To see if I could,’ she said. ‘I wanted to see if I could do it.’
‘I think you can do anything, Karla. But we should’ve done it together.’
She laughed again.
‘You’re so loved,’ she said. ‘And I’m so glad to finally tell you.’
It was too much, it was every dream. Doubt, the thing that fights love, pushed me to the cliff, daring me to jump. I jumped.
‘I love you so much, Karla, that I’m lost in it, and I always will be.’
Men don’t like to be that honest about love: to put the gun in a woman’s hand, and hold it against their own hearts, and say, Here, this is how you kill me. But it was okay. It was okay.
‘I love you too, baby,’ she said, all green queens. ‘I always did, even when it looked like I didn’t. I’m stuck on you, and you better get used to it, because we’re inseparable from now on. You see that, right?’
‘I see that,’ I said, pulling her down to kiss me. ‘You thought all this out pretty long and hard, didn’t you?’
‘You know me,’ she purred. ‘I do everything long and hard.’