Shantaram (60 page)

"I... this whole business was once something of a specialty with me...," Khaled said, when that long first lesson finally ended.

His voice trailed off, and I couldn't be certain whether he was reminiscing or simply reluctant to talk further. I waited.

"When I was studying, in New York," he went on at last, "I was working on a thesis... well, I wrote a thesis, on _un-organised trade in the ancient world. It's an area that my mother was researching, before the '67 war. When I was a kid, she got me interested in the black markets of Assyria, Akkad, and Sumer, and how they related to trade routes, and taxes, and the empires that built up around them. When I started to write it myself, I called it Black Babylon."

"It's a catchy title."

He fired a glance at me to reassure himself that I wasn't mocking him.

"I mean it," I said quickly, wanting to put him at ease because I was beginning to like him. "I think it's a good topic for a thesis, and it's a very catchy title. I think you should go ahead and finish it." He smiled again.

"Well, Lin, life has a lot of surprises, and, as my uncle in New York used to say, most of them ain't happy ones for a working stiff. Now I'm working _for a black market, instead of working on one. Now, it's Black Bombay."

The bitterness in his voice was disconcerting. His jaw began to set in a grim and almost angry expression as he stared at his joined hands. I moved to steer the conversation away from the past.

"You know, I've been involved with a part of the black market that might interest you. Have you heard of the lepers' medicine market?"

"Sure," he replied, interest glittering in his dark brown eyes.

He ran a hand over his face and up across the short, military haircut, prematurely streaked with grey and white. The gesture wiped his gloomy recollections away, and he gave me his full attention. "I heard that you met Ranjit-he's incredible, isn't he?"

We talked about Ranjitbhai, the king of his little group of lepers, and the black market they'd organised across the country.

Their mysterious trade fascinated us equally. As a historian-or a man who'd once dreamed of becoming a historian, like his scholarly mother-Khaled was intrigued by the long evolution and secret conduct of the lepers' organisation. As a writer, I was provoked by the story of their suffering and their unique response to it. After twenty minutes of excited, actuating discussion, we agreed to visit Ranjit together to find out more about the history of the black market in medicines.

And with that pledge between exiles, between scholar and writer, Khaled and I established a simple but enduring bond of intellectual respect. We became friends in the rapid, unquestioning way of criminals, soldiers, and other survivors of disaster. I visited him every day in his sparsely furnished, Spartan apartment near Andheri station. The sessions lasted five or six hours. They roved freely from ancient history to reserve bank interest-rate policies, from anthropology to fixed and floating currencies, and I learned more about that very common but complex crime in one month, with Khaled Ansari, than most street traders in dollars and Deutschmarks learned in a year of dealing.

And when the lessons were complete, I went to work with Khaled every morning and every evening, seven days a week. The pay was good. The wages I earned came in such quantities that I was often paid in thick blocks of rupees, direct from the bank and still bearing their steel staples all the way through the notes. Compared to the slum-dwellers I'd known as neighbours, friends, and patients for almost two years, I was already a rich man.

To ensure that the cuts and wounds of prison healed as quickly as possible, I'd taken a room at the India Guest House, at Khaderbhai's expense. The clean, tiled shower and soft mattress did help me to heal, but there was more to the move than physical convalescence. The truth was that the months in Arthur Road Prison had damaged my spirit more than my body. And the lingering shame I felt over the deaths of my neighbour Radha in the cholera epidemic, and the two boys from my English class, gave me no peace. The prison torment, and my failures in the cholera epidemic: I might've survived either one of them on its own, and gone back to those loving, wretched acres when I was well enough.

But both of them, together, were more than my frail self-respect could endure, and I couldn't live in the slum or even sleep the night there.

I visited Prabaker, Johnny, Qasim, and Jeetendra often, and I continued to help out at the clinic, attending to patients for two afternoons every week. But the strange mix of arrogance and insouciance that had permitted me to be the slum doctor was gone, and I didn't expect it to return. There's a little arrogance at the heart of every better self. That arrogance left me when I failed to save my neighbour's life-failed even to know that she was ill. And there's an innocence, essential and unblinking, in the heart of every determination to serve. That innocence faltered when I stumbled from the Indian prison: my smile, no less than my footsteps, hobbled by the memory of the leg-irons.

Moving out of the slum had as much or more to do with the state of my soul as it did with the wounds on my body.

For their part, my friends from the slum accepted my decision without question or comment. They greeted me warmly whenever I visited, and involved me in the daily routines and celebrations of the slum-weddings, festivals, community meetings, or cricket games-as if I still lived and worked with them. And despite their shock and sorrow when they saw my emaciated frame, and the scars that the overseers had branded on my skin, they never once mentioned the prison. A part of that, I think, was sensitivity to the shame they knew I must've been feeling; the shame that they would've felt had they been imprisoned. Another part, in the hearts of Prabaker, and Johnny Cigar, and perhaps even Qasim Ali, mightVe been found in guilt-that they hadn't been able to help me because they hadn't thought to search for me. None of them had realised that I'd been arrested. They'd assumed that I'd simply tired of life in the slum, and that I'd returned to my comfortable life in my comfortable country, like every other tourist or traveller they'd ever known.

And that, too, found its way into my reluctance to return to the slum. It astonished me, and it hurt me, after all I'd done there, and for all that they'd included me in the ragged skein of their too-many lives, that they still expected me to leave them, without a word of farewell, whenever the whim possessed me.

So, when my health improved and I began to earn real money, I didn't move back to the slum. Instead, with Khaderbhai's help, I rented an apartment in Colaba at the landward end of Best Street, not far from Leopold's. It was my first apartment in India, and my first indulgence of space and privacy and domestic luxuries such as a hot shower and a functioning kitchen. I ate well, cooking high-protein and high-carbohydrate meals, and forcing myself to finish off a bucket of ice cream every day. I put on body weight. I slept for ten hours at a stretch, night after night, healing my lacerated body with sleep's ravelling repair.

But I woke often, with my arms flailing, fighting, and the wet metal smell of blood still fresh from the nightmare.

I trained in karate and weightlifting with Abdullah at his favourite gym in the fashionable suburb of Breach Candy. Two other young gangsters-Salman Mustaan and his friend Sanjay, whom I'd met at my first visit to Khader's council-often joined us.

They were strong, healthy men in their late-twenties who liked to fight about as much as they liked sex, and they liked sex just fine. Sanjay, with his movie-star looks, was the joker. Salman was quieter and more serious. Although inseparable friends since childhood, they were as hard on one another in the ring as they were when they boxed Abdullah and me. We worked out five times each week, with two days off to allow our torn and swollen muscles to recover. And it was good. It helped. Pumping iron is Zen for violent men. Little by little, my body regained its strength, muscular shape, and fitness.

But no matter how fit I became, I knew that my mind wouldn't heal, couldn't heal, until I found out who'd arranged with the police to have me picked up and sent to Arthur Road Prison. I needed to know who did it. I needed to know the reason. Ulla was gone from the city-in hiding, some said, but no-one could guess from whom, or why. Karla was gone, and no-one could tell me where she was. Didier and several other friends were digging around for me, trying to find the truth, but they hadn't found anything that might tell me who'd set me up.

Someone had arranged with senior cops to have me arrested, without charge, and imprisoned at Arthur Road. The same person had arranged to have me beaten-severely and often-while I was in the prison. It was a punishment or an act of revenge.

Khaderbhai had confirmed that much, but he couldn't or wouldn't say more, except to tell me that whoever it was who'd set me up hadn't known that I was on the run. That information, about the escape from Australia, had emerged from the routine fingerprint check. The cops concerned had realised, at once, that there might be profit in keeping quiet about it, and they'd shelved my file until Vikram approached them on Khader's behalf.

"Those fuckin' cops liked you, man," Vikram told me as we sat together in Leopold's one afternoon, a few months after I'd started work with Khaled as a currency collector.

"U-huh."

"No, really, they did. That's why they let you go."

"I never saw that cop before in my life, Vikram. He didn't know me at all."

"You don't get it," he replied patiently. He poured another glass of cold Kingfisher beer, and sipped it appreciatively. "I talked to that guy, the cop, when I got you out of there. He told me the whole story. See, when the first guy in the fingerprint section found out who the fuck you really were-when your fingerprint check came back with the news that you were this wanted guy, from Australia-he freaked out on it. He freaked out on how much money he might get, you know, to keep the shit quiet. A chance like that doesn't come along every day, na? So, without saying anything to anyone else, he goes to a senior cop he knows, and shows him the file report on your prints. That cop freaks out, too. He goes to another cop-the one we saw at the jail-and shows him the file. That cop tells the others to keep quiet about it, and leave it to him to find out how much money there is in it."

A waiter brought my cup of coffee, and chatted with me for a while in Marathi. Vikram waited until we were alone again before he spoke.

"They love it, you know, all these waiters and cab drivers and post office guys-and the cops, too-they love it, all these guys, that you speak Marathi to them. Fuck, man, I'm born here, and you speak Marathi better than I do. I never learned to speak it properly. I never had to. That's why so many Marathis are so pissed off, man. Most of us don't give a shit about the Marathi language, or who all comes to live in Bombay, or wherever the fuck they come from, yaar. Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, so the cop has this file on you, and he's keeping it quiet. But he wants to know more about this Australian fucker, who escaped from jail, before he does anything, yaar."

Vikram stopped, and grinned at me until the grin became a playful laugh. He wore a black leather vest over his white silk shirt, despite the thirty-five-degree heat. In his heavy, black jeans and ornate black cowboy boots, he must've been very hot, but he seemed cool; almost as cool as he looked.

"It's fuckin' great, man!" he laughed. "You busted out of a maximum-security jail! Fuckin' deadly! It's the greatest thing I ever heard, Lin. It's tearing my heart out that I can't tell anyone about it."

"Do you remember what Karla said about secrets, when we were sitting here one night?"

"No, man. What was it?"

"It isn't a secret, unless keeping it hurts."

"That's pretty fuckin' good," Vikram mused, grinning "So where was I? I'm losing it today, man. It's this Lettie thing. It's driving me insane, Lin. Oh yeah, the cop in charge, the cop with your file, he wants to do some checking on you. So, he sends two of his guys around, asking questions about you. All the street guys you used to work with, they gave you solid support, man.

They said you never cheated anyone, never fucked anybody over, and you put a lot of money around with the poor street guys when you had it."

"But the cops didn't tell anyone I was in Arthur Road?"

"No, man, they were checking up on you to find out if they wanted to fuck you over, and send you back to the Australian cops, or not-depending on how you checked out. And there's more to it.

One of the moneychangers tells the cops, Hey, if you wanna know about Lin, go ask in the zhopadpatti, because he lives there.

Well, the cops are now real intrigued, like-a gora, living in the slum. So they go there, and they take a look. They don't tell anybody in the slum what happened to you, but they start asking about you, and the people say stuff like, You see that clinic?

Lin built it, and he's been working there for a long time, helping the people... And they say stuff like, Everybody here has been treated at Lin's clinic, free of charge, at one time or another, and he did a great job when the cholera came... And they told the cops about that little school you started, You see that little school for English? Lin started it... And the cops get an earful of this Lin, this Linbaba, this foreign guy who does all this good shit, and they go back to their boss, telling him what they heard."

"Oh, come on, Vikram! You really think that made a difference? It was about money, that's all, and I'm just glad you were there to pay it."

Vikram's eyes widened in surprise, and then narrowed into a disapproving frown. He lifted the hat from his back and examined it, turning it in his hands and flicking specks of dust from the rim.

"You know, Lin, you've been here for a while now, and you've learned some language, and been to the village, and lived in the slum, and even been the fuck to jail and all, but you still don't get it, do you?"

"Maybe not," I conceded. "Probably not."

"Damn right you don't, man. This is not England, or New Zealand, or Australia, or wherever the fuck else. This is India, man. This is India. This is the land of the heart. This is where the heart is king, man. The fuckin' heart. That's why you're free. That's why that cop gave you back your phoney passport. That's why you can walk around, and not get picked up, even though they know who you are. They could've fucked you, Lin. They could've taken your money, Khader's money, and let you go, and then get some other cops to bust you, and send you the fuck home. But they didn't do it, and they won't do it, because you got them in their heart, man, in their Indian fuckin' heart. They looked at all what you did here, and how the people in that slum love you, and they thought, Well, he fucked up in Australia, but he's done some good shit here. If he pays up, we'll let the fucker go. Because they're Indians, man. That's how we keep this crazy place together-with the heart. Two hundred fuckin' languages, and a billion people. India is the heart. It's the heart that keeps us together. There's no place with people like my people, Lin.