Shantaram полностью

Her friends had moved to our side of the little stand, and she left me to join them. They were all Indians, all young, and dressed in the clean, fashionably western clothes of the middle class. They laughed often and leaned against one another familiarly, but no-one touched Karla. She seemed to project an aura that was attractive and inviolable at the same time. I moved closer, pretending to be intrigued by the cigarette seller’s work with his leaves and pastes. I listened as she spoke to them, but I couldn’t understand the language. Her voice, in that language and in that conversation, was surprisingly deep and sonorous; the hairs on my arms tingled in response to the sound of it. And I suppose that, too, should’ve been a warning. The voice, Afghan matchmakers say, is more than half of love. But I didn’t know that then, and my heart rushed in, where even matchmakers might’ve feared to tread.

‘See, Mr. Lindsay, I bought it just two cigarettes for us,’ Prabaker said, rejoining me and offering one of the cigarettes with a flourish. ‘This is India, country of the poor fellows. No need for buying whole packet of cigarettes here. Just one cigarette, you can buy only. And no need for buying it any matches.’

He leaned forward and took up a length of smouldering hemp rope that was hanging from a hook on the telegraph pole, next to the cigarette stall. Prabaker blew the ash from the end of it, exposing a little orange ember of fire, which he used to puff his cigarette alight.

‘What is he making? What are they chewing in those leaves?’

‘Is called paan. A most very excellent taste and chewing it is. Everyone in Bombay is chewing and spitting, chewing and more spitting, no problem, day and night also. Very good for health it is, plenty of chewing and full spitting. You want to try it? I will get it for you some.’

I nodded and let him make the order, not so much for the new experience of the paan as for the excuse it offered to stand there longer, and look at Karla. She was so relaxed and at home, so much a part of the street and its inscrutable lore. What I found bewildering, all around me, seemed to be mundane for her. I was reminded of the foreigner in the slum-the man I’d seen from the window of the bus. Like him, she seemed calm and content in Bombay. She seemed to belong. I envied her the warmth and acceptance she drew from those around her.

But more than that, my eyes were drawn to her perfect loveliness. I looked at her, a stranger, and every other breath strained to force its way from my chest. A clamp like a tightening fist seized my heart. A voice in my blood said yes, yes, yes… The ancient Sanskrit legends speak of a destined love, a karmic connection between souls that are fated to meet and collide and enrapture one another. The legends say that the loved one is instantly recognised because she’s loved in every gesture, every expression of thought, every movement, every sound, and every mood that prays in her eyes. The legends say that we know her by her wings-the wings that only we can see-and because wanting her kills every other desire of love.

The same legends also carry warnings that such fated love may, sometimes, be the possession and the obsession of one, and only one, of the two souls twinned by destiny. But wisdom, in one sense, is the opposite of love. Love survives in us precisely because it isn’t wise.

Ah, you look that girl,’ Prabaker observed, returning with the paan and following the direction of my gaze. ‘You think she is beautiful, na? Her name is Karla.’

‘You know her?’

‘Oh, yes! Karla is everybody knows,’ he replied, in a stage whisper so loud that I feared she might hear. ‘You want to meet her?’

‘Meet her?’

‘If you want it, I will speak to her. You want her to be your friend?’

‘What?’

‘Oh, yes! Karla is my friend, and she will be your friend also, I think so. Maybe you will make a lot of money for your very good self, in business with Karla. Maybe you will become such good and closely friends that you will have it a lot of sexes together, and make a full enjoyment of your bodies. I am sure you will have a friendly pleasure.’

He was actually rubbing his hands together. The red juices of the paan stained the teeth and lips of his smile. I had to grasp at his arm to stop him from approaching her, there, in the group of her friends.

‘No! Stop! For Christ’s sake, keep your voice down, Prabaker. If I want to speak to her, I’ll do it myself.’

‘Oh, I am understand,’ he said, looking abashed. ‘It is what foreigners are calling foreplay, isn’t it?’

‘No! Foreplay is… never mind what foreplay is!’

‘Oh, good! I never mind about the foreplays, Mr. Lindsay. I am an Indian fellow, and we Indian fellows, we don’t worry about the foreplayings. We go straight to the bumping and jumping. Oh yes!’

He was holding an imaginary woman in his hands and thrusting his narrow hips at her, smiling that red-juiced smile all the while.