Shantaram полностью

‘Oh, regional, language-based, ethnic, us-against-them,’ he replied, sneering cynically as he ticked each characteristic off on the fingers of his left hand. They were very white, soft hands. His long fingernails were black with dirt under the edges. ‘The politics of fear. I hate politics, and politicians even more. They make a religion of being greedy. It’s unforgivable. A man’s relationship to his greed is a deeply personal thing, don’t you think? The Shiv Sena controls the police, because they are a Maharashtrian party, and most of the lower ranks of the police are Maharashtrians. They control a lot of the slums, too, and many of the unions, and some of the press. They have everything, in fact, except the money. Oh, they have the support of the sugar barons, and some of the merchants, but the real money-the industrial money and the black money-that is in the hands of the Parsees and the Hindus from other cities in India and, most hated of all, the Muslims. And here is the struggle, the guerre économique, the truth behind their talk of race and language and region. They are changing the city, a little less and a little more every day. Even the name has been changed, from Bombay to Mumbai. They haven’t managed to change the maps, yet, but they will do it. And they will do almost anything, join with almost anyone, in their quest. There are opportunities. Fortunes. Just in the last few months some Sainiks-oh, not the public ones, not the highly placed ones-made a deal with Rafiq and his Afghans and the police. In exchange for certain cash and concessions, the police closed down all but a few of the opium dens in the city. Dozens of the finest smoking parlours, places that have served the community for generations, were closed in a single week. Closed forever! Normally, I do not interest myself in the pigsty of politics, or in the slaughterhouse of big business, for that matter. The only force more ruthless and cynical than the business of big politics is the politics of big business. But this is big politics and big business together, in the destruction of the opium smoking, and I am incensed! I ask you, what is Bombay without its chandu-its opium-and its opium dens? What is the world coming to? It’s a disgrace!’

I watched the men he’d described, as they concentrated with energetic single-mindedness on their meal. The table was heaped with platters of rice, chicken, and vegetable dishes. None of the five men spoke, nor did they so much as look at one another as they ate, bending low to their plates and scooping the food into their mouths rapidly.

‘That’s a pretty good line,’ I commented, grinning widely. ‘The one about the business of big politics, and the politics of big business. I like it.’

‘Ah, my dear friend, I cannot claim it as my own. It was Karla who said it to me the first time, and I have used it ever since. I am guilty of many crimes-of most crimes, to say the truth-but I have never claimed a cleverness that was not my own.’

‘Admirable,’ I laughed.

‘Well,’ he puffed, ‘a man has to draw the line somewhere. Civilisation, after all, is defined by what we forbid, more than what we permit.’

He paused, drumming the fingers of his right hand on the cold marble tabletop. After a few moments, he glanced around at me.

‘That is one of mine,’ he said, apparently peeved that I hadn’t drawn attention to the phrase. When I didn’t react, he spoke again. ‘About the civilisation… it was one of mine.’

‘And damn clever,’ I responded quickly.

‘Nothing at all,’ he said modestly, then he caught my eye, and we both laughed out loud.

‘What was in it for Rafiq, if you don’t mind my asking. That stuff about closing all the opium dens. Why did he go along with it?’

‘Go along with it?’ Didier frowned, ‘Why, it was his idea. There is more money to be made from garad-brown sugar heroin-than there is from opium. And now everyone, all the poor who were chandu smokers, they have become garad smokers. Rafiq controls the garad, the brown sugar. Not all of it, of course. No one man controls all the thousands of kilos of brown sugar that come from Afghanistan, through Pakistan, into India. But a lot of it is his, a lot of the Bombay brown heroin. This is big money, my friend, big money.’

‘Why did the politicians go along with it?’