Shantaram полностью

He paused, breathing through his nose, with his lips pressed tightly together. His eyes squinted against the glare from the glittering sea, and the fresh, persistent breeze. Behind us we could hear the noises of the slum-hawkers’ cries, the slap of clothes on stone in the washing area, children playing, a bickering complaint, and the jangling music for Prabaker’s piston-hips.

‘She had a tough time of it, Lin. She was heavily pregnant with me when they threw her out. She moved to a pavement-dweller settlement, across in Crawford Market area, and wore the widow’s white sari, pretending that she’d had a husband, and pretending that he was dead. She had to do that-she had to become a widow, for life, before she was even married. That’s why I never got married. I’m thirty-eight years old. I can read and write very well-my mother made sure I was educated-and I do the bookwork for all the shops and businesses in the slum. I do the taxes for every man who pays them. I make a good living here, and I have respect. I should’ve been married fifteen or even twenty years ago. But she was a widow, all her life, for me. And I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t allow myself to get married. I kept hoping I would see him, the sailor with the best moustache. My mother had one very old, faded photograph of the two of them, looking very serious and stern. That’s why I lived in this area. I always hoped I would see him. And I never married. And she died last week, Lin. My mother died last week.’

He turned to me, and the whites of his eyes were blazing with the tears he wouldn’t let them shed.

‘She died last week. And now, I’m getting married.’

‘I’m sorry to hear about your mother, Johnny. But I’m sure she’d want you to get married. I think you’ll make a good father. In fact, I know you’ll make a good father. I’m sure of it.’

He looked at me, his eyes talking to me in a language I could feel but couldn’t understand. When I left him, he was staring at the ceaselessness of the sea, irritated to chequered, white rifts by the wind.

I walked back through the slum to the clinic. A conversation with Ayub and Siddhartha, the two young men I’d trained to run the clinic, reassured me that all was well. I gave them some money to keep, as an emergency float, and left money with Prabaker for his wedding preparations. I paid a courtesy visit to Qasim Ali Hussein, allowing him to force the hospitality of chai upon me. Jeetendra and Anand Rao, two of my former neighbours, joined us, with several other men I knew well. Qasim Ali led the conversation, referring to his son Sadiq, who was working in the Gulf. In turn, we spoke of religious and communal conflict in the city, the construction of the twin towers, still at least two years from completion, and the weddings of Prabaker and Johnny Cigar.

It was a genial, sanguine meeting, and I rose to leave with the strength and confidence that those honest, simple, decent men always inspired in me. I’d only walked a few paces, however, when the young Sikh, Anand Rao, caught up, and fell into step beside me.

‘Linbaba, there is a problem here,’ he said quietly. He was an unusually solemn man at the best of times, but at that moment his expression was unambiguously grim. ‘That Rasheed, that fellow I used to be sharing with. Do you remember?’

‘Yes. Rasheed. I remember him,’ I replied, recalling the thin, bearded face and restless, guilty eyes of the man who’d been my neighbour, with Anand, for more than a year.

‘He is making a bad business,’ Anand Rao declared bluntly. ‘His wife and her sister came from their native place. I went from that hut when they came. He has been living with them alone now, for some time.’

‘And… whatï I asked, as we walked out on to the road together. I had no idea what Anand Rao was driving at, and I had no patience for it. It was the kind of vague, insinuated complaint that had come to me almost every day when I’d lived in the slum. Most of the time, such complaints came to nothing. Most of the time, it was in my best interests to have nothing to do with them.

‘Well,’ Anand Rao hesitated, perhaps sensing my impatience, ‘it is… he is… something is very bad, and I am… there must be…’

He fell silent, staring at his sandaled feet. I reached out to put a hand on his broad, proud, thin shoulder. Gradually his eyes lifted, and met mine in a mute appeal.

‘Is it money?’ I asked, reaching into my pocket. ‘Do you need some money?’

He recoiled as if I’d cursed him. He held the stare, for a moment, before turning and walking back into the slum.