Shantaram полностью

I strode on through familiar streets, and told myself that it was okay. Anand Rao and Rasheed had shared a hut for more than two years. If they were falling out because Rasheed’s wife and her sister had moved to the city, and Anand had been forced from the hut, it was probably to be expected. And it was no business of mine. I laughed, shaking my head as I walked, and trying to figure out why Anand Rao had reacted so badly to the offer of money. It wasn’t an unreasonable thing for me to assume or to offer. On the thirty-minute walk from the slum to Leopold’s, I gave money to five other people, including both of the Zodiac Georges. He’ll get over it, whatever it is, I told myself. At any rate, it’s got nothing to do with me. But the lies we tell ourselves are the ghosts that haunt the empty house of midnight. And although I pushed Anand and the slum from my mind, I felt the breath of that ghosted lie on my face as I walked through the long, thronging Causeway on that hot afternoon.

I stepped up into Leopold’s, and Didier seized me by the arm before I could speak or sit down, turning me about and leading me to a cab that was waiting outside.

‘I have searched for you everywhere,’ Didier puffed as the cab pulled out from the kerb. ‘I have been to the most unspeakably foul places, looking for you.’

‘People keep telling me that.’

‘Well, Lin, you really must try to spend more time in places where they serve a decent alcohol. It may not make the finding of you easier, but it will make it far more pleasant.’

‘Where are we going, Didier?’

‘Vikram’s great strategy-my own superb strategy, if you please-for the capture of Letitia’s cold and stony little English heart unfolds, now, even as we speak.’

‘Yeah, well, I wish him all the best,’ I frowned, ‘but I’m hungry. I was about to make very loud noises in a plate of Leopold’s pulao. You can let me off here.’

‘But, no! It is not possible!’ Didier objected. ‘Letitia, she is a very stubborn woman. She would refuse gold and diamonds if someone insisted that she should take them. She will not participate in the strategy unless someone convinces her. Someone like you, my friend. And this must be achieved in the next half-hour. At exactly six minutes after three o’clock.’

‘What makes you think Lettie will listen to me?’

‘You are the only one of us she does not now hate, or has not hated at some time in the past. For Letitia, the statement I do not hate you is a poem of passionate love. She will listen to you. I am sure of it. And without you, the plan will fail. And the good Vikram-as if loving such a woman as our Letitia was not sufficient to prove his mental derangement-he has already risked his life, several times, to make the plan possible. You cannot imagine how much preparation we have made, Vikram and I, for just this moment.’

‘Well, nobody told me anything about it,’ I complained, still thinking of the delicious pulao at Leopold’s.

‘But that is exactly why I have searched for you all over Colaba! You have no choice, Lin. You must help him. I know you. There is in you, as there is in me, a morbid belief in love, and a fascination for the madness that love puts in its victims.’

‘I wouldn’t put quite that spin on it, Didier.’

‘You can spin it how you will,’ he replied, laughing for the first time, ‘But you have the love disease, Lin, and you know, in your heart, that you must help Vikram, just as I must help him.’

‘Oh God,’ I relented, lighting a beedie to stave off the hunger. ‘I’ll do what I can to help. What’s the plan?’

‘Ah, it is quite complicated -’

‘Just a minute,’ I said, raising my hand to interrupt him quickly. ‘Is this scheme of yours dangerous?’

‘Well…’

‘And does it involve breaking the law?’

‘Well…’

‘I thought so. Then, don’t tell me until we get there. I’ve got enough to worry about.’

‘D’accord. I knew that we could count on you. Alors, speaking of worry, I have a little news that may be of some help to you.’

‘Let’s have it.’

‘The woman who made the complaint about you, the woman who put you in the prison, she is not Indian. I have learned it, beyond any doubt. She is a foreigner who lives here, in Bombay.’

‘There’s nothing else?’

‘No. I regret, there is nothing more. Not at this time. But I will not rest until I know all.’

‘Thanks, Didier.’

‘It’s nothing. You are looking well, by the way. Perhaps even better than before you went to the prison.’

‘Thanks. I’m a little heavier, and a little fitter.’

‘And a little… crazier… perhaps?’

I laughed, avoiding his eye, because it was true. The taxi pulled up at Marine Lines Station. Marine Lines was the first railway station after the central city terminus, at Churchgate Depot. We climbed the pedestrian ramp and found Vikram, with several of his friends, waiting for us on the station platform.

‘Oh, fuck] Thank God you’re here, man!’ he said, pumping my hand in a frantic, two-handed shake. ‘I thought you weren’t coming.’