Shantaram полностью

‘Ah, yes. He loved me, and I loved him, it was true, but he made an error of the judgment. He gave my love a test. He allowed me to discover the secret place where he kept a large sum of cash. I could not resist the temptation that he offered to me. I took the money and ran away. I loved him, but I took his money, and I ran away. For all his wisdom, he did not know that love cannot be tested. Honesty can be tested, and loyalty. But there is no test for love. Love goes on forever, once it begins, even if we come to hate the one we love. Love goes on forever because love is born in the part of us that does not die.’

‘Did you ever see him again?’

‘Yes. Yes, I did. Another loop of fortune brought me back to Genova, almost fifteen years later. I walked on the same boulevard of sand where he had taught me to read Rimbaud and Verlaine. And then I saw him. He was sitting with a group of men of his own age-he was more than sixty then-and they were watching two elderly men play chess. He wore a grey cardigan and a black velvet scarf, although the day was not cold. His hair was almost gone. That silver crown of hair, it was… gone. His face was all hollow spaces, and his skin was a bad mix of bad colours, as if he was recovering from a serious illness. Perhaps he was succumbing to it. I do not know. I walked on past him, averting my gaze, so that he should not recognise me. I even pretended a strange, stooping walk to disguise myself. At the last moment I glanced back at him, watching as he coughed violently into a white handkerchief. There was blood, I think, staining that white handkerchief. I walked faster and faster until I ran with the haste of a man in terror.’

Once again we sat in silence and allowed our eyes to rove the passing crowds, following a man in a blue turban in one instant, and a woman in a black mask, veil, and chador the next.

‘You know, Lin, I have lived what many-or most-would call a wicked life. I have done things that could put me in prison, and things that, in some nations, could see me executed. There are many things I have done that I can say, I am not proud. But there is only one act in my whole life that I can say, I am truly ashamed of it. I hurried past that great man, and I had money enough and time enough and good health enough to help him. I hurried past him, not because I felt guilty about the theft of his money. And not because I was afraid of his sickness, or the commitment it might cost me. I hurried past that good and brilliant man who loved me, and taught me how to love, simply because he was old-because he was not beautiful any more.’

He drained his glass, examined its emptiness for a moment, and then placed it on the table as gently and attentively as if it was about to explode.

‘Merdel Let’s drink, my friend!’ he cried at last, but my hand stayed his, preventing him from summoning the waiter.

‘I can’t, Didier. I have to meet Lisa at the Sea Rock. She asked me to ride out there and meet her. I’ll have to leave now, if I’m going to make it.’

He clenched his jaws on something-a request, perhaps, or another confession. My hand still rested on his.

‘Look, you can come, if you like. It’s not a private meeting, and it’s a nice ride out to Juhu.’

He smiled slowly, and slid his hand out from under mine. Still staring into my eyes, he raised his hand, pointing with one finger. A waiter came to the table. Without looking at him, Didier ordered another whisky. When I paid my bill and walked out to the street, he was coughing again, hunched over one hand and clutching his glass with the other.

I’d bought a bike, an Enfield Bullet, a month before. The taste of two-wheeled adrenaline that I’d experienced in Goa had nagged at me until I finally surrendered to it, and went with Abdullah to the mechanic who serviced his bike. The mechanic, a Tamil named Hussein, loved bikes, and loved Abdullah almost as much. The Enfield he sold to me was in perfect condition, and it never once let me down. Vikram was so impressed with it that he bought one from Hussein within a week. Sometimes we rode together, Abdullah, Vikram, and I, our three bikes side by side, and the sun in our laughing mouths.

On that afternoon when I left Didier at Leopold’s I rode slowly, and gave myself time and space to think. Karla was gone from the little house on Anjuna beach. I had no idea where she might be. Ulla told me that Karla had stopped writing to her, and I had no reason to think she was lying. So Karla was gone, and there was no way to find her. And every day I woke with a dream or a thought of her. Every night I slept with the knife of regret in my chest.