Shantaram полностью

‘I don’t know if you will do it or not,’ he replied with what seemed to be genuine sadness. ‘I am going on this mission myself. To Afghanistan-my home, that I have not seen for more than fifty years. And I am inviting you-I am asking you-to go with me. The choice, of course, is yours to make. It is a dangerous job. That much is certain. I will not think less about you, if you decide not to go with me.’

‘Why me?’

‘I need a gora, a foreigner, who is not afraid to break a large number of international laws, and who can pass for an American. Where we will go there are many rival clans, and they have fought with one another for hundreds of years. They have long traditions of raiding one another and taking whatever they can as plunder on their raids. Only two things unite them, just at this time-love for Allah, and hatred for the Russian invaders. At the moment, their chief allies against the Russians are the Americans. They are fighting with American money and American weapons. If I have an American with me, they will leave us alone, and let us pass, without molesting us or stealing more than a reasonable amount from us.’

‘Why don’t you get an American-a real one, I mean?’

‘I tried. I could not find one crazy enough to take the risk. That is why I need you.’

‘What are we smuggling on this mission to Afghanistan?’

‘The usual things that one smuggles into a war-guns, explosives, passports, money, gold, machine parts, and medicines. It will be an interesting journey. If we pass through the heavily armed clans who would like to take what we have, we will deliver our goods to a unit of mujaheddin fighters who are putting siege to Kandahar city. They have been fighting the Russians in the same place for two years, and they need the supplies.’

Questions writhed in my shivering mind, hundreds of them, but the cold turkey was crippling me. Cold, greasy sweat from the struggle smothered my skin. The words, when they came at last, were rushed and faltering.

‘Why are you doing this? Why Kandahar? Why there?’

‘The mujaheddin-the men at the siege of Kandahar-they are my people, from my village. They are from Nazeer’s village also. They are fighting a jihad, a holy war, to drive the Russian invaders out of the homeland. We have helped them in many ways, up to this time. Now it is time to help them with guns, and with my blood, if it is necessary.’

He looked at the sickness trembling across my face, and cutting facets from my eyes. He smiled again, pressing his fingers into my shoulder until that pain, that touch, his touch, was all I felt for a moment.

‘First you must be well,’ he said, releasing the pressure of his fingers and touching his palm to my face. ‘Allah be with you, my son. Allah ya fazak!’

When he left me, I went to the bathroom. Stomach cramp stabbed me with eagle’s claws, and then twisted my insides with talons of agony. Diarrhoea shook me with convulsive spasms. I washed myself, shivering so violently that my teeth clattered together. I looked in the mirror and saw my eyes, the pupils so large that the whole iris was black. When the light comes back, when the heroin stops and the turkey starts and the light returns, it rushes in through the black funnels of the eyes.

Wearing a towel around my waist, I walked back to the big main room. I looked thin. I was stooped, and shivering, and moaning involuntarily. Nazeer looked me up and down, with a sneer curling his thick upper lip. He handed me a pile of clean clothes. They were exact copies of Khader’s green Afghan costume. I dressed, shaking and trembling and losing my balance a few times. Nazeer watched me, his knotty fists balled at his hips. The sneer rippled his lip like the opening ridges of a clamshell. His every gesture was so loud and broad that it had the exaggeration of pantomime, but his dark eyes were fierce with menace. I suddenly realised that he reminded me of the Japanese actor Toshiro Mifune. He was an ugly, troll-like caricature of Mifune.

‘Do you know Toshiro Mifune?’ I asked him through a desperate, pain-smeared laugh. ‘You know Mifune? Huh?’

His answer was to walk to the front door of the house and throw it open. He pulled some fifty-rupee notes from his pocket, and hurled them onto the floor.

‘Jaa, bahinchudh!’ he snarled, pointing out the open door. Go, sisterfucker!

I staggered to the pile of cushions heaped against the great window and collapsed there. I pulled a blanket over myself, cringing in the flaying wrench and cramp of the craving. Nazeer closed the door of the house and took up his position on the patch of carpet, sitting cross-legged and straight-backed as he watched me.