Shantaram полностью

While waiting at the cashier’s desk, I caught sight of myself unexpectedly in an angled mirror that showed my face in three-quarter profile. It was a face so hard and unfamiliar that it startled me to recognise it as my own. I remembered the photograph taken by shy Kishmishi, and looked again into the mirror. There was a cold impassiveness in my face-and a determination, perhaps-which hadn’t even begun to gleam in the eyes that had stared so confidently into the lens of Khaled’s camera. I snatched up my sunglasses and put them on. Have I changed so much? I hoped that a hot shower, and shaving off my thick beard, would soften some of the hard edges. But the real hardness was inside me, and I wasn’t sure if it was simply tough and tenacious or if it was something much more cruel.

The cab driver followed my instructions and pulled up near the entrance to Leopold’s. I paid him, and stood on the busy Causeway for a minute, staring at the wide doorway of the restaurant where my fated connection to Karla and Khaderbhai had really begun. Every door is a portal leading through time as well as space. The same doorway that leads us into and out of a room also leads us into the past of the room and its ceaselessly unfolding future. People knew that once, deep within the ur-mind, the ur-imagination. You can still find those who decorate doorways, and reverently salute them, in every culture, from Ireland to Japan. I stepped up one, two steps, and reached out with my right hand to touch the doorjamb and then touch my chest, over the heart, in a salaam to fate and a homage to the dead friends and enemies who entered with me.

Didier Levy was sitting in his usual chair, commanding a view of the patrons and of the busy street beyond. He was talking to Kavita Singh. Her eyes were averted, but he looked up and saw me as I approached the table. Our eyes met and held for a second, each of us reading the other’s shifting expressions like diviners finding meanings in the magic of scattered bones.

‘Lin!’ he shouted, hurling himself forward, flinging his arms around me, and kissing me on both cheeks.

‘It’s good to see you, Didier.’

‘Bah!’ he spat, wiping his lips with the back of his hand. ‘If this beard is the fashion for holy warriors, I thank whatever powers protect me that I am an atheist, and a coward!’

There was a little more grey, I thought, in the mop of dark curls that brushed the collar of his jacket. The pale blue eyes were a little more tired, a little more bloodshot. Yet the wicked, leering mischief still arched his eyebrow, and the playful sneer I knew so well, and loved, was still there, curling his upper lip. He was the same man, in the same city, and it was good to be home.

‘Hello, Lin,’ Kavita greeted me, pushing Didier aside to give me a hug.

She was beautiful. Her thick, dark brown hair was tousled and awry. Her back was straight. Her eyes were clear. And, as she held me, the casual, friendly touch of her fingers on my neck seemed like such a tender ravishment-after the blood and snow of Afghanistan-that I can still feel it, through all the years since.

‘Sit down, sit down!’ Didier shouted, waving to the waiters for more drinks. ‘Merde, I heard that you were dead, but I didn’t believe it! It is so good to see you! We shall be famously drunk tonight, non?’

‘No,’ I replied, resisting the pressure he placed on my shoulder. The disappointment in his eyes moderated my tone, if not my mood. ‘It’s a little early in the day, and I have to get going. I’ve got… something to do.’

‘Very well,’ he yielded with a sigh. ‘But you must have one drink with me. It would be too uncivilised for you to leave my company without allowing me at least this little corruption of your holy warring self. After all, what is the point of a man returning from the dead, if it is not to drink strong spirits with his friends?’

‘Okay,’ I relented, smiling at him but still standing. ‘One drink. I’ll have a whisky. Make it a double. Is that corrupt enough for you?’

‘Ah, Lin,’ he grinned, ‘Is there anyone, in this sickly sweet world of ours, who is corrupt enough for me?’

‘Where there’s a weak will, there’s a way, Didier. We live in hope.’

‘But of course,’ he said, and we both laughed.

‘I’ll leave you to it,’ Kavita announced, leaning over to kiss my cheek. ‘I’ve got to get back to the office. Let’s get together, Lin. You look… you look pretty wild. You look like a story, yaar, if ever I saw one.’

‘Sure,’ I smiled. ‘There’s a story or two. Off the record, of course. Probably keep us going over dinner.’

‘I look forward to it,’ she said, holding my eye long enough to make sure I felt it in several places at once. She broke the contact to flash a smile at Didier. ‘Be nasty to someone for me, Didier. I don’t want to hear that you’ve got all sentimental, yaar, just because Lin is back.’

She walked out with my eyes on her, and when the drinks arrived Didier insisted that I sit down with him at last.