Shantaram полностью

‘That’s toad, love, not toe,’ Lettie corrected patiently, still laughing. ‘He’s a toad of a man, not a toe of a man. A despicable toe wouldn’t make any sense at all, now would it? We wouldn’t love him or hate him just for being a toe of a man, would we, darlin’-even if we knew what it meant?’

‘I’m not so good with the English jokes, you know that, Lettie,’ Ulla persisted. ‘But I think he is a big, ugly, hairy toe of a man.’

‘I assure you,’ Didier protested, ‘that my toes-and my feet, for that matter-are exceptionally beautiful.’

Karla, Maurizio, and an Indian man in his early thirties walked in from the busy night street. Maurizio and Modena joined a second table to ours, and then the eight of us ordered drinks and food.

‘Lin, Lettie, this is my friend, Vikram Patel,’ Karla announced, when there was a moment of relative quiet. ‘He came back a couple of weeks ago, after a long holiday in Denmark, and I think you’re the only two who haven’t met him.’

Lettie and I introduced ourselves to the newcomer, but my real attention was on Maurizio and Karla. He sat beside her, opposite me, and rested his hand on the back of her chair. He leaned in close to her, and their heads almost touched when they spoke.

There’s a dark feeling-less than hatred, but more than loathing-that ugly men feel for handsome men. It’s unreasonable and unjustified, of course, but it’s always there, hiding in the long shadow thrown by envy. It creeps out, into the light of your eyes, when you’re falling in love with a beautiful woman. I looked at Maurizio, and a little of that dark feeling began in my heart. His straight, white teeth, smooth complexion, and thick, dark hair turned me against him more swiftly and surely than flaws in his character might’ve done.

And Karla was beautiful: her hair, in a French roll, was shining like water running over black river stones, and her green eyes were radiant with purpose and pleasure. She wore a long-sleeved Indian salwar top that reached to below her knees, where it met loose trousers in the same olive silk fabric.

‘I had a great time, yaar,’ the newcomer, Vikram, was saying when my thoughts returned to the moment. ‘Denmark is very hip, very cool. The people are very sophisticated. They’re so fucking controlled, I couldn’t believe it. I went to a sauna, in Copenhagen. It was a fucking huge place, yaar, with a mixed set-up-with men and women, together, walking around stark naked. Absolutely, totally naked. And nobody reacted at all. Not even a flickering eye, yaar. Indian guys couldn’t handle that. They’d be boiling, I tell you.’

‘Were you boiling, Vikram dear?’ Lettie asked, sweetly.

‘Are you fucking kidding? I was the only guy in the place wearing a towel, and the only guy with a hard-on.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Ulla said, when we stopped laughing. It was a flat statement-neither a complaint, nor a plea for further explanation.

‘Hey, I went there every day for three weeks, yaar,’ Vikram continued. ‘I thought that if I just spent enough time there, I’d get used to it, like all the super-cool Danes.’

‘Get used to what?’ Ulla asked.

Vikram frowned at her, bewildered, and then turned to Lettie.

‘It was no good. It was useless. After three weeks, I still had to wear the towel. No matter how often I went there, when I saw those bouncy bits going up and down, and side-to-side, I stiffened up. What can I say? I’m too Indian for a place like that.’

‘It is the same for Indian women,’ Maurizio observed. ‘Even when they are making love, it is not possible to be naked.’

‘Well, that’s not always true,’ Vikram went on, And anyway, it’s the guys who are the problem here. Indian women are ready to change. Young Indian chicks from middle-class families are wild about change, yaar. They’re educated, and they’re ready for short hair, short dresses, and short love affairs. They’re ready for it, but the guys are holding them back. The average Indian guy has a sexual maturity of about fourteen.’

‘Tell me about it,’ Lettie muttered.

Kavita Singh had approached our table moments before, and stood behind Vikram while he made his observations about Indian women. With short, styled hair, and wearing jeans and a white sweatshirt bearing the emblem of New York University, she was the living woman, the physical representation of what Vikram had been saying. She was the real thing.

‘You’re such a chudd, Vikkie,’ she said, taking a place opposite him and on my right side. ‘You say all this, but you’re just as bad as all the rest. Look at how you treat your own sister, yaar, if she dares to wear jeans and a tight sweater.’

‘Hey, I bought her that tight sweater, in London, last year!’ Vikram protested.

‘But you still gave her buckets of grief when she wore it to the jazz yatra, na?’

‘Well, how was I to know that she would want to wear it outside the apartment?’ he countered lamely, provoking laughter and derision from the whole group. None laughed harder than Vikram himself.