Shantaram полностью

Rajubhai’s invitation to his daughter’s wedding was significant: it meant that I was accepted as one of them. For months I’d worked side by side with Salman, Sanjay, Farid, Rajubhai, and others on the council. My work in the passport section was bringing in almost as much money as the entire currency operation. My own contacts on the streets threw large sums into the gold, goods, and money-change pots. I worked out in the boxing gym with Salman Mustaan and Abdullah Taheri every other day. Using my friendship with Hassaan Obikwa, I’d forged a new alliance with his men in the black ghetto. It was a useful connection which had brought us new men, money, and markets. At Nazeer’s request, I’d joined the delegation that had struck an arms agreement with Afghan exiles in the city-a deal that had ensured a steady supply of weapons to the Salman council from the semi-autonomous tribal regions on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. I had friendship and respect and more money than I cared to spend, but it wasn’t until Rajubhai invited me to his daughter’s wedding that I knew I was truly accepted. He was a senior man on the Salman council. His invitation was the endorsement that welcomed me into the inner circle of trust and affection. You can work with the mafia, and for the mafia, and do the kind of job that earns high esteem, but you’re not really one of them until they invite you home to kiss the babies.

I walked out through the invisible boundaries of the Fort area and approached Flora Fountain. A roving taxi slowed beside me, the driver gesturing aggressively for my fare. I waved him away. Not realising that I could speak Hindi, he drove up beside me at a crawling pace and leaned from the window to talk.

‘Hey white sisterfucker, can’t you see the taxi’s empty? What are you doing? Walking in the hot afternoon like somebody’s lost white goat?’

‘Kai paijey turn?’ I asked in rude Marathi. Whaddaya want?

‘Kaipaijey?’ he repeated, stunned to hear the Marathi phrase.

‘What’s your problem?’ I asked, speaking in the rough Marathi dialect of Bombay’s back streets. ‘You don’t understand Marathi? This is our Bombay, and Bombay is ours. If you can’t speak Marathi, what are you doing in Bombay? Have you got a goat’s brain inside your sisterfucking head?’

‘Arrey!’ he grinned, switching to English. ‘You speak Marathi, baba?’

‘Gora chierra, kala maan,’ I said in answer, making circling gestures over my face and my heart. White face, black heart. I moved into Hindi, using the most polite form of the word you to put him at ease. ‘I’m white on the outside, brother, but full Hindustani on the inside. I’m just taking a walk, passing time. Why don’t you look for some real tourists, and leave poor Indian fuckers like me alone, na?’

He laughed aloud and passed his hand across the window of his cab to shake mine gently, and then sped away.

I walked on, avoiding the crowded footpaths to join the swifter lines on the road beside the passing cars. Deep breaths of the city finally drove the smell of the currency-room from my nostrils. I was heading back toward Colaba, to Leopold’s, to meet Didier. I wanted to walk because I was glad to be back in the part of the city I loved most. Work for Salman’s mafia council took me to every distant suburb of the great city, and there were many favoured places: from Mahalaxmi to Malad; from Cotton Green to Thana; from Santa Cruz and Andheri to the Lakes District on the Film City Road. But the real seat of his council’s power was in the long peninsula that began in the sweeping curve of Marine Drive and followed the scimitar shore all the way to the World Trade Centre. And it was there in those thriving streets, never more than a few bus stops from the sea, that I’d lost my heart to the city and learned to love her.

It was hot on the street, hot enough to burn all but the deepest thoughts from troubled minds. Like every other Bombayite, every other Mumbaiker, I’d made that walk from Flora Fountain to the Causeway a thousand times, and like them I knew where to find the cool breezes and refreshing shades on the way. My scalp, my face, and my shirt were wet with sweat in any few seconds of bare sunlight-the baptism in every daylight walk-and then cooled all the way to dry again in a minute of shaded wind.