Shantaram полностью

‘No need for thanks. You would be doing the same for me, in your country, isn’t it? Come, there is someone who wants to meet you.’

He gestured to a car that was parked at the kerb ten metres away. It had drawn up behind me, and the motor was still running, but somehow I’d failed to hear it. It was an Ambassador, India’s modest version of a luxury car. There were two men inside-a driver, and one passenger in the back.

Abdullah opened the rear door and I stooped to look inside. A man in his middle to late sixties sat there, his face half illuminated by the streetlights. It was a lean, strong, intelligent face with a long, thin nose and high cheekbones. I was struck and held at once by the eyes, an amber brilliance of amusement and compassion and something else-ruthlessness, perhaps, or love. His hair and beard were close-cropped and white-grey.

‘You are Mr. Lin?’ he said. His voice was deep, resonant, and supremely confident. ‘I am pleased to meet you. Yes, very pleased. I have heard something good about you. It is always a delight to hear good things-and even more pleasurable, when it concerns foreigners, here in our Bombay. Perhaps you have heard of me also. My name is Abdel Khader Khan.’

Sure, I’d heard of him. Everyone in Bombay had heard of him. His name appeared in the newspapers every other week. People spoke about him in the bazaars and nightclubs and slums. He was admired and feared by the rich. He was respected and mythologised by the poor. His discourses on theology and ethics, held in the courtyard of the Nabila Mosque in Dongri, were famous throughout the city, and drew many scholars and students from every faith. No less famous were his friendships with artists, businessmen, and politicians. He was also one of the lords of Bombay’s mafia-one of the founders of the council system that had divided Bombay into fiefdoms ruled by separate councils of mafia dons. The system was a good one, people said, and popular, because it had brought order and relative peace to the city’s underworld after a decade of bloody power struggles. He was a powerful, dangerous, brilliant man.

‘Yes, sir,’ I answered, shocked that I’d inadvertently used the word sir. I loathed the word. In the punishment unit we were beaten whenever we failed to address the guards as sir. ‘I know your name, of course. The people call you Khaderbhai.’

The word bhai, at the end of his name, meant elder brother. It was a term of respectful endearment. He smiled and nodded his head slowly when I said it: Khaderbhai.

The driver adjusted his mirror and fixed me in it, staring expression-lessly. There were fresh jasmine flowers hanging in garlands from the mirror, and the perfume was intoxicating, almost dizzying after the fresh wind from the sea. As I leaned into the doorway of the car, I became acutely conscious of myself and my situation: my stooping posture; the wrinkles in my frown as I lifted my face to see his eyes; the rim of guttering at the edge of the car’s roof under my fingertips; and a sticker, pasted to the dashboard, that read GOD BLESS I AM DRIVING THIS CAR. There was no-one else on the street. No cars passed. It was silent, but for the idling engine of the car and the muffled churning of the shuffling waves.

‘You are the doctor in the Colaba hutments, Mr. Lin. I heard of it at once, when you went to live there. It is unusual, a foreigner, living in the hutments. This belongs to me, you understand. The land where those huts stand-it belongs to me. You have pleased me by working there.’

I was stunned into silence. The slum where I lived, known as the zhopadpatti, or the hutments, half a square kilometre, with twenty-five thousand men, women, and children, belonged to him? I’d lived there for months, and I’d heard Khaderbhai’s name mentioned many times, but no-one had ever said that he owned the place. It can’t be, I heard myself thinking. How can any one man own such a place, and all its lives?’

‘I, er, I’m not a doctor, Khaderbhai,’ I managed to tell him.

‘Perhaps that is why you are having such success in treating the sick, Mr. Lin. Doctors will not go into the hutments willingly. We can compel men not to be bad, but we cannot compel them to be good, don’t you find? My young friend, Abdullah, recognised you just now, as we passed you, sitting on the wall. I turned the car to come back here for you. Come-sit inside the car with me. I will take you somewhere.’

I hesitated.

‘Please, don’t trouble yourself. I…’

‘No trouble, Mr. Lin. Come and sit. Our driver is my very good friend, Nazeer.’

I stepped into the car. Abdullah closed the door behind me, and then sat in the front next to the driver, who adjusted the mirror to find and fix me in it again. The car didn’t move off.

‘Chillum bono,’ Khaderbhai said to Abdullah. Make a chillum.