The Mountain Shadow

by Gregory David Roberts

‘You don’t wanna make me dance, Shantaram.’ ‘You don’t have to dance,’ I shouted over the music, dancing away from her a few steps. ‘That’s okay. That’s fine. But I’m dancing, right over here, and you can join me, any time you get the urge.’ She smiled at me and watched for a while, but then she began to move, and she let it loose. Her hands and arms were seaweed, surfing waves made by hips. She danced over to me and around me in circles of temptation, then the wave lapped against me, and she was all black cats and green fire.

Karma’s a hammer, not a feather.’

‘I love you,’ I said, watching dawn’s pale shadows light her face, wanting to kiss her, but enjoying the thought of it so much that I didn’t kiss her.

And the only way to live with the constant cull of what you love is to take a little of that cold grave into yourself, every time.

‘I’m so happy we have that settled,’ Didier said. ‘Now, will someone please open the bar. My soul may be improved, but mind is screaming for mercy.’

‘Destiny is the ability to focus spiritual energy, in the form of will, to change the future course of our lives. We are all doing this, to a greater or lesser extent, in all our lives, and in the collective life of our species. We are living directed lives already, and it is up to us to realise it, and to direct them more positively.’

‘You men are obsessed with the truth,’ Karla said. ‘But the truth isn’t such a big deal. The truth is just inhibition, after three drinks.’

‘Idriss,’ I said. ‘I feel bad that this has found its way up here. I’m sorry.’ ‘Taking responsibility for the decisions and actions of others is a sin against Karma,’ Idriss said. ‘Equal, in gravity, to avoiding responsibility for your own decisions and actions. You did not cause this. It is not your karmic burden. Be safe tonight. You are blessed, all of you.’

Karla, sitting beside me, and killers on the way: my instincts were shouting to get the hell out of hell. But she was calm, and resolute. She’d finished her food, and was cleaning her gun. She was humming. And I guess, when I look back at it, she always had enough guts for both of us.

‘It’s not because the texts are sacred that life is important. It’s because life is sacred that the texts are important.’

She slept again, and I was calm with her, in the peace that only sleeping love creates,

The mystery of love is what we will become, the phrase repeated. The mystery of love is what we will become.

And beloved mould, nature’s comment on our plans, was scraped from buildings and painted over.

Karla was standing beside Ahmed, her arms folded, a cheeky smile playing in the garden of her eyes. ‘The mirror has to go, Lin,’ Ahmed

‘Lin’s unarmed, Didier, and naked to the world,’ Karla said. ‘He threw his knives into the sea this morning.’ ‘The sea will throw them back again,’ Didier said. ‘The sea can’t get over it that we crawled onto the land. Mark my words, Lin. The sea is a jealous woman, without the charming personality.’

Trust is the soul’s drug of choice.

‘I told you that you misjudged Kavita,’ she said. ‘I don’t judge anyone. I want a world without stones, or people to throw them at.’ ‘I know that,’ she laughed. ‘What’s so funny?’ ‘Something Didier said, about you.’ ‘What?’ ‘Lin has a good heart, which is inexcusable.’ ‘Thank you, I think.’