Читаем Shantaram полностью

I was about to enter the dark and unprepossessing restaurant when he stopped me, his expression suddenly grave. He frowned, and swallowed hard, as if he was unsure how to begin.

‘Before we are eating this good foods,’ he said, at last, ‘before we… before we make any business also, something there is, I must tell it to you.’

‘O-kay…’

His manner was so dejected that I felt a twinge of apprehension.

‘Well, now I am telling… that tola charras, the one I was selling to you in hotel…’

‘Yes?’

‘Well… that was the business price. The really price-the friendship price-is only fifty rupees for one tola Afghani charras.’ He lifted his arms, and then let them slap down at his thighs. ‘I charged it fifty rupees too much.’

‘I see,’ I answered quietly. The matter was so trivial, from my point of view, that I was tempted to laugh out loud. It was obviously important to him, however, and I suspected that he wasn’t often moved to make such admissions. In fact, as he told me much later, Prabaker had just then decided to like me, and for him that meant he was bound to a scrupulous and literal honesty in everything he said or did. It was at once his most endearing and most irritating quality, that he always told me the whole of the truth.

‘So… what do you want to do about it?’

‘My suggestion,’ he said seriously, ‘we smoke it that business price charras very fast, until finish that one, then I will buy new one for us. After from now, it will be everything friendship prices, for you and for me also. This is a no problem policy, isn’t it?’

I laughed, and he laughed with me. I threw my arm around his shoulder and led him into the steamy, ambrosial activity of the busy restaurant.

‘Lin, I think I am your very good friend,’ Prabaker decided, grinning happily. ‘We are the lucky fellows, isn’t it?’

‘Maybe it is,’ I replied. ‘Maybe it is.’

Hours later, I lay back in a comfortable darkness, under the sound-strobe of a ceaselessly revolving ceiling fan. I was tired, but I couldn’t sleep. Beneath my windows the street that had writhed and toiled in daylight was silent, subdued by a night-sultriness, moist with stars. Astounding and puzzling images from the city tumbled and turned in my mind like leaves on a wave of wind, and my blood so thrilled with hope and possibility that I couldn’t suppress a smile, lying there in the dark. No-one, in the world I’d left behind me, knew where I was. No-one, in the new world of Bombay, knew who I was. In that moment, in those shadows, I was almost safe.

I thought of Prabaker, and his promise to return early in the morning to begin my tours of the city. Will he come? I wondered. Or will I see him somewhere later in the day, walking with another newly arrived tourist’? I decided, with the faint, impersonal callousness of the lonely, that if he were as good as his word, and turned up in the morning, I would begin to like him.

I thought of the woman, Karla, again and again, surprised that her composed, unsmiling face intruded so often. If you go to Leopold’s, some time, maybe you’ll find out. That was the last thing she’d said to me. I didn’t know if it was an invitation, a challenge, or a warning. Whatever it was, I meant to take her up on it. I meant to go there, and look for her. But not yet. Not until I’d learned a little more about the city she seemed to know so well. I’ll give it a week, I thought. A week in the city…

And beyond those reflections, as always, in fixed orbits around the cold sphere of my solitude, were thoughts of my family and my friends. Endless. Unreachable. Every night was twisted around the unquenchable longing of what my freedom had cost me, and all that was lost. Every night was pierced by the spike of shame for what my freedom continued to cost them, the loved ones I was sure I would never see again.

‘We could’a beat him down, you know,’ the tall Canadian said from his dark corner on the far side of the room, his sudden voice in the whirring silence sounding like stones thrown on a metal roof. ‘We could’a beat that manager down on the price of this room. It’s costin’ us six bucks for the day. We could’a beat him down to four. It’s not a lotta money, but it’s the way they do things here. You gotta beat these guys down, and barter for everything. We’re leavin’ tomorrow for Delhi, but you’re stayin’ here. We talked about it before, when you were out, and we’re kinda worried about you. You gotta beat ‘em down, man. If you don’t learn that, if you don’t start thinkin’ like that, they’re gonna fuck you over, these people. The Indians in the cities are real mercenary, man. It’s a great country, don’t get me wrong. That’s why we come back here. But they’re different than us. They’re… hell, they just expect it, that’s all. You gotta beat ‘em down.’