Читаем Shantaram полностью

‘And I am the surprise, Lin brother,’ the ghost smiled. ‘You were coming to meet me. He was supposed to be making it a surprise for you. But you left the restaurant. And the others, they have been waiting for you. But you didn’t come back, so I went to find you. Now the surprise is really a shocks.’

‘Don’t say that!’ I snapped, remembering something Prabaker had once said to me, and still reeling, still confused.

‘Why not?’

‘It doesn’t matter! Fuck, Abdullah… this is… this is a fuckin’ weird dream, man.’

‘I am back,’ he said calmly, a little frown of worry creasing his brow. ‘I am here, again. I was shot. The police. You know about it.’

The tone of the conversation was matter-of-fact. The fading sky behind his head, and the passers-by on the street, were unremarkable. Nothing matched the blur and streak of a dream. Yet it had to be a dream. Then the ghost lifted his white shirt to reveal his many wounds, healed and healing into dark-skinned rings, whirls, and thumb-thick gashes.

‘Look, Lin brother,’ the dead man said. ‘I was shot, yes, many times, but I did live. They took my body from the Crawford Market police station. They took me to Thana for the first two months. Then they took me to Delhi. I was in hospital for one year. It was a private hospital, not far from Delhi. It was a year of many operations. Not a good year, Lin brother. Then it was almost another year to become well, Nushkur’allah.’

‘Abdullah,’ I said, reaching out to hug him. The body was strong. Warm. Alive. I held him tightly, clamping my hand to my wrist behind his back. I felt the press of his ear against my face, and smelt the soap on his skin. I heard his voice passing from his chest to mine like ocean sonancies, sounding and resounding, wave on wave through shores of tight-wet sand at night. Eyes closed, and clinging to him, I floated on the dark water of the sorrowing I’d done for him, for both of us. Heart-crippled with fear that I was mad, that it really was a dream, a nightmare, I held him until I felt the strong hands push me gently to the length of his extended arms.

‘It is okay, Lin,’ he smiled. The smile was complex, shifting from affection to solace, and a little shocked, perhaps, at the emotion in my eyes. ‘It is okay.’

‘It’s not okay!’ I growled, breaking away from him. ‘What the fuck happened? Where the fuck have you been? And why the fuck didn’t you tell me?’

‘No. I could not tell you.’

‘Bullshit! Of course you could! Don’t be so stupid!’

‘No,’ he insisted, running a hand through his hair and squinting his eyes to fix me with a determined stare. ‘Do you remember, one time, we were riding the motorcycles, and we saw some men? They were from Iran. I told you to wait at the motorcycles, but you did not. You followed me, and we fought those men together. Do you remember?’

‘Yes.’

‘They were enemies of mine. And they were Khader Khan’s enemies, also. They had a connect to the Iran secret police, the new Savak.’

‘Can we-wait a minute,’ I interrupted, reaching backwards to support myself against the sea wall. ‘I need a cigarette.’

I flipped open the box to offer him one.

‘Did you forget?’ he asked, grinning happily. ‘I do not smoke the cigarettes. And you should not also, Lin brother. I only smoke the hashish. I have some, if you would like?’

‘Fuck that,’ I laughed, lighting up. ‘I’m not getting stoned with a ghost.’

‘Those men-the men we fought-they did some business here. Mostly drugs business, but sometimes guns business and sometimes passports. And they were spies against us, reporting about any of us from Iran who ran away from the Iraq war. I was one man who ran away from the Iraq war. Many thousands ran away to here, India, and many thousands who hate Ayatollah Khomeini. The spies from Iran, they made reports about us to the new Savak in Iran. And they hate Khader because he want to help the mujaheddin in Afghanistan and because he did help so many of us from Iran. You understand this business, Lin brother?’

I understood it. The Iranian expatriate community in Bombay was huge, and I had many friends who’d lost their homeland and their families, and were struggling to survive. Some of them worked in existing mafia gangs like Khader’s council. Others had formed their own gangs, hiring themselves out to do the wet work, in a business that got a little bloodier every working day. I knew that the Iranian secret police had spies circulating among the exiles, reporting on them and sometimes getting their own hands a little damp.

‘Go on,’ I said, taking a gulp of smoky air from my cigarette.