Читаем Shantaram полностью

‘Well, I agree with Didier,’ Maurizio stated, finishing his meal with a glass of iced water. ‘I like things just as they are, and I am content if they do not change.’

‘How about you?’ Karla asked, turning to face me.

‘What about me?’ I smiled.

‘If you could be happy, really happy, for just a while, but you knew from the start that it would end in sadness, and bring pain afterwards, would you choose to have that happiness or would you avoid it?’

The attention and the question unsettled me, and I felt momentarily uncomfortable in the expectant silence that awaited my reply. I had the feeling that she’d asked the question before, and that it was a kind of test. Maybe she’d already asked the others at the table. Maybe they’d given their answers, and were waiting to hear mine. I wasn’t sure what she wanted me to say, but the fact was that my life had already answered the question. I’d made my choice when I escaped from prison.

‘I’d choose the happiness,’ I replied, and was rewarded with a half-smile of recognition or amusement-perhaps it was both-from Karla.

‘I wouldn’t do it,’ Ulla said, frowning. ‘I hate sadness. I can’t bear it. I would rather have nothing at all than even a little sadness. I think that’s why I love to sleep so much, na? It’s impossible to be really sad when you’re asleep. You can be happy and afraid and angry in your dreams, but you have to be wide awake to be sad, don’t you think?’

‘I’m with you, Ulla,’ Vikram agreed. ‘There’s too much fucking sadness in the world, yaar. That’s why everybody is getting so stoned all the time. I know that’s why I’m getting so stoned all the time.’

‘Mmmmm-no, I agree with you, Lin,’ Kavita put in, although I couldn’t be sure how much was agreement with me, and how much merely the reflex of opposing Vikram. ‘If you have a chance at real happiness, whatever the cost, you have to take it.’

Didier grew restless, irritated with the turn the conversation had taken.

‘You are being much too serious, all of you.’

‘I’m not!’ Vikram objected, stung by the suggestion.

Didier fixed him with one raised eyebrow.

‘I mean that you are making things to be more difficult than they are, or need to be. The facts of life are very simple. In the beginning we feared everything-animals, the weather, the trees, the night sky-everything except each other. Now we fear each other, and almost nothing else. No-one knows why anyone does anything. No-one tells the truth. No-one is happy. No-one is safe. In the face of all that is so wrong with the world, the very worst thing you can do is survive. And yet you must survive. It is this dilemma that makes us believe and cling to the lie that we have a soul, and that there is a God who cares about its fate. And now you have it.’

He sat back in his chair, and twirled the points of his D’Artagnan moustache with both hands.

‘I’m not sure what he just said,’ Vikram muttered, after a pause, ‘but somehow I agree with him, and feel insulted, at the same time.’

Maurizio rose from his seat to leave. He placed a hand on Karla’s shoulder, and turned to the rest of us with a brilliant smile of affability and charm. I had to admire that smile, even as I was working myself up to hate him for it.

‘Don’t be confused, Vikram,’ he said pleasantly. ‘Didier only has one subject-himself.’

‘And his curse,’ Karla added quickly, ‘is that it is a fascinating subject.’

‘Merci, Karla, darling,’ Didier murmured, presenting her with a little bow.

‘Allora, Modena, let’s go. We may see you all later, at the President, si! Ciao.’

He kissed Karla on the cheek, put on his Ray-Ban sunglasses, and stalked out into the crowded night with Modena at his side. The Spaniard hadn’t spoken once all evening, or even smiled. As their shapes were lost in the shifting, shuffling figures on the street, however, I saw that he spoke to Maurizio passionately, waving his clenched fist. I watched them until they were gone, and was startled and a little ashamed to hear Lettie speak aloud the smallest, meanest corner of my thoughts.

‘He’s not as cool as he looks,’ she snarled.

‘No man is as cool as he looks,’ Karla said, smiling and reaching out to cover Lettie’s hand with her own.

‘You don’t like Maurizio any more?’ Ulla asked.

‘I hate him. No, I don’t hate him. But I despise him. It makes me sick to look at him.’

‘My dear Letitia -’ Didier began, but Karla cut him off.

‘Not now, Didier. Give it a rest.’

‘I don’t know how I could’ve been so stupid,’ Lettie growled, clenching her teeth.

‘Naja…’ Ulla said slowly. ‘I don’t want to say I told you so, but…’

‘Oh, why not?’ Kavita asked. ‘I love to say I told you so. I tell Vikram I told you so at least once a week. I’d rather say I told you so than eat chocolate.’