Читаем Shantaram полностью

‘You tell me! I’m going out with her all over the place, and I still can’t get to first base. I’m not even in the ballpark. Fuck the ballpark, yaar-I’m not even in the fuckin’ zip code. This chick is killin’ me. This love is killin’ me. She’s playing hard to get. And brother, I’m hard but not getting any. I swear, I’m about to fuckin’ explode!’

‘You know, Vikram,’ Didier said, his eyes shining once more with shrewdness and good humour, ‘I have a strategy that just might work for you.’

‘Didier, man, I’ll try anything. The way things are, with this Indira thing and all, I gotta grab any chance while I can. Who knows where we’ll all be tomorrow, na?’

‘Yes, well, attention! This plan, it involves great daring, and careful planning, and a precise timing. If you are careless, it might cost you your life.’

‘My… my life?’

‘Yes. Make no mistake. But if you succeed, I think you will win her heart forever. Are you, how do they say it, are you game, to try it?’

‘I’m the game-iest motherfucker in the whole damn saloon, yaar. Let’s hear it!’

‘I might take this as my cue to leave, before you guys get too deep into this,’ I interrupted, standing and shaking hands with both men. ‘Thanks for the tip, Didier. I appreciate it. And a tip for you, Vikram-whatever you plan to try with Lettie, you can start by losing the phrase hot-titty English chick. Every time you call her that, she winces like you just strangled a baby rabbit.’

‘You really think so?’ he asked, frowning his puzzlement.

‘Yes.’

‘But it’s one of my best lines, yaar. In Denmark-’

‘You’re not in Denmark any more, Toto.’

‘Okay Lin,’ he conceded, laughing. ‘Listen, when you find out what went down with the jail thing… I mean, who the motherfucker was who put you in there, and all… well, if you need a hand, count me in. Okay?’

‘Sure,’ I said, enjoying the good eye contact. ‘Take it easy.’

I paid the bill and left, walking along the Causeway to Regal Cinema roundabout. It was early evening, one of the three best times of day in Bombay city. Early morning before the heat, and late night after the heat are special times of day, with special pleasures; but they’re quiet times, with few people. Evening brings the people to their windows, balconies, and doorways. Evening fills the streets with strolling crowds. Evening is an indigo tent for the circus of the city, and families bring children to the entertainments that inspire every corner and crossroad. And evening is a chaperone for young lovers: the last hour of light before the night comes to steal the innocence from their slow promenades. There’s no time, in the day or night, when there are more people on the streets of Bombay than there are in the evening, and no light loves the human face quite so much as the evening light in my Mumbai.

I walked through the evening crowds, loving the faces, loving the perfumes of skin and hair, loving the colours of clothes and the cadences of words that surrounded me. Yet I was alone, too much alone with my love of evening in the city. And all the while a black shark slowly circled in the sea of my thoughts: a black shark of doubt and anger and suspicion. A woman betrayed me. A woman. A young and very beautiful woman…

The persistent blaring of a car horn drew my attention, and I saw Prabaker waving to me from his taxi. I got into the cab and asked him to drive me to my evening meeting with Khaled, near Chowpatty Beach. One of the first things I’d done with the first real money I’d made in Khaderbhai’s service was pay for Prabaker’s taxi licence. The cost of the licence had always been prohibitive for Prabaker, and it had eluded his sub-miniature talent for thrift. He drove occasional shifts in his cousin Shantu’s taxi without the required licence, but ran considerable risks in doing it. With his own licence, he was free to approach any of the taxi lords who owned fleets of cabs and hired them out to licensed taxi drivers.