Читаем Shantaram полностью

‘Well, we’re different people,’ he said flatly, staring out at the distant fires of the offshore oil refinery. ‘You don’t understand. You can’t understand it.’

‘I understand that hate kills you, Khaled, if you can’t let it go.’

‘No, Lin,’ he answered, turning to look at me in the faint light of the cab. His eyes were gleaming, and there was a broken smile fixed to his scarred face. It was something like the expression Vikram wore when he talked about Lettie, or like Prabaker’s face when he talked about Parvati. It was the kind of expression some men assume when they talk about their experience of God.

‘My hate is what saved me,’ he said quietly, but with an excited, feverish zeal. Softly rounded American vowels blended with breathy, aspirated Arabic in a sound, a voice, that was somewhere between Omar Sharif and Nicholas Cage. In another time, another place, another life, Khaled Ansari would’ve read poetry aloud, in Arabic and English, moving all those who heard him to joy and tears. ‘Hate is a very resilient thing, you know. Hate is a survivor. I had to hide my hate for a long time. People couldn’t handle it. They got spooked by it. So I sent my hate outside myself. It’s weird that I was a refugee for years-I still am-and my hate was a refugee, just like me. My hate was outside me. My family… they were all killed… raped and butchered… and I killed men… I shot them… I cut their throats… and my hate survived out there. My hate got stronger and harder. And then, I woke up one day, working for Khader, with money and power, and I could feel the hate creeping back into me. And it’s here now, inside me, where it belongs. And I’m glad. I enjoy it. I need it, Lin. It’s stronger than I am. It’s braver than I am. My hate is my hero.’

He held that fanatic stare for a moment, and then turned to the driver, who was dozing in the front seat of the car.

‘Challo, bhai!’ he snapped. Let’s go, brother!

A minute later, he broke the silence to ask me a question.

‘You heard about Indira?’

‘Yeah. On the radio, at Leopold’s.’

‘Khader’s guys in Delhi got the details. The inside story. They phoned it through to us just before I came to meet you. It was pretty messy, the way she went.’

‘Yeah?’ I replied, still thinking about Khaled’s song of hate. I didn’t really care about the details of Indira’s assassination, but I was happy that he’d changed the subject.

‘At nine o’clock in the morning, this morning, she walked down to a security gate at her residence-the prime minister’s residence. She folded her hands together in a greeting, you know, for the two Sikh bodyguards at the gate. She knew those guys. They were only there, on duty, because she insisted on it. After the Golden Temple, after Bluestar, they advised her not to have Sikhs in her security detail. But she insisted because she couldn’t believe that her loyal Sikh bodyguards would turn against her. She just didn’t get it-how much hatred she put in them, when she ordered the army to attack the Golden Temple. Anyway, she put her hands together in a greeting, and she smiled at them, and said the word Namaste. One bodyguard, he pulled out his service revolver-it was a.38-and fired three shots. He got her right in the guts, in the abdomen. She crumpled to the pathway. The second bodyguard turned his Sten gun on her. He emptied the whole magazine. Thirty rounds. It’s an old gun, the Sten, but it packs a hell of a punch at close range. At least seven bullets got her in the abdomen, three bullets went into her chest, and one went through her heart.’

We rode in silence for a while. I was the first to speak.

‘So, how do you think the money market will react?’

‘I think it’ll be good for business,’ he replied dispassionately. ‘So long as there’s a clear line of succession-as there is here, with Rajiv-an assassination is always good for business.’

‘But there’ll be riots. They’re already talking about gangs going after Sikhs. I saw a morcha, on my way up here.’

‘Yeah, I saw it, too,’ he said, turning to face me. His eyes were dark, almost black, and gleaming with the vehemence of his wilful induration. ‘But even that’ll be good for business. The more riots there are, and the more people get killed, the more demand there’ll be for dollars. We’ll put the rates up tomorrow morning.’

‘The roads might be tangled up. If there’s morchas or riots, it might not be so easy to get around.’

‘I’ll pick you up at your place, seven o’clock, and we’ll go straight to Rajubhai’s,’ he said, referring to the mafia’s black money counting room in the Fort area, and to Raju, the man who ran it. ‘They won’t stop me. My car will get through. What are you doing now?’

‘Right now-after we finish the collections?’

‘Yeah. Have you got some time?’

‘Sure. What do you want me to do?’