Читаем Shantaram полностью

‘Scalping,’ I said. ‘We call it ticket scalping. It’s big business-black-market business-at the most popular football matches in my country.’

‘Yes. And I made an excellent profit in the first week of my work. I already began to have dreams of moving to a fine apartment and wearing the best clothes, perhaps even buying a car. Then, one night, I was standing outside the cinema with my tickets when two very big men came to me, showed me their weapons-they had a sword and a meat chopper-and demanded that I go with them.’

‘Local goondas,’ I laughed.

‘Goondas,’ he repeated, laughing with me. For those of us who knew him as lord Abdel Khader Khan, the don, the ruler of his kingdom of crime in Bombay, it was hilarious to picture him as a shame-faced eighteen-year-old in the custody of two street thugs.

‘They took me to see Chota Gulab, the Little Rose. He had that name for the mark on his cheek made by a bullet that had passed through his face, breaking most of his teeth, and leaving a scar that was pinched like a rose. He was the boss of that whole area in those days, and before he had me beaten to death, as an example to others he wanted to take a look at the impudent fellow who had trespassed on his area.

‘He was furious. “What are you doing, selling tickets in my area?” he asked me, speaking a mix of Hindi and English. It was a poor English, but he wanted to intimidate me with it, as if he was a judge in a court of law. “Do you know how many men died, how many men I had to kill, how many good men I lost, to take control of the black-market tickets at all the cinemas in this area?”

‘I was terrified, I admit it to you, and I thought that my life was but a few minutes’ worth. So I threw away my caution, and I spoke boldly. “Now you will have to eliminate one more nuisance, Gulabji,” I told him, speaking an English that was far superior to his, “because I have no other way of making money, and I have no family, and I have nothing to lose. Unless, of course, you have some decent job of work that a loyal and resourceful young man can do for you.”

‘Well, he laughed out loud, and he asked me where I learned to speak English so well, and when I told him, and when I told him my story, he gave me a job right away. Then he showed me his smashed teeth, opening his mouth wide to point out the gold replacements. Looking into Chota Gulab’s mouth was a real honour amongst his men, and some of his closest goondas were very jealous that I got such an intimate tour of the famous mouth on my very first meeting with him. Gulab liked me, and he became a kind of father to me in Bombay, but I had enemies around me from the first time that I shook his hand.

‘I went to work as a soldier, fighting with my fists and with swords and cleavers and hammers to enforce Chota Gulab’s rule in the area. Those were bad days, before the council system, and there was fighting every day and night. After a while, one of his men took a special dislike to me. Resentful of my close relationship with Gulabji, he found a reason to pick a fight with me. So I killed him. And when his best friend attacked me, I killed him, too. And then I killed a man for Chota Gulab. And I killed again. And again.’

He fell silent, staring ahead at the floor where it met the mud-brick wall. After a time, he spoke.

‘And again,’ he said.

He repeated the phrase into a silence that was thickening around us and seeming to press in upon my burning eyes.

‘And again.’

I watched him wade through the past, his eyes blazing recollections, and then he shook himself back into the moment.

‘It is late. Here, I want to give you a gift.’

He opened the chamois-leather parcel to reveal a pistol in a side holster, several magazines, a box of ammunition, and a metal box. Lifting back the lid of the metal box, he displayed a cleaning kit of oil, graphite powder, tiny files, brushes, and a new, short pull-through cord.

‘This is a Stechkin APS pistol,’ he said, taking up the weapon and removing its magazine. He checked to ensure that there was no round in the firing chamber, and handed the pistol to me. ‘It is Russian. You will find plenty of ammunition on the dead Russians, if you have to fight them. It is a nine-millimetre-calibre weapon, with a magazine of twenty rounds. You can fire it as a single shot, or set it on automatic. It is not the best gun in the world, but it is reliable, and the only light weapon with more bullets in it, where we are going, is a Kalashnikov. I want you to wear it, clearly displayed at all times from now on. You eat with it, you sleep with it, and when you wash yourself, you have it within your reach. I want everyone who is with us, and everyone who sees us, to know that you have it. Do you understand?’

‘Yes,’ I answered, staring at the gun in my hands.