The Moors Last Sigh

looked at other girls,’ he mumbled.
    Corrupt global-scale banking schemes, stock market fixing at the super-epic Mogambo level, multi-billion-dollar arms deals, nuclear technology conspiracies involving stolen computers and Maldivian Mata Haris, export of antiquities including the symbol of the nation itself, the four-headed Lion of Sarnath … how much of his ‘black’ world, how many of his grand designs, did Abraham disclose to Uma Sarasvati? How much, for example, about certain special export consignments of Baby Softo powder? When I asked him he just shook his head. ‘Not much, I suppose. I don’t know. Everything. I am told I talk in my sleep.’

    But I am getting ahead of myself. Uma told me about the game she played with my father, praising his golf swing – ‘not a wobble – and at his age!’ – and his generosity to a young girl new in town. We had taken to meeting in a series of modestly-priced rooms in Colaba or at Juhu (the city’s five-star joints were too risky; too many telephoto eyes and long-distance tongues). But our favourites were the Railway Retiring Rooms at V.T. and Bombay Central: in those high-ceilinged, shuttered, cool, clean, anonymous chambers I began my journey to Heaven and Hell. ‘Trains,’ Uma Sarasvati said. ‘All those pistons-shistons. Don’t they just turn you on?’
    It is hard for me to speak of our lovemaking. Even now, and in spite of everything, the memory of it makes me shiver with yearning for what is lost. I remember its ease and tenderness, its quality of revelation; as if a door were opened in the flesh and through it poured an unsuspected fifth-dimension universe: its ringed planets and comets’ tails. Its whirling galaxies. Its bursting suns. But beyond expression, beyond language was the plain bodyness of it, the movement of hands, the tensing of buttocks, the arching of backs, the rise and fall of it, the thing with no meaning but itself, that meant everything; that brief animal doing, for the sake of which anything – anything – might be done. I cannot imagine – no, even now, my fancy will not stretch to it – that such passion, such essentiality, could have been faked. I do not believe she lied to me there, in that way, above the come and go of trains. I do not believe it; I believe it; I do not believe; I believe; I do not; I do not; I do.
    There is one embarrassing detail. Uma, my Uma, murmured in my ear near the Everest of our ecstasy, on the South Col of desire, that there was a thing which made her sad. ‘Your Mummyji I revere; she-tho doesn’t like me, but.’ And I, gasping, and otherwise engaged, consoled her. Yes she does . But Uma – sweating, panting, hurling her body upon mine – repeated her grief. ‘No, my darling boy. She doesn’t. Bilkul not.’ I confess that at that high instant I had no stomach for this talk. An obscenity sprang unbidden to my lips. Fuck her then . – ‘What was that you said?’ – I said fuck her. Fuck my mother. O . – At which she dropped the subject and concentrated on matters in hand. Her lips at my ear spoke of other things. You want this my darling and this, to do this, you can do this, if you want to, if you want. O God yes I want to let me yes yes O  …
    Such chitter-chatter is better participated in than eavesdropped upon, so I will not set down any more. But I must admit – and it makes me blush to do so – that she, Uma, returned time and again to the topic of my mother’s hostility, until it seemed to become a part of what excited her. – She hates me hates me tell me what to do. – And I was expected to reply, and, forgive me, in the grip of lust I answered as required. Screw her I said. Screw her stupid the stupid bitch . And Uma: How? Darling, my darling, how? – Fuck her. Fuck her upside down and sideways too . – O, you can, my only sweet, if you want to, if you only say you want. – God yes. I want to. Yes. O God .
    Thus at the moment of my greatest joy I spilt the seeds of ruin: my ruin, and my mother’s, and the ruin of our great house.

    We were, all but one of us, in love with Uma in those days, and even Aurora, who was not, relented; for Uma’s presence in our house brought my sisters home, too, and in addition she could also see the delight on my face. No matter how occasional a mother she had been, a mother she remained, and accordingly softened her heart. Also, Aurora was serious about work, and after Kekoo Mody visited Baroda and came back raving about