The Moors Last Sigh

the young woman’s pieces, great Aurora melted further. Uma was installed as guest of honour at one of my mother’s now-infrequent Elephanta soirées. ‘To genius,’ she pronounced, ‘everything must be forgiven.’ Uma looked sweetly flattered and shy. ‘And to the second-rate,’ added Aurora, ‘nothing must be given – not one paisa, not one kauri, not one dam. Ohé, Vasco – what do you say to that?’ Vasco Miranda in his fifties no longer spent very much time in Bombay; when he did turn up, Aurora wasted no time on niceties, and laid into his ‘airport art’ with a venom that was unusual even for that most abrasive of women. Aurora’s own work had never ‘travelled’. A few important European galleries – the Stedelijk, the Tate – had bought pieces, but America remained impervious, with the exception of the Gobler family of Fort Lauderdale, Fla., without whose collecting zeal so many Indian artists would have been penniless; so it was possible that envy had honed my mother’s tongue. ‘How are your Transit Lounge Specials, eh, Vasco?’ she wanted to know. ‘Have you noticed how passengers on Travolators never pause to take a look at your stuff? And jet-lag! Is it good for the critical faculties?’ Under these assaults, Vasco smiled weakly and bowed his head. He had amassed a huge foreign-currency fortune, and had recently given up his residences and studios in Lisbon and New York to construct a hilltop folly in Andalusia, on which, according to rumour, he was spending more than the combined lifetime income of the entire community of Indian artists. This story, which he did nothing to deny, served only to heighten his unpopularity in Bombay, and the intensity of Aurora Zogoiby’s attacks.
    His waistline had ballooned, his moustache was a Daliesque double exclamation mark, his greasy hair was parted just above his left ear and plastered across his bald, Brylcreem-shiny dome. ‘No wonder you’re still a bachelor boy,’ Aurora taunted him. ‘A spare tyre the ladies can tolerate, but boy, you bought the whole Goodyear factory.’ For once, Aurora’s gibes were in tune with majority opinion. Time, which had been kind to Vasco’s bank balance, had dealt harshly with his Indian reputation as well as his body. In spite of his myriad commissions, his work’s stock was presently in free fall, dismissed as thin and meretricious, and although the national collection had acquired a couple of his pieces in the early days it had not done so for years. Not one of its purchases was presently on show. Among the sharper critics and the younger generation of artists V. Miranda was a busted flush. As Uma Sarasvati’s star rose, Vasco’s plummeted; but when Aurora kicked out at him, he kept his answers to himself.
    The Picasso-Braque collaboration between Vasco and Aurora had never materialised; recognising the inadequacy of his gift, she had gone her own way, allowing him to maintain his studio at Elephanta only for old times’ sake, and perhaps because she enjoyed having him around to poke fun at. Abraham, who had always loathed Vasco, showed Aurora news clippings from abroad, proving that V. Miranda had more than once been charged with violent behaviour, and had only narrowly avoided deportation from both the United States and Portugal; and that he had been obliged to undergo extensive treatment in mental homes, drying-out centres for alcoholics, and drug rehabilitation clinics across Europe and North America. ‘Get rid of this posturing old phoney,’ he implored.
    As for myself, I remembered Vasco’s many kindnesses when I was a young and frightened child, and loved him for them still, but could see that his demons had won their battle against his lighter side. The Vasco who visited us on Uma’s evening, that bloated comic-opera clown, was a sad sight indeed.
    Towards the end of the night, when alcohol had lowered his defences, he cracked. ‘To hell with the lot of you,’ he cried. ‘I’m off to my Benengeli soon, and if I’ve got any brains I will never return.’ Then he burst into tuneless song. ‘Goodbye , Flora Fountain,’ he began. ‘Farewell, Hutatma Chowk.’ He stopped, blinking, and shook his head. ‘No. Not right. Goodbye, Marine Dri-ive , Farewell, Netaji-Subhas-Chandra-Bose-Road!’ (Many years later, when I, too, came to Spain, I would remember Vasco’s uncompleted ditty, and even sing a version of it quietly to myself.)
    Uma Sarasvati walked over to this sad, painful