The Moors Last Sigh

innocent boy, you don’t know what people are like! – but I tell them there are limits, it is not so, I can vouch for it myself. So you see your good name is now in my hands.’
    It was the occasion of our first real quarrel, but even as I defended Aurora I felt the truth of Uma’s accusations in my heart. Kekoo’s canine devotion had had its reward, and Aurora’s prolonged tolerance, and simultaneous abuse, of Vasco finally made sense, if seen in the context of an ‘involvement’, however decayed. Now that she and Abraham no longer shared a bed, where could Aurora look for comfort? Her genius and grandeur had isolated her; powerful women scare men off, and there were few Bombay males who would have dared to woo her. That explained Mainduck. Coarse, physically strong, ruthless, he was one of the few men in the city for whom Aurora would hold no terrors. Their encounter in the matter of The Kissing of Abbas Ali Baig would have aroused him; he had taken her bribe and would have wanted – or so I speculated–to conquer her in return. And in my mind’s eye I saw her both revolted and entranced by this gutter-creature of real potency, this savage, this walking slum. If her husband preferred Falkland Road cage-girls to her, then she, Aurora the great, would gain her revenge by surrendering her body to Fielding’s pawings and thrustings; yes, I could see how that would arouse her, how it might unleash her own wildness. Maybe Uma was right: maybe my mother was Mainduck’s whore.
    No wonder she had started to be a little paranoid, to worry about being followed; such a complex secret life, and so much to lose if it came to light! Art-loving Kekoo, the ever more Westernised figure of V. Miranda, and the communalist toad; add to these Abraham Zogoiby’s invisible world of money and black markets, and you have a portrait of the things my mother truly loved, the points of her inner compass, revealed by her choice of men. Seen through this lens, her work looked rather like a distraction from the harsh realities of her character; like a gallant coat laid over the filthy mud-puddle of her soul.
    In my confusion I found myself simultaneously weeping and becoming erect. Uma laid me back on the bed and straddled me, kissing away the tears. ‘Does everyone know but me?’ I asked her. ‘Mynah? Minnie? Who?’
    ‘Don’t think about your sisters,’ she said, moving slowly, soothingly. ‘Poor man, you love everyone, you want nothing but love. If only they cared for you as you care for them. But you should hear what they say about you to me. Such things! You don’t know the fights I have had with them over you.’
    I made her stop. ‘What are you saying? What are you saying to me?’
    ‘Poor baby,’ she said, curling against me like a spoon. How I adored her; how grateful I was, in this treacherous world, to have her maturity, her serenity, her worldly wisdom, her strength, her love.
    ‘Poor unlucky Moor. I will be your family now.’

15
    T HE PAINTINGS GREW STEADILY less colourful, until Aurora was working only in black, white and occasional shades of grey. The Moor was an abstract figure now, a pattern of black and white diamonds covering him from head to foot. The mother, Ayxa, was black; and the lover, Chimène, was brilliant white. Many of these pictures were love-scenes. The Moor and his lady made love in many settings. They left their palace to travel the city streets. They sought out cheap hotels, and lay naked in shuttered rooms above the come and go of trains. Ayxa the mother was always somewhere in these pictures, behind a curtain, stooped at a keyhole, flying up to the window of the lovers’ eyries. The black-and-white Moor turned towards his white love and away from his black dam; yet both were apart of him. And now, on the paintings’ far horizons, there were armies massing. Horses stamped, lances glittered. The armies drew nearer over the years .
    But the Alhambra is invincible, the Moor told his beloved . Our stronghold – like our love – will never fall.
    He was black and white. He was the living proof of the possibility of the union of opposites. But Ayxa the Black pulled one way, and Chimène the White, the other. They began to tear him in half. Black diamonds, white diamonds fell from the gash, like teardrops. He tore himself away from his mother, clung to Chimène. And when the armies came to the foot of the hill, when that great white force was gathered on Chowpatty beach, a figure in a