The Moors Last Sigh

official report failed to account for the delay in summoning medical assistance, though it did list forty-seven separate counts on which the factory had failed to observe prescribed safety norms. First-aid-qualified staff on site were also rapped for the slowness with which they reached Mynah and her party. In spite of being given a shot of sodium thiosulphate in the ambulance, Mynah died before they reached the hospital. She died in pop-eyed agony, retching and gasping for air, while poison ate her lungs. Two of her colleagues from the WWSTP also died; three more lived on with severe disabilities. No compensation was ever paid. The investigation concluded that the incident had been a deliberate attack on Mynah’s organisation by ‘unnamed outside agents’ and the factory could therefore not be deemed culpable. Only a few months previously Mynah had finally succeeded in sending Kéké Kolatkar to jail for his property swindles, but no trail connecting the politico to the killing was ever established. And Abraham, as has been stated, got himself off with a fine … listen, Mynah was his daughter . His daughter . Okay?
    Okay.
    ‘Confusion to our …’ Uma stopped in mid-phrase, seeing the look on my face, when I went to see her after Philomina Zogoiby’s funeral. ‘No more of that,’ I said, sobbing. ‘No more confusion. Please.’
    I lay in bed with my head in her lap. She stroked my white hair. ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘Time to simplify. Your mummy-daddy must accept us, they must bow down before our love. Then we can get married and hey presto. It’s happy ever after for us, and another artist in the family, too.’
    ‘She won’t …’ I began, but Uma laid a finger across my lips.
    ‘She must.’
    Uma in this mood was an irresistible force. Our love was simply an imperative, she insisted; it demanded, and had a right, to be. ‘When I explain this to your mother and father they will come round. It is my bona-fides that they doubt? Very well then. For our love I will go to see them – tonight! – and show them that they are wrong.’
    I protested, but weakly. It was too soon. Their hearts were full of Mynah, I demurred, and there was no room for us. She overrode all my arguments. There was no heart that had no room in it for declarations of love, she said; just as there was no shame that true love did not erase – and now that Mr Sarasvati was no more, what stain lay upon our love except that she had been married once before and was not a virgin bride? My parents’ objections were not reasonable. How could they stand in the way of their one son’s chance of happiness? A son who had had to bear such burdens from the day of his birth? ‘Tonight,’ she repeated, grimly. ‘You just wait on here. I will go and convince.’ She leapt to her feet and began to dress. As she left she clipped a Walkman to her belt and donned headphones. ‘Whistle while you work,’ she grinned, clicking a cassette into place. I was terrified. ‘Good luck,’ I said loudly. ‘Can’t hear a word,’ she said, and left. Once she had gone I wondered idly why she had bothered with the Walkman when she had a perfectly good sound system in the car. Probably bust, I thought. Nothing in this goddamn country works for very long.
    She came back after midnight, full of love. ‘I really think it will be OK,’ she whispered. I had been lying awake in bed; tension had turned my body into knotted steel. ‘Are you sure?’ I said, begging for more. ‘They are not evil people,’ she said softly, sliding in beside me. ‘They listened to everything and I am sure they got the point.’
    At that moment I felt my life coming together as never before, I felt as if the tangled mess of my right hand were unscrambling, rearranging itself into palm and knuckles and jointed fingers and thumb. In elation’s grip, I may even have danced. Damn it, I did dance: and shrieked, and boozed, and made wild love for joy. Verily she was my miracle worker and had achieved the unachievable thing. We slipped towards sleep wrapped in each other’s bodies. Near oblivion I mumbled, vaguely, ‘Where’s the Walkman?’
    ‘Oh, that damn thing,’ she whispered. ‘Always mangling up my tapes. I stopped on the way and chucked it in a bin.’

    When I got home the next morning Abraham and Aurora were waiting for me in the garden, standing shoulder to shoulder, with darkness on their faces.
    ‘What?’ I asked.
    ‘From this moment on,’ said