The Moors Last Sigh

Aurora Zogoiby, ‘you are no longer our son. All steps to disinherit you have been put in place. You have one day in which to collectofy your effects and get out. Your father and I never wish to see you again.’
    ‘I support your mother fully,’ said Abraham Zogoiby. ‘You disgust us. Now get out of our sight.’
    (There were further harsh words; louder, many of them mine. I will not set them down.)

    ‘Jaya? Ezekiel? Lambajan? Will somebody tell me what’s happened? What is going on?’ Nobody spoke. Aurora’s door was locked, Abraham had left the premises, and his secretaries had instructions not to put through any of my calls. Finally Miss Jaya Hé allowed herself to utter three words.
    ‘Better you pack.’

    Nothing was explained – not the fact of my expulsion, nor the brutality of its manner. Such an extreme penalty for so minor a ‘crime’! – The ‘crime’ of falling into delirious love with a woman of whom my mother disapproved! To be cut off the family tree, like a dead branch, for so trivial – no, so wonderful – a reason … it was not enough. It made no sense. I knew that other people – most people – were living in this country of parental absolutism; and in the world of the masala movie these never-darken-my-doorstep scenes were two-a-penny. But we were different; and surely this place of fierce hierarchies and ancient moral certitudes had not been my country, surely this kind of material had no part in the script of our lives! – Yet it was plain that I was wrong; for there was no further discussion. I called Uma to give her the news, and then, having no option, faced my fate. The gates of Paradise were opened, and Lambajan averted his eyes. I stumbled through them, giddy, disoriented, lost. I was nobody, nothing. Nothing I had ever known was of use, nor could I any longer say that I knew it. I had been emptied, invalidated; I was, to use a hoary but suddenly fitting epithet, ruined . I had fallen from grace, and the horror of it shattered the universe, like a mirror. I felt as though I, too, had shattered; as if I were falling to earth, not as myself, but as a thousand and one fragmented images of myself, trapped in shards of glass.
    After the fall: I arrived at Uma Sarasvati’s with a suitcase in my hand. When she answered the door her eyes were red, her hair was wild, her manner was deranged. Old-style Indian melodrama was exploding over the surface of our fraudulently sophisticated ways, like the truth bursting through a thinly painted veneer of sweet lies. Uma erupted into shrieky apologies. Her inner gravity had weakened dramatically; now she really was coming apart. ‘O god– if I’d ever thought – but how could they, it’s something from prehistory – from ancient time – I thought they were such civilised people – I thought it was us religious nuts who acted like this not you modern secular types – O god, I’ll go see them again, just now I’ll go, I’ll swear never to see you …’
    ‘No,’ I said, still dulled by shock. ‘Please don’t go. Don’t do another thing.’
    ‘Then I will do the only thing you cannot forbid,’ she howled. ‘I will kill myself. I will do it now, tonight. I will do this for my love of you, to set you free. Then they must take you back.’ She must have been working herself up ever since my telephone call. Now she was operatic, immense.
    ‘Uma, don’t be mad,’ I said.
    ‘ I am not mad ,’ she shouted at me, madly. ‘Don’t call me mad. All of your family calls me mad. I am not mad. I am in love. A woman will do great things for love. A man in love would do no less for me, but this I do not ask. I do not expect great things from you, from any man. I am not mad, unless I am mad about you. Call me mad for love. And – for god’s sake! – shut the goddamn door.’

    Fervid, with blood standing in her eyes, she began to pray. At the little shrine to Lord Ram in the corner of her living-room she lit a dia-lamp and moved it in tense circles through the air. I stood there in the gathering darkness with a suitcase at my feet. She means it, I thought. This is not a game. This is happening. It is my life, our life, and this its shape. This its true shape, the shape behind all shapes, the shape that reveals itself only at the moment of truth. At that moment an utter despair came over me, crushing me beneath its weight. I understood that I had no life. It had been taken from me. The illusion of the future which Ezekiel