The Moors Last Sigh

the body of the dead woman lying on the apartment floor.

III
BOMBAY CENTRAL

16
    I N A STREET I had never heard of I stood in manacles before a building I had never seen, a structure of such size that my entire field of vision was occupied by a single featureless wall, in which, a little way to my right, I perceived a tiny iron door – or, rather, a door that looked small, small as a metal mousehole, on account of being set in that ghastly grey immensity of stone. I was prodded forward by the arresting officer’s stick, and walked obediently away from the windowless vehicle in which I had been transported from the macabre scene of my lover’s demise. I crossed that empty and silent thoroughfare in astonishment, for streets in Bombay are never silent, and never, never empty – here there is no ‘dead of night’, or so, until now, I had always supposed. As I approached the door I saw that in reality it was extremely large, and towered above me like the entrance to a cathedral. How vast the wall must be, then! Close to, it spread over and about us and hid the dirty moon. I felt my heart sink. I found I could remember very little about the journey. Tied down in the dark, I had evidently lost all sense of direction and of the passage of time. What was this place? Who were these people? Were they truly police officers; was I really accused of drug trafficking and now also under suspicion of murder; or had I slipped accidentally from one page, one book of life on to another–in my wretched, disoriented state, had my reading finger perhaps slipped from the sentence of my own story on to this other, outlandish, incomprehensible text that had been lying, by chance, just beneath? Yes: some such slippage had plainly occurred. ‘I am not a criminal,’ I cried out. ‘Nor do I belong here, in this Under World. There has been a mistake.’
    ‘Give up such delusive esperance, you rotter,’ replied the Inspector. ‘Here many bhoots of the Under World, many fearful blighters, are turning into lost shadows. No mistake, you bally chump! Enter! Within, the rotfulness is terrific.’
    The great door opened with many clanks and groans. At once the air was full of hellish wails. ‘Oooh! Hai-hai! Groooh! Oi-yoi-yoi! Yarooh!’ Inspector Singh gave me an unceremonious shove. ‘Left-right left-right one-two one-two!’ he cried. ‘Scurry along, Beelzebooby! Your After Life awaits.’
    I was led down dim corridors stinking of excrement and torment, of desolations and violations, by whip-cracking men with, as it seemed to me, the heads of beasts and poisonous snakes for tongues. Either the Inspector had left or else he had metamorphosed into one of these hybrid monsters. I tried to ask the monsters questions but their communications did not extend beyond the physical. Blows, pushes, even the tip of a whip burning fiercely across my ankle: this was the sum total of what they had to say. I stopped talking and moved deeper into the jail.
    After a long while I found my way blocked by a man with – I narrowed my eyes and peered – the head of a bearded elephant, who held in his hand an iron crescent dripping with keys. Rats scurried respectfully around his feet. ‘To this place we are bringing godless men like you,’ said the elephant man. ‘Here you will suffer for your sins. We will humiliate you in fashions of which you have not even been able to dream.’ I was ordered to remove my clothes. Naked, shivering in the hot night, I was manhandled into a cell. A door – a whole life, a whole way of understanding life – closed behind me. I stood in darkness, lost.
    Solitary confinement. The heat intensified the stench of ordure. Mosquitoes, straw, pools of fluid, and, everywhere, in the dark, cockroaches. My bare feet crunched them as I walked. When I stood still they scrambled up my legs. Bending in panic to brush them off, I felt my hair brush against the walls of my black cage. Cockroaches swarmed over my head and down my back. I felt them on my stomach, dropping into my pubes. I began to jerk like a marionette, hitting at myself, screaming. Something – a defilement – had begun.
    In the morning, some light did find its way into the cell and the roaches retreated to await the dark’s return. I had not slept; my battle against those vile creatures had used up all my strength. I fell on to the straw pile that was my only bed, and rats flurried into holes in the wall. A little window opened in the cell door. ‘Pretty soon