The Moors Last Sigh

young man, to wager his unborn son. Yes, the High Command did exist, and the Muslim gangs had been united by a Cochin Jew. The truth is almost always exceptional, freakish, improbable, and almost never normative, almost never what cold calculations would suggest. In the end, people make the alliances they need. They follow the men who can lead them in the directions they prefer. It occurred to me that my father’s pre-eminence over Scar and his colleagues was a dark, ironic victory for India’s deep-rooted secularism. The very nature of this inter-community league of cynical self-interest gave the lie to Mainduck’s vision of a theocracy in which one particular variant of Hinduism would rule, while all India’s other peoples bowed their beaten heads.
    Vasco had said it years ago: corruption was the only force we had that could defeat fanaticism. What had been, on his lips, no more than a drunkard’s gibe, had been turned by Abraham Zogoiby into living reality, into a union of hovel and high-rise, a godless crooked army that could take on and vanquish anything that the god-squad sent its way.
    Maybe.
    Raman Fielding had already made the grave error of underestimating his opponent. Would Abraham Zogoiby be any wiser? Early indications were not good. ‘A bug,’ he’d called Mainduck. ‘A stupid collared dog.’
    And if both sides went to war because they believed the enemy was easy to vanquish? And if both sides were wrong? What then?
    Armageddon?

    In the matter of the Baby Softo narcotics scandal, Abraham Zogoiby – as he confirmed during our ‘briefing sessions’, with a wide, shameless grin – had received a complete exoneration by the investigating authorities. ‘Clean bill of health,’ he crowed. ‘Pair of hands, likewise clean. Enemies may try to drag me down, but they must try harder than that.’ There was no question that the Softo company’s talcum powder exports had been used as cover for the dispatch overseas of rather more lucrative white powders, but in spite of herculean efforts by narcotics squad officers it had been impossible to prove that Abraham had been aware of any illegal activity. Certain minor functionaries of the company – in the canning and dispatch departments – had indeed been shown to be in the pay of a drugs syndicate, but thereafter all investigations simply hit a wall. Abraham was generous in caring for the families of the jailed men – ‘Why should women-children suffer for activities of fathers?’ he liked to say – and in the end the case was closed without any of the charges against high personages that had originally been trumpeted, not least by Raman Fielding’s MA-controlled city corporation. It remained a matter of embarrassment that the drug overlord known as ‘Scar’ remained at liberty. The supposition was that he had taken refuge somewhere in the Persian Gulf. But Abraham Zogoiby had different news for me. ‘How foolish we would be if immigration-emigration matters were not also capable of being arranged,’ he cried. ‘Of course our people can slip out and in whenever they may so choose. And drugs squad officers also are only human. On their low pay it is hard to make ends meet. What to tell you? It is the duty of the well-off to be generous. Philanthropy is our necessary rôle. Noblesse oblige.’
    Abraham’s victory in the Baby Softo affair had been a blow for Fielding, who urged me constantly to pump my father for information about drug-related activities. But I did not need to pump. Abraham was intent on opening his heart to me, and told me plainly that the Softo win had not been without long-term costs. With the talcum powder route closed, a more perilous operation had had to be constructed at some speed and in the teeth of the intensive police investigation. ‘Start-up costs were ridiculous,’ he confided. ‘But what to do? In business a man’s word is his bond, and there were contracts to fulfil.’ Scar and his men had been working full-time to set up the new route, which culminated in the dusty wastes of the Rann of Kutch (thus necessitating the bribery of officials in Gujarat as well as Maharashtra). Small boats would ferry the ‘talcum’ out to waiting cargo ships. The new route was slower, riskier. ‘Only a stop-gap,’ said Abraham. ‘In time we will find new friends at the air cargo terminal.’
    I would go to his high-rise glass Eden at night and he would tell me his serpentine tales. And they were like fairy tales, in a