The Moors Last Sigh

the boatload, nor were their womenfolk and children far behind. Further Menezeses poured out of the bus depot, and yet more members of the clan were believed to be trying to get down by train, but had been delayed on account of the eccentricities of the railway service. By the time Belle had recovered from Aurora’s birth, and Camoens from his Lenin fiasco, Epifania’s people had got in everywhere, they were twining themselves around the Gama Trading Company like pepper-creepers around coco-palms, bullying the plantation overseers, nosing into the accounts, meddling with procedures at the godowns; it was an invasion all right, but it is never easy for conquerors to be loved, and no sooner was Epifania certain of her power than she started making mistakes. Her first error was to be too Machiavellian, for even though Aires was her favourite son she could not deny that Camoens had produced the only heir, and therefore could not be entirely excluded from her calculations. She began to flirt clumsily with Belle, who did not respond because of her growing anger at the behaviour of the numberless Menezeses; however, Epifania’s too-obvious efforts to seduce her alienated Carmen to a considerable degree. Then Epifania made an even bigger error: on account of her worsening allergy to the spices that were the mainstay of the family’s wealth – yes, even to pepper, to pepper most of all! – she let it be known that in future the Gama Trading Company would be developing a fragrance business, ‘so that, in quick time, good perfume can take the place of these stuffs that maddofy my nose’.
    Carmen lost patience. ‘Menezeses were always small fry,’ she railed at Aires. ‘Will you let your mother turn big business into bottled smells?’ But in those days Aires da Gama’s over-indulgences had instilled a torpor that all Carmen’s cajolings could not dispel. ‘Then if you will not take up your rightful place in this house,’ she cried, ‘at least have the goodness to permit that Lobo family members may help us instead of these Menezes fellows crawling everywhere like white ants and eating up our cash.’ Great-Uncle Aires readily agreed. Belle, who was equally agitated, had less success (and no relatives); Camoens was not a warrior by nature, and argued that since he had no head for business he should not stand in the way of his mother. But then the Lobos arrived.

    What started with perfume ended with a very big stink indeed … there is a thing that bursts out of us at times, a thing that lives in us, eating our food, breathing our air, looking out through our eyes, and when it comes out to play nobody is immune; possessed, we turn murderously upon one another, thing-darkness in our eyes and real weapons in our hands, neighbour against thing-ridden neighbour, thing-driven cousin against cousin, brother-thing against brother-thing, thing-child against thing-child. Carmen’s Lobos headed for the da Gama estates in the Spice Mountains, and things began to stir.
    The Jeep-road to the Spice Mountains bumps & grinds past rice-paddies, red-plantain trees, and roadside carpets of green and red capsicums laid out to dry in the sun; through cashew and areca-nut orchards (Quilon is cashewtown, just as Kottayam is rubberville); and up, up to the kingdoms of cardamom and cumin, to the shadow of young coffee plants in flower, to the terraces of tea that look like giant green tiled roofs, and to the empire of Malabar pepper above all. Early in the morning the bulbuls sing, working elephants amble past, munching amiably at the vegetation, an eagle circles in the sky. Cyclists come, riding four abreast, arms on one another’s shoulders, defying the thundering trucks. See: one cyclist has rested a foot against the back of his friend’s saddle. Idyllic, no? But within days of the coming of the Lobos there were rumours of trouble in the mountains, Lobos and Menezeses jostling for power, there were stories of arguments and blows.
    As for the house on Cabral Island, it was full-to-overflowing; you fell over the Lobos lining the stairs, and the toilets were blocked by Menezeses. Lobos angrily refused to budge when Menezeses tried to ascend or descend ‘their’ staircases, and such was the Menezes’s monopoly of hygiene facilities that Carmen’s people were reduced to performing their natural functions in the open air, in full view of the inhabitants of the nearby island of Vypeen with its fishing villages and its ruined