The Moors Last Sigh

in a scene of grand guignol?
    But, after all, there is no need to lay the blame on forebears or lovers. My own career as a beater of men – my pulverising Hammer period – had its origins in a sport of nature, which had packed so much punching power into my otherwise powerless right hand. It is true that I had, thus far, never killed a man; but given the weight and extended length of some of the poundings I administered, that can only be put down to luck. If, in the matter of Raman Fielding, I took it upon myself to be judge, jury and executioner, it is because it was in my nature so to do.
    Civilisation is the sleight of hand that conceals our natures from ourselves. My hand, gentle reader, lacked sleight; but it knew what manner of thing it was.
    So, blood-lust was in my history, and it was in my bones. I did not waver in my decision for an instant; I would have vengeance – or die in the attempt. My thoughts had run constantly on dying of late. Here, at last, was a way of giving meaning to my otherwise feeble end. I realised with a kind of abstract surprise that I was ready to die, as long as Raman Fielding’s corpse lay close at hand. So I had become a murdering fanatic, too. (Or a righteous avenger; take your pick.)
    Violence was violence, murder was murder, two wrongs did not make a right: these are truths of which I was fully cognisant. Also: by sinking to your adversary’s level you lose the high ground. In the days after the destruction of the Babri Masjid, ‘justly enraged Muslims’/‘fanatical killers’ (once again, use your blue pencil as your heart dictates) smashed up Hindu temples, and killed Hindus, across India and in Pakistan as well. There comes a point in the unfurling of communal violence in which it becomes irrelevant to ask, ‘Who started it?’ The lethal conjugations of death part company with any possibility of justification, let alone justice. They surge among us, left and right, Hindu and Muslim, knife and pistol, killing, burning, looting, and raising into the smoky air their clenched and bloody fists. Both their houses are damned by their deeds; both sides sacrifice the right to any shred of virtue; they are each other’s plagues.
    I do not exempt myself. I have been a man of violence for too long, and on the night after Raman Fielding insulted my mother on TV, I brutally put an end to his accursed life. And in so doing called a curse down upon my own.

    At night, the walls around Fielding’s property were patrolled by eight paired teams of crack cadres working three-hour shifts; I knew most of their inner-circle nicknames. The gardens were protected by four throat-ripping Alsatians (Gavaskar, Vengsarkar, Mankad and – as evidence of their owner’s lack of prejudice – Azharuddin); these metamorphosed cricket stars came up to me to be caressed, and wagged happy tails. At the door to the house proper were further guards. I knew these thugs, too – a couple of young giants going by the names of Badmood and Sneezo – but they searched me from head to foot anyway. I was carrying no weapon; or, at any rate, no weapon that they could remove from my person. ‘Id’s lige old tibes today,’ Sneezo, the younger, permanently bung-nosed and – perhaps in compensation – less tight-lipped of these friskers told me. ‘The Tid-bad stobbed by earlier to bay his resbegds. I thig he was hobig to be tagen bag on, but the sgibber is a tough-binded guy.’ I said I was sorry to have missed Sammy; and how was old Five-in-a-Bite? ‘He feld sorry for Hazaré,’ the young guard mumbled. ‘They wend off dogether to ged drung.’ His colleague smacked the back of his head and he fell silent. ‘It’s odly Habber,’ he complained, squeezing his nose between thumb and forefinger, and blowing hard. Mucus sprayed in all directions. I backed hastily away.
    It was a stroke of luck, I knew, that Chhaggan was not on the premises. He had a sixth, even a seventh sense for trouble, and my chances of overcoming him as well as Fielding, and escaping without raising a general alarm, would have been nil. I had come expecting no better; this fortuitous absence gave me a chance, at least, of getting off the premises alive.
    The taciturn one, the head-smacker, Badmood, asked me my business. I repeated what I had said at the gates. ‘For skipper’s ears only.’ Badmood looked displeased: ‘No chance.’ I made a face. ‘Then it’s on your head, when he finds out.’ He gave in. ‘Fortunate for you,