The Moors Last Sigh

Portuguese fort (‘o–ou, aa-aa,’ sang the fisherfolk as they rowed past Cabral Island, and Lobo women blushed deeply and competed for the shelter of the bushes), and of the workers in the not-so-far-away coir doormat factory on Gundu Island, and of decaying princelings in their launches, passing by on a spree. There was much bumping and shoving in the queues that formed at mealtimes, and harsh words were spoken in the courtyards beneath the neutral gaze of carved wooden leogryphs.
    Fights started to break out. The two Corbusier follies were opened up to cope with the overcrowding problem, but they proved unpopular with the in-laws; there were fisticuffs over the increasingly vexed question of which family members should be granted the supposedly higher status of sleeping in the main house. Lobo women started pulling Menezes pigtails and Menezes children started grabbing, and ripping apart, the Lobo kiddies’ dolls. The da Gama household servants complained of the highhanded attitude of the in-laws, of bad language and other injuries to staff pride.
    Things were coming to a head. One night rival gangs of Menezes and Lobo teenagers clashed violently in the Cabral Island gardens; there were broken arms and cracked heads and knife-wounds, two of them serious. The gangs had ripped the paper walls of the Corbusier’s East folly-in-the-style-Japanese, and damaged its wooden structure so gravely that it had to be demolished soon afterwards; they had broken into the West folly and destroyed much of the furniture and many of the books. On the night of the gang violence of the in-laws Belle shook Camoens out of sleep and said, ‘It is time you paid attention, or all will be lost.’ At that moment a flying cockroach fluttered into her face, and she screamed. The scream brought Camoens to his senses. He jumped out of bed, killed the cockroach with a rolled newspaper, and when he went to shut the window there was a smell on the breeze that told him the real trouble had already started: the unmistakable odour of burning spices, cumin coriander turmeric, red-pepper-black-pepper, red-chilli-green-chilli, a little garlic, a little ginger, some sticks of cinnamon. It was as if some mountain giant were preparing, in a monstrous pan, the largest, hottest dish of curry ever cooked.
    ‘We can’t live all together like this any more,’ Camoens said. ‘Belle, we are burning up our own house.’
    Yes, the big stink came rolling down from the Spice Mountains to the sea, the da Gama in-laws are firing the spice-fields , and that night, when Belle saw Carmen née Lobo standing up for the first time in her life to her mother-in-law Epifania née Menezes, when she saw them in their nighties, loose-haired, like witches, howling accusations and blaming each other for the catastrophe of the burning plantations, then, with great deliberation, she settled little Aurora in her cot, filled a bowl with cold water, carried it down into the moonlit courtyard where Epifania and Carmen were going at it hammer-and-tongs, took careful aim and drenched them both to the skin. ‘Since you could start-o these evil fires with your scheming,’ she said to them, ‘then it is with you that we must begin to put them out.’
    After that the scandal and family’s disgrace deepened. The malevolent flames drew more than fire-fighters. Policemen came to Cabral Island, and after policemen there were soldiers, and then Aires and Camoens da Gama were taken, manacled and under armed escort, not directly to prison, but to the beautiful Bolgatty Palace on the island of the same name, where in a high cool room they were made to kneel on the floor at gunpoint while a cream-suited, balding Englishman with thick, pebbly eye-glasses and a walrus moustache stared out of the window at Cochin harbour with his hands clasped lightly behind his back, and talked, as it seemed, to himself.
    ‘No one, not even the Supreme Government, knows everything about the administration of the Empire. Year by year England sends out fresh drafts for the first fighting-line, which is officially called the Indian Civil Service. These die, or kill themselves by overwork, or are worried to death, or broken in health and hope in order that the land may be protected from death and sickness, famine and war, and may eventually become capable of standing alone. It will never stand alone, but the idea is a pretty one, and men are willing to die for it, and yearly the work of pushing and coaxing and