The Moors Last Sigh

strange tricks when sinking towards sleep,’ I reminded myself, and got out of bed. It was daylight, and from the main room of the small house there came a strong, irresistible aroma of lentil soup. Felicitas and Renegada were at table, and there was a third place, at which a large steaming bowl had already been placed. They watched approvingly as I gulped down spoonful after spoonful.
    ‘How long have I been asleep?’ I asked them, and they gave each other a little look.
    ‘A whole day,’ said Renegada. ‘Now it’s tomorrow.’
    ‘Nonsense,’ Felicitas disagreed. ‘You were just snoozing for a few hours. It’s still today.’
    ‘My half-sister is teasing,’ said Renegada. ‘Actually, I didn’t want to shock you, and that is why I understated the case. The truth is that you have slept for forty-eight hours at least.’
    ‘Forty-eight winks, more like,’ said Felicitas. ‘Renegada, don’t confuse the poor man.’
    ‘We have cleaned and pressed your clothes,’ her half-sister said, changing the subject. ‘I hope you don’t mind.’
    The effects of the journey had not worn off, even after my rest. If I really had snored my way into the day after tomorrow, though, a certain disorientation was to be expected. I turned my thoughts to business.
    ‘Ladies, I am most grateful to you,’ I said politely. ‘But now I must ask you for some urgent advice. Vasco Miranda is an old friend of the family, and I need to see him on important family business. Permit me to introduce myself. Moraes Zogoiby, of Bombay, India, at your service.’
    They gasped.
    ‘Zogoiby!’ muttered Felicitas, shaking her head in disbelief.
    ‘I never thought to hear from another’s lips that hated, hated name,’ said Renegada Larios, colouring brightly as she spoke.
    This was the story I managed to coax out of them.
    When Vasco Miranda first came to Benengeli, as a painter with a world-wide reputation, the half-sisters (at that time young women in their mid-twenties) had offered him their services, and been employed at once. ‘He said he was pleased by our command of English, our domestic skills, but most of all by our family tree,’ said Renegada, surprisingly. ‘Our father Juan Larios was a sailor, and Felicitas’s mother was Moroccan, while mine hailed from Palestine. So Felicitas is half-Arab, and I am Jewish on my mother’s side.’
    ‘Then you and I have something in common,’ I told her. ‘For I, too, am fifty per cent in that direction.’ Renegada looked inordinately pleased.
    Vasco had told them they would renew, in his ‘Little Alhambra’, the fabulous multiple culture of ancient al-Andalus. They would be more like a family than master and servants. ‘We thought he was a little crazy, of course,’ said Felicitas, ‘but all artists are, isn’t that so, and the money he offered was well above the rate.’ Renegada nodded. ‘And anyhow it was just a pipe-dream. Just words. It was always boss and workers between us. And then he got more and more insane, dressing up like an old-time Sultan, and behaving even worse than one of those absolutist, infidel despots of Moors.’ Now they went in every morning and cleaned the place as best they could. The gardeners had been dismissed and the water-garden, once a jewel-like miniature Generalife, was almost dead. The kitchen staff were long departed and Vasco would leave the Larios women shopping lists and money. ‘Cheeses, sausages, wines, cakes,’ said Felicitas. ‘I do not think so much as an egg has been cooked in that house this year.’
    Ever since the day of Salvador Medina’s insult over five years ago, Vasco had been retreating. He spent his days locked in his high tower apartment into which they were not permitted to venture, on pain of instant dismissal. Renegada said she had seen a couple of canvases in his studio, blasphemous works in which Judas took the place of Christ upon the cross; but these ‘Judas Christ’ paintings had been there for months, half-finished, apparently abandoned. He did not seem to be working on anything else. Nor did he travel any more, as he once had, to execute murals to commission for the airport departure halls and hotel lobbies of the earth. ‘He has bought a lot of high-technology equipment,’ she confided. ‘Recording machines, and even one of those X-ray gadgets. With the recording machines he makes strange tapes, a screeches and bangs, shouts and thumps. Avant-garde rubbish. He plays it at top volume in his tower