The Moors Last Sigh

nothing but war – to be frank, Hitler and Churchill did as much as anyone to prevent my scandalous parents’ goose from being cooked; the outbreak of World War II was a pretty effective diversionary tactic – and the prices of pepper and spices had grown unstable on account of the loss of the German market, and the growing number of stories about the risks to cargo vessels. Particularly persistent were the rumours about German plans to paralyse the British Empire by sending warships and submarines – people were starting to learn the term U-boats – into the shipping lanes of the Indian Ocean as well as the Atlantic, and trading vessels (so everybody believed) would be as high-priority a target as the British Navy; on top of which there would be mines. In spite of all this, Abraham had worked his magic trick, and the Marco Polo was even now disappearing out of Cochin harbour and heading West. Don’t ask , his lip-stitching fingers warned; and Aurora, my empress of a mother, put up her hands, brought them together for a little round of applause, and asked no more. ‘I always wanted a magician,’ was all she said. ‘Looks like I found one after all.’
    I marvel at my mother when I think of it. How did she stifle her curiosity? Abraham had done the impossible, and she was content not to know how: she was prepared to live in ignorance, as the Young Lady of Thread-Needle Street. And in the years that followed, as the family business diversified triumphantly in a hundred and one directions, as the treasure-mountains grew from mere Gama-Ghats into Zogoiby-Himalayas, did she never imagine – did she never think for one moment – but of course, she must have; hers was a chosen blindness, her complicity the complicity of silence, of don’t-tell-me-things-I-don’t-want-to-know, of quiet-I-am-busy-with-my-Great-Work. And such was the force of her not-seeing that none of us looked either. What a cover she was for Abraham Zogoiby’s operations! What a brilliant, legitimising façade … but I must not run ahead of my story. For the present, it is necessary only to reveal – no, it is high time that somebody revealed it! – that my father, Abraham Zogoiby, turned out to have a genuine talent for changing reluctant minds.
    I have it from the horse’s mouth: he spent most of his missing hours among the dock-workers, drawing aside the largest and strongest of those known to him, and pointing out that if the Nazis’ attempt at a blockade succeeded, if businesses like the da Gamas’ Camoens Fifty Per Cent Corp. (Private) Limited were to go under, then they, the stevedores, and their families, too, would quickly sink into destitution. ‘That Marco Polo captain,’ he murmured contemptuously, ‘by his cowardice in refusing to sail, is snatching food from your kiddies’ plates.’
    Once he had succeeded in building an army strong enough to overpower the ship’s crew, should the need arise, Abraham went by himself to see the chief clerks. Messrs Tejpattam, Kalonjee and Mirchandalchini met him with ill-concealed distaste, for had he not been their humble minion until very recently, theirs to command as they pleased? Whereas – thanks to his seduction of that cheap hussy, the Proprietor – he now had the effrontery to come laying down the law like a boss of bosses … however, having no option, they followed his instructions. Urgent and insistent telegraphic messages were sent to the owners and the master of the Marco Polo , and a short while after that Abraham Zogoiby, still unaccompanied, was taken out to the cargo-boat by the harbour pilot himself.
    The meeting with the ship’s captain didn’t take long. ‘I laid out the total situation frankly,’ my father told me in his great old age. ‘Necessity of prompt action to corner the British market as compensation for loss of German income, so on so forth. I was generous, that is always wise in negotiation. Because of his courage, I said, we would make him a rich man just when he reached East India Dock. This he liked. This made him well disposed.’ He paused, gasping, trying to fill the tattered remnant of his lungs. ‘Naturally, there was not only this bowl of carrot- halva but a big bumboo -stick as well. I informed Skipper that if there was no compliance by sunset then to my great regret, speaking as a colleague, his ship would go to the bottom of the harbour and he personally would, alas, be required to accompany the same.’
    Would he have carried out