The Moors Last Sigh

looked like a hairy Cupid’s-bow. She got her tailor to run up outfits for him: broad-striped silk suits and huge floppy bow-ties that convinced le tout Bombay that Aurora Zogoiby’s new discovery must be a raving queen (in fact he was a genuine fifty-fifty bisexual, as many young men and women in the Elephanta circle would learn over the years). She was attracted to his huge appetite for information, food, work, and above all pleasure; and for the nakedness with which, smiling his Binaca smile, he went after what he wanted. ‘Let him stay,’ she pronounced when Abraham wondered mildly if the fellow showed any sign of ever pushing off. ‘I like having him around. After all, as he said, he is my hit-fortune; think-o of him as a good-luck charm.’ When he had finished decorating the nursery, she gave him his own studio, and equipped it with easels, crayons, a chaise-longue, brushes, paints. Abraham Zogoiby like a sceptical parrot tucked his head into a doubtful shoulder; but let the matter rest. Vasco Miranda kept this studio long after he became rich, and had an American dealer and work-places scattered across the Western world. He spoke of it as his ‘roots’; and it was Aurora’s decision to uproot him that finally drove him over the edge …
    Vasco-speak quickly became Zogoiby-chat. Ina, Minnie and Mynah grew up dividing their teachers at Walsingham House School into ‘hits’ and ‘misses’. At home in Elephanta , nothing was turned on or off any more; telephones, light-switches, radiograms were always ‘opened’ or ‘closed’. Unaccountable gaps in the language were filled in: if the opposed answer-and-question pairs there/where, then/when, that/what, thither/whither, thence/whence all existed, then, Vasco argued, ‘every this must also have its whis , every these its whese , every those its whoase.’
    As for the nursery, he was as good as his word. In a large light room with a sea view, he created what my sisters and I would always think of as the closest we ever came to an earthly (though mercifully non-horticultural) Eden. For all his Bombay-talkie bendy-cane-twirling comic-uncle antics he was a diligent worker, and within days of his appointment had acquired a knowledge of his subject that far exceeded Aurora’s requirements. On the nursery walls he first painted a series of trompe-l’oeil windows, Mughal-palatial, Andalusian Moorish, Manueline Portuguese, roseate Gothic, windows great and small; and then, through these magic casements, which were windows both of and on the world of make-believe, he gave us glimpses of his fabulous throngs. Early-period Mickey on his steamboat, Donald fighting the hands of Time, Unca Scrooge with $ signs in his eyes. Huey-Dewey-Louie. Gyro Gearloose, Goofy, Pluto. Crows, chipmunks, and other couples that have passed beyond my recollection: Heckle’n’Jeckle, Chip’n’Dale, What’n’Not. He also gave us Looney Tunes: Daffy, Porky, Bugs and Fudd; and in the air above this two-dimensional portrait gallery he hung their cacophonetic expostulations – hahahaHAha, thuffering thuccotash, tawt-I-taw, beep-beep, what’s-up-Doc and wak. There were talking roosters, booted pussies and flying, red-caped Wonder Dogs; also great galleries of more local heroes, for he gave us more than we had bargained for, adding djinns on carpets and thieves in giant pitchers and a man in the claws of a giant bird. He gave us story-oceans and abracadabras, Panchatantra fables and new lamps for old. Most important of all, however, was the notion he implanted in all of us through the pictures on our walls: the notion, that is, of the secret identity.
    Who was that masked man? It was from the walls of my childhood that I first learned about the wealthy socialite Bruce Wayne and his ward Dick Grayson, beneath whose luxury residence lurked the secrets of the Bat-Cave, about mild-mannered Clark Kent who was the space-immigrant Kal-El from the planet Krypton who was Superman, about John Jones who was the Martian J’onn J’onzz and Diana King who was Wonder Woman the Amazon Queen. It was from these walls that I learned how profoundly a super-hero could yearn for normality, that Superman who was brave as a lion and could see through anything except lead wanted more than life itself that Lois Lane should love him as a meek wimp in specs. I never thought of myself as a super-hero, don’t get me wrong; but with my hand like a club and my personal calendar losing pages at super-speed I