The Moors Last Sigh

meanings, how then could Abraham’s career have been any different? How could any of us have escaped that deadly layering? How, trapped as we were in the hundred per cent fakery of the real, in the fancy-dress, weeping-Arab kitsch of the superficial, could we have penetrated to the full, sensual truth of the lost mother below? How could we have lived authentic lives? How could we have failed to be grotesque?
    It is clear to me now, as I look back, that the only thing wrong with Vasco Miranda’s Independence Night gag about the power of corruption being equal to that of the gods was the excessive mildness of its formulation. And of course Abraham Zogoiby must have known very well that the painter’s boozy attempt at flamboyant cynicism was in fact an understatement of the case.
    ‘Your mother and her art crowd were always complaining what tough times they had making something out of nothing ,’ Abraham confessing his crimes in his great old age remembered, with more than a little amusement. ‘What did they make? Pictures! But I, I, I-tho brought a whole new city out of nowhere! Now you judge: which is the harder magic trick? From your dear mother’s conjuring hat came many fine creatures; but from mine, mister – King Kong!’
    During the first twenty or so years of my life, new tracts of land– ‘something out of nothing’ – were reclaimed from the Arabian Sea at the southern end of the Bombay peninsula’s Back Bay, and Abraham invested heavily in this reverse-Atlantis rising from the waves. In those days there was much talk of relieving the pressure on the overcrowded city by limiting the extent and height of new buildings in the Reclamation area, and then constructing a second city centre on the mainland across the water. It was important for Abraham that this scheme should fail – ‘how could I maintain the value of the property in which I had sunk so many assets, if not?’ he asked me, spreading his skeletal arms wide and baring his teeth in what would once have been a disarming smile, but now, in the semi-darkness of his office high above the city streets, gave my nonagenarian father the appearance of a voracious skull.
    He found an ally when Kiran (‘K.K.’ or ‘Kéké’) Kolatkar, a little pop-eyed black cannonball of a politico from Aurangabad, and the toughest of all the hard men who have bossed Bombay over the years, rose to dominate the Municipal Corporation. Kolatkar was a man to whom Abraham Zogoiby could explain the principles of invisibility, those hidden laws of nature that could not be overturned by the visible laws of men. Abraham explained how invisible funds could find their way through a series of invisible bank accounts and end up, visible and clean as a whistle, in the account of a friend. He demonstrated how the continued invisibility of the dream-city across the water would benefit those friends who might have, or by chance acquire, a stake in what had until recently been invisible but had now risen up like a Bombay Venus from the sea. He showed how easy it would be to persuade those worthy officers whose job it was to monitor and control the number and height of new buildings in the Reclamation that they would be much advantaged were they to lose the gift of sight – ‘metaphorically, of course, boy – it was only a figure of speech; don’t think we wanted to put out anybody’s eyes, not like Shah Jehan with that peeping Tom who wanted a sneak preview of the Taj’ – so that great crowds of new edifices could actually remain invisible to public scrutiny, and soar into the sky, as high as anyone could wish. And, once again, hey presto, the invisible buildings would generate mountains of cash, they would become some of the most valuable real-estate on earth; something out of nothing, a miracle, and all the friends who had helped make it so would be well rewarded for their pains.
    Kolatkar was a quick learner, and even came up with an inspiration of his own. Suppose these invisible buildings could be built by an invisible work-force? Would that not be the most elegant and economic of results? ‘Naturally, I agreed,’ old Abraham confessed. ‘That little bullet-head Kéké was getting into the swing.’ Soon after that the city authorities decreed that any persons who had settled in Bombay subsequent to the last census were to be deemed not to exist. Because they had been cancelled, it followed that the city bore no responsibility for their housing or welfare,