The Moor's Last Sigh

  So we were invaders now, were we? After two thousand years, we still did not belong, and indeed, were soon to be ‘erased’ – which ‘cancellation’ need not be followed by any expressions of regret, or grief. Mainduck’s insult to Aurora’s memory made it easier for me to carry out the deed upon which I was resolved.

  My assassin mood cannot properly be ascribed to atavism; though inspired by my mother’s death, this was scarcely a recurrence of characteristics that had skipped a few generations! It might more accurately be termed a sort of in-law inheritance; for had not match after match imported violence into the da Gama household? Epifania brought her murderous Menezes clan, and Carmen her lethal Lobos. And Abraham had had the killer instinct from the start, though he preferred to employ others to carry out his commands. Only my true-loving maternal grandparents, Camoens and Belle, were innocent of such a charge.

  My own amorous liaisons had scarcely been an improvement. I cast no slur upon sweet Dilly; but what of Uma, who deprived me of my mother’s love by persuading her that I harboured indecent passions? What of Uma the would-be murderess, who only failed to kill me because of the head-banging intervention of slapstick comedy in a scene of grand guignol?

  But, after all, there is no need to lay the blame on forebears or lovers. My own career as a beater of men – my pulverising Hammer period – had its origins in a sport of nature, which had packed so much punching power into my otherwise powerless right hand. It is true that I had, thus far, never killed a man; but given the weight and extended length of some of the poundings I administered, that can only be put down to luck. If, in the matter of Raman Fielding, I took it upon myself to be judge, jury and executioner, it is because it was in my nature so to do.

  Civilisation is the sleight of hand that conceals our natures from ourselves. My hand, gentle reader, lacked sleight; but it knew what manner of thing it was.

  So, blood-lust was in my history, and it was in my bones. I did not waver in my decision for an instant; I would have vengeance – or die in the attempt. My thoughts had run constantly on dying of late. Here, at last, was a way of giving meaning to my otherwise feeble end. I realised with a kind of abstract surprise that I was ready to die, as long as Raman Fielding’s corpse lay close at hand. So I had become a murdering fanatic, too. (Or a righteous avenger; take your pick.)

  Violence was violence, murder was murder, two wrongs did not make a right: these are truths of which I was fully cognisant. Also: by sinking to your adversary’s level you lose the high ground. In the days after the destruction of the Babri Masjid, ‘justly enraged Muslims’/‘fanatical killers’ (once again, use your blue pencil as your heart dictates) smashed up Hindu temples, and killed Hindus, across India and in Pakistan as well. There comes a point in the unfurling of communal violence in which it becomes irrelevant to ask, ‘Who started it?’ The lethal conjugations of death part company with any possibility of justification, let alone justice. They surge among us, left and right, Hindu and Muslim, knife and pistol, killing, burning, looting, and raising into the smoky air their clenched and bloody fists. Both their houses are damned by their deeds; both sides sacrifice the right to any shred of virtue; they are each other’s plagues.

  I do not exempt myself. I have been a man of violence for too long, and on the night after Raman Fielding insulted my mother on TV, I brutally put an end to his accursed life. And in so doing called a curse down upon my own.

  At night, the walls around Fielding’s property were patrolled by eight paired teams of crack cadres working three-hour shifts; I knew most of their inner-circle nicknames. The gardens were protected by four throat-ripping Alsatians (Gavaskar, Vengsarkar, Mankad and – as evidence of their owner’s lack of prejudice – Azharuddin); these metamorphosed cricket stars came up to me to be caressed, and wagged happy tails. At the door to the house proper were further guards. I knew these thugs, too – a couple of young giants going by the names of Badmood and Sneezo – but they searched me from head to foot anyway. I was carrying no weapon; or, at any rate, no weapon that they could remove from my person. ‘Id’s lige old tibes today,’ Sneezo, the younger, permanently bung-nosed and – perhaps in compensation – less tight-lipped of these friskers told me. ‘The Tid-bad stobbed by earlier to bay his resbegds. I thig he was hobig to be tagen bag on, but the sgibber is a tough-binded guy.’ I said I was sorry to have missed Sammy; and how was old Five-in-a-Bite? ‘He feld sorry for Hazaré,’ the young guard mumbled. ‘They wend off dogether to ged drung.’ His colleague smacked the back of his head and he fell silent. ‘It’s odly Habber,’ he complained, squeezing his nose between thumb and forefinger, and blowing hard. Mucus sprayed in all directions. I backed hastily away.

  It was a stroke of luck, I knew, that Chhaggan was not on the premises. He had a sixth, even a seventh sense for trouble, and my chances of overcoming him as well as Fielding, and escaping without raising a general alarm, would have been nil. I had come expecting no better; this fortuitous absence gave me a chance, at least, of getting off the premises alive.

  The taciturn one, the head-smacker, Badmood, asked me my business. I repeated what I had said at the gates. ‘For skipper’s ears only.’ Badmood looked displeased: ‘No chance.’ I made a face. ‘Then it’s on your head, when he finds out.’ He gave in. ‘Fortunate for you, skipper is working late on account of national happenings,’ he said furiously. ‘Wait on and I will inquire.’ And after some moments he returned and jerked an enraged thumb towards the inner lair.

  Mainduck was working by the yellow light of a single Anglepoise lamp. His large bespectacled head was half-illuminated, half in darkness; the great bulk of his body merged with the night. Was he alone? Hard to be sure. ‘Hammer, Hammer,’ he croaked. ‘And how have you come tonight? As your father’s emissary, or a traitor to his fucked-up cause?’

  ‘Messenger,’ I said. He nodded. ‘Then, deliver.’

  ‘For your ears only,’ I told him. ‘Not for microphones.’ Many years ago Fielding had spoken admiringly of the American President Nixon’s decision to bug his own office. ‘Guy had a sense of history,’ he’d said. ‘Guts, too. Everything on the record.’ I’d pointed out that these tapes had helped to terminate his presidency. Fielding pooh-poohed the objection. ‘What I say cannot undo me,’ he proclaimed. ‘My ideology is my fortune! And one day the kiddiwinks will study my statements at school.’

  Therefore: not for microphones. He grinned from ear to ear, looking, in his pool of light, more Cheshire Cat than frog. ‘You remember too damn much, Hammer,’ he chided me fondly. ‘So come, come, my dearie. Whisper sweet nothings in my ear.’

  I had grown old, I worried as I walked over to him. Maybe the old KO punch had gone. Give me the strength, I prayed to nothing in particular: to Aurora’s ghost, perhaps. One last time. Let me still have my hammer-blow. The green frog-phone stared up at me from his desk. God, I hated that phone. I bent towards Mainduck; who flung out his left hand, at high speed, caught me by the hair at the nape of my neck, and jammed my mouth into the left side of his head. Off-balance for a moment, I realised with some horror that my right hand, my only weapon, could no longer reach the target. But as I fell against the edge of the desk, my left hand – that same left hand which I had had to force myself, all my life, and against my nature, to learn how to use – collided, by chance, with the telephone.

  ‘The message is from my mother,’ I whispered, and smashed the green frog into his face. He made no sound. His fingers released my hair, but the frog-phone kept wanting to kiss him, so I kissed him with it, as hard as I could, then harder, and harder still, until the plastic splintered and the instrument began to come apart in my hand. ‘Cheap fucking gimmick item,’ I thought, and put it down.

  How Lord Ram slew the fair Sita’s abductor, Ravan, King of Lanka:

  Still the dubious battle lasted, until Rama in his ire

  Wielded Brahma’s deathful weapon flaming with celestial fire!

  Weapon which the Saint Agastya had unto the hero given,
br />   Winged as lightning dart of Indra, fatal as the bolt of heaven,

  Wrapped in smoke and flaming flashes, speeding from the circled bow,

  Pierced the iron heart of Ravan, laid the lifeless hero low …

  Voice of blessing from the bright sky fell on Raghu’s valiant son,

  ‘Champion of the true and righteous! now thy noble task is done!’

  How Achilles slew Hector, Patroclus’ killer:

  Then answered Hector of the flashing helm,

  His strength all gone: ‘I beg thee by thy life,

  Thy knees, thy parents, leave me not for dogs

  Of the Achaeans by the ships to eat …’

  But scowling at him swift Achilles said:

  ‘Do not entreat me, dog, by knees or parents.

  I only wish I had the heart and will

  To hack the flesh off thee and eat it raw,

  For all that thou hast done to me! there lives

  None who shall keep the dogs away from thee …

  … but dogs and birds shall eat thee utterly.’

  You see the difference. Where Ram had the use of a heavenly doomsday-machine, I had to make do with a telecommunicative frog. And, afterwards, received no heavenly words of congratulation for my deed. As for Achilles: I had neither his innard-munching savagery (so reminiscent, if I may say so, of Hind of Mecca, who gobbled the dead hero Hamza’s heart) nor his poetic turn of phrase. The Achaeans’ dogs, however, did have their local counterparts …

  … After Ram killed Ravan he chivalrously arranged a lavish funeral for his fallen foe. Achilles, much the less gallant of these high heroes, tied Hector’s corpse to his ‘chariot-tail’ and dragged him thrice round dead Patroclus’s grave. As for me: not living in heroic times, I neither honoured nor desecrated my victim’s body; my thoughts were for myself, my chances of survival and escape. After I had murdered Fielding I turned him in his chair, so that he faced away from the door (though he no longer had a face). I set his feet up on a bookshelf and folded his arms across his pulpy wounds, so that he seemed to have fallen asleep, exhausted by his labours. Then quickly, quietly, I searched for the recording machines – there would be two, to back each other up.

  They were easy enough to find. Fielding had never made a secret of his recording zeal, and his office cupboards – which were unlocked – revealed to me the spools whirling slowly, like dervishes, in the dark. I ripped out lengths of tape and stuffed them in my pockets.

  It was time to go. I left the room and closed the door with exaggerated care. ‘Do not disturb,’ I whispered to Badmood and Sneezo. ‘Skipper’s catching forty winks.’ That held them for the moment, but would I have time to leave the property? I had visions of yells, whistles, shots, and four transmogrified cricketers, snarling loudly as they leapt for my throat. My feet began to hurry; I slowed them down, and then came to a halt. Gavaskar, Vengsarkar, Mankad and Azharuddin came up and licked my good hand. I knelt and hugged them. Then I rose, left dogs and Mumbadevi statues behind me, went out through the gates, and got into the Mercedes-Benz I had taken from the Cashondeliveri Tower car-pool. As I drove away I wondered who would get to me first: the police, or Chhaggan Five-in-a-Bite. On the whole, I would prefer the police. A second dead body, Mr Zogoiby. Careless. The slackfulness is terrific.

  There was an animal noise behind me, except that no animal ever roared so loud, and a giant’s hand spun my car around, twice, and blew out my rear windows. The Murs’deez stalled, facing the wrong way.

  The sun had come out. The first thing I thought of was The Walrus and the Carpenter. ‘The moon was shining sulkily,/Because she thought the sun/Had got no business to be there/After the day was done./“It’s very rude of him,” she said,/“To come and spoil the fun!” ’ My second thought was that an aeroplane had crashed on the city. There were high flames now, and screams, and for the first time I realised that something had happened at the Fielding residence. I heard Sneezo’s voice again: ‘The Tid-bad stobbed by earlier to bay his resbegds.’

  His last respects. His sacked old warrior’s respects. How had Sammy the bomber smuggled this device past the searching guards? I could come up with just one answer. Inside his metal limb. Which meant it had to be pretty small. No room for dynamite sticks in there. What then? Plastique, RDX, Semtex? ‘Bravo, Sammy,’ I thought. ‘Miniaturisation, eh? Wah-wah. Only the best, latest stuff for Mainduck.’ Who would not be giving anyone else the sack in a hurry. It occurred to me that I had murdered a dead man. Even though he had still been alive when I got to him, Sammy had beaten me to the knockout punch.

  It took me a few more moments to work out that there wouldn’t be much left of Mainduck. Sammy was good enough to have made sure of that. It was quite possible, therefore, that I would not come under suspicion of having committed any crime at all. Though, as the last man to have seen Raman Fielding alive, I would no doubt have questions to answer. The car obediently started first time. The air was horrid with smoke and all-too-identifiable stenches. Many people were running. It was time to leave. As I reversed down the street I imagined I heard the barking of hungry dogs who had unexpectedly been thrown large chunks of meat, mostly still on the bone. That, and the flapping of vultures.

  ‘Get out,’ said Abraham Zogoiby. ‘Do it pronto. And stay out.’

  It was my last walk with him in his aerial orchard. I had made my report about the fatal events in Bandra. ‘So Hazaré is a loose cannon,’ my father said. ‘Doesn’t matter. Side-issue. Some supplier is dealing on the side, that will have to be taken up. But, none of your business. Just now you are under no restraint. Therefore, goodbye. Take your leave. While you can do it, go.’

  ‘What will happen here?’

  ‘Your brother will rot in jail. Everything will end. I also am finished. But my finish: that has not yet begun.’

  I took a ripe apple from a basket, and asked him my last question. ‘Once,’ I said, ‘Vasco Miranda told you that this was no country for us. At that time he said to you what you are now saying to me. “Macaulay’s Minutemen, get out.” So, then: was he right? Vamoose, go West? That’s it?’

  ‘Your documents are in order?’ Abraham, his power ended, seemed to be ageing before my eyes, like an immortal forced, at last, to step outside the magic portals of Shangri-La. But yes, I nodded, my documents were in order. That much-renewed passage to Spain which was my mother’s legacy to me. That window to another world.

  ‘Then go ask him yourself,’ said Abraham, smiling his despairing smile as he walked away from me into the trees. I let the apple fall and turned to go.

  ‘Ohé, Moraes,’ he called after me. Shameless, grinning, defeated. ‘Bleddy stupid fool. Who do you think had those pictures stolen if not your loony Miranda? Go find them, boy. Go find your precious Palimpstine. Go see Mooristan.’ And his last command, the closest he came to a declaration of affection: ‘Take the bleddy pooch.’ I left that celestial garden with Jawaharlal under my arm. It was almost dawn. There was a red rim edging the planet, dividing us from the sky. It looked as if someone, or something, had been crying.

  Bombay blew apart. Here’s what I’ve been told: three hundred kilograms of RDX explosive were used. Two and a half thousand kilos more were captured later, some in Bombay, others in a lorry near Bhopal. Also timers, detonators, the works. There had been nothing like it in the history of the city. Nothing so cold-blooded, so calculated, so cruel. Dhhaaiiiyn! A busload of schoolkids. Dhhaaiiiyn! The Air-India building. Dhhaaiiiyn! Trains, residences, chawls, docks, movie-studios, mills, restaurants. Dhhaaiiiyn! Dhhaaiiiyn! Dhhaaiiiyn! Commodity exchanges, office buildings, hospitals, the busiest shopping streets in the heart of town. Bits of bodies were lying everywhere; human and animal blood, guts, and bones. Vultures so drunk on flesh that they sat lop-sidedly on rooftops, waiting for appetite to return.

  Who did it? Many of Abraham’s enemies were hit – policemen, MA cadres, criminal rivals. Dhhaaiiiyn! My father in the hour of his annihilation made a phone call, and the metropolis began to
explode. But could even Abraham, with his immense resources, have stockpiled such an arsenal? How could gang warfare explain the legion of innocent dead? Hindu and Muslim areas were both attacked; men, women, children perished, and there was nobody to give the dignity of meaning to their deaths. What avenging demon bestrode the horizon, raining fire upon our heads? Was the city simply murdering itself?

  Abraham went to war, and let his curse fall wheresoever it could. That was some of it. It wasn’t enough; it wasn’t everything. I don’t know everything. I’m telling you what I know.

  Here’s what I want to know: who killed Elephanta, who murdered my home? Who blew it to bits, and ‘Lambajan Chandiwala’ Borkar, Miss Jaya Hé and Ezekiel of the magic copybooks along with the bricks and mortar? Was it dead Fielding’s revenge, or freelance Hazaré’s, or was there some more profound movement in history, deeper down, where not even those of us who had spent so long in the Under World could see it?

  Bombay was central; had always been. Just as the fanatical ‘Catholic Kings’ had besieged Granada and awaited the Alhambra’s fall, so now barbarism was standing at our gates. O Bombay! Prima in Indis! Gateway to India! Star of the East with her face to the West! Like Granada – al-Gharnatah of the Arabs – you were the glory of your time. But a darker time came upon you, and just as Boabdil, the last Nasrid Sultan, was too weak to defend his great treasure, so we, too, were proved wanting. For the barbarians were not only at our gates but within our skins. We were our own wooden horses, each one of us full of our doom. Maybe Abraham Zogoiby lit the fuse, or Scar: these fanatics or those, our crazies or yours; but the explosions burst out of our very own bodies. We were both the bombers and the bombs. The explosions were our own evil – no need to look for foreign explanations, though there was and is evil beyond our frontiers as well as within. We have chopped away our own legs, we engineered our own fall. And now can only weep, at the last, for what we were too enfeebled, too corrupt, too little, too contemptible to defend.