The Moor's Last Sigh Read Online Free PDF Page A

West, though from time to time, as the Frenchy's reputation grew, Francisco was asked if he had indeed been the first Indian patron of the young man who was now calling himself 'Le Corbusier'. When he received such an enquiry, the shattered hero would fire off a terse note in reply: 'Never heard of the fellow.' After a time these enquiries also stopped. Epifania was exultant. As Francisco sank into introversion and despondency, his face acquiring the puckered look common in men convinced that the world has inexplicably done them a great and unjustified wrong, she moved in swiftly for the kill. (Literally, as it turned out.) I have come to the conclusion that the years of her suppressed discontents had bred in her a vindictive rage--rage, my true inheritance!--that was often indistinguishable from true, murderous hatred; although if you had ever asked her if she loved her husband, the very question would have shocked her. 'Ours was a love-match,' she told her dejected spouse during an interminable island evening with only the radio for company. 'For love or what else I gave in to your fancies? But see where they have brought you. Now for love you must give in to mine.' The detested jfo Uies in the garden were locked up. Nor was politics to be mentioned in her presence again: when the Russian Revolution shook the world, when the Great War ended, when news of the Amritsar Massacre filtered down from the north and destroyed the Anglophilia of almost every Indian (the Nobel laureate, Rabindranath Tagore, returned his knighthood to the King), Epifania da Gama on Cabral Island stopped up her ears and continued to believe, to a degree that was almost blasphemous, in the omnipotent beneficence of the British; and her elder son Aires believed it along with her. At Christmas, 1921, Camoens, eighteen, shyly brought the seventeen-year-old orphan Isabella Ximena Souza home to meet his parents (Epifania asked where they had met, was told with many blushes of a brief encounter at St Francis's Church, and with a disdain bom of her great ability to forget everything inconvenient about her own background, snorted, 'Hussy from somewhere!' But Francisco gave the girl his blessing, stretching out a tired hand at the to-tell-the-truth not-very-festive table and placing it on Isabella Souza's lovely head). Camoens's future bride was characteristically outspoken. Her eyes shining with excitement, she broke Epifania's five-year-old taboo and expressed delight at Calcutta's virtual boycott of, and Bombay's large demonstrations against, the visit of the Prince of Wales (the future Edward VIII), praising the Nehrus, father and son, for the non-collaboration in court that had sent them both to jail. 'Now the Viceroy will know what's what,' she said. 'Motilal loves England, but even he has preferred to go to lock-up.' Francisco stirred, an old light dawning in those long-dulled eyes. But Epifania spoke first. 'In this God-fearing Christian house, British still is best, madder-moyselle,' she snapped. 'If you have ambitions in our boy's direction, then please to mindofy your mouth. You want dark or white meat? Speak up. Glass of imported Dao wine, nice cold? You can have. Pudding-shudding? Why not. These are Christmas topics, frawline. You want stuffing?' Later, on the jetty, Belle was equally blunt about her findings, complaining bitterly to Camoens that he had not stood up for her. 'Your family home is like a place lost in a fog,' she told her fiance. 'Where is the air to breathe? Somebody there is casting a spell and sucking life out of you and your poor Dad. As for your brother, who cares, poor type is a hopeless case. Hate me don't hate me but; t is plain as the colours on your by-the-way-excuse-me too-horrible bush-shirt that a bad thing is growing quickly here.' 'Then you won't come again?' Camoens wretchedly asked. Belle got into the waiting boat. 'Silly boy,' she said. 'You are a sweet and touching boy. And you have no idea at all of what I will and