Read Online The Moors Last Sigh by Salman Rushdie - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Salman Rushdie
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business and her nights in search of wildlife; rather, she worshipped them both, and refused to hear a word of criticism, for example from me, about their skill as parents.
(But she kept her true nature secret from them. She hugged it to herself; until it burst out of her, as such truth always will: because it must.)
Epifania, at prayer,
and ageing, because when her sons were jailed she was forty-eight, but she was fifty-seven by the time they were released after serving nine years of their sentence, the years drifting by like lost boats, Lord, as if we had time to waste , entered into a kind of ecstasy, an apocalyptic frenzy in which guilt and God and vanity and the end of the world, the destruction of the old shapes by the hated advent of the new, were all jumbled up, it wasn’t meant to be this way, Lord, I wasn’t meant to be banished in my own home behind a pile of sacks, forbidden to cross that madwoman’s white lines , she scratched at the wounds of the present and the past, my own servants, Lord, they keep-o me in my place, for I am in prison too and they are my warders, I cannot dismiss them because I do not pay their wages, she she she, everywhere and evermore she, but I can wait, see, patience is a virtue, I’ll just bide-o my time , Epifania in her orisons called down curses on Lobos, and why do you tormentofy me, sweet Jesus, holy Mary, by making me live with the daughter of that cursed house, that barren thing I tried in my generosity to befriend, see how she repays me, how that household of printers came and smashed my life , but at other times the memory of the dead rose up and accused her, Lord, I have sinned, I should be scalded with hot oils and burned with cold ice, have mercy on me Mother of God for I am the lowest of the low, save me if it be your will from the chasm the bottomless pit, for in my name and by my doing was great and murderous evil unloosed upon the earth , she chose punishments for herself, Lord, today I decided to sleep without mosquito-nets, let them come, Lord, the stings of Thy retribution, let them needle-o me in the night and suckofy my blood, let them infect me, Mother of God, with the fevers of Thy wrath , and this penance was to continue after the release of her sons when she forgave herself her sins and once again draped around herself that protective billow of nocturnal mist, blindly refusing to concede that in their years of disuse the already-perforated mosquito-nets had been eaten full of moth-holes, Lord, my hair is falling out, the world is broken, Lord, and I am old .
And Carmen, in her solitary bed,
her fingers reaching down for solace below her waist, entwined herself in herself, drank her own bitterness and called it sweet, walked in her own desert and called it lush, excited herself with fantasies of seductions by dark sailors in the back of the family’s black-and-gold, wood-panelled Lagonda, of seducing Aires’s lovers in the family Hispano-Suiza, O God think how many new men he will find is finding has found in jail , and lying sleepless night after night she caressed her bony body while her youth slipped away, twenty-one when Aires went to jail, thirty when he came out, and still untouched, untouchable, never to be touched, not by others, but these fingers know, oh they know oh oh; and soap-slippery in the bath and sweat-moistened in the bazaar she sought her daily joy, it wasn’t meant to be like this, Aires-husband, Epifania-mother-in-law, it was meant to be beautiful; and there is beauty all around me, the infinite power of Belle, the whimsicality and possibilities of her beauty. But I, I, I am unbeauty. In this house in thrall to the beautiful I have been shown myself, and lo, sirs, I am beastly, oho-ho, ladies and ladahs, yes indeed , and closing her misfortunate eyes and arching her back she gave in to the pleasure of disgust, flay me flay my skin from my body whole entire and let me start again let me be of
(But she kept her true nature secret from them. She hugged it to herself; until it burst out of her, as such truth always will: because it must.)
Epifania, at prayer,
and ageing, because when her sons were jailed she was forty-eight, but she was fifty-seven by the time they were released after serving nine years of their sentence, the years drifting by like lost boats, Lord, as if we had time to waste , entered into a kind of ecstasy, an apocalyptic frenzy in which guilt and God and vanity and the end of the world, the destruction of the old shapes by the hated advent of the new, were all jumbled up, it wasn’t meant to be this way, Lord, I wasn’t meant to be banished in my own home behind a pile of sacks, forbidden to cross that madwoman’s white lines , she scratched at the wounds of the present and the past, my own servants, Lord, they keep-o me in my place, for I am in prison too and they are my warders, I cannot dismiss them because I do not pay their wages, she she she, everywhere and evermore she, but I can wait, see, patience is a virtue, I’ll just bide-o my time , Epifania in her orisons called down curses on Lobos, and why do you tormentofy me, sweet Jesus, holy Mary, by making me live with the daughter of that cursed house, that barren thing I tried in my generosity to befriend, see how she repays me, how that household of printers came and smashed my life , but at other times the memory of the dead rose up and accused her, Lord, I have sinned, I should be scalded with hot oils and burned with cold ice, have mercy on me Mother of God for I am the lowest of the low, save me if it be your will from the chasm the bottomless pit, for in my name and by my doing was great and murderous evil unloosed upon the earth , she chose punishments for herself, Lord, today I decided to sleep without mosquito-nets, let them come, Lord, the stings of Thy retribution, let them needle-o me in the night and suckofy my blood, let them infect me, Mother of God, with the fevers of Thy wrath , and this penance was to continue after the release of her sons when she forgave herself her sins and once again draped around herself that protective billow of nocturnal mist, blindly refusing to concede that in their years of disuse the already-perforated mosquito-nets had been eaten full of moth-holes, Lord, my hair is falling out, the world is broken, Lord, and I am old .
And Carmen, in her solitary bed,
her fingers reaching down for solace below her waist, entwined herself in herself, drank her own bitterness and called it sweet, walked in her own desert and called it lush, excited herself with fantasies of seductions by dark sailors in the back of the family’s black-and-gold, wood-panelled Lagonda, of seducing Aires’s lovers in the family Hispano-Suiza, O God think how many new men he will find is finding has found in jail , and lying sleepless night after night she caressed her bony body while her youth slipped away, twenty-one when Aires went to jail, thirty when he came out, and still untouched, untouchable, never to be touched, not by others, but these fingers know, oh they know oh oh; and soap-slippery in the bath and sweat-moistened in the bazaar she sought her daily joy, it wasn’t meant to be like this, Aires-husband, Epifania-mother-in-law, it was meant to be beautiful; and there is beauty all around me, the infinite power of Belle, the whimsicality and possibilities of her beauty. But I, I, I am unbeauty. In this house in thrall to the beautiful I have been shown myself, and lo, sirs, I am beastly, oho-ho, ladies and ladahs, yes indeed , and closing her misfortunate eyes and arching her back she gave in to the pleasure of disgust, flay me flay my skin from my body whole entire and let me start again let me be of
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