The Moors Last Sigh

hear the ear-splitting music. Plainly, the room had been expensively soundproofed. However, the light in that chamber – the slit-windows had been covered over with black cloth, so that there was only the blinding white blare of light emanating from the wall of boxes – was almost as oppressive as the music had been. ‘What are you doing here?’ I asked Vasco, deliberately sounding as impolite as I could. ‘Learning to paint?’
    ‘I see you have developed the sharp tongue of the Zogoibys,’ he answered. ‘But it is careless to mock a man with a loaded gun; a man, what’s more, who has done you the service of solving the puzzle of your mother’s death.’
    ‘I know the answer to that riddle,’ I said. ‘And this painting has nothing to do with it.’
    ‘You are an arrogant bunch, you Zogoibys,’ Vasco Miranda went on, ignoring my remarks. ‘No matter how badly you treat a man, you are sure he will go on caring for you. Your mother thought that about me. She wrote to me, you know? Not long before she died. After fourteen years of silence, a cry for help.’
    ‘You’re lying,’ I told him. ‘You could never have helped her with anything.’
    ‘She was scared,’ he said, ignoring me again. ‘Someone was trying to kill her, she said. Someone was angry, and jealous, and ruthless enough to have her assassinated. She was expecting to be murdered at any time.’
    I was trying to keep up a façade of contempt, but how could I fail to be moved by the image of my mother in a state of such terror – and such isolation – that she had turned to this played-out figure, this long-alienated madman for assistance? How could I not see her face before my mind’s eye, contorted by fear? She was pacing up and down her studio, wringing her hands, and every noise startled her, as if it were a harbinger of doom.
    ‘I know what happened to my mother,’ I said quietly. Vasco exploded.
    ‘Zogoibys always say they know everything! But you know nothing! Nothing at all! It is I – I, Vasco – Vasco whom you all derided, that airport-artist who was not fit to kiss the hem of your great mother’s garment, Vasco the potboiler painter, Vasco the bleddy joke – this time it is I who know.’
    He stood silhouetted before the bank of light-boxes, X-ray images to his right and left. ‘If she was killed, she said, she wanted the murderer brought to book. So she had concealed his portrait under her work in progress. Get the picture X-rayed, she said to me, and you will see my killer’s face.’ He was holding the letter in his hand. So here, at last, in this time of mirages, this place of sleights, was a simple fact. I took the letter and my mother spoke to me from beyond the grave.
    ‘Take a look.’ Vasco waved the pistol at the X-ray images. Silenced, abashed, I did as I was told. There was no doubt that the canvas was a palimpsest; a full-length portrait could be made out in negative-image segments beneath the surface work. But Raman Fielding had been a figure of Vasco-like corpulence, and the man in the ghost-image was slender, and tall.
    ‘That’s not Mainduck,’ I said, the words emerging of their own volition.
    ‘Correct! Absolute hit-take,’ said Vasco. ‘A frog is a harmless fellow. But this guy? Don’t you know him? Follow your instincts and outstincts! Here he may be undercover but you have seen him overcover! Look, look – the boss baddie himself. Blofeld, Mogambo, Don Vito Corleone: don’t you recognise the gent?’
    ‘It’s my father,’ I said, and it was. I sat down heavily on the cold stone floor.

    In cold blood: the phrase never fitted anyone so well as Abraham Zogoiby. – From humble beginnings (persuading a reluctant sea-captain to set sail) he rose to Edenic heights; from which, like an icy deity, he wrought havoc upon the mere mortals below; but also, and in this he differed from most deities, among his own kith and kin. – Disjointed observations were presenting themselves to me for approval; or perusal; or what you will. – Like Superman, I had been given the gift of X-ray vision; unlike Superman, it had shown me that my father was the most evil man that ever lived. – By the way, if Renegada and Felicitas were not half-sisters, what were their last names? Lorenço, del Toboso, de Malindrania, Carculiambro? – But my father, I was speaking of my father Abraham, who had been the one to start the investigation into the mystery of Aurora’s death; who could not leave her be, and