The Moor's Last Sigh by Salman Rushdie Page B

The domestic servants were divided too, and even though almost all of them pleaded to be allowed to remain under her command she insisted on scrupulous fairness, one maid here, another there, one kitchen boy on this side, another across the cease-fire line. 'As for the chapel,' she told a stunned Epifania and Carmen when they returned to the fait accompli of a newly segregated universe, 'along with ivory teeth and Ganesha gods, you are welcome to it. On our side we have no plans to collect elephants, or to pray.' Neither Epifania nor Carmen had the strength, after recent events, to stand against the fury of Belle's unleashed will. Two ofyou have brought Hell-fire down on this family,' she told them. 'Now I do not want to see your ugly mugs again. Keep to your fifty per cent! Employ your own in-charges, or let the whole she-bang go to pot, or sell up, I don't care! I just will see to it that my Camoens's fifty will survive'n'thrive.' 'You came from nowhere,' said Epifania, sneezing, across a wall of cardamom-sacks, 'and, madam, nowhere is your fate,' but it didn't sound convincing, and neither she nor Carmen argued when Belle told them that the destroyed fields were part of their allocated fifty, and Aires da Gama sent a defeated note from prison: 'Chop it up, blast it! Slice up the whole demnition affair, why not.' So it was that Belle da Gama, at the age of twenty-one, took charge of her jailed husband's fortunes; and, though there were many vicissitudes in the following years, husbanded them well. After the jailing of Camoens and Aires, the Gama Company's lands and godowns had been placed under public administration: while lawyers drew up the deeds of separation, the reality was that armed sepoys patrolled the Spice Mountains, and public officers sat in the company's high chairs. It took Belle months of haranguing, wheedling, bribing and flirtation to get the business back. By this rime many clients, shocked by the scandal, had taken their business elsewhere, or else, when they learned that a chit of a girl was now in charge, had demanded new terms of business that placed further burdens on the company's already tottering finances. There were many offers to buy her out for a tenth or at best an eighth of the business's real value. She didn't sell. She started dressing in men's trousers, white cotton shirts and Camoens's cream fedora. She went to every field, every orchard, every plantation under her control and won back the confidence of the terrified employees, many of whom had bolted for their lives. She found managers whom she could trust and whom the work-force would follow with respect but without fear. She charmed banks into lending her money, bullied departed clients into returning, and became a mistress of small print. And for the rescue of her fifty per cent of the Gama Trading Company she earned a respectful nickname: from Fort Cochin's salons to the Ernakulam dockside, from the British Residency in old Bolgatty Palace to the Spice Mountains, there was only one Queen Isabella of Cochin. She did not like the nickname, though the admiration behind it made her hot with pride. 'Call me Belle,' she would insist. 'Plain Belle is fine for me.' But she was never plain; and, more than any local princess, had earned her royalty. After three years Aires and Carmen surrendered, because their fifty per cent had by this time come to the point of collapse. Belle could have bought them out for next to nothing, but because Camoens would not do such a thing to his brother, she paid out A twice as much. And in the years that followed she worked as feverishly on saving the Aires Fifty as she had on rescuing her own. The company name was changed, however; the Gama Trading Company was gone for good. In its place stood the restored edifice of the so-called C-5O, the Camoens Fifty Per Cent Corp. (Private) Limited. 'Just goes to show,' she liked to say, 'how, in this life, fifty plus fifty equals fifty.' Meaning that the business might be