35053668-Empire-of-the-Soul-Paul-William-Roberts

244
EMPIRE OF THE SOUL
panthers as flat as woolly crocodiles; crocodiles you could have
mistaken for charred logs; and a bear, with perhaps a square foot of
fur left on its entire body, that appeared to have died of fatigue and
old age. The rajkumar’s ancestors had certainly wreaked havoc on
the local wildlife in their time.
I asked him if there were still tigers left in the area. He shook his
head, as if puzzled by such a wry turn of events, certainly not
connecting it with his moth-eaten little zoo of corpses. Exotic birds
too – ibis, crane, falcon, even the now virtually extinct imperial
bustard – perched precariously and forlornly on piles of rubbish
inside densely cobwebbed glass domes.
More than just the fauna had been neglected. Astounding items
of furniture, carved and inlaid, were also near extinction, gasping
for wax, savaged by the climate, intricate marquetry buckled and
bleached, pieces missing altogether. Some of it was even the work of
European masters: Sheraton, Chippendale – signed, too, for all I
knew.
Then there were solid gold statues of gods, an army of them, two
feet high, wedged in beside enough yellowed elephant tusks to build
an ivory tower with. Ceremonial costumes glittered dully with silver
and gold threads. Studded with gems, they now hung limply on
deformed tailor’s dummies, dust probably the only thing holding
them together – the weight of all the precious stones and metals
that had once been their glory now their undoing.
I gawked in amazement, hoping the rajkumar would see fit to
mention the sorry condition to which his magnificent past had
been reduced. Instead, he showed a boisterous and almost obscene
pride in every object he pointed out, explained, attributed to this or
that ancestor. I supposed that, like his father before him, he was so
accustomed to displaying these treasures and hearing flabbergasted
sighs of awe that he had not perhaps noticed the obdurate toll the
years were taking. I recalled the way he’d presented things to me
back in Bangalore. He hadn’t lied; it seemed he only saw what used
to be. He did not see what I saw. Perhaps the drastic contrast between
past and present had also slightly unhinged him – although, judging
by the cousin who needed chaining down from time to time, a good
deal of inbreeding was also splashing through the family gene pool.