For three and a half days Lalita keeps McKay opiated while she waits for the sow. Whenever he comes down from his opium trips, she has a fresh pipe prepared and ready for him, and off he goes again. She has no way of knowing that in his disembodied state he quite sloughs off all carnality. He wants to tell her he has discovered that he genuinely loves her, from the bottom of his heart, but never gets the chance. Finally, she knows by the tone of the grunts that the sow has started to give birth.

As soon as the first piglet pops out, she takes it tenderly in her arms and climbs the stairs to where Magnus lies on a futon on the floor. With grim stubbornness working her jaw, she takes a large roll of agricultural plastic to lay out next to him, then rolls him over onto it. She turns up all the corners and edges, so it forms a kind of shallow pool. Then she removes the gold Longines watch from his left wrist and lays it next to the piglet which she lays next to McKay; or rather, next to McKay’s body, for as we know Magnus himself is off on some celestial frolic, where we must join him briefly to get his side of the story.

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