Meanwhile, Back on the Farm:-

Lalita has opened all those major veins and arteries that she could penetrate with a kitchen knife and while her husband bleeds to death she caresses the piglet whose name henceforth will be Magnus McKay and presses his Longines gold watch against the wriggling creature until she is quite sure McKay’s soul has found its new lodging. She ties a crimson ribbon round each of the piglet’s legs, so she will not get him mixed up with the others, and gives him back to his mother to feed.

She has been terribly torn, right to the core, but she is finally at peace. Her torment consisted of the conflict between her undeniable need to possess him forever and the equally pressing need to kill him because he was a depraved monster who deceived and abused both her and the Buddha’s holy monks. This is resolved now. Pigs live at least ten years and she will have him with her constantly for that time. Using McKay’s platinum Visa card and the ATM code he gave her, she takes out as much as the account will allow on a daily basis until she is rich enough to pay for her mother’s cataract operation and her father’s quadruple heart by-pass. She also makes sure she can pay for her young brother’s school fees all the way to post-graduate level, and retire from the Game to live contentedly in her native land for the rest of her life. Her first and most pressing expense, though, is to bribe the local cops. She has known them since childhood, though, and once a sum has been agreed they conclude the farang died of bird ‘flu.

When Magnus McKay the Pig dies, she will have had time to arrange for his transmigration to a more long-lived creature: perhaps an elephant? Marriage is forever, right?

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