Part 4, Chapter 20 Summary

Moor is forced, at gunpoint, upstairs to the top floor of the tower, where he meets an imprisoned woman, Aoi Ué. She labors, removing Miranda's pedestrian over painting of The Moor's Last Sigh from the original portrait of a bare-breasted young Aurora Zogoiby. Of necessity, it is slow, meticulous work, but she is also drawing it out, in order to allow time for her abduction to be discovered and her rescue effected. Miranda orders the narrator to record his life story in all its detail, promising that, like Scheherazade, he will be allowed to live so long as his tales amused his new master. He learns, in brief, Aoi's history and draws from her the discipline necessary to survive. They cling to each other in their imprisonment, reminiscent of conditions in Bombay Central, until the Moor's tales, which she reads...