Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights

by Salman Rushdie

  She made him swear a solemn oath, the mirror of her own. “Now that I have opened your eyes to your true nature and given you power over it, you must promise to fight at my side until what has to be done is done, or we perish in the attempt.” Her eyes blazed. Her will was too great to be resisted. “Yes,” he said. “I swear.”

  She kissed his cheek to show him her approval. “There’s a boy you need to meet,” she told him. “Jimmy Kapoor, who also goes by the name of Natraj Hero. A brave boy, and your cousin. Speaking of cousins, there’s also a bad girl.”

  Her name, Teresa Saca, was unusable. She had killed a man, and that used up all the credit in her name. She cut it in half like dead plastic and tossed it in the trash, she spat it out like gum. Fuck her name. She was on the run and went now by many names, the names on stolen debit cards and fake IDs bought from street corner hustlers, the names in the smudged registers of one-night cheap hotels. She was not good at this, the low life. She needed service industries. In the good times a day away from the wellness spa or yoga shala was a day wasted. But those days were gone and she had to live by her wits, fuck that, Jack, and her a college dropout. Luckily for her everything was in a mess, law enforcement wasn’t what it used to be, and the chaos of the times allowed her to slip through the cracks. So far, anyway. Or maybe she had been forgotten. The people’s attention was elsewhere and she was yesterday’s news.

  So Teresa or Mercedes or Silvia or Patrizia or whatever she went by that evening: sitting solo in a sports bar in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, spurning the advances of well-muscled men with military haircuts, doing tequila shots, watching the latest school killings on outsize flat-screen HDTV. Ag god, she mumbled in a voice made imprecise by alcohol, it is an age of killing and you know what that’s all right with me. It’s slaughterhouse time out there and you look to be getting in on the act yourself god whatever your name is you got more aliases than me. Yeah you god I’m talking to you. You with this name that name in that country this country, always big on the killing thing, you okay with people getting killed for a Facebook post, or not being circumcised, or fucking the wrong guy. I have no problem with that because guess what god I’m a killer too. Little me. I got me some action too.

  In those times when suspicion fell on lightning-strike survivors some of them gathered furtively here and there to bemoan their fate. She sought them out wanting to listen to their tales, in case any of them turned out to be like her, masters of the thunderbolt and not just victims. When you’re a freak it’s good to know you’re not alone. But here in the Center of Fun in the Smoky Mountains the survivors’ gathering was a cluster of sad sacks. They huddled in a small room behind the sports bar, a poorly lit room situated in a small street off the main drag where tourists formerly did what tourists liked to do, eating tourist food and driving tourist bumper cars and posing for tourist pictures with a picture of Dolly Parton and mining in a tourist mine for tourist gold. For those with more ghoulish tastes, there had been a Titanic Museum Attraction where you could see the violin that had belonged to the ship’s bandleader, Wallace Hartley, and enjoy the tributes to the 133 children who went down with the ship, the “littlest heroes.” All that was shut down now that the world had changed, now that everywhere was the Titanic and everyone was going down. The sports bar stayed in business because men will drink in hard times, that doesn’t change, only the games on the screens were reruns, all the famous initials had shut down operations, MLB NBA NFL, all gone. Their ghosts moved on the big screens between the occasional news broadcasts when such items were flickeringly able to come online thanks to those brave journalists in the field who knew how to uplink to the satellites.

  The survivors of thunderbolt attacks were of two types. The first type had a lot to say. This one had been hit by lightning four times, but that one held the record with seven strikes. Many said they felt confused, they had headaches and panic attacks. They sweated too much, they couldn’t sleep, one leg mysteriously began to shrink. They wept when there was nothing to cry about, they walked into doors and bumped into furniture. They remembered that the strike had literally blown them out of their shoes and their clothes had exploded off their bodies, leaving them naked as well as stunned. The absence of burn marks meant that people accused them of protesting too much, or for too long. They spoke with awe of the bolts from the blue. Many of them called it a religious experience. They had witnessed, at first hand, the devil’s work.

  The second type was silent. These survivors sat alone in corners, locked into their secret worlds. The lightning had sent them somewhere far away and they either could not or chose not to share their own mysteries. When Teresa or Mercedes or whoever she was now tried to talk to them, they looked frightened and moved away or responded with sudden, extreme hostility, baring their teeth and clawing at their questioner.

  This was of no use to her. These people were weak and broken. She left the gathering and hit the tequila and near the bottom of the bottle a voice spoke to her inside her head, and she thought she should probably stop doing shots. It was a woman’s voice, quiet and measured, and she could hear it very clearly, even though nobody was talking to her. I’m your mother, the voice said, and before she could open her mouth to say No you’re not because my mother never calls me not even on my fuckin’ birthday not unless she gets cancer, then I probably get a fuckin’ text asking for help with medical expenses, before she could say any of that, the voice said, No, not that mother, your mother from nine hundred years ago, give or take, the mother who put the magic in your body, and now you’re going to put it to good use. That was good tequila, she said aloud admiringly, but the so-called mother in her head was undeterred, I’ll show myself to you when I’m ready, she said, but if it helps to establish my credibility I can tell you the name and number on your stolen card and the location and combination number of the pathetic deposit box where you stored your so-called valuables. If you want me to do it I can tell the story of what your dad said when you told him you wanted to study English, what are you going to do with that, he said, be a paralegal or a secretary, or maybe you want to hear how you took that old used red convertible you stole when you were seventeen and drove it as fast as you could west and south from Aventura to Flamingo not caring if you lived or died. You have no secrets from me but fortunately I love you as a daughter whatever you did, even though you killed that gentleman, that doesn’t matter now because now there’s a war and I want you as a soldier and you already showed me you’re good at what I need you to do.

  You mean you don’t care if I kill people, Teresa Saca said without speaking. What am I doing, she asked herself, I’m talking to a voice in my head, I’m hearing voices now? What am I, Joan of Arc? I saw the TV show. They burned her.

  No, said the voice in her head. You’re no saint and neither am I.

  You want me to kill people, she asked again, silently, inside her head, knowing it was beyond drunk, it was insane.

  Not people, the voice said. We’re hunting bigger game.

  When Mr. Geronimo found himself standing once again at the entrance to The Bagdad, he was armed with the new knowledge that until that day he had known nothing, not only about the world but about himself, and his place in it. But now he knew something; not everything, but it was a start. He had to begin again and he knew where he wanted to do it, and had asked Dunia to return him to this place, to attempt his first cure. She left him there and went about her own business, but he had access, now, to the communications system of the jinn, and could locate her precisely at any moment on that extraordinary internal positioning system, so her physical absence was a mere detail. He rang the doorbell and waited. Then he remembered that he still had the key. It still worked, turning in the lock as if nothing had happened, as if he hadn’t been expelled from this place for being the bringer of a terrifying disease.

  How long had he spent in Peristan? A day, a day and a half? But here in the lower world eighteen months had passed, or perhaps more. Much changes in eighteen months on e
arth, in the age of acceleration that began around the turn of the millennium and still continues to this day. All our stories are told more quickly now, we are addicted to the acceleration, we have forgotten the pleasures of the old slownesses, of the dawdles, the browses, the three-volume novels, the four-hour motion pictures, the thirteen-episode drama series, the pleasures of duration, of lingering. Do what you have to do, tell your story, live your life, get out quickly, spit spot. Standing on the doorstep of The Bagdad, he seemed to see a year and a half of his hometown rush before his eyes, the screaming terror as the risings multiplied, and alongside their opposites, the crushings, people squashed flat by a local increase in gravitational force, just like the story in the Chinese box, Mr. Geronimo thought, and there were swooping random attacks on groups of citizens by the Grand Ifrits astride their flying urns, the Grand Ifrits offering rewards, great chests of jewels, to anyone who could point at a finger at men or women without earlobes. Martial law had been declared and the emergency services had done an astonishing job, the fire department ladder crews ministering to the floating people, the police keeping some semblance of order in the streets, helped by the National Guard.

  Religious gangs had been roaming the city, looking for people to blame. Some of these mobs had targeted the mayor, whose adopted child Storm, the miraculous arbiter of honesty, was slandered as demon seed. A crowd of the faithful, for whom hostility seemed to be the necessary sidekick of fidelity, Hardy to its Laurel, gathered around the mayoral residence—converging on it from three directions, the ferry terminal, East End Avenue and the FDR—and then, shockingly, succeeded in storming the historic building and setting it ablaze. The successful attack on Gracie Mansion was news even in those disorderly times, because the frontline group of assailants, faced with troopers firing heavy-duty assault weapons, did not fall even when shot multiple times, in the head as well as the torso, or so the story went, and in spite of the decay of communications it was a story that spread rapidly. An unusual detail of some accounts added that several vehicles were assaulted, among them a fishmonger’s van, and when its back doors were pulled open and the dead fish on ice—albacore, sockeye, chinook, coho and pink salmon, pollock, haddock, sole, whiting—were able to stare glassily at the bloodied demonstrators, several of the fish commenced, in spite of being dead, to laugh uproariously. The story of the parasite fanatics immediately reminded Mr. Geronimo of Blue Yasmeen’s folktale of a laughing fish and he understood once again that many things formerly believed to be fantastic were now commonplace.

  He had not known about the parasite-jinn until Dunia whispered to him and opened his eyes to the reality of his jinn inheritance. One of the Grand Ifrits, Shining Ruby, was the lord of the parasite-jinn, a master of possessing bodies for a time and then releasing them alive, as he had shown by his sensational occupation of the financial titan Daniel Aroni, and all the lesser parasites were foot soldiers serving under General Ruby’s command. But whereas Shining Ruby was able to function without a living being to occupy, his parasite followers were both less potent and clumsier. When on earth they needed hosts—dogs, snakes, vampire bats, human beings—and destroyed their temporary homes when they moved on.

  The Zumurrud gang was evidently waging war on many fronts, Mr. Geronimo thought. It would not be easy to defeat.

  The mayor and her little daughter Storm had fled the burning building unharmed. Again, the stories that circulated about their escape preferred a supernatural explanation. According to this version (and there is no other, more plausible account that has come down to us) the unknown mother of the storm baby was a jinnia who, unwilling to raise her half-human love child, had abandoned her at the mayor’s door, but had kept a watchful eye on her child from a distance, and, seeing that child’s life threatened, had entered the burning mansion and thrown a protective shield around Rosa Fast and young Storm and given them safe passage out of the house. Faute de mieux, this is the story we have.

  How treacherous history is! Half-truths, ignorance, deceptions, false trails, errors, and lies, and buried somewhere in between all of that, the truth, in which it is easy to lose faith, of which it is consequently easy to say, it’s a chimera, there’s no such thing, everything is relative, one man’s absolute belief is another man’s fairy tale; but about which we insist, we insist most emphatically, that it is too important an idea to give up to the relativity merchants. Truth exists, and Toddler Storm’s magic powers provided, in those days, the visible proof of it. In her illustrious memory we refuse to allow truth to become “truth.” We may not know what it is, but it’s out there. We can’t be sure how Rosa Fast and Storm escaped the burning mayoral mansion, but we can accept our zone of unknowing and hold fast to what is known: they did escape. And after that the mayor, accepting the recommendation of the security services, went into a secret facility and governed the city from an undisclosed location. That location is unknown; her heroic governance is known. She marshaled the fight against the chaos inflicted by the Grand Ifrits; she made broadcasts to the citizenry to reassure them that everything possible was being done to help them and more would be done soon. She became the face and voice of the resistance and kept her invisible finger on the city’s pulse. This is known, and what is not known does not undermine it. This is the scientific way. To be open about the limits of one’s knowledge increases public confidence in what one says is known.

  The city was a war zone and the war had spilled into The Bagdad. Graffiti tags, obscene writings, fecal matter, a broken place outside and in. The windows boarded up and many panes of glass long gone. He entered the darkened foyer and at once felt metal pressed to the side of his head and heard a high, wired voice threatening death, this house be occupy, muthafucka, open your shirt, open your goddam shirt, he had to show them he wasn’t wearing a grenade belt, he wasn’t a bomb somebody told to walk in here and spring-clean the building, who sent you, muthafucka, who you from. It was interesting, he thought, that he was moving at his normal leisurely rate but everything around him could be slowed right down, the voice of the man with the gun could be stretched out, becoming slo-mo-low, and he could slow things down further just by wanting to, just like this, and now the tough guys in the dark of the foyer were like statues, and he could reach up to the muzzle of the gun and pinch it, so, and squash it shut like a Plasticine toy, this was almost fun. He could do this, and now all the weapons in the possession of the occupiers had been turned into carrots and cucumbers. Oh, and he could do this, and now they were all naked. He allowed them to speed up—or himself to decelerate—and had the satisfaction of watching another transformation, from gang lords into frightened kids, who the what the let’s get outta here. As they backed away from him clutching at their manhood, he had a question for them: Sister Allbee, Blue Yasmeen, those names mean anything to you? And the man who had held a gun to his head now delivered a dagger to his heart. Those be the floatin’ bitches? The balloons? He removed his hands from his private parts and made a spreading gesture. Kapow, man. It was a mess. What do you mean, Mr. Geronimo asked, even though he knew what the man meant. Like a fuckin’ piñata, the naked man said. Boom. Dat some wack shit.

  That was not how this part of the story was supposed to go. He was supposed to come home from Fairyland with superpowers and rescue Yasmeen and Sister. He was supposed to use his newly harnessed skills and bring them gently back to earth, hear their complaints, accept the blame, apologize, hug them, give them back the dailiness of their lives, save them from the madness and celebrate their salvation, like friends. It was supposed to be the moment when good sense began to return to the world and he, along with the others, was to be the bringer of that sense. The madness that had gotten into the world had had its way long enough. It was time for sanity to return and this was where he had wanted the process to begin. Them being dead—did they starve to death or were they killed, shot at for sport by the madness, maybe by those naked kids when the madness took them, and then their bodies left floating in the stairwell, filling up with
the gases of death, until the explosion, until their insides like sticky rain—that wasn’t it at all.

  He searched the house, which was now close to dereliction. There was blood on the walls. Maybe some of it had come from the exploding bodies of Sister and Yasmeen. In one room a naked wire sparked, which could start a fire at any time. Almost all the toilets were clogged. Almost all the chairs were broken and there were ripped mattresses on the floors of several units. In his own apartment there had been extensive looting. He owned nothing now except the clothes he was wearing. Outside, he did not expect to find his truck where he had left it, and so it was no surprise to find it gone. None of this mattered to him. He left The Bagdad in the grip of a new force, a rage that allowed him to understand Dunia’s blazing wrath after her father’s murder. The war had just become personal.

  The phrase to the death formed in his thoughts and he realized, with some surprise, that he meant it.

  The Lady Philosopher and Oliver Oldcastle were nowhere to be seen. Maybe they were still alive. Maybe they had found their way back home. He had to go to La Incoerenza at once. That, before anything else. He didn’t need the green pickup truck. He had a new way to get around.

  He was only slowly grasping what his life had become. That he had risen, he well knew. He had faced that and accepted it. The descent had been involuntary, as unexpected as the rising, and it was, he understood, the consequence of an opening within himself of a secret self whose existence he had not previously suspected. But perhaps there was also a human dimension to his descending, his overcoming of what he had often thought of as a fault, his fault. In those lonely pendant hours he had faced the darkest things in his life, the pain of separation from what that life had once been, the agony of the rejected path, the path that rejected him. By embracing his grave wound, showing it to himself, he became stronger than his affliction. He had earned his gravity, and came down to earth. Thus Patient Zero became a source not only of the disease but of the cure.