Grimus

by Salman Rushdie

  Virgil Jones smiled in satisfaction. —That’s my little joke, he said. The jigsaw cannot be completed.

  X

  AS VIRGIL JONES and Dolores O’Toole prepared the evening meal, Flapping Eagle could not help observe what a good team they made in their distorted way. They seemed to work at different planes of the room—Dolores low and stooping, Virgil gross but erect. For a moment Flapping Eagle had the illusion that they actually stood at different ground levels. Then it passed, and he smiled. Despite their secrecy, their unwillingness to talk about the island, he could not help liking them. He wondered if they made love.

  He had told them his own story earlier in the afternoon; they had listened with the rapt silence of children, nodding and gasping. Mr Jones had spoken only once, when Flapping Eagle first mentioned Nicholas Deggle. Then the eyebrows had lifted high into the fleshy forehead and Mr Jones had said: —So, so. When he finished, they sat in respectful silence for a moment; then Virgil Jones had said:

  —By the heavens, Mr Eagle, you do seem to have led a rather epic life. I’m afraid we can offer you no stories to match yours. We live wholly in the microcosm, you see; the state of my corns and the state of nations are to me of equal concern. I don’t want at all to preach but I would recommend that you adapt yourself to minutiae; they are so much less confusing.

  —There is the end of my search to be achieved, said Flapping Eagle.

  —I’m afraid, to be honest, said Virgil Jones apologetically, I’ve ceased to see the merit in achievement or heroism. One tries by one’s life and actions to bring a little sense into an inane universe; to attempt more is to be sucked into the whirlpool.

  Flapping Eagle thought: they seem very anxious for me to abandon my intentions. But he thought he had heard a subsidiary note in Virgil Jones’ voice: a note of uncertainty. Perhaps he didn’t quite believe what he was saying. He also thought Dolores O’Toole was the more tense of the two; and when he had spoken of his desire to continue his search, her glance had not been wholly neighbourly.

  —Concentrate on the here, Mr Eagle, that’s my advice to you, finished Virgil Jones. Don’t worry about the there. Or the past. Or the future. Worry about dinner and your corns. Those are things you can affect.

  —You said you would answer my questions when I was well, said Flapping Eagle. I am well now.

  —Tomorrow morning, said Dolores hastily. After a good night’s sleep.

  —There’s no time like the present, said Flapping Eagle.

  —Tomorrow, pleaded Dolores O’Toole.

  Flapping Eagle drew a breath.

  —Since I am living on your kindness, he said, I am naturally at your mercy. Tomorrow will be quite soon enough.

  Virgil Jones assumed a hearty air. —Let us celebrate your recovery, he said. I think we might slay a chicken tonight. In fact, Mr Eagle, since the peeling and so forth of vegetables rather preoccupies Mrs O’Toole and myself at present, perhaps you would be so kind?

  Flapping Eagle could not very well refuse; he took the proffered knife and went out into the yard. It struck him that this was his first conscious sally into Calf Island.

  When he was outside, Dolores came hesitantly to stand by Mr Jones’ side.

  —You won’t… you won’t go with him? Her eyes were filled with fear.

  Virgil Jones silently took her hand; she squeezed it violently. It was, for both of them, an irreversible declaration, forced at last from an eternity of concealment.

  —I could not bear to lose you, she said.

  Flapping Eagle looked up at Calf Mountain in the failing light. It climbed steeply away into lost forests, forbidding, green, which cleared somewhere up there to make room for the town of K. Calf Mountain: as alien to him as it was to the world he had known; and yet there was a similarity: a likeness of self and mountain, of mist-isolated island and much-travelled continents. It was there in the gloom and he couldn’t see it. Just the faces of his sister and the unknown pedlar in the darkness, waiting to be found, or forgotten.

  —Chicken, he said to the chicken, shall I kill you?

  The knife was in his hand, and the fowl at his mercy; but he hesitated, an old conflict reopening within him. He had never been an outsider by choice, and the desire to be acceptable, to please, which he knew to be within him, created a warring sensation inside. If only for this reason, he would not mind, in some ways, if he did stay awhile with Mr Jones and Mrs O’Toole. It would give pleasure, perhaps; it would, for once, unite him with other human beings, a welcome change from his accustomed separate-ness. And it would be peaceful. But to give up his search altogether…

  He killed the chicken, because it was there to be killed.

  Dinner was a silent meal for long stretches. Dolores O’Toole was lost in nervous broodings; she would snap out of the reverie to offer Mr Jones and Flapping Eagle further helpings of chicken. Flapping Eagle saw in her eyes a new light; he didn’t know what it meant, but it was new. He himself was preoccupied with the mountain, cloud-topped and unknown.

  Virgil Jones made fitful attempts at conversation.

  —Would you agree, Mr Eagle, he said, that what the human race fears most is the workings of its own mind?

  —Yes and no, said Flapping Eagle distantly. Mr Jones frowned; he knew he should find a less serious topic, but none presented itself in the candle-lit murkiness. They squatted around the rickety, low table, Flapping Eagle once again unfrocked, Virgil hatless, and thought their separate thoughts.

  —The mountain is really irresistible at this time of evening, offered Virgil Jones, and received only a few syllables in reply.

  —Yes, yes it is, said Flapping Eagle, and was rewarded with a fierce glare from Mrs O’Toole.

  —You cannot have failed to hear the birds, Mr Jones tried again. They are legion. Has it ever struck you how often one uses birds as analogies of human attributes and behaviour?

  —No, said Flapping Eagle.

  —Ah. Consider. The bird-kingdom is remarkably suitable for myth-makers. It occupies a different medium, yet it is in many ways an excellent parallel—having languages, courtship, family ties and so forth. Distant enough in appearance to he a safely abstract analogue, birds are near enough to be interesting. Consider the lark. Or the hawk. Or the nightingale. Or the vulture. The names are more than descriptions; they have become symbols. Consider, too, the profusion of bird-gods in Antiquity. The Phoenix. The Roc. The Homa. The Garuda. The Bennu. The Bar Yuchre. The Hathilinga with the strength of five elephants. The Kerkes. The Gryphon. The Norka. The Sacred Dragon. The Pheng. The Kirni. The Orosch. The Saëna. The Anqa. And of course, the master of them all, Simurg himself. Quite a number. Quite a number.

  There was no reply.

  —If I am not very much mistaken, Mr Eagle, Mr Jones added, the Eagle has an interesting significance in Amerindian mythology. Am I not right in saying that it is the symbol of the Destroyer? Its destruction being terrible and swift. I was fascinated by your choice of the name.

  —I did not choose the name, said Flapping Eagle. It chose me.

  —Quite, said Virgil Jones, and crossed his fingers.

  XI

  MIDNIGHT, OR THEREABOUTS. In the small house in the small clearing by the grey cliffs above the grey beach, silence. In the dark forests on the dark slopes of the magic mountain, silence. Even the sea and sky were hushed.

  Flapping Eagle was asleep; but the worried, ugly woman on the mat across the floor was wide awake.

  Virgil Jones sat, an ample mound of flesh partly-concealed by a less-than-simple blanket, in his rocking-chair. Its irregular movements betrayed that he, too, was some way from dreams. His eyes closed for a moment; when, inexorably, they inched open again, he saw that Dolores stood in front of him, a bent body in a crude shift, spindleshanked and shaking slightly. The invitation in her eyes was unmistakable. They remained thus for a long instant, obesity and attenuation linked by the naked expression of desire. Then Virgil’s mouth twitched briefly in an unconvincing attempt at a smile; and he ha
uled himself from the chair, his nerves crying outrage in his tired frame. He walked to the door and drew back the sackcloth, standing with stiff gallantry as Mrs O’Toole hobbled out.

  In the clearing, amid the sleeping chickens, they came to a halt again, uncertainty paralysing their half-willing limbs. Virgil’s tongue licked its outsize way around his lips; Dolores O’Toole’s hands fluttered limply at her sides, like a sparrow with a broken wing.

  —Virgil.

  His name floated discreetly across the paralysis; Dolores had voiced it with the care of a woman revealing a secret treasure. It lanced its way into him through the old nightshirt, and abruptly he felt less ridiculous.

  —O, Virgil.

  A second call; his eyes moved until they were looking at Dolores’ eyes, and saw the shine. He found himself full of the charm of those eyes, so alive, so fond.

  —Madam, he said, as fright coursed once more through his body, Madam, I fear I may not be…

  —Dolores, she said. Not Madam. Dolores.

  He opened his mouth; the name emerged to cleanse him.

  —Dolores, he said.

  —Virgil.

  And again the hiatus; now it was the woman who waited upon the man, unwilling to move further without his support.

  Virgil Jones thought: We are like two frightened, ugly virgins. He found the power of his limbs returning and moved the few steps to Dolores’ side.

  —My arm, he offered. She made a brief bob.

  —I thank you, sir, she said, and took it.

  —This way, I think, said Virgil Jones; there is a soft hollow of grass adjacent to the well.

  She inclined her head in agreement. They walked to the edge of the clearing in a formal, deliberate gait, and then the trees moved around them.

  Virgil Jones sat down heavily in the hollow, exhaling air in a gush. He was at a loss to know what Dolores might do now, and equally at a loss in himself. Alas, poor Yorick.

  Dolores remained standing, her eyes fixed upon him in a glassy, cocked glance; her hands moved slowly to her shoulders, where rough bows held her shift in place. Something near panic flooded through Virgil as he realized their purpose; but she was fixed now, determination set in her chin. The hands reached their goal and tugged; the shift fell.

  —It is a warm night, thankfully, essayed Mr Jones. The mist is all but cleared. The words sounded idiotic as he said them, but Dolores showed no sign of disapproval, standing before him shyly, one hand half-accidentally poised at the joining of her thighs. In the dark, she semed less wrinkled, her hunched body less broken.

  Virgil extended an arm, and she came to him, jerking her way to the ground, to lie motionless, yet expectant.

  He kissed her.

  Their hands were slow at first, slow and unsure, learning once more the touches of skin and skin, weaving inelegant patterns upon the fellow-bodies. But slowly they found their purpose, kneading away the knots of tension in necks and shoulders and backs, finding a natural rhythm, glad hands.

  So now the hands remembered, and the lips, lips feverishly seeking each other out, parting and joining, tongues twisting in the elation of rediscovery.

  —Not bad for a pair of youngsters, said Virgil Jones, and Dolores O’Toole laughed. It was so long since he had heard her laugh; it was to him a delightful thing, and he laughed too.

  It was the laughter that did it; the floodgates opened and drowned their hesitations. Their bodies assaulted each other.

  Dolores cried out at some time: —My hump! Hold my hump!

  And Virgil’s hands had grasped the forbidden deformity, to stroke and scratch and grasp; she shuddered with the pleasure of it, of feeling disfiguration transmute into sexuality.

  She lay beside him for a moment; then sprang up to straddle him, her hands grasping great folds of his flesh, to squeeze and twist them in a child’s delight. Again they laughed; Virgil, too, was freed from the disadvantages of his shape. —It’s like making bread, she giggled, pretending to work his belly into a loaf.

  He came only once, and she not at all. All organs atrophy through disuse. But their limitations were important to neither of them; their achievement was what concerned and satisfied them. For a long time he simply lay over her, spilling over her on both sides, enveloping her in himself, feeling her bones, hard and near the surface of her as they lay covered in his flesh, and they were one beast, four-handed, four-legged, two-headed and wreathed in a smile.

  Her breasts were as small as pendulous dried figs, while his were as fleshy as watermelons. His penis lay short and fat in the hard hollow of her hand.

  —Don’t be thin, she said. Don’t ever be thin. Stay fat. Stay Virgil.

  —I scarcely have any option, he replied, having a Condition as I do. The thyroid gland does not respond to dieting.

  —Good, she said.

  —By the same token, said Virgil Jones, I couldn’t imagine you being overweight.

  —Nothing will change, she said. We shall still sit upon the beach and feed the chickens and listen to the birds and dust the house and…

  The expression on his face stopped her.

  —Virgil, she cried. Nothing will change I Nothing!

  The expression on his face did not change.

  Perhaps it was wrong to lie with him. Now I have given him what he wanted. Now I have nothing for him, nothing held back, nothing to hold him.

  Perhaps it was wrong to lie with her. Another duty, another obligation, another potential source of guilt. Was I lying to her in lying with her?

  Perhaps it was right to lie with him. Now there is no secrecy, all of it out in the open and fixed and unchanging. Now he will know that he loves me.

  Perhaps it was right to lie with her …

  —I love you, said Dolores O’Toole.

  —I love you, said Virgil Jones.

  They both felt very, very sad.

  —It was him, said Dolores fiercely.

  —Who?

  —Flapping Eagle, she said. If he were not here, we would not be. Here.

  —We have much to thank him for, then, said Virgil Jones.

  —Yes, said Dolores, unhappily. We have everything to thank him for.

  But the risk of grief, thought Virgil, and the risk of guilt: could one not lay that, very properly, at the door of Grimus?

  Dolores stared at the mountain with a possessed intensity.

  —Nothing will change, she said, between clenched teeth.

  XII

  IT WAS THE tremor that woke Flapping Eagle early. It shook at him through the thin mat; it upset the room’s single low table to send the jigsaw crashing. He came awake fast, and leapt to his feet at the same instant; but it was over, too slight to cause any damage.

  He had been dreaming: a nightmare. He stood on a black rock, in full warpaint, clutching a tomahawk, slashing vainly at the eagle that swooped endlessly down at him, scarring his body, biting at his flesh, while on the ground below stood a faceless figure, long and black and very smooth, with jewelled rings on every finger, laughing and laughing and laughing: the laugh of Deggle.

  The room was still dark, sackcloth barring the first faint light. He stood gulping breath for a nervous instant, and saw that Dolores O’Toole’s mat was unused, and Virgil Jones’ rocking-chair was rocking emptily. He went outside.

  Mr Jones and Mrs O’Toole stood in the clearing; chickens squawked with alarm and birds screeched, interrupted in their sleep. The ill-assorted pair stood still. Virgil’s tongue was working unconsciously; Dolores’ eyes looked vague and distant. They did not focus on Flapping Eagle.

  —Earthquake, she said.

  —What? said Flapping Eagle. Dolores appeared not to hear.

  —The Great Turtle moved, she said to Virgil and cackled.

  Virgil looked at her worriedly, as she broke off and said gravely:

  —No, no, I was mistaken. Nothing happened. Nothing changes.

  —Is Mrs O’Toole all right? asked Flapping Eagle.

  —Yes, yes, said Mr Jones, shephe
rding her into the room. A little overwrought, he said in an aside to Flapping Eagle. Rest is what she needs. I suggest you and I go for a walk. Have our little chat. Let her rest, wouldn’t you agree?

  —Of course, said Flapping Eagle.

  So they left her in the hut and walked towards Virgil and Dolores’ night-hollow. When they were gone, Dolores moved jerkily towards the old trunk that lay unopened in the corner. This is where the past sat locked, her past, unchanged, unchangeable. She sat on the ground and embraced the trunk, whispering to it.

  —It is yesterday, she whispered. Every day is yesterday, so every day is fixed.

  XIII

  FLAPPING EAGLE, SENSITIVE to changes in atmosphere, knew that the Virgil Jones of this morning was a different man from the Virgil Jones of the previous night. He also felt that Dolores O’Toole’s antagonism to him, so imperceptible at first, was hardening fast. But this morning he had deliberately closed his mind to both these facts; he wanted information from Mr Jones. The sooner he knew the nature of Calf Island and its mountain, not to mention the whereabouts of Bird-Dog and Sispy, the sooner he could leave the outcast couple to their devices and move on down his solitary road.

  Virgil Jones led him away from the hut and into the fringes of the wood. They sat beside a deep well. Or, rather, a deep hole that had been meant for a well, but was quite dry. Virgil Jones was making a valiant attempt to conceal some strong emotion behind a schoolmasterly façade.

  —Very well, he said. Might I begin by reminding you of your own adventures … and indeed misadventures. By your own account you have had at least one or two experiences which would normally be classed as supernatural. Your very acceptance of immortality, for instance: most human beings would classify that as sorcery. So, then. You must accept that the world in which you lived was no simple, matter-of-fact place.

  Flapping Eagle nodded.

  —Chanakya, said Virgil Jones. By which I do not mean myself but an ancient philosopher-king of that name, used to say that the world was neither what it seemed, nor what it did not seem, nor more, nor less, but all those things. Both what it appears to be and not what it appears to be. That is to say, I think it was Chanakya who said that. It was such a long time ago, you follow. But for the sake of argument, let us accept it as a genuine quote.