Grimus

by Salman Rushdie

  —Holy Mary, cried O’Toole to a farmer’s wife, who had shrunk away in fear, you look about ready for it, me darlin. What wouldn’t you say now to a large dose of O’Toole’s hot cock, eh? There, don’t shrink away. ’Tis the Organ O’Toole I offer, you Protestant whore. And that’s no mean gift I can tell you surely with the stops pulled out and all.

  The farmer sat bridling by his wife, but made no attempt to defend her; a bellyful of potato whisky makes a mean fighter.

  —There now, observe your husband, lurched O’Toole, if he isn’t being more sensible than yourself, then I don’t know what. Compliance is a virtue; resistance is an act o’ violence and me I’m a hater of all that. Come now, up with your skirts, down with your underwear and Napoleon O’Toole will give you an evening to remember him by. ’Twould be an act of true pacifism. For which I believe the Sanskrit word is Ahimsa. Mr Gandy himself’d be proud of you.

  The woman shook her head imploringly at her husband.

  —Now then, he said, half-rising from his seat. O’Toole shoved him back.

  —Would you deny me my due, sir, would you? This place is my land and a seigneur on his land has droits. Do not cross me. Do not. In the morning no doubt I shall chastise meself as once I chastised meself for years upon years through a holy union with a broken hag of a wife. That was a religious thing to do if you like, to pleasure the crippled and suffer agonies in the doing. Have you ever screwed a hunchback, farmer? Then do not deny me my freedom. My time is served.

  —I will not go with you, said the woman.

  —Will you not? roared O’Toole. Will you not now? You come to the Elbaroom and will not go with its master? Is that manners, woman, to treat your host so? The name itself gives you fair warning, El Barooom! The blast of the rocket and the prick of Napoleon. Have you no wish to roll with emperors? I would give you children of genius. If I could.

  —I will not go, insisted the woman tearfully.

  —Then go to the devil, cried O’Toole, and raised the small table that sat between the peasant couple over his head, scattering glasses and drinks. He made to throw it across the room.

  Blink.

  (In O’Toole’s version of the breakdown of his marriage to Dolores, he held that when he had suffered long enough, been tortured long enough by her deformity and ungratefulness, he had thrown her out. The truth was a different matter. Dolores O’Toole had left her husband because he could not satisfy her. Flann Napoleon O’Toole had only half a testicle, having lost the rest in a fight with a dog; his limp penis was but an inch long and, owing to the depredations of the demon drink, he could only rarely stiffen it to twice that size. These circumstances are offered in extenuation of his behaviour.)

  When Jocasta had replaced Liv as Madame of the town’s brothel, it was Virgil Jones who had suggested the ironic play on words that was now its name. But though she insisted on keeping a spotless house, it possessed none of the expansive, trellised, wrought-iron elegance of the city that New Orleans had once been; nor did the Madame resemble the tragic queen, wife and mother to the oedipal Rex, in any wise but their shared name. Thus both arms of the pun were somewhat truncated, and the House of the Rising Son forged its own style.

  One of the first innovations she had made, once she felt strong enough to move out of the all-encompassing shadow of Liv, was to increase the specialization of her employées’ functions. Liv had thought it enough that they should all be dedicated exponents of the horizontal arts in general; Jocasta had always disagreed, perhaps because she was herself best at being an all-rounder, jack-of-all-trades, and had always felt a nagging dissatisfaction with herself. So she gave her employees new names on the same day as the brothel; and with the new names went extremely precise sexual functions. She believed the change had paid dividends; people said the House of the Rising Son was an altogether lighter, more open, less embarrassing, more rewarding place to visit than Liv’s ménage. (It is easier to ask for the services of a lady whom you know to be an expert in your favourite variations than to ask an anonymous whore to indulge your whims.) And Jocasta had the feeling that her girls took a greater pride in their work these days.

  The one employee who gave her cause for concern was the single male whore, Gilles Priape. He was lazy for his size; she knew men needed longer rest-periods than women, but she suspected Monsieur Gilles of malingering. Specialization again, you see: he was the only one practising the male arts and was therefore forced into versatility. Still, his customers seemed content enough. Speciality of the House, they called him, much to the irritation of the girls. Especially when his customers were men.

  Jocasta was walking the corridors of her empire. Behind closed doors, the staff were busy. Jocasta liked nothing better than these muffled sounds, the grunts of real ecstasy mingling with the far more expert sighs of simulation. She sometimes thought she preferred this aural stimulation to the act itself … but then she put the unprofessional thought firmly in its place.

  Certainly she was a desirable woman; she knew that all right. Not, perhaps, in the same visual class as some of the girls, but definitely a class lady. Her features were as classically Grecian as her name; and if her breasts were a trifle too heavy, she had stopped worrying about them aeons ago. They looked well enough, swelling through her long, floor-length, white lace nightgown, shadowed by the light from the candle she held as she toured the building. She enjoyed dressing like this. It made her feel pure.

  Whereas, as every one of her staff was fully aware, anything they could do, Madame Jocasta could perform twice as erotically. She was the best; and if she undervalued her all-round gifts, her cohorts did not. On the rare occasions when she performed herself, they would crowd to the observation-holes in the walls of her room, and learn.

  The sound of the whip was unmistakable. It came from the door behind which “Boom-Boom” de Sade was in full cry. Her hungry voice drawled something about a red-hot poker and Jocasta moved on contentedly.

  Boom-Boom was a great favourite of Flann O’Toole’s, since she made him positively enjoy his self-mortifications; but Flann O’Toole was no favourite of Jocasta’s. He was too liable to turn sadist himself and damage the staff.

  The next door yielded only silence. This was Mile Florence Nightingale’s chamber. She exuded a comfortable, homely sexuality, so peaceful as she displayed an accidental nipple, so demure as she undressed. Florence always did it, never screwed or fucked or shafted or banged; did it with grace and in the dark. As Jocasta paused, a tuneful hum welled up from within. Florence was singing her client to sleep with a soft lullaby.

  From Gilles’ room came the sound of music. It could be that he was trying to conceal his lack of effort; but Madame Jocasta decided not to interfere tonight. She would, however, have to speak to Gilles soon.

  The Indian girl, Kamala, was not in her room. Madame Jocasta remembered the presence next door, in the bed of the Chinese contortionist Lee Kok Fook, of a very special guest. Count Cherkassov had requested the company of his two favourite ladies, and while Madame the Countess Cherkassova slept unknowing in her bed, the two mistresses of the arts of the East were persuading the amiably stupid Count’s aristocratic blood to flow somewhat faster than usual. Lee Kok Fook and Kamala Sutra made a perfect team.

  —Come in, Madame.

  Media’s voice brought a glow of pleasure to Jocasta’s face. This one was her favourite; the only one who truly understood her. Media was the talent nearest Jocasta’s own. To avoid competing with her protégée, Jocasta had allotted her the task of pleasing only women; which she did with great zest. —I like women, she said. I get on well with them.

  Jocasta entered her lieutenant’s room.

  —It would appear we’re both free tonight, said Media. She was standing with her back to the window, naked, displaying herself to the night.

  —Shut the window, Media. The mist. You’ll catch something.

  Media obeyed unquestioningly. Madame knew best.

  —Since we have this little time on our han
ds, she suggested, I was wondering if you felt like a little practice, Madame?

  —That’s what I like, Media, said Madame Jocasta, letting her nightgown fall to the floor. Devotion.

  —It’s a pleasure, Madame, replied Media, coming to her.

  Blink.

  Mr Norbert Page was a small man.

  He wore small silver-rimmed bifocals.

  He took small steps.

  He drank small drinks.

  His hands made small movements of nervousness as they discovered that the door to the shed was unlocked. Alex was getting far too good with his golden toothpick. He pushed the door open, and Alex grinned up at him, all innocence and childish charm.

  —Alex, said Norbert Page, wagging as stern a finger as he could muster, you haven’t been out, have you? It was a forlorn question; Alex nodded the answer happily: —Yes.

  —Did anyone see you?

  Alex shook his head, still smiling beatifically.

  —Alexy, said Mr Page in great relief, You’ll be the death of me, you will. If you’d been seen … if your mother had found out I went to have a little drinkie…

  He gave up; Alex’s grin widened. —Play, he commanded. Play game.

  Norbert Page loved indoor games; his armchair athleticism had earned him the title of “Sports” Page. This love made him Alex’s ideal guardian.

  They played draughts on a chessboard, with chessmen. This enabled Mr Page to add a secret level of difficulty for himself. When the draughts reached the queening square, he would replace a pawn by a major chess piece. To Alex, these signified no more than a normal doubled draught; but Sports Page meticulously observed the seniority of Queen over Rook, Rook over Bishop and so forth, never permitting himself to take a great piece with a lesser. It made the game more interesting for him and gave Alex a chance of winning.

  —Your move, said Mr Page.

  Blink.

  There were, of course, some who slept through the blink. Irina Cherkassova for instance lay unmoved in her large, if crude, four-poster, oblivious to this as she was to her husband’s nocturnal retreat.

  If the Rising Son was the tallest house in K, the Cherkassov residence, somewhat distant from the main body of the town, was the most sprawling. It also had a fine, large garden. In fact, it was as near to an old dacha as they could make it; but since the family was not nearly large enough to fill it, they were obliged to share it with one P. S. Moonshy, about whom the standing joke was that he had been an afterthought on the part of his parents— hence his initials. P. S. Moonshy was the town quartermaster, and the continual battle that raged between him and the Cherkassovs was one of the wonders and hilarities of the town. —’Tis a happy irony, O’Toole had been heard to say in a sober moment, that that nest of gentility should be afflicted with so potent a viper of levelling.

  P. S. Moonshy slept every night with Marx under the pillow. It was uncomfortable, but he did it, as a mark of respect. He was sleeping now. Badly.

  So, in the neighbouring house, was that other possessor of meaningful initials, Ignatius Quasimodo Gribb.

  Elfrida Gribb, being a prig, was filled with a faint nausea as she turned on to the Cobble-way and approached the Elbaroom. She could tolerate it no more than she could Madame Jocasta’s hell-hole; and if she had a complaint to level at her sleeping husband, it was that in his all-embracing love for the town where he had made his home, he could find no place for a condemnation of those two mansions of corruption.

  It was, then, an ill-assorted quartet that found itself outside the Elbaroom … Virgil Jones, all of a shamble, slouching beside Flapping Eagle, squinting into the mist; the man called Stone crouching up the cobbled way; and the pale woman astride her pliant donkey.

  Elfrida’s eyes met Flapping Eagle’s. She caught her breath.

  Blink.

  XXXIII

  HOW LONG is an interlude in being? The blink had gone —or so it felt to those who experienced it—almost before it had had time to happen; and yet it had happened, and Elfrida shivered with the chill. She found herself thinking hard about Ignatius, holding his face in her mind’s eye, making him solid enough to clutch. Elsewhere, Jocasta and Media continued their practice with unwonted ferocity; and in the Elbaroom, Flann O’Toole put down the table he had been about to hurl and retreated behind his bar, where his Alsatian bitch stared up at him in confused silence.

  —Virgil? asked Flapping Eagle; but Virgil Jones shook his head, uncomprehending. —Some sort of blackout, he said. We must be tired.

  —But both of us, Virgil? At the same time?

  Virgil shook his head again. —I don’t know, he said, his voice grating on Flapping Eagle’s jangled nerves.

  —Let’s go in, said Flapping Eagle. We may as well try and find beds.

  Elfrida had heard the name Virgil. Surely not, she thought, surely Mr Jones has not returned? And yet one of the figures in the doorway had a distinct air of Virgil Jones about it. The other … his companion … the one who had stared at her … the face … no, it was the mist and her imagination. He was a stranger. The feather, that proved it. He was a stranger.

  One thing is now certain, Elfrida told herself. Whatever hopes of sleep I entertained are in utter disarray. Perhaps the night would be best used in arriving at a solution of this mystery.

  Flapping Eagle and Virgil had gone into the Elbaroom.

  Elfrida dismounted, and pulling her shawl tightly about her, she stole to the wall of the Elbaroom, to stand between the door and window.

  For the first time in her life, Mrs Gribb was deliberately eavesdropping.

  XXXIV

  THE SILENCE SPREAD with them as they walked through the long, narrow room. It was as though they exuded some invisible, deadening substance to kill words on people’s lips and stifle movements at their source. It was also a magnetic substance, since the eyes of the numbed were capable only of following the two walking men. Quiet was an alien condition here; the entry of Virgil and Flapping Eagle had somehow altered the element in which these late revellers habitually had their being. Under the shock, too, Flapping Eagle sensed the presence of something more slippery, more dangerous, less predictable in its effects: the emotion of the prison guard whose escaped charge has just returned to his captors of his own free will, or that of the lion faced with a suicidal Christian. Puzzlingly, this emotion seemed to be directed at both of them. Not for the first or last time, Flapping Eagle was consumed with curiosity about his companion’s past. Moreover, though, he was shocked by the looks, almost of recognition, he was receiving himself. And subsequently he found himself—equally confusingly—utterly ignored. As though he shouldn’t have been there, and all present wished he weren’t.

  Once they know me, he reassured himself, they will not be hostile. In the face of the blank hush of the Elba-room, it was perhaps an overly optimistic thought.

  Noise returned to the bar as abruptly as it had left; and with it, every eye snapped away from the two newcomers. It was an unnerving reversal; they might not have existed as the denizens of the drinking-house exploded into an effusion of speech.

  Hunter was gazing at One-Track Peckenpaw with a desperate interest.

  —Tell me, he said, a shade too earnestly, about your hunting techniques.

  Peckenpaw burst into a voluble speech about trap-laying, stalking, shooting and survival in the wild. All trace of boredom was gone from the Two-Time Kid’s features, replaced by a new-found passion for the hunt. One-Track himself had rarely been so passionate; he spoke of his past as though his life depended on it.

  Meanwhile Flann O’Toole seemed to have collapsed completely. He stood, eyes squeezed shut, fists drumming on the bar-top, repeating monotonously: —Holy Mary Mother of God I swear I’ll never drink again. Holy Mary Mother of God I swear I’ll never…

  He broke off to be sick into a bucket under the bar.

  —Jesu Maria, he groaned.

  It was at this point that O’Toole’s Alsatian did an unexpected thing. Worming her way past her vo
miting master and under the bar, she launched herself at Virgil Jones, tail wagging, tongue licking, to give the returning man his first taste of welcome. O’Toole looked up, grey-faced; his eyes widened.

  —Certainly I don’t believe it, he said. But then the dog always liked him; being closer to animals than human beings he always had a way with ’em. ’Tis Virgil Jones himself an no miasma. Jones the Dig. The grave fool is returned.

  Eyes slowly drifted back across the room to Virgil and Flapping Eagle and the big friendly animal leaping about them as they stood stock-still halfway along the bar, next to Peckenpaw and the Two-Time Kid. Flapping Eagle watched the eyes and saw them run through a fast series of expressions. Disbelief first, to echo O’Toole; then wonderment; and finally relief.

  —Wal, said Peckenpaw. Jones and a stranger. He gave the word a heavy emphasis.

  —Well, well, said Two-Time, two times. Jones and a stranger.

  And there were other similar exclamations along the length of the room. Gradually, joviality returned to the night.

  Flann O’Toole came out from behind the bar, recovering fast, his ebullience already restored. There was a smile on his face that looked friendly. Looked friendly, Flapping Eagle warned himself. Looking isn’t being.

  —His friend, bellowed One-Track Peckenpaw obviously, got a feather in his hair. Reminds me when I scalped an Indian chief. (Laughs, cheers, boos.)