Grimus

by Salman Rushdie

  Guidance. Virgil Jones sweating at the graveside. Flapping Eagle had thought Virgil had winked at him, once, during the ceremony. Was it possible he bore no grudge? Virgil, whom he had slighted so callously?

  —We’ll have to go to Madame Jocasta’s, he said, thinking aloud. I can’t think of anywhere else.

  —I scarcely think she will welcome me, said Elfrida.

  —We’ll both have to, um, eat a quantity of crow, said Flapping Eagle. I didn’t go down too well with her either.

  —She probably didn’t like your face, said Elfrida enigmatically.

  —There’s nothing for it, said Flapping Eagle. I must talk to Virgil again. And I don’t think they’ll come for us there, somehow.

  —The brothel, murmured Elfrida. Why not, why not.

  He had on his old, worn, travelling clothes. Ignatius Gribb, tidy as Elfrida until his last rage, had even preserved his headscarf and feather. Smiling wryly, he put those on as well. If he was to be in a bad Western, he might as well wear the full uniform.

  He had to see Irina Cherkassova, since he had to return the late Count’s clothes. She took them from him in the doorway, making no move to invite him in.

  —Don’t think I didn’t see through you, she said. Even in his clothes.

  —What do you mean? asked Flapping Eagle. You made me your friend.

  —I told the Count, she said. I saw it in your face. The evil.

  She shut the door, and he never saw her again.

  Exactly on the seventh knock, the door was opened. Madame Jocasta looked at the pair of them in amazement. Elfrida returned her gaze calmly, twirling her parasol. She was dressed entirely in white lace.

  —Is there something you want? asked Jocasta, discouragingly.

  —Yes, said Flapping Eagle. This was no time to stand upon one’s pride. We seek sanctuary.

  Jocasta smiled without humour. —No, she said and began to close the door.

  —What do you want me to say? cried Flapping Eagle. That I’ve seen the error of my ways? I have. That I was an inhumanly selfish bastard? I was. That I treated Virgil badly, and with every reason for treating him well? It’s true. I accept all of it. Will you not accept a genuine admission of guilt? How do you think it feels to be even indirectly responsible for four deaths?

  —Murderous, I expect, said Jocasta, unrelenting.

  —If you don’t let us in, said Flapping Eagle, You’ll be responsible for two more. They won’t let us have any food.

  —O hello, said a voice. Media was looking over Jocasta’s shoulder in open pleasure.

  —Media, go and fetch Virgil, said Jocasta. It’s up to him.

  Virgil Jones came downstairs looking delighted.

  —My dear Flapping Eagle, he said. My dear Mrs Gribb. How very nice.

  —Virgil, said Flapping Eagle. You may think I’m only saying this because I’m in trouble, because I made a choice that didn’t work out, but it’s not so. I was very wrong. My behaviour towards you was morally indefensible. I can only say I know it, and I am sorry.

  Virgil listened to this speech solemnly, but his eyes were not serious.

  —Rubbish, he cried gaily when Flapping Eagle had finished. We all have to make our mistakes. Welcome to the fold.

  —You want me to let him in? asked Jocasta, dubiously.

  —Of course, said Virgil. He’s a friend of mine.

  —What about her? asked Jocasta. Saint Elfrida, wearing white on the day after her husband’s funeral. I haven’t heard any note of contrition from her.

  Elfrida said: —I am no better than you, and no worse.

  —Please, Virgil, said Flapping Eagle. She’s not herself.

  —That’s an improvement, said Madame Jocasta, giving in. Well, come in then, you two wretches, don’t just stand there.

  Media’s smile of welcome more than compensated for Jocasta’s reluctant tone.

  The room faced the rising mountain, whose occluded peak glowered through its one window. It was not a beautiful room; it would probably have seemed entirely nondescript but for the carvings.

  The carvings were hideous.

  It was not that they were grotesque, for the grotesque, expertly depicted, becomes beautiful. It was not that their subjects were hideous; even ugly heads can be moving, given the right treatment. The carvings were simply and without any question extremely ugly, seemingly lacking any purpose or aesthetic drive except that of making the world seem vile and hateful. Even that was pitching it too high. The carver had possessed less skill than even Flapping Eagle, who was no artist.

  The carvings stared down from the walls and made the room a darker place.

  —Liv’s room, said Virgil Jones. Hasn’t been used since, you know, she left with, er, me. Liv’s carvings, I hope you don’t mind them, I brought them back when, er, I stayed here some time ago. Before I left K, you know. But never mind that. It’s a bed.

  One bed. Elfrida Gribb lay down on it at once. A moment later she was sound asleep. No doubt her nerves, on which she had been living ever since Ignatius’ death, had finally rebelled and demanded a period of regeneration. Flapping Eagle felt frankly relieved.

  Virgil left him alone, saying: —Gather your strength, that’s the thing. He moved over to the window, averting his eyes from the misshapen objects on the walls, and looked out at the mountain. A fly settled on his cheek; he brushed it away. It settled on his other cheek; he brushed it away again. The third time, he slapped at it, and it was crushed against his face. He wiped the corpse away.

  Despite the ugliness of the carvings, despite the presence of Elfrida Gribb, despite the absence of any sense of direction, Flapping Eagle felt safe here. The brothel air was heavy with the scent of solace. But sanctuary was not for him, or at any rate not for long. If he had failed to achieve stasis—failed, that is, to ingrain himself into the Way of K—he would have to revert once more to kinesis. But that involved knowing what to do, not only with himself, but with Elfrida.

  Flapping Eagle stared at the mountain. —You’re winning, he said aloud. He turned to the bed and flung himself down beside the sleeping Elfrida, to gaze emptily at the ceiling. Soon he, too, was asleep, tired and asleep.

  Media came into the room to watch him dream. Looking at his face, the face that had changed her life, the firm-jawed face with the shadow of a beard and the closed, long-lashed eyes, she began to think heresy. Perhaps it had something to do with being in Liv’s room; Liv who had left the brothel and its safety for the sake of a man; (hard to imagine now that that man had been Virgil Jones) Liv who had placed herself and her desires above her duties, and seized her moment; but Media, watching the dreaming face, was forming this thought in her mind:

  Where he goes, I go.

  It was the face that did it.

  She spoke softly to the sleeping Eagle:

  —What you need is a woman who can cope with you, she said.

  Madame Jocasta was pacing the corridors of her realm again; but she was not enjoying it, not listening for the sounds behind the doors, for, at Virgil’s request, she had closed the House’s doors. Silence everywhere. In her own room, a moody, pensive Virgil; in her predecessor’s room, the hidden forms of two people who, she was afraid, would change her small world, too much, far too much. Already Virgil was lost within himself; already Media was afflicted with Flapping Eagle, despite her allotted specialty.

  She stood silently outside the door of Liv’s room, which was fractionally ajar, and heard Media’s voice speak its one sentence. She retreated quietly, her worries redoubled.

  But she had given them sanctuary, she thought; she would not, could not break that pledge.

  At the head of the mob were Flann O’Toole and One-Track Peckenpaw. There were perhaps a dozen more, all regular customers of the Elbaroom. They carried sticks, stones and a length of rope.

  —The House is closed, said Jocasta from the door.

  —’Tis not your women we’re afther, said O’Toole in a thick voice, flowing with the fumes of potato-
whisky. ’Tis that bastard Eagle.

  —We got a harmless little lynching in mind, said Peckenpaw.

  —I see, said Jocasta. You want a scapegoat.

  —Jesus forbid, grinned Flann O’Toole. But the slightest consideration shows how all our troubles began with his coming. ’Tis entirely logical to speed his going, is it not, now?

  —Flann O’Toole, said Madame Jocasta. You know what place this is. When anyone enters the House they leave the world behind. It is a place to escape to; no evil comes here. Flapping Eagle has sanctuary. If you take him by force, the House loses its meaning for you all. You will be hanging a part of your own town. Is that what you want?

  The crowd shuffled morosely. Flann O’Toole stopped grinning.

  —Now listen, Jocasta, he lurched. What in God’s name are you protecting him for? Now you know we wouldn’t do a thing like that, violating the sanctity o’ the House and all, but that Eagle, he’s no friend to you, or your Mr Jones.

  —Go away, O’Toole, said Jocasta.

  —Okay, said Peckenpaw. Okay, Jocasta. You win. But we’ll keep watch right here on your doorstep. And if he shows his pretty face outside, Virgil Jones’Ü have some more digging to do.

  Bestowing a contemptuous look on him, Jocasta closed the door. The look made no impression on One-Track Peckenpaw.

  L

  FLAPPING EAGLE SAT at Virgil Jones’ feet, or, more precisely, sat beside him on the low bed in Jocasta’s room as Virgil spoke. There was a satisfaction on Virgil’s face and an excitement in his voice, but of a faintly morbid kind, the satisfaction and excitement of a man who senses events are running his way once more, but is highly uncertain of his power to direct them. A spider wove its webs on the ceiling.

  —More cases of fever, said Virgil Jones. Certainly there will be more. I’m afraid K is vulnerable now. The Achilles heel exposed. An object lesson in the fragility of the best defences. And make no mistake, the Way of K was a very expert defence. They practised their eyes-to-the-ground life for so long, it became second nature. Hence the confusing illusion of normality you succumbed to, and that entrancing, ethereal quality. They lived here, but they lived for their preoccupations, and thus seemed detached, intoxicating, complete. The expertise grew with the power of the Effect, keeping pace, and they might well have resisted it forever. Gribb’s death changed all that. Now there are many who find it an effort to keep their minds off Grimus. And they need to, whereas before the deaths they could even joke about him. Hence the determination of the lynch-mob. Hence the attitude of Mrs Gribb. I’m not sure she is so much in love with you. She needs to love, that’s more important. It will get worse; for now, the instant they relax, they will be open to the Dimensions. Some of them will die. Which will make the rest even more manic. A gloomy prospect, I’m sure You’ll agree.

  —Jocasta and her girls don’t seem to suffer, said Flapping Eagle.

  —Ah, said Virgil. There you have the extraordinary nature of this House in a nutshell. A refuge, you see, from the Effect as well as the mob. Because, as you hazarded earlier, it has become, for them, an end in itself. The only thing that matters to them. Though I fear you may be unsettling dear Media, you know. You do have almost as powerful an effect on women as, as Grimus, ha ha.

  —I’m sorry, said Flapping Eagle stupidly.

  —The simple fact, said Virgil Jones, is that Grimus is in possession of a stupendous piece of knowledge: that we live in one of an infinity of Dimensions. To accept the nature of the Dimensions involves changing, entirely, our ideas of what we are and what our world is like. Thus rewriting the book of morality and priorities from the beginning. What you must ask yourself is this: is there such a thing as too much knowledge? If a marvellous discovery is made whose effects one cannot control, should one attempt to destroy one’s find? Or do the interests of science override even those of society, and, indeed, survival? Is it better to have known, and die, than not to have known at all? A fair number of questions, I’m afraid.

  —And you’ve decided, said Flapping Eagle, that science must yield.

  —At this time, in this place, this piece of knowledge is an untenably dangerous thing, said Virgil Jones sadly.

  Virgil Jones examined his corns, wiggling his toes. Flapping Eagle sat in silence, watching the spider. Eventually, Virgil spoke again.

  —They treat me like an idiot here, he said, because I went through a phase of behaving like one. Just after my … disagreement … with the Inner Dimensions. And Liv. I ran around town once with my sex hanging out. I dyed my nose blue. I farted into women’s faces with my trousers down. Poor forked creature that I was. Am. I had something to prove, then. That they didn’t matter to me. That the island didn’t matter. That nothing mattered. Trouble was, I didn’t believe any of it myself. So the gestures lacked a certain conviction. In the end I went down the mountain and discovered dignity instead. The clothing of impotence. Until you arrived.

  Flapping Eagle burst out: —Virgil, what shall I do? What is there to do?

  —Ah, said Virgil, licking frantically around his lips. That’s what I’ve been getting round to. You can choose between withdrawal, inaction and action. No shame in any of them.

  —I don’t understand, said Flapping Eagle.

  —Withdrawal involves walking out there and getting lynched. Not pleasant. Or sneaking out somehow and going back down the mountain to let events take their course. The blinks, the fever, all of it. Leave it behind. Inaction involves staying put right here and waiting to see if Jocasta throws you to the wolves. Action, however, does rather involve doing what I say.

  —You chose inaction, said Flapping Eagle. You haven’t done much recently.

  —Naturally, said Virgil. I can’t do anything. You can.

  —It’s not that the Inner Dimensions burnt my mind out, said Virgil. Or I couldn’t have danced the Strongdance successfully. Call it a kind of paralysis. A seized-up gearbox. It worked in extreme need, in the forest. But my little flutter with the Gorf undid that. And now, because I know it would be much easier for you, the need isn’t there. I’m not sure the will is either.

  —But you said you’d made up your mind?

  —Decisions are easy, said Virgil Jones. They’re the easy part.

  —The field of what I’ll call Dimension-Chaos in which we find ourselves, said Virgil, tutorially, and indeed all Grimus’ powers, spring from an object called the Stone Rose. As you’ve probably guessed. This is what must be destroyed.

  There is, actually, a considerable risk. It is possible that this Dimension cannot survive without the Rose. What is certain is that no-one will survive here, except for spiders, flies and animals, unless the Rose is broken. So it is a risk we must take.

  —Kill or cure, said Flapping Eagle.

  —Precisely, said Virgil. How well put.

  —Deggle, you know, said Virgil Jones, unintentionally did the only thing that could have turned me against the Rose. When he broke that piece off the Stem, I mean. One has to ascribe both blinks and probably even the Grimus Effect to malfunctions of the mutilated Rose. It was only a small piece, so it went unnoticed. But it has, ah, damaged the dimension.

  —If a small piece can create so much havoc, asked Flapping Eagle, wouldn’t we inevitably be destroyed if the whole Rose were broken up?

  —Not necessarily, said Virgil. Half a loaf is not always better than no bread.

  The weight of his guilt and the feeling of futility within him inclined Flapping Eagle towards agreeing to perform the task. His morale had been steadily declining ever since the death of Ignatius Gribb. Now, faced with the grim alternatives Virgil had offered, it was at its nadir. But something held him back from acquiescing, a fragment, perhaps, of the relatively innocent self he had brought to Calf Island; and, thinking about that self, he found a last glimmering of hope.

  —I want your word on two scores, he said to Virgil. First, that Grimus possesses some means of undoing my immortality. There’s nothing for me on Calf Mountain, and I know etern
ity palls in my own world.

  —So you’re back to that, said Virgil.

  —Also, Flapping Eagle forged on, I must know that a way back exists: a way back to the place, world, dimension, whatever, that I came from.

  —If we’re spared, you’d like to return.

  —Yes.

  —And if I give you my word, You’ll go to Grimus.

  —If I can.

  Virgil Jones smiled sadly.

  —As far as I know, he said, the answer to both your questions is that there are no such certain ways and means of achieving either of your aims.

  It was like a sentence of death, confirmed, with no appeal. No way back. The aim of centuries, to return to normal life, dashed; his recent aim, to live contentedly here in K, in ruins. Flapping Eagle was an empty man, a Shell without a Form.

  —O hell, he said. I’ll do it anyway. Why not?

  Virgil Jones smiled his sad smile again. It was tinged with triumph.

  The time of action obliterates the process of evaluation. Virgil Jones, champion of doubt, had no time for it now. He was planning Flapping Eagle’s ascent to Grimus.

  —The Gate to Grimus is similar in type to the one through which you entered the Sea of Calf. Though less crude. Impossible to find it unless you know where it is. Which, as it happens, I do. That’s where your conquest of the Inner Dimensions will come in handy. They cannot harm you now, so you can concentrate on moving through the Outer ones. It may not be pleasant, though. Grimus will certainly know you’re coming; he may well try and close the Gate. In which case you will have quite a battle to break through. He will also resist any attempt to tamper with the Rose. You’ll just have to do what you can, wait for the opportunity, you know, strike when the time is ripe and so forth. Remember this: he’s only a man.