Grimus

by Salman Rushdie

  —Yes, said Flapping Eagle, turning away, to face the black house.

  A figure stood in the doorway, covered from head to foot in a black veil with a window at eye-level.

  —I thought you’d come, said Liv in a flat voice.

  Virgil Jones was lurching across the small plateau and muttering to himself. Every so often he would stop, squeeze his eyes shut until moisture ran from the corners and stand in a paralysis of thought. Then he would open his eyes, shake his head, and continue on his lurching way. The Gate continued to elude him.

  Liv said:

  —Does he imagine I have never searched for the Gate? Does he imagine I have lived here for nothing? I have as much reason to hate Grimus as he has. Does he imagine Grimus to be as great a fool as Virgil Jones?

  The flat tones were gone now, replaced by a frightening intensity of passion. The venom in her voice would have alarmed a snake.

  —Look, Flapping Eagle, she said. Look at Virgil Jones, your guide and my husband, and equally incompetent at both functions. I look at him and see a man as blindly possessed as any man in K. What do you see? I see a man chasing shadows. What do you see? Come inside, Virgil, she called. Perhaps I’ve hidden your Gate inside. Come and look for it inside.

  Virgil Jones continued to squeeze his eyes and lurch from empty ground to empty ground. He might not even have heard her.

  —It is time, she said, turning to Flapping Eagle. It is time you knew all about Virgil Jones. High time you knew how great a fool you are to believe in him.

  They stood there for a moment, ingrowing, hate-filled Liv and scarred, colourless Eagle, as Virgil muttered and stumbled his shambling way around them, racked by the gulf between attempt and achievement. There were vast spaces between their lives: Flapping Eagle could almost see the holes. And yet, it was those spaces which bound them irrevocably together, weakness, ignorance and hate, united against their will.

  Liv wheeled and went indoors. After a moment’s hesitation, Flapping Eagle followed her, leaving the shambling Virgil Jones, vulnerable and wounded, to go his muttering way. It was getting darker.

  Media, hiding at the end of the wooded slopes, cried tears of sympathy for their failure.

  —Did he tell you about Dimension-fever? said Liv. No. I suspect he wanted you to suffer that, because only by conquering it could you become the man he wanted. Did he tell you the danger you would be in, with your face, in K?

  —What about my face? asked Flapping Eagle, perplexed.

  —He didn’t even tell you that, said Liv. The hooded head shook; the voice was disgusted. Twice already he has risked your life. He was ready to do so again. And he didn’t even tell you that.

  —He saved my life twice, said Flapping Eagle. And he had my agreement for this attempt. But what about my face?

  —Poor idiot boy, said Liv, lying back on her bed. Flapping Eagle sat stiffly on the chair amid the accumulated filth.

  —Poor idiot boy, she repeated. Your face is as like the face of Grimus as his own reflection. Younger-looking, paler, but so, so similar. Did you not know that was what attracted him to you in the first place? It was not Bird-Dog he was interested in. It was you. Born-From-Dead.

  She knew a lot about him…

  —Sispy, he said. Sispy and Grimus are one and the same?

  The reclining, hidden figure nodded.

  —Then if my face is so like his, said Flapping Eagle, why did Bird-Dog not tell me so? She would have mentioned it… we were close then.

  —Grimus, said Liv, is a master of disguise. Don’t doubt it, poor stupid double. It was your face that fascinated him. But it was Bird-Dog he got.

  A cruel laugh. As his thoughts whirled, Flapping Eagle wished he could see the face behind the hood.

  —One other thing, said Liv. Grimus is a very attractive man. Does that perhaps explain some things?

  Deggle used to call him pretty-face.

  Irina saying: —You are not the man you look…

  Gribb at the foot of the bed, muttering: —Remarkable, remarkable.

  The looks of recognition he had received in the Elba-room, and Peckenpaw saying: —Jones and a stranger, in that loaded voice.

  The Spectre of the Stone Rose.

  The Spectre of Grimus…

  That was why Irina Cherkassova had been drawn to him so instantly. That was why Elfrida Gribb had been attracted, too. That was why the girl Media had stared at him so compulsively. That was why Jocasta had disliked him instinctively. He was living behind another man’s features, reaping both the rewards and the whirlwind of his personality. That was why.

  —I see that it does, said Liv dryly. She stretched lazily on the bed. How fascinating it is to watch the truth at work on people.

  —The truth, mumbled Flapping Eagle.

  —And now, she said, I shall tell you the truth about me. I shall tell you because you’ve been starved of truth. This is the truth about Liv: she hates Grimus. She hates Virgil. She hates this infernal mountain.

  —But she lives, said Flapping Eagle.

  —Hate, said Liv, is the nearest thing on earth to power. One does not give up power easily.

  Flapping Eagle was about to speak, but she silenced him.

  —It’s time to look at the book, she said, and reached under her pillow.

  Sitting in this slum of a room, his hopes of redemption shattered by the mumbling failure outside, reduced to the status of a pawn in someone else’s game by the truth from this hooded oracle, Flapping Eagle learnt the story of Calf Mountain; learnt it when he believed there was no longer anything he could do about it. As usual, he was wrong about that.

  The carvings stared down from the wall as Liv brought the old, old notebook out from under the pillow, wrapped in rough black cloth.

  —In those days, she said, Virgil kept a diary. It makes interesting reading.

  A hen squawked irrelevantly from the shelf.

  —I shall now read from it, she said, and began to recite. Recite, because the room was dark, and getting darker by the second as evening drew on and even the faintest light withdrew. She knew the book by heart.

  Wodensday 19th June.

  My diaries have always been my friends. The written word is so much more constant than human beings. Honest, too. Holding up a constant mirror to one’s own inadequacies, but without malice. There’s friendship if you like.

  The fact is, my friend, you are going to have to be more understanding today than ever you were. The things I am about to tell you are true, but you could easily be forgiven for disbelieving them. You must not disbelieve.

  A tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Dear Brutus. I wonder if he was right. Certainly it is high tide in my affairs. The link between floods and fortune is somewhat tenuous, however. But I am circling round my subject. Perhaps I am reluctant to begin. I shall begin.

  My old failures you know: it was sheer laziness, a butterfly quality of the mind, that thwarted my archaeological aspirations. Ironic that idleness should have led so directly to manual labour. But debts must be paid and I do know how to dig. Even if I now inter where once I exhumed. I think of myself as a layer of evidence for future archaeologists. I must; I can see no other dignity in my present labour.

  As you further know, Nicholas Deggle arranged for my present employment. He came to see me yesterday. (My apologies for not writing then. Events had me by the scruff of the neck.) I think he came to ridicule. It is his most unfortunate trait. Forgivable perhaps from a creditor. Understandable perhaps when considering my employment.

  Not only am I a gravedigger, my friend, but a digger of pets’ graves! I have been burying beloved spaniels and lamented moggies by the score. Everyone has to start somewhere, they say. There could scarcely be a more humble beginning.

  The pets’ section of the cemetery is at its very edge, next to a piece of overgrown woodland. Having consigned my third lap-dog to the soil, I went here to eat my small lunch: two biscuits and a piece of cheese. It wa
s here that I found the Thing.

  At first I thought it was a mislaid tombstone. On closer inspection I realized it was not so easily explicable. It is about the height of a man and perfectly carved in stone. It looks like a highly geometric rose, and that is what we now call it: the Stone Rose.

  It stood in the middle of a bush. I don’t think it was deliberately concealed there. It just was there. I cleared a way to it, scratching my hands and tearing my coat-sleeve a fraction.

  This is where you must begin to suspend your disbelief, my friend. I touched it and an entirely terrifying thing happened. My head swirled, strange pictures formed before my eyes. I must have fainted. I awoke on the ground by the Rose, dusty and with a couple more scratches. I’m ashamed to say my first instinct was flight. I returned to my duties and buried a few more animals. Then Deggle arrived. It was his condescension that led me back to the Rose. I wanted to see if it had the same effect on him. If it did, he would soon stop sneering.

  It did. I was forced to resuscitate him by splashing water over him. I say forced: I must confess I used more than was necessary.

  We emerged from the wood, shaken and greatly frightened, to find ourselves being scrutinized by a tallish, fairish man, who somehow gave the appearance of being a good deal older than he was. I suppose he is in his middle fifties and is actually very well-preserved, but he seems older. If that is not too oxymoronic a statement. He had brought us a bird to bury, a highly coloured bird of paradise. He said his name was Grimus; by his accents he is evidently Middle-European, a refugee no doubt.

  We must have looked a fright, for he asked us instantly what the matter was. After a brief discussion, during which he looked increasingly interested, we led him into the wood and he tried his hand at the Rose. He staggered away from it, clasping his head; but he did not faint. Which instantly gave him a kind of seniority over us. Perhaps that is why we agreed to keep the Rose a secret for a while, until we understood it better.

  He invited us to his home that evening to talk further. Already we seemed to have entered a conspiracy with this man. He returned to the cemetery as I was completing my duties with an empty coffin. Using ropes and sticks, we unearthed the rose and placed it in the coffin without touching it. He had brought his large estate car to the wood and we smuggled our treasure out like three grave-robbers, feeling criminal though we had committed no crime.

  Grimus’ house is in a dingy suburban terrace in the south-west extreme of the city. It is as dingy inside as out, and cluttered with a quite amazing variegation of objects and books. There are a number of stuffed birds and evidence of wide travel. There are pictures, Oriental I think, everywhere, and again the theme is preponderantly ornithological. Grimus is interested in mythical birds and as he talked he seemed curiously bird-like himself, his hands fluttering and his voice a rushing twitter. In my amateur way, I share his interests; moreover he has the quality of interesting others in his own preoccupations, so we were not bored.

  It is not his real name, Grimus. He told us so freely. He changed it from something unpronounceable when he arrived in this country some thirty years ago. True to himself, his adopted name is derived anagrammatically from a mythical bird: the Simurg.

  —The Simurg, he told us eagerly, is the Great Bird. It is vast, all-powerful and singular. It is the sum of all other birds. There is a Sufi poem in which thirty birds set out to find the Simurg on the mountain where he lives. When they reach the peak, they find that they themselves are, or rather have become, the Simurg. The name, you see, means Thirty Birds. Si, thirty. Murg, birds. Fascinating. Fascinating. The myth of the Mountain of Kâf.

  —Calf? asked Nicholas Deggle.

  —Kâf, Grimus enunciated. The Arabic letter K.*

  He would have rambled on thus for ages, but Deggle cut him short, reminding him about the Rose.

  —Ah yes, he said. The rose. The rose has Power.

  —You are an occultist? I asked, depressed. I am always depressed by the occult. It is so cheerless.

  —Not exactly, he twittered. Broad-minded. That is what. If the rose has Power, we must learn of what kind.

  —Open the coffin, he said to me. I resented the order, but found myself obeying. Grimus moved swiftly to the rose and before we knew what he was doing, grasped it. He cried aloud in pain, but did not release his hold. I saw his eyes dilate and widen.

  Then he disappeared. The Rose stayed where it was, but I swear he did not. He softly and silently vanished away.

  A few minutes later, he reappeared, beaming and shaking his head.

  —Wonderful, he said. Truly wonderful.

  I looked at Nicholas Deggle and he at me. —You must both try it, said Grimus. You must.

  We both did in the end, after a large measure of Grimus’ excellent brandy. We were both scared but I am sure Deggle was the more so. He had an entire posture of superiority to lose, after all. Deggle is not an humble man.

  I cannot describe the planet Thera to you as yet. I must form my opinions of it more completely first. Suffice to say that we have travelled through … what? I do not know, and met a life-form vastly superior to our own. The world is suddenly filled with marvellous possibilities.

  And it was I who found it!

  —I will leave out the next part, said Liv formally. It is an account of other journeys they made.

  The room was black now. Eagle listened riveted to the flat recitative.

  Moonday 1st July.

  Today Grimus made his greatest discovery and propounded his grand design. I must say it enthralls me. Deggle is surly and withdrawn and, I think, disapproves; but the Rose has him gripped as tightly as any of us. Even though he has continued to refuse to use it after that first visit to Thera.

  —One has enough problems, he said today, without any of this trickery. He still comes though: comes every evening when we gather around the coffin in Grimus’ living-room to go on the Conceptual Travels which Dota explained to us. He comes to sit and glower as Grimus and I take turns to visit our worlds.

  How rapidly I have come to accept a new universe, to sit in an exotic suburban living-room watching a man disappear and reappear and doing so myself! Evidently, like Grimus, I too am (his word) broad-minded. Fortunate. But today the broadmindedness received a nasty test. Grimus brought something back from his Travel. It is the first time those other universes have entered ours. He brought back two bottles. One filled with yellow liquid. One filled with blue.

  —Yellow for eternal life. Blue for eternal death, he says.

  This is his grand design. In his own words. Or as nearly as I can remember.

  —We have now the situation of being able to dispense the gift of life, he said in his feathery Slavonic voice. I propose we accept the responsibility. The necessary first step is that we grant it to ourselves. The necessary second step is the choosing of recipients. I offer some criteria for the choice: those with a pleasure in life. Those with a work to do which eternity would benefit. Those in short who would both benefit from, and seek, a longer span of life. The necessary third step is to provide a place of refuge. A place where those who tire of the world but not of life may come.

  —Just a moment, said Nicholas Deggle. How on earth are we to choose these people?

  It was at this point that Grimus reached into a pocket of the greatcoat he always wore on his Travels and produced the Watercrystal.

  —With this, he said, and with the Rose correctly adjusted, we can see the lives of those we Conceptualize, according to the techniques of Dota. Simply we fix our thoughts upon the selected type of recipient and they appear here like a TV picture. Then with a further adjustment of the Rose we go to them.

  —Playing God, said Deggle. Dangerous, don’t you think?

  —Would you rather we handed our knowledge to the authorities? snapped Grimus. His voice was filled with a bitterness and hatred for authority that must spring from some awful experience in his past, before he became Grimus the birdman. (We never knew his true name.) —Would you rathe
r be locked up in an insane asylum? Or watch as Governments used our gift to make weapons and war? We do it ourselves or not at all. I say only this: to allow knowledge of this magnitude to go unused is more than a crime. It is a sin.

  Liv skipped several pages. She made great show of turning to the correct place, though she never glanced at the book in her hand as she spoke.

  We have been building a world. Impossible to say whether we found the island or made it. I incline to the latter, Grimus to the former. He holds that Conceptual Technology merely reveals existences which mirror your concepts. I am not so sure. However, we have made the island and it is a paradise, fertile, lush and green. Grimus has named it. Kâf Island. The mountain is Kâf Mountain. But since neither Deggle nor I are masters either of the glottal-stop or of the flat Arabic vowel, I’m afraid we bastardize the name to Calf. Fatted? Golden? Time will tell.

  As for its population: Grimus now spends his entire time at the Watercrystal. He has made a discovery: each life he sees there comes from a fractionally different dimension, exists in a slightly different potential present … his phrase. Will there be a problem in assimilating immigrants from these different planets in the one society? Grimus is cheerfully optimistic. The differences are too minute to matter, he says. I trust he is right.

  Liv moved on once more.

  Calf Island, Day One.

  Moonday January 1.

  The date is arbitrary. One may as well begin at a beginning. We are all on Calf Island now, at the town called simply K. Grimus has been clever in arranging this beginning: by astute use of the Rose he has engineered that whoever wishes to come to Calf Island, (he has kept a careful check on all the Recipients) whenever they do so in their own lives and dimensions, they are brought to K on the same day. —It is a time-equation process, says Grimus, and I believe him. He says there has been only one misjudgement.

  The philosopher Ignatius Gribb and his wife Elfrida’s journey has been mistimed; they will not be here for some time yet.