I have more.
I have certain questions, anyhow. – About, for instance, an unmarked blue Mercedes panel van, which followed Walcott Roberts’s pick-up truck, and then Pamela Chamcha’s MG. – About the men who emerged from this van, their faces behind Hallowe’en masks, and forced their way into the CRC offices just as Pamela unlocked the outer door. – About what really happened inside those offices, because purple brick and bulletproof glass cannot easily be penetrated by the human eye. – And about, finally, the whereabouts of a red plastic briefcase, and the documents it contains.
Inspector Kinch? Are you there?
No. He’s gone. He has no answers for me.
Here is Mr Saladin Chamcha, in the camel coat with the silk collar, running down the High Street like some cheap crook. – The same, terrible Mr Chamcha who has just spent his evening in the company of a distraught Alleluia Cone, without feeling a flicker of remorse. – ‘I look down towards his feet,’ Othello said of Iago, ‘but that’s a fable.’ Nor is Chamcha fabulous any more; his humanity is sufficient form and explanation for his deed. He has destroyed what he is not and cannot be; has taken revenge, returning treason for treason; and has done so by exploiting his enemy’s weakness, bruising his unprotected heel. – There is satisfaction in this. – Still, here is Mr Chamcha, running. The world is full of anger and event. Things hang in the balance. A building burns.
Boomba, pounds his heart. Doomba, boomba, dadoom.
Now he sees the Shaandaar, on fire; and comes to a skidding halt. He has a constricted chest; – badoomba! – and there’s a pain in his left arm. He doesn’t notice; is staring at the burning building.
And sees Gibreel Farishta.
And turns; and runs inside.
‘Mishal! Sufyan! Hind!’ cries evil Mr Chamcha. The ground floor is not as yet ablaze. He flings open the door to the stairs, and a scalding, pestilential wind drives him back. Dragon’s breath, he thinks. The landing is on fire; the flames reach in sheets from floor to ceiling. No possibility of advance.
‘Anybody?’ screams Saladin Chamcha. ‘Is anybody there?’ But the dragon roars louder than he can shout.
Something invisible kicks him in the chest, sends him toppling backwards, on to the café floor, amid the empty tables. Doom, sings his heart. Take this. And this.
There is a noise above his head like the scurrying of a billion rats, spectral rodents following a ghostly piper. He looks up: the ceiling is on fire. He finds he cannot stand. As he watches, a section of the ceiling detaches itself, and he sees the segment of beam falling towards him. He crosses his arms in feeble self-defence.
The beam pins him to the floor, breaking both his arms. His chest is full of pain. The world recedes. Breathing is hard. He can’t speak. He is the Man of a Thousand Voices, and there isn’t one left.
Gibreel Farishta, holding Azraeel, enters the Shaandaar Café.
What happens when you win?
When your enemies are at your mercy: how will you act then? Compromise is the temptation of the weak; this is the test for the strong. – ‘Spoono,’ Gibreel nods at the fallen man. ‘You really fooled me, mister; seriously, you’re quite a guy.’ – And Chamcha, seeing what’s in Gibreel’s eyes, cannot deny the knowledge he sees there. ‘Wha,’ he begins, and gives up. What are you going to do? Fire is falling all around them now: a sizzle of golden rain. ‘Why’d you do it?’ Gibreel asks, then dismisses the question with a wave of the hand. ‘Damnfool thing to be asking. Might as well inquire, what possessed you to rush in here? Damnfool thing to do. People, eh, Spoono? Crazy bastards, that’s all.’
Now there are pools of fire all around them. Soon they will be encircled, marooned in a temporary island amid this lethal sea. Chamcha is kicked a second time in the chest, and jerks violently. Facing three deaths – by fire, by ‘natural causes’, and by Gibreel – he strains desperately, trying to speak, but only croaks emerge. ‘Fa. Gur. Mmm.’ Forgive me. ‘Ha. Pa.’ Have pity. The café tables are burning. More beams fall from above. Gibreel seems to have fallen into a trance. He repeats, vaguely: ‘Bloody damnfool things.’
Is it possible that evil is never total, that its victory, no matter how overwhelming, is never absolute?
Consider this fallen man. He sought without remorse to shatter the mind of a fellow human being; and exploited, to do so, an entirely blameless woman, at least partly owing to his own impossible and voyeuristic desire for her. Yet this same man has risked death, with scarcely any hesitation, in a foolhardy rescue attempt.
What does this mean?
The fire has closed around the two men, and smoke is everywhere. It can only be a matter of seconds before they are overcome. There are more urgent questions to answer than the damnfool ones above.
What choice will Farishta make?
Does he have a choice?
Gibreel lets fall his trumpet; stoops; frees Saladin from the prison of the fallen beam; and lifts him in his arms. Chamcha, with broken ribs as well as arms, groans feebly, sounding like the creationist Dumsday before he got a new tongue of choicest rump. ‘Ta. La.’ It’s too late. A little lick of fire catches at the hem of his coat. Acrid black smoke fills all available space, creeping behind his eyes, deafening his ears, clogging his nose and lungs. – Now, however, Gibreel Farishta begins softly to exhale, a long, continuous exhalation of extraordinary duration, and as his breath blows towards the door it slices through the smoke and fire like a knife; – and Saladin Chamcha, gasping and fainting, with a mule inside his chest, seems to see – but will ever afterwards be unsure if it was truly so – the fire parting before them like the red sea it has become, and the smoke dividing also, like a curtain or a veil; until there lies before them a clear pathway to the door; – whereupon Gibreel Farishta steps quickly forward, bearing Saladin along the path of forgiveness into the hot night air; so that on a night when the city is at war, a night heavy with enmity and rage, there is this small redeeming victory for love.
Conclusions.
Mishal Sufyan is outside the Shaandaar when they emerge, weeping for her parents, being comforted by Hanif. – It is Gibreel’s turn to collapse; still carrying Saladin, he passes out at Mishal’s feet.
Now Mishal and Hanif are in an ambulance with the two unconscious men, and while Chamcha has an oxygen mask over his nose and mouth Gibreel, suffering nothing worse than exhaustion, is talking in his sleep: a delirious babble about a magic trumpet and the fire that he blew, like music, from its mouth. – And Mishal, who remembers Chamcha as a devil, and has come to accept the possibility of many things, wonders: ‘Do you think – ?’ – But Hanif is definite, firm. ‘Not a chance. This is Gibreel Farishta, the actor, don’t you recognize? Poor guy’s just playing out some movie scene.’ Mishal won’t let it go. ‘But, Hanif,’ – and he becomes emphatic. Speaking gently, because she has just been orphaned, after all, he absolutely insists. ‘What has happened here in Brickhall tonight is a socio-political phenomenon. Let’s not fall into the trap of some damn mysticism. We’re talking about history: an event in the history of Britain. About the process of change.’
At once Gibreel’s voice changes, and his subject-matter also. He mentions pilgrims, and a dead baby, and like in ‘The Ten Commandments’, and a decaying mansion, and a tree; because in the aftermath of the purifying fire he is dreaming, for the very last time, one of his serial dreams; – and Hanif says: ‘Listen, Mishu, darling. Just make-believe, that’s all.’ He puts his arm around her, kisses her cheek, holding her fast. Stay with me. The world is real. We have to live in it; we have to live here, to live on.
Just then Gibreel Farishta, still asleep, shouts at the top of his voice.
‘Mishal! Come back! Nothing’s happening! Mishal, for pity’s sake; turn around, come back, come back.’
It had been the habit of Srinivas the toy merchant to threaten his wife and children, from time to time, that one day, when the material world had lost its savour, he would drop everything, including his name, and turn sanyasi, wandering fro
m village to village with a begging bowl and a stick. Mrs Srinivas treated these threats tolerantly, knowing that her gelatinous and good-humoured husband liked to be thought of as a devout man, but also a bit of an adventurer (had he not insisted on that absurd and scarifying flight into the Grand Canyon in Amrika years ago?); the idea of becoming a mendicant holy man satisfied both needs. Yet, when she saw his ample posterior so comfortably ensconced in an armchair on their front porch, looking out at the world through stout wire netting, – or when she watched him playing with their youngest daughter, five-year-old Minoo, – or when she observed that his appetite, far from diminishing to begging-bowl proportions, was increasing contentedly with the passing years – then Mrs Srinivas puckered up her lips, adopted the insouciant expression of a film beauty (though she was as plump and wobbling as her spouse) and went whistling indoors. As a result, when she found his chair empty, with his glass of lime-juice unfinished on one of its arms, it took her completely by surprise.
To tell the truth, Srinivas himself could never properly explain what made him leave the comfort of his morning porch and stroll across to watch the arrival of the villagers of Titlipur. The urchin boys who knew everything an hour before it happened had been shouting in the street about an improbable procession of people coming with bags and baggage down the potato track towards the grand trunk road, led by a girl with silver hair, with great exclamations of butterflies over their heads, and, bringing up the rear, Mirza Saeed Akhtar in his olive-green Mercedes-Benz station wagon, looking like a mango-stone had got stuck in his throat.
For all its potato silos and famous toy factories, Chatnapatna was not such a big place that the arrival of one hundred and fifty persons could pass unnoticed. Just before the procession arrived Srinivas had received a deputation from his factory workers, asking for permission to close down operations for a couple of hours so that they could witness the great event. Knowing they would probably take the time off anyway, he agreed. But he himself remained, for a time, stubbornly planted on his porch, trying to pretend that the butterflies of excitement had not begun to stir in his capacious stomach. Later, he would confide to Mishal Akhtar: ‘It was a presentiment. What to say? I knew you-all were not here for refreshments only. She had come for me.’
Titlipur arrived in Chatnapatna in a consternation of howling babies, shouting children, creaking oldsters, and sour jokes from the Osman of the boom-boom bullock for whom Srinivas did not care one jot. Then the urchins informed the toy king that among the travellers were the wife and mother-in-law of the zamindar Mirza Saeed, and they were on foot like the peasants, wearing simple kurta-pajamas and no jewels at all. This was the point at which Srinivas lumbered over to the roadside canteen around which the Titlipur pilgrims were crowding while potato bhurta and parathas were handed round. He arrived at the same time as the Chatnapatna police jeep. The Inspector was standing on the passenger seat, shouting through a megaphone that he intended to take strong action against this ‘communal’ march if it was not disbanded at once. Hindu-Muslim business, Srinivas thought; bad, bad.
The police were treating the pilgrimage as some kind of sectarian demonstration, but when Mirza Saeed Akhtar stepped forward and told the Inspector the truth the officer became confused. Sri Srinivas, a Brahmin, was obviously not a man who had ever considered making a pilgrimage to Mecca, but he was impressed nevertheless. He pushed up through the crowd to hear what the zamindar was saying: ‘And it is the purpose of these good people to walk to the Arabian Sea, believing as they do that the waters will part for them.’ Mirza Saeed’s voice sounded weak, and the Inspector, Chatnapatna’s Station Head Officer, was unconvinced. ‘Are you serious, ji?’ Mirza Saeed said: ‘Not me. They, but, are serious as hell. I’m planning to change their minds before anything crazy happens.’ The SHO, all straps, moustachioes and self-importance, shook his head. ‘But, see here, sir, how can I permit so many individuals to congregate on the street? Tempers can be inflamed; incident is possible.’ Just then the crowd of pilgrims parted and Srinivas saw for the first time the fantastic figure of the girl dressed entirely in butterflies, with snowy hair flowing down as far as her ankles. ‘Arré deo,’ he shouted, ‘Ayesha, is it you?’ And added, foolishly: ‘Then where are my Family Planning dolls?’
His outburst was ignored; everybody was watching Ayesha as she approached the puff-chested SHO. She said nothing, but smiled and nodded, and the fellow seemed to grow twenty years younger, until in the manner of a boy of ten or eleven he said, ‘Okay okay, mausi. Sorry, ma. No offence. I beg your pardon, please.’ That was the end of the police trouble. Later that day, in the afternoon heat, a group of town youths known to have RSS and Vishwa Hindu Parishad connections began throwing stones from nearby rooftops; whereupon the Station Head Officer had them arrested and in jail in two minutes flat.
‘Ayesha, daughter,’ Srinivas said aloud to the empty air, ‘what the hell happened to you?’
During the heat of the day the pilgrims rested in whatever shade they could find. Srinivas wandered among them in a kind of daze, filled up with emotion, realizing that a great turning-point in his life had unaccountably arrived. His eyes kept searching out the transformed figure of Ayesha the seer, who was resting in the shade of a pipal-tree in the company of Mishal Akhtar, her mother Mrs Qureishi, and the lovesick Osman with his bullock. Eventually Srinivas bumped into the zamindar Mirza Saeed, who was stretched out on the back seat of his Mercedes-Benz, unsleeping, a man in torment. Srinivas spoke to him with a humbleness born of his wonderment. ‘Sethji, you don’t believe in the girl?’
‘Srinivas,’ Mirza Saeed sat up to reply, ‘we are modern men. We know, for instance, that old people die on long journeys, that God does not cure cancer, and that oceans do not part. We have to stop this idiocy. Come with me. Plenty of room in the car. Maybe you can help to talk them out of it; that Ayesha, she’s grateful to you, perhaps she’ll listen.’
‘To come in the car?’ Srinivas felt helpless, as though mighty hands were gripping his limbs. ‘There is my business, but.’
‘This is a suicide mission for many of our people,’ Mirza Saeed urged him. ‘I need help. Naturally I could pay.’
‘Money is no object,’ Srinivas retreated, affronted. ‘Excuse, please, Sethji. I must consider.’
‘Don’t you see?’ Mirza Saeed shouted after him. ‘We are not communal people, you and I. Hindu-Muslim bhai-bhai! We can open up a secular front against this mumbo-jumbo.’
Srinivas turned back. ‘But I am not an unbeliever,’ he protested. ‘The picture of goddess Lakshmi is always on my wall.’
‘Wealth is an excellent goddess for a businessman,’ Mirza Saeed said.
‘And in my heart,’ Srinivas added. Mirza Saeed lost his temper. ‘But goddesses, I swear. Even your own philosophers admit that these are abstract concepts only. Embodiments of shakti which is itself an abstract notion: the dynamic power of the gods.’
The toy merchant was looking down at Ayesha as she slept under her quilt of butterflies. ‘I am no philosopher, Sethji,’ he said. And did not say that his heart had leapt into his mouth because he had realized that the sleeping girl and the goddess in the calendar on his factory wall had the identical, same-to-same, face.
When the pilgrimage left town, Srinivas accompanied it, turning a deaf ear to the entreaties of his wild-haired wife who picked up Minoo and shook her in her husband’s face. He explained to Ayesha that while he did not wish to visit Mecca he had been seized by a longing to walk with her a while, perhaps even as far as the sea.
As he took his place among the Titlipur villagers and fell into step with the man next to him, he observed with a mixture of incomprehension and awe that infinite butterfly swarm over their heads, like a gigantic umbrella shading the pilgrims from the sun. It was as if the butterflies of Titlipur had taken over the functions of the great tree. Next he gave a little cry of fear, astonishment and pleasure, because a few dozen of those chameleon-winged creatures had settled on his shoulders and turned, upon
the instant, the exact shade of scarlet of his shirt. Now he recognized the man at his side as the Sarpanch, Muhammad Din, who had chosen not to walk at the front. He and his wife Khadija strode contentedly forward in spite of their advanced years, and when he saw the lepidopteral blessing that had descended on the toy merchant, Muhammad Din reached out and grasped him by the hand.
It was becoming clear that the rains would fail. Lines of bony cattle migrated across the landscape, searching for a drink. Love is Water, someone had written in whitewash on the brick wall of a scooter factory. On the road they met other families heading south with their lives bundled up on the backs of dying donkeys, and these, too, were heading hopefully towards water. ‘But not bloody salt water,’ Mirza Saeed shouted at the Titlipur pilgrims. ‘And not to see it divide itself in two! They want to stay alive, but you crazies want to die.’ Vultures herded together by the roadside and watched the pilgrims pass.
Mirza Saeed spent the first weeks of the pilgrimage to the Arabian Sea in a state of permanent, hysterical agitation. Most of the walking was done in the mornings and late afternoons, and at these times Saeed would often leap out of his station wagon to plead with his dying wife. ‘Come to your senses, Mishu. You’re a sick woman. Come and lie down at least, let me press your feet a while.’ But she refused, and her mother shooed him away. ‘See, Saeed, you’re in such a negative mood, it gets depressing. Go and drink your Coke-shoke in your AC vehicle and leave us yatris in peace.’ After the first week the Air Conditioned vehicle lost its driver. Mirza Saeed’s chauffeur resigned and joined the foot-pilgrims; the zamindar was obliged to get behind the wheel himself. After that, when his anxiety overcame him, it was necessary to stop the car, park, and then rush madly back and forth among the pilgrims, threatening, entreating, offering bribes. At least once a day he cursed Ayesha to her face for ruining his life, but he could never keep up the abuse because every time he looked at her he desired her so much that he felt ashamed. The cancer had begun to turn Mishal’s skin grey, and Mrs Qureishi, too, was beginning to fray at the edges; her society chappals had disintegrated and she was suffering from frightful foot-blisters that looked like little water-balloons. When Saeed offered her the comfort of the car, however, she continued to refuse point-blank. The spell that Ayesha had placed upon the pilgrims was still holding firm. – And at the end of these sorties into the heart of the pilgrimage Mirza Saeed, sweating and giddy from the heat and his growing despair, would realize that the marchers had left his car some way behind, and he would have to totter back to it by himself, sunk in gloom. One day he got back to the station wagon to find that an empty coconut-shell thrown from the window of a passing bus had smashed his laminated windscreen, which looked, now, like a spider’s web full of diamond flies. He had to knock all the pieces out, and the glass diamonds seemed to be mocking him as they fell on to the road and into the car, they seemed to speak of the transience and worthlessness of earthly possessions, but a secular man lives in the world of things and Mirza Saeed did not intend to be broken as easily as a windscreen. At night he would go to lie beside his wife on a bedroll under the stars by the side of the grand trunk road. When he told her about the accident she offered him cold comfort. ‘It’s a sign,’ she said. ‘Abandon the station wagon and join the rest of us at last.’
The Satanic Verses: A Novel Page 51
