The Satanic Verses (77 page)

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.’

I
t 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 from 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.