The Satanic Verses (21 page)

           
For Gibreel there was neither a hosepipe nor the
sharp end
of her
tongue. Rosa uttered token words of reproof, held her nostrils while examining
the fallen and newly sulphurous Saladin (who had not, at this point, removed
his bowler hat), and then, with an access of shyness which she greeted with
nostalgic astonishment, stammered an invitation, yyou bbetter bring your
ffriend in out of the cccold, and stamped back up the shingle to put the kettle
on, grateful to the bite of the winter air for reddening her cheeks and
saving
,
in the old comforting phrase,
her blushes
.

           
* * * * *

           
As a young man Saladin Chamcha had possessed a face of quite exceptional
innocence, a face that did not seem ever to have encountered disillusion or
evil, with skin as soft and smooth as a princess's palm. It had served him well
in his dealings with women, and had, in point of fact, been one of the first
reasons his future wife Pamela Lovelace had given for falling in love with him.
"So round and cherubic," she marvelled, cupping her hands under his
chin. "Like a rubber ball."

           
He was offended. "I've got bones," he protested. "Bone
structure
."

           
"Somewhere in there," she conceded. "Everybody does."

           
After that he was haunted for a time by the notion that he looked like a
featureless jellyfish, and it was in large part to assuage this feeling that he
set about developing the narrow, haughty demeanour that was now second nature
to him. It was, therefore, a matter of some consequence when, on arising from a
long slumber racked by a series of intolerable dreams, prominent among which
were images of Zeeny Vakil, transformed into a mermaid, singing to him from an
iceberg in tones of agonizing sweetness, lamenting her inability to join him on
dry land, calling him, calling;―but when he went to her she shut him up
fast in the heart of her ice-mountain, and her song changed to one of triumph
and revenge. . . it was, I say, a serious matter when Saladin Chamcha woke up,
looked into a mirror framed in blue-and-gold Japonaiserie lacquer, and found
that old cherubic face staring out at him once again; while, at his temples, he
observed a brace of fearfully discoloured swellings, indications that he must
have suffered, at some point in his recent adventures, a couple of mighty
blows.

           
Looking into the mirror at his altered face, Chamcha attempted to remind
himself of himself. I am a real man, he told the mirror, with a real history
and a planned-out future. I am a man to whom certain things are of importance:
rigour, self-discipline, reason, the pursuit of what is noble without recourse
to that old crutch, God. The ideal of beauty, the possibility of exaltation,
the mind. I am: a married man. But in spite of his litany, perverse thoughts
insisted on visiting him. As for instance: that the world did not exist beyond
that beach down there, and, now, this house. That if he weren't careful, if he
rushed matters, he would fall off the edge, into clouds. Things had to be
made
.
Or again: that if he were to telephone his home, right now, as he should, if he
were to inform his loving wife that he was not dead, not blown to bits in
mid-air but right here, on solid ground, if he were to do this eminently
sensible thing, the person who answered the phone would not recognize his name.
Or thirdly: that the sound of footsteps ringing in his ears, distant footsteps,
but coming closer, was not some temporary tinnitus caused by his fall, but the
noise of some approaching doom, drawing closer, letter by letter, ellowen,
deeowen, London.
Here I am, in Grandmother's house. Her big eyes, hands,
teeth
.

           
There was a telephone extension on his bedside table. There, he admonished
himself. Pick it up, dial, and your equilibrium will be restored. Such
maunderings: they aren't like you, not worthy of you. Think of her grief; call
her now.

           
It was night-time. He didn't know the hour. There wasn't a clock in the room
and his wristwatch had disappeared somewhere along the line. Should he
shouldn't he?―He dialed the nine numbers. A man's voice answered on the
fourth ring.

           
"What the hell?" Sleepy, unidentifiable, familiar.

           
"Sorry," Saladin Chamcha said. "Excuse, please. Wrong
number."

           
Staring at the telephone, he found himself remembering a drama production seen
in Bombay, based on an English original, a story by, by, he couldn't put his
finger on the name, Tennyson? No, no. Somerset Maugham?―To hell with
it.―In the original and now authorless text, a man, long thought dead,
returns after an absence of many years, like a living phantom, to his former
haunts. He visits his former home at night, surreptitiously, and looks in
through an open window. He finds that his wife, believing herself widowed, has
re-married. On the window-sill he sees a child's toy. He spends a period of
time standing in the darkness, wrestling with his feelings; then picks the toy
off the ledge; and departs forever, without making his presence known. In the
Indian version, the story had been rather different. The wife had married her
husband's best friend. The returning husband arrived at the door and marched
in, expecting nothing. Seeing his wife and his old friend sitting together, he
failed to understand that they were married. He thanked his friend for
comforting his wife; but he was home now, and so all was well. The married
couple did not know how to tell him the truth; it was, finally, a servant who
gave the game away. The husband, whose long absence was apparently due to a
bout of amnesia, reacted to the news of the marriage by announcing that he,
too, must surely have re-married at some point during his long absence from
home; unfortunately, however, now that the memory of his former life had returned
he had forgotten what had happened during the years of his disappearance. He
went off to ask the police to trace his new wife, even though he could remember
nothing about her, not her eyes, not the simple fact of her existence.

           
The curtain fell.

           
Saladin Chamcha, alone in an unknown bedroom in unfamiliar red-and-white
striped pyjamas, lay face downwards on a narrow bed and wept. "Damn all
Indians," he cried into the muffling bedclothes, his fists punching at
frilly-edged pillowcases from Harrods in Buenos Aires so fiercely that the
fifty-year-old fabric was ripped to shreds. "
What the hell
. The
vulgarity of it, the
sod it sod it
indelicacy.
What the hell
.
That bastard, those bastards, their lack of
bastard
taste."

           
It was at this moment that the police arrived to arrest him.

           
* * * * *

           
On the night after she had taken the two of them in from the beach, Rosa
Diamond stood once again at the nocturnal window of her old woman's insomnia,
contemplating the nine-hundred-year-old sea. The smelly one had been sleeping
ever since they put him to bed, with hot-water bottles packed in tightly around
him, best thing for him, let him get his strength. She had put them upstairs,
Chamcha in the spare room and Gibreel in her late husband's old study, and as
she watched the great shining plain of the sea she could hear him moving up
there, amid the ornithological prints and bird-call whistles of the former
Henry Diamond, the bolas and bullwhip and aerial photographs of the Los Alamos
estancia far away and long ago, a man's footsteps in that room, how reassuring
they felt. Farishta was pacing up and down, avoiding sleep, for reasons of his
own. And below his footfall Rosa, looking up at the ceiling, called him in a
whisper by a long-unspoken name. Martin she said. His last name the same as
that of his country's deadliest snake, the viper. The vibora,
de la Cruz
.

           
At once she saw the shapes moving on the beach, as if the forbidden name had
conjured up the dead. Not again, she thought, and went for her opera-glasses.
She returned to find the beach full of shadows, and this time she was afraid,
because whereas the Norman fleet came sailing, when it came, proudly and openly
and without recourse to subterfuge, these shades were sneaky, emitting stifled
imprecations and alarming, muted yaps and barks, they seemed headless,
crouching, arms and legs a-dangle like giant, unshelled crabs. Scuttling,
sidelong, heavy boots crunching on shingle. Lots of them. She saw them reach
her boathouse on which the fading image of an eyepatched pirate grinned and
brandished a cutlass, and that was too much,
I'm not having it
, she
decided, and, stumbling downstairs for warm clothing, she fetched the chosen
weapon of her retribution: a long coil of green garden hose. At her front door
she called out in a clear voice. "I can see you quite plainly. Come out,
come out, whoever you are."

           
They switched on seven suns and blinded her, and then she panicked, illuminated
by the seven blue-white floodlights around which, like fireflies or satellites,
there buzzed a host of smaller lights: lanterns torches cigarettes. Her head
was spinning, and for a moment she lost her ability to distinguish between
then
and
now
, in her consternation she began to say Put out that light, don't
you know there's a blackout, you'll be having Jerry down on us if you carry on
so. "I'm raving," she realized disgustedly, and banged the tip of her
stick into her doormat. Whereupon, as if by magic, policemen materialized in
the dazzling circle of light.

           
It turned out that somebody had reported a suspicious person on the beach,
remember when they used to come in fishing boats, the illegals, and thanks to
that single anonymous telephone call there were now fifty-seven uniformed
constables combing the beach, their flashlights swinging crazily in the dark,
constables from as far away as Hastings Eastbourne Bexhill-upon-Sea, even a
deputation from Brighton because nobody wanted to miss the fun, the thrill of
the chase. Fifty-seven beachcombers were accompanied by thirteen dogs, all
sniffing the sea air and lifting excited legs. While up at the house away from
the great posse of men and dogs, Rosa Diamond found herself gazing at the five
constables guarding the exits, front door, ground-floor windows, scullery door,
in case the putative miscreant attempted an alleged escape; and at the three
men in plain clothes, plain coats and plain hats with faces to match; and in
front of the lot of them, not daring to look her in the eye, young Inspector
Lime, shuffling his feet and rubbing his nose and looking older and more
bloodshot than his forty years. She tapped him on the chest with the end of her
stick,
at this time of night, Frank, what's the meaning of
, but he
wasn't going to allow her to boss him around, not tonight, not with the men
from the immigration watching his every move, so he drew himself up and pulled
in his chins.

           
"Begging your pardon, Mrs. D.―certain allegations,―information
laid before us,―reason to believe,―merit
investigation,―necessary to search your,―a warrant has been
obtained."

           
"Don't be absurd, Frank dear," Rosa began to say, but just then the
three men with the plain faces drew themselves up and seemed to stiffen, each
of them with one leg slightly raised, like pointer dogs; the first began to
emit an unusual hiss of what sounded like pleasure, while a soft moan escaped
from the lips of the second, and the third commenced to roll his eyes in an
oddly contented way. Then they all pointed past Rosa Diamond, into her floodlit
hallway, where Mr. Saladin Chamcha stood, his left hand holding up his pyjamas
because a button had come off when he hurled himself on to his bed. With his
right hand he was rubbing at an eye.

           
"Bingo," said the hissing man, while the moaner clasped his hands
beneath his chin to indicate that all his prayers had been answered, and the
roller of eyes shouldered past Rosa Diamond, without standing on ceremony,
except that he did mutter, "Madam, pardon
me
."

           
Then there was a flood, and Rosa was jammed into a corner of her own
sitting-room by that bobbing sea of police helmets, so that she could no longer
make out Saladin Chamcha or hear what he was saying. She never heard him
explain about the detonation of the
Bostan
―there's been a mistake,
he cried, I'm not one of your fishing-boat sneakers-in, not one of your
ugandokenyattas, me. The policemen began to grin, I see, sir, at thirty
thousand feet, and then you swam ashore. You have the right to remain silent,
they tittered, but quite soon they burst out into uproarious guffaws, we've got
a right one here and no mistake. But Rosa couldn't make out Saladin's protests,
the laughing policemen got in the way, you've got to believe me, I'm a British,
he was saying, with right of abode, too, but when he couldn't produce a
passport or any other identifying document they began to weep with mirth, the
tears streaming down even the blank faces of the plain-clothes men from the
immigration service. Of course, don't tell me, they giggled, they fell out of
your jacket during your tumble, or did the mermaids pick your pocket in the
sea? Rosa couldn't see, in that laughter-heaving surge of men and dogs, what
uniformed arms might be doing to Chamcha's arms, or fists to his stomach, or
boots to his shins; nor could she be sure if it was his voice crying out or
just the howling of the dogs. But she did, finally, hear his voice rise in a
last, despairing shout: "Don't any of you watch TV? Don't you see? I'm
Maxim. Maxim Alien."