The Satanic Verses (52 page)

           
"Mother . . ." Allie began, but Alicja's mood had changed again, and
this time, when she spoke, Allie was not listening to the words, but hearing
the pain they both revealed and concealed, the pain of a woman to whom history
had most brutally happened, who had already lost a husband and seen one
daughter precede her to what she once, with unforgettable black humour,
referred to (she must have read the sports pages, by some chance, to come
across the phrase) as an
early bath
. "Allie, my baby," Alicja
Cohen said, "we're going to have to take good care of you."

           
One reason why Allie was able to spot that panic-anguish in her mother's face
was her recent sighting of the same combination on the features of Gibreel
Farishta. After Sisodia returned him to her care, it became plain that Gibreel
had been shaken to the very marrow, and there was a haunted look to him, a
scarified popeyed quality, that quite pierced her heart. He faced the fact of
his mental illness with courage, refusing to play it down or call it by a false
name, but his recognition of it had, understandably, cowed him. No longer (for
the present, anyway) the ebullient vulgarian for whom she had conceived her
"grand passion", he became for her, in this newly vulnerable
incarnation, more lovable than ever. She grew determined to lead him back to
sanity, to stick it out; to wait out the storm, and conquer the peak. And he
was, for the moment, the easiest and most malleable of patients, somewhat dopey
as a result of the heavy-duty medication he was being given by the specialists
at the Maudsley Hospital, sleeping long hours, and acquiescing, when awake, in
all her requests, without a murmur of protest. In alert moments he filled in
for her the full background to his illness: the strange serial dreams, and
before that the near-fatal breakdown in India. "I am no longer afraid of
sleep," he told her. "Because what's happened in my waking time is
now so much worse." His greatest fear reminded her of Charles II's terror,
after his Restoration, of being sent "on his travels" again:
"I'd give anything only to know it won't happen any more," he told
her, meek as a lamb.

           
Lives there who loves his pain?
"It won't happen," she
reassured him. "You've got the best help there is." He quizzed her
about money, and, when she tried to deflect the questions, insisted that she
withdraw the psychiatric fees from the small fortune stashed in his money-belt.
His spirits remained low. "Doesn't matter what you say," he mumbled
in response to her cheery optimisms. "The craziness is in here and it
drives me wild to think it could get out any minute, right now, and he would be
in charge again." He had begun to characterize his "possessed",
"angel" self as another person: in the Beckettian formula,
Not I.
He
. His very own Mr. Hyde. Allie attempted to argue against such
descriptions. "It isn't
he
, it's you, and when you're well, it
won't be you any more."

           
It didn't work. For a time, however, it looked as though the treatment was
going to. Gibreel seemed calmer, more in control; the serial dreams were still
there―he would still speak, at night, verses in Arabic, a language he did
not know:
tilk al-gharaniq al'ula wa inna shafa'ata-hunna la-turtaja
,
for example, which turned out to mean (Allie, woken by his sleeptalk, wrote it
down phonetically and went with her scrap of paper to the Brickhall mosque,
where her recitation made a mullah's hair stand on end under his turban):
"These are exalted females whose intercession is to be
desired"―but he seemed able to think of these nightshows as separate
from himself, which gave both Allie and the Maudsley psychiatrists the feeling
that Gibreel was slowly reconstructing the boundary wall between dreams and
reality, and was on the road to recovery; whereas in fact, as it turned out,
this separation was related to, was the same phenomenon as, his splitting of
his sense of himself into two entities, one of which he sought heroically to
suppress, but which he also, by characterizing it as other than himself,
preserved, nourished, and secretly made strong.

           
As for Allie, she lost, for a while, the prickly, wrong feeling of being
stranded in a false milieu, an alien narrative; caring for Gibreel, investing
in his brain, as she put it to herself, fighting to salvage him so that they
could resume the great, exciting struggle of their love―because they
would probably quarrel all the way to the grave, she mused tolerantly, they'd
be two old codgers flapping feebly at one another with rolled-up newspapers as
they sat upon the evening verandas of their lives―she felt more closely
joined to him each day; rooted, so to speak, in his earth. It was some time
since Maurice Wilson had been seen sitting among the chimneypots, calling her
to her death.

           
* * * * *

           
Mr. "Whisky" Sisodia, that gleaming and charm-packed knee in
spectacles, became a regular caller―three or four visits a
week―during Gibreel's convalescence, invariably arriving with boxes full
of goodies to eat. Gibreel had been literally fasting to death during his
"angel period", and the medical opinion was that starvation had
contributed in no small degree to his hallucinations. "So now we fafatten
him up," Sisodia smacked his palms together, and once the invalid's
stomach was up to it, "Whisky" plied him with delicacies: Chinese
sweet-corn and chicken soup, Bombay-style bhel-puri from the new, chic but
unfortunately named "Pagal Khana" restaurant whose "Crazy
Food" (but the name could also be translated as
Madhouse
) had grown
popular enough, especially among the younger set of British Asians, to rival
even the long-standing pre-eminence of the Shaandaar Cafe, from which Sisodia,
not wishing to show unseemly partisanship, also fetched eats―sweetmeats,
samosas, chicken patties―for the increasingly voracious Gibreel. He
brought, too, dishes made by his own hand, fish curries, raitas, sivayyan,
khir, and doled out, along with the edibles, namedropping accounts of celebrity
dinner parties: how Pavarotti had loved Whisky's lassi, and O but that poor
James Mason had just adored his spicy prawns. Vanessa, Amitabh, Dustin,
Sridevi, Christopher Reeve were all invoked. "One soosoo superstar should
be aware of the tatastes of his pipi peers." Sisodia was something of a
legend himself, Allie learned from Gibreel. The most slippery and
silver-tongued man in the business, he had made a string of "quality"
pictures on microscopic budgets, keeping going for over twenty years on pure
charm and nonstop hustle. People on Sisodia projects got paid with the greatest
difficulty, but somehow failed to mind. He had once quelled a cast
revolt―over pay, inevitably―by whisking the entire unit off for a
grand picnic in one of the most fabulous maharajah palaces in India, a place
that was normally off limits to all but the high-born elite, the Gwaliors and
Jaipurs and Kashmirs. Nobody ever knew how he fixed it, but most members of
that unit had since signed up to work on further Sisodia ventures, the pay
issue buried beneath the grandeur of such gestures. "And if he's needed he
is always there," Gibreel added. "When Charulata, a wonderful
dancer-actress he'd often used, needed the cancer treatment, suddenly years of
unpaid fees materialized overnight."

           
These days, thanks to a string of surprise box-office hits based on old fables
drawn from the
Katha-Sarit-Sagar
compendium―the "Ocean of the
Streams of Story", longer than the Arabian Nights and equally as
fantasticated―Sisodia was no longer based exclusively in his tiny office
on Bombay's Readymoney Terrace, but had apartments in London and New York, and
Oscars in his toilets. The story was that he carried, in his wallet, a
photograph of the Hong Kong-based kung-phooey producer Run Run Shaw, his
supposed hero, whose name he was quite unable to say. "Sometimes four
Runs, sometimes a sixer," Gibreel told Allie, who was happy to see him
laugh. "But I can't swear. It's only a media rumour."

           
Allie was grateful for Sisodia's attentiveness. The famous producer appeared to
have limitless time at his disposal, whereas Allie's schedule had just then
grown very full. She had signed a promotional contract with a giant chain of
freezer-food centres whose advertising agent, Mr. Hal Valance, told Allie
during a power breakfast―grapefruit, dry toast, decaf, all at Dorchester
prices―that her
profile
, "uniting as it does the positive
parameters (for our client) of 'coldness' and 'cool', is right on line. Some
stars end up being vampires, sucking attention away from the brand name, you
understand, but this feels like real synergy." So now there were
freezer-mart openings to cut ribbons at, and sales conferences, and advertising
shots with tubs of softscoop icecream; plus the regular meetings with the
designers and manufacturers of her autograph lines of equipment and
leisurewear; and, of course, her fitness programme. She had signed on for Mr.
Joshi's highly recommended martial arts course at the local sports centre, and
continued, too, to force her legs to run five miles a day around the Fields, in
spite of the soles-on-broken-glass pain. "No pop problem," Sisodia
would send her off with a cheery wave. "I will iss iss issit here-only
until you return. To be with Gigibreel is for me a pip pip privilege." She
left him regaling Farishta with his inexhaustible anecdotes, opinions and
general chitchat, and when she returned he would still be going strong. She
came to identify several major themes; notably, his corpus of statements about
The Trouble With The English. "The trouble with the Engenglish is that
their hiss hiss history happened overseas, so they dodo don't know what it
means."―"The see secret of a dinner party in London is to ow ow
outnumber the English. If they're outnumbered they bebehave; otherwise, you're
in trouble."―"Go to the Che Che Chamber of Horrors and you'll
see what's rah rah wrong with the English. That's what they rereally like, caw
corpses in bubloodbaths, mad barbers, etc. etc. etera. Their pay papers full of
kinky sex and death. But they tell the whir world they're reserved, ist ist
istiff upper lip and so on, and we're ist ist istupid enough to believe."
Gibreel listened to this collection of prejudices with what seemed like
complete assent, irritating Allie profoundly. Were these generalizations really
all they saw of England? "No," Sisodia conceded with a shameless
smile. "But it feels googood to let this ist ist istuff out."

           
By the time the Maudsley people felt able to recommend a major reduction in
Gibreel's dosages, Sisodia had become so much a fixture at his bedside, a sort
of unofficial, eccentric and amusing layabout cousin, that when he sprung his
trap Gibreel and Allie were taken completely by surprise.

           
* * * * *

           
He had been in touch with colleagues in Bombay: the seven producers whom
Gibreel had left in the lurch when he boarded Air India's Flight 420,
Bostan
.
"All are eel, elated by the news of your survival," he informed
Gibreel. "Unf unf unfortunately, question of breach of contract
ararises." Various other parties were also interested in suing the
renascent Farishta for plenty, in particular a starlet named Pimple Billimoria,
who alleged loss of earnings and professional damage. "Could urn amount to
curcrores," Sisodia said, looking lugubrious. Allie was angry. "You
stirred up this hornets' nest," she said. "I should have known: you
were too good to be true."

           
Sisodia became agitated. "Damn damn damn."

           
"Ladies present," Gibreel, still a little drug-woozy, warned; but
Sisodia windmilled his arms, indicating that he was trying to force words past
his overexcited teeth. Finally: "Damage limitation. My intention. Not
betrayal, you mumust not thithithink."

           
To hear Sisodia tell it, nobody back in Bombay really wanted to sue Gibreel, to
kill in court the goose that laid the golden eggs. All parties recognized that
the old projects were no longer capable of being restarted: actors, directors,
key crew members, even sound stages were otherwise committed. All parties
further recognized that Gibreel's return from the dead was an item of a
commercial value greater than any of the defunct films; the question was how to
utilize it best, to the advantage of all concerned. His landing up in London
also suggested the possibility of an international connection, maybe overseas
funding, use of non-Indian locations, participation of stars "from
foreign", etc.: in short, it was time for Gibreel to emerge from
retirement and face the cameras again. "There is no chochoice,"
Sisodia explained to Gibreel, who sat up in bed trying to clear his head.
"If you refuse, they will move against you
en bloc
, and not even
your four four fortune could suffice. Bankruptcy, jajajail, funtoosh."

           
Sisodia had talked himself into the hot seat: all the principals had agreed to
grant him executive powers in the matter, and he had put together quite a
package. The British-based entrepreneur Billy Battuta was eager to invest both
in sterling and in "blocked rupees", the non-repatriable profits made
by various British film distributors in the Indian subcontinent, which Battuta
had taken over in return for cash payments in negotiable currencies at a
knockdown (37-point discount) rate. All the Indian producers would chip in, and
Miss Pimple Billimoria, to guarantee her silence, was to be offered a showcase
supporting role featuring at least two dance numbers. Filming would be spread
between three continents―Europe, India, the North African coast. Gibreel
got above-the-title billing, and three percentage points of producers' net
profits . . . "Ten," Gibreel interrupted, "against two of the
gross." His mind was obviously clearing. Sisodia didn't bat an eyelid.
"Ten against two," he agreed. "Pre-publicity campaign to be as
fofollows . . ."