The Satanic Verses (71 page)

           
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 cafe 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 Cafe.

           
* * * * *

           
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 cafe 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 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.