The Satanic Verses (76 page)

           
Mirza Saeed saw Mishal, who was being supported by two of the village men,
because she was no longer strong enough to stand up by herself. Ayesha was
beside her, and Saeed had the idea that the prophetess had somehow stepped out
of the dying woman, that all the brightness of Mishal had hopped out of her
body and taken this mythological shape, leaving a husk behind to die. Then he
was angry with himself for allowing Ayesha's supernaturalism to infect him,
too.

           
The villagers of Titlipur had agreed to follow Ayesha after a long discussion
in which they had asked her not to take part. Their common sense told them that
it would be foolish to turn back when they had come so far and were in sight of
their first goal; but the new doubts in their minds sapped their strength. It
was as if they were emerging from some Shangri-La of Ayesha's making, because
now that they were simply walking behind her rather than following her in the
true sense, they seemed to age and sicken with every step they took. By the
time they saw the sea they were a lame, tottering, rheumy, feverish, red-eyed
bunch, and Mirza Saeed wondered how many of them would manage the final few
yards to the water's edge.

           
The butterflies were with them, high over their heads.

           
"What now, Ayesha?" Saeed called out to her, filled with the horrible
notion that his beloved wife might die here under the hoofs of ponies for rent
and beneath the eyes of sugarcane-juice vendors. "You have brought us all
to the edges of extinction, but here is an unquestionable fact: the sea. Where
is your angel now?"

           
She climbed up, with the villagers' help, on to an unused thela lying next to a
soft-drink stall, and didn't answer Saeed until she could look down at him from
her new perch. "Gibreel says the sea is like our souls. When we open them,
we can move through into wisdom. If we can open our hearts, we can open the
sea."

           
"Partition was quite a disaster here on land," he taunted her.
"Quite a few guys died, you might remember. You think it will be different
in the water?"

           
"Shh," said Ayesha suddenly. "The angel's almost here."

           
It was, on the face of it, surprising that after all the attention the march
had received the crowd at the beach was no better than moderate; but the
authorities had taken many precautions, closing roads, diverting traffic; so
there were perhaps two hundred gawpers on the beach. Nothing to worry about.

           
What
was
strange was that the spectators did not see the butterflies, or
what they did next. But Mirza Saeed clearly observed the great glowing cloud
fly out over the sea; pause; hover; and form itself into the shape of a colossal
being, a radiant giant constructed wholly of tiny beating wings, stretching
from horizon to horizon, filling the sky.

           
"The angel!" Ayesha called to the pilgrims. "Now you see! He's
been with us all the way. Do you believe me now?" Mirza Saeed saw absolute
faith return to the pilgrims. "Yes," they wept, begging her
forgiveness. "Gibreel! Gibreel! Ya Allah."

           
Mirza Saeed made his last effort. "Clouds take many shapes," he
shouted. "Elephants, film stars, anything. Look, it's changing even
now." But nobody paid any attention to him; they were watching, full of
amazement, as the butterflies dived into the sea.

           
The villagers were shouting and dancing for joy. "The parting! The
parting!" they cried. Bystanders called out to Mirza Saeed: "Hey,
mister, what are they getting so fired up about? We can't see anything going
on."

           
Ayesha had begun to walk towards the water, and Mishal was being dragged along
by her two helpers. Saeed ran to her and began to struggle with the village
men. "Let go of my wife. At once! Damn you! I am your zamindar. Release
her; remove your filthy hands!" But Mishal whispered: "They won't. Go
away, Saeed. You are closed. The sea only opens for those who are open."

           
"Mishal!" he screamed, but her feet were already wet.

           
Once Ayesha had entered the water the villagers began to run. Those who could
not leapt upon the backs of those who could. Holding their babies, the mothers
of Titlipur rushed into the sea; grandsons bore their grandmothers on their
shoulders and rushed into the waves. Within minutes the entire village was in
the water, splashing about, falling over, getting up, moving steadily forwards,
towards the horizon, never looking back to shore. Mirza Saeed was in the water,
too. "Come back," he beseeched his wife. "Nothing is happening;
come back."

           
At the water's edge stood Mrs. Qureishi, Osman, the Sarpanch, Sri Srinivas.
Mishal's mother was sobbing operatically: "O my baby, my baby. What will
become?" Osman said: "When it becomes clear that miracles don't
happen, they will turn back." "And the butterflies?" Srinivas
asked him, querulously. "What were they? An accident?"

           
It dawned on them that the villagers were not coming back. "They must be
nearly out of their depth," the Sarpanch said. "How many of them can
swim?" asked blubbering Mrs. Qureishi. "Swim?" shouted Srinivas.
"Since when can village folk swim?" They were all screaming at one
another as if they were miles apart, jumping from foot to foot, their bodies
willing them to enter the water, to do something. They looked as if they were
dancing on a fire. The incharge of the police squad that had been sent down for
crowd control purposes came up as Saeed came running out of the water.

           
"What is befalling?" the officer asked. "What is the
agitation?"

           
"Stop them," Mirza Saeed panted, pointing out to sea.

           
"Are they miscreants?" the policeman asked.

           
"They are going to die," Saeed replied.

           
It was too late. The villagers, whose heads could be seen bobbing about in the
distance, had reached the edge of the underwater shelf. Almost all together,
making no visible attempt to save themselves, they dropped beneath the water's
surface. In moments, every one of the Ayesha Pilgrims had sunk out of sight.

           
None of them reappeared. Not a single gasping head or thrashing arm.

           
Saeed, Osman, Srinivas, the Sarpanch, and even fat Mrs. Qureishi ran into the
water, shrieking: "God have mercy; come on, everybody, help."

           
Human beings in danger of drowning struggle against the water. It is against
human nature simply to walk forwards meekly until the sea swallows you up. But
Ayesha, Mishal Akhtar and the villagers of Titlipur subsided below sea-level;
and were never seen again.

           
Mrs. Qureishi was pulled to shore by policemen, her face blue, her lungs full
of water, and needed the kiss of life. Osman, Srinivas and the Sarpanch were
dragged out soon afterwards. Only Mirza Saeed Akhtar continued to dive, further
and further out to sea, staying under for longer and longer periods; until he,
too, was rescued from the Arabian Sea, spent, sick and fainting. The pilgrimage
was over.

           
Mirza Saeed awoke in a hospital ward to find a CID man by his bedside. The
authorities were considering the feasibility of charging the survivors of the
Ayesha expedition with attempted illegal emigration, and detectives had been
instructed to get down their stories before they had had a chance to confer.

           
This was the testimony of the Sarpanch of Titlipur, Muhammad Din: "Just
when my strength had failed and I thought I would surely die there in the
water, I saw it with my own eyes; I saw the sea divide, like hair being combed;
and they were all there, far away, walking away from me. She was there also, my
wife, Khadija, whom I loved."

           
This is what Osman the bullock-boy told the detectives, who had been badly
shaken by the Sarpanch's deposition: "At first I was in great fear of
drowning myself. Still, I was searching searching, mainly for her, Ayesha, whom
I knew from before her alteration. And just at the last, I saw it happen, the
marvellous thing. The water opened, and I saw them go along the oceanfloor, among
the dying fish."

           
Sri Srinivas, too, swore by the goddess Lakshmi that he had seen the parting of
the Arabian Sea; and by the time the detectives got to Mrs. Qureishi, they were
utterly unnerved, because they knew that it was impossible for the men to have
cooked up the story together. Mishal's mother, the wife of the great banker,
told the same story in her own words. "Believe don't believe," she
finished emphatically, "but what my eyes have seen my tongue
repeats."

           
Goosepimply CID men attempted the third degree: "Listen, Sarpanch, don't
shit from your mouth. So many were there, nobody saw these things. Already the
drowned bodies are floating to shore, swollen like balloons and stinking like
hell. If you go on lying we will take you and stick your nose in the
truth."

           
"You can show me whatever you want," Sarpanch Muhammad Din told his
interrogators. "But I still saw what I saw."

           
"And you?" the CID men assembled, once he awoke, to ask Mirza Saeed
Akhtar. "What did you see at the beach?"

           
"How can you ask?" he protested. "My wife has drowned. Don't
come hammering with your questions."

           
When he found out that he was the only survivor of the Ayesha Haj not to have
witnessed the parting of the waves―Sri Srinivas was the one who told him
what the others saw, adding mournfully: "It is our shame that we were not
thought worthy to accompany. On us, Sethji, the waters closed, they slammed in
our faces like the gates of Paradise"―Mirza Saeed broke down and
wept for a week and a day, the dry sobs continuing to shake his body long after
his tear ducts had run out of salt.

           
Then he went home.

           
* * * * *

           
Moths had eaten the punkahs of Peristan and the library had been consumed by a
billion hungry worms. When he turned on the taps, snakes oozed out instead of
water, and creepers had twined themselves around the four-poster bed in which
Viceroys had once slept. It was as if time had accelerated in his absence, and
centuries had somehow elapsed instead of months, so that when he touched the
giant Persian carpet rolled up in the ballroom it crumbled under his hand, and
the baths were full of frogs with scarlet eyes. At night there were jackals
howling on the wind. The great tree was dead, or close to death, and the fields
were barren as the desert; the gardens of Peristan, in which, long ago, he
first saw a beautiful young girl, had long ago yellowed into ugliness. Vultures
were the only birds in the sky.

           
He pulled a rocking-chair out on to his veranda, sat down, and rocked himself
gently to sleep.

           
Once, only once, he visited the tree. The village had crumbled into dust;
landless peasants and looters had tried to seize the abandoned land, but the
drought had driven them away. There had been no rain here. Mirza Saeed returned
to Peristan and padlocked the rusty gates. He was not interested in the fate of
his fellow-survivors; he went to the telephone and ripped it out of the wall.

           
After an uncounted passage of days it occurred to him that he was starving to
death, because he could smell his body reeking of nail-varnish remover; but as
he felt neither hungry nor thirsty, he decided there was no point bothering to
find food. For what? Much better to rock in this chair, and not think, not
think, not think.

           
On the last night of his life he heard a noise like a giant crushing a forest
beneath his feet, and smelled a stench like the giant's fart, and he realized
that the tree was burning. He got out of his chair and staggered dizzily down
to the garden to watch the fire, whose flames were consuming histories,
memories, genealogies, purifying the earth, and coming towards him to set him
free;―because the wind was blowing the fire towards the grounds of the
mansion, so soon enough, soon enough, it would be his turn. He saw the tree
explode into a thousand fragments, and the trunk crack, like a heart; then he
turned away and reeled towards the place in the garden where Ayesha had first
caught his eye;―and now he felt a slowness come upon him, a great
heaviness, and he lay down on the withered dust. Before his eyes closed he felt
something brushing at his lips, and saw the little cluster of butterflies
struggling to enter his mouth. Then the sea poured over him, and he was in the
water beside Ayesha, who had stepped miraculously out of his wife's body . ..
"Open," she was crying. "Open wide!" Tentacles of light
were flowing from her navel and he chopped at them, chopped, using the side of
his hand. "Open," she screamed. "You've come this far, now do
the rest."―How could he hear her voice?―They were under water,
lost in the roaring of the sea, but he could hear her clearly, they could all
hear her, that voice like a bell. "Open," she said. He closed.

           
He was a fortress with clanging gates.―He was drowning.―She was
drowning, too. He saw the water fill her mouth, heard it begin to gurgle into
her lungs. Then something within him refused that, made a different choice, and
at the instant that his heart broke, he opened.