Grimus

by Salman Rushdie

  Virgil Jones was staring at him.

  —Why did you cry out? he asked.

  —Whatever do you mean? asked Flapping Eagle.

  —You didn’t hear yourself?

  —I most certainly did not, said Flapping Eagle, annoyed. Is this a joke?

  —No, no, I assure you, said Mr Jones. Tell me, can you hear anything at all? A kind of high-pitched whistle?

  —Yes … said Flapping Eagle, alarm growing.

  —Right, said Virgil Jones. I’m afraid my hearing, like my eyesight, is somewhat diminished, particularly in the upper registers. The fact is, we are entering the zone of the Effect. It now becomes of vital importance that we talk to each other.

  —What Effect? asked Flapping Eagle. And why talk?

  —About anything except the Effect, said Virgil Jones. Now is no time for explanations. Please do as I say. Silence could prove very dangerous.

  Flapping Eagle bit back a flurry of questions and decided to go along with Mr Jones’ advice.

  —Dolores, he said. Will she be all right?

  —I hope so, said Mr Jones. I surely hope so.

  A brief silence: then Mr Jones burst into speech.

  —Did you ever hear the story of how a prostitute once started a civil war in your country? Polly Adams was her name…

  But Flapping Eagle’s mind had wandered. He was thinking of Bird-Dog, of Mr Jones’ motives, of the dense wood in which they were lost, of the whine in his ears, the whine in his ears, the whine in his ears, and it grew louder and louder…

  Virgil Jones was shouting into his ear:

  —A riddle, Mr Eagle. Think about this: Why does an Irishman wear three prophylactics?

  Weakness, illness. Both alien things to Flapping Eagle, both now rushing towards and over him like the wave that brought him to Calf Island. That same sensation of puzzled abstraction which he’d felt before passing out on his boat was creeping upon him once more. His legs wobbled; standing became harder and harder, climbing impossible. He came to a halt. His forehead blazed. The whine grew louder still and louder.

  —I don’t know, Mr Jones, he said feebly. Why does an Irishman wear three….

  Something was distorting his sight. Virgil seemed a mile away; his arm came stretching across light-years like a long, snaking tentacle. Flapping Eagle shied away, instinctively, and fell over. He felt a chill in his bones. His forehead was icy now. The whine now practically deafened him to Virgil’s bellowing voice.

  —Don’t worry, Virgil was shouting. Just a touch of Dimension-fever, that’s all. We’ll soon get you better … the words echoed and faded.

  Dimension-fever: what was that? Flapping Eagle felt a rage at having been kept in ignorance, and his eyes seemed to clear. He saw a solicitous Virgil Jones leaning over him.

  —It’s worse in the dark, Virgil was shouting. I’ll get you to a clearing. Try and concentrate on my voice. I’ll talk all the way. Daylight helps: chases away the monsters.

  —Monsters … said Flapping Eagle faintly.

  —They come from inside you, said Virgil Jones. Inside you … (His voice, fading, diminishing.)

  Confusion returned to Flapping Eagle. Again the distorted vision.

  —Can’t explain, Virgil yelled down a long tunnel. To live through it is to understand it. Listen to my voice. Listen only to my voice.

  Fear enveloped Flapping Eagle, the fear of a healthy man for an inexplicable disease. He felt his convictions slipping from him; what was he doing here, anyway? What kind of devilry had seized him? Why had he not simply killed himself when he had the chance? Perhaps, after all, he was dead. Yes, he was dead. He had drowned in the boat and this was hell and Virgil Jones was a demon and this was some infernal torture. Yes, he was dead.

  O, I remember, I remember: I was Flapping Eagle. As the unknowable swept over me, I went all but mad. Hallucinations … I thought they were hallucinations at first, but gradually they gained the certitude of absolute reality and it was the voice of Virgil Jones that came drifting to me like a dream. The world had turned upside down; I was climbing a mountain into the depths of an inferno, plunging deep into myself.

  The scene I saw seemed to freeze; it went through a myriad transmutations, in which colours altered, the trees became moving creatures, the ground became liquid and the sky solid, grass spoke and flowers played music. In some of these transformations Virgil Jones was not there at all; in others he was a huge suppurating monster. In others he was dead. In others I could hear his voice speaking to me, pouring words of comfort and advice into my ear. It was a baptism of fire.

  Virgil Jones and I: a strange pair of bedfellows. He a burnt-out man, the shell of his past, secure in the knowledge of some great failure; I an incomplete man, looking for the knowledge of dying which would finish me, seeking my face in the eye of death. For a reason I did not understand until much later, he loved me like a son, like the last of his living sons; and once I recovered from the fever, I loved him too, though I loved him badly and not enough. He nursed me then, dragging me to a clearing, rubbery and sluggish as I was, talking, talking to distract my mind from the depredations of the Effect. In the dark, before we reached the clearing, he was lost to me. In the clearing, his voice gave me some strength. Until he came to get me.

  Virgil Jones: a soul without a future helping me to mine, leaving behind him Dolores, his sorrow and love, heading for places long-since fled. A brave man.

  To live through the fever of the Dimensions is to abandon the question Why? And yet, before the end, I had an answer to all the unanswered whys, and a few unasked ones as well.

  As Virgil Jones dragged Flapping Eagle to the clearing, he said:

  —O dear, my friend. I wish it didn’t have to be you. Grimus used to say a man would either lose or find himself in these woods. That is the difference between myself and yourself. I can only lose.

  Mr Eagle, you are not a realized man. That is your weakness and also your power. Before one realizes oneself one has the optimism of ignorance. It can be the saving of one’s life. Once realized, one faces the terror of knowing what it is you are and have done … the realized man can have a profound effect on the world about him; he must bear the consequences, and guilt, of that as well….

  Finally, in the clearing, he sat down, placed Flapping Eagle’s head on his lap, and answered his own riddle, abstractedly:

  —An Irishman wears three prophylactics to be sure, to be sure, to be sure.

  To himself he thought:

  Now, Mr Jones, we shall see if you are capable of being a guide.

  XX

  BIRD-DOG SAID, brandishing a bone:

  —Look, little brother. Look. Here’s a bone for you. Good dog. It’s a very special bone. The Bone of K. Take it. Come and bury it.

  —Bird-Dog, said Flapping Eagle, slowly. Is it you?

  She stood mockingly upon a rock, stamping her right foot as she turned in a slow circle. She tossed him the bone. It fell unerringly into his hand; a rose grew from a crack in it. He stuffed it into his trousers.

  She was lying mockingly upon the rock, pulling her raggedy skirt up to her waist and spreading her legs, arching her back.

  —Come in, little brother, she said. Come and bury it.

  He crawled towards her, weakly, and the nearer he came, the larger she grew. A hundred yards away and she was already as large as a horse. The hole between her legs yawned; its hairs were like ropes. Ten yards away. She was a house, a cavern lying red and palpitating before him, the curtain of hair parting. He heard her booming voice.

  —Why resist, she was saying. Give up, little brother. Come in. Give up. Come in. Give up.

  He crawled into the cavern. The curtain fell into place behind him, cutting off all light.

  Inside … a dark reddish glow. There she was again, fleet Bird-Dog, racing away into her own depths, squealing with childish delight.

  —Silly little brother, can’t catch me, she cried and vanished around a corner. He was not yet strong enough to chase. He
stood up.

  And heard the voice of Virgil Jones.

  —The trouble with Grimus, the voice said, is he can’t control the Effect. Its field grows stronger and stronger. You’ll have to get used to it gradually. Control your thoughts. Slowly. Softlee softlee catchee monkee. The inner dimensions are lonely places. We create our own, so to speak. Frightening, that: each man his own universe. Imagine the effect. Men go mad. That’s the tragedy of K. They’re all scared of their own minds. I was, myself, once, but there’s not much of it left now. Like old Father William, eh? Small pleasantry. May I interest you in a theory? Fellow in K, You’ll meet him, calls himself a philosopher, Ignatius Gribb, Ignatius Q. Gribb. Q for Quasimodo. I. Q. Gribb, you see, never knew if it was his idea of a joke or his parents’, the initials. He used to say: —there are no human beings alive. What we all are is Shells, and hovering around in the ether are what he called Forms. Things like emotions, reasons and so forth. They occupy one of us for a while, then another one moves in. It’s pretty in its fashion. Explains the illogicality of some human actions. Shifts of character and so forth It’s completely exploded by the dimensions, of course. The one thing that stays constant in the shifts between the dimensions is one’s own consciousness. But then Mr Gribb tries very hard to ignore the dimensions. They’re a frightening thing. Cultivate your consciousness, Mr Eagle, that’s the way out. There’s always a way. Where there’s a will. Only control you have.

  The voice faded away again.

  Flapping Eagle took a deep breath, closed his eyes, opened his eyes and tried to establish his whereabouts. It was like standing in foam. Springy, his feet subsided into it. Soft wet reddish foam.

  Red: that meant light. If there was colour, there was light, but he could see no light-source. Yet there was light, dim, diffuse, but light. He gave up the search.

  He turned to look behind him, at the entrance. It was no longer there. A brief moment of claustrophobia, then calm, despite the ancient saying that grew in his head and took words for itself: Jonah in the belly of the whale.

  The survival instinct lies buried deep in soft civilizations; in the peripatetic Flapping Eagle, it lay very near the surface, if somewhat weakened by his knowledge of his immortality. Now, when he was plunged into a world his senses told him could not exist, but which they also told him did exist, this instinct took him over. It did so in a very physical way. He could perceive a thing which was entirely himself but also not-himself assuming command of his faculties and gritting his teeth for him. It was a simple but overwhelming self-command to survive this. He was astonished and a little pleased at the strength of his own will. In extremis veritas.

  WHERE THERE’S A WILL. The realization of his own power, of Virgil Jones’ meaning, dawned on him. Here was his way out, if his resolve was strong enough.

  He began to practise. At his first attempt, a rose grew from the floor of the Place. (He could not think of it as his sister’s insides, especially as he had seen her disappearing down the fleshy corridor.) The rose died almost at once. He thought about this, and a second rose grew. It showed no signs of dying.

  He looked at the floor, and it became solid. A carpet covered it, hand-woven in silk, with an Eye embroidered into the very centre. He used the eye to make windows. It glared at the red walls and they fell into order.

  It was really quite an elegant room, even if the walls were a livid red. He felt almost proud of himself.

  Outside the windows, Calf Mountain was beginning to form. He got as far as seeing the clearing, the forest around it, and even caught a glimpse of Virgil Jones, who seemed to come right up to one of the windows until his fleshy face filled it. There was a door in the wall, ebony-handled; all he had to do was open it and walk out and he would be well. Controlling the Dimensions was easy, if you knew what you were doing, he told himself cockily. He rather fancied he saw a look of respect in Mr Jones’ eyes.

  The Gorf was feeling disappointed. He had locked himself to Flapping Eagle’s self, using the parasitic technique by which Gorfs communicated, and had fully expected a long, delectable time of Endimions-shuffling, which was the next best thing he knew to the Divine Game. But here was Flapping Eagle displaying an exceptional capacity for controlling the Endimions.

  The Gorf decided to take a hand. After all, the Final Ordering of the island could wait a little longer—-Flapping Eagle found the room dissolving as he reached for the door-handle. The shock wrecked his new-found confidence. The darkness descended. He was, for a moment, blind and giddy. The world seemed to spin rapidly. When his head cleared, the Abyssinians were squatting in front of him.

  XXI

  THE DANCE HAS had many functions. It has been a social icebreaker and a ritual cloudbreaker. It has been a mark of passion and a sign of hate. Stars have danced in young girls’ eyes and death has danced with its unwilling family. Today, in the hollow of a wood, with the green light of the leaves playing about his face, stark naked, a grim-faced fat man called Virgil Jones was dancing for the life of his new friend.

  —Friend: he had repeated the word to himself a million times, he had whispered it into the ear of the unconscious Eagle to give him strength.

  —You are the straw, Flapping Eagle, he had said, and I am the drowning man.

  Last chances, like first chances, come only once. Virgil Jones was convinced that his last chance was upon him, A last chance to do, to help, to expiate the guilt and the uselessness that lay within him, rusting his insides; a chance to save instead of ruining.

  A man who lives in tolerable comfort amidst extreme poverty learns in the end not to see the quagmire of hopelessness. It is a survival mechanism. In just the same way, Virgil Jones had shut out his past from his mind. He had come down the mountain and forgotten the blank terrors he had fled. They were still there, locked in his head, but he did not see them.

  Now, for Flapping Eagle’s sake, he unlocked the prison and like Pandora’s uncontrollable sprites his memory came flooding out, grating painfully upon him as it emerged. He had forgotten the pain. So much had been numb for so long.

  At first he had thought Flapping Eagle might have been strong enough, had been hardened enough by his long journeys to survive the Dimensions unaided. (But then he had forgotten their devastating power.) And for a moment Flapping Eagle’s eyes had sparked—he had almost pulled his mind away from itself. But he hadn’t been strong enough; and now there was only one thing to do.

  Virgil Jones had to go in there, into the dimensions of another man’s mind, more dangerous even than one’s own, and guide him out. The alternative was a foregone conclusion. Flapping Eagle’s mind would overheat and in the end it would burn out, perhaps beyond all saving. As Virgil Jones’ mind had nearly destroyed itself. The worm biting its own tail would finally swallow itself.

  Because the worlds that Calf Mountain and its Effect unleashed inside the head were not phantoms. They were solid. They could hit and hurt.

  Virgil Jones had sat for an age, running his thoughts over the agonies of his past, when he had travelled the Dimensions, before the Effect had become too huge for him to handle, trying to clutch at the knowledge he needed. He knew that he had known it; that somewhere on his travels he had met—who?—someone—that knew the technique for locking on to the mind of another living being.

  Virgil Jones had not told Flapping Eagle about his own travels. In his day he had rejoiced in those interdimensional trips. There had been the voyages to the real, physical, alternative space-time continua. So close, yet such an eternity away. And there had been his own annihilating journey into the Inner Dimensions, like the internal inferno which now clutched Flapping Eagle, which had left him hollow and impotent and lucky to be alive. And there was the third kind.

  The bridge between the first two kinds.

  With sufficient imagination, Virgil Jones had found, one could create worlds, physical, external worlds, neither aspects of oneself nor a palimpsest-universe.

  Fictions where a man could live.

  In
those days, Mr Jones had been a highly imaginative man.

  He fought his way past the unbearable memory of his breakdown, when the power became a monster which turned upon him and seared his mind, and came to the good times. He smiled. What worlds he had visited! What things he had learned! He recalled with admiration the sexual techniques of the Ydjac, the instinct-logic of the plant-geniuses of Poli XI, the tonal sculpture of the Aurelions. The pain was gone now; he was past the block, excavating his own history with the pleasure of the genuine archaeologist. And so he came, eventually, to the time he visited the Spiral Dancers.

  Certain kinds of science aspire to the condition of poetry; and on the planet of the Spiral Dancers, a long tradition of scientist-poets had elevated a branch of physics until it became a high symbolist religion. They had probed matter, dividing it into ever-smaller units, until they found at its very roots the pure, beautiful dance of life. This was a harmony of the infinitesimal, where energy and matter moved like fluids. Energy forces came gracefully together to create at their point of union a pinch which was matter. The pinches came together into larger pinches; or else fell away again into pure energy, according to the rules of a highly formal, spiral rhythm. When they came together, they were dancing the Strong-dance. When they fell back into the Primal, they were dancing the Weakdance.

  From this discovery came the religion of Spiral Unity. If everything was energy, everything was the same. A thinking being and a table were only aspects of the same force. It had been proven scientifically.

  The main ritual of the religion, which was only established after generations of poet-scientists worked on applications of the Theory, was the Spiral Dance. It was a physical exercise based on the primal rhythms, and its purpose was to enable every humble, imperfect living thing to aspire to that fundamental perfection. Dance the Dance, and you would commune with the Oneness surrounding you on all sides.

  Virgil Jones stood up.

  He removed his old dark jacket. And his old dark trousers. And his old dark waistcoat with the watchless gold chain.