Grimus

by Salman Rushdie

  —The odds do seem to be just slightly against me, said Flapping Eagle.

  —About a hundred to one, said Virgil. And even if you get through … Grimus can be a very persuasive man.

  —Where’s the Gate? asked Flapping Eagle mechanically.

  —Ah yes, the Gate. Now that will involve escaping the mob. And climbing a little further. As far as, as far as, Liv. The black house, you know.

  His voice trailed away lamely.

  —I know, said Flapping Eagle. I met her. She sends you her regards.

  Virgil jerked himself out of an incipient reverie.

  —Met her? he said. Are you quite sure?

  —No, said Flapping Eagle. She wore a black veil. From head to foot.

  —That’s her, said Virgil. That’s Liv.

  Flapping Eagle looked around the room. Creeping plants on the wall. Creeping spider on the ceiling. It was probably one of the last rooms he would ever see. Facing this, he discovered he didn’t particularly mind. He was a spent force now, Virgil’s tool, no more. Before coming to Calf Island, he had felt a suicidal urge born of desperation. He was not desperate now; he simply saw no particular value in remaining alive.

  —Ah well, said Virgil Jones. It will be, ah, pleasant to see Liv again.

  LI

  —BY ALL MEANS, said Jocasta. Go, by all means.

  Virgil stood before her like an errant schoolboy, wringing his hands, opening and shutting his mouth as though eternally on the verge of producing an acceptable explanation of his misdeeds.

  —Go, repeated Jocasta. If the things we have done for you, the things I have done, mean so little, then please go at once. Go back to her. She’ll shred you into tiny pieces, that one. This time there will be nothing left for me to patch up. She sits up there and spins her webs and of course you walk right in. Go, go, be done with it, if you have the urge to wound yourself, I will not stop you any more. Perhaps you are a fool. Perhaps you are mad. It is mad, to go back, after the shame she brought upon you, but go. I will not stand in your way.

  —I have to, Jocasta, said Virgil, distressed. I must show Flapping Eagle the Gate.

  —Flapping Eagle! she cried. Who returned your kindness with betrayal. Who returned my kindness by intoxicating Media. Who has brought nothing but trouble to all who took him in. You’ll do anything for him.

  Virgil Jones said in a very quiet voice:

  —It is Flapping Eagle who is doing this for me.

  —All of you, burst Jocasta. Go, all of you. Leave me to my House again.

  Elfrida Gribb in white lace, her face veiled, a fly crawling unhindered across the veil, standing at the window, carvings to her right, mountain at her back, Flapping Eagle at her left, disaster staring her in the face.

  —You will not go, she said. You cannot, after what I did. I love you, Flapping Eagle. My place is at your side.

  He closed his eyes and hardened his voice as much as he could.

  —I loved you, he said.

  Her eyes turned to stone, green marbles of blindness.

  —Loved. The word was not a question. It was a bleak statement.

  —Everything has changed, he said miserably. I must go.

  —A whore, she said. You think I’m a whore. I do not talk to whores. You and her. You planned this, to make me love you, to make me jealous, to ruin me.

  —No, he said.

  —Whore. Elfrida the whore. Yes, why not. Yes, why not. If my love thinks me a whore, I must live up to his idea of me. Yes, why not. I shall be a whore and earn my keep. Yes, why not, why not.

  Why not, thought Flapping Eagle, was the phrase of the moment.

  Media, eavesdropping, heard the interchange; and was delighted.

  In the kitchen of the House of the Rising Son, amid the desolate pots and pans, the man called Stone ate, the only guest of the night, the one who could not be turned away. Virgil Jones saw him, and the escape was planned.

  Flapping Eagle left the house by the side door and crawled out on to the Cobble-way, decrepit as his borrowed clothes, stained as the houses, dusty as the streets, and began to count the cobblestones. He greeted them like old friends. Slowly, tattered hat pulled low over stooping face, he made his way down the night road, pail in one hand, cloth in the other, on his knees, mumbling, polishing.

  Madame Jocasta lay in her bed, shut into her room, refusing to know what was happening in her house. Media had volunteered to keep the pebble-cleaner occupied, even though it was a breach of House rules; and while Jocasta turned her face to the wall, Media used every scrap of experience at her command to ensnare Stone, her first man in an eternity, long enough for Flapping Eagle to make good his slow, painfully deliberate escape.

  Just before dawn, Virgil Jones left the brothel, bowler hat on head, watchless chain around his waist, humming innocently to himself. The mob had dispersed to its bed, for the most part; but the implacable Peckenpaw sat bearlike on the front doorstep. He looked at Virgil angrily, but let him pass. Virgil went humming up the street, and was interested to notice that it bore no crawling figure. Flapping Eagle had either been discovered or had reached his goal.

  At the far end of the Cobble-way, at the point where the town of K yielded to the resurgent slopes of Calf Mountain, the forest regained its supremacy. Thick vegetation concealed the narrow path, more suited to donkeys than men, which led up to the last habitable point, the rock on which Liv’s house stood and looked down on K. Here, in the forest, Virgil and Flapping Eagle made their rendezvous.

  —Just like old times, said Virgil Jones.

  Media, gone. Flapping Eagle’s absence was a relief. Virgil’s absence she had fortified herself to expect. But to find a man, and a wretched man at that, in Media’s bed, and her nowhere to be seen, was almost more than Jocasta could bear. Media, poor, infatuated Media, Media of all her girls.

  Gone, but where? To follow Virgil and Eagle, but how far? And had they asked her, and did they want her, and would she come back cowed and crawling and beg forgiveness? Jocasta wanted to think so but she, too, remembered Liv; and she knew Media would not return, not if she could help it, not if she could…

  Jocasta walked out into the corridor, silent as it was, and was hit by the third blink there, alone.

  She gasped when it passed and leant against a wall. Elfrida Gribb came out of her room, tight-faced, controlled.

  And put an arm around her.

  —Madame, she said. I should like to stay. To stay … and work.

  Jocasta looked at her vacantly. Anything was possible now.

  —Since we have a sudden vacancy, she said, you’re hired.

  The two bereaved women stayed there a moment, clutching each other; and then Jocasta, eyes red-rimmed, went down to the front door. Peckenpaw stood as she opened it.

  —The House of the Rising Son is open for business, said Madame Jocasta.

  It was morning.

  LII

  NICHOLAS DEGGLE WAS sitting in the rocking-chair among the early chickens, as he had become accustomed to doing. He was thinking about the blinks.

  Mrs O’Toole had apparently been entirely unaware of them. Perhaps her wayward mind simply denied their existence, as it denied the evidence of her eyes and enabled her to see and hear him as Virgil Jones. Nothing changes.

  But, thought Deggle with a tinge of fear, there was another explanation. Grimus. Grimus had acquired this new, devastating power and was trying to get rid of him. Perhaps Deggle had been the only one affected.

  Nicholas Deggle rocked between impotence and paranoia, back and forth. Dolores O’Toole came out of the hut holding a knife. Time to assassinate another chicken.

  Dolores sat down on the ground. With the knife in her right hand, and with intense concentration, she slit the vein in her left wrist. Then she transferred the knife to that hand and set about slashing the right wrist, equally methodically. Only now did Deggle emerge from his shock and lunge at the knife. She avoided his grasp and held the blade against her neck.

  —What d
o you think you’re doing, for godsake? he cried.

  —Every night since we made love, she said. Every night you have refused me. It is obvious, Virgil, that you despise my body. I can’t live with you hating me so.

  Blood spurted on to the ground, creating small specks of red mud.

  What does one do to stop a vein bleeding? Deggle looked around him helplessly. —Bandages, he said aloud.

  —Leave me alone, she said, and began to sing, weakly.

  Whitebeard is all my joy

  and whitebeard is my desire, she sang.

  Nicholas Deggle pulled his shirt off, over his head. When he could see again, Dolores lay prone on the ground, a second, red mouth grinning bloodily from ear to ear, beneath her chin. She had finished what she set out to do.

  Deggle, bare-chested, shirt in hand, watched the blood until it ceased to flow. This thought crossed his mind:

  —It is I who will be alone.

  The rocking-chair rocked in the early morning breeze.

  LIII

  THE GORF, BEING determined to see Calf Island through to the end, had taken refuge from Virgil Jones’ successful accusations in the ever stimulating spectator sport of observing other people’s lives.

  Gorfs, though their bodies move only with great difficulty, can transport themselves instantly from place to place by a process of physical disintegration and reintegration, supervised by their disembodied Selves. Thus the Gorf had eavesdropped with Elfrida at the Elbaroom and sat in her garden watching as she and Irina and Flapping Eagle took turns upon the swing. He had peered through the windows of the Rising Son and watched the travellers depart. He had been intrigued by the blinks and a dispassionate witness to the suicide of Dolores O’Toole.

  Now, awaiting the Final Ordering, he returned constantly to the contemplation of the basic anagram which had given rise to so much of the essence of Calf Island— the Re-Ordering which could be made of the name Grimus.

  This anagram was Simurg.

  The Gorf looked forward to the imminent clash of the Eagle, prince of earthly birds, and the Simurg, bird of paradise, wielder of the Stone Rose. He found it very pleasing that the names should contain these primordial symbols. It added spice.

  PART THREE

  GRIMUS

  LIV

  IT WAS DARK inside the small blackwashed house, a dark chill quiet. Shadows stood everywhere, insubstantial guards over the unseen ugliness. Outside, the shrouds of Calf Mountain’s summit hung over the house like a second, thundery ceiling, shielding it from the pale, mist-weak sunlight lying over the plains beneath. Liv’s home, blind and without foundation, stood blankly on the cheerless outcrop, its door firmly shut, the only sign of life a single donkey, tethered to the last tree of the climbing forest, munching at the forest’s long grass. A bird shrieked.

  The unseen ugliness. Behind the shuttered windows lay a scene of cosmic chaos, the debris of a life wrestling and vying for floor-space. Dust lay thickly over the scattered books and plates. A piece of bread, invisible behind its crust of mould, lay on a broken hand-mirror and a spider etched its web between the two. Cloth, paper and crumb alike succumbed to the encasing envelope of dirt. And above the strewn floor, the carvings glared. Carvings which made their ancestors at the Rising Son seem, by comparison, effusions of beauty and joy. The vile, twisted shapes, faces, bodies, truncated limbs, nightmare landscapes, spoke of a deepening passion in their maker, a deepening slough of loathing. If the carver merely extracts from his raw materials the shapes that already lie within it, then the wood must have been made by demons, to contain such hideous forms.

  The interior of the small black house was a single room. Hens sat miserably in cages on a shelf. There was a chair, and a bed. And here was a surprise: for these two pieces were as perfectly clean as the rest of the house was filthy. They were dusted and cared for and the bedclothes were washed. They were pieces from another world.

  A shadow sat unmoving in the chair.

  To re-enter the forested slopes was to relinquish all illusions of normality, to shake off the air of the town, insanely mundane, mundanely insane. The green light of the trees was a kind of purifier for them both. Here Flapping Eagle felt once more the tangible mystery of the mountain and was cleansed of the webs of his own self-deceit. The mountain would not be ignored. Virgil, too, was in good heart, dragging corpulence and corns uncomplainingly up the steep incline, grasping hummocks of earth and tufts of grass to ease his ascent. The air was alive with the hum of insects and the esoteric messages of birds in flight.

  —Magister pene monstrat, Virgil Jones quoted, out of nowhere.

  They were resting for a moment. Flapping Eagle was obliged to ask for clarification.

  —At school, said Virgil Jones in half-embarrassed recollection. An irritating young twerp chalked that up on the blackboard before the lesson. As a joke. The magister in question took it very well. Simply asked why the word penis was in the Ablative rather than the Accusative. Whereupon the young twerp, showing a degree of nerve, stood up and said: —Please sir, it’s the Ablative of the End in View.

  They resumed their climb. The excitement of the end in view, whatever it might prove to be, had invaded and conquered them both. If the Mountain was to win, Flapping Eagle told himself, at least it would have to fight for its victory. In the excitement of anticipation, he didn’t pause to reflect that he knew few of the rules of the battle or of the purposes of his adversary. He was in it now: that was all that mattered.

  The scar on his chest itched.

  He noticed that Virgil Jones’ fingers, when they were not holding on to clumps of grass, were tightly crossed.

  A little way behind them, the secret figure of Media followed, keeping her distance, keeping in touch. They didn’t hear her, because they didn’t expect to be followed. The mind-whine of the Effect, not so much a sound as a feeling, was stronger now, but in their separate ways they were all defended against it: Media by her new obsession, Virgil by his old paralysis, Flapping Eagle by his recent conquest of the fever.

  The shadow sat unmoving in the chair and heard the movements outside. Eventually, it would move. Eventually, it would be time to look at the book under the pillow. Eventually, it would be time to wring a pullet’s neck, and eat. Eventually, the movements would have to be investigated. But not for the moment. For the moment, sitting here in the dark was enough.

  Liv sat like this a great deal, still, stone, statue.

  It was cold on the outcrop, cold and damp. The day had moved into late afternoon. Flapping Eagle stood by Liv’s donkey, patting it idly, watching Virgil Jones behaving like a schoolboy on a treasure hunt.

  (—No, he had said, let’s not bother to see her. Let’s get it done.)

  Sixteen paces forward from the edge of the clearing. He turned right. Sixteen paces right. He stopped. The black house was behind him, impassive. —Here, said Virgil Jones. It should be here.

  Flapping Eagle closed his eyes and controlled the wild rushing inside him. It was time. He walked across to Virgil, whose tongue flickered in an agony of tension, the blind guide. Being paralysed by the Rose, he could not himself know if it was the right spot. Flapping Eagle had to be the guinea-pig.

  —If you stand where I am standing, said Virgil, and concentrate upon the Gate, you should find it. He moved three paces to his left and crossed his fingers anxiously.

  Flapping Eagle lunged forwards suddenly and stood upon the spot.

  Again, he closed his eyes.

  The Gate, he thought fiercely. This is the Gate. I am passing through the Gate. This is the Gate. I am passing through. This is the Gate…

  Over and over, building power in himself as Virgil had instructed, waiting for the Outer Dimensions to claim him and carry him to Grimus.

  Was that a change in climate? Was there a breeze where there had been none before? Did the ground feel strange beneath his feet? Cast out those thoughts, they are a distraction. Concentrate, concentrate. The Gate and I am passing through.

&n
bsp; Nothing happened.

  Virgil’s voice, calling: —Think on the Rose. You’re going to the Rose.

  A rose made out of stone. It is coming to me, I can hold it in my hand. I am going to hold the rose, hold the rose, hold the rose…

  Nothing.

  He opened his eyes. Virgil was staring at him in anguish.

  —What is it? he cried. Is it Grimus? Is he fighting you? Can’t you get through? Will, will. That’s the thing. Where there’s a will, there’s a Way.

  —Virgil, said Flapping Eagle quietly. This isn’t the Gate.

  —Of course it is, said Virgil. Of course. It always was. I wouldn’t forget.

  —There was nothing here, said Flapping Eagle in an empty voice.

  —You didn’t feel the, the power? asked Virgil. Flapping Eagle shook his head. —didn’t you have a sense of being about to be … transported? asked Virgil. Again, Flapping Eagle shook his head. He felt drained, voided by the anticlimax.

  Virgil Jones subsided to the hard ground and buried his head in his hands.

  —He’s moved it,

  The words came from him like an echo from a hollow cave. Flapping Eagle knew it was the end. They had failed before they had even begun. Bitterness flooded over him.

  —didn’t you know? he asked. didn’t you know he could move the Gate?

  Virgil looked up, hearing the tinge of frustrated scorn.

  —In theory, he said. Yes, in theory. But in practice … He must have become infinitely more expert. It took so much hardship to build. So much pain. It isn’t an easy thing, you know. Wasn’t. I didn’t think he would have.

  —You didn’t think, said Flapping Eagle, adrenalin forcing the insult to his lips. Virgil looked at him, and his eyes were the eyes of a beaten man.

  —We’ll find it, he said blankly. Can’t have gone far. Don’t believe he’s that expert. Just have to nose around a bit. It’s here all right. We’ll find it.