Quichotte

by Salman Rushdie

  He allowed it all to wash over him, the stuff of electronic life, the manifold whatness of the airwaves. He neither accepted nor rejected. He was not a judge. Even the coincidence of the Q of his pseudonym with the handle of the architect of QAnon was only of passing interest. He was passing the time in his preferred way and the time was passing. That was enough. He wasn’t interested in becoming analytical about reality. Reality was this room, this play of shadow and light, this waiting for the call.

  On the fourth day the call came.

  * * *

  —

  THERE WAS A TREE he was looking for, an old red oak. It stood a little distance away from the statue of Hans Christian Andersen contemplating (or being contemplated by) a duckling which was present for familiar literary reasons that need not detain us. Quichotte preferred—both preferred and was frightened by—the story about the shadow. Shadows were treacherous and cryptic counter-selves, and needed to be watched. (The shadow of Peter Pan had escaped at one point also, and had had to be caught and reattached to Peter’s feet by Wendy’s deft and careful needle.) He had kept half an eye on his own shadow throughout his quest, but so far, to his relief, it had showed no signs of acquiring an independent spirit, a malicious nature, or competitive romantic inclinations. In the golden shade of the autumnal tree, his shadow was banished, and so, with a flutter, a kaleidoscope of butterflies in his stomach, he waited; and while he waited, thought—of course—about television.

  Just as King Arthur had needed his Merlin, so also Quichotte had come to the park today to meet the wizard who would work the magic he needed. He hadn’t enjoyed the TV series about the youth of Merlin a few years ago. He was looking for an adult sorcerer today, not a callow boy who needed to grow up. Everyone wanted youth now. How tedious that was! Young Indiana Jones. Young Han Solo. Young Sherlock Holmes. Young Dumbledore. Any minute now there would be a mini-series about the young Methuselah. As an older person he wanted the trend to be reversed. How about Old Sex in the City? Old Friends? Old Girls? Old Gossip Girl? Old Housewives? Old Bachelors? How about old models on the runway? (Victoria, after all, had lived to be a very old queen, and no doubt still, in her old age, had her secrets.) Sure, The Golden Girls, okay. But that was just one show. How about Old Simpsons? How about an Old Fonz in Happy Days Got Older? He’d watch those shows. And America had an aging population, did it not? So, then. Time to stop pandering to empty-headed youth. Start pandering to the addle-brained elderly instead.

  The Wizard in the old show from the eighties had been a little person. The conjurer Quichotte was waiting for was scarcely a foot taller than its star, David Rappaport, had been. He kept his eyes peeled for this person, a small man of energetic disposition and a certain ethical vacuity: his cousin, the bearer of his destiny, Dr. R. K. Smile.

  Why was Quichotte so certain of what the day would bring? The answer was there for anyone to see who had eyes to see. It was the increasing number of spots dancing in his field of vision. Everyone had started seeing these spots now, but because of the infuriating ability of human beings to fail to understand what was right in front of their faces, explanations were being offered which were much more complicated than the truth.

  The eye condition which caused blind spots on the retina had long been known about, and had indeed for some time been the leading cause of blindness in Americans, but it was now—or so all the relevant authorities and respected journals proclaimed—attaining the status of a global epidemic, or even, to use the term beloved of writers, a plague. Plagues were mysterious in origin, random in their victims, and uncontrollable. They caused panic in the streets and required, often, the digging of mass graves in big cities. The Black Spot, as the new eye plague came to be known, did not appear to be fatal, although its consequences included a rising number of motor car accidents, which sometimes did lead to fatalities. There were also railway accidents in many countries, at a rate higher than the norm, most of them minor, but a few that were truly catastrophic. In addition, mistakes made by airline pilots during landing were reported from airports around the world. In countries where the expensive medication that could treat the plague was available, supplies ran short, even though the treatment—regular injections through the white of the eye to clear the retina—was one that many people were frightened to try, even though they knew that blindness was worse than a needle in the eye. The cause of the illness was the deterioration of the macula, the central part of the retina, which controlled human beings’ ability to read, drive, recognize faces and colors, and see objects in fine detail. Often there was also a leakage of blood onto the surface of the retina. However, eye specialists in many countries who were now fully occupied by the treatment of the surge of cases reported strange results. Tests on their patients showed no noticeable deterioration in the macula, nor had blood leaked onto the retinal surface. In fact, the patients’ eyes could in the majority of cases be said to be one hundred percent healthy. Yet the apparent effects of retinal decay were present in their vision. It was a medical mystery to which nobody could offer a plausible solution.

  This did not mean there were no theories on offer. The scientist-entrepreneur Evel Cent, chairman and CEO of the new-tech giant CentCorp, was insistently, even stridently, presenting his eschatological solution to anyone who would listen, but this was not, at first, thought to be plausible. The deterioration, he declared with great emphasis on all available media, was not taking place in the eyesight of the human race, but in the world. Not in the seeing thing but in the thing seen. He quoted, very often, the old sixties graffito, Do not adjust your mind, there is a fault in reality. There really was a fault in reality, and it was getting worse, and everyone needed to wake up and understand what was happening. The cosmos was crumbling. There was still time, with the support of world governments and the United Nations, to mass-produce the NEXT machines in sufficient quantity to rescue a high proportion of the human race by transporting them to a parallel Earth. He himself was prepared to invest his entire personal fortune and all of his time to the effort.

  Few people were convinced at first. Even his substantial fan base of admirers, some of whom were willing to go along with his scare tactics, mistrusted the NEXT machines, which, if built in the numbers Cent proposed, seemed more likely to cause a mass extermination of humanity than to transport them to a new Garden of Eden. His experiment with the Labrador Schrödinger persuaded few people, and many more considered it to be a put-up job. Anyone could say a dog had traveled to a “neighbor Earth” and returned in good health. The dog itself was unable to bear witness, and no visual evidence had been made public. So, for the moment, Evel Cent was a voice crying in the wilderness, heard by many, believed by almost none.

  Quichotte believed him. Ever since he began his quest he had known that preparing himself for love, making himself worthy of the Beloved, also necessitated readying oneself for an ending, because after perfection was attained there was only oblivion to look forward to. These manifestations, erroneously characterized as symptoms of a medical emergency, were early warnings that both culminations were at hand.

  There was the tree, and there—poof!—was Dr. R. K. Smile. Hat, coat, small leather attaché case, like an old-world medico doing his rounds. And had that been a puff of smoke? No, that was just his imagination, Quichotte reproved himself. It was improbable that his illustrious cousin traveled the country with the Wicked Witch of the West’s personal smoke effects in his baggage. But, on the other hand, in the Age of Anything-Can-Happen, as he well knew, anything could happen. Maybe puffs of smoke were available now. Maybe you could buy them at Walmart, like guns.

  “Best of cousins!” Quichotte cried. “I’m happy to see you. I hope your mood is fine?”

  “Let’s walk a little,” said Dr. Smile. His mood, Quichotte noted with regret, appeared to be very far from fine. One might say that it was foul.

  “There has been an event today in Atlanta,” Dr. Smile said as they
walked in the general direction of the boathouse. “A shocking event, may I say. An offensive event concerning my good wife.”

  “Mrs. Happy?” Quichotte cried. “That is indeed unexpected and woeful news! I hope she has not met with a misfortune?”

  “ ‘Misfortune’ is too mild a word,” Dr. Smile said grimly. “I will tell you what has happened. I have a need to tell someone, and I believe I can talk to you—because, to put it bluntly, you are nobody, you know nobody, so you can tell nobody who is anybody, and, plus, you are borderline simple as well.”

  This remark—in its tone very unlike the kind manner with which his cousin had always spoken to him—struck Quichotte as harsh, and in part incorrect. “But everybody is somebody, aren’t they?” he replied mildly. “Although the language can be confusing. When we say that ‘nobody is here,’ we mean in fact that ‘somebody’ is ‘not here.’ If I am here, I can’t be nobody. Look,” he said, pointing. “There, there, there. Somebody, somebody, somebody.” He pointed at himself. “Somebody,” he concluded with some pride.

  Dr. Smile heard him out with growing impatience. “I repeat,” he said, “borderline simple.”

  The discourtesy in his cousin’s speech saddened Quichotte. He tried to deflect it. “Simple is almost smile rearranged, isn’t it,” he offered. “If you or I or both only had the initial P, then we would both be simple rearranged.”

  This gentle pleasantry failed to improve Dr. Smile’s mood. “I don’t have time for small talk,” he barked. (Quichotte was on the verge of replying, “Then this you have in common with the famous Mr. Evel Cent!”—but he held his tongue.) “I have something to say today about the injustice of the world toward a man trying to do his best. And also toward his lady wife, an innocent bystander, Happy by name, happy by nature.”

  Quichotte composed his features, frowning slightly to indicate deep attention.

  “She was with her lady friends,” Dr. Smile said. “A circle of like-minded philanthropical ladies, meeting as was their habit at Dr. Bombay’s Underwater Tea Party in Candler Park.”

  “Underwater?” Quichotte was lost now.

  “This is a name only,” Dr. Smile said sharply. “This is a tea place, not a submarine.”

  Quichotte inclined his head.

  “Then they came in, how do they say in America? Like gangbusters.”

  “The like-minded philanthropical ladies?”

  “The forces of the law,” Dr. Smile said. “Bulletproof vests, dogs, assault weapons, as if it was a terrorist gang, not a social occasion. And why?”

  “Why?”

  “Because of me,” Dr. Smile said. “Because I am accused of crimes, and in my absence they went for her. Bastards.”

  “The law enforcement officers?”

  “The people who betrayed me. Treacherous bastards. Who else could have informed the police? Only the people I made rich. Yes, I made myself more rich, but I was the one who made it happen. Little doctors here, there, turning into rich fellows. Then they turn me in. Bastards. How do they think you become a billionaire in America? Morgan, Carnegie, Vanderbilt, Mellon, Rockefeller? At Underwater Tea Parties? I have done what had to be done. It’s the American way, correct? But still my own children, my own creations, the ones I made who they are today, they want to save their asses and tear me down.

  “Listen,” he went on, “I don’t feel this thing called community feeling. This ‘our people’ bakwas. We are supposed to feel it, isn’t it? Loyalty to our community above all. The brown before the white, the many before the one. Bullshit. Our people come closer to us so they get to knife us first, in the front, in the back, in the balls, wherever. I’m speaking frankly today. I’m opening my heart to you in my time of anger. ‘Our people’ is nonsense. Wife feels the feeling, I don’t. Even if in some ways our people can teach us things. Our culture. It has lessons I have learned.

  “Corruption, they accuse me of today. Corruption! Me! Myself! Dr. R. K. Smile! Everyone knows that what I have done is not corruption. It is our culture from the old country. You are at a railway station—let’s say Sawai Madhopur—and the lines at the ticket windows are long. You get to the front and the clerk says, wrong line, go and queue over there. This is frustrating, am I right? It would frustrate anybody. Then here is a little boy, maybe ten years old, tugging at your sleeve. Ssss, he says. Ssss. You want ticket? I have an uncle. And of course he wants a little something for his trouble. You can be smart and give it to him or you can be stupid and refuse. If you are smart you find he really does have an uncle, and he can take you to this uncle in the office behind the ticket window, and in two shakes your ticket is in your hand. If you are stupid you move from line to line for hours. We are like this only. You are in a yard, let us say in Thiruvananthapuram, and here is an antiques dealer offering you fine objects of value, and you want to bring them home, maybe to Atlanta, Georgia, to share with your loving family. But there are laws, isn’t it, that say it can’t be done. So you can be stupid and say, the law is the law, or you can be smart and say, the law is an ass. If you say ass the antique dealer will take you to the person who has the government stamp, the person who needs to be convinced, the amount it takes to convince him being specified in advance, and in five minutes your treasure is on the way to Buckhead. The law is useful, in fact. It tells you who is the correct person you need to convince. Otherwise you can waste money convincing people who don’t have the stamp. Waste not, want not. We are like this only. We know what is the oil that greases the wheels.”

  He paused for breath, panting a little. Quichotte waited patiently.

  “You also,” Dr. Smile said, stabbing at Quichotte a sudden vehement finger, “you also are a person who is uninterested in your people. You also, going here, going there, going nowhere, you have broken loose of your moorings, isn’t it. Like a boat without a rudder. Like a car without a driver. Where you came from, who you came from, do you think about it? I don’t think so that you do.”

  “You are angry,” Quichotte answered gently. “But I am not the reason for your anger.”

  “What do you like?” Dr. Smile roared on. “Our food? Our clothes? Our religions? Our ways? I don’t think you are concerned with these things. Am I wrong or right?”

  “I own thirteen objects,” Quichotte said, “which open the doors of memory. Some family photographs, a ‘Cheeta Brand’ maachis, a stone head from Gandhara, a hoopoe bird.”

  “You are a fool,” Dr. Smile said, and then, like a burst balloon, subsided. “But you are a fool who is going to have a very lucky day. My luck today, however, is bad. However, I will not go to ground like a rat in a hole. I will not vanish like a thief in the night. I will surrender myself, I will pay whatever bail they want, I will wear the damn ankle bracelet, and I will fight. This is America. I will fight and I will win.” His words had a hollow ring, expressing a bravado he did not feel.

  “That is an admirable course to follow,” said Quichotte.

  “What nobody grasps,” Dr. Smile said with the weariness of a man who carries a burden other people are unwilling to lift, “is that business gets harder all the time. I do things responsibly, through medical personnel, et cetera. But there are gangs now. They threaten my people. You are lucky you quit when you did.”

  I didn’t quit, Quichotte remembered. I was dismissed. This also he did not say.

  “Crazy names,” Dr. Smile said, his voice receding into a melancholy growl. “Nine Trey Gangsta Bloods. It has no meaning. But they are selling everything out on the street. Heroin, fentanyl, furanyl fentanyl, MDMA, dibutylone. They are irresponsible and unscrupulous. To a medical person, they are anathema. Also they deplete my sales.”

  “Can I ask,” Quichotte finally ventured, “why it is that you wished to see me? Why is it a lucky day for me?”

  “You are like everyone else,” Dr. Smile said sadly. “Me, me, me.” Nodding with the bruised resignation of a
man who only, selflessly, works for the benefit of others, and who goes unappreciated and unloved by the selfish world, he indicated the attaché case he was carrying. “This you will keep safely,” he said. “You have the deposit box with the key, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Keep it there only. Inside you will see little white envelopes. Each envelope is one delivery of InSmile™ spray, to be made once a month, directly into the lady’s personal hand. To this procedure she has agreed.”

  “The lady is very unwell?”

  “The lady is very important.”

  “But she is a person with a medical requirement?”

  “She is a person we wish to please.”

  “And this is what you want me to do,” Quichotte said. His tone of deflation mirrored his cousin’s. “To please a person who is not sick.”

  “Ask me her name,” Dr. Smile said. “Then let’s see what you think.”

  When the name was spoken a great radiance opened up in the heavens and flowed down over Quichotte in a cascade of joy. His labors had not been in vain. He had proved himself worthy and now the Grail had manifested herself. He had abandoned reason for the sake of love, accepted the uselessness of worldly knowledge, surrendered his desires and attachments to the world, understood that everything was connected, moved beyond harmony, and now in the Valley of Wonderment the name of the Beloved hung in the air before him as if on a giant flat-screen television. It occurred to him that he loved the man who had caused this miracle to occur.

  “I love you,” he said to Dr. Smile.

  The doctor, pondering his troubles, was startled and horrified by this remark. “What are you talking?” he demanded.