Joseph Anton: A Memoir: A Memoir

by Salman Rushdie

  A few days after the photo session he went to the launch party for The God of Small Things because he had enjoyed meeting its author and wanted to help her celebrate her big moment. He found Miss Roy in an icier mood. That morning a review of her novel had appeared in The New Yorker, written by John Updike, and it was a largely positive review, not quite ten out of ten but eight and a half, perhaps. Anyway, an excellent review for a first novel in an important place, written by a giant of American letters. “Did you see it?” he asked her. “You must be very pleased.” Miss Roy shrugged prettily. “Yes, I saw it,” she said. “So what?” That was surprising and, in a way, impressive. But, “No, Arundhati, that’s too cool,” he told her. “A wonderful thing is happening to you. Your first novel is having a magnificent success. There is nothing quite like first success. You should enjoy it. Don’t be so cool.” She looked him straight in the eye. “I am pretty cool,” she said, and turned away.

  After an effusive introduction from her publisher, Stuart Proffitt, she gave a long, gloomy reading and Robert McCrum, who was happily recovering from his stroke, whispered, “Five out of ten.” In the car home the protection officer Paul Topper said, “I’d been thinking of buying the book after her publisher’s speech but then she read from it and I thought, perhaps not.”

  Elizabeth and Milan came home from the hospital and Caroline Michel came over, bringing “your second baby,” the finished copy of the Vintage Book of Indian Writing (later published in the United States as Mirrorwork). Outside the bubble of the protection, the news of Milan’s birth was breaking. The Evening Standard ran the story, including Milan’s name. The police were still very worried about Elizabeth’s name getting into the papers and were working hard to prevent it. For the time being her name did not appear. He was taken back to the spy fortress where Mr. Afternoon and Mr. Morning were worried about Elizabeth and Milan too. But, they said, a “specific threat” had been “disrupted.” No more details. He remembered the bloody great fist and hoped it had done its work well. Did this mean he no longer had to worry about the assassination plan? “We didn’t say that,” Mr. Afternoon demurred. “There are still strong reasons for concern,” Mr. Morning confirmed. Can you tell me what those reasons are? “No,” said Mr. Afternoon. I see. No, you say. “That is correct,” Mr. Morning said. “But the specific threat that we became aware of at the time of your Danish trip,” Mr. Afternoon said, “that threat has been frustrated.” Oh, you mean there actually was a specific threat in Copenhagen? “There was,” said Mr. Afternoon. Then why didn’t you tell me? “Source protection,” said Mr. Morning. “We couldn’t have you telling the media that you knew.” Given the choice between protecting him and the source, the spies had chosen the source.

  Meanwhile the Daily Insult was preparing to run stories about the increased cost to the nation of Milan’s birth. (There was no such increase.) He braced himself for RUSHDIE BABY COSTS TAXPAYERS A FORTUNE. But a different story ran instead: RUSHDIE HOLDS BBC TO RANSOM. He was apparently prejudicing the Midnight’s Children project by making ridiculously high financial demands. The figures quoted were more than double what he was being paid. He instructed his lawyers to pursue the Insult, and after some weeks its bosses caved in and apologized in print.

  They went to Marylebone registry office and no sooner had they registered his birth and name than Elizabeth broke down completely because his surname was not hyphenated, not West-Rushdie but plain Rushdie. Only a day earlier she had told him how nice it was to tell everyone his name was Milan Rushdie, so he was caught completely off guard. They had discussed the question of the surname many times and had, he thought, agreed on it months ago. She now said she had suppressed her true feelings because “you wouldn’t have liked it.” For the rest of the day she was inconsolable and distraught. The next day was Friday the thirteenth and she was still angry, miserable, accusatory. “What a good job we are making of destroying the great happiness we have been given,” he wrote in his journal. He was shaken and wretchedly upset. That so levelheaded a woman should have gone into so complete an emotional meltdown suggested that it was about much more than what it seemed to be about. This near-hysterical Elizabeth was not the woman he had known for seven years. All the uncertainty, fear and anxiety she had bottled up seemed to be pouring out of her. The missing hyphen was just a MacGuffin—the pretext that had unleashed the real, hidden story of how she felt.

  She had a pinched nerve and was suddenly in great pain. She ignored all his pleas that she see a doctor until the pain got so bad that she literally couldn’t move. Tension was crackling between them and he said, too sharply, “This is your way of dealing with pain. You tell anyone who wants to help you to shut up and get out of your sight.” She shouted back at him, furious, “Are you going to criticize the way I gave birth?” Oh, no, no, he thought. No, we shouldn’t be doing this. A serious rift had grown up between them just when they should have been closer than ever.

  On Father’s Day he was given a card: an outline of Zafar’s hand, eighteen years old, and inside it an outline of Milan’s hand, aged eighteen days. It became one of his most prized possessions. And after that Elizabeth and he made up their quarrel.

  Zafar was eighteen years old. “My pride in this young fellow is absolute,” he wrote in his journal. “He has grown into a fine, honest, brave young man. The essential sweetness with which he was born, his gentleness, his calm, that is still there, unscathed. He has a genuine gift for life. He has greeted Milan’s birth with grace and, it seems, genuine interest. And we still have a relationship good enough for him to trust me with his private feelings—an intimacy my father and I failed to maintain. Will he earn his university place? His destiny is in his own hands. But at least he knows, has always known, that he is deeply loved. My adult son.”

  The birthday boy came over in the morning and was given his birthday present—a car radio—and a letter telling him of his father’s pride in him, in his courage and grace. He read it and said, moved, “That’s very nice.”

  He wrote and talked, argued and fought. Nothing changed. Well, the government did change. He had an excellent meeting with Derek Fatchett, now Robin Cook’s understudy at the Foreign Office, and there was a big difference in mood from the old Tory days. “We will push the case hard,” Fatchett promised, and he said he would help with the Indian travel ban, he would help with British Airways, he would, in general, help. Suddenly he felt the government was on his side. Who could say what a difference that might make? The new regime in Iran wasn’t making promising noises. A birthday message came in from the new “moderate” president, Khatami: “Salman Rushdie will die soon.”

  Laurie Anderson had called to ask if he had a text about fire. She was curating an evening of performances to raise money to build a children’s hospital for the charity War Child, and she had an amazing fire video and needed words to go with it. He edited together passages from the “London’s burning” part of The Satanic Verses. Laurie had persuaded Brian Eno to record several loops of sound, which she was going to mix from a little desk in the wings while he read. There was no time to rehearse anything so he just went out on stage and started reading with the fire video flaming behind him and Laurie mixing the Enomusic, the sound swelling and fading without warning, and he had to ride those waves like a surfer or skateboard daredevil, his own voice rising and falling, gleaming the cube. It was one of the most enjoyable things he had ever done. Zafar came to watch him with a girl called Melissa, the first time he had heard his dad read, and afterward he said, “You stuttered a couple of times and you move around too much; it’s distracting,” but he seemed to have liked it, on the whole.

  They had dinner at Antonia Fraser and Harold Pinter’s house and Harold held Milan on his lap for a long time. Finally he handed him back to Elizabeth and said, “Tell him when he grows up that his Uncle Harold enjoyed his cuddle.”

  The boss of British Airways, Robert Ayling, went to speak at Zafar’s school, and Zafar questioned him about his airline’s re
fusal to fly his dad, and criticized and scolded him for several minutes. Afterward, when BA finally changed their no-fly policy, Ayling spoke of how moved he had been by Zafar’s intervention. It was Zafar who softened the airline boss’s heart.

  Summer in America! As soon as Milan was old enough to fly they traveled to their annual weeks of summer freedom … on a British airline this time, a direct flight, and the three of them together! Virgin Atlantic had agreed to carry him, giving him a direct route to the United States. No more trips to Oslo, Vienna or Paris to catch a friendly plane. A brick fell out of the prison wall.

  The Grobow house was welcoming, their friends were all around them—Martin and Isabel were in East Hampton, Ian McEwan and Annalena McAfee had rented a house in Sag Harbor, many other good people visited them from the city—and they had a new baby and a wedding to plan. This was their annual shot in the arm, the time that gave them the strength to survive the rest of the time. There were birds in the trees and deer in the woods and the sea was warm and Milan was two months old, as sweet and smiling and mischief-faced and miraculous as he could be. Everything was perfect except for one thing. Four days after they arrived he heard from Tristram Powell that the Indian government had refused to allow the BBC to film Midnight’s Children on Indian soil. “It would be prudent to avoid the misapprehension,” a government statement explained, “that we in any way endorsed the author.” That statement engraved itself on his heart. “The producer, Chris Hall, is on his way to Sri Lanka to see if we can shoot there,” Tristram said in his gentle way. “Everyone at the Beeb feels so much effort has been put in and the scripts are so good that they want to try to save it.” But he felt sick at heart. India, his great love, had told him to fuck off because it didn’t want to endorse him in any way. Midnight’s Children, his love letter to India, had been deemed unfit to be filmed anywhere in that country. That summer he would be working on The Ground Beneath Her Feet, a novel about people without a sense of belonging, people who dreamed of leaving, not of home. He would use the way he felt now, dreadful, disconnected, spurned, as fuel for his book.

  The story broke in the British press but he turned away from it. His friends were all around him and he was writing his book and soon he would be married to the woman he had loved for seven years. Bill Buford came to stay with his girlfriend, Mary Johnson, a sparky Betty Boop look-alike from Tennessee, and the Wylies and Martin and Isabel came around for a mighty barbecue cooked by Bill, who had become quite a chef. He took Elizabeth out for a pre-wedding date at the American Hotel in Sag Harbor. The avant-garde director Robert Wilson invited him to watch rehearsals of a new piece he was making, and wanted him to provide a text for it. He listened to Bob explain the piece for over half an hour and then had to admit he hadn’t understood a word of what the great man had said. Robert McCrum came to stay for a night. Elizabeth spoke to the people at Loaves & Fishes, the outrageously expensive deli, and arranged the wedding food and drink. They went to the East Hampton town hall and got a wedding license. He bought himself a new suit. Zafar called from London with grand news: His A level results had been good enough to get him his place at Exeter University. Happiness and wedding plans cushioned the Indian blow.

  Then, a second Indian rebuff. Bill Buford had been invited to the big New York celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of Indian independence to be held at the Indian consulate in Manhattan on independence day, August 15, 1997. He told the consulate folks that Mr. Rushdie was in town, but they backed away as if confronted by a rattlesnake. A woman called Bill and gave a stammering explanation. “In the light of everything surrounding him … we felt … not in his best interests … a very big event … lots of publicity … the consul-general can’t … not in our best interests …” On India’s fiftieth birthday, Saleem Sinai’s birthday, Saleem’s Cinderella creator would not go to the ball. He would not allow his love of the country and its people to be destroyed by Official India, he promised himself. Even if Official India never allowed him to set foot in his homeland again.

  Again he took refuge in the good stuff. He went to the city for a few days and found Elizabeth a wedding present at Tiffany. He did interviews for the Mirrorwork anthology and went to hear David Byrne sing “Psycho Killer” at Roseland. He had dinner with Paul Auster and Siri Hustvedt. Paul was writing and directing a film called Lulu on the Bridge and wanted him to play a sinister interrogator who would give Harvey Keitel the third degree. (A sinister interrogator after Robbe-Grillet’s offer of un médecin assez sinistre: Was this typecasting?) Zafar flew out to join him and they took the jitney back to Bridgehampton in hundred-degree heat. He got back to Little Noyac Path to find Elizabeth in a suspicious, mistrustful mood. What had he been up to in New York? Who had he been seeing? The damage done by his brief infidelity was still there. He didn’t know what to do except to tell her he loved her. It made him fear for their marriage. But five minutes later she shrugged off her misgivings and said she was fine.

  He went with Ian McEwan to get Thai takeout for dinner. At the restaurant, Chinda’s, the Thai lady said, “You know who you rook rike, you rook rike that man who wrote that book.” Yes, he admitted, that’s me. “Oh good,” she said. “I read that book, I rike it, then you wrote another book but I did not read. When you phone your order you order beef and we think, maybe it’s Birry Joel, but no, Birry Joel he come on Tuesdays.” At dinner Martin spoke of going off to visit Saul Bellow. He envied Martin this: his closeness to the greatest American novelist of their time. But he had bigger fish to fry. He was getting married in four days, and it was about to be the end of the world, or at least the world according to Arnold Schwarzenegger. The day after their wedding day, August 29, 1997, was used in Terminator 2 as the date of “Judgment Day,” the day the machines, guided by the supercomputer Skynet, launched their nuclear holocaust against the human race. So they were getting married on the last day in the history of the world as they knew it.

  The weather was excellent and the field of cosmos was as brilliant as the sky. Their friends assembled at Isabel’s family’s compound and he went to fetch the judge. Then in a circle stood Paul and Siri and little Sophie Auster too, and Bill and Mary, and Martin and Isabel and the two Amis boys and Martin’s daughter Delilah Seale and Isabel’s sister Quina, and Ian and Annalena and the two McEwan boys, and Andrew and Camie and their daughter Erica Wylie, and Hitch and Carol and their daughter, his “ungoddaughter,” Laura Antonia Blue Hitchens, and Isabel’s mother, Betty Fonseca, and Betty’s husband, Dick Cornuelle, in whose garden they were standing, and Milan cradled in Siri’s arms, and Zafar, and Elizabeth with roses and lilies in her hair. There were readings. Bill read a Shakespeare sonnet, the usual one, and Paul unusually but thoughtfully read William Carlos Williams’s “The Ivy Crown,” about love that came later in life:

  At our age the imagination

  across the sorry facts

  lifts us

  to make roses

  stand before thorns.

  Sure

  love is cruel

  and selfish

  and totally obtuse—

  at least, blinded by the light,

  young love is.

  But we are older,

  I to love

  and you to be loved,

  we have,

  no matter how,

  by our wills survived

  to keep

  the jeweled prize

  always

  at our finger tips.

  We will it so

  and so it is

  past all accident.

  They rejoiced that night in their seven years of improbable happiness, these two who had found each other in the middle of a hurricane and had clung to each other, not in fear of the storm but in delight at the finding. Her smile had brightened his days and her love his nights, and her courage and care had given him strength, and of course, as he confessed to her and all his friends in his wedding night speech, it had been he who had flung himself at her and not the other way around. (W
hen he conceded this after seven years of insisting on the opposite she laughed out loud in astonishment.) And the world did not end, but began again the next day, refreshed, renewed, past all accident. We are only mortal, the poet said, but being mortal / can defy our fate.

  The business of love is

  cruelty which,

  by our wills,

  we transform

  to live together.

  And on the day on which the world continued Ian and Annalena got married too, at East Hampton town hall. They had planned a party on the beach, but the weather turned against them, so everyone came to Little Noyac Path and there were more wedding festivities all afternoon and evening. The day brightened and they played incompetent, un-American baseball in the field at the back of the house and then he and Ian went again to Chinda’s for Thai takeout and he still wasn’t Birry Joel.

  The British papers got the story of his marriage at once—the East Hampton town hall staff had leaked the news almost as soon as the ceremony was complete—and all of them ran it, with Elizabeth’s full name. So there she was, visible at last. For a moment she wobbled badly, then recovered and got used to it, as was her determined, sanguine way. As for himself, he felt relieved. He was very tired of “hiding.”

  That night, after a barbecue on Gibson Beach, they were at John Avedon’s house when David Rieff called to say that there had been a car crash in Paris and Princess Diana had been badly injured and her lover, Dodi al-Fayed, was dead. It was on all the TV channels but nothing substantive was being said about the princess. Later when they were going to bed he said to Elizabeth, “If she was alive they would have told us so. If they are not giving us news of her condition it’s because she’s dead.” And in the morning there was the confirmation on the front of The New York Times and Elizabeth wept. All that day the story rolled out. The paparazzi chasing her on their motorbikes. The car going very fast, the drunk driver pushing it to 120 miles per hour. That poor girl had no luck, he thought. Her unhappy ending arrived just as happier beginnings had become possible. But to die because you didn’t want your photograph taken, that was folly. If they had paused for a moment on the steps of the Ritz and let the paparazzi do their work maybe they would not have been pursued and it would have not been necessary to drive at that insane speed and die in a concrete underpass, wasting themselves for nothing.