The Satanic Verses (77 page)

           
His body split apart from his adam's-apple to his groin, so that she could
reach deep within him, and now she was open, they all were, and at the moment
of their opening the waters parted, and they walked to Mecca across the bed of
the Arabian Sea.

           
Eighteen months after his heart attack, Saladin Chamcha took to the air again
in response to the telegraphed news that his father was in the terminal stages
of multiple myeloma, a systemic cancer of the bone marrow that was "one
hundred per cent fatal", as Chamcha's GP unsentimentally put it when he
telephoned her to check. There had been no real contact between father and son
since Changez Chamchawala sent Saladin the proceeds from his felled walnut-tree
all those eternities ago. Saladin had sent a brief note reporting that he had
survived the
Bostan
disaster, and had been sent an even terser missive
in return: "Rec.'d yr. communication. This information already to
hand." When the bad news telegram arrived, however―the signatory was
the unknown second wife, Nasreen II, and the tone was pretty unvarnished:
FATHER GOING FAST + IF DESIROUS OF SEEING BETTER MOVE IT + N CHAMCHAWALA
(MRS)―he discovered to his surprise that after a lifetime of tangled relationships
with his father, after long years of crossed wires and "irrevocable
sunderings", he was once again capable of an uncomplicated reaction.
Simply, overwhelmingly, it was imperative that he reach Bombay before Changez
left it for good.

           
He spent the best part of a day first standing in the visa queue at the
consular section of India House, and then trying to persuade a jaded official
of the urgency of his application. He had stupidly forgotten to bring the
telegram, and was told, as a result, that "it is issue of proof. You see,
anybody could come and tell that their father is dying, isn't it? In order to
expedite." Chamcha fought to restrain his anger, but finally burst.
"Do I look like a Khalistan zealot to you?" The official shrugged.
"I'll tell you who I am," Chamcha bellowed, incensed by that shrug,
"I'm the poor bastard who got blown up by terrorists, fell thirty thousand
feet out of the sky because of terrorists, and now because of those same
terrorists I have to be insulted by pen-pushers like you." His visa
application, placed firmly at the bottom of a large pile by his adversary, was
not granted until three days later. The first available flight was thirty-six
hours after that: and it was an Air India 747, and its name was
Gulistan
.

           
Gulistan and Bostan, the twin gardens of Paradise―one blew apart, and
then there was one... Chamcha, moving down one of the drains through which
Terminal Three dripped passengers into aircraft, saw the name painted next to
the 747's open door, and turned a couple of shades paler. Then he heard the
sari-clad Indian stewardess greeting him in an unmistakably Canadian accent,
and lost his nerve, spinning away from the plane in a reflex of straightforward
terror. As he stood there, facing the irritable throng of passengers waiting to
board, he was conscious of how absurd he must look, with his brown leather
holdall in one hand, two zippered suit-hanger bags in the other, and his eyes
out on stalks; but for a long moment he was entirely unable to move. The crowd
grew restive;
if this is an artery
, he found himself thinking,
then
I'm the blasted clot
. "I used to chichi chicken out also," said a
cheerful voice. "But now I've got the titrick. I fafa flap my hands during
tatake-off and the plane always mama makes it into the isk isk isky."

           
* * * * *

           
"Today the top gogo goddess is absolutely Lakshmi," Sisodia confided
over whisky once they were safely aloft. (He had been as good as his word,
flapping his arms wildly as
Gulistan
rushed down the runway, and
afterwards settled back contentedly in his seat, beaming modestly.
"Wowoworks every time." They were both travelling in the 747's upper
deck, reserved for business class non-smokers, and Sisodia had moved into the em-pty
seat next to Chamcha like air filling a vacuum. "Call me Whisky," he
insisted. "What lie lie line are you in? How mum much do you earn? How
long you bibi been away? You know any women in town, or you want heh heh
help?") Chamcha closed his eyes and fixed his thoughts on his father. The
saddest thing, he realized, was that he could not remember a single happy day
with Changez in his entire life as a man. And the most gladdening thing was the
discovery that even the unforgivable crime of being one's father could be
forgiven, after all, in the end.
Hang on,,
he pleaded silently.
I'm
coming as fast as I can
. "In these hihighly material times,"
Sisodia explained, "who else but goddess of wewealth? In Bombay the young
businessmen are hoho holding all night poopoo pooja parties. Statue of Lakshmi
presides, with hands tuturned out, and lightbulbs running down her fifi
fingers, lighting in sequence, you get me, as if the wealth is paw paw pouring
down her palms." On the cabin's movie screen a stewardess was demonstrating
the various safety procedures. In a corner of the screen an inset male figure
translated her into sign language. This was progress, Chamcha recognized. Film
instead of human beings, a small increase in sophistication (the signing) and a
large increase in cost. High technology at the service, ostensibly, of safety;
while in reality air travel got daily more dangerous, the world's stock of
aircraft was ageing and nobody could afford to renew it. Bits fell off planes
every day, or so it seemed, and collisions and near-misses were also on the up.
So the film was a kind of lie, because by existing it said:
Observe the
lengths we'll go to for your security. We'll even make you a movie about it
.
Style instead of substance, the image instead of the reality . . . "I'm
planning a big bubudget picture about her," Sisodia said. "This is in
strictest coco confidence. Maybe a Sridevi weewee wehicle, I hohope so. Now
that Gibreel's comeback is flaw flaw flopping, she is number one supreme."

           
Chamcha had heard that Gibreel Farishta had hit the comeback trail. His first
film,
The Parting of the Arabian Sea
, had bombed badly; the special
effects looked home-made, the girl in the central Ayesha role, a certain Pimple
Billimoria, had been woefully inadequate, and Gibreel's own portrayal of the
archangel had struck many critics as narcissistic and megalomaniac. The days
when he could do no wrong were gone; his second feature,
Mahound
, had
hit every imaginable religious reef, and sunk without trace. "You see, he
chochose to go with other producers," Sisodia lamented. "The
greegreed of the ista ista istar. With me the if if effects always work and the
good tataste also you can take for gug, grunt, granted." Saladin Chamcha
closed his eyes and leaned back in his seat. He had drunk his whisky too fast
on account of his fear of flying, and his head had begun to spin. Sisodia
appeared not to recall his past connection to Farishta, which was fine. That
was where the connection belonged: in the past. "Shh shh Sridevi as Lakshmi,"
Sisodia sang out, not very confidentially. "Now that is sosolid gold. You
are an ack actor. You should work back hohome. Call me. Maybe we can do
bubusiness. This picture: solid pap pap
platinum
."

           
Chamcha's head whirled. What strange meanings words were taking on. Only a few
days ago that
back home
would have rung false. But now his father was
dying and old emotions were sending tentacles out to grasp him. Maybe his
tongue was twisting again, sending his accent East along with the rest of him.
He hardly dared open his mouth.

           
Almost twenty years earlier, when the young and newly renamed Saladin was
scratching a living on the margins of the London theatre, in order to maintain
a safe distance from his father; and when Changez was retreating in other ways,
becoming both reclusive and religious; back then, one day, out of the blue, the
father had written to the son, offering him a house. The property was a
rambling mansion in the hill-station of Solan. "The first property I ever
owned," Changez wrote, "and so it is the first I am gifting to
you." Saladin's instant reaction was to see the offer as a snare, a way of
rejoining him to home, to the webs of his father's power; and when he learned
that the Solan property had long ago been requisitioned by the Indian
Government in return for a peppercorn rent, and that it had for many years been
occupied by a boys' school, the gift stood revealed as a delusion as well. What
did Chamcha care if the school were willing to treat him, on any visits he
cared to make, as a visiting Head of State, putting on march-pasts and
gymnastic displays? That sort of thing appealed to Changez's enormous vanity,
but Chamcha wanted none of it. The point was, the school wasn't budging; the
gift was useless, and probably an administrative headache as well. He wrote to
his father refusing the offer. It was the last time Changez Chamchawala tried
to give him anything.
Home
receded from the prodigal son.

           
"I never forget a faface," Sisodia was saying. "You're mimi
Mimi's friend. The
Bostan
susurvivor. Knew it the moment I saw you papa
panic at the gaga gate. Hope you're not feefeeling too baba bad." Saladin,
his heart sinking, shook his head, no, I'm fine, honestly. Sisodia, gleaming,
knee-like, winked hideously at a passing stewardess and summoned more whisky.
"Such a shashame about Gibreel and his lady," Sisodia went on.
"Such a nice name that she had, alla alla Alleluia. What a temper on that
boy, what ajeajealous tata type. Hard for a momodern gaga girl. They bus bust
up." Saladin retreated, once again, into a pretense of sleep.
I have
only just recovered from the past. Go, go away
.

           
He had formally declared his recovery complete only five weeks earlier, at the
wedding of Mishal Sufyan and Hanif Johnson. After the death of her parents in
the Shaandaar fire Mishal had been assailed by a terrible, illogical guilt that
caused her mother to appear to her in dreams and admonish her: "If only
you'd passed the fire extinguisher when I asked. If only you'd blown a little
harder. But you never listen to what I say and your lungs are so
cigarette-rotten that you could not blow out one candle let alone a burning
house." Under the severe eye of her mother's ghost Mishal moved out of
Hanif's apartment, took a room in a place with three other women, applied for
and got Jumpy Joshi's old job at the sports centre, and fought the insurance
companies until they paid up. Only when the Shaandaar was ready to reopen under
her management did Hind Sufyan's ghost agree that it was time to be off to the
after-life; whereupon Mishal telephoned Hanif and asked him to marry her. He
was too surprised to reply, and had to pass the telephone to a colleague who
explained that the cat had got Mr. Johnson's tongue, and accepted Mishal's
offer on the dumbstruck lawyer's behalf. So everybody was recovering from the
tragedy; even Anahita, who had been obliged to live with a stiflingly
old-fashioned aunt, managed to look pleased at the wedding, perhaps because
Mishal had promised her her own rooms in the renovated Shaandaar Hotel. Mishal
had asked Saladin to be her chief witness in recognition of his attempt to save
her parents' life, and on their way to the registry office in Pinkwalla's van
(all charges against the DJ and his boss, John Maslama, had been dropped for
lack of evidence) Chamcha told the bride: "Today feels like a new start
for me, too; perhaps for all of us." In his own case there had been
by-pass surgery, and the difficulty of coming to terms with so many deaths, and
nightmare visions of being metamorphosed once more into some sort of
sulphurous, cloven-hoof demon. He was also, for a time, professionally crippled
by a shame so profound that, when clients finally did begin to book him once
more and ask for one of his voices, for example the voice of a frozen pea or a
glove-puppet packet of sausages, he felt the memory of his telephonic crimes
welling up in his throat and strangling the impersonations at birth. At
Mishal's wedding, however, he suddenly felt free. It was quite a ceremony,
largely because the young couple could not refrain from kissing one another
throughout the procedure, and had to be urged by the registrar (a pleasant
young woman who also exhorted the guests not to drink too much that day if they
planned to drive) to hurry up and get through the words before it was time for
the next wedding party to arrive. Afterwards at the Shaandaar the kissing
continued, the kisses becoming gradually longer and more explicit, until
finally the guests had the feeling that they were intruding on a private
moment, and slipped quietly away leaving Hanif and Mishal to enjoy a passion so
engulfing that they did not even notice their friends' departure; they remained
oblivious, too, of the small crowd of children that gathered outside the
windows of the Shaandaar Cafe to watch them. Chamcha, the last guest to leave,
did the newlyweds the favour of pulling down the blinds, much to the children's
annoyance; and strolled off down the rebuilt High Street feeling so light on
his feet that he actually gave a kind of embarrassed skip.