Authors: Salman Rushdie
Not Martian, but Mauritian. She was a ninth-generation child of indentured labourers brought from India after the black exodus that had followed the end of slavery. At home – home was a small village to the north of Port Louis, and its largest edifice was a small white Vishnu temple – she and her family had spoken a
version of the Indian Bhojpuri dialect, so creolised over the years as to be virtually incomprehensible to non-Mauritian Indians. She had never been to India, and my birth and childhood and continued connections there made me, in her eyes, ridiculously glamorous, like a visitor from Xanadu.
For be on honey-dew hath fed, And drunk the milk of Paradise.
Even though she was, as she put it, ‘from science side’, she was interested in writing, and liked the fact that I was trying to be a writer. She took pride in ‘Romeo and Juliet of Mauritius’, as she called Bernardin de St Pierre’s
Paul et Virginie
; and insisted that I read it. ‘Maybe it will influence,’ she said, hopefully.
She had a doctor’s unsqueamishness and practicality, and like all people ‘from arts side’ I envied her knowledge of what human beings were like on the inside. What I had to imagine about human nature, she gave every appearance of knowing. She wasn’t a big talker, but I felt that in her I had found my rock. And the warm dark tides of the Indian Ocean rose nightly in her veins.
What angered her, it seemed, was Eliot, and my closeness to him. Once she was installed as my wife – we honeymooned in Venice – her unease prompted what was, for her, a major speech. ‘All that mumboing and jumboing,’ she snorted, full of science-side contempt for the Irrational. ‘So phoney, God! Listen: he
comes round too much, it’s bad for you. What is he? Some English mess-head, only. Get my drift, writer sahib? I mean, thanks for the intro etcetera, but now you should drop him, like a brick.’
‘Welsh,’ I said, very surprised. ‘He’s Welsh.’
‘Doesn’t matter,’ snapped Doctor (Mrs) Khan. ‘Diagnosis still applies.’
But in Eliot’s enormous, generously shared mental storehouse of the varieties of ‘forbidden knowledge’ I thought I’d found another way of making a bridge between here-and-there, between my two othernesses, my double unbelonging. In that world of magic and power there seemed to exist the kind of fusion of world-views, European Amerindian Oriental Levantine, in which I desperately wanted to believe.
With his help, I hoped, I might make a ‘forbidden self’. The apparent world, all cynicism and napalm, seemed wholly without kindness or wisdom. The hidden realm, in which Sufis walked with Adepts and great secrets could be glimpsed, would show me how to be wise. It would grant me – Eliot’s favourite word, this – harmony.
Mala was right. He couldn’t help anyone, the poor sap; couldn’t even save himself. In the end his demons came
for him, his Gurdjieff and Ouspensky and his Crowley and Blavatsky, his Dunsany and his Lovecraft long ago. They crowded out the sheep on his Welsh hillside, and closed in on his mind.
Harmony? You never heard such a din as the ruckus in Eliot’s head. The songs of Swedenborg’s angels, the hymns, the mantras, the Tibetan overtone chants. What human mind could have defended itself against such a Babel, in which Theosophists argued with Confucians, Christian Scientists with Rosicrucians? Here were devotees praising the coming of Lord Maitreya; there, blood-sucking wizards hurling curses. And lo, there came forth Millenarians crying Doom; and behold, Hitler arose brandishing his fylfot, which in his ignorance or malignity he gave the name of the symbol of good:
swastika.
In the throng besieging the sick man of Crowley End even my personal favourite, Raja Rammohun Roy, was just another voice in the cacodemonic crowd.
Bang!
And, at last, silence.
Requiescat in pace.
By the time I got back to Wales, Lucy’s brother Bill had called the police and undertakers and had spent heroic hours in the spare room cleaning the blood and brains
off the walls. Lucy sat sipping gin in the kitchen in a light summer frock, looking dreadfully composed.
‘Would you go through his books and papers?’ she asked me, sounding sweet and distant. ‘I can’t do it. There may be enough of the Glendower thing. Someone could pull it into shape.’
It took me the best part of a week, that sad excavation of my dead friend’s unpublished mind. I felt a page turning; I was just starting to be a writer then, and Eliot had just stopped being one. Although in truth, as I found, he had stopped being one years ago. There was no trace of a Glendower manuscript, or any serious work at all. There were only ravings.
Bill Evans had stuffed three tea-chests with Eliot’s typed and scribbled papers. In these chests of delirium I found hundreds of pages of operatic, undirected obscenities and inchoate rants against the universe in general. There were dozens of notebooks in which Eliot had dreamed up alternative personal futures of extraordinary distinction and renown, or, alternatively, self-pitying versions of a life of genius-in-obscurity ending in agonising illnesses, or assassination by jealous rivals; after which, inevitably, came recognition by a remorseful world of the greatness it had ignored. These were sorry reams.
Harder still to read were his fantasies about us, his friends. These were of two kinds: hate-filled, and pornographic. There were many virulent attacks on me, and pages of steamy sex involving my wife Mala, ‘dated’, no doubt to maximise their auto-erotic effect, in the days immediately after our marriage. And, of course, at other times. The pages about Lucy were both nasty and lubricious. I searched the tea-chests in vain for a loving remark. It was hard to believe that such a passionate and eager man could have nothing good to say about life on earth. Yet it was so.
I showed Lucy nothing, but she saw it all on my face. ‘It wasn’t really him writing,’ she consoled me mechanically. ‘He was sick.’
And I know what made him sick, I thought; and vowed silently to remain well. Since then there has been no intercourse between the spiritual world and mine. Mesmer’s ‘influential fluid’ evaporated for ever as I plunged through the putrid tea-chests of my friend’s mad filth.
Eliot was buried according to his wishes. The manner of his dying had created some difficulties regarding the use of consecrated ground, but Lucy’s fury had persuaded the local clergy to turn a blind eye.
Among the mourners was a Conservative Member
of Parliament who had been at school with Eliot. ‘Poor Elly,’ this man said in a loud voice. ‘We used to ask ourselves,
“Whatever will become of Elly Crane?”
And I’d say,
“He’ll probably make something half-way decent of his life, if he doesn’t kill himself first
.” ’
This gentleman is presently a member of the Cabinet, and receives Special Branch protection. I don’t think he realises how close he came to needing protection (against me) on a sunny morning in Wales long ago.
But his epitaph is the only one I remember.
At the moment of our parting Lucy gave me her hand to shake. We didn’t see each other again. I heard that she had remarried quickly and dully and gone to live in the American West.
Back home, I found that I needed to talk for a long time. Mala sat and listened sympathetically. Eventually I told her about the tea-chests.
‘You worked him out, no need to remind me,’ I cried. ‘You knew his insides. Imagine! He was so sick, so crazy, that he fantasised all these frenzied last-tango encounters with you. For instance, just after we got home from Venice. For instance, in those two days I was alone with Lucy on
Bougainvillaea
, and he said he had to go to Cambridge for a lecture.’
Mala stood up and turned her back on me, and
before she spoke I guessed her answer, feeling it explode in my chest with an unbearable raucous crack, a sound reminiscent of the break-up of log-jams or pack-ice. Yes, she had warned me against Eliot Crane, warned me with the bitter passion of her denunciation of him; and I, in my surprise at the denunciation, had failed to hear the real warning, failed to understand what she had meant by the passion in her voice.
That mess-head. He’s bad for you.
So, here it came: the collapse of harmony, the demolition of the spheres of my heart.
‘Those weren’t fantasies,’ she said.
C
HEKOV
AND
Z
ULU
I
On 4th November, 1984, Zulu disappeared in Birmingham, and India House sent his old schoolfriend Chekov to Wembley to see the wife.
‘Adaabarz, Mrs Zulu. Permission to enter?’
‘Of course come in, Dipty sahib, why such formality?’
‘Sorry to disturb you on a Sunday, Mrs Zulu, but Zulu-tho hasn’t been in touch this morning?’
‘With me? Since when he contacts me on official trip? Why to hit a telephone call when he is probably enjoying?’
‘Whoops, sore point, excuse
me.
Always been the foot-in-it blunderbuss type.’
‘At least sit, take tea-shee.’
‘Fixed the place up damn fine, Mrs Zulu, wah-wah. Tasteful decor, in spades, I must say. So much cut-glass! That bounder Zulu must be getting too much pay, more than yours truly, clever dog.’
‘No, how is it possible? Acting Dipty’s tankha must be far in excess of Security Chief.’
‘No suspicion intended, ji. Only to say what a bargain-hunter you must be.’
‘Some problem but there is, na?’
‘Beg pardon?’
‘Arré, Jaisingh! Where have you been sleeping? Acting Dipty Sahib is thirsting for his tea. And biscuits and jalebis, can you not keep two things in your head? Jump, now, guest is waiting.’
‘Truly, Mrs Zulu, please go to no trouble.’
‘No trouble is there, Diptyji, only this chap has become lazy since coming from home. Days off, TV in room, even pay in pounds sterling, he expects all. So far we brought him but no gratitude, what to tell you, noth-
thing.
’
‘Ah, Jaisingh; why not? Excellent jalebi, Mrs Z. Thanking you.’
Assembled on top of the television and on shelf units around it was the missing man’s collection of
Star Trek
memorabilia: Captain Kirk and Spock dolls, spaceship models – a Klingon Bird of Prey, a Romulan vessel, a space station, and of course the Starship
Enterprise.
In pride of place were large figurines of two of the series’s supporting cast.
‘These old Doon School nicknames,’ Chekov exclaimed heartily. ‘They stay put like stuck records. Dumpy, Stumpy, Grumpy, Humpy. They take over from our names. As in our case our intrepid cosmonaut aliases.’
‘I don’t like. This “Mrs Zulu” I am landed with! It sounds like a blackie.’
‘Wear the name with pride, begum sahib. We’re old comrades-in-arms, your husband and I; since boyhood days, perhaps he was good enough to mention? Intrepid diplonauts. Our umpteen-year mission to explore new worlds and new civilisations. See there, our alter egos standing on your TV, the Asiatic-looking Russky and the Chink. Not the leaders, as you’ll appreciate, but the ultimate professional servants. “Course laid in!” “Hailing frequencies open!” “Warp factor three!” What would that strutting Captain have been without his top-level staffers? Likewise with the good ship Hindustan. We are servants also, you see, just like your fierce Jaisingh here. Never more important than in a moment like the present sad crisis, when an even keel must be maintained, jalebis must be served and tea poured, no matter what. We do not lead, but we enable. Without us, no course can be laid, no hailing frequency opened. No factors can be warped.’
‘Is he in difficulties, then, your Zulu? As if it wasn’t bad enough, this terrible time.’
On the wall behind the TV was a framed photograph of Indira Gandhi, with a garland hung around it. She had been dead since Wednesday. Pictures of her cremation had been on the TV for hours. The flower-petals, the garish, unbearable flames.
‘Hard to believe it. Indiraji! Words fail one. She was our mother. Hai, hai! Cut down in her prime.’
‘And on radio-TV, such-such stories are coming about Delhi goings-on. So many killings, Dipty Sahib. So many of our decent Sikh people done to death, as if all were guilty for the crimes of one-two badmash guards.’
‘The Sikh community has always been thought loyal to the nation,’ Chekov reflected. ‘Backbone of the Army, to say nothing of the Delhi taxi service. Super-citizens, one might say, seemingly wedded to the national idea. But such ideas are being questioned now, you must admit; there are those who would point to the comb, bangle, dagger et cetera as signs of the enemy within.’
‘Who would dare say such a thing about us? Such an evil thing.’
‘I know. I know. But you take Zulu. The ticklish thing is, he’s not on any official business that we know of. He’s dropped off the map, begum sahib. AWOL ever since the assassination. No contact for two days plus.’
‘O God.’
‘There is a view forming back at HQ that he may have been associated with the gang. Who have in all probability long-established links with the community over here.’
‘O God.’
‘Naturally I am fighting strenuously against the proponents of this view. But his absence is damning, you must see. We have no fear of these tinpot Khalistan wallahs. But they have a ruthless streak. And with Zulu’s inside knowledge and security background … They have threatened further attacks, as you know. As you must know. As some would say you must know all too well.’
‘O God.’
‘It is possible’, Chekov said, eating his jalebi, ‘that Zulu has boldly gone where no Indian diplonaut has gone before.’
The wife wept. ‘Even the stupid name you could never get right. It was with S. “Sulu.” So-so many episodes I have been made to see, you think I don’t know? Kirk Spock McCoy Scott Uhura Chekov
Sulu.
’
‘But Zulu is a better name for what some might allege to be a wild man,’ Chekov said. ‘For a suspected savage. For a putative traitor. Thank you for excellent tea.’
2
In August, Zulu, a shy, burly giant, had met Chekov off the plane from Delhi. Chekov at thirty-three was a
small, slim, dapper man in grey flannels, stiff-collared shirt and a double-breasted navy blue blazer with brass buttons. He had bat’s-wing eyebrows and a prominent and pugnacious jaw, so that his cultivated tones and habitual soft-spokenness came as something of a surprise, disarming those who had been led by the eyebrows and chin to expect an altogether more aggressive personality. He was a high flyer, with one small embassy already notched up. The Acting Number Two job in London, while strictly temporary, was his latest plum.