What? I should enumerate the changes?
Good breath/bad breath.
And around the edges of Gibreel Farishta’s head, as he stood with his back to the dawn, it seemed to Rosa Diamond that she discerned a faint, but distinctly golden, glow.
And were those bumps, at Chamcha’s temples, under his sodden and still-in-place bowler hat?
And, and, and.
When she laid eyes on the bizarre, satyrical figure of Gibreel Farishta prancing and dionysiac in the snow, Rosa Diamond did not think of say it angels. Sighting him from her window, through salt-cloudy glass and age-clouded eyes, she felt her heart kick out, twice, so painfully that she feared it might stop; because in that indistinct form she seemed to discern the incarnation of her soul’s most deeply buried desire. She forgot the Norman invaders as if they had never been, and struggled down a slope of treacherous pebbles, too quickly for the safety of her not-quite-nonagenarian limbs, so that she could pretend to scold the impossible stranger for trespassing on her land.
Usually she was implacable in defence of her beloved fragment of the coast, and when summer weekenders strayed above the high tide line she descended upon them like a wolf on the fold, her phrase for it, to explain and to demand: – This is my garden, do you see. – And if they grew brazen, – getoutofitsillyoldmoo, itsthesoddingbeach, – she would return home to bring out a long green garden hose and turn it remorselessly upon their tartan blankets and plastic cricket bats and bottles of sun-tan lotion, she would smash their children’s sandcastles and soak their liver-sausage sandwiches, smiling sweetly all the while: You won’t mind if I just water my lawn? … O, she was a One, known in the village, they couldn’t lock her away in any old folks’ home, sent her whole family packing when they dared to suggest it, never darken her doorstep, she told them, cut the whole lot off without a penny or a by your leave. All on her own now, she was, never a visitor from week to blessed week, not even Dora Shufflebotham who went in and did for her all those years, Dora passed over September last, may she rest, still it’s a wonder at her age how the old trout manages, all those stairs, she may be a bit of a bee but give the devil her due, there’s many’s’d go barmy being that alone.
For Gibreel there was neither a hosepipe nor the sharp end of her tongue. Rosa uttered token words of reproof, held her nostrils while examining the fallen and newly sulphurous Saladin (who had not, at this point, removed his bowler hat), and then, with an access of shyness which she greeted with nostalgic astonishment, stammered an invitation, yyou bbetter bring your ffriend in out of the cccold, and stamped back up the shingle to put the kettle on, grateful to the bite of the winter air for reddening her cheeks and saving, in the old comforting phrase, her blushes.
As a young man Saladin Chamcha had possessed a face of quite exceptional innocence, a face that did not seem ever to have encountered disillusion or evil, with skin as soft and smooth as a princess’s palm. It had served him well in his dealings with women, and had, in point of fact, been one of the first reasons his future wife Pamela Lovelace had given for falling in love with him. ‘So round and cherubic,’ she marvelled, cupping her hands under his chin. ‘Like a rubber ball.’
He was offended. ‘I’ve got bones,’ he protested. ‘Bone structure.’
‘Somewhere in there,’ she conceded. ‘Everybody does.’
After that he was haunted for a time by the notion that he looked like a featureless jellyfish, and it was in large part to assuage this feeling that he set about developing the narrow, haughty demeanour that was now second nature to him. It was, therefore, a matter of some consequence when, on arising from a long slumber racked by a series of intolerable dreams, prominent among which were images of Zeeny Vakil, transformed into a mermaid, singing to him from an iceberg in tones of agonizing sweetness, lamenting her inability to join him on dry land, calling him, calling; – but when he went to her she shut him up fast in the heart of her ice-mountain, and her song changed to one of triumph and revenge … it was, I say, a serious matter when Saladin Chamcha woke up, looked into a mirror framed in blue-and-gold Japonaiserie lacquer, and found that old cherubic face staring out at him once again; while, at his temples, he observed a brace of fearfully discoloured swellings, indications that he must have suffered, at some point in his recent adventures, a couple of mighty blows.
Looking into the mirror at his altered face, Chamcha attempted to remind himself of himself. I am a real man, he told the mirror, with a real history and a planned-out future. I am a man to whom certain things are of importance: rigour, self-discipline, reason, the pursuit of what is noble without recourse to that old crutch, God. The ideal of beauty, the possibility of exaltation, the mind. I am: a married man. But in spite of his litany, perverse thoughts insisted on visiting him. As for instance: that the world did not exist beyond that beach down there, and, now, this house. That if he weren’t careful, if he rushed matters, he would fall off the edge, into clouds. Things had to be made. Or again: that if he were to telephone his home, right now, as he should, if he were to inform his loving wife that he was not dead, not blown to bits in mid-air but right here, on solid ground, if he were to do this eminently sensible thing, the person who answered the phone would not recognize his name. Or thirdly: that the sound of footsteps ringing in his ears, distant footsteps, but coming closer, was not some temporary tinnitus caused by his fall, but the noise of some approaching doom, drawing closer, letter by letter, ellowen, deeowen, London. Here I am, in Grandmother’s house. Her big eyes, hands, teeth.
There was a telephone extension on his bedside table. There, he admonished himself. Pick it up, dial, and your equilibrium will be restored. Such maunderings: they aren’t like you, not worthy of you. Think of her grief; call her now.
It was night-time. He didn’t know the hour. There wasn’t a clock in the room and his wristwatch had disappeared somewhere along the line. Should he shouldn’t he? – He dialled the nine numbers. A man’s voice answered on the fourth ring.
‘What the hell?’ Sleepy, unidentifiable, familiar.
‘Sorry,’ Saladin Chamcha said. ‘Excuse, please. Wrong number.’
Staring at the telephone, he found himself remembering a drama production seen in Bombay, based on an English original, a story by, by, he couldn’t put his finger on the name, Tennyson? No, no. Somerset Maugham? – To hell with it. – In the original and now authorless text, a man, long thought dead, returns after an absence of many years, like a living phantom, to his former haunts. He visits his former home at night, surreptitiously, and looks in through an open window. He finds that his wife, believing herself widowed, has re-married. On the window-sill he sees a child’s toy. He spends a period of time standing in the darkness, wrestling with his feelings; then picks the toy off the ledge; and departs forever, without making his presence known. In the Indian version, the story had been rather different. The wife had married her husband’s best friend. The returning husband arrived at the door and marched in, expecting nothing. Seeing his wife and his old friend sitting together, he failed to understand that they were married. He thanked his friend for comforting his wife; but he was home now, and so all was well. The married couple did not know how to tell him the truth; it was, finally, a servant who gave the game away. The husband, whose long absence was apparently due to a bout of amnesia, reacted to the news of the marriage by announcing that he, too, must surely have re-married at some point during his long absence from home; unfortunately, however, now that the memory of his former life had returned he had forgotten what had happened during the years of his disappearance. He went off to ask the police to trace his new wife, even though he could remember nothing about her, not her eyes, not the simple fact of her existence.
The curtain fell.
Saladin Chamcha, alone in an unknown bedroom in unfamiliar red-and-white striped pyjamas, lay face downwards on a narrow bed and wept. ‘Damn all Indians,’ he cried into the muffling bedclothes, his fists punching at frilly-edged pillowcases from Harrods in
Buenos Aires so fiercely that the fifty-year-old fabric was ripped to shreds. ‘What the hell. The vulgarity of it, the sod it sod it indelicacy. What the hell. That bastard, those bastards, their lack of bastard taste.’
It was at this moment that the police arrived to arrest him.
On the night after she had taken the two of them in from the beach, Rosa Diamond stood once again at the nocturnal window of her old woman’s insomnia, contemplating the nine-hundred-year-old sea. The smelly one had been sleeping ever since they put him to bed, with hot-water bottles packed in tightly around him, best thing for him, let him get his strength. She had put them upstairs, Chamcha in the spare room and Gibreel in her late husband’s old study, and as she watched the great shining plain of the sea she could hear him moving up there, amid the ornithological prints and bird-call whistles of the former Henry Diamond, the bolas and bullwhip and aerial photographs of the Los Alamos estancia far away and long ago, a man’s footsteps in that room, how reassuring they felt. Farishta was pacing up and down, avoiding sleep, for reasons of his own. And below his footfall Rosa, looking up at the ceiling, called him in a whisper by a long-unspoken name. Martin she said. His last name the same as that of his country’s deadliest snake, the viper. The víbora, de la Cruz.
At once she saw the shapes moving on the beach, as if the forbidden name had conjured up the dead. Not again, she thought, and went for her opera-glasses. She returned to find the beach full of shadows, and this time she was afraid, because whereas the Norman fleet came sailing, when it came, proudly and openly and without recourse to subterfuge, these shades were sneaky, emitting stifled imprecations and alarming, muted yaps and barks, they seemed headless, crouching, arms and legs a-dangle like giant, unshelled crabs. Scuttling, sidelong, heavy boots crunching on shingle. Lots of them. She saw them reach her boathouse on which the fading image of an eyepatched pirate grinned and brandished a cutlass, and that was too much, I’m not having it, she decided, and, stumbling downstairs for warm clothing, she fetched the chosen weapon of her retribution: a long coil of green garden hose. At her front door she called out in a clear voice. ‘I can see you quite plainly. Come out, come out, whoever you are.’
They switched on seven suns and blinded her, and then she panicked, illuminated by the seven blue-white floodlights around which, like fireflies or satellites, there buzzed a host of smaller lights: lanterns torches cigarettes. Her head was spinning, and for a moment she lost her ability to distinguish between then and now, in her consternation she began to say Put out that light, don’t you know there’s a blackout, you’ll be having Jerry down on us if you carry on so. ‘I’m raving,’ she realized disgustedly, and banged the tip of her stick into her doormat. Whereupon, as if by magic, policemen materialized in the dazzling circle of light.
It turned out that somebody had reported a suspicious person on the beach, remember when they used to come in fishing-boats, the illegals, and thanks to that single anonymous telephone call there were now fifty-seven uniformed constables combing the beach, their flashlights swinging crazily in the dark, constables from as far away as Hastings Eastbourne Bexhill-upon-Sea, even a deputation from Brighton because nobody wanted to miss the fun, the thrill of the chase. Fifty-seven beachcombers were accompanied by thirteen dogs, all sniffing the sea air and lifting excited legs. While up at the house away from the great posse of men and dogs, Rosa Diamond found herself gazing at the five constables guarding the exits, front door, ground-floor windows, scullery door, in case the putative miscreant attempted an alleged escape; and at the three men in plain clothes, plain coats and plain hats with faces to match; and in front of the lot of them, not daring to look her in the eye, young Inspector Lime, shuffling his feet and rubbing his nose and looking older and more bloodshot than his forty years. She tapped him on the chest with the end of her stick, at this time of night, Frank, what’s the meaning of, but he wasn’t going to allow her to boss him around, not tonight, not with the men from the immigration watching his every move, so he drew himself up and pulled in his chins.
‘Begging your pardon, Mrs D. – certain allegations, – information laid before us, – reason to believe, – merit investigation, – necessary to search your, – a warrant has been obtained.’
‘Don’t be absurd, Frank dear,’ Rosa began to say, but just then the three men with the plain faces drew themselves up and seemed to stiffen, each of them with one leg slightly raised, like pointer dogs; the first began to emit an unusual hiss of what sounded like pleasure, while a soft moan escaped from the lips of the second, and the third commenced to roll his eyes in an oddly contented way. Then they all pointed past Rosa Diamond, into her floodlit hallway, where Mr Saladin Chamcha stood, his left hand holding up his pyjamas because a button had come off when he hurled himself on to his bed. With his right hand he was rubbing at an eye.
‘Bingo,’ said the hissing man, while the moaner clasped his hands beneath his chin to indicate that all his prayers had been answered, and the roller of eyes shouldered past Rosa Diamond, without standing on ceremony, except that he did mutter, ‘Madam, pardon me.’
Then there was a flood, and Rosa was jammed into a corner of her own sitting-room by that bobbing sea of police helmets, so that she could no longer make out Saladin Chamcha or hear what he was saying. She never heard him explain about the detonation of the Bostan – there’s been a mistake, he cried, I’m not one of your fishing-boat sneakers-in, not one of your ugando-kenyattas, me. The policemen began to grin, I see, sir, at thirty thousand feet, and then you swam ashore. You have the right to remain silent, they tittered, but quite soon they burst out into uproarious guffaws, we’ve got a right one here and no mistake. But Rosa couldn’t make out Saladin’s protests, the laughing policemen got in the way, you’ve got to believe me, I’m a British, he was saying, with right of abode, too, but when he couldn’t produce a passport or any other identifying document they began to weep with mirth, the tears streaming down even the blank faces of the plainclothes men from the immigration service. Of course, don’t tell me, they giggled, they fell out of your jacket during your tumble, or did the mermaids pick your pocket in the sea? Rosa couldn’t see, in that laughter-heaving surge of men and dogs, what uniformed arms might be doing to Chamcha’s arms, or fists to his stomach, or boots to his shins; nor could she be sure if it was his voice crying out or just the howling of the dogs. But she did, finally, hear his voice rise in a last, despairing shout: ‘Don’t any of you watch TV? Don’t you see? I’m Maxim. Maxim Alien.’
‘So you are,’ said the popeyed officer. ‘And I am Kermit the Frog.’
What Saladin Chamcha never said, not even when it was clear that something had gone badly wrong: ‘Here is a London number,’ he neglected to inform the arresting policemen. ‘At the other end of the line you will find, to vouch for me, for the truth of what I’m saying, my lovely, white, English wife.’ No, sir. What the hell.
Rosa Diamond gathered her strength. ‘Just one moment, Frank Lime,’ she sang out. ‘You look here,’ but the three plain men had begun their bizarre routine of hiss moan roll-eye once again, and in the sudden silence of that room the eye-roller pointed a trembling finger at Chamcha and said, ‘Lady, if it’s proof you’re after, you couldn’t do better than those.’
Saladin Chamcha, following the line of Popeye’s pointing finger, raised his hands to his forehead, and then he knew that he had woken into the most fearsome of nightmares, a nightmare that had only just begun, because there at his temples, growing longer by the moment, and sharp enough to draw blood, were two new, goaty, unarguable horns.
Before the army of policemen took Saladin Chamcha away into his new life, there was one more unexpected occurrence. Gibreel Farishta, seeing the blaze of lights and hearing the delirious laughter of the law-enforcement officers, came downstairs in a maroon smoking jacket and jodhpurs, chosen from Henry Diamond’s wardrobe. Smelling faintly of mothballs, he stood on the first-floor landing and observed the proceedings without comment. He stood there un
noticed until Chamcha, handcuffed and on his way out to the Black Maria, barefoot, still clutching his pyjamas, caught sight of him and cried out, ‘Gibreel, for the love of God tell them what’s what.’
Hisser Moaner Popeye turned eagerly towards Gibreel. ‘And who might this be?’ inquired Inspector Lime. ‘Another sky-diver?’
But the words died on his lips, because at that moment the floodlights were switched off, the order to do so having been given when Chamcha was handcuffed and taken in charge, and in the aftermath of the seven suns it became clear to everyone there that a pale, golden light was emanating from the direction of the man in the smoking jacket, was in fact streaming softly outwards from a point immediately behind his head. Inspector Lime never referred to that light again, and if he had been asked about it would have denied ever having seen such a thing, a halo, in the late twentieth century, pull the other one.
But at any rate, when Gibreel asked, ‘What do these men want?’, every man there was seized by the desire to answer his question in literal, detailed terms, to reveal their secrets, as if he were, as if, but no, ridiculous, they would shake their heads for weeks, until they had all persuaded themselves that they had done as they did for purely logical reasons, he was Mrs Diamond’s old friend, the two of them had found the rogue Chamcha half-drowned on the beach and taken him in for humanitarian reasons, no call to harass either Rosa or Mr Farishta any further, a more reputable looking gentleman you couldn’t wish to see, in his smoking jacket and his, his, well, eccentricity never was a crime, anyhow.