Joseph Anton: A Memoir

  He gave Zafar an electric guitar for his eleventh birthday and spent the afternoon with him at Hermitage Lane, listening to him play it and recording his efforts. Just another ordinary day with the most important human being in his life.

  Cosima had found a large, detached house in Wimbledon, much more comfortable than Hermitage Lane: an ample three-story brick home with an octagonal tower on its southern side. The police had looked at it and approved. Hermitage Lane was an awful place but it had given him seven stable months. Now it was time to prepare to move again.

  The contract for Haroun and the Sea of Stories had not been signed by the publisher. Andrew went to meet Sonny Mehta and Alberto Vitale to ask the reason why. Before the meeting Sonny said to Andrew, “I don’t think there’s a problem,” so clearly there was one. At the meeting, Vitale said he didn’t want the contract signed “for insurance reasons.” They were negotiating to buy their building and they didn’t want this book to become an issue. They were willing to pay two-thirds of the agreed advance to acquire an “option to publish,” and would hand over the final third after the author had discussed “editorial issues” with Sonny. “The author should sign,” Vitale said, “but we will wait.” Andrew called him to give him the news. “No,” he said, outraged. “Cancel the deal and tell them I’ll sue them for breach of contract. I’d rather go unpublished than be humiliated.” Later that afternoon Andrew met with Vitale and Sonny again and they capitulated. Yes, they said, they would sign. He was left with a bitter taste in his mouth, but at least he had won a round.

  On his forty-third birthday Gillon brought him the contract to be signed. It contained a “confidentiality clause.” He was not to tell anyone about the deal until a later date to be agreed upon with Random House. This clause gave off the unmistakable scent of rat. He signed the contract. Almost at once the rat came out into the open. Sonny Mehta refused to publish Haroun unless it was rewritten to his specifications.

  He had known Sonny Mehta for ten years, ever since Sonny had published the UK paperback of Midnight’s Children at Picador Books in London. For all that time he had thought of him as a friend, even though Sonny’s famous reserve made him a difficult man to feel close to. Sonny was a man of very few words and even fewer phone calls, given to smiling enigmatically behind his goatee and leaving the talking and socializing to his flamboyant wife, Gita, but he was a man of taste, integrity, deep loyalty to his authors, and elegance (high-quality blazers worn with drainpipe jeans). In the matter of Haroun and the Sea of Stories, however, he behaved like a different person entirely. On June 26, 1990, he called Andrew to insist that Haroun must be rewritten to change the setting. The “Valley of K,” he said, was obviously Kashmir, and Kashmir was a highly contentious place, wars had been fought over it, and Islamic jihadists were active there; so clearly that had to go—maybe, he proposed, the story could be set in Mongolia?—or there would be “bodies everywhere,” and “Salman will be in worse trouble than he is now.” Haroun, he assured Andrew, was a more dangerous and provocative work than The Satanic Verses.

  He tried to look at his children’s fable through that distorted lens. But even with that warped vision the book could surely only be read as “pro-Kashmiri”? The character of “Snooty Buttoo,” however, was a satirical portrait of an Indian politician and maybe that was what Sonny, who came from a high diplomatic family and whose wife was the daughter of the chief minister of Orissa, and who moved in Delhi’s elite political circles, really objected to? And if Sonny was so scared of a children’s book, how would he react to the adult fiction he might be offered in the future?

  There was worse to come. Sonny’s plan was to go through the entire production process without putting the author’s name on the book. Alberto Vitale had bizarrely insisted on secrecy because one of Random House’s tenants was the Norwegian consulate, and to announce the publication of a Rushdie novel would make things too dangerous for the Norwegians. A false name would therefore be used and the real name substituted at the last minute, as the book was going to be printed. That was terrible. It looked like frightened behavior—it was frightened behavior—and when it leaked, as it would almost certainly leak, that Random House was too scared to name the author of this book, it would give the book a “controversial” aura before anyone had even seen it, and act as a clear invitation to the author’s adversaries to start another fight.

  Sonny messengered clippings about Kashmir, taken from Indian magazines and newspapers, to Andrew’s office to illustrate his concern. There were characters in Haroun called Butt and a man called Butt had been hanged in Kashmir recently, “as Salman must have known.” So now this “Butt,” which had been his mother’s maiden name; and which, spelled as “Butt” or “Bhatt,” was the most common of Kashmiri names; and which, in Haroun, was not the name of a hanged man but of a genial bus driver and then of a giant mechanical hoopoe, had become a politically explosive name? It was absurd, but Sonny was in deadly earnest. Andrew suggested to him that he was not exactly behaving as Salman’s old friend and he retorted, “I don’t see what this has to do with friendship.” Then he added, “Andrew, nobody on earth understands this book as well as I do.” Andrew answered, with commendable restraint, “I think Salman believes that he does.”

  All this Andrew relayed to him from New York while standing in the street after leaving Sonny’s office. He told Andrew, “Please go back upstairs and put me on the phone with him.” Sonny got on the line and said he was “sure” their disagreements could be sorted out, if he could just fly to London to discuss them. But things had gone too far for that.

  “What I need you to answer, Sonny,” he said, “is, will you publish my novel as I have written it—yes or no?”

  “Let me come and talk to you about it,” Sonny repeated.

  “There’s nothing to talk about,” he told Sonny. “Will you publish it as written, that’s the only question.”

  “No,” said Sonny, “I will not.”

  “Then,” he told his old friend, “please tear up that contract you have in front of you on your desk.”

  “Okay,” Sonny said, “if that’s what you want, Salman.”

  “It’s not what I want,” he said. “I want someone to publish my book, not some damn book you’ve got in your head.”

  “Okay,” he said, “then we’ll tear it up.”

  He learned that there had been a Random House UK board meeting some time previously and the possible publication of Haroun had been on the agenda. The vote had gone heavily against him.

  In another universe, it was time for the World Cup. Bill Buford, who for some time had been writing a book about soccer hooligans, flew to Sardinia for the England-Holland match, not for the soccer but because the battles after the game between the rival gangs of thugs would be too good to miss. That night on the main British evening news the violence in Sardinia was the lead item. An army of British hoodlums was seen advancing on the camera position, brandishing fists and clubs and chanting “England!” In the very center of the first line of British thugs, yelling and chanting with the rest of them, was the editor of Granta magazine, taking the participatory techniques of the New Journalism to a level that George Plimpton and Tom Wolfe had perhaps not envisaged. Later that night the Italian police had attacked the British “fans” and many of them were badly beaten, including Bill, who was kicked repeatedly in the kidneys while curled up in a fetal ball on the sidewalk. In spite of his injuries, he dedicated himself, on his return to London, to rescuing his friend’s literary career.

  Haroun was looking for a publisher. Liz Calder said that Bloomsbury would not wish to compete for it. Christopher Sinclair-Stevenson, who had just launched his own small, independent house, said that his operation was “too fledgling” to take this on. Christopher MacLehose at Harvill was prevented from bidding by Murdoch’s HarperCollins, Harvill’s majority shareholder. Faber and Faber was a possibility. But it was Bill who wanted it most, for Granta magazine’s new imprint, Granta Books. “You need
someone who will publish you absolutely normally, with all the excitement and pizzazz that a new book from you deserves,” he said. “You need to be presented to readers as a writer all over again, and that’s what I want to do for you with this book.” Until the possibility of publishing Haroun arose Bill had been suggesting to him that Blake Morrison be allowed to write his authorized biography, to allow readers to get to know the man, rather than the scandal. Blake was an excellent writer and would do a fine job, he knew that; but he didn’t want his private life exposed. And if the time came when the story was ready to be told, he wanted to be the one to do it. One day, he told Bill, it’s going to be me.

  Now the biography idea was forgotten. Bill was begging Gillon to be allowed to do Haroun. His enthusiasm was gratifying, and persuasive. Granta Books were distributed by Penguin. This, Gillon said, could be an “elegant solution.” A breach with Penguin, which could lead to damaging publicity, would be avoided, and yet the Penguin people would not be too directly involved. All of a sudden everyone at Viking Penguin got excited about this. They, too, liked the face-saving aspect. Bill said that the Penguin sales reps’ response had been “very positive.” Peter Mayer wrote a letter hoping this could be a fresh start and he replied that he, too, hoped it might be. Everyone in the UK office wanted to publish quickly, in September, to be able to benefit from Christmas sales, and Penguin USA agreed. The deal was done and announced almost as soon as it was proposed. The speed was important. If Sonny had had time to explain to his many friends in publishing that he had refused to publish Haroun because its author had once again submitted a time bomb without coming clean about its dangers, then that author’s ability to publish books would have disappeared forever. Bill Buford, by his courage and determination, had prevented that from happening.

  Gita Mehta told a mutual friend, “I think he’s a bit off us at the moment.”

  He missed Marianne. He knew he must not try to go back to her after everything that had happened, after the CIA plot and the black journal, but, mind and body, he missed her. When they spoke on the phone they fought. Conversations that began I wish you well ended with I hope you die. But love, whatever he meant by love, whatever she meant by it, the word “love” still hung in the air between them. His mother had survived decades of marriage to his angry, disappointed, alcoholic father by developing what she called a “forgettery” instead of a memory. She woke up every day and forgot the day before. He, too, seemed to lack a memory for trouble, and woke up remembering only what he yearned for. But he did not act upon his yearning. She had left for America and that was for the best.

  He knew that somewhere beneath the constant pressure of events he was deeply depressed and his reactions to the world had grown abnormal. Pray do not mock me, as Lear said. I fear I am not in my perfect mind. Perhaps he saw in her the physical reality of his old life, the ordinary that this present extraordinary had usurped. Perhaps this what remained of their love. It was the love of the vanished yesterday, the day-after yearning for the day before.

  He was aware that the splitting in him was getting worse, the divide between what “Rushdie” needed to do and how “Salman” wanted to live. He was “Joe” to his protectors, an entity to be kept alive; and in his friends’ eyes, when he was able to see them, he read their alarm, their fear that “Salman” might be crushed under the weight of what had happened. “Rushdie” was another matter entirely. “Rushdie” was a dog. “Rushdie,” according to the private comments of many eminent persons, including the Prince of Wales, who made these comments over lunch to his friends Martin Amis and Clive James, deserved little sympathy. “Rushdie” deserved everything he got, and needed to do something to undo the great harm that he had done. “Rushdie” needed to stop insisting on paperbacks and principles and literature and being in the right. “Rushdie” was much hated and little loved. He was an effigy, an absence, something less than human. He—it—needed only to expiate.

  Ruthie Rogers, co-owner of London’s River Café, gave a birthday party for him. A dozen of his closest friends gathered under the watchful eyes of nine of Andy Warhol’s Mao screen prints in the huge living room of the Rogers house on Royal Avenue, that brilliantly lit white space with its high curtainless windows that was a Special Branch nightmare. Ruthie and her husband, the architect Richard Rogers, had been no more than friendly acquaintances of his before the fatwa but it was in their loving natures to draw closer to friends in time of trouble and do much more than was called for. He was a man in need of hugs and embraces and that evening he received plenty of them. He was glad his friends were huggers and kissers. But he saw himself reflected in their eyes and understood that he was in bad shape.

  He was learning the limitations of language. He had always believed in its omnipotence, in the power of the tongue. But language would not get him out of this. “In Good Faith” and “Is Nothing Sacred?” had changed nothing. A Pakistani friend, Omar Noman, wanted to assemble a group of people from “our part of the world” to explain to the Iranians that “they had got the wrong man.” An Indian friend, the distinguished attorney Vijay Shankardass, saw a role for Indian Muslims in resolving the affair. Vijay undertook to speak to some leaders, including Syed Shahabuddin, who had managed to get The Satanic Verses banned in India, and Salman Khurshid, the “wrong Salman,” whom Imam Bukhari of the Delhi Juma Masjid had mistakenly condemned at Friday prayers.

  He doubted that reason or argument, the methods of language people, would be very successful. He was battling a greater—or, to use the vocabulary of the godly, a higher power, one that scoffed at the merely rational, and commanded a language that far outranked the tongues of mortal men. And this god was not a god of love.

  He left Hermitage Lane forever and was driven, with Zafar, to Deborah and Michael’s farm in Powys, where they spent a precious weekend together kicking a soccer ball, playing cricket and throwing a Frisbee around a field. Clarissa had wanted the weekend to herself because of a new man she was seeing but that weekend he broke up with her, unwilling to deal with her share of the fatwa fallout. She was handling it very strongly. He wished she could be happy.

  After the weekend he slipped unnoticed into the Wimbledon house, but then there was trouble. The owner, Mrs. Cindy Pasarell, called several times with nosy questions. Fortunately one of the female protection officers, Rachel Clooney, was on duty, and because a woman’s voice was a more reassuring thing to hear than a man’s Mrs. Pasarell’s curiosity was somewhat assuaged. Then Mr. Devon Pasarell called, apparently unaware of Mrs. Pasarell’s calls, saying he needed some things from the garage. Maybe they were separated? The next day a “business associate” of Mrs. Pasarell’s showed up at the door for no good reason. Then Cindy Pasarell called again, sounding sterner. She would like to meet the new tenants to satisfy herself that they were “appropriate.”

  He called Pauline to ask for help. She had played parts in everything from Far from the Madding Crowd to The Young Ones, and knew all about improv, so she could certainly handle this role. He briefed her on her character and she agreed to spend a day at the house and meet the inquisitive Cindy. The situation was both absurd and fraught. He told Bob Major that he couldn’t do this anymore, all this deception and lurking. Some other arrangement would have to be made. Bob made sympathetic, noncommittal noises. He was a foot soldier. A decision like that wasn’t his to make.

  In the next two days Mr. Pasarell came round again without warning, to “pick up his stuff from the garage,” and then again, “to drop the garage key through the front door.” Rachel Clooney, a tall, elegant blonde with a soft Scottish burr and a big smile, spoke gently to him, but he remained in his black Granada outside the property for quite a while, watching. In an attempt to calm things down, Pauline, as the lady of the house, called Mrs. Pasarell and invited her to tea, but although she accepted the invitation she didn’t show up; instead the Pasarells jointly sent a letter of complaint to Gillon’s office, protesting about what they called the “multiple occupancy” of the h
ouse. The fear of discovery was paralyzing. Would it be Little Bardfield all over again—would he have to move out at once and lose all the rent he had paid and contracted to pay? “This is horrible,” he said to Gillon. “It has to end.”

  It was Gillon who solved the problem. “They’re being ridiculous,” he said in his haughtiest, most contemptuous tone. “They’re getting a great deal of money from you. We need to slap them down a little. Leave it to me, my dear.” He faxed them what he called a “fuck-off letter.” Soon after he called back, tickled pink. “My dear, I think it worked. They have faxed me back, and agreed to fuck off.” The Pasarells had indeed agreed that in return for the excellent amount of rent they were receiving they would cease to bother their tenants. They may even have apologized. And that, for several months, was that.

  Nadine Gordimer was collecting the signatures of eminent Europeans on an “appeal to the government of Iran.” At the Pinters’ home he dined with Carlos and Silvia Fuentes and the great Mexican novelist offered to “round up Latin American heads of state.” Meanwhile the garden gnome Siddiqui continued to make his unpleasant gnomic statements, which were echoed in louder voices by the grander gnomes of Qom and Tehran. There had been a huge earthquake near the city of Rasht and forty thousand people had died, and half a million more were homeless, but that did not change the subject. The fatwa stood.

  Zafar would be away for three whole weeks. He was off to holiday camp with two school friends, and after that Clarissa was taking him to France with Liz Calder and Louis Baum and Louis’s son Simon. In his absence, there were Pakistani guerrillas to be dealt with.

  The Pakistani film International Gorillay (International guerrillas), produced by Sajjad Gul, told the story of a group of local heroes—of the type that would, in the language of a later age, come to be known as jihadis or terrorists—who vowed to find and kill an author called “Salman Rushdie.” The quest for “Rushdie” formed the main action of the film and “his” death was the film’s version of a happy ending.