Salman Rushdie: Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights

The fictional Greek god Proteus was a powerful metamorphic deity of the sea, as fluid in his transformations as water itself. Blood-Drinker was fond of transforming himself into sea-monsters and it is possible that he and Proteus were one and the same, that Proteus was the name the ancient Greeks gave him during their time. Dunia slipped into the grand bath hall of Peristan and there in the enormous bottomless saltwater pool was the Ifrit prince, now a long slippery eel, now a nameless spiky bug-eyed monster of the deep ocean trenches, and around him were the ladies of Fairyland squealing with anticipatory joy. Dunia had to move swiftly. As she plunged below the surface of the water to grab Ra’im Blood-Drinker by his sex — because whatever fantastic sea-beast he was impersonating at that moment, he would make sure he retained the equipment he needed to make love to the ladies of Fairyland — she spoke to him in the unvoiced private language of the jinn. I never did like fucking fish, she said, but fish-man, your time has come.

This was what she knew about male metamorphs: they would elude you, they would turn themselves into water and slip through your fingers, unless you were quick enough to grab them by the balls and hold on tightly. Then you had to cling on until they had tried everything they could think of; and if you were still there at the end, with their balls in your fist, then they were yours.

Easier said than done.

This was no ordinary metamorph, but Ra’im Blood-Drinker, the Grand Ifrit. He was a shark gaping at her with his great jagged teeth and a serpent winding around her to crush her in his coils. He was seaweed binding her and a whale trying to swallow her and a great stingray that could mortally damage her with his tail. She clung to him and avoided his traps. She was a black cloud with a hand emerging from it clutching his manhood. She was dazzling in her speed, her twists, her feints. She matched his moves and surpassed them. She was invincible. His transformations multiplied and accelerated. She was equal to them all. And finally he was spent, gasping his last breaths as she rose above the water and burned it with her electric hands and he was caught: tossed, fried and done. His body lay upon the water like a shipwreck.

Fish supper tonight, she said, and left him to sink beneath the surface.

She came out of the palace of the baths to face a hostile crowd. There were boos and cries of Shame on you. Ah, the confusion and fear of the jinnias of Peristan faced with one of their own, the Queen of Qâf Mountain, no less, become a murderer, killer of dark princes. They had all fled the baths when the fight began, and now they saw the palace broken and damaged, its golden arches fallen, its vaulted glass roof smashed, the palace turned into a mirror of so many war-smashed structures in the lower world; and yes, they knew the ruins could be rebuilt in a trice, a magic spell would give them back the palace immaculate and unspoilt, that was not the issue. No magic could raise Ra’im Blood-Drinker from the dead. And Shining Ruby was gone as well. Those truths were irreversible. The ladies of Fairyland turned their backs to Queen Dunia and she understood that she had lost her place in their ranks. No matter. It was time to return to the lower world and bring the war to an end.

In the midst of the battle there had been time to do one small good deed. The foolish Signor Giacomo Donizetti of New York, former seducer of unhappily married women, afterwards victim of a wicked, though not undeserved, tit-for-tat hex that obliged him to adore all women unreservedly, and presently wretched and rudderless, was of no use to her as a fighter; but maybe she could heal him. She was the mother of all her flock, the useless ones as well as the worthwhile, and she saw the good in this stray sheep of the Duniazát, hiding beneath the lechery and cynicism, and she pitied him for the spell cast on him by this or that small-fry bad jinni. Breaking the enchantment was easy and then Giacomo was once more immune to doctors’ receptionists and bag ladies, but he remained a lost soul until she listened to his heart and whispered to him what he must do, and wherein his salvation lay. Soon after that he opened a new restaurant.

It was an insane time to open an upscale eatery, even for somebody who had once been among the princes of the city’s nightlife. Those days were long gone and now, in wartime, people rarely ventured out to dinner, and when they did it was to grab something easy, something that required no investment of time or money on the part of either the vendor or the purchaser. Into that devastation of what had formerly been the gastronomic capital of the world came Giacomo Donizetti restored to his peacock finery with an establishment of polished wood and even more highly polished metal and glass. It shone like a new sun, and even though almost nobody went to eat there Donizetti’s extraordinary kitchen staff, pulled together from all the newly unemployed master chefs, pâtissiers and sommeliers in America, daily produced a menu as dazzling as the furnishings, so that the empty restaurant with its perfect table settings and even more immaculate waitstaff became a beacon of hope, a Statue of Liberty made not of copper but rather of food and wine. Afterwards, when peace returned to the world, it made Giacomo Donizetti’s fortune, becoming something like a symbol of the resistance, an emblem of the city’s old characteristics of defiance and optimism; but in those days people marveled at the epic folly of opening such a place: a brilliantly illuminated and opulent saloon containing the best of everything, except customers.

He had named the restaurant in the Venetian manner, Ca’ Giacomo, and its cuisine was Venetian too, featuring such delicacies as baccalà Mantecato, or creamed cod, bisato su l’ara, which was eel roasted with bay leaves, and caparossoli in cassopipa, or clams with parsley. There was rice and peas, risi e bisi, and stuffed duck, anatra ripiena, and for dessert there was a trolley bearing fried cream and torta Nicolotta and torta sabbiosa as well. How did Donizetti do it? people wondered. Where did he find the produce, and where did he get the cash? He answered all such questions with a Venetian mask of indifference, and a shrug. You want to eat? Don’t ask. You don’t like it? Eat someplace else.

His patrons’ pockets were deep. Zumurrud the Great was not the only one with caves full of precious stones larger than dragons’ eggs. And a jinnia queen can put meat and fish in your freezer with just a flick of her hand.

He tried repeatedly to thank her but she waved him away. It’s good for me too, she said. Wherever I’ve been, whoever I had to kill, I can come here every night and eat with the kitchen brigade. If I am your only customer, so what? It’s my money I’m losing. Fegato, seppie, Venetian baicoli biscuits. A glass of good Amarone wine. Yes. This heals me too.

In the unexpected lull that followed the deaths of Shining Ruby and Ra’im Blood-Drinker, things began to feel different in the city, though everyone was hesitant to use the word better. However, as the resistance grew; and as the mobs of the parasite-jinn disappeared from the city’s streets, many of their number standing petrified here and there as signs of a shift in the conflict; and as the strangenesses diminished in number, frequency and ferocity; so people began to venture out into the streets and parks again. Like the first crocus of spring, a runner was sighted on the promenade along the banks of the Hudson, not running away from a monster, just running for fun. The rebirth of the idea of pleasure was itself like the arrival of a new season, even though everyone knew that as long as the malevolent Zabardast and Zumurrud were out there — these names had become familiar to everyone on the planet — the danger remained. Liberation radio stations began intermittently to broadcast and all of them asked the same question: Where are ZZ Top?