Salman Rushdie - Shalimar the Clown

His head was clearing. Life-and-death matters were all around him. In the middle of the fifteenth century the Sultan Zain-ul-abidin succumbed to a deadly Disease, viz. a poisonous Boil on the Chest, and would certainly have died, had it not been for the intervention of a scholarly Doctor, a Pandit whose Name was Shri Butt or Bhat. After Dr. Butt or Bhat had cured the King of his Illness, Zain-ul-abidin told him he should ask for a very precious Gift, for had he not given the King himself renewed Life, the most precious of all Gifts? “I need nothing for myself,” Dr. Butt or Bhat replied, “but sire, under the Kings who came before you my Brothers were persecuted without end, and they are in need of a Gift at least as valuable as Life.” The King agreed to cease the Persecution of the Kashmiri Pandits at once. In addition, he made it his Business to see to the Rehabilitation of their devastated and scattered Families, and allowed them to preach and practice their Religion without any Hindrance. He rebuilt their Temples, reopened their Schools, abolished the Taxes that burdened them, repaired their Libraries and ceased to murder their Cows. Whereupon a Golden Age began.

Words reawakened in him and rushed out like panicky sheep. “Pamposh, hai! hai! Pamposh-where is she-what’s happening-is she all right-the baby, will the baby live-where is Pyarelal, he must be wild-my God, didn’t I tell you to stay back -arré, how did she, when did it, what should we do?”

His wife put her hand on his lips and loudly, for public consumption, jeered dismissively. “Listen to my great husband who holds the whole village in his hand,” she said. “Listen to what one new baby turns him into-a panicky little boy.” Then, so that nobody else could hear, she whispered into his ear in quite a different manner. “We have taken sheets and constructed a private delivery area behind the kitchen tents. There are enough women to do the needful. I can help with the baby and the others will keep an eye on the twins and little Anees. But Giri is not so well, and the blizzard doesn’t help. There are doctors on the guest list and some of them live in nearby parts of Srinagar. Pyarelal has gone into the city to fetch one. Everything that can be done is being done. Leave it to me. There is enough on your plate just now.”

Abdullah opened his mouth to speak, and Firdaus saw the words I told you so trembling on his lips. “Don’t say it,” she forestalled him. “Just don’t even bother to try.”

Abdullah Noman was himself again. Yes, the doctor would be brought and Pamposh and the baby would be saved. The intervention of a scholarly doctor, a pandit, just the way it was in Budshah. In the meanwhile there was cooking to supervise and a double bill of plays to prepare for. Abdullah strode about, pointing and ordering, smoothing points of liaison with liveried members of the maharaja’s security guards, as well as service personnel and kitchen staff. The world resumed its familiar shape. On each of the terraces of the Shalimar garden, on either side of the central cascade of water, gaily colored shamiana tents had been erected, and the royal household staff were spreading the Dogra dastarkhans, the floor-cloths surrounded by bolster cushions at which the banquet was traditionally served to guests sitting in groups of four. Abdullah was everywhere, satisfying himself that all was as it should be. The snow fell straight down in large feathery flakes. It was hard to tell if it was a benediction or a curse.

In a tent on the lowest terrace Bombur Yambarzal the waza of Shirmal confronted him with a face whose colors were anything but gay. In spite of the maharaja’s requirement that their rivalries be set aside, this was not a man at peace with his neighbor. “It’s the final humiliation,” he snapped. “We-we, who are the unrivaled wazwaanis, longtime virtuosos of the pulao, maestros of methi chicken and artists of aab gosh!- we have been given the junior terrace, where the least important diners will come to eat. You interlopers-you pickpockets-you ignoramuses who think you can cook this food without even a waza to supervise you, let alone a vasta waza, a grand chef like myself!-have been ranked above us. The insult is apparent to all and will not be forgotten. I console myself that at least your rabble don’t have access to the highest terrace either, because the household chefs threatened to walk out if they didn’t get to feed the top tables. Clearly the maharaja was prepared to insult the whole village of Shirmal but felt obliged to butter up his cooks.”

Abdullah Noman held his tongue. It was true that Pachigam was to feed the middle tier of guests, but later in the evening Abdullah’s troupe of bhand pather actors would perform the history of Zain-ul-abidin, and then the Ram Leela, climaxing in the burning of the effigies and the fireworks, before the maharaja himself. “No point rubbing poor Bombur’s nose in his misfortune,” he thought, feeling one of his periodic twinges of guilty compassion for the waza of Shirmal; he inclined his head toward Yambarzal in a manner that was almost apologetic or at least deferential, and went on his way without returning hot words for hot, never suspecting that what lay ahead was not an evening of feasting and theater but one of the great hinge moments of his life and also of the life of everyone and everything he loved, a night after which nothing in the world would continue down its expected path, rivers would change their courses, the stars would turn up in unexpected places in the sky, the sun might as well start rising in the north or south or any damn place, because all certainty was lost, and the darkening began, ushering in the time of horrors, which Abdullah’s dreaming tongue had prophesied without consulting his brain. He went about his business, leaning into the snow, kicking drifts aside with his stout boots; and he was on his way to inspect the progress of the stage construction when Firdaus, staggering slightly, found him by the pond on the uppermost terrace. Exclamatory fountains burst upwards as she clutched his arm for support, as if the garden itself were shocked by the alteration in her demeanor. She looked much less in control of things than before, her face showed evidence of strain, and her lazy eye drifted uncertainly away to the side. “Okay,” she said, and then winced and gritted her teeth, perspiring silently as a powerful contraction hit her, “so, I admit, the situation has become a little more complicated than we thought.”

Two women gave snowbound birth behind the bushes, attended by a well-known local doctor and Sufistic philosopher, Khwaja Abdul Hakim, master of medicine both herbal and chemical, traditional and modern, Eastern and Western. But tonight his skills were useless; life arrived by itself, and death would not be denied. One boy child, one girl child, one trouble-free birth, one fatality. Firdaus Noman gave birth at speed, spitting out Noman Noman like a fruit pip. “Here you are, then, in a hurry,” she whispered into the ear of her newborn boy, neglecting to make sure that the first word he heard was the name of God. “Your father is a shape-shifter who calls his sorcery acting and your mother’s family of desperadoes is pretty suspicious, too, and nothing is at all normal about tonight; but just grow up normal anyway, okay, and don’t give me any reason to be scared.” Then Giri shrieked and Firdaus had to be restrained from jumping up to help her anguished friend. The women of Pachigam tended the living mother, swaddled and cared for the two healthy children and covered the dead woman’s face. They would take the body home during the night on a bullock cart covered with blossom from the garden and tomorrow she would burn in a sandalwood flame. What was there to say about such things? They happened. They did not happen frequently enough to threaten the survival of the species, the statistics were improving all the time, but when it was your turn, you were one hundred percent dead. There was grieving to be done and it would be done, as fully as was fitting. The pandit and his baby daughter needed the village’s support and they would receive it. The village would close around them like a hand. The pandit would live on. His daughter would live on. Life continued. The snow would melt and new flowers would grow. Death was not the end.