Salman Rushdie - Shalimar the Clown

On the day of her denunciation, Boonyi was with her friends at their afternoon dance practice by the banks of the Muskadoon. “Look,” said Zoon the carpenter’s daughter, pointing to a rocky outcrop where Gopinath stood watching them. “If it isn’t Mr. Bitterherb himself.” The spy made his way down the rocks, chewing his paan, his umbrella tapping on the stone, and Boonyi suddenly saw through his fogyish pose. “This is not a crabby little duffer at all, but a very dangerous man,” she warned herself, but it was too late. Gopinath had already seen everything he needed to see. To wooded groves and moonlit mountain meadows he had followed Shalimar the clown and Boonyi. Eight-millimeter movie film had been exposed, and still photographs taken also. They had never suspected his presence, never heard his footfall. He, by contrast, had seen more than enough. Now he stood before Boonyi, spat out betel juice and dropped his mask. His body straightened, his voice strengthened, and his face changed-his furrowed brow smoothed itself out, his expression was no longer narrow and pinched but calm and authoritative, and he plainly didn’t need (and so removed) his spectacles; he looked younger and steelier, a man to be reckoned with, a man it might be advisable not to cross. “That boy is trash-not worthy of you,” he said, loudly and clearly. “And the trashy things you were doing with him are unworthy of any decent girl.” Wor’y. U’wor’y. The accent at least had been genuine. Zoon, Gonwati and Himal became stiff with curiosity and horror. “You will be angry with me now,” the spy went on, “but later, when we are married, you may be pleased to have at your side a man of real mettle, not a lecherous boy.” The girl shook her head in disbelief. “What have you done?” she asked. “I have put an end to sin,” the spy replied. Boonyi’s thoughts raced. Her friends had closed in around her, pressing their bodies loyally against hers, forming a wall against the alien attack. Catastrophe was close.

“The panchayat is meeting at this moment in emergency session, to consider the evidence I have laid before it,” said Gopinath. “The sarpanch, your father and the others will soon decide your fate. You are disgraced, of course, your face is blackened and your good name is dirt, and that is your own doing; but I have informed them that I am prepared to restore your honor by taking you as my wife. What choice does your father have? What other man would be so generous toward a fallen woman? Repent now and thank me later, when your senses are your own again. Your lover is finished, of course, he is branded forever as a varlet and a dastard, but I snap my fingers at him as should you-as you will, when you enter into your only possible destiny, namely your inevitable life with me.”

Repen’ and than’ me whe’ your se’ses are your ow’. It was a remarkable proposal of marriage and after making it the transformed Gopinath did not wait for his beloved’s reply, but walked off some distance along the bank of the Muskadoon and sat down perhaps a hundred yards away, pretending that he didn’t have a care in the world. In reality he knew that he would be in boiling hot water with his superiors, having revealed his spying abilities to everyone in Pachigam and simultaneously turned himself into the most hated man in the village. His serious purposes were undone, he would have to withdraw immediately from his post at the school and from the village itself, and it would be far harder for the authorities to plant a second agent inside a community that would henceforth be on its guard against traitors and spies. In short, Gopinath had gambled everything on Boonyi, had been willing to sacrifice his secret career in return for capturing a wife who would never reciprocate his love, who would in fact detest him for painting her scarlet and puncturing her dreams of love. He stared into the fast-flowing waters and contemplated the tragedy of desire.

An air of calamity was rapidly enveloping the village. The fruit orchards, saffron fields and rice paddies lay empty and untended as those who habitually labored there put down tools and gathered outside the Noman residence where the panchayat was meeting. No food was cooked in the villagers’ kitchens that afternoon. Children ran barefoot hither and yon, gleefully shouting out ill-founded rumors of banishment and suicide. Boonyi and her three friends huddled together, arms around one another, in an inward-facing circle of misery from which loud wails and sobs of anguish escaped constantly. Even the livestock had divined that something was wrong; goats and cattle, dogs and geese displayed the kind of instinctive or premonitory agitation that is sometimes seen in the hours before an earthquake. Bees stung their keepers with unwonted ferocity. The very air seemed to shimmer with concern and there was a rumble in the empty sky. Firdaus Noman came for Boonyi, running with an ungainly lolloping gait, panting heavily, and screamed abuse at the judas Gopinath sitting calmly by the riverside. “Carbuncle!” she cursed him. “Clovenhoof! Bad-smell buttock! Little penis! Dried-up brinjal! ” The object of her wrath, the zaharbad, the pedar, the possessor of the smelly mandal, the wee kuchur, the wangan hachi, neither turned nor flinched. “ Wattal-nath Gopinath! ” Firdaus screamed-that is to say, mean-spirited, low-life, degraded Gopinath-and Boonyi’s friends broke away from their circle to take up the chant. “Wattal-nath Gopinath! Gopinath Wattal-nath!” Through the village went that cry, taken up by the eager children, until the whole village, almost all of whose residents were by now gathered outside the sarpanch’s home, was shouting. “Wattal-nath Gopinath! Little penis, bad-smell buttock, dried-up brinjal, clovenhoof! Gopinath Wattal-nath, go!”

“Damn you too,” Firdaus said more conversationally to Boonyi. “Come on, you stupid oversexed child. I’m taking you back to your father’s house and there you’ll stay until what’s done is done and your fate is known.” “We’re coming too,” cried Zoon, Himal and Gonwati. Firdaus shrugged. “That’s your concern. But I will be locking you four wretches in.” Boonyi did not argue and made her way home, chaperoned by her beloved’s irate mother. “Where is Noman?” she asked Firdaus in a small voice. “Shut up,” Firdaus answered loudly. “That is nothing to do with you.” Then in a low fast murmur she went on, “His brothers have taken him away, up to Khelmarg, to stop him from cutting off Pandit Gopinath Razdan’s fat head.” Boonyi replied more heatedly, and certainly more lewdly, than her situation warranted. “Anyway, they shouldn’t make me marry that snake. The first time he’s asleep I’ll cut off his kuchur and stuff it into his evil little mouth.” Firdaus slapped her hard across the face. “You’ll do as you are told,” she said. “And that was for the dirty talk, which I will not tolerate.” Faced with the incandescent fury of Firdaus Noman, neither Boonyi nor her friends dared to remind her where that day’s bad language had come from in the first place.

Once they were inside Boonyi’s home, Firdaus stopped pretending to be angry and made the girls a pot of salty pink tea. “The boy loves you,” she said to Boonyi, “and even though you have behaved like a disgusting slut, that love counts with me.” One hour later a boy knocked at the door to tell them that the panchayat had reached its decision and their presence was required. “We’re coming too,” said Himal, Gonwati and Zoon again, and again Firdaus did not demur. They made their way to the steps of the sarpanch’s residence where the panchayat members stood solemn-faced. Shalimar the clown was there with his brothers surrounding him and Boonyi’s heart thumped when she saw his face. There was a murderous darkness on his brow that she had not seen before. It frightened her and, worse than that, it made him look unattractive to her for the first time in her life. All the villagers were gathered around this little tableau and when they saw Firdaus approaching with Boonyi and her girlfriends a silence fell. Pandit Pyarelal Kaul was standing beside Abdullah Noman and the two fathers’ faces were the grimmest on display. “I’m done for,” Boonyi thought. “They’re going to pack me off to that bastard sitting like a cold fish by the river, waiting to have me handed over on a plate-me, Boonyi Kaul, whom he could never otherwise have won.”