Salman Rushdie - Shalimar the Clown

And after another plunge into the phantom world, after boats, cars and planes, after a Canadian border crossing by helicopter shuttle from Vancouver to Seattle and a bus ride south, after a strange assignation at the IHOP on Sunset and Highland with his local contact, a middle-aged Filipino gentleman sporting slicked-down hair and a silk smoking jacket, after a night’s sleep in a downtown flophouse across the street from the Million Dollar Hotel, he stood in his business suit outside high gates on Mulholland Drive and spoke open-sesame words into an entry-phone. I am for Ambassador Max and my name is Shalimar the clown. No, sir, not tradesman. Sir, I am not understanding. You please to inform Ambassador Max, sir, wait on sir, sir, please, sir. And on the second day, again, the speech to the unnamed voice, the hostile, aloof, dismissive voice, the voice of security, taking no risks, considering the worst-case scenario, taking steps. On the third day there were dogs on the other side of the gate. Sir, he said, no dogs, please. I am known to Ambassador Max. No trouble, sir, please. Only please to inform Excellency and I will wait on his pleasure.

He slept in the rough grasses below the road’s rim, keeping out of sight of the cruising patrol cars. He was trained in many things. He could have caught the dogs by their jaws and ripped their heads in half. He could have faced the security voice and shown it some tricks, could have forced it to roll over like a dog and play dead like a dog. It was a dog’s voice and its owner could be killed like a dog. But he controlled himself, was humble, supplicant, mild. When the ambassador’s Bentley came out through the gates on the fourth day Shalimar the clown rose into view. Security guards raised their weapons but he had a woollen Kashmiri hat in his hands, his head was bowed and his demeanor was worshipful and sad. The window of the car came down and there was the target, Ambassador Max, old now but still the man he wanted, his prey. One’s prey can be hunted in many ways. Some of these are stealthy. Who are you, the ambassador was saying, why do you keep coming here. Sir, he said, my name is Shalimar the clown and once in Kashmir you met my wife. She danced for you. Anarkali. Yes, sir, Shalimar. Yes, sir, Boonyi, my wife. No, sir, I don’t want trouble. What’s done is done. No, sir, unfortunately she is deceased. Yes, sir. Some while back. Sad, yes, sir, very sad. Life is short and full of sorrow. Yes, sir, thank you for asking. I am happy to be here in land of frees home of braves. Only I am in need of employment. This, for her sake, sir, I ask. Sir, if you are able, for love. God bless you, sir. I will not disappoint.

Come tomorrow, the ambassador said. We’ll talk then. He bowed his head and backed off. On the fifth day he buzzed again. I am for Ambassador Max and my name is Shalimar the clown.

The gates opened.

He was more than a driver. He was a valet, a body servant, the ambassador’s shadow-self. There were no limits to his willingness to serve. He wanted to draw the ambassador close, as close as a lover. He wanted to know his true face, his strengths and weaknesses, his secret dreams. To know as intimately as possible the life he planned to terminate with maximum brutality. There was no hurry. There was time.

He knew the ambassador had a wife, from whom he was estranged. He knew there was a daughter who had been raised by the wife but now lived in Los Angeles also. Mr. Khadaffy Andang, the odd-looking Filipino gentleman, was a connection of the ustadz ’s connections, a long-term sleeper planted in California by the operatives of the Base, and had been activated by the Sheikh at the ustadz ’s request, to assist Shalimar the clown. By chance, or divine intervention, the sleeper resided in the same apartment building as the Ophuls girl. He talked to her at the laundry machines and his gentle courteous old-world manner put her at her ease. This was how the information about the ambassador had come to light. This was the way of the world. Sometimes your heart’s desire hung from the highest branch of the highest tree and you could never climb high enough to reach it. Or else you just waited patiently and it fell into your lap.

The ambassador kept no framed photographs of his family on his desk. That was his preference, to be low key in family matters. Then it was his daughter’s birthday and the ambassador sent him up to her apartment with flowers. When he saw her, when those green eyes speared him, he began to tremble. The flowers shook in his hands and she took them quickly from him, looking amused. In the elevator he couldn’t take his eyes off her until she saw him staring and then he dragged his gaze away and forced himself to look down at the floor. She spoke to him. His heart pounded. The voice was incredible. It was the ambassador’s voice on the surface but beneath the English words he could hear a voice he knew. He was from Kashmir, he said, answering her question. He made his English sound worse than it was, to prevent a conversation from beginning. He couldn’t speak to her. He could barely speak. He wanted to reach out to her. He didn’t know what he wanted. She let her hair down and there were tears in his eyes. He watched her drive away with her father and all he could think was, She’s alive. He didn’t know what he wanted. She was living in America now and by some miracle she was twenty-four years old again, mocking him with her emerald eyes, she was the same and not the same, but she was still alive.

He had warned Boonyi against leaving him. In Khelmarg long ago he promised her, “I’ll never forgive you. I’ll have my revenge. I’ll kill you and if you have any children by another man I’ll kill the children too.” And here now was that child, the child she had concealed from him until the end, the child in whom the mother was reborn. How beautiful she was. He would love her if he still knew how to love. But he had forgotten the way. All he knew now was slaughter. I’ll kill the children too.

W hat was justice, the old ladies chorused, the toothless old ladies from Croatia, Georgia, Uzbekistan, the widows in their dark cassocks swaying in slow unison with Olga Volga the house super naked at their head, grinding her hips, rotating her lumpy white body like a giant peeled potato, there was no justice, the women keened, your husbands died, your children abandoned you, your fathers were murdered, there was no justice but revenge.

After a while India Ophuls didn’t even have to be asleep to see the dream, it came to her whenever she closed her eyes, whenever she sat stiff-backed in a Shaker chair in her little vestibule, waiting for whatever she was waiting for. When she saw the gossipy old ladies in the corridors now she immediately pictured them dressed in cassocks and when she ran into Olga Simeonovna she imagined her without her clothes on, which made an intimacy between them. The former Astrakhani sorceress had taken the grief-distracted younger woman under her

wing, becoming her newest surrogate mother, tidying her apartment for her while she stared silently into space, and cooking her thick-gravied meat stews with dumplings and potatoes, or potato soup, or, when time was short, getting organic vegeburgers and Ore-Ida french fries out of the freezer. She was putting potatoes to work in other, more occult ways as well. The manhunt for Shalimar the assassin was coming up empty, infuriating Olga. “The LAPD, excuse me, they couldn’t catch a cold in a Russian draft,” she said contemptuously. “But by the power of potato magic we will haul in that asshole’s ass.”