Salman Rushdie - Shalimar the Clown

The élite Special Forces officers, looking a little disgusted at the case’s turn toward the ordinary, handed over responsibility for the investigation to Central Homicide, the regular, nonterrorist, crime-related-elimination guys, and two new detectives, Lieutenant Tony Geneva and Sergeant Elvis Hilliker, sad-eyed men with high mileage numbers on their clocks, came to inspect the murder scene, but they weren’t interested in briefing India on the status of the search for the man she was now trying to think of as “Noman,” maybe there was classified material which they were keeping to themselves but the only things they came out with were bland, ready-to-wear formulations like the manhunt is intensifying, ma’am, and snippets of useless facts, He planned his day carefully, took a change of clothing along in the trunk, we found the soiled garments in there, Lieutenant Geneva said, and Sergeant Hilliker added, He abandoned the car just a few blocks east of here, on Oakwood near Crescent Heights, and if he’s on foot in this town he’s going to be hard to miss, plus if he tries to steal himself a ride we’ll have him in our sights, so we’ll get him, ma’am, don’t doubt it, this isn’t Indian country, it’s ours.

She understood their remarks to mean that they were under pressure from their senior officers and needed to sound effective. (When she innocently used the term superiors to describe their bosses at City Hall, they had plenty to say, they momentarily achieved something like volubility, They’re not our superiors, ma’am, senior officers is all they are, Lieutenant Geneva rebuked her, and Sergeant Hilliker vehemently added, Which doesn’t make them our betters. Everybody was sensitive nowadays. Everybody had a vocabulary to peddle. Words had become as painful as sticks and stones, or maybe skins had grown thinner. India blamed the ozone layer, apologized and changed the subject.) Max’s death was a big story, and they had more than just the commissioner on their backs, the TV audience was impatient, too, it wanted the pictures right away, a shoot-out, preferably, or a car chase with helicoptered cameras, or at the very least a good, close-up look at the captured murderer, manacled, shaggy haired, and in orange or green or blue prison fatigues, pleading to be put to death by lethal injection or cyanide gas because he didn’t deserve to live.

She had no way of knowing if an arrest was near because she wasn’t fully in the information loop. But the truth-the impossible truth, the truth that proved to her she was more than a little crazy right now, the truth she couldn’t share with anyone, and which consequently sealed her off from the people who loved her-the insane, segregating truth was that she knew things about the fugitive which the police did not, because she had begun to hear his voice inside her head. Or not exactly a voice but a disembodied nonverbal transmission, like a wild screech full of static and internal dissension, hatred and shame, repentance and threat, curses and tears; like a werewolf howling at the moon. She had not experienced anything like this before, and in spite of her occasional power of second sight she was made greatly afraid by this auditory manifestation, by her transformation into a medium for the living. She locked her apartment door and sat in darkness, doubting her own sanity, until she slowly came to terms with what was happening. The shouted, argumentative, out-of-control babble in her head was the cry of a deranged soul, a man in a state of elated horror, He might be a professional, she thought, but he’s not reacting professionally this time, something about this hit has unhinged him, this wasn’t done in cold blood. This was hot.

I am for Ambassador Max and my name is Shalimar the clown. The sentence with which the murderer had introduced himself and named his quarry, quoted by one of the Mulholland Drive security guards to the police, had somehow found its way into the papers, and she had been worrying away at it, trying to unlock its secrets. Shalimar the clown. What did that mean. He was her mother’s husband. What was she to do with information of such power. Now she understood what he had been staring at in the elevator that first day, her birthday, he had been seeing in her what she herself could not see, what her survival instincts, her private defense mechanisms, had made her block out of her vision. He had found her mother in her and now that mother within was hearing his silent demented scream.

She went to her bedroom, stripped off her clothes and examined her body in the mirrored closet doors, kneeling on her bed, stretching, leaning, trying to see in her unclothed form what he had seen in her when she was fully attired, straining to look beyond the echoes of her father and find the woman she had never been able to see. Slowly her mother’s face began to form in her mind’s eye, blurry, out of focus, vague. It was something. A gift from a killer. He had taken her father but her mother was being given to her. She felt angry all of a sudden. In a rage she called out to him, naked, with her eyes closed, like a witch at a séance. Tell me about her, she cried. Tell me about my mother, who wanted to go back to you, who was ready to give me up, who would have left me for you if she hadn’t died first. (This cruel fragment of knowledge had been imparted long ago by the woman who was not her mother, the woman who did not give her life but gave her her name, the name she did not like.) Tell me, she cried into the night, about my mother who loved you more than me. Then came a thought unbidden: She’s still alive. Maybe it wasn’t true about her dying, and she’s still alive. Where is she, she asked the voice in her head. Is this what she wanted, to kill her lover, to allow her husband to regain his honor by murdering the man she left him for. Did she send you to do this. How she must hate me, to abandon me and then have my father killed. What is she like. Does she ask about me. Have you sent her photographs of me. Does she want to see me. Does she know my name. Is she still alive.

Her desire to understand the killer had been fighting against more vengeful longings. A part of her believed that the act of taking a life was never trivial, always profound, wanted to believe it even in an age of interminable slaughter, a primitive age in which hard-won ideas, the sovereignty of the individual, the sanctity of life, were dying beneath the piles of bodies, buried beneath the lies of warlords and priests, and this part wanted to know in full the why of it, not to excuse the deed but at least to comprehend, to know the other who had with such finality altered the condition of her self. For another, possibly larger part, the memory of her father subsiding in blood was all the knowledge that was required. What was justice? Was comprehension necessary before judgment could be made and sentence passed? Had Shalimar the clown understood the man he killed? And if he felt he had, would that make his actions defensible? Did understanding drag justice in its wake? No, she told herself, understanding and justice were unrelated things, like repentance and forgiveness. An understanding man could also be unjust. A woman might see her father’s killer repent, truly repent, and still be unable to forgive.

He had no answers for her. He was inchoate, contradictory, storm clouded. He was a hunted animal living in a ravine, like a coyote, like a dog. He was starving and thirsty. He was venom and blood. Is my mother here too, she asked him, over and over again. Did you bring her with you, is she waiting for you somewhere, holed up in some cheap freeway motel, to celebrate my father’s death. What do you do to celebrate your kills, do you drink yourself stupid, no, you wouldn’t drink, or is it sex, is that how you release your brutal delight, or do you pray, you and my mother, will you both get down on your knees and bang your joyful foreheads against the floor. Where is she, take me to her, let me look her in the face. She has to look me in the face. She cut me loose and never looked back and she has to look me in the face. She’s here, isn’t she. She wouldn’t miss this. She’s here, in a neon motel, waiting. Did she ask you to cut off his head. Did she want him decapitated but he was too tough for you, he didn’t give you that satisfaction. His head stayed on his shoulders and thwarted your obscene aims, your attack against humanity. Where is she. If she sent you she has to face me.