Salman Rushdie: Grimus

Virgil Jones smiled in satisfaction. -That’s my little joke, he said. The jigsaw cannot be completed.

AS VIRGIL JONES and Dolores O’Toole prepared the evening meal, Flapping Eagle could not help observe what a good team they made in their distorted way. They seemed to work at different planes of the room-Dolores low and stooping, Virgil gross but erect. For a moment Flapping Eagle had the illusion that they actually stood at different ground levels. Then it passed, and he smiled. Despite their secrecy, their unwillingness to talk about the island, he could not help liking them. He wondered if they made love.

He had told them his own story earlier in the afternoon; they had listened with the rapt silence of children, nodding and gasping. Mr Jones had spoken only once, when Flapping Eagle first mentioned Nicholas Deggle. Then the eyebrows had lifted high into the fleshy forehead and Mr Jones had said: -So, so. When he finished, they sat in respectful silence for a moment; then Virgil Jones had said:

– By the heavens, Mr Eagle, you do seem to have led a rather epic life. I’m afraid we can offer you no stories to match yours. We live wholly in the microcosm, you see; the state of my corns and the state of nations are to me of equal concern. I don’t want at all to preach but I would recommend that you adapt yourself to minutiae; they are so much less confusing.

– There is the end of my search to be achieved, said Flapping Eagle.

– I’m afraid, to be honest, said Virgil Jones apologetically, I’ve ceased to see the merit in achievement or heroism. One tries by one’s life and actions to bring a little sense into an inane universe; to attempt more is to be sucked into the whirlpool.

Flapping Eagle thought: they seem very anxious for me to abandon my intentions. But he thought he had heard a subsidiary note in Virgil Jones’ voice: a note of uncertainty. Perhaps he didn’t quite believe what he was saying. He also thought Dolores O’Toole was the more tense of the two; and when he had spoken of his desire to continue his search, her glance had not been wholly neighbourly.

– Concentrate on the here , Mr Eagle, that’s my advice to you, finished Virgil Jones. Don’t worry about the there . Or the past. Or the future. Worry about dinner and your corns. Those are things you can affect.

– You said you would answer my questions when I was well, said Flapping Eagle. I am well now.

– Tomorrow morning, said Dolores hastily. After a good night’s sleep.

– There’s no time like the present, said Flapping Eagle.

– Tomorrow, pleaded Dolores O’Toole.

Flapping Eagle drew a breath.

– Since I am living on your kindness, he said, I am naturally at your mercy. Tomorrow will be quite soon enough.

Virgil Jones assumed a hearty air. -Let us celebrate your recovery, he said. I think we might slay a chicken tonight. In fact, Mr Eagle, since the peeling and so forth of vegetables rather preoccupies Mrs O’Toole and myself at present, perhaps you would be so kind?

Flapping Eagle could not very well refuse; he took the proffered knife and went out into the yard. It struck him that this was his first conscious sally into Calf Island.

When he was outside, Dolores came hesitantly to stand by Mr Jones’ side.

– You won’t… you won’t go with him? Her eyes were filled with fear.

Virgil Jones silently took her hand; she squeezed it violently. It was, for both of them, an irreversible declaration, forced at last from an eternity of concealment.

– I could not bear to lose you, she said.

Flapping Eagle looked up at Calf Mountain in the failing light. It climbed steeply away into lost forests, forbidding, green, which cleared somewhere up there to make room for the town of K. Calf Mountain: as alien to him as it was to the world he had known; and yet there was a similarity: a likeness of self and mountain, of mist-isolated island and much-travelled continents. It was there in the gloom and he couldn’t see it. Just the faces of his sister and the unknown pedlar in the darkness, waiting to be found, or forgotten.

– Chicken, he said to the chicken, shall I kill you?

The knife was in his hand, and the fowl at his mercy; but he hesitated, an old conflict reopening within him. He had never been an outsider by choice, and the desire to be acceptable, to please, which he knew to be within him, created a warring sensation inside. If only for this reason, he would not mind, in some ways, if he did stay awhile with Mr Jones and Mrs O’Toole. It would give pleasure, perhaps; it would, for once, unite him with other human beings, a welcome change from his accustomed separate-ness. And it would be peaceful. But to give up his search altogether…

He killed the chicken, because it was there to be killed.

Dinner was a silent meal for long stretches. Dolores O’Toole was lost in nervous broodings; she would snap out of the reverie to offer Mr Jones and Flapping Eagle further helpings of chicken. Flapping Eagle saw in her eyes a new light; he didn’t know what it meant, but it was new. He himself was preoccupied with the mountain, cloud-topped and unknown.

Virgil Jones made fitful attempts at conversation.

– Would you agree, Mr Eagle, he said, that what the human race fears most is the workings of its own mind?

– Yes and no, said Flapping Eagle distantly. Mr Jones frowned; he knew he should find a less serious topic, but none presented itself in the candle-lit murkiness. They squatted around the rickety, low table, Flapping Eagle once again unfrocked, Virgil hatless, and thought their separate thoughts.

– The mountain is really irresistible at this time of evening, offered Virgil Jones, and received only a few syllables in reply.

– Yes, yes it is, said Flapping Eagle, and was rewarded with a fierce glare from Mrs O’Toole.

– You cannot have failed to hear the birds, Mr Jones tried again. They are legion. Has it ever struck you how often one uses birds as analogies of human attributes and behaviour?

– No, said Flapping Eagle.

– Ah. Consider. The bird-kingdom is remarkably suitable for myth-makers. It occupies a different medium, yet it is in many ways an excellent parallel-having languages, courtship, family ties and so forth. Distant enough in appearance to he a safely abstract analogue, birds are near enough to be interesting. Consider the lark. Or the hawk. Or the nightingale. Or the vulture. The names are more than descriptions; they have become symbols. Consider, too, the profusion of bird-gods in Antiquity. The Phoenix. The Roc. The Homa. The Garuda. The Bennu. The Bar Yuchre. The Hathilinga with the strength of five elephants. The Kerkes. The Gryphon. The Norka. The Sacred Dragon. The Pheng. The Kirni. The Orosch. The Saëna. The Anqa. And of course, the master of them all, Simurg himself. Quite a number. Quite a number.

There was no reply.

– If I am not very much mistaken, Mr Eagle, Mr Jones added, the Eagle has an interesting significance in Amerindian mythology. Am I not right in saying that it is the symbol of the Destroyer? Its destruction being terrible and swift. I was fascinated by your choice of the name.

– I did not choose the name, said Flapping Eagle. It chose me.

– Quite, said Virgil Jones, and crossed his fingers.

MIDNIGHT, OR THEREABOUTS. In the small house in the small clearing by the grey cliffs above the grey beach, silence. In the dark forests on the dark slopes of the magic mountain, silence. Even the sea and sky were hushed.

Flapping Eagle was asleep; but the worried, ugly woman on the mat across the floor was wide awake.

Virgil Jones sat, an ample mound of flesh partly-concealed by a less-than-simple blanket, in his rocking-chair. Its irregular movements betrayed that he, too, was some way from dreams. His eyes closed for a moment; when, inexorably, they inched open again, he saw that Dolores stood in front of him, a bent body in a crude shift, spindleshanked and shaking slightly. The invitation in her eyes was unmistakable. They remained thus for a long instant, obesity and attenuation linked by the naked expression of desire. Then Virgil’s mouth twitched briefly in an unconvincing attempt at a smile; and he hauled himself from the chair, his nerves crying outrage in his tired frame. He walked to the door and drew back the sackcloth, standing with stiff gallantry as Mrs O’Toole hobbled out.