Salman Rushdie - Grimus

– Virgil, she said. I was so afraid.

– Now, now, Dolores, he said helplessly, feeling grossly hypocritical.

She climbed out of the trunk and came to him, standing in front of him like a vulnerable chimpanzee.

– Nothing will change, will it, Virgil? she repeated.

Virgil Jones closed his eyes.

– Dolores, he said. Please try to understand. I must go up the mountain with Mr Eagle. I must.

– O good, she cried all at once, clapping her hands. I knew it would be all right.

He looked at her. -Dolores, he said. Did you hear? We are going to leave in the morning. Leave .

– Yes, she said, early in the morning. We’ll go down to the beach as usual, and I’ll carry your chair for you, clumsy and shortsighted as you are. My love.

– O god, said Virgil Jones.

– It’s not your fault, he said outside, to Flapping Eagle. Please ascribe no blame to yourself. It is my responsibility. Mea culpa.

– You’ll stay with her, of course, said Flapping Eagle.

– No, said Mr Jones. If acceptable to you, we leave tomorrow morning.

Flapping Eagle had to ask: -Why, Mr Jones? Why choose me?

Mr Jones smiled crookedly. -My dear fellow, he said, never look a gift horse in the mouth. Do you know Latin?

– No, said Flapping Eagle. Or just a few words.

– Timere Dañaos et dona ferentes , said Mr Jones. Do you follow me?

– No, said Flapping Eagle.

– Perhaps it’s just as well, said Virgil Jones, if we are to be friends.

TO KEEP DOLORES calm, Flapping Eagle had dinner alone that night, by the well; Virgil Jones brought it out to him. He was puzzled; there was a whole set of facts that didn’t add up: some awful history of which he was unaware, and which had brought Mr Jones to his surprising decision. He tried to work it out and failed; so he tried to go to sleep instead, and eventually succeeded.

Meanwhile, Virgil Jones was making a despairing attempt to break through the barrier in Dolores’ mind.

– You remember Nicholas Deggle, he said.

– O yes, said Dolores, quite normally. I never took to him. Good riddance, I thought, when he disappeared.

– He didn’t disappear, Dolores. He was thrown out. So listen: if he should arrive, don’t mention you knew me. All right?

– Very well, darling, she said equably, but you’re being foolish. Why, he’ll see you, for heaven’s sake.

– Dolores, exclaimed Virgil Jones, I’m going away!

– I love you too, said Mrs O’Toole.

Virgil shook his head in a gesture of impotence.

– Listen, Dolores, he tried again. Nicholas Deggle has a grudge against me. So don’t let him know I loved you… love you. For your own sake.

– Darling, said Mrs O’Toole, I want to tell the whole world about our love. I want to shout it out all over the island. I want…

– Dolores, said Virgil Jones. Stop. Stop.

– I’m so glad you’re staying, she said. And I’m proud of you, too.

– Proud, echoed Mr Jones.

– O yes, she said. For chasing away that spectre from Grimus. That was well done. Now nothing can happen.

– No, said Mr Jones, admitting defeat. Nothing.

That night, Virgil Jones dreamt of Liv. Tall, beautiful, deadly Liv, who had been the breaking of him so long ago. She was the centre of the whirlpool and he was falling towards her as her mouth opened in a smile of welcome and opened further and wider and opened and opened and he fell towards her and the water rushed up over his head and he broke, like a twig.

Flapping Eagle woke several times during the night, since the bare ground was both hard and lumpy. There was an itching on his chest. He scratched at it sleepily, and thought as he drifted off again: That damn scar .

That damn scar played him up sometimes.

Tiusday morning again. Misty.

Virgil Jones was shaken gently awake. He found Mrs O’Toole smiling at him, saying: -Time to get up, my love.

He got up. Methodically, he took an old bag from its peg on the wall, filling it with fruit and vegetables.

– Why ever do you need all that for the beach, dear? asked Dolores. He didn’t reply.

– I’ll need your belt now, my love, she said, attempting a dulcet tone. He dressed in silence: the black suit, the bowler hat.

– Dolores, he said, I need the belt myself today.

– O, she pouted. Well, if you’re going to be like that, I’ll manage without it.

She hoisted the chair on to her hump. -Come on, she cooed. Time to be off.

– I’m not coming with you, he said.

– All right, dear, she said; you come on behind as usual. I’ll see you down there.

– Goodbye, Dolores, he said.

She hobbled out of the hut with the rocking-chair on her back.

He collected Flapping Eagle from the wellside. The Axona had tied a cloth around his forehead and stuck a feather in at the back.

– Ceremonial dress, he joked; Virgil Jones didn’t smile.

– Let’s go, he said.

The rocking-chair sat upon the beach, with its back to the sea. Beside it, on the greysilver sands, Dolores O’Toole sat and sang her songs of mourning and requition.

– O, Virgil, she said. I’m so, so happy.

Waiting in the forests on the slopes of Calf Mountain, silent, invisible, as the fat, stumbling man and his tallish feathered companion, feather bobbing beside bowler, made their progress up the overgrown paths, watching over them and waiting, was a Gorf.

THE GORFIC PLANET is sometimes called Thera. It winds its way around the star Nus in the Yawy Klim galaxy of the Gorfic Nirveesu. This area is the major component of the zone sometimes termed the Gorfic Endimions. The Gorfic obsession with anagram-making ranges from simple rearrangement of word-forms to the exalted level of the Divine Game of Order. The Game extends far beyond mere letter-puzzling; the vast mental powers of the Gorfs make it possible for them anagrammatically to alter their very environment and indeed their own physical make-up-in the latter case within the severe limits imposed by their somewhat grotesque given material. The Rules of the Game are known as Anagrammar; and to hold the title of Magister Anagrammari is the highest desire of any living Gorf.

“Living” is a troublesome term, for Gorfs are not life-forms as we know them. They need no food, no water, no atmosphere, and possess only one intangible sensory tool which serves for sight, sound, touch, taste, smell and quite a lot besides: a sort of aura or emanation surrounding their huge, hard, useless bodies.

To be explicit: the Gorfs look like nothing so much as enormous sightless frogs, with one important peculiarity. They are made entirely out of rock.

Their origins are lost in mystery; some radiation, perhaps, blasting their now-barren planet, formed the rock into these masterpieces of intelligence and at the same time trapped them in the tragic irony of near-immobility and total isolation. For this is the tragedy of the Gorfs: not only Thera itself, but the entire Endimions, is totally devoid of any other life-form. No animals bound, no plants wave, nor is there any breeze to wave them.

This irony prevented the Gorfs, for several millennia, from being able to determine how advanced a culture they actually were, having no standards of measurement. The result was a certain philosophical paranoia. The supreme Master of the Game, Dota himself, asked in the celebrated Questions of Dota: And are we actually to be the least intelligent race in our Endimions? -a philosophy of despair: he who is unique is both largest and smallest. Our own Gorf, the one now eagerly overseeing the progress of Flapping Eagle and Mr Virgil Jones, took especial pride in his Ordering of this last and most famous of the Questions. He had altered it to make quite a different question, thus: Determine how catalytic an elite is; use our talent and learning-lobe . This is a perfect use of Anagrammar; for not only does it contain all the letters of the Chiefest Question and only those letters, but moreover, it enriches the Question itself, adding to it the concept of elitism and its desirability, the concept of catalysis and its origins, and instructions about how the question is to be answered. “Talent” to the Gorfs means only one thing: skill at Ordering. Thus the very skill that caused the Chiefest Question to be asked must be used in its solution, with the aid of the “Learning-lobe”, that inexhaustible memory-vault locked within each Gorf, giving the species absolute recall of anything that has ever befallen any Gorf.