Salman Rushdie - Grimus

– Don’t worry, Virgil was shouting. Just a touch of Dimension-fever, that’s all. We’ll soon get you better… the words echoed and faded.

Dimension-fever: what was that? Flapping Eagle felt a rage at having been kept in ignorance, and his eyes seemed to clear. He saw a solicitous Virgil Jones leaning over him.

– It’s worse in the dark, Virgil was shouting. I’ll get you to a clearing. Try and concentrate on my voice. I’ll talk all the way. Daylight helps: chases away the monsters.

– Monsters… said Flapping Eagle faintly.

– They come from inside you, said Virgil Jones. Inside you… (His voice, fading, diminishing.)

Confusion returned to Flapping Eagle. Again the distorted vision.

– Can’t explain, Virgil yelled down a long tunnel. To live through it is to understand it. Listen to my voice. Listen only to my voice.

Fear enveloped Flapping Eagle, the fear of a healthy man for an inexplicable disease. He felt his convictions slipping from him; what was he doing here, anyway? What kind of devilry had seized him? Why had he not simply killed himself when he had the chance? Perhaps, after all, he was dead. Yes, he was dead. He had drowned in the boat and this was hell and Virgil Jones was a demon and this was some infernal torture. Yes, he was dead.

O, I remember, I remember: I was Flapping Eagle. As the unknowable swept over me, I went all but mad. Hallucinations… I thought they were hallucinations at first, but gradually they gained the certitude of absolute reality and it was the voice of Virgil Jones that came drifting to me like a dream. The world had turned upside down; I was climbing a mountain into the depths of an inferno, plunging deep into myself.

The scene I saw seemed to freeze; it went through a myriad transmutations, in which colours altered, the trees became moving creatures, the ground became liquid and the sky solid, grass spoke and flowers played music. In some of these transformations Virgil Jones was not there at all; in others he was a huge suppurating monster. In others he was dead. In others I could hear his voice speaking to me, pouring words of comfort and advice into my ear. It was a baptism of fire.

Virgil Jones and I: a strange pair of bedfellows. He a burnt-out man, the shell of his past, secure in the knowledge of some great failure; I an incomplete man, looking for the knowledge of dying which would finish me, seeking my face in the eye of death. For a reason I did not understand until much later, he loved me like a son, like the last of his living sons; and once I recovered from the fever, I loved him too, though I loved him badly and not enough. He nursed me then, dragging me to a clearing, rubbery and sluggish as I was, talking, talking to distract my mind from the depredations of the Effect. In the dark, before we reached the clearing, he was lost to me. In the clearing, his voice gave me some strength. Until he came to get me.

Virgil Jones: a soul without a future helping me to mine, leaving behind him Dolores, his sorrow and love, heading for places long-since fled. A brave man.

To live through the fever of the Dimensions is to abandon the question Why? And yet, before the end, I had an answer to all the unanswered whys, and a few unasked ones as well.

As Virgil Jones dragged Flapping Eagle to the clearing, he said:

– O dear, my friend. I wish it didn’t have to be you. Grimus used to say a man would either lose or find himself in these woods. That is the difference between myself and yourself. I can only lose.

Mr Eagle, you are not a realized man. That is your weakness and also your power. Before one realizes oneself one has the optimism of ignorance. It can be the saving of one’s life. Once realized, one faces the terror of knowing what it is you are and have done… the realized man can have a profound effect on the world about him; he must bear the consequences, and guilt, of that as well…

Finally, in the clearing, he sat down, placed Flapping Eagle’s head on his lap, and answered his own riddle, abstractedly:

– An Irishman wears three prophylactics to be sure, to be sure, to be sure.

To himself he thought:

Now, Mr Jones, we shall see if you are capable of being a guide .

BIRD-DOG SAID, brandishing a bone:

– Look, little brother. Look. Here’s a bone for you. Good dog. It’s a very special bone. The Bone of K. Take it. Come and bury it.

– Bird-Dog, said Flapping Eagle, slowly. Is it you?

She stood mockingly upon a rock, stamping her right foot as she turned in a slow circle. She tossed him the bone. It fell unerringly into his hand; a rose grew from a crack in it. He stuffed it into his trousers.

She was lying mockingly upon the rock, pulling her raggedy skirt up to her waist and spreading her legs, arching her back.

– Come in, little brother, she said. Come and bury it.

He crawled towards her, weakly, and the nearer he came, the larger she grew. A hundred yards away and she was already as large as a horse. The hole between her legs yawned; its hairs were like ropes. Ten yards away. She was a house, a cavern lying red and palpitating before him, the curtain of hair parting. He heard her booming voice.

– Why resist, she was saying. Give up, little brother. Come in. Give up. Come in. Give up.

He crawled into the cavern. The curtain fell into place behind him, cutting off all light.

Inside… a dark reddish glow. There she was again, fleet Bird-Dog, racing away into her own depths, squealing with childish delight.

– Silly little brother, can’t catch me , she cried and vanished around a corner. He was not yet strong enough to chase. He stood up.

And heard the voice of Virgil Jones.

– The trouble with Grimus, the voice said, is he can’t control the Effect. Its field grows stronger and stronger. You’ll have to get used to it gradually. Control your thoughts. Slowly. Softlee softlee catchee monkee. The inner dimensions are lonely places. We create our own, so to speak. Frightening, that: each man his own universe. Imagine the effect. Men go mad. That’s the tragedy of K. They’re all scared of their own minds. I was, myself, once, but there’s not much of it left now. Like old Father William, eh? Small pleasantry. May I interest you in a theory? Fellow in K, You’ll meet him, calls himself a philosopher, Ignatius Gribb, Ignatius Q. Gribb. Q for Quasimodo. I. Q. Gribb, you see, never knew if it was his idea of a joke or his parents’, the initials. He used to say: -there are no human beings alive. What we all are is Shells, and hovering around in the ether are what he called Forms. Things like emotions, reasons and so forth. They occupy one of us for a while, then another one moves in. It’s pretty in its fashion. Explains the illogicality of some human actions. Shifts of character and so forth It’s completely exploded by the dimensions, of course. The one thing that stays constant in the shifts between the dimensions is one’s own consciousness. But then Mr Gribb tries very hard to ignore the dimensions. They’re a frightening thing. Cultivate your consciousness, Mr Eagle, that’s the way out. There’s always a way. Where there’s a will. Only control you have.

The voice faded away again.

Flapping Eagle took a deep breath, closed his eyes, opened his eyes and tried to establish his whereabouts. It was like standing in foam. Springy, his feet subsided into it. Soft wet reddish foam.

Red: that meant light. If there was colour, there was light, but he could see no light-source. Yet there was light, dim, diffuse, but light. He gave up the search.

He turned to look behind him, at the entrance. It was no longer there. A brief moment of claustrophobia, then calm, despite the ancient saying that grew in his head and took words for itself: Jonah in the belly of the whale .