Salman Rushdie - Grimus

– I have to, Jocasta, said Virgil, distressed. I must show Flapping Eagle the Gate.

– Flapping Eagle! she cried. Who returned your kindness with betrayal. Who returned my kindness by intoxicating Media. Who has brought nothing but trouble to all who took him in. You’ll do anything for him .

Virgil Jones said in a very quiet voice:

– It is Flapping Eagle who is doing this for me.

– All of you, burst Jocasta. Go, all of you. Leave me to my House again.

Elfrida Gribb in white lace, her face veiled, a fly crawling unhindered across the veil, standing at the window, carvings to her right, mountain at her back, Flapping Eagle at her left, disaster staring her in the face.

– You will not go, she said. You cannot, after what I did. I love you, Flapping Eagle. My place is at your side.

He closed his eyes and hardened his voice as much as he could.

– I loved you, he said.

Her eyes turned to stone, green marbles of blindness.

– Loved. The word was not a question. It was a bleak statement.

– Everything has changed, he said miserably. I must go.

– A whore, she said. You think I’m a whore. I do not talk to whores . You and her. You planned this, to make me love you, to make me jealous, to ruin me.

– No, he said.

– Whore. Elfrida the whore. Yes, why not. Yes, why not. If my love thinks me a whore, I must live up to his idea of me. Yes, why not. I shall be a whore and earn my keep. Yes, why not, why not.

Why not , thought Flapping Eagle, was the phrase of the moment.

Media, eavesdropping, heard the interchange; and was delighted.

In the kitchen of the House of the Rising Son, amid the desolate pots and pans, the man called Stone ate, the only guest of the night, the one who could not be turned away. Virgil Jones saw him, and the escape was planned.

Flapping Eagle left the house by the side door and crawled out on to the Cobble-way, decrepit as his borrowed clothes, stained as the houses, dusty as the streets, and began to count the cobblestones. He greeted them like old friends. Slowly, tattered hat pulled low over stooping face, he made his way down the night road, pail in one hand, cloth in the other, on his knees, mumbling, polishing.

Madame Jocasta lay in her bed, shut into her room, refusing to know what was happening in her house. Media had volunteered to keep the pebble-cleaner occupied, even though it was a breach of House rules; and while Jocasta turned her face to the wall, Media used every scrap of experience at her command to ensnare Stone, her first man in an eternity, long enough for Flapping Eagle to make good his slow, painfully deliberate escape.

Just before dawn, Virgil Jones left the brothel, bowler hat on head, watchless chain around his waist, humming innocently to himself. The mob had dispersed to its bed, for the most part; but the implacable Peckenpaw sat bearlike on the front doorstep. He looked at Virgil angrily, but let him pass. Virgil went humming up the street, and was interested to notice that it bore no crawling figure. Flapping Eagle had either been discovered or had reached his goal.

At the far end of the Cobble-way, at the point where the town of K yielded to the resurgent slopes of Calf Mountain, the forest regained its supremacy. Thick vegetation concealed the narrow path, more suited to donkeys than men, which led up to the last habitable point, the rock on which Liv’s house stood and looked down on K. Here, in the forest, Virgil and Flapping Eagle made their rendezvous.

– Just like old times, said Virgil Jones.

Media, gone. Flapping Eagle’s absence was a relief. Virgil’s absence she had fortified herself to expect. But to find a man, and a wretched man at that, in Media’s bed, and her nowhere to be seen, was almost more than Jocasta could bear. Media, poor, infatuated Media, Media of all her girls.

Gone, but where? To follow Virgil and Eagle, but how far? And had they asked her, and did they want her, and would she come back cowed and crawling and beg forgiveness? Jocasta wanted to think so but she, too, remembered Liv; and she knew Media would not return, not if she could help it, not if she could…

Jocasta walked out into the corridor, silent as it was, and was hit by the third blink there, alone.

She gasped when it passed and leant against a wall. Elfrida Gribb came out of her room, tight-faced, controlled.

And put an arm around her.

– Madame, she said. I should like to stay. To stay… and work.

Jocasta looked at her vacantly. Anything was possible now.

– Since we have a sudden vacancy, she said, you’re hired.

The two bereaved women stayed there a moment, clutching each other; and then Jocasta, eyes red-rimmed, went down to the front door. Peckenpaw stood as she opened it.

– The House of the Rising Son is open for business, said Madame Jocasta.

It was morning.

NICHOLAS DEGGLE WAS sitting in the rocking-chair among the early chickens, as he had become accustomed to doing. He was thinking about the blinks.

Mrs O’Toole had apparently been entirely unaware of them. Perhaps her wayward mind simply denied their existence, as it denied the evidence of her eyes and enabled her to see and hear him as Virgil Jones. Nothing changes .

But, thought Deggle with a tinge of fear, there was another explanation. Grimus. Grimus had acquired this new, devastating power and was trying to get rid of him. Perhaps Deggle had been the only one affected.

Nicholas Deggle rocked between impotence and paranoia, back and forth. Dolores O’Toole came out of the hut holding a knife. Time to assassinate another chicken.

Dolores sat down on the ground. With the knife in her right hand, and with intense concentration, she slit the vein in her left wrist. Then she transferred the knife to that hand and set about slashing the right wrist, equally methodically. Only now did Deggle emerge from his shock and lunge at the knife. She avoided his grasp and held the blade against her neck.

– What do you think you’re doing, for godsake? he cried.

– Every night since we made love, she said. Every night you have refused me. It is obvious, Virgil, that you despise my body. I can’t live with you hating me so.

Blood spurted on to the ground, creating small specks of red mud.

What does one do to stop a vein bleeding? Deggle looked around him helplessly. -Bandages, he said aloud.

– Leave me alone, she said, and began to sing, weakly.

Whitebeard is all my joy

and whitebeard is my desire , she sang.

Nicholas Deggle pulled his shirt off, over his head. When he could see again, Dolores lay prone on the ground, a second, red mouth grinning bloodily from ear to ear, beneath her chin. She had finished what she set out to do.

Deggle, bare-chested, shirt in hand, watched the blood until it ceased to flow. This thought crossed his mind:

– It is I who will be alone.

The rocking-chair rocked in the early morning breeze.

THE GORF, BEING determined to see Calf Island through to the end, had taken refuge from Virgil Jones’ successful accusations in the ever stimulating spectator sport of observing other people’s lives.

Gorfs, though their bodies move only with great difficulty, can transport themselves instantly from place to place by a process of physical disintegration and reintegration, supervised by their disembodied Selves. Thus the Gorf had eavesdropped with Elfrida at the Elbaroom and sat in her garden watching as she and Irina and Flapping Eagle took turns upon the swing. He had peered through the windows of the Rising Son and watched the travellers depart. He had been intrigued by the blinks and a dispassionate witness to the suicide of Dolores O’Toole.