Salman Rushdie - Grimus

– didn’t you know? he asked. didn’t you know he could move the Gate?

Virgil looked up, hearing the tinge of frustrated scorn.

– In theory, he said. Yes, in theory. But in practice… He must have become infinitely more expert. It took so much hardship to build. So much pain. It isn’t an easy thing, you know. Wasn’t. I didn’t think he would have.

– You didn’t think, said Flapping Eagle, adrenalin forcing the insult to his lips. Virgil looked at him, and his eyes were the eyes of a beaten man.

– We’ll find it, he said blankly. Can’t have gone far. Don’t believe he’s that expert. Just have to nose around a bit. It’s here all right. We’ll find it.

– Yes, said Flapping Eagle, turning away, to face the black house.

A figure stood in the doorway, covered from head to foot in a black veil with a window at eye-level.

– I thought you’d come, said Liv in a flat voice.

Virgil Jones was lurching across the small plateau and muttering to himself. Every so often he would stop, squeeze his eyes shut until moisture ran from the corners and stand in a paralysis of thought. Then he would open his eyes, shake his head, and continue on his lurching way. The Gate continued to elude him.

Liv said:

– Does he imagine I have never searched for the Gate? Does he imagine I have lived here for nothing? I have as much reason to hate Grimus as he has. Does he imagine Grimus to be as great a fool as Virgil Jones?

The flat tones were gone now, replaced by a frightening intensity of passion. The venom in her voice would have alarmed a snake.

– Look, Flapping Eagle, she said. Look at Virgil Jones, your guide and my husband, and equally incompetent at both functions. I look at him and see a man as blindly possessed as any man in K. What do you see? I see a man chasing shadows. What do you see? Come inside, Virgil, she called. Perhaps I’ve hidden your Gate inside. Come and look for it inside.

Virgil Jones continued to squeeze his eyes and lurch from empty ground to empty ground. He might not even have heard her.

– It is time, she said, turning to Flapping Eagle. It is time you knew all about Virgil Jones. High time you knew how great a fool you are to believe in him.

They stood there for a moment, ingrowing, hate-filled Liv and scarred, colourless Eagle, as Virgil muttered and stumbled his shambling way around them, racked by the gulf between attempt and achievement. There were vast spaces between their lives: Flapping Eagle could almost see the holes. And yet, it was those spaces which bound them irrevocably together, weakness, ignorance and hate, united against their will.

Liv wheeled and went indoors. After a moment’s hesitation, Flapping Eagle followed her, leaving the shambling Virgil Jones, vulnerable and wounded, to go his muttering way. It was getting darker.

Media, hiding at the end of the wooded slopes, cried tears of sympathy for their failure.

– Did he tell you about Dimension-fever? said Liv. No. I suspect he wanted you to suffer that, because only by conquering it could you become the man he wanted. Did he tell you the danger you would be in, with your face, in K?

– What about my face? asked Flapping Eagle, perplexed.

– He didn’t even tell you that, said Liv. The hooded head shook; the voice was disgusted. Twice already he has risked your life. He was ready to do so again. And he didn’t even tell you that.

– He saved my life twice, said Flapping Eagle. And he had my agreement for this attempt. But what about my face?

– Poor idiot boy, said Liv, lying back on her bed. Flapping Eagle sat stiffly on the chair amid the accumulated filth.

– Poor idiot boy, she repeated. Your face is as like the face of Grimus as his own reflection. Younger-looking, paler, but so, so similar. Did you not know that was what attracted him to you in the first place? It was not Bird-Dog he was interested in. It was you. Born-From-Dead.

She knew a lot about him …

– Sispy, he said. Sispy and Grimus are one and the same?

The reclining, hidden figure nodded.

– Then if my face is so like his, said Flapping Eagle, why did Bird-Dog not tell me so? She would have mentioned it… we were close then.

– Grimus, said Liv, is a master of disguise. Don’t doubt it, poor stupid double. It was your face that fascinated him. But it was Bird-Dog he got.

A cruel laugh. As his thoughts whirled, Flapping Eagle wished he could see the face behind the hood.

– One other thing, said Liv. Grimus is a very attractive man. Does that perhaps explain some things?

Deggle used to call him pretty-face .

Irina saying: -You are not the man you look …

Gribb at the foot of the bed, muttering: -Remarkable, remarkable .

The looks of recognition he had received in the Elba-room, and Peckenpaw saying: -Jones and a stranger, in that loaded voice .

The Spectre of the Stone Rose .

The Spectre of Grimus …

That was why Irina Cherkassova had been drawn to him so instantly. That was why Elfrida Gribb had been attracted, too. That was why the girl Media had stared at him so compulsively. That was why Jocasta had disliked him instinctively. He was living behind another man’s features, reaping both the rewards and the whirlwind of his personality. That was why.

– I see that it does, said Liv dryly. She stretched lazily on the bed. How fascinating it is to watch the truth at work on people.

– The truth, mumbled Flapping Eagle.

– And now, she said, I shall tell you the truth about me. I shall tell you because you’ve been starved of truth. This is the truth about Liv: she hates Grimus. She hates Virgil. She hates this infernal mountain.

– But she lives, said Flapping Eagle.

– Hate, said Liv, is the nearest thing on earth to power. One does not give up power easily.

Flapping Eagle was about to speak, but she silenced him.

– It’s time to look at the book, she said, and reached under her pillow.

Sitting in this slum of a room, his hopes of redemption shattered by the mumbling failure outside, reduced to the status of a pawn in someone else’s game by the truth from this hooded oracle, Flapping Eagle learnt the story of Calf Mountain; learnt it when he believed there was no longer anything he could do about it. As usual, he was wrong about that.

The carvings stared down from the wall as Liv brought the old, old notebook out from under the pillow, wrapped in rough black cloth.

– In those days, she said, Virgil kept a diary. It makes interesting reading.

A hen squawked irrelevantly from the shelf.

– I shall now read from it, she said, and began to recite. Recite, because the room was dark, and getting darker by the second as evening drew on and even the faintest light withdrew. She knew the book by heart.

Wodensday 19th June .

My diaries have always been my friends. The written word is so much more constant than human beings. Honest, too. Holding up a constant mirror to one’s own inadequacies, but without malice. There’s friendship if you like.

The fact is, my friend, you are going to have to be more understanding today than ever you were. The things I am about to tell you are true, but you could easily be forgiven for disbelieving them. You must not disbelieve.

A tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune . Dear Brutus. I wonder if he was right. Certainly it is high tide in my affairs. The link between floods and fortune is somewhat tenuous, however. But I am circling round my subject. Perhaps I am reluctant to begin. I shall begin.

My old failures you know: it was sheer laziness, a butterfly quality of the mind, that thwarted my archaeological aspirations. Ironic that idleness should have led so directly to manual labour. But debts must be paid and I do know how to dig. Even if I now inter where once I exhumed. I think of myself as a layer of evidence for future archaeologists. I must; I can see no other dignity in my present labour.