Salman Rushdie - Grimus

I overheard this:

– Your name, said Grimus. LIV . In the Roman numerology that is fifty-four. I was fifty-four when I drank the elixir. The numbers bind us.

I knew Grimus was interested in numerology. But is this simply a monkish, mystic bond? I am becoming a jealous man. Liv says I have nothing to be jealous of. She is right. There is nothing between us.

It’s all going wrong.

Tiusday May 1st .

Mayday, m’aidez. The grand design is broken and so are we. I will try, my friend, to recount events dispassionately, but I may not succeed.

Deggle started it. The violence.

Liv finished it.

But the beginning. Begin at the beginning, go on until you reach the end, then stop. Sound instructions. The beginning, then. Two nights ago. I was awakened by a terrible crash in the Rose Room. I rushed, as rapidly as my bulk permits, to the scene. Grimus was already there, in his ridiculous nightshirt and noddycap, a large, enraged goblin, staring at the disaster.

The Rose lay on the floor, its stem protruding from the coffin, which was overturned on top of the precious thing! And stooping over it, scowling, was Deggle.

I have felt for some time now that all was not well with Deggle, and wondered how much the growing dislike of Grimus and myself in the town was a result of his machinations. We have been passing through disenchanted times in K. Suicides apart (and thank the lord, that phase seems to be over) there have been a number of defections from K. People who have chosen to live elsewhere, in the wooded lower slopes, away from the town. K itself, stultified, discontented. Natural, I suppose, god help us, that they should vent their spleen upon the people responsible for Calf Island. But the violence… the whispers about destroying Grimus’ infernal machine… I had thought we had left violence behind. And the Rose itself… I do not even know about that anymore.

Control. Control.

Deggle has been spending much of his time in the Elba-room. Perhaps he saw himself as a kind of saviour. A popular messiah. A liberator. There has never been much love lost between us. Perhaps the enmity ran deeper than we believed.

At any rate. We found him trying to shatter the Rose! Grimus recovered quickly from the shock and, displaying astonishing strength, hurled him from the room. -It must be tested, he said, and for the rest of the night he was closeted with the Rose, adjusting, permuting, testing. It was dawn before he declared himself satisfied that no damage had been done.

No damage!

– We must not allow this to happen again, he said, with a fierceness in his voice I had heard only once before, in his short diatribe against authority. -The Rose is the most valuable thing on the island, he said. I cannot permit it to be jeopardized. Will you help me?

I was caught up in the fervour of those bright, hooded eyes. -How? I asked.

– By myself I am not sure I can do it, he said. It will take our combined wills. We must expel the vandal from the island. I visited Dota in the night: he has taught me a method. But it is difficult.

I won’t bother with the ensuing argument. Suffice to say that we went into the Rose Room, agreed. At once I felt uneasy.

How can I explain it? There was a sensation in the room, like a soft inaudible whine. No, not in the room. Inside my head . And it was strongest near the Rose. I asked Grimus what it was, in some anxiety. He dismissed it: it had not affected the Rose’s functions in any way. - It was only a whine , he said. Dota the Gorf had not been worried about it.

He set the Rose and we fixed our thoughts upon our intentions, repeating this form of words: IXSE SIXTTES SIXE IXSETES EXIS EXISTIS. A variant, I supposed, to the SISPI formula for Travel between potential presents.

Deggle has not been seen on Calf Island since. I must presume the expulsion worked. I do not know where we have sent him, but he has gone. No doubt the Water-crystal will spot him should we desire it. I do not desire it. Not now.

I have always thought of uses of the Rose as rites. They are so very unmechanical. So. When the rite was over, it happened. I felt dizzy. I was unwell, I was sure. Grimus was saying: -It is not enough to expel Deggle. We must remove the Rose to a safer place. I have a plan.

I could hardly hear his voice… it came and went, and went.

(Now, Virgil, dispassion, tell it calmly.)

The whine. It was the whine, somehow, it must have been. Holding the Rose all that time, so close. I wonder why Grimus was not affected…

The whine filled my head with shapes and pictures and beasts and terrors. Horrors. Horrors . I tried to escape and there was no escape. They were inside .

Hallucinations? No, they were too real, they could cause pain. No, I will not describe them, the infernal scenes I saw and felt, the depths I plumbed. It was as though an army of terrors from the recesses of my own imagination had been released, my inmost fears made flesh. Horrible, most horrible. No, I will say no more about it… the Dimension-fever. So Grimus called it.

When I came to my senses, Grimus sat by me solicitously, on the Rose Room floor. He had rescued me, tuning the Rose to my co-ordinates and willing me back from my inner depths. So the Rose can heal as well as hurt. I am more scared of it than I ever was.

Most of all I am scared because I can no longer use it.

Grimus wanted me to master it again, like a fallen mountaineer. He set the Rose for Thera and we grasped it.

I did not Travel I Try as I might, I could not use the Rose.

It is like a paralysis of the mind. It shuts me out from that insidious whine-but it shuts me out, too, from all the countless universes I have not yet seen. Calf Island is all I have now. And a bleak inheritance it is.

I shall be brief now, or else I shall become maudlin.

Grimus, using the Rose for intradimensional Travel for the first time, has removed himself-and it-to the mountain peak. With a great deal of effort, he has succeeded in building a double barrier against the island: a visual barrier of clouds which obscures him perennially from our sight, and a kind of forcefield which we cannot pass. There is one Gate. He showed it me in case things improved . They will not improve.

His departure has brought about the end of my-not marriage-cohabitation with Liv. I was obliged to watch the degrading spectacle of my wife pleading, begging Grimus to take her with him. Misogynist that he is, he refused. I found myself feeling angry with him for this, this, insult to my wife! Imagine that, my friend. So greatly am I reduced.

Picture Liv’s fury, then, when he took the woman Bird-Dog instead of her. An explicable choice. He wants a servant, not a mistress. The doting Axona will be a good servant, I expect. She thinks of him as a demi-god.

Liv’s fury, in the absence of Grimus, vented itself on me. She has said a number of cruel things I will not commit to this page. She despises me for not being his equal, though I never claimed I was. And for my paralysis, thanks to which she is barred from his company. She wants nothing to do with me. In her eyes, I am just a fat, weak man. Probably she is right. Yes. Probably she is.

The house where we lived is empty now. Liv has gone up the mountain, to be as near Grimus as possible, no doubt. She does not know the location of the Gate, nor how close she is. And even if she knew, Grimus would not let her pass. He will watch the island with his Watercrystal and defend the Rose, and his privacy. The Rose is all he cares for now.

I am being looked after by Jocasta. She has always been a friend to me. I suspect a rift between her and Liv. Because Liv scorns me, Jocasta adopts me. But I am past questioning motives; I accept companionship where it is offered.