Salman Rushdie - Grimus

Flapping Eagle burst out:

– Grimus, what is this all about?

Grimus looked mildly astonished.

– All about, Mr Eagle? But of course it is all about death. Death, Mr Eagle-that is what life is about.

Flapping Eagle felt suddenly very cold.

– Whose death? he asked, fearfully.

– My dear Flapping Eagle, smiled Grimus. Mine, naturally. Whose did you think? That is who you are: the angel of my death.

– Put these on, said Grimus.

– Why?

– Because it must all be properly done, said Grimus, his hands fluttering in bird-like movements.

So, in the Bird-Room, Flapping Eagle assumed the full ceremonial feathered head-dress and face-paint of an Axona Sham-Man, slung a bow across a shoulder and a quiver of arrows at his back, and held a ju-ju stick in his right hand. Grimus, in the meanwhile, put on a different head-dress, whose colouring exactly matched the plumage of the great bird in the largest portrait in the room.

– And now, said Grimus. Shall we dance?

Flapping Eagle sat in Grimus’ rocking-chair, listening, There was not much else he could do; he had seen no sign of the Stone Rose. And besides, he was curious. His head-dress hung proudly over the back of the swaying-chair and the ju-ju stick lay in his lap. Grimus circled him, walking in an odd, stilted manner, bending forward from the waist and sticking out his neck at every step, his hands at shoulder-height, his fingers moving, moving ceaselessly. There was an angular rhythm about his movements that dizzied the eye.

– This is the Dance of Wisdom and Death, said Grimus. Death, still, watching and listening, biding its time, good. Wisdom, circling, gesturing, revealing itself to its Doom. Good. This is how I chose to be; it is a man’s freedom to choose the manner of his going. I have chosen a beautiful Death and made it in my own image.

His voice descended from its high pitch and his manner became conversational.

– Ordinary men, he said, by which I mean mortal men, are made incomplete by ageing and death. As the years give them wisdom, their failing faculties make a nonsense of it, so that when Death claims them they have little to say to it. I chose to be different. Through longevity I have been able both to grow wise and to retain the faculties which add potency to wisdom. To be wise and powerful is to be complete. That which is complete is also dead . And so I wish to die. Not the paltry fizzling of mortal life, but a minutely-planned and satisfying death. An aesthetic passing on.

The Elixir of Death, the blue release, has no power on Kâf Mountain. It was thus I conceptualized the island, for in building a life one must be conscious of its end. Who would write a story without knowing how it finished? All beginnings contain an end. Unknown to Virgil Jones, unknown to Nicholas Deggle, I planned Kâf Mountain around my death. Around you. The Elixir of Death would have been too easy, too incomplete. One cannot reveal one’s secrets to a drink. And then there is the question of the Phoenician impulse, but more of that later.

The Mountain of Kâf, in short, is a place where death is neither natural nor easy. It must be chosen, and it must be an act of violence against the body. That, after all, is what it always is in truth.

But the Mountain is more than this. It is the Great Experiment. Not in the sense that Virgil Jones understood it; I saw no reason to tell him my true intentions. There is every reason to tell you. You are the Phoenician Death. This is the nature of Kâf: it is an attempt to understand human nature by freeing it from its greatest instinctual drive, the need to preserve the species through reproduction. The Elixir of Life is a beautifully two-edged weapon, removing at a stroke the possibility of reproduction by sterilizing Recipients, and also nullifying the need to reproduce by conferring immortality. The island, furthermore, is plentiful and fertile. Scarcity, too, has been removed. All of which necessitates a profound change in human behaviour, a change which I believed would reveal our true natures far more exactly. It is a fine combination, sterile immortals and fertile land. A most rewarding study.

Analysts of the mythical mountain of Kâf have called it a model for the structure and workings of the human mind. Fitting, then, that the actual Mountain should be a structure created to examine the interests (and enable the death) of one human mind.

Though, in a sense, it is not my intention that my mind should die. This is the purpose of revealing my secrets to the chosen instrument of my death. This is the Phoenician impulse.

When I became Grimus, I took the name from a respect for the philosophy contained in the myth of the Simurg, the myth of the Great Bird which contains all other birds and in turn is contained by them. The similarity with the Phoenix myth is self-apparent. Through death, the annihilation of self, the Phoenix passes its selfhood on to its successor. That is what I hope to do with you. Flapping Eagle. Named for the king of earthly birds. You are to be the next stage of the cycle, the next bearer of the flag, Hercules succeeding Atlas. In the midst of death we are in life.

– What if I refuse?

The question came unprompted from Flapping Eagle’s scared lips. Megalomania is a frightening thing to be circled by.

– You are the next life of the Phoenix, repeated Grimus. The Phoenician Death.

– How can you refuse? said Grimus after a pause. Consider your life: you will see that I have shaped it to this express purpose. In a sense, Flapping Eagle, I created you, conceptualizing you as you are. Just as I created the island and its dwellers with all the selectivity of any artist.

– We existed before you found us, said Flapping Eagle.

– Surely, said Grimus tolerantly. But by shaping you to my grand design I remade you as completely as if you had been unmade clay.

– I don’t believe you, said Flapping Eagle, and Grimus laughed.

– A sceptical Death, he said. Good, good. His voice rose again to its formal high pitch and his fingers fluttered more than ever.

– Do you deny that by selecting you as a Recipient I shaped your life thenceforth? Do you deny that by taking your sister from the Axona I forced your expulsion? Do you deny that by expelling Nicholas Deggle into your continuum I guided you towards Calf Island? Do you deny that by allowing you to wander the world for centuries instead of bringing you here I made you the man you are, chameleon, adaptable, confused? Do you deny that by choosing a man similar in appearance to myself I estimated exactly the effect of such a man on Virgil and on the town of K? Do you deny that I lured you here with the Spectre of Bird-Dog? Do you deny that I have steered a course between the infinite potential presents and futures in order to make this meeting possible? (And then, dropping his voice:) Which of your Lord’s blessings would you deny?

Flapping Eagle was shaken but not wholly convinced. He shook his head.

– Since you do not know how to conceptualize the coordinates of your Dimension, you cannot leave the island, said Grimus. You cannot stay among Kâf’s inhabitants, bearing my face. Your only alternative is suicide, and once I have shown you my marvels you will not wish to do so.

– Show me, said Flapping Eagle.

Flapping Eagle stood in the room he had passed through earlier, the room with veiled objects on podia, wondering what he found most alarming about Grimus. He decided it was the childishness underlying his whole so-called Grand Design, the fulfilment of every half-formed whim, and the strangely infantile rituals he devised to amuse him, like this so-called Dance. Grimus: a baby with a bomb. Or a whole veiled arsenal of bombs. On pedestals.

– The second part of the Dance, Grimus twittered, is a Dance of Veils. In Which Much That Is Wonderful Is Revealed.