Salman Rushdie: Grimus

Mrs Cramm had said it was his lot to be led; and he was filled with something approaching hate for Sispy, who had distorted his entire life in one casual stroke so very long ago. He found himself wanting not only his freedom from the chains of immortality, but some kind of satisfaction as well.

He went for a walk alone the next morning, in the hills above X. He was saying goodbye to the world, since, if half of what Deggle had said was true, there was a good chance he would never see it again.

In the afternoon he went down to the jetty and prepared the boat for departure. Deggle still disclaimed any need for it.

In the evening, Deggle and Lotti came to see him off. -The evening is the best time to try and get through, Deggle had said. They waved.

– Deggle, Flapping Eagle said as he pushed off, I’d love to know what motivates you.

– Oh, well, shrugged the wickedly-smiling conjurer, perhaps I don’t like your friend Sispy very much either. But then, perhaps I do.

– Byeee, squeaked Lotti.

– Ethiopia, said Deggle.

Flapping Eagle no longer knew whether he was mad, whether he had accepted Deggle’s story so unquestioningly, been so willing to follow his instructions despite the warnings of physical danger, just as an excuse for doing away with himself. He was, he told himself, doing the only thing he could do.

– They go there, Deggle had said, from choice, because they chose immortality. Whereas you are after something quite different: old age. Physical decay. And, presumably, death. You should set the cat among the pigeons, pretty-face. Not to mention old Livia’s prophecy.

The Deggle giggle lasted for a long while after that.

The Mediterranean was calm, dark and calm. No wind. A clear sky. Stars. Flapping Eagle dozed for a moment. When he awoke, it was to feel a gale rushing at his face, a cloud rushing over his head, a crackle of electricity in the air. He was standing erect now, fighting to keep his craft from breaking under the force of the holocaust, when quite unaccountably dizziness swept over him and he fell from his yacht, Deggle’s yacht, into the angry sea. The last thing he heard was a loud drumming noise… like the beating of mighty wings.

A few seconds later he fell through the hole in the Mediterranean into that other sea, that not-quite-Mediterranean, and was carried towards the misty beach in the first light of dawn as Mr Virgil Jones rocked in his chair.

When Flapping Eagle arrived at Calf Island his body was thirty-four years, three months and four days old. He had lived for a total of seven hundred and seventy-seven years, seven months and seven days. By a swift calculation, we see that he had stopped ageing seven hundred and forty-three years, four months and three days ago.

He was a tired man.

– INTRODUCTIONS WOULD BE proper, said Virgil Jones, at a time like the present. Would you care for a nice steaming bowl of Mrs O’Toole’s very own root-tea, as it is the hour? Never let it be said the decencies were not observed in the Maison O’Toole.

– I’m wearing a frock, said Flapping Eagle in astonishment.

– Certainly you are, certainly, said Virgil Jones. Allow me to explain. Always a rational explanation, as they say, or, that is to say, as they said.

– Please do, said Flapping Eagle, feeling his throbbing head.

– Ah yes, said Virgil Jones, the head. I expect it hurts, not entirely unexpectedly, if I might be momentarily tautologous. Half-drowned heads have a way of protesting, you might even say bellyaching, although obviously we are not speaking of your belly. You have, sir, my unrestrained sympathy and the offer of root-tea. Mrs O’Toole swears by the arrowroot for such malaises. It flies straight and true to the heart of the affliction and thunk! one is cured.

– About the frock, said Flapping Eagle, raising himself from the prone position until he was jack-knifed, legs lying along the rush mat, torso and head leaning upwards into the room inquiringly, supported on a rubbery arm.

– Now, now, said Mr Jones, if I were you I wouldn’t attempt the vertical just yet. The horizontal is a far more suitable position for recuperation. I have often wondered if those tragic cases of people buried alive did not spring from this: the horizontal helping them to recover, you understand. Possibly one should be buried standing up, if You’ll excuse the brief foray into necrology. Merely a small pleasantry, no morbidity intended, nor I hope taken.

– The frock, said Flapping Eagle.

– O, my sincere apologies, said Virgil Jones, if it seems I was ducking your inquiry. Far from it, sir, far from it. Nothing could give me greater pleasure than to elucidate the matter of the frock. The fact of the matter is one’s conversational partners have been rather limited of late and the opportunity is well-nigh irresistible. The affair of the frock is a trifle. Merely that when we fished you from the sea your garments were a little moist, not to say damp, not to say positively sodden. And the fact of the matter is my own wardrobe is somewhat limited; so on the whole we thought it best, if you take my meaning, to employ one of Mrs O’Toole’s garments. You have our unreserved apologies if it brings you any embarrassment, but I assure you all proper decencies were observed, Mrs O’Toole leaving the room during the process of disinvestiture.

– I’m sure they were, said Flapping Eagle, trying to put the voluble, excited man at his ease; and, remembering his manners, went on: I owe you my thanks, sir, for saving my life. My name is Flapping Eagle.

– Virgil Beauvoir Chanakya Jones at your service, said Mr Jones, approximating a bow from the waist, which he did with some difficulty, there being so much of his own flesh to impede him. -Mrs O’Toole will be here presently, he confided. She is at the beach retrieving my rocking-chair, which she was unable to carry back with us, owing to having yourself strapped across her shoulders.

Flapping Eagle must have failed to conceal his puzzlement, for Mr Jones added hastily: -As you will observe, I am sitting down. Were I to stand, you would see why I am unable to carry the chair myself. My belt, you follow. It serves as a strap; but tragically, when doing so, the efficiency of my trousers is somewhat impaired.

It didn’t sound like a very good explanation, but then it was none of Flapping Eagle’s business. -Quite so, he said, and noticed in himself, not for the first time, a tendency to adopt the speaking style and speech patterns of others.

His head reminded him of its existence; he lay back on the mat. -I think I would like that root-tea, he said.

Mr Jones stood up laboriously, clutching at his trousers. He moved across the room, blinking in the direction of the fireplace, where a small pot hung above the winking embers. -Keeps it warm, he said; then added: Damnation. He had just knocked over a low, rickety table. The pieces of a large jigsaw puzzle dispersed themselves informally around the accident.

– Fornication, Mr Jones swore further. It was a black day for mankind when my glasses broke. Your pardon for my foulmouthed speech, Mr Eagle; one’s bodily inadequacies are a constant affliction, are they not?

– You do jigsaw puzzles, then.

– Do them? Mr Eagle, I construct them. In these solitary years they have provided my one stimulation. One day, I expect, I shall be some good at the things. At the moment my skill in construction far surpasses my talents at reconstruction. And myopia does nothing to assist. O for a qualified grinder of lenses.

He poured out a bowl of root-tea and carried it back, nearly slipping on the scattered jigsaw, and sat down by Flapping Eagle once more.

How unlikely, thought Flapping Eagle, that surroundings as meagre as these should exude so comfortable, so friendly an atmosphere. The room in which he lay was little more than the interior of a hovel; two rush mats some distance apart, one of which currently bore his weakened frame, lying on a dirt floor-although it was a meticulously swept floor. The broom, a bundle of twigs, rested indolently against a wall. The walls were logs covered in caked mud, the roof as well. A fireplace and the upturned rickety low table. A few pots. In a far corner, an old trunk. Nothing on the walls; no decoration anywhere. It was as distant from the sumptuous residence of, say, Livia Cramm as was China. And yet it was friendly.