Salman Rushdie: Luka and the Fire of Life

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‘Do I have to translate all that?’ said Ratatat reluctantly.

‘Yes,’ Luka insisted.

‘Fortunately for you,’ said Ratatat, sighing a little, ‘I have an excellent memory, and an obliging nature as well. You won’t like it, though. “Once and for all,”’ she began, ‘“members of the Real World must be shown that they are not permitted the use of the Fire of Life. It cannot revive the Dead, for they have entered the Book of the Dead and are no longer Beings, but only Words. But to the Dying it gives new life, and in the healthy it can induce great longevity, even immortality, which belongs to the gods alone. The Fire of Life must not cross the boundary and enter the Real World, and yet here is a Fire Thief who plans precisely to take it across that forbidden frontier. An example must be made.”’

‘Oh, is that so?’ said Luka. A fire of his own making had risen in his breast, and blazed through his eyes. The strange inner force that had gripped him after Nobodaddy’s disappearance rose up again and gave him the strength he needed. ‘As it happens,’ he realised, ‘I know exactly what to say.’ Then he called out so loudly to the assembled ex-gods that they stopped roaring and hissing and chirping and whinnying and making all the other weird noises they habitually made, and fell silent, and listened.

‘It’s my turn to speak now,’ Luka hollered at the assembled Supernatural Beings, ‘and, believe you me, I have a lot to say about all this poppycock, and you had better listen closely, and listen well, because your future depends upon it as much as mine does. You see, I know something you don’t know about this World of Magic… it isn’t your World! It doesn’t even belong to the Aalim, whoever they are, wherever they are lurking right now. This is my father’s World . I’m sure there are other Magic Worlds dreamed up by other people, Wonderlands and Narnias and Middle-earths and whatnot – and I don’t know, maybe there are some such Worlds that dreamed themselves up, I suppose that’s possible, and I won’t argue with you if you say it is – but this one, gods and goddesses, ogres and bats, monsters and slimy things, is the World of Rashid Khalifa, the well-known Ocean of Notions, the fabulous Shah of Blah. From start to finish; Level One to Level Nine and back again; lock, stock and barrel; from soup to nuts, it’s his.

‘He put it together this way, he gave it shape and laws, and he brought all of you here to populate it, because he has learned about you, thought about you, and even dreamed about you all his life. The reason this World is the way it is, is because, Right-Handed or Left-Handed, Nobody’s World or the World of Nonsense, this is the World inside his head! And I know about it – probably that’s why I was able to stumble to the right and step to the left and get here – because I’ve been hearing about it every day of my life, as bedtime stories and breakfast sagas and dinner-table yarns, and as tall tales told to audiences all over the city of Kahani and the country of Alifbay, and also as little secrets he whispered into my ears, just for me. So in a way it’s now my World, too. And the plain truth is that if I don’t get the Fire of Life to him before it’s too late, he isn’t the only one who will come to an end. Everything here will vanish, too; I don’t know what will become of you all exactly but, at the very least, you won’t have this comfortable World to live in any more, this place where you can go on pretending you matter when actually nobody gives a hoot. And in the worst-case scenario you will disappear completely – poof – as if you had never been, because let’s be frank, how many people other than Rashid Khalifa are really bothering to keep your story going nowadays? How many people know any more about the Salamander that lives in Fire, or the Squonk that is so sad about being ugly that it actually dissolves into tears?

‘Wake up and smell the coffee, old-timers! You’re extinct! You’re deceased! As gods and wonderful creatures, you have ceased to be! You say the Fire of Life mustn’t cross into the Real World? I’m telling you that if it doesn’t reach one particular member of the Real World double-quick, you’re done for. Your golden eggs have been fried, and your magic goose is cooked.’

‘Wow,’ Ratatat the squirrel whispered into his ear. ‘You’ve certainly got their attention now.’

The entire army of discarded divinities had been shocked into amazed silence. Luka under the Tree of Terror knew that he mustn’t let anything break the spell. And besides, he had plenty more to say.

‘Shall I tell you who you are now?’ he shouted. ‘Well, first I’ll go on reminding you who you aren’t. You aren’t really the gods of anywhere or anyone any more. You no longer have the power of life and death and salvation and damnation. You can’t turn into bulls and capture Earth girls, or interfere in wars, or play any of those other games you used to play. Look at you! Instead of real Powers, you have Beauty Contests. It’s a bit on the feeble side, to be honest with you. Listen to me: it’s only through Stories that you can get out into the Real World and have some sort of power again. When your story is well told, people believe in you; not in the way they used to believe, not in a worshipping way, but in the way people believe in stories – happily, excitedly, wishing they wouldn’t end. You want Immortality? It’s only my father, and people like him, who can give it to you now. My father can make people forget that they forgot all about you, and start adoring you all over again and being interested in what you’ve been getting up to and wishing that you wouldn’t end. And you’re trying to stop me? You should be begging me to finish the work I came here to do. You should be helping me. You should be putting the Fire into my Ott Pot, making sure it lights up my Ott Potatoes, and then escorting me all the way home. Who am I? I’m Luka Khalifa. I’m the only chance you’ve got.’

It was the greatest speech of his life as a performer, delivered on the most important stage on which he had ever set foot; and he had used every ounce of skill and passion in his body, that was true – but had he carried his audience with him? ‘Maybe so,’ he thought worriedly, ‘and maybe no.’

Bear the dog and Dog the bear, still on the Horse King’s back, were shouting out supportively, yelling, ‘That’s telling them!’ and so on, but the silence of the gods grew so dense, so oppressive, that in the end even Bear held his tongue. That awful silence went on thickening, like a fog, and the dark skies grew darker until the only light Luka could see was the glow from the Fire Temple, and in that flickering radiance he saw the slow movements of giant shadows all around him, shadows that looked like they were closing in on the Tree of Terror and the boy who stood captive beneath it with a Sumerian thunder demon as his guard. Closer and closer the shadows came, forming themselves into a single giant fist that was closing around Luka, and would, any minute now, squeeze the life out of him like water from a sponge. ‘This is it, then,’ he thought. ‘My speech didn’t work, they didn’t buy it, and so here’s an end to it all.’ He wished he could hug his dog and his bear once more. He wished the people he loved were there to hold his hand. He wished he could wish himself out of this jam. He wished…

The Mountain of Knowledge began to shake violently, as if some invisible colossus were jumping up and down on its slopes. The trunk of the Tree of Terror cracked from top to bottom, and the Tree fell in ruins to the ground, its crashing branches narrowly missing Luka and the thunder demon. One falling branch struck Mimir the Head, and he unleashed an injured yelp. From among the ranks of the gods and monsters there were many more cries, of anguish, bewilderment and fear. Then came the most terrifying events of all. There were instants, very brief, fractions of seconds, when everything completely disappeared , and Luka, Bear and Dog – the three visitors from the Real World – remained suspended in an appalling, colourless, soundless, motionless, lawless, everything-less absence . Then the Magic World came back again, but a horrible realisation began to dawn on everyone and everything there: the World of Magic was in trouble. Its deepest foundations were shaking, its geography was becoming uncertain, its very existence had begun to be an intermittent, on-off affair. What if the ‘off’ moments started getting longer? What if they began to last longer than the ‘on’ ones? What if the ‘on’ moments, the periods of the World’s existence, diminished to split seconds, or even vanished entirely? What if everything the Fire Thief had just told them was the naked truth, in which they had until now refused to believe, clothed as they all were in the tatters of their old divine glory and the remnants of their pride? Was this the bare, unvarnished reality: that their survival was tied to the ebbing life of a sick and dying man? These were the questions plaguing all the inhabitants of the Magic World, but in Luka’s panicked, racing mind there was a simpler, more horrifying query.