Salman Rushdie - The Satanic Verses

What am I doing here , Gibreel thought in great alarm, as he stood before Don Enrique in the rancher's study, while Dona Rosa blushed in the background, this is someone else's place . – Great confidence in you, Henry was saying, not in English but Gibreel could still understand. – My wife is to undertake a motor tour, for her convalescence, and you will accompany... Responsibilities at Los Alamos prevent me from going along. Now I must speak, what to say , but when his mouth opened the alien words emerged, it will be my honour, Don Enrique, click of heels, swivel, exit.

Rosa Diamond in her eighty-nine-year-old weakness had begun to dream her story of stones, which she had guarded for more than half a century, and Gibreel was on a horse behind her Hispano-Suiza, driving from estancia to estancia, through a wood of arayana trees, beneath the high cordillera, arriving at grotesque homesteads built in the style of Scottish castles or Indian palaces, visiting the land of Mr. Cadwallader Evans, he of the seven wives who were happy enough to have only one night of duty each per week, and the territory of the notorious MacSween who had become enamoured of the ideas arriving in Argentina from Germany, and had started flying, from his estancia's flagpole, a red flag at whose heart a crooked black cross danced in a white circle. It was on the MacSween estancia that they came across the lagoon, and Rosa saw for the first time the white island of her fate, and insisted on rowing out for a picnic luncheon, accompanied neither by maid nor by chauffeur, taking only Martin de la Cruz to row the boat and to spread a scarlet cloth upon the white sand and to serve her with meat and wine.

As white as snow and as red as blood and as black as ebony . As she reclined in black skirt and white blouse, lying upon scarlet which itself lay over white, while he (also wearing black and white) poured red wine into the glass in her white-gloved hand, – and then, to his own astonishment, bloody goddamn , as he caught at her hand and began to kiss, – something happened, the scene grew blurred, one minute they were lying on the scarlet cloth, rolling all over it so that cheeses and cold cuts and salads and pates were crushed beneath the weight of their desire, and when they returned to the Hispano-Suiza it was impossible to conceal anything from chauffeur or maid on account of the foodstains all over their clothes, – while the next minute she was recoiling from him, not cruelly but in sadness, drawing her hand away and making a tiny gesture of the head, no , and he stood, bowed, retreated, leaving her with virtue and lunch intact, – the two possibilities kept alternating, while dying Rosa tossed on her bed, did-she-didn't-she, making the last version of the story of her life, unable to decide what she wanted to be true.

‘I'm going crazy,’ Gibreel thought. ‘She's dying, but I'm losing my mind.’ The moon was out, and Rosa's breathing was the only sound in the room: snoring as she breathed in and exhaling heavily, with small grunting noises. Gibreel tried to rise from his chair, and found he could not. Even in these intervals between the visions his body remained impossibly heavy. As if a boulder had been placed upon his chest. And the images, when they came, continued to be confused, so that at one moment he was in a hayloft at Los Alamos, making love to her while she murmured his name, over and over, Martin of the Cross , – and the next moment she was ignoring him in broad daylight beneath the watching eyes of a certain Aurora del Sol, – so that it was not possible to distinguish memory from wishes, or guilty reconstructions from confessional truths, – because even on her deathbed Rosa Diamond did not know how to look her history in the eye.

Moonlight streamed into the room. As it struck Rosa's face it appeared to pass right through her, and indeed Gibreel was beginning to be able to make out the pattern of the lace embroidery on her pillowcase. Then he saw Don Enrique and his friend, the puritanical and disapproving Dr Babington, standing on the balcony, as solid as you could wish. It occurred to him that as the apparitions increased in clarity Rosa grew fainter and fainter, fading away, exchanging places, one might say, with the ghosts. And because he had also understood that the manifestations depended on him, his stomach-ache, his stone-like weightiness, he began to fear for his own life as well.

‘You wanted me to falsify Juan Julia's death certificate,’ Dr Babington was saying. ‘I did so out of our old friendship. But it was wrong to do so; and I see the result before me. You have sheltered a killer and it is, perhaps, your conscience that is eating you away. Go home, Enrique. Go home, and take that wife of yours, before something worse happens.’

‘I am home,’ Henry Diamond said. ‘And I take exception to your mention of my wife.’

‘Wherever the English settle, they never leave England,’ Dr Babington said as he faded into the moonlight. ‘Unless, like Dona Rosa, they fall in love.’

A cloud passed across the moonlight, and now that the balcony was empty Gibreel Farishta finally managed to force himself out of the chair and on to his feet. Walking was like dragging a ball and chain across the floor, but he reached the window. In every direction, and as far as he could see, there were giant thistles waving in the breeze. Where the sea had been there was now an ocean of thistles, extending as far as the horizon, thistles as high as a full-grown man. He heard the disembodied voice of Dr Babington mutter in his ear: ‘The first plague of thistles for fifty years. The past, it seems, returns.’ He saw a woman running through the thick, rippling growth, barefoot, with loose dark hair. ‘She did it,’ Rosa's voice said clearly behind him. ‘After betraying him with the Vulture and making him into a murderer. He wouldn't look at her after that. Oh, she did it all right. Very dangerous one, that one. Very.’ Gibreel lost sight of Aurora del Sol in the thistles; one mirage obscured another.

He felt something grab him from behind, spin him around and fling him flat on his back. There was nobody to be seen, but Rosa Diamond was sitting bolt upright in bed, staring at him wide-eyed, making him understand that she had given up hope of clinging on to life, and needed him to help her complete the last revelation. As with the businessman of his dreams, he felt helpless, ignorant... she seemed to know, however, how to draw the images from him. Linking the two of them, navel to navel, he saw a shining cord.

Now he was by a pond in the infinity of the thistles, allowing his horse to drink, and she came riding up on her mare. Now he was embracing her, loosening her garments and her hair, and now they were making love. Now she was whispering, how can you like me, I am so much older than you, and he spoke comforting words.

Now she rose, dressed, rode away, while he remained there, his body languid and warm, failing to notice the moment when a woman's hand stole out of the thistles and took hold of his silver-hafted knife...

No! No! No, this way!

Now she rode up to him by the pond, and the moment she dismounted, looking nervously at him, he fell upon her, he told her he couldn't bear her rejections any longer, they fell to the ground together, she screamed, he tore at her clothes, and her hands, clawing at his body, came upon the handle of a knife...

No! No, never, no! This way: here!

Now the two of them were making love, tenderly, with many slow caresses; and now a third rider entered the clearing by the pool, and the lovers rushed apart; now Don Enrique drew his small pistol and aimed at his rival's heart, —

– and he felt Aurora stabbing him in the heart, over and over, this is for Juan, and this is for abandoning me, and this is for your grand English whore, —