Salman Rushdie - The Satanic Verses

‘Alleluia, brother,’ the compartment's only other occupant affirmed. ‘Hosanna, my good sir, and amen.’

‘Although I must add, sir, that my beliefs are strictly non-denominational,’ the stranger continued. ‘Had you said “Lailaha”, I would gladly have responded with a full-throated “illallah”.’

Gibreel realized that his move across the compartment and his inadvertent taking of Allie's unusual name had been mistaken by his companion for overtures both social and theological. ‘John Maslama,’ the fellow cried, snapping a card out of a little crocodile-skin case and pressing it upon Gibreel. ‘Personally, I follow my own variant of the universal faith invented by the Emperor Akbar. God, I would say, is something akin to the Music of the Spheres.’

It was plain that Mr. Maslama was bursting with words, and that, now that he had popped, there was nothing for it but to sit it out, to permit the torrent to run its orotund course. As the fellow had the build of a prize-fighter, it seemed inadvisable to irritate him. In his eyes Farishta spotted the glint of the True Believer, a light which, until recently, he had seen in his own shaving-mirror every day.

‘I have done well for myself, sir,’ Maslama was boasting in his well-modulated Oxford drawl. ‘For a brown man, exceptionally well, considering the quiddity of the circumstances in which we live; as I hope you will allow.’ With a small but eloquent sweep of his thick ham of a hand, he indicated the opulence of his attire: the bespoke tailoring of his three-piece pin-stripe, the gold watch with its fob and chain, the Italian shoes, the crested silk tie, the jewelled links at his starched white cuffs. Above this costume of an English milord there stood a head of startling size, covered with thick, slicked-down hair, and sprouting implausibly luxuriant eyebrows beneath which blazed the ferocious eyes of which Gibreel had already taken careful note. ‘Pretty fancy,’ Gibreel now conceded, some response being clearly required. Maslama nodded. ‘I have always tended,’ he admitted, ‘towards the ornate.’

He had made what he called his first pile producing advertising jingles, ‘that ol’ devil music', leading women into lingerie and lip-gloss and men into temptation. Now he owned record stores all over town, a successful nightclub called Hot Wax, and a store full of gleaming musical instruments that was his special pride and joy. He was an Indian from Guyana, ‘but there's nothing left in that place, sir. People are leaving it faster than planes can fly.’ He had made good in quick time, ‘by the grace of God Almighty. I'm a regular Sunday man, sir; I confess to a weakness for the English Hymnal, and I sing to raise the roof.’

The autobiography was concluded with a brief mention of the existence of a wife and some dozen children. Gibreel offered his congratulations and hoped for silence, but now Maslama dropped his bombshell. ‘You don't need to tell me about yourself,’ he said jovially. ‘Naturally I know who you are, even if one does not expect to see such a personage on the Eastbourne—Victoria line.’ He winked leeringly and placed a finger alongside his nose. ‘Mum's the word. I respect a man's privacy, no question about it; no question at all.’

‘I? Who am I?’ Gibreel was startled into absurdity. The other nodded weightily, his eyebrows waving like soft antlers. ‘The prize question, in my opinion. These are problematic times, sir, for a moral man. When a man is unsure of his essence, how may he know if he be good or bad? But you are finding me tedious. I answer my own questions by my faith in It, sir,’ – here Maslama pointed to the ceiling of the railway compartment – ‘and of course you are not in the least confused about your identity, for you are the famous, the may I say legendary Mr. Gibreel Farishta, star of screen and, increasingly, I'm sorry to add, of pirate video; my twelve children, one wife and I are all long-standing, unreserved admirers of your divine heroics.’ He grabbed, and pumped Gibreel's right hand.

‘Tending as I do towards the pantheistic view,’ Maslama thundered on, ‘my own sympathy for your work arises out of your willingness to portray deities of every conceivable water. You, sir, are a rainbow coalition of the celestial; a walking United Nations of gods! You are, in short, the future. Permit me to salute you.’ He was beginning to give off the unmistakable odour of the genuine crazy, and even though he had not yet said or done anything beyond the merely idiosyncratic, Gibreel was getting alarmed and measuring the distance to the door with anxious little glances. ‘I incline, sir,’ Maslama was saying, ‘towards the opinion that whatever name one calls It by is no more than a code; a cypher, Mr. Farishta, behind which the true name lies concealed.’

Gibreel remained silent, and Maslama, making no attempt to hide his disappointment, was obliged to speak for him. ‘What is that true name, I hear you inquire,’ he said, and then Gibreel knew he was right; the man was a full-fledged lunatic, and his autobiography was very likely as much of a concoction as his ‘faith’. Fictions were walking around wherever he went, Gibreel reflected, fictions masquerading as real human beings. ‘I have brought him upon me,’ he accused himself. ‘By fearing for my own sanity I have brought forth, from God knows what dark recess, this voluble and maybe dangerous nut.’

‘You don't know it!’ Maslama yelled suddenly, jumping to his feet. ‘Charlatan! Poser! Fake! You claim to be the screen immortal, avatar of a hundred and one gods, and you haven't a foggy ! How is it possible that I, a poor boy made good from Bartica on the Essequibo, can know such things while Gibreel Farishta does not? Phoney! Phooey to you!’

Gibreel got to his feet, but the other was filling almost all the available standing room, and he, Gibreel, had to lean over awkwardly to one side to escape Maslama's windmilling arms, one of which knocked off his grey trilby. At once Maslama's mouth fell open. He seemed to shrink several inches, and after a few frozen moments, he fell to his knees with a thud.

What's he doing down there, Gibreel wondered, picking up my hat? But the madman was begging for forgiveness. ‘I never doubted you would come,’ he was saying. ‘Pardon my clumsy rage.’ The train entered a tunnel, and Gibreel saw that they were surrounded by a warm golden light that was coming from a point just behind his head. In the glass of the sliding door, he saw the reflection of the halo around his hair.

Maslama was struggling with his shoelaces. ‘All my life, sir, I knew I had been chosen,’ he was saying in a voice as humble as it had earlier been menacing. ‘Even as a child in Bartica, I knew.’ He pulled off his right shoe and began to roll down his sock. ‘I was given,’ he said, ‘a sign.’ The sock was removed, revealing what looked to be a perfectly ordinary, if outsize, foot. Then Gibreel counted and counted again, from one to six. ‘The same on the other foot,’ Maslama said proudly. ‘I never doubted the meaning for a minute.’ He was the self-appointed helpmate of the Lord, the sixth toe on the foot of the Universal Thing. Something was badly amiss with the spiritual life of the planet, thought Gibreel Farishta. Too many demons inside people claiming to believe in God.

The train emerged from the tunnel. Gibreel took a decision. ‘Stand, six-toed John,’ he intoned in his best Hindi movie manner. ‘Maslama, arise.’

The other scrambled to his feet and stood pulling at his fingers, his head bowed. ‘What I want to know, sir,’ he mumbled, ‘is, which is it to be? Annihilation or salvation? Why have you returned?’

Gibreel thought rapidly. ‘It is for judging,’ he finally answered. ‘Facts in the case must be sifted, due weight given pro and contra. Here it is the human race that is the undertrial, and it is a defendant with a rotten record: a history-sheeter, a bad egg. Careful evaluations must be made. For the present, verdict is reserved; will be promulgated in due course. In the meantime, my presence must remain a secret, for vital security reasons.’ He put his hat back on his head, feeling pleased with himself.