Ахмед Рушди - Quichotte - A Novel

It wasn’t about him, she had said, and that was right. But she was dying, and he would live, and after that it would be his burden to bear, because she would have set it down.

SHE SLEPT MUCH OF the day, went in and out of sleep. The judge was busy with paperwork at his desk. Daughter ran between her business and her mother. The hospice team members came and went. Brother found a wooden upright chair and placed it in a corner of Sister’s bedroom, keeping out of the way. He had a notebook on his knee and made entries in it.

In the Valley of Wonderment, said Quichotte, the Wayfarer, in the presence of the Beloved, is filled with awe and understands that he has never known or understood anything.

There’s an old Jewish joke, Evel Cent said to Miss Salma R in a deleted segment of their interview. In the joke an old Jew in Germany in the 1930s goes into a travel agency looking for a country to flee to. On the counter of the travel agency is a globe of the world and the old Jew points at one country after another, the United States, Canada, Mexico, wherever, and each time the travel agent shakes his head and says no, they aren’t accepting any more refugees. Eventually the old Jew doesn’t have any more countries he can point to, so he turns away from the globe and says to the travel agent, “So this one’s all full up. So maybe you got another?” Our neighbor Earth project answers that question with a big Yes. Yes, that old Jew can be one of the NEXT people. And so can all of us.

Grillo Parlante, Sancho whispered in his bedroom at night. Mister Jiminy, are you there? There are things I need: a life of my own, away from Daddy Q. It’s time pretty soon to leave him behind and strike out on my own. But before I do that there are two actual items I really do require.—Pop!—The cricket appeared on his bed, looking none too pleased. I think maybe this is my final visit, it said. La mia ultima visita. After this you’re on your own. So, what is it? Don’t ask for too much. Remember the fisherman’s wife and the talking flounder.—What about them?—That magic fish, which was German, by the way, but I don’t speak German, was granting them everything. When the fisherman found the flounder they had been living in a pisspot. In un vase da notte, because they were poor as piss. Then came gold, riches, the works. But finally the fisherman’s wife went too far. She said she wanted to be the pope. So the fisherman said to the fish, my wife, she want to be pope. Il Papa. When he went home he discovered that all the fish’s gifts had vanished and they were back to living in the pisspot. This is the German story. In Italian it is not so different.—I don’t want to be pope, Sancho said. I want two things. I want a cellphone, and I want the girl’s personal telephone number, not the office line.—Look in your pocket, said the talking cricket, and addio per sempre. Goodbye forever.

Are you Mrs. Smile, said the first man in a black suit wearing wraparound shades. Mrs. Happy Smile?—Yes, she said.—Yes, ma’am, I am Will Smith, special agent in charge for the Office of Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. My colleague here is Tommy Lee Jones, a Federal Bureau of Investigation special agent. Is your husband at home?—No, he is away on business.—Ma’am, we will need to come in. This is a search warrant.—But my husband is an honorable man, a prominent citizen, much respected in the town, a public benefactor, a supporter of the arts.—Ma’am, we also hold a warrant for his arrest.

(N.B.: the agents’ names are obviously placeholders. These are not those men in black.)

And one more:

If I use Sister’s death in my book, is that exploitation or legitimate? And also: who is it that has to die? And he added a postscript: How big of an asshole am I?

She woke up and looked straight at him, looking alert and present, but her mind was confused. She made a number of remarks that seemed to be addressed to other people, as if she mistook him for someone else; and then, suddenly, shockingly, demanded: “I’m not dying, am I?”

He replied without pausing to think. “No,” he said. “No, honey, it’s okay, you’re just resting.”

For a long time afterwards he would ask himself if he had given the right answer. If, when his turn came, he asked that question of the people closest to him, would he prefer the comforting lie or the truth which would enable him to prepare for the grandeur of life’s ending? He thought he would prefer to know. But everyone he asked said, “I would have done the same as you.” Again, the human preference for fiction over fact.

Sister gave a small nod. “I’m glad you came,” she said, recognizing him now. “This has been good.” She smiled faintly and slipped back into sleep.

I have what I came for, he thought: absolution.

HE LAY IN BED listening to the sounds of the night city. The night music of Manhattan was played by the orchestra of emergency machines going about their business—ambulances, fire trucks, police cars racing to the scene of a crime—and sometimes a sanitation vehicle or a snowplow reversing under your window. In London he was hearing voices, and, being a little separated from objectivity by what he had heard and seen since he arrived, he found it hard to say if these were human beings or phantoms or the voices of angels or devils, in some way of another realm, ethereal voices such as the great mystics could hear, Joan of Arc, Saint John the Divine, Aurobindo, Osho, Buddha. The city seemed to be shrieking its pain into the night sky, asking for succor. Mortal men and women in agony and despair, without any road to happiness or peace. Monsters on the rooftops like giant succubi, drawing in long breaths and sucking out of human beings all their hope and joy.

And amid all this mayhem he had crossed the ocean looking only for the love of a woman he did not really know.

Now Quichotte and I are no longer two different beings, the one created and the one creating, he thought. Now I am a part of him, just as he is a part of me.

THE NEXT DAY SISTER announced that she would be hosting, at 4 P.M., a little afternoon tea for the family. The judge and Daughter said in unison, “Excellent idea,” and offered to go out and get cakes and crumpets and madeleines and scones. Daughter said she would make the cucumber sandwiches. “We will do this,” Sister additionally commanded, “downstairs, and there will be music. I’m tired of being in this bedroom. There is a very sick woman in here and she’s becoming annoying.”

Sister got up and dressed, with Daughter’s help, in a fine skirt made from Indian brocade, a white blouse, and antique silver jewelry—not from her lecherous father’s Zayvar Brother store but from the Zaveri Bazaar market district, which was also in the city she insisted on calling Bombay. In Zaveri Bazaar the price of the jewelry had nothing to do with its antiquity or with the fineness of the jeweler’s work, but was based solely on the weight and the purity of the silver. She liked this matter-of-fact approach, she said. It cast aside the vanity of artists and the sentimentality of age in favor of the practicality of what had true value: weight and purity. Daughter had brought her a magnolia flower and she put that in her hair. The judge had dressed up, too, in his finest evening gown, a gorgeous silver sheath with lacy frills spreading out below the knee. “By Mr. Cecil Beaton,” he said to Brother. “ Sir Cecil Beaton. Since you ask.”

All of them, Daughter, Brother, and the judge, were needed to help her downstairs, Daughter going down backwards in front of her, arms extended, to prevent her mother from falling, and the two men beside her, sideways, helping her to go slowly down, step by anxious step. The members of the hospice staff stood by, ready to help, but understanding, on account of their great reserves of human sympathy, that this was a family matter. (During the family tea party the caregivers retreated upstairs to Sister’s bedroom. Later, when tea was over, Sister preferred to allow one of them, a strong young orderly, to carry her back up to her room.)