Ахмед Рушди - Quichotte - A Novel

This did not mean there were no theories on offer. The scientist-entrepreneur Evel Cent, chairman and CEO of the new-tech giant CentCorp, was insistently, even stridently, presenting his eschatological solution to anyone who would listen, but this was not, at first, thought to be plausible. The deterioration, he declared with great emphasis on all available media, was not taking place in the eyesight of the human race, but in the world. Not in the seeing thing but in the thing seen. He quoted, very often, the old sixties graffito, Do not adjust your mind, there is a fault in reality. There really was a fault in reality, and it was getting worse, and everyone needed to wake up and understand what was happening. The cosmos was crumbling. There was still time, with the support of world governments and the United Nations, to mass-produce the NEXT machines in sufficient quantity to rescue a high proportion of the human race by transporting them to a parallel Earth. He himself was prepared to invest his entire personal fortune and all of his time to the effort.

Few people were convinced at first. Even his substantial fan base of admirers, some of whom were willing to go along with his scare tactics, mistrusted the NEXT machines, which, if built in the numbers Cent proposed, seemed more likely to cause a mass extermination of humanity than to transport them to a new Garden of Eden. His experiment with the Labrador Schrödinger persuaded few people, and many more considered it to be a put-up job. Anyone could say a dog had traveled to a “neighbor Earth” and returned in good health. The dog itself was unable to bear witness, and no visual evidence had been made public. So, for the moment, Evel Cent was a voice crying in the wilderness, heard by many, believed by almost none.

Quichotte believed him. Ever since he began his quest he had known that preparing himself for love, making himself worthy of the Beloved, also necessitated readying oneself for an ending, because after perfection was attained there was only oblivion to look forward to. These manifestations, erroneously characterized as symptoms of a medical emergency, were early warnings that both culminations were at hand.

There was the tree, and there—poof!—was Dr. R. K. Smile. Hat, coat, small leather attaché case, like an old-world medico doing his rounds. And had that been a puff of smoke? No, that was just his imagination, Quichotte reproved himself. It was improbable that his illustrious cousin traveled the country with the Wicked Witch of the West’s personal smoke effects in his baggage. But, on the other hand, in the Age of Anything-Can-Happen, as he well knew, anything could happen. Maybe puffs of smoke were available now. Maybe you could buy them at Walmart, like guns.

“Best of cousins!” Quichotte cried. “I’m happy to see you. I hope your mood is fine?”

“Let’s walk a little,” said Dr. Smile. His mood, Quichotte noted with regret, appeared to be very far from fine. One might say that it was foul.

“There has been an event today in Atlanta,” Dr. Smile said as they walked in the general direction of the boathouse. “A shocking event, may I say. An offensive event concerning my good wife.”

“Mrs. Happy?” Quichotte cried. “That is indeed unexpected and woeful news! I hope she has not met with a misfortune?”

“ ‘Misfortune’ is too mild a word,” Dr. Smile said grimly. “I will tell you what has happened. I have a need to tell someone, and I believe I can talk to you—because, to put it bluntly, you are nobody, you know nobody, so you can tell nobody who is anybody, and, plus, you are borderline simple as well.”

This remark—in its tone very unlike the kind manner with which his cousin had always spoken to him—struck Quichotte as harsh, and in part incorrect. “But everybody is somebody, aren’t they?” he replied mildly. “Although the language can be confusing. When we say that ‘nobody is here,’ we mean in fact that ‘somebody’ is ‘not here.’ If I am here, I can’t be nobody. Look,” he said, pointing. “There, there, there. Somebody, somebody, somebody.” He pointed at himself. “Somebody,” he concluded with some pride.

Dr. Smile heard him out with growing impatience. “I repeat,” he said, “borderline simple.”

The discourtesy in his cousin’s speech saddened Quichotte. He tried to deflect it. “ Simple is almost smile rearranged, isn’t it,” he offered. “If you or I or both only had the initial P, then we would both be simple rearranged.”

This gentle pleasantry failed to improve Dr. Smile’s mood. “I don’t have time for small talk,” he barked. (Quichotte was on the verge of replying, “Then this you have in common with the famous Mr. Evel Cent!”—but he held his tongue.) “I have something to say today about the injustice of the world toward a man trying to do his best. And also toward his lady wife, an innocent bystander, Happy by name, happy by nature.”

Quichotte composed his features, frowning slightly to indicate deep attention.

“She was with her lady friends,” Dr. Smile said. “A circle of like-minded philanthropical ladies, meeting as was their habit at Dr. Bombay’s Underwater Tea Party in Candler Park.”

“Underwater?” Quichotte was lost now.

“This is a name only,” Dr. Smile said sharply. “This is a tea place, not a submarine.”

Quichotte inclined his head.

“Then they came in, how do they say in America? Like gangbusters.”

“The like-minded philanthropical ladies?”

“The forces of the law,” Dr. Smile said. “Bulletproof vests, dogs, assault weapons, as if it was a terrorist gang, not a social occasion. And why?”

“Why?”

“Because of me,” Dr. Smile said. “Because I am accused of crimes, and in my absence they went for her. Bastards.”

“The law enforcement officers?”

“The people who betrayed me. Treacherous bastards. Who else could have informed the police? Only the people I made rich. Yes, I made myself more rich, but I was the one who made it happen. Little doctors here, there, turning into rich fellows. Then they turn me in. Bastards. How do they think you become a billionaire in America? Morgan, Carnegie, Vanderbilt, Mellon, Rockefeller? At Underwater Tea Parties? I have done what had to be done. It’s the American way, correct? But still my own children, my own creations, the ones I made who they are today, they want to save their asses and tear me down.

“Listen,” he went on, “I don’t feel this thing called community feeling. This ‘our people’ bakwas. We are supposed to feel it, isn’t it? Loyalty to our community above all. The brown before the white, the many before the one. Bullshit. Our people come closer to us so they get to knife us first, in the front, in the back, in the balls, wherever. I’m speaking frankly today. I’m opening my heart to you in my time of anger. ‘Our people’ is nonsense. Wife feels the feeling, I don’t. Even if in some ways our people can teach us things. Our culture. It has lessons I have learned.

“Corruption, they accuse me of today. Corruption! Me! Myself! Dr. R. K. Smile! Everyone knows that what I have done is not corruption. It is our culture from the old country. You are at a railway station—let’s say Sawai Madhopur—and the lines at the ticket windows are long. You get to the front and the clerk says, wrong line, go and queue over there. This is frustrating, am I right? It would frustrate anybody. Then here is a little boy, maybe ten years old, tugging at your sleeve. Ssss, he says. Ssss. You want ticket? I have an uncle. And of course he wants a little something for his trouble. You can be smart and give it to him or you can be stupid and refuse. If you are smart you find he really does have an uncle, and he can take you to this uncle in the office behind the ticket window, and in two shakes your ticket is in your hand. If you are stupid you move from line to line for hours. We are like this only. You are in a yard, let us say in Thiruvananthapuram, and here is an antiques dealer offering you fine objects of value, and you want to bring them home, maybe to Atlanta, Georgia, to share with your loving family. But there are laws, isn’t it, that say it can’t be done. So you can be stupid and say, the law is the law, or you can be smart and say, the law is an ass. If you say ass the antique dealer will take you to the person who has the government stamp, the person who needs to be convinced, the amount it takes to convince him being specified in advance, and in five minutes your treasure is on the way to Buckhead. The law is useful, in fact. It tells you who is the correct person you need to convince. Otherwise you can waste money convincing people who don’t have the stamp. Waste not, want not. We are like this only. We know what is the oil that greases the wheels.”