Grimus - By Salman Rushdie Page 0,14

Mr Eagle, I construct them. In these solitary years they have provided my one stimulation. One day, I expect, I shall be some good at the things. At the moment my skill in construction far surpasses my talents at reconstruction. And myopia does nothing to assist. O for a qualified grinder of lenses.

He poured out a bowl of root-tea and carried it back, nearly slipping on the scattered jigsaw, and sat down by Flapping Eagle once more.

How unlikely, thought Flapping Eagle, that surroundings as meagre as these should exude so comfortable, so friendly an atmosphere. The room in which he lay was little more than the interior of a hovel; two rush mats some distance apart, one of which currently bore his weakened frame, lying on a dirt floor—although it was a meticulously swept floor. The broom, a bundle of twigs, rested indolently against a wall. The walls were logs covered in caked mud, the roof as well. A fireplace and the upturned rickety low table. A few pots. In a far corner, an old trunk. Nothing on the walls; no decoration anywhere. It was as distant from the sumptuous residence of, say, Livia Cramm as was China. And yet it was friendly.

Noises off: the twitterings of birds. A rustle of thick shrubbery. The occasional distant howl of a wild dog. No footsteps, no concourse of humanity. One window, with a piece of sacking drawn across it, flapping in the breeze; one door, covered in the same manner. It was the dwelling of a savage, or a castaway. Virgil Jones fitted into it about as easily as an elephant in a pepperpot.

He sat solicitously on the floor, wearing a dark and aged suit. There was a bowler hat upon his head and a gold chain traversed his waistcoat. (There was no gold watch at the end of it.) Somehow, thought Flapping Eagle, in these unsavoury surroundings, he preserves an air of dignity. Short-sighted, clumsy, loquacious, large-tongued, slobbering dignity, the injured hauteur of the impoverished. He reminded Flapping Eagle of an old railway engine he had once seen, a giant of steam in its day, rusting in a siding. The form of power denied its content. A stranded hulk. Puffing Billy. Flapping Eagle finished his root-tea, put the bowl down and fell fast asleep.

—That’s right, murmured Virgil Jones. Build your strength.

The birds sang their agreement from the trees.

When he awoke it was to find a different face staring down at him: the crinkled monkey folds of Dolores O’Toole’s physiognomy. At first he leapt in alarm, but then as wakefulness came subsided again, realizing that what he had taken for a snarl of hate was in fact a smile. Dolores O’Toole was the ugliest woman he had ever seen.

He gathered himself. —May I ask an obvious question, he said. Where am I?

—That’s a good question, approved Virgil Jones.

—Among friends, soothed Dolores O’Toole, snarling her sympathy.

Flapping Eagle felt highly confused.

IX

—YOU ARE AT the foot of a mountain, said Virgil Jones. This is Calf Island, and the mountain is Calf Mountain. The mountain is really the whole island.

—Are you alone here? asked Flapping Eagle.

—Here, yes. Yes, here we are alone. Relatively speaking, said Virgil Jones. There are the birds, of course, and the chickens, and a few harmless wild animals.

—Do you mean there are no other human beings on the island at all?

—O, said Virgil Jones, no, I can’t truthfully say that.

—No, agreed Dolores, not truthfully.

Flapping Eagle had the distinct impression that they spoke with reluctance.

—Where are they then? he pressed.

—Ah, said Virgil.

—A long distance away, said Dolores.

Flapping Eagle’s head hurt; he felt ill. Scarcely strong enough to force information out of the lip-biting pair.

—Please, he said, tell me where.

Virgil Jones appeared to make a decision. —The slopes of the mountain, he said, are mainly covered in forestation. I believe there are a few people wandering around in the woods, but we rather keep ourselves to ourselves, so I couldn’t truthfully say where.

—And that’s all? asked Flapping Eagle.

—N … n … no, admitted Virgil.

—There are others, yielded Dolores.

—Are you going to tell me about them? asked Flapping Eagle, his skull giving a fair impression of splintering into a million tiny shards.

—O, you don’t want to know about them, said Virgil Jones hopefully.

—They are completely uninteresting, assured Dolores.

Flapping Eagle closed his eyes.

—Please, he said.

—He asks so politely, said Dolores despairingly.

So they told him.

From Dolores, he learned that K was a town of reprobates and degraded types; selfish, decadent people that no decent woman would want