Grimus - By Salman Rushdie Page 0,3

omen; if I could bring death at the moment of my birth, it would sit upon my shoulder like a vulture wherever I went. As for my colouring: the Axona are a dark-skinned race and shortish. As I grew, it became apparent that I was, inexplicably, to be fair-skinned and tallish. This further genetic aberration—whiteness—meant they were frightened of me and shied away from contact.

Because they were frightened, they gave us a measure of respect. Because I was a freak, they gave us a measure of scorn.

It goes without saying that Bird-Dog and I were very close indeed. How much she suffered because of my deformities, she never said. It was a mark of her love.

So, unconsciously, from those early days, I was being equipped for the voyage to Calf Island. I was an exile in an isolated community, and I clung to my love for my sister as a castaway to driftwood.

That day, when Bird-Dog spoke the unspeakable, she let me into a secret.

—Before I was your age I went Down, she said. I was shocked. In those days the idea of breaking the law of Axona still shocked me.

—When I was your age I went into the town, she said, and listened at a window outside an eating-place. There was a singing machine there. It sang about a creature called a bird-dog, clever, fiendish. It feared the creature. I thought: that is the brave’s name for me.

In a state of semi-shock, I asked: —What about the Demons? and my voice stuttered. How did you escape the Whirling Demons?

She tossed her head. —Easy, she said with contempt. They’re nothing at all but air, they aren’t.

Ever since that day, Bird-Dog made frequent journeys into town. She would return full of tales of moving pictures and fast-moving machines; of machines that gave water and food, and of such numbers and numbers of people … I never had the courage to accompany her. It was there, in the town, that she learnt about twenty-first birthdays. —That’s the day you’ll prove you’re a brave, she said. You’ll go into town; and what’s more You’ll go in alone.

It was also the day she met Mr Sispy and was given eternal life.

As I said, the day began well enough for young Joe-Sue. But once he was awake it gave the lie to its beginnings.

III

IT WAS JOE-SUE’S birthday: I got up and went outside. The sky was a blinding blue. The table-top dotted with red-brown tents was a deep, rich green, a green thumb sticking sorely above a rich-red, barren-brown world. If the Whirling Demons were whirling below, they couldn’t catch me, and all seemed right with the world.

Bird-Dog was sitting on an outcrop of rock, a grown woman of thirty-four years, three months and four days, in rags, her hair falling blackly over the olive face. She clutched two small bottles. The one in her right hand was full of bright yellow liquid. The one in her left hand was full of bright blue liquid. Colour was rampant everywhere, except in my skin. I felt a cloud pass across the sun.

The gleam of excitement in Bird-Dog’s face as she crouched eagerly over her treasures dispelled the bleak moment.

—I’ve been down, she said, to see if the Whirling Demons are quiet today. They’re quiet. It’s all right. But her voice was absent, her eyes stared fiercely at the brightly-coloured phials.

—I met a man between here and the town, she said distantly. He gave me these.

—What are they? Who was he? Why did he give you them?

—He was a pedlar. His name was Mr Sispy. Nice man. Funny name, Sispy. He gave them to me because I wanted them.

—But what do they do?

—They’ll keep me young, she said, clutching them ever more tightly. Or at least this one will. She held up the yellow phial.

—For how long? I asked timorously. The shadow was back.

—Forever, she screamed triumphantly, and then burst into tears.

With my arms around her, moistened by her tears of frightened joy, I asked:

—What does the other one do, the blue one?

She didn’t answer at once.

Now that I am so much older, I am not at all sure what the word magician means. To Joe-Sue that day, born and raised as he was in a tribe where magic intermingled continually with daily life, it meant anyone apparently in possession of powers, or knowledge, which he himself lacked. Perhaps that’s the only sense in which the word has meaning; and by that definition, for Joe-Sue and Bird-Dog