Grimus - By Salman Rushdie Page 0,59

Flapping Eagle; and I can’t agree.

—You’ve spent too long with that trickster … that charlatan. He has no place in this town. Gribb was now definitely angry. A red dwarf.

—Darling, said Elfrida, I’m sure it might be interesting for you to have a man of Mr Eagle’s undoubted experience investigate the matter.

Gribb collected himself. —Yes, of course, he said. Dear, dear, dear. It would be … most amusing.

Flapping Eagle was thinking hard: certainly it seemed no-one in K ever succumbed to dimension-fever; and since his own experience of it, the dimensions no longer intruded into his own consciousness. And he had been ill in Virgil’s company. He wished passionately that he knew more about Virgil.

He was now sure of one thing: he intended, if permitted, to find out as much as possible about Grimus, whether he was fact or fiction. It was the only way to understand what had happened to him.

And where was Virgil Jones now?

To Mr Gribb, he said formally: —Please rest assured, sir, that I shall be the soul of impartiality in my studies. It is a debt of honour to you for housing me. Scholasticism breeds a scholarly attitude.

—Well,well,well,well,well, said Mr Gribb, mollified.

—Heavens, said Elfrida, if we are indeed dining with the Cherkassovs, I must fly and dress.

XXXVII

A BRUISED MAN in a torn suit knocks at the door of a brothel, seven times. Exactly on the seventh stroke, the door flies open. A hollow noise as it strikes against a darkened wall. Candlelight: a woman in a long lace nightgown, her dark hair a cascade upon her shoulders, her face glowing. The man stumbles inside; the door closes. There is no wilderness without an oasis.

The man lies in the lap of a lady with a lamp, sleeping as she sings. Behind her stands a girl, naked and motionless; at their feet the woman in the long lace nightgown lies watching. These are some of the words of the song:

And shall ye attempt to climb

The inaccessible mountain of Kâf?

It bruises all men in its time

It shatters the strongest staff

It brings an end to all rhyme

And crushes the lightest laugh

O do not attempt then to climb

The inaccessible mountain of Kâf.

In time all must climb it, in time.

Awaking, the man asks for refuge; and since a brothel is a place of refuge, asylum is given. And food and new clothing.

—Your namesake Chanakya, whispered Kamala Sutra to Virgil Jones, could place his right hand upon a brazier of coals and his left hand upon the cool breast of a young girl, feeling neither the pain of the fire nor the pleasure of her skin. Ask yourself if it is your luck or your misfortune that you could feel both. And now that the fires have scalded you, allow the woman to heal you.

She lay beside him; from her throat came low clucking noises. She drew her hands over her eyes to close them and held them, fingers spread, at the corners of the sloe-shaped lids. When Virgil made no move, she took his hand in hers and put it on her breast. Slowly, it began to move.

—Be comforted, she said.

And he was.

—If you fix your eyes upon a black dot at the centre of a sheet of white paper, said Lee Kok Fook, it will either disappear or grow until it gives the illusion of filling the page. In the ancient symbol of yin and yang, the yin hemisphere contains a yang dot, and the yang hemisphere a yin dot, to show how each half contains the seeds of its opposite. If you fix your eyes upon the dot, it will grow into a cloud, and create an imbalance in the mind, such as the desolation you feel now. I will help you to avert your eyes from the cloud; by our love-making the harmony can perhaps be restored.

She wound around him like a snake, her legs and arms seemingly spiralling around his, until they were irretrievably interlocked; and he could do nothing but respond.

That night, Florence Nightingale sang him to sleep once more; and again the naked Media stood behind them silently while Madame Jocasta reclined at their feet. It was a rippling song, full of clear waters and quickly-running streams, fresh and soothing. He slept better.

—There are some men, said Lee Kok Fook, whose curse it is to be different from the rest. Among thinkers, they see only a lack of practicality; among men of action, they mourn the absence of thought. When they are at one extreme,