Grimus - By Salman Rushdie Page 0,68

on the forms of things, the material business of living, and on “prime interests”, and the inner and outer universes would be blocked out. It all fitted: that was why Gribb and the rest resolutely refused to discuss origins—to do so would be to admit the presence of the enemy which they had driven from their minds. That was why Cherkassov had treated Gribb with that mixture of respect and insult: Gribb, as perpetrator of the Grimus-denying school of thought, had to be respected; but since all of K knew it to be a convenient sham, the respect was only external; probably they despised him for his pomposity. Flapping Eagle wondered how Elfrida felt. Probably she simply adored him for his cleverness.

Elfrida, Irina: there were the two most powerful weights in favour of K. No town which contained them could be easily dismissed. And perhaps two days was too short a time in which to decide to break his vow to himself. Yes, perhaps.

But while he was reassuring himself, the face of Bird-Dog crept back into his head and refused to leave. It was not easy to be an ostrich, even in a town full of them.

The donkey paused, by habit, outside Moonshy’s Stores. P. S. Moonshy had struck Flapping Eagle as a man worth talking to, if only because he had questioned the sovereignty of Gribb’s ideas. But when they sat in the spartan back room of the Stores, which was Moonshy’s retreat, he became less certain. Yellowing posters clung to the walls, screaming defiance at long-gone tyrannies. The clenched fist of solidarity was much in evidence. Moonshy differed from the rest only in choice of obsession. He was Opposition Man. That was what gave him the strength to question the shaky edifice on which rested the sanity of K. He questioned, but he was a part of it; so that when Flapping Eagle raised the crucial question of origins—and Grimus—he received only a stony stare and the official doctrine.

—These things, pah! said Moonshy. They do not matter. I spit upon them. What is of importance is Cherkassov’s privileges, is Gribb’s indolent scribblings, which the deprived workers are obliged to support, is the sinecure given to the woman Liv in consideration of her mental state. She is not deranged, nor is she talented. She is a passenger. These things are important.

—But you continue to work within the system?

—The time is not yet ripe, declaimed Moonshy. When the workers become politicized, the time will come.

His accents betrayed his words. He was secure in his attitudes, as he would never have to carry them to their logical conclusion. Flapping Eagle made an excuse and left, feeling disappointed.

Evening was drawing on when Flapping Eagle saw Bird-Dog again. And this was no hallucination, nothing which could be explained away as a trick of the eyesight. It was her, his sibling and mother-substitute, Bird-Dog herself, large as life and just as plain.

Nothing was out of the ordinary in K; Mr Stone was busy at his counting, the cloud hung over the mountain-top, the mist hung over the plain. Flapping Eagle dismounted from his donkey to one side of the House of the Rising Son. He wanted to see Virgil again. Leaving the donkey tethered there, off the Cobble-way, he walked round to the front door. There was a woman leaning against it, her face in shadow. He called to her: —Is Virgil Jones in?

The woman moved into the street. —Come, little brother, she said. Come catch me. And she was off, running as fast as ever she did, around the brothel, away from the parked donkey. The surprise rooted Flapping Eagle to the spot for a vital moment and then he was after her. But she turned each corner as he turned the previous one, holding her lead easily, calling: —Next time, little brother. May be next time. He raced round the back of the house after her and then returned to the side where his donkey stood bellowing—but Bird-Dog was nowhere.

The donkey was bellowing because the Two-Time Kid, Anthony St Clair Peyrefitte Hunter, was in the process of sodomizing it, and even for a docile donkey, there are limits.

Fighting back anger and nausea, Flapping Eagle asked: —Did you see her?

—Who? asked Hunter conversationally. The donkey bellowed louder.

A woman leaned out of a window of the House.

—Get away from here, she shouted. Hooligans!

—For pity’s sake stop that, shouted Flapping Eagle, hauling Hunter off the tethered donkey.

—All right, said Hunter mildly, it’s disgustingly unpleasant anyway.

—Then