Grimus - By Salman Rushdie Page 0,75

Eagle’s ears seemed to have faded for the time being. It was as though the island were biding its time. In retrospect it seemed to Flapping Eagle that he had been given enough rope to hang himself and several others besides.

This was how the one intrusion occurred:

Ignatius Gribb was having his afternoon nap, and thus managed once again to sleep through an important event. Elfrida and Flapping Eagle were at the swing. More precisely, they sat on the grass under the ash from which it hung. They were drowsy with food and wine; but the second blink jolted them wide awake.

It hit them like an electric shock. No living being can be removed from existence and then returned to it without feeling the effects.

It passed; Elfrida looked at Flapping Eagle, a helpless child filled with fear. He took her into his arms and they hung on to each other tightly, proving to themselves it was all right, they were there, solid, alive.

It seemed only natural that they should kiss.

Inside, in his study, Ignatius Gribb snored on.

XLV

EARLIER, AT THE House of the Rising Son.

Media was saying: —Madame Jocasta, might you not have been too hard on Flapping Eagle? People do get confused. Good people can do bad things under stress.

Madame Jocasta said: —You don’t even know the man.

Media tossed her head. —I’m just giving him the benefit of the doubt. Virgil’s always encouraging people to doubt.

Jocasta said: —Flapping Eagle is not welcome here. And remember, Media, your own speciality excludes him from your bed.

—Yes, Madame, she said. And added, after a pause: I like women.

—Don’t be sad, said Media.

—No, my dear, said Virgil absently.

—I’m sorry I asked about him, she said, full of contrition.

—It’s not that, he said.

The Gorf had warned him: he was irrelevant, redundant; he would take no further part in the story of Calf Mountain. The Gorf had warned him; and since Flapping Eagle had chosen the Way of K, it looked as if the Gorf was right.

—People sometimes get depressed in retirement, he said to Media.

XLVI

NO-ONE TO GUIDE him; no sister to forage, no sham-man to expel, no livia to command, no deggle to direct, no virgil to instruct. He had to choose—which of them? Either of them? And then to gamble on their choice. And to know what he wanted.

The white witches weaving their spell, binding him in silken cords.

Perhaps any choice, even the wrong one, was better than these agonizing, fluctuating self-examinations and inner debates.

Without being conscious of it, Flapping Eagle was falling into the natural thought-patterns of his adopted town.

The pale sorceresses circled and smiled.

—I know I’m a guest in his house, he said. But it’s yours, too. I know he’s been kind and generous to me. But it was you who brought me here. I don’t expect you to love me; I’m not sure if I love you. But I want you. I know it would be easier, more comfortable if I didn’t. But I do.

There: it was done.

—I love my husband, said Elfrida Gribb in a voice seized with panic.

Night. Irina Cherkassova lay awake in her bed, thinking about the blink. A spider crawled unseen along the hangings over her head, the rude canopy of her inelegant four-poster. Bats hung from the eaves outside her closed window.

For her, it had been the first blink, and the first time is the worst. She bit her lip and tasted the salty blood. Tonight she needed companionship, even if it was only Aleksandr. But how to go to him, proud Irina, how crawl into his bedroom after this age of partitioned nights, how to ask his warmth and protection in the face of her history of icy hauteur. No: she could not. No. Yes. Yes. She could. She got out of bed and drew her dressing-gown around her.

There was no answer when she knocked at his door. Sleeping, obviously; he probably doesn’t even remember it happened, addlebrained fool. She opened the door.

At that moment, at the House of the Rising Son, Lee Kok Fook licked Aleksandr Cherkassov on the ear-lobe.

She knew it, of course; in fact she expected that he should spend nights at the brothel. Having banned him from her bed, she would be naïve to think otherwise. Besides, a sated halfwit was preferable to a frustrated husband demanding his rights. But tonight, it hurt. Tonight, when she had been willing to come to him, to humble herself before him for the sake of his company. It is most galling for the sensitive to