The Satanic Verses Read Free Page B

of her high-rise home. Its name was Everest Vilas.
               
His neighbour; as a matter of fact, from the apartment directly beneath his
own. His neighbour and his friend; why should I say any more? Of course the
scandal-pointed malice-magazines of the city filled their columns with hint innuendo
and nudge, but that's no reason for sinking to their level. Why tarnish her
reputation now?
               
Who was she? Rich, certainly, but then Everest Vilas was not exactly a tenement
in Kurla, eh? Married, yessir, thirteen years, with a husband big in
ball-bearings. Independent, her carpet and antique showrooms thriving at their
prime Colaba sites. She called her carpets klims and kleens and
the ancient artefacts were anti-queues . Yes, and she was beautiful,
beautiful in the hard, glossy manner of those rarefied occupants of the city's
sky-homes, her bones skin posture all bearing witness to her long divorce from
the impoverished, heavy, pullulating earth. Everyone agreed she had a strong
personality, drank like a fish from Lalique crystal and hung her hat shameless on a Chola Natraj and knew what she wanted and how to get it, fast. The husband
was a mouse with money and a good squash wrist. Rekha Merchant read Gibreel
Farishta's farewell note in the newspapers, wrote a letter of her own, gathered
her children, summoned the elevator, and rose heavenward (one storey) to meet
her chosen fate.
               
"Many years ago," her letter read, "I married out of cowardice.
Now, finally, I'm doing something brave." She left a newspaper on her bed
with Gibreel's message circled in red and heavily underscored―three harsh
lines, one of them ripping the page in fury. So naturally the bitch-journals
went to town and it was all LOVELY"S LOVELORN LEAP, and BROKEN-HEARTED
BEAUTY TAKES LAST DIVE. But:
               
Perhaps she, too, had the rebirth bug, and Gibreel, not understanding the
terrible power of metaphor, had recommended flight.  To be born again,
first you have to and she was a creature of the sky, she drank Lalique
champagne, she lived on Everest, and one of her fellow-Olympians had flown; and
if he could, then she, too, could be winged, and rooted in dreams.
               
She didn't make it. The lala who was employed as gatekeeper of the Everest
Vilas compound offered the world his blunt testimony. "I was walking, here
here, in the compound only, when there came a thud, tharaap . I turned.
It was the body of the oldest daughter. Her skull was completely crushed. I
looked up and saw the boy falling, and after him the younger girl. What to say,
they almost hit me where I stood. I put my hand on my mouth and came to them.
The young girl was whining softly. Then I looked up a further time and the
Begum was coming. Her sari was floating out like a big balloon and all her hair
was loose. I took my eyes away from her because she was falling and it was not
respectful to look up inside her clothes."
               
Rekha and her children fell from Everest; no survivors. The whispers blamed
Gibreel. Let's leave it at that for the moment.
               
Oh: don't forget: he saw her after she died. He saw her several times. It was a
long time before people understood how sick the great man was. Gibreel, the
star. Gibreel, who vanquished the Nameless Ailment. Gibreel, who feared sleep.
               
After he departed the ubiquitous images of his face began to rot. On the
gigantic, luridly coloured hoardings from which he had watched over the
populace, his lazy eyelids started flaking and crumbling, drooping further and
further until his irises looked like two moons sliced by clouds, or by the soft
knives of his long lashes. Finally the eyelids fell off, giving a wild, bulging
look to his painted eyes. Outside the picture palaces of Bombay, mammoth
cardboard effigies of Gibreel were seen to decay and list. Dangling limply on
their sustaining scaffolds, they lost