The Satanic Verses

His nose informed him that the sanatorium, or whatever the place called itself, was also begi

‘In conclusion,’ he said before disappearing forever from Saladin's new life, ‘I suggest, Mr. Citizen Saladin, that you di

Saladin Chamcha closed his eyes and when he opened them his tormentor had turned into the nurse and physiotherapist, Hyacinth Phillips. ‘Why you wan go walking?’ she asked. ‘Whatever your heart desires, you jus ask me, Hyacinth, and we'll see what we can fix.’

‘Ssst.’

That night, in the greeny light of the mysterious institution, Saladin was. awakened by a hiss out of an Indian bazaar.

‘Ssst. You, Beelzebub. Wake up.’

Standing in front of him was a figure so impossible that Chamcha wanted to bury his head under the sheets; yet could not, for was not he himself...? ‘That's right,’ the creature said. ‘You see, you're not alone.’

It had an entirely human body, but its head was that of a ferocious tiger, with three rows of teeth. ‘The night guards often doze off,’ it explained. That's how we manage to get to talk.’

Just then a voice from one of the other beds – each bed, as Chamcha now knew, was protected by its own ring of screens – wailed loudly: ‘Oh, if ever a body suffered!’ and the man-tiger, or manticore, as it called itself, gave an exasperated growl. That Moaner Lisa,’ it exclaimed. ‘All they did to him was make him blind.’

‘Who did what?’ Chamcha was confused.

‘The point is,’ the manticore continued, ‘are you going to put up with it?’

Saladin was still puzzled. The other seemed to be suggesting that these mutations were the responsibility of – of whom? How could they be? – ‘I don't see,’ he ventured, ‘who can be blamed…’

The manticore ground its three rows of teeth in evident frustration. ‘There's a woman over that way,’ it said, ‘who is now mostly water-buffalo. There are businessmen from Nigeria who have grown sturdy tails. There is a group of holiday makers from Senegal who were doing no more than changing planes when they were turned into slippery snakes. I myself am in the rag trade; for some years now I have been a highly paid male model, based in Bombay, wearing a wide range of suitings and shirtings also. But who will employ me now?’ he burst into sudden and unexpected tears. ‘There, there,’ said Saladin Chamcha, automatically. ‘Everything will be all right, I'm sure of it. Have courage.’

The creature composed itself. ‘The point is,’ it said fiercely, ‘some of us aren't going to stand for it. We're going to bust out of here before they turn us into anything worse. Every night I feel a different piece of me begi

‘But how do they do it?’ Chamcha wanted to know.

‘They describe us,’ the other whispered solemnly. ‘That's all. They have the power of description, and we succumb to the pictures they construct.’

‘It's hard to believe,’ Chamcha argued. ‘I've lived here for many years and it never happened before...’ His words dried up because he saw the manticore looking at him through narrow, distrustful eyes. ‘Many years?’ it asked. ‘How could that be? – Maybe you're an informer? – Yes, that's it, a spy?’

Just then a wail came from a far corner of the ward. ‘Lemme go,’ a woman's voice howled. ‘O Jesus I want to go. Jesus Mary I gotta go, lemme go, O God, O Jesus God.’ A very lecherous-looking wolf put its head through Saladin's screens and spoke urgently to the manticore. ‘The guards'll be here soon,’ it hissed. ‘It's her again, Glass Bertha.’

‘Glass... ?’ Saladin began. ‘Her skin turned to glass,’ the manticore explained impatiently, not knowing that he was bringing Chamcha's worst dream to life. ‘And the bastards smashed it up for her. Now she can't even walk to the toilet.’

A new voice hissed out across the greeny night. ‘For God's sake, woman. Go in the fucking bedpan.’

The wolf was pulling the manticore away. ‘Is he with us or not?’ it wanted to know. The manticore shrugged. ‘He can't make up his mind,’ it answered. ‘Can't believe his own eyes, that's his trouble.’

They fled, hearing the approaching crunch of the guards’ heavy boots.

The next day there was no sign of a doctor, or of Pamela, and Chamcha in his utter bewilderment woke and slept as if the two conditions no longer required to be thought of as opposites, but as states that flowed into and out of one another to create a kind of unending delirium of the senses... he found himself dreaming of the Queen, of making tender love to the Monarch. She was the body of Britain, the avatar of the State, and he had chosen her, joined with her; she was his Beloved, the moon of his delight.

Hyacinth came at the appointed times to ride and pummel him, and he submitted without any fuss. But when she finished she whispered into his ear: ‘You in with the rest?’ and he understood that she was involved in the great conspiracy, too. ‘If you are,’ he heard himself saying, ‘then you can count me in.’ She nodded, looking pleased. Chamcha felt a warmth filling him up, and he began to wonder about taking hold of one of the physiotherapist's exceedingly dainty, albeit powerful, little fists; but just then a shout came from the direction of the blind man: ‘My stick, I've lost my stick.’

‘Poor old bugger,’ said Hyacinth, and hopping off Chamcha she darted across to the sightless fellow, picked up the fallen stick, restored it to its owner, and came back to Saladin. ‘Now,’ she said. I'll see you this pm; okay, no problems?’

He wanted her to stay, but she acted brisk, ‘I'm a busy woman, Mr. Chamcha. Things to do, people to see.’

When she had gone he lay back and smiled for the first time in a long while. It did not occur to him that his metamorphosis must be continuing, because he was actually entertaining romantic notions about a black woman; and before he had time to think such complex thoughts, the blind man next door began, once again, to speak.