The Satanic Verses

The fact of being alive compensated for what life did to one. That night, in an oak-panelled dining-room decorated with medieval flags, Pamela Chamcha in her most dazzling gown ate venison and drank a bottle of Chateau Talbot at a table heavy with silver and crystal, celebrating a new begi

Sipping cognac, Pamela watched vampires on TV and allowed herself to take pleasure in, well, in herself. Had she not invented herself in her own image? I am that I am, she toasted herself in Napoleon brandy. I work in a community relations council in the borough of Brickhall, London, nei; deputy community relations officer and damn good at it, ifisaysomyself. Cheers! We just elected our first black Chair and all the votes cast against him were white. Down the hatch! Last week a respected Asian street trader, for whom MPs of all parties had interceded, was deported after eighteen years in Britain because, fifteen years ago, he posted a certain form forty-eight hours late. Chin-chin! Next week in Brickhall Magistrates’ Court the police will be trying to fit up a fifty-year-old Nigerian woman, accusing her of assault, having previously beaten her senseless. Skol! This is my head: see it? What I call my job: bashing my head against Brickhall.

Saladin was dead and she was alive.

She drank to that. There were things I was waiting to tell you, Saladin. Some big things: about the new high-rise office building in Brickhall High Street, across from McDonald's; – they built it to be perfectly sound-proof, but the workers were so disturbed by the silence that now they play tapes of white noise on the ta

And a couple of tiny little things. There's a killer on the loose in my patch, specializes in killing old women; so don't worry, I'm safe. Plenty older than me.

One more thing: I'm leaving you. It's over. We're through.

I could never say anything to you, not really, not the least thing. If I said you were putting on weight you'd yell for an hour, as if it would change what you saw in the mirror, what the tightness of your own trousers was telling you. You interrupted me in public. People noticed it, what you thought of me. I forgave you, that was my fault; I could see the centre of you, that question so frightful that you had to protect it with all that posturing certainty. That empty space.

Goodbye, Saladin. She drained her glass and set it down beside her. The returning rain knocked at her leaded windows; she drew her curtains shut and turned out the light.

Lying there, drifting towards sleep, she thought of the last thing she needed to tell her late husband. ‘In bed,’ the words came, ‘you never seemed interested in me; not in my pleasure, what I needed, not really ever. I came to think you wanted, not a lover. A servant.’ There. Now rest in peace.

She dreamed of him, his face, filling the dream. ‘Things are ending,’ he told her. ‘This civilization; things are closing in on it. It has been quite a culture, brilliant and foul, ca

She didn't agree, not even in the dream, but she knew, as she dreamed, that there was no point telling him now.

After Pamela Chamcha threw him out, Jumpy Joshi went over to Mr Sufyan's Shaandaar Café in Brickhall High Street and sat there trying to decide if he was a fool. It was early in the day, so the place was almost empty, apart from a fat lady buying a box of pista barfi and jalebis, a couple of bachelor garment workers drinking chaloo chai and an elderly Polish woman from the old days when it was the Jews who ran the sweatshops round here, who sat all day in a corner with two vegetable samosas, one puri and a glass of milk, a

‘Hey, Saint Jumpy,’ he sang out, ‘why you bringing your bad weather into my place? This country isn't full enough of clouds?’

Jumpy blushed as Sufyan bounced over to him, his little white cap of devotion pi

‘You ever make any money?’ Sufyan asked.

‘Not me, Uncle.’

‘Ever do any business? Import-export? Off-licence? Corner shop?’

‘I never understood figures.’

‘And where your family members are?’

‘I've got no family, Uncle. There's only me.’

‘Then you must be praying to God continually for guidance in your loneliness?’

‘You know me, Uncle. I don't pray.’

‘No question about it,’ Sufyan concluded. ‘You're an even bigger fool than you know.’

‘Thanks, Uncle,’ Jumpy said, finishing his coffee. ‘You've been a great help.’

Sufyan, knowing that the affection in his teasing was cheering the other man up in spite of his long face, called across to the light-ski