The Satanic Verses

Sisodia had talked himself into the hot seat: all the principals had agreed to grant him executive powers in the matter, and he had put together quite a package. The British-based entrepreneur Billy Battuta was eager to invest both in sterling and in ‘blocked rupees’, the non-repatriable profits made by various British film distributors in the Indian subcontinent, which Battuta had taken over in return for cash payments in negotiable currencies at a knockdown (37-point discount) rate. All the Indian producers would chip in, and Miss Pimple Billimoria, to guarantee her silence, was to be offered a showcase supporting role featuring at least two dance numbers. Filming would be spread between three continents – Europe, India, the North African coast. Gibreel got above-the-title billing, and three percentage points of producers’ net profits... ‘Ten,’ Gibreel interrupted, ‘against two of the gross.’ His mind was obviously clearing. Sisodia didn't bat an eyelid. ‘Ten against two,’ he agreed. ‘Pre-publicity campaign to be as fofollows...’

‘But what's the project?’ Allie Cone demanded. Mr. ‘Whisky’ Sisodia beamed from ear to ear. ‘Dear mamadam,’ he said. ‘He will play the archangel, Gibreel.’

The proposal was for a series of films, both historical and contemporary, each concentrating on one incident from the angel's long and illustrious career: a trilogy, at least. ‘Don't tell me.’ Allie said, mocking the small shining mogul. ‘Gibreel in Jahilia, Gibreel Meets the Imam, Gibreel with the Butterfly Girl.’ Sisodia wasn't one bit embarrassed, but nodded proudly. ‘Stostorylines, draft scenarios, cacasting options are already well in haha hand.’ That was too much for Allie. ‘It stinks,’ she raged at him, and he retreated from her, a trembling and placatory knee, while she pursued him, until she was actually chasing him around the apartment, banging into the furniture, slamming doors. ‘It exploits his sickness, has nothing to do with his present needs, and shows an utter contempt for his own wishes. He's retired; can't you people respect that? He doesn't want to be a star. And will you please stand still. I'm not going to eat you.’

He stopped ru

‘A what?’

‘Pagal Khana. Asylum. That would be another wwwway.’ Allie lifted a heavy brass inkwell in the shape of Mount Everest and prepared to hurl it. ‘You really are a skunk,’ she began, but then Gibreel was standing in the doorway, still rather pale, bony and hollow-eyed. ‘Alleluia,’ he said, ‘I am thinking that maybe I want this. Maybe I need to go back to work.’

‘Gibreel sahib! I can't tell you how delighted. A star is reborn.’ Billy Battuta was a surprise: no longer the hair-gel-and-finger-rings society column shark, he was unshowily dressed in brass-buttoned blazer and blue jeans, and instead of the cocksure swagger Allie had expected there was an attractive, almost deferential reticence. He had grown a neat goatee beard which gave him a striking resemblance to the Christ-image on the Turin Shroud. Welcoming the three of them (Sisodia had picked them up in his limo, and the driver, Nigel, a sharp dresser from St Lucia, spent the journey telling Gibreel how many other pedestrians his lightning reflexes had saved from serious injury or death, punctuating these reminiscences with car-phone conversations in which mysterious deals involving amazing sums of money were discussed), Billy had shaken Allie's hand warmly, and then fallen upon Gibreel and hugged him in pure, infectious joy. His companion Mimi Mamoulian was rather less low-key. ‘It's all fixed,’ she a

That was the general idea, Allie thought. Her initial opposition to the whole scheme had been overcome by Gibreel's own interest, which, in turn, prompted his doctors to go along with it, estimating that his restoration to his familiar milieu – going home, in a way – might indeed be beneficial. And Sisodia's purloining of the dream-narratives he'd heard at Gibreel's bedside could be seen as serendipitous: for once those stories were clearly placed in the artificial, fabricated world of the cinema, it ought to become easier for Gibreel to see them as fantasies, too. That Berlin Wall between the dreaming and waking state might well be more rapidly rebuilt as a result. The bottom line was that it was worth the try.

Things (being things) didn't work out quite as pla

Worst of all: he got jealous. As he came off the heavy drugs, and as his work (as well as hers) began to force separations upon them, he began to be possessed, once again, by that irrational, out-of-control suspiciousness which had precipitated the ridiculous quarrel over the Brunei cartoons. Whenever they met he would put her through the mill, interrogating her minutely: where had she been, who had she seen, what did he do, did she lead him on? She felt as if she were suffocating. His mental illness, the new influences in his life, and now this nightly third-degree treatment: it was as though her real life, the one she wanted, the one she was hanging in there and fighting for, was being buried deeper and deeper under this avalanche of wrong-nesses. What about what I need, she felt like screaming, when do I get to set the terms? Driven to the very edge of her self-control, she asked, as a last resort, her mother's advice. In her father's old study in the Moscow Road house – which Alicja had kept just the way Otto liked it, except that now the curtains were drawn back to let in what light England could come up with, and there were flower-vases at strategic points – Alicja at first offered little more than world-weariness. ‘So a woman's life-plans are being smothered by a man's,’ she said, not unkindly. ‘So welcome to your gender. I see it's strange for you to be out of control.’ And Allie confessed: she wanted to leave him, but found she couldn't. Not just because of guilt about abandoning a seriously unwell person; also because of ‘grand passion’, because of the word that still dried her tongue when she tried to say it. ‘You want his child,’ Alicja put her finger on it. At first Allie blazed: ‘I want my child,’ but then, subsiding abruptly, blowing her nose, she nodded dumbly, and was on the verge of tears.