The Satanic Verses

the political pressure on the show had increased in Chamcha’s absence, orchestrated by a certain Dr Uhuru Simba. ‘Doctor of what, beats me,’ Valance deepthroated down the phone. ‘Our ah researchers haven’t come up with anything yet.’ Mass pickets, an embarrassing appearance on
Right to Reply. ‘
The guy’s built like a fucking tank.’ Chamcha envisaged the pair of them, Valance and Simba, as one another’s antitheses. It seemed that the protests had succeeded: Valance was ‘de-politicizing’ the show, by firing Chamcha and putting a huge blond Teuton with pectorals and a quiff inside the prosthetic make-up and computer-generated imagery. A latex-and-Quantel Schwarzenegger, a synthetic, hip-talking version of Rutger Hauer in
Blade Runner
. The Jews were out, too: instead of Mimi, the new show would have a voluptuous shiksa doll. ‘I sent word to Dr Simba: stick that upyour fucking pee aitch dee. No reply has been received. He’ll have to work harder than that if he’s going to take over
this
little country. I,’ Hal Valance announced, ‘love this fucking country. That’s why I’m going to sell it to the whole goddamn world, Japan, America, fucking Argentina. I’m going to sell the arse off it. That’s what I’ve been selling all my fucking life: the fucking nation. The
flag
.’ He didn’t hear what he was saying. When he got going on this stuff, he went puce and often wept. He had done just that at the White Tower, that first time, while stuffing himself full of Greek food. The date came back to Chamcha now: just after the Falklands war. People had a tendency to swear loyalty oaths in those days, to hum ‘Pomp and Circumstance’ on the buses. So when Valance, over a large balloon of Armagnac, started up – ‘I’ll tell you why I love this country’ – Chamcha, pro-Falklands himself, thought he knew what was coming next. But Valance began to describe the research programme of a British aerospace company, a client of his, which had just revolutionized the construction of missile guidance systems by studying the flight pattern of the common housefly. ‘Inflight course corrections,’ he whispered theatrically. ‘Traditionally done in the line of flight: adjust the angle up a bit, down a touch, left or right a nadge. Scientists studying high-speed film of the humble fly, however, have discovered that the little buggers always, but always, make corrections
in right angles
.’ He demonstrated with his hand stretched out, palm flat, fingers together. ‘Bzzt! Bzzt! The bastards actually fly vertically up, down or sideways. Much more accurate. Much more fuel efficient. Try to do it with an engine that depends on nose-to-tail airflow, and what happens? The sodding thing can’t breathe, stalls, falls out of the sky, lands on your fucking allies. Bad karma. You follow. You follow what I’m saying. So these guys, they invent an engine with three-way airflow: nose to tail, plus top to bottom, plus side to side. And bingo: a missile that flies like a goddamn fly, and can hit a fifty p coin travelling at a ground speed of one hundred miles an hour at a distance of three miles. What I love about this country is that: its genius. Greatest inventors in the world. It’s beautiful: am I right or am I right?’ He hadbeen deadly serious. Chamcha answered: ‘You’re right.’ ‘You’re damn right I’m right,’ he confirmed.
    They met for the last time just before Chamcha took off for Bombay: Sunday lunch at the flag-waving Highgate mansion. Rosewood panelling, a terrace with stone urns, a view down a wooded hill. Valance complaining about a new development that would louse up the scenery. Lunch was predictably jingoistic:
rosbif, boudin Yorkshire, choux de bruxelles
. Baby, the nymphet wife, didn’t join them, but ate hot pastrami on rye while shooting pool in a nearby room. Servants, a thunderous Burgundy, more Armagnac, cigars. The self-made man’s paradise, Chamcha reflected, and recognized the envy in the thought.
    After lunch, a surprise. Valance led him into a room in which there stood two clavichords of great delicacy and lightness. ‘I make ’em,’ his host confessed. ‘To relax. Baby wants me to make her a fucking guitar.’ Hal Valance’s talent as a cabinet-maker was undeniable, and somehow at odds with the rest of the man. ‘My father was in the trade,’ he admitted under Chamcha’s probing, and Saladin understood that he had been granted a privileged glimpse into the