The Satanic Verses

shady angle containing various Podsnaps. – And worse: behold the dustman’s mounds of Boffin’s Bower, supposedly in the near vicinity of Holloway, looming in this abridged metropolis over Fascination Fledgeby’s rooms in the Albany, the West End’s very heart! – But the guests are not disposed to grumble; the reborn city, even rearranged, still takes the breath away; most particularly in that part of the immense studio through which the river winds, the river with its fogs and Gaffer Hexam’s boat, the ebbing Thames flowing beneath two bridges, one of iron, one of stone. – Upon its cobbled banks the guests’ gay footsteps fall; and there sound mournful, misty, footfalls of ominous note. A dry ice pea-souper lifts across the set.
    Society grandees, fashion models, film stars, corporation bigwigs, a brace of minor royal Personages, useful politicians and suchlike riff-raff perspire and mingle in these counterfeit streets with numbers of men and women as sweat-glistened as the ‘real’ guests and as counterfeit as the city: hired extras in period costume, as well as a selection of the movie’s leading players. Chamcha, who realizes in the moment of sighting him that thisencounter has been the whole purpose of his journey, – which fact he has succeeded in keeping from himself until this instant, – spots Gibreel in the increasingly riotous crowd.
    Yes: there, on London Bridge Which Is Of Stone, without a doubt, Gibreel! – And that must be his Alleluia, his Icequeen Cone! – What a distant expression he seems to be wearing, how he lists a few degrees to the left; and how she seems to dote on him – how everyone adores him: for he is among the very greatest at the party, Battuta to his left, Sisodia at Allie’s right, and all about a host of faces that would be recognized from Peru to Timbuctoo! – Chamcha struggles through the crowd, which grows ever more dense as he nears the bridge; – but he is resolved – Gibreel, he will reach Gibreel! – when with a clash of cymbals loud music strikes up, one of Mr Bentham’s immortal, show-stopping tunes, and the crowd parts like the Red Sea before the children of Israel. – Chamcha, off-balance, staggers back, is crushed by the parting crowd against a fake half-timbered edifice – what else? – a Curiosity Shop; and, to save himself, retreats within, while a great singing throng of bosomy ladies in mobcaps and frilly blouses, accompanied by an over-sufficiency of stovepipehatted gents, comes rollicking down the riverside street, singing for all they’re worth.
    What kind of fellow is Our Mutual Friend
?
What does he intend
?
Is he the kind of fellow on whom we may depend
?
&c. &c. &c
.

    ‘It’s a funny thing,’ a woman’s voice says behind him, ‘but when we were doing the show at the C—— Theatre, there was an outbreak of lust among the cast; quite unparalleled, in my experience. People started missing their cues because of the shenanigans in the wings.’
    The speaker, he observes, is young, small, buxom, far from unattractive, damp from the heat, flushed with wine, and evidentlyin the grip of the libidinous fever of which she speaks. – The ‘room’ has little light, but he can make out the glint in her eye. ‘We’ve got time,’ she continues matter-of-factly. ‘After this lot finish there’s Mr Podsnap’s solo.’ Whereupon, arranging herself in an expert parody of the Marine Insurance agent’s self-important posture, she launches into her own version of the scheduled musical Podsnappery:
    Ours is a Copious Language
,
A Language Trying to Strangers;

Ours is the Favoured Nation
,
Blest, and Safe from Dangers …

    Now, in Rex-Harrisonian speech-song, she addresses an invisible Foreigner. ‘And How Do You Like London? – “Aynormaymong rich?” – Enormously Rich, we say. Our English adverbs do Not terminate in Mong. – And Do You Find, Sir, Many Evidences of our British Constitution in the Streets of the World’s Metropolis, London, Londres, London? – I would say,’ she adds, still Podsnapping, ‘that there is in the Englishman a combination of qualities, a modesty, an independence, a responsibility, a repose, which one would seek in vain among the Nations of the Earth.’
    The creature has been approaching Chamcha while delivering herself of these lines; – unfastening, the while, her blouse; – and he, mongoose to her cobra, stands there transfixed; while she, exposing a shapely right breast, and offering it to