The Satanic Verses

him, points out that she has drawn upon it, – as an act of civic pride, – the map of London, no less, in red magic-marker, with the river all in blue. The metropolis summons him; – but he, giving an entirely Dickensian cry, pushes his way out of the Curiosity Shop into the madness of the street.
    Gibreel is looking directly at him from London Bridge; their eyes – or so it seems to Chamcha – meet. Yes: Gibreel lifts, and waves, an unexcited arm.

    What follows is tragedy. – Or, at the least the echo of tragedy, the full-blooded original being unavailable to modern men and women, so it’s said. – A burlesque for our degraded, imitative times, in which clowns re-enact what was first done by heroes and by kings. – Well, then, so be it. – The question that’s asked here remains as large as ever it was: which is, the nature of evil, how it’s born, why it grows, how it takes unilateral possession of a many-sided human soul. Or, let’s say: the enigma of Iago.
    It’s not unknown for literary-theatrical exegetes, defeated by the character, to ascribe his actions to ‘motiveless malignity’. Evil is evil and will do evil, and that’s that; the serpent’s poison is his very definition. – Well, such shruggings-off will not pass muster here. My Chamcha may be no Ancient of Venice, my Allie no smothered Desdemona, Farishta no match for the Moor, but they will, at least, be costumed in such explanations as my understanding will allow. – And so, now, Gibreel waves in greeting; Chamcha approaches; the curtain rises on a darkening stage.

    Let’s observe, first, how isolated this Saladin is; his only willing companion an inebriated and cartographically bosomed stranger, he struggles alone through that partying throng in which all persons appear to be (and are not) one another’s friends; – while there on London Bridge stands Farishta, beset by admirers, at the very centre of the crowd;
    and, next, let us appreciate the effect on Chamcha, who loved England in the form of his lost English wife, – of the golden, pale and glacial presence by Farishta’s side of Alleluia Cone; he snatches a glass from a passing waiter’s tray, drinks the wine fast, takes another; and seems to see, in distant Allie, the entirety of his loss;
    and in other ways, as well, Gibreel is fast becoming the sum of Saladin’s defeats; – there with him now, at this very moment, isanother traitor; mutton dressed as lamb, fifty plus and batting her eyelashes like an eighteen-year-old, is Chamcha’s agent, the redoubtable Charlie Sellers; – you wouldn’t liken
him
to a Transylvanian bloodsucker, would you, Charlie, the irate watcher inwardly cries; – and grabs another glass; – and sees, at its bottom, his own anonymity, the other’s equal celebrity, and the great injustice of the division;
    most especially – he bitterly reflects – because Gibreel, London’s conqueror, can see no value in the world now falling at his feet! – why, the bastard always sneered at the place, Proper London, Vilayet, the English, Spoono, what cold fish they are, I swear; – Chamcha, moving inexorably towards him through the crowd, seems to see,
right now
, that same sneer upon Farishta’s face, that scorn of an inverted Podsnap, for whom all things English are worthy of derision instead of praise; – O God, the cruelty of it, that he, Saladin, whose goal and crusade it was to make this town his own, should have to see it kneeling before his contemptuous rival! – so there is also this: that Chamcha longs to stand in Farishta’s shoes, while his own footwear is of no interest whatsoever to Gibreel.
    What is unforgivable?
    Chamcha, looking upon Farishta’s face for the first time since their rough parting in Rosa Diamond’s hall, seeing the strange blankness in the other’s eyes, recalls with overwhelming force the earlier blankness, Gibreel standing on the stairs and doing nothing while he, Chamcha, horned and captive, was dragged into the night; and feels the return of hatred, feels it filling him bottom-to-top with fresh green bile,
never mind about excuses
, it cries,
to hell with mitigations and what-could-he-have-dones; what’s beyond forgiveness is beyond. You can’t judge an internal injury by the size of the hole
.
    So: Gibreel Farishta, put on trial by Chamcha, gets a rougher ride than Mimi and Billy in New York, and is declared guilty, for all perpetuity, of the Inexcusable Thing. From which what follows, follows. –