The Satanic Verses

felt, once again, that dragging hook in his stomach, and he fell against a lamp-post and gasped for air. He heard a clip-clopping noise, and then around the corner came an archaic pony-trap, full of young people in what seemed at first sight to be fancy dress: the men in tight black trousers studded at the calf with silver buttons, their white shirts open almost to the waist; the women in wide skirts of frills and layers and bright colours, scarlet, emerald, gold. They were singing in a foreign language and their gaiety made the street look dim and tawdry, but Gibreel realized that something weird was afoot, because nobody else in the street took the slightest notice of the pony-trap. Then Rosa emerged from the baker’s with the cake-box dangling by its ribbon from the index finger of her left hand, and exclaimed: ‘Oh, there they are, arriving for the dance. We always had dances, you know, they like it, it’s in their blood.’ And, after a pause: ‘That was the dance at which he killed the vulture.’
    That was the dance at which a certain Juan Julia, nicknamed The Vulture on account of his cadaverous appearance, drank too much and insulted the honour of Aurora del Sol, and didn’t stop until Martín had no option but to fight,
hey Martín, why you enjoy fucking with this one, I thought she was pretty dull
. ‘Let us go away from the dancing,’ Martín said, and in the darkness, silhouetted against the fairy-lights hung from the trees around the dance-floor, the two men wrapped ponchas around their forearms, drew their knives, circled, fought. Juan died. Martín de la Cruz picked up the dead man’s hat and threw it at the feet of Aurora del Sol. She picked up the hat and watched him walk away.
    Rosa Diamond at eighty-nine in a long silver sheath dress with a cigarette holder in one gloved hand and a silver turban on herhead drank gin-and-sin from a green glass triangle and told stories of the good old days. ‘I want to dance,’ she announced suddenly. ‘It’s my birthday and I haven’t danced once.’

    The exertions of that night on which Rosa and Gibreel danced until dawn proved too much for the old lady, who collapsed into bed the next day with a low fever that induced ever more delirious apparitions: Gibreel saw Martín de la Cruz and Aurora del Sol dancing flamenco on the tiled and gabled roof of the Diamond house, and Peronistas in white suits stood on the boathouse to address a gathering of peons about the future: ‘Under Perón these lands will be expropriated and distributed among the people. The British railroads also will become the property of the state. Let’s chuck them out, these brigands, these privateers …’ The plaster bust of Henry Diamond hung in mid-air, observing the scene, and a white-suited agitator pointed a finger at him and cried, That’s him, your oppressor; there is the enemy. Gibreel’s stomach ached so badly that he feared for his life, but at the very moment that his rational mind was considering the possibility of an ulcer or appendicitis, the rest of his brain whispered the truth, which was that he was being held prisoner and manipulated by the force of Rosa’s will, just as the Angel Gibreel had been obliged to speak by the overwhelming need of the Prophet, Mahound.
    ‘She’s dying,’ he realized. ‘Not long to go, either.’ Tossing in her bed in the fever’s grip Rosa Diamond muttered about ombú poison and the enmity of her neighbour Doctor Babington, who asked Henry, is your wife perhaps quiet enough for the pastoral life, and who gave her (as a present for recovering from typhus) a copy of Amerigo Vespucci’s account of his voyages. ‘The man was a notorious fantasist, of course,’ Babington smiled, ‘but fantasy can be stronger than fact; after all, he had continents named after him.’ As she grew weaker she poured more and more of her remaining strength into her own dream of Argentina, and Gibreel’s navel felt as if it had been set on fire. He lay slumped in an armchair at herbedside and the apparitions multiplied by the hour. Woodwind music filled the air, and, most wonderful of all, a small white island appeared just off the shore, bobbing on the waves like a raft; it was white as snow, with white sand sloping up to a clump of albino trees, which were white, chalk-white, paper-white, to the very tips of their leaves.
    After the arrival of the white island Gibreel was overcome by a deep lethargy. Slumped in an armchair in the bedroom of the