The Satanic Verses

dying woman, his eyelids drooping, he felt the weight of his body increase until all movement became impossible. Then he was in another bedroom, in tight black trousers, with silver buttons along the calves and a heavy silver buckle at the waist.
You sent for me, Don Enrique
, he was saying to the soft, heavy man with a face like a white plaster bust, but he knew who had asked for him, and he never took his eyes from her face, even when he saw the colour rising from the white frill around her neck.
    Henry Diamond had refused to permit the authorities to become involved in the matter of Martín de la Cruz,
these people are my responsibility
, he told Rosa,
it is a question of honour
. Instead he had gone to some lengths to demonstrate his continuing trust in the killer, de la Cruz, for example by making him the captain of the estancia polo team. But Don Enrique was never really the same once Martín had killed the Vulture. He was more and more easily exhausted, and became listless, uninterested even in birds. Things began to come apart at Los Alamos, imperceptibly at first, then more obviously. The men in the white suits returned and were not chased away. When Rosa Diamond contracted typhus, there were many at the estancia who took it for an allegory of the old estate’s decline.
    What am I doing here
, Gibreel thought in great alarm, as he stood before Don Enrique in the rancher’s study, while Doña Rosa blushed in the background,
this is someone else’s place. –
Great confidence in you, Henry was saying, not in English but Gibreel could still understand. – My wife is to undertake a motor tour, for her convalescence, and you will accompany … Responsibilities atLos Alamos prevent me from going along.
Now I must speak, what to say
, but when his mouth opened the alien words emerged, it will be my honour, Don Enrique, click of heels, swivel, exit.
    Rosa Diamond in her eighty-nine-year-old weakness had begun to dream her story of stories, which she had guarded for more than half a century, and Gibreel was on a horse behind her Hispano-Suiza, driving from estancia to estancia, through a wood of arayana trees, beneath the high cordillera, arriving at grotesque homesteads built in the style of Scottish castles or Indian palaces, visiting the land of Mr Cadwallader Evans, he of the seven wives who were happy enough to have only one night of duty each per week, and the territory of the notorious MacSween who had become enamoured of the ideas arriving in Argentina from Germany, and had started flying, from his estancia’s flagpole, a red flag at whose heart a crooked black cross danced in a white circle. It was on the MacSween estancia that they came across the lagoon, and Rosa saw for the first time the white island of her fate, and insisted on rowing out for a picnic luncheon, accompanied neither by maid nor by chauffeur, taking only Martín de la Cruz to row the boat and to spread a scarlet cloth upon the white sand and to serve her with meat and wine.
    As white as snow and as red as blood and as black as ebony
. As she reclined in black skirt and white blouse, lying upon scarlet which itself lay over white, while he (also wearing black and white) poured red wine into the glass in her white-gloved hand, – and then, to his own astonishment,
bloody goddamn
, as he caught at her hand and began to kiss, – something happened, the scene grew blurred, one minute they were lying on the scarlet cloth, rolling all over it so that cheeses and cold cuts and salads and pâtés were crushed beneath the weight of their desire, and when they returned to the Hispano-Suiza it was impossible to conceal anything from chauffeur or maid on account of the foodstains all over their clothes, – while the next minute she was recoiling from him, not cruelly but in sadness, drawing her hand away and making a tiny gesture of the head,
no
, and he stood, bowed, retreated,leaving her with virtue and lunch intact, – the two possibilities kept alternating, while dying Rosa tossed on her bed, did-she-didn’t-she, making the last version of the story of her life, unable to decide what she wanted to be true.

    ‘I’m going crazy,’ Gibreel thought. ‘She’s dying, but I’m losing my mind.’ The moon was out, and Rosa’s breathing was the only sound in the room: snoring as she breathed in and exhaling heavily, with small grunting noises. Gibreel tried to rise from his chair, and found he could not. Even in these intervals between the