The Satanic Verses

visions his body remained impossibly heavy. As if a boulder had been placed upon his chest. And the images, when they came, continued to be confused, so that at one moment he was in a hayloft at Los Alamos, making love to her while she murmured his name, over and over,
Martin of the Cross, –
and the next moment she was ignoring him in broad daylight beneath the watching eyes of a certain Aurora del Sol, – so that it was not possible to distinguish memory from wishes, or guilty reconstructions from confessional truths, – because even on her deathbed Rosa Diamond did not know how to look her history in the eye.
    Moonlight streamed into the room. As it struck Rosa’s face it appeared to pass right through her, and indeed Gibreel was beginning to be able to make out the pattern of the lace embroidery on her pillowcase. Then he saw Don Enrique and his friend, the puritanical and disapproving Dr Babington, standing on the balcony, as solid as you could wish. It occurred to him that as the apparitions increased in clarity Rosa grew fainter and fainter, fading away, exchanging places, one might say, with the ghosts. And because he had also understood that the manifestations depended on him, his stomach-ache, his stone-like weightiness, he began to fear for his own life as well.
    ‘You wanted me to falsify Juan Julia’s death certificate,’ Dr Babington was saying. ‘I did so out of our old friendship. But it was wrong to do so; and I see the result before me. You havesheltered a killer and it is, perhaps, your conscience that is eating you away. Go home, Enrique. Go home, and take that wife of yours, before something worse happens.’
    ‘I am home,’ Henry Diamond said. ‘And I take exception to your mention of my wife.’
    ‘Wherever the English settle, they never leave England,’ Dr Babington said as he faded into the moonlight. ‘Unless, like Doña Rosa, they fall in love.’
    A cloud passed across the moonlight, and now that the balcony was empty Gibreel Farishta finally managed to force himself out of the chair and on to his feet. Walking was like dragging a ball and chain across the floor, but he reached the window. In every direction, and as far as he could see, there were giant thistles waving in the breeze. Where the sea had been there was now an ocean of thistles, extending as far as the horizon, thistles as high as a full-grown man. He heard the disembodied voice of Dr Babington mutter in his ear: ‘The first plague of thistles for fifty years. The past, it seems, returns.’ He saw a woman running through the thick, rippling growth, barefoot, with loose dark hair. ‘She did it,’ Rosa’s voice said clearly behind him. ‘After betraying him with the Vulture and making him into a murderer. He wouldn’t look at her after that. Oh, she did it all right. Very dangerous one, that one. Very.’ Gibreel lost sight of Aurora del Sol in the thistles; one mirage obscured another.
    He felt something grab him from behind, spin him around and fling him flat on his back. There was nobody to be seen, but Rosa Diamond was sitting bolt upright in bed, staring at him wide-eyed, making him understand that she had given up hope of clinging on to life, and needed him to help her complete the last revelation. As with the businessman of his dreams, he felt helpless, ignorant … she seemed to know, however, how to draw the images from him. Linking the two of them, navel to navel, he saw a shining cord.
    Now he was by a pond in the infinity of the thistles, allowing his horse to drink, and she came riding up on her mare. Now he was embracing her, loosening her garments and her hair, and nowthey were making love. Now she was whispering, how can you like me, I am so much older than you, and he spoke comforting words.
    Now she rose, dressed, rode away, while he remained there, his body languid and warm, failing to notice the moment when a woman’s hand stole out of the thistles and took hold of his silver-hafted knife …
    No! No! No, this way!
    Now she rode up to him by the pond, and the moment she dismounted, looking nervously at him, he fell upon her, he told her he couldn’t bear her rejections any longer, they fell to the ground together, she screamed, he tore at her clothes, and her hands, clawing at his body, came upon the handle of a knife …
    No! No, never, no! This way: here!
    Now the two of them were making love, tenderly, with many slow caresses; and now a third rider entered the clearing by the pool,