The Satanic Verses

struggling with his shoelaces. ‘All my life, sir, I knew I had been chosen,’ he was saying in a voice as humble as it had earlier been menacing. ‘Even as a child in Bartica, I knew.’ He pulled off his right shoe and began to roll down his sock. ‘I was given,’ he said, ‘a sign.’ The sock was removed, revealing what looked to be a perfectly ordinary, if outsize, foot. Then Gibreel counted and counted again, from one to six. ‘The same on the other foot,’ Maslama said proudly. ‘I never doubted the meaning for a minute.’ He was the self-appointed helpmate of the Lord, the sixth toe on the foot of the Universal Thing. Something was badly amiss with the spiritual life of the planet, thought Gibreel Farishta. Too many demons inside people claiming to believe in God.
    The train emerged from the tunnel. Gibreel took a decision.‘Stand, six-toed John,’ he intoned in his best Hindi movie manner. ‘Maslama, arise.’
    The other scrambled to his feet and stood pulling at his fingers, his head bowed. ‘What I want to know, sir,’ he mumbled, ‘is, which is it to be? Annihilation or salvation? Why have you returned?’
    Gibreel thought rapidly. ‘It is for judging,’ he finally answered. ‘Facts in the case must be sifted, due weight given pro and contra. Here it is the human race that is the undertrial, and it is a defendant with a rotten record: a history-sheeter, a bad egg. Careful evaluations must be made. For the present, verdict is reserved; will be promulgated in due course. In the meantime, my presence must remain a secret, for vital security reasons.’ He put his hat back on his head, feeling pleased with himself.
    Maslama was nodding furiously. ‘You can depend on me,’ he promised. ‘I’m a man who respects a person’s privacy. Mum’ – for the second time! – ‘is the word.’
    Gibreel fled the compartment with the lunatic’s hymns in hot pursuit. As he rushed to the far end of the train Maslama’s paeans remained faintly audible behind him. ‘Alleluia! Alleluia!’ Apparently his new disciple had launched into selections from Handel’s
Messiah
.
    However: Gibreel wasn’t followed, and there was, fortunately, a first-class carriage at the rear of the train, too. This one was of open-plan design, with comfortable orange seats arranged in fours around tables, and Gibreel settled down by a window, staring towards London, with his chest thumping and his hat jammed down on his head. He was trying to come to terms with the undeniable fact of the halo, and failing to do so, because what with the derangement of John Maslama behind him and the excitement of Alleluia Cone ahead it was hard to get his thoughts straight. Then to his despair Mrs Rekha Merchant floated up alongside his window, sitting on her flying Bokhara, evidently impervious to the snowstorm that was building up out there and making England look like a television set after the day’s programmes end. She gave him a little wave and he felt hope ebbingfrom him. Retribution on a levitating rug: he closed his eyes and concentrated on trying not to shake.

    ‘I know what a ghost is,’ Allie Cone said to a classroom of teenage girls whose faces were illuminated by the soft inner light of worship. ‘In the high Himalayas it is often the case that climbers find themselves being accompanied by the ghosts of those who failed in the attempt, or the sadder, but also prouder, ghosts of those who succeeded in reaching the summit, only to perish on the way down.’
    Outside, in the Fields, the snow was settling on the high, bare trees, and on the flat expanse of the park. Between the low, dark snow-clouds and the white-carpeted city the light was a dirty yellow colour, a narrow, foggy light that dulled the heart and made it impossible to dream. Up
there
, Allie remembered, up there at eight thousand metres, the light was of such clarity that it seemed to resonate, to sing, like music. Here on the flat earth the light, too, was flat and earthbound. Here nothing flew, the sedge was withered, and no birds sang. Soon it would be dark.
    ‘Ms Cone?’ The girls’ hands, waving in the air, drew her back into the classroom. ‘Ghosts, miss? Straight up?’ ‘You’re pulling our legs, right?’ Scepticism wrestled with adoration in their faces. She knew the question they really wanted to ask, and probably would not: the question of the miracle of her skin. She had heard them whispering excitedly as she entered the classroom, ’s