The Satanic Verses (79 page)

           
Early in life Changez Chamchawala had acquired the disconcerting knack of
sleeping with his eyes wide open, "staying on guard", as he liked to
say. Now, as Saladin quietly entered the room, the effect of those open grey
eyes staring blindly at the ceiling was positively unnerving. For a moment
Saladin thought he was too late; that Changez had died while he'd been chatting
in the garden. Then the man on the bed emitted a series of small coughs, turned
his head, and extended an uncertain arm. Saladin Chamcha went towards his
father and bowed his head beneath the old man's caressing palm.

           
* * * * *

           
To fall in love with one's father after the long angry decades was a serene and
beautiful feeling; a renewing, life-giving thing, Saladin wanted to say, but
did not, because it sounded vampirish; as if by sucking this new life out of
his father he was making room, in Changez's body, for death. Although he kept
it quiet, however, Saladin felt hourly closer to many old, rejected selves,
many alternative Saladins―or rather Salahuddins―which had split off
from himself as he made his various life choices, but which had apparently
continued to exist, perhaps in the parallel universes of quantum theory. Cancer
had stripped Changez Chamchawala literally to the bone; his cheeks had collapsed
into the hollows of the skull, and he had to place a foam-rubber pillow under
his buttocks because of the atrophying of his flesh. But it had also stripped
him of his faults, of all that had been domineering, tyrannical and cruel in
him, so that the mischievous, loving and brilliant man beneath lay exposed,
once again, for all to see.
If only he could have been this person all his
life
, Saladin (who had begun to find the sound of his full, unEnglished
name pleasing for the first time in twenty years) found himself wishing. How
hard it was to find one's father just when one had no choice but to say
goodbye.

           
On the morning of his return Salahuddin Chamchawala was asked by his father to
give him a shave. "These old women of mine don't know which side of a
Philishave is the business end." Changez's skin hung off his face in soft,
leathery jowls, and his hair (when Salahuddin emptied the machine) looked like
ashes. Salahuddin could not remember when he had last touched his father's face
this way, gently drawing the skin tight as the cordless shaver moved across it,
and then stroking it to make sure it felt smooth. When he had finished he
continued for a moment to run his fingers along Changez's cheeks. "Look at
the old man," Nasreen said to Kasturba as they entered the room, "he
can't take his eyes off his boy." Changez Chamchawala grinned an exhausted
grin, revealing a mouth full of shattered teeth, flecked with spittle and
crumbs.

           
When his father fell asleep again, after being forced by Kasturba and Nasreen
to drink a small quantity of water, and gazed up at―what?―with his
open, dreaming eyes, which could see into three worlds at once, the actual
world of his study, the visionary world of dreams, and the approaching
after-life as well (or so Salahuddin, in a fanciful moment, found himself
imagining);―then the son went to Changez's old bedroom for a rest.
Grotesque heads in painted terracotta glowered down at him from the walls: a
horned demon; a leering Arab with a falcon on his shoulder; a bald man rolling
his eyes upwards and putting his tongue out in panic as a huge black fly
settled on his eyebrow. Unable to sleep beneath these figures, which he had
known all his life and also hated, because he had come to see them as portraits
of Changez, he moved finally to a different, neutral room.

           
Waking up in the early evening, he went downstairs to find the two old women
outside Changez's room, trying to work out the details of his medication. Apart
from the daily Melphalan tablet, he had been prescribed a whole battery of
drugs in an attempt to combat the cancer's pernicious side-effects: anaemia,
the strain on the heart, and so on. Isosorbide dinitrate, two tablets, four
times a day; Furosemide, one tablet, three times; Prednisolone, six tablets,
twice daily . . . "I'll do this," he told the relieved old women.
"At least it is one thing I can do." Agarol for his constipation,
Spironolactone for goodness knew what, and a zyloric, Allopurinol: he suddenly
remembered, crazily, an antique theatre review in which the English critic,
Kenneth Tynan, had imagined the polysyllabic characters in Marlowe's
Tamburlaine
the Great
as "a horde of pills and wonder drugs bent on decimating one
another":

           
Beard'st thou me here, thou bold Barbiturate?

           
Sirrah, thy grandam's dead―old Nembutal.

           
The spangled stars shall weep for Nembutal . . .

           
Is it not passing brave to be a king,

           
Aureomycin and Formaldehyde,

           
Is it not passing brave to be a king

           
And ride in triumph through Amphetamine?

           
The things one's memory threw up! But perhaps this pharmaceutical
Tamburlaine
was not such a bad eulogy for the fallen monarch lying here in his bookwormed
study, staring into three worlds, waiting for the end. "Come on,
Abba," he marched cheerily into the presence. "Time to save your
life."

           
Still in its place, on a shelf in Changez's study: a certain copper- and-brass
lamp, reputed to have the power of wish fulfilment, but as yet (because never
rubbed) untested. Somewhat tarnished now, it looked down upon its dying owner;
and was observed, in its turn, by his only son. Who was sorely tempted, for an
instant, to get it down, rub three times, and ask the turbanned djinni for a
magic spell . . . however, Salahuddin left the lamp where it was. There was no
place for djinns or ghouls or afreets here; no spooks or fancies could be
permitted. No magic formulae; just the impotence of the pills. "Here's the
medicine man," Salahuddin sang out, rattling the little bottles, rousing
his father from sleep. "Medicine," Changez grimaced childishly.
"Eek, bhaak, thoo."

           
* * * * *

           
That night, Salahuddin forced Nasreen and Kasturba to sleep comfortably in
their own beds while he kept watch over Changez from a mattress on the floor.
After his midnight dose of Isosorbide, the dying man slept for three hours, and
then needed to go to the toilet. Salahuddin virtually lifted him to his feet,
and was astonished at Changez's lightness. This had always been a weighty man,
but now he was a living lunch for the advancing cancer cells . . . in the
toilet, Changez refused all help. "He won't let you do one thing,"
Kasturba had complained lovingly. "Such a shy fellow that he is." On
his way back to bed he leaned lightly on Salahuddin's arm, and shuffled along
flat-footed in old, worn bedroom slippers, his remaining hairs sticking out at
comical angles, his head stuck beakily forward on its scrawny, fragile neck.
Salahuddin suddenly longed to pick the old man up, to cradle him in his arms
and sing soft, comforting songs. Instead, he blurted out, at this least
appropriate of moments, an appeal for reconciliation. "Abba, I came
because I didn't want there to be trouble between us any more . . ."
Fucking
idiot. The Devil damn thee black, thou cream-fac'd loon. In the middle of the
bloody night! And if he hasn't guessed he's dying, that little deathbed speech will
certainly have let him know
. Changez continued to shuffle along; his grip
on his son's arm tightened very slightly. "That doesn't matter any
more," he said. "It's forgotten, whatever it was."

           
In the morning, Nasreen and Kasturba arrived in clean saris, looking rested and
complaining, "It was so terrible sleeping away from him that we didn't
sleep one wink." They fell upon Changez, and so tender were their caresses
that Salahuddin had the same sense of spying on a private moment that he'd had
at the wedding of Mishal Sufyan. He left the room quietly while the three
lovers embraced, kissed and wept.

           
Death, the great fact, wove its spell around the house on Scandal Point.
Salahuddin surrendered to it like everyone else, even Changez, who, on that
second day, often smiled his old crooked smile, the one that said I know what's
up, I'll go along with it, just don't think I'm fooled. Kasturba and Nasreen
fussed over him constantly, brushing his hair, coaxing him to eat and drink.
His tongue had grown fat in his mouth, slurring his speech slightly, making it
hard to swallow; he refused anything at all fibrous or stringy, even the
chicken breasts he had loved all his life. A mouthful of soup, pureed potatoes,
a taste of custard. Baby food. When he sat up in bed Salahuddin sat behind him;
Changez leaned against his son's body while he ate.

           
"Open the house," Changez commanded that morning. "I want to see
some smiling faces here, instead of your three glum mugs." So, after a
long time, people came: young and old, half-forgotten cousins, uncles, aunts; a
few comrades from the old days of the nationalist movement, poker-backed
gentlemen with silver hair, achkan jackets and monocles; employees of the
various foundations and philanthropical enterprises set up by Changez years
ago; rival manufacturers of agricultural sprays and artificial dung. A real bag
of allsorts, Salahuddin thought; but marvelled, also, at how beautifully
everyone behaved in the presence of the dying man: the young spoke to him
intimately about their lives, as if reassuring him that life itself was
invincible, offering him the rich consolation of being a member of the great
procession of the human race,―while the old evoked the past, so that he
knew nothing was forgotten, nothing lost; that in spite of the years of
self-imposed sequestration he remained joined to the world. Death brought out
the best in people; it was good to be shown―Salahuddin
realized―that this, too, was what human beings were like: considerate,
loving, even noble. We are still capable of exaltation, he thought in
celebratory mood; in spite of everything, we can still transcend. A pretty
young woman―it occurred to Salahuddin that she was probably his niece,
and he felt ashamed that he didn't know her name―was taking Polaroid
snapshots of Changez with his visitors, and the sick man was enjoying himself
hugely, pulling faces, then kissing the many proffered cheeks with a light in
his eyes that Salahuddin identified as nostalgia. "It's like a birthday party,"
he thought. Or: like Finnegan's wake. The dead man refusing to lie down and let
the living have all the fun.

           
"We have to tell him," Salahuddin insisted when the visitors had
left. Nasreen bowed her head; and nodded. Kasturba burst into tears.

           
They told him the next morning, having asked the specialist to attend to answer
any questions Changez might have. The specialist, Panikkar (a name the English
would mispronounce and giggle over, Salahuddin thought, like the Muslim
"Fakhar"), arrived at ten, shining with self-esteem. "I should
tell him," he said, taking control. "Most patients feel ashamed to
let their loved ones see their fear." "The hell you will,"
Salahuddin said with a vehemence that took him by surprise. "Well, in that
case," Panikkar shrugged, making as if to leave; which won the argument,
because now Nasreen and Kasturba pleaded with Salahuddin: "Please, let's
not fight." Salahuddin, defeated, ushered the doctor into his father's
presence; and shut the study door.

           
"I have a cancer," Changez Chamchawala said to Nasreen, Kasturba and
Salahuddin after Panikkar's departure. He spoke clearly, enunciating the word
with defiant, exaggerated care. "It is very far advanced. I am not
surprised. I said to Panikkar: 'This is what I told you the very first day.
Where else could all the blood have gone?'"―Outside the study,
Kasturba said to Salahuddin: "Since you came, there was a light in his
eye. Yesterday, with all the people, how happy he was! But now his eye is dim.
Now he won't fight."

           
That afternoon Salahuddin found himself alone with his father while the two
women napped. He discovered that he, who had been so determined to have
everything out in the open, to say the word, was now awkward and inarticulate,
not knowing how to speak. But Changez had something to say.

           
"I want you to know," he said to his son, "that I have no
problem about this thing at all. A man must die of something, and it is not as
though I were dying young. I have no illusions; I know I am not going anywhere
after this. It's the end. That's okay. The only thing I'm afraid of is pain,
because when there is pain a man loses his dignity. I don't want that to
happen." Salahuddin was awestruck.
First one falls in love with one's father
all over again, and then one learns to look up to him, too
. "The
doctors say you're a case in a million," he replied truthfully. "It
looks like you have been spared the pain." Something in Changez relaxed at
that, and Salahuddin realized how afraid the old man had been, how much he'd
needed to be told... "Bas," Changez Chamchawala said gruffly.
"Then I'm ready. And by the way: you get the lamp, after all."

           
An hour later the diarrhoea began: a thin black trickle. Nasreen's anguished
phone calls to the emergency room of the Breach Candy Hospital established that
Panikkar was unavailable. "Take him off the Agarol at once," the duty
doctor ordered, and prescribed Imodium instead. It didn't help. At seven pm the
risk of dehydration was growing, and Changez was too weak to sit up for his
food. He had virtually no appetite, but Kasturba managed to spoon-feed him a
few drops of semolina with skinned apricots. "Yum, yum," he said
ironically, smiling his crooked smile.