The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie Page B

much. But we
loved her, we all. We three. And in this manner we may keep her spirit
alive."
               
"It is pooja, you could say," came Vallabh's quiet voice. "An
act of worship."
               
"And you," Changez Chamchawala spoke as softly as his servant,
"you come here to this temple. With your unbelief. Mister, you've got a
nerve."
               
And finally, the treason of Zeenat Vakil. "Come off it, Salad," she
said, moving to sit on the arm of the Chesterfield next to the old man.
"Why be such a sourpuss? You're no angel, baby, and these people seem to
have worked things out okay."
               
Saladin's mouth opened and shut. Changez patted Zeeny on the knee. "He
came to accuse, dear. He came to avenge his youth, but we have turned the
tables and he is confused. Now we must let him have his chance, and you must
referee. I will not be sentenced by him, but I will accept the worst from
you."
                The bastard. Old bastard. He wanted me off-balance, and here l am, knocked
sideways. I won't speak, why should I, not like this, the humiliation .
"There was," said Saladin Chamcha, "a wallet of pounds, and
there was a roasted chicken."
               
* * * * *
               
Of what did the son accuse the father? Of everything: espionage on child-self,
rainbow-pot-stealing, exile. Of turning him into what he might not have become.
Of making-a-man of. Of what-will-I-tell-my-friends. Of irreparable sunderings
and offensive forgiveness. Of succumbing to Allah-worship with new wife and
also to blasphemous worship of late spouse. Above all, of magic-lampism, of
being an open-sesamist. Everything had come easily to him, charm, women,
wealth, power, position. Rub, poof, genie, wish, at once master, hey presto. He
was a father who had promised, and then withheld, a magic lamp.
               
* * * * *
               
Changez, Zeeny, Vallabh, Kasturba remained motionless and silent until Saladin
Chamcha came to a flushed, embarrassed halt. "Such violence of the spirit
after so long," Changez said after a silence. "So sad. A quarter of a
century and still the son begrudges the peccadilloes of the past. O my son. You
must stop carrying me around like a parrot on your shoulder. What am I?
Finished. I'm not your Old Man of the Sea. Face it, mister: I don't explain you
any more."
               
Through a window Saladin Chamcha caught sight of a forty-year-old walnut-tree.
"Cut it down," he said to his father. "Cut it, sell it, send me
the cash."
               
Chamchawala rose to his feet, and extended his right hand. Zeeny, also rising,
took it like a dancer accepting a bouquet; at once, Vallabh and Kasturba
diminished into servants, as if a clock had silently chimed pumpkin-time.
"Your book," he said to Zeeny. "I have something you'd like to
see."
               
The two of them left the room; impotent Saladin, after a moment's floundering,
stamped petulantly in their wake. "Sourpuss," Zeeny called gaily over
her shoulder. "Come on, snap out of it, grow up."
               
The Chamchawala art collection, housed here at Scandal Point, included a large
group of the legendary Hamza-nama cloths, members of that
sixteenth-century sequence depicting scenes from the life of a hero who may or
may not have been the same Hamza as the famous one, Muhammad's uncle whose
liver was eaten by the Meccan woman Hind as he lay dead on the battlefield of
Uhud. "I like these pictures," Changez Chamchawala told Zeeny,
"because the hero is permitted to fail. See how often he has to be rescued
from his troubles." The pictures also provided eloquent proof of Zeeny
Vakil's thesis about the eclectic, hybridized nature of the Indian artistic
tradition. The Mughals had brought artists from every part of India to work on
the paintings; individual identity was submerged to create a many-headed,
many-brushed Over-artist who, literally, was