The Satanic Verses Read Online Free PDF Page A

co-operative of
spirits, such a too-friendly fellow, see, so I thought to ask him some big
questions. Is there a God , and that glass which had been running round
like a mouse or so just stopped dead, middle of table, not a twitch, completely
phutt, kaput. So, then, okay, I said, if you won't answer that try this one
instead, and I came right out with it, Is there a Devil . After that the
glass―baprebap!―began to shake―catch your
ears!―slowslow at first, then faster-faster, like a jelly, until it
jumped!―ai-hai!―up from the table, into the air, fell down on its
side, and―o-ho!―into a thousand and one pieces, smashed. Believe don't
believe, Babasaheb Mhatre told his charge, but then-and-there I learned my
lesson: don't meddle, Mhatre, in what you do not comprehend.
               
This story had a profound effect on the consciousness of the young listener,
because even before his mother's death he had become convinced of the existence
of the supernatural world. Sometimes when he looked around him, especially in
the afternoon heat when the air turned glutinous, the visible world, its
features and inhabitants and things, seemed to be sticking up through the
atmosphere like a profusion of hot icebergs, and he had the idea that
everything continued down below the surface of the soupy air: people,
motor-cars, dogs, movie billboards, trees, nine-tenths of their reality
concealed from his eyes. He would blink, and the illusion would fade, but the
sense of it never left him. He grew up believing in God, angels, demons,
afreets, djinns, as matter-of-factly as if they were bullock-carts or
lamp-posts, and it struck him as a failure in his own sight that he had never
seen a ghost. He would dream of discovering a magic optometrist from whom he
would purchase a pair of green-tinged spectacles which would correct his
regrettable myopia, and after that he would be able to see through the dense,
blinding air to the fabulous world beneath.
               
From his mother Naima Najmuddin he heard a great many stories of the Prophet,
and if inaccuracies had crept into her versions he wasn't interested in knowing
what they were. "What a man!" he thought. "What angel would not
wish to speak to him?" Sometimes, though, he caught himself in the act of
forming blasphemous thoughts, for example when without meaning to, as he
drifted off to sleep in his cot at the Mhatre residence, his somnolent fancy
began to compare his own condition with that of the Prophet at the time when,
having been orphaned and short of funds, he made a great success of his job as
the business manager of the wealthy widow Khadija, and ended up marrying her as
well. As he slipped into sleep he saw himself sitting on a rose-strewn dais,
simpering shyly beneath the sari-pallu which he had placed demurely over his
face, while his new husband, Babasaheb Mhatre, reached lovingly towards him to
remove the fabric, and gaze at his features in a mirror placed in his lap. This
dream of marrying the Babasaheb brought him awake, flushing hotly for shame,
and after that he began to worry about the impurity in his make-up that could
create such terrible visions.
               
Mostly, however, his religious faith was a low-key thing, a part of him that
required no more special attention than any other. When Babasaheb Mhatre took
him into his home it confirmed to the young man that he was not alone in the
world, that something was taking care of him, so he was not entirely surprised
when the Babasaheb called him into the blue office on the morning of his
twenty-first birthday and sacked him without even being prepared to listen to
an appeal.
               
"You're fired," Mhatre emphasized, beaming. "Cashiered, had your
chips. Dis- miss ."
               
"But, uncle,"
               
"Shut your face."
               
Then the Babasaheb gave the orphan the greatest present of his life, informing
him that a meeting had