The Satanic Verses Read Online Free PDF Page B

monkey-tails became de rigueur for
the city's young bucks at the kind of parties frequented by convent girls known
as "firecrackers" because of their readiness to go off with a bang.
               
After Hanuman there was no stopping Gibreel, and his phenomenal success
deepened his belief in a guardian angel. But it also led to a more regrettable
development.
               
(I see that I must, after all, spill poor Rekha's beans.)
               
Even before he replaced false head with fake tail he had become irresistibly
attractive to women. The seductions of his fame had grown so great that several
of these young ladies asked him if he would keep the Ganesh-mask on while they
made love, but he refused out of respect for the dignity of the god. Owing to
the innocence of his upbringing he could not at that time differentiate between
quantity and quality and accordingly felt the need to make up for lost time. He
had so many sexual partners that it was not uncommon for him to forget their
names even before they had left his room. Not only did he become a philanderer
of the worst type, but he also learned the arts of dissimulation, because a man
who plays gods must be above reproach. So skillfully did he conceal his life of
scandal and debauch that his old patron, Babasaheb Mhatre, lying on his
deathbed a decade after he sent a young dabbawalla out into the world of
illusion, black-money and lust, begged him to get married to prove he was a
man. "God-sake, mister," the Babasaheb pleaded, "when I told you
back then to go and be a homo I never thought you would take me seriously,
there is a limit to respecting one's elders, after all." Gibreel threw up
his hands and swore that he was no such disgraceful thing, and that when the
right girl came along he would of course undergo nuptials with a will.
"What you waiting? Some goddess from heaven? Greta Garbo, Gracekali,
who?" cried the old man, coughing blood, but Gibreel left him with the
enigma of a smile that allowed him to die without having his mind set entirely
at rest.
               
The avalanche of sex in which Gibreel Farishta was trapped managed to bury his
greatest talent so deep that it might easily have been lost forever, his
talent, that is, for loving genuinely, deeply and without holding back, the
rare and delicate gift which he had never been able to employ. By the time of
his illness he had all but forgotten the anguish he used to experience owing to
his longing for love, which had twisted and turned in him like a sorcerer's
knife. Now, at the end of each gymnastic night, he slept easily and long, as if
he had never been plagued by dream-women, as if he had never hoped to lose his
heart.
               
"Your trouble," Rekha Merchant told him when she materialized out of
the clouds, "is everybody always forgave you, God knows why, you always
got let off, you got away with murder. Nobody ever held you responsible for
what you did." He couldn't argue. "God's gift," she screamed at
him, "God knows where you thought you were from, jumped-up type from the
gutter, God knows what diseases you brought."
               
But that was what women did, he thought in those days, they were the vessels
into which he could pour himself, and when he moved on, they would understand
that it was his nature, and forgive. And it was true that nobody blamed him for
leaving, for his thousand and one pieces of thoughtlessness, how many
abortions, Rekha demanded in the cloud-hole, how many broken hearts. In all
those years he was the beneficiary of the infinite generosity of women, but he
was its victim, too, because their forgiveness made possible the deepest and
sweetest corruption of all, namely the idea that he was doing nothing wrong.
               
Rekha: she entered his life when he bought the penthouse at Everest Vilas and
she offered, as a neighbour and businesswoman, to show him her carpets and
antiques. Her husband was at a