Fury by Salman Rushdie Page A
Authors: Salman Rushdie
Tags: United States, Fiction, Literary, Psychological, Psychological fiction, British, New York (N.Y.), Middle-Aged Men, anger, College teachers, British - United States
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processes, which had come to stand for realism, integrity, and art. But the world is in color and is less well scripted than the movies. Malik Solanka turned around sharply, opened his mouth to remonstrate, and found himself looking at Mila and her quarterback centurion of a boyfriend. By thinking of her he had conjured them up. And behind them stood-leaned, hunched, squatted, posed-the rest of the indolent stoop troop.
They looked gorgeous, Solanka conceded; their daytime Hilfiger uniform had been sloughed off to reveal a very different, preppier style based on Calvin’s classic white-and-tan summerwear, and they all wore shades in spite of the hour. There was a commercial playing in the multiplexes in which a group of fashionable vampires-thanks to Buffy on TV, vampires were hot-sat on a dune in their Ray-Bans and waited for the dawn. The one who had forgotten his shades was fried when the sun’s rays hit him and his comrades laughed as he exploded, baring their fangs. HA-ha-ha-HA. Perhaps, thought Professor Solanka, Mila & Co. were vampires and he was the fool without the protection. Except, of course, that that would mean he was a vampire, too, a refugee from death, able to defy the laws of time.... Mila removed her sunglasses and looked him provocatively in the eye, and at once he remembered who it was that she resembled.
“What do you know, it’s Mr. Garbo, who vants to be alone,” the peroxide centurion was saying, nastily, indicating that he was ready for all the trouble creaky old Professor Solanka cared to put his way. But Malik was trapped by Mila’s gaze. “Oh, my,” he said. “Oh, my, excuse me, it’s Little Brain. Excuse me, but it’s my doll.” The giant centurion found this to be an opaque, and therefore objectionable utterance, and indeed, in Solanka’s manner there was something more than surprise; something bilious, almost hostile, something that might have been disgust. “Take it easy, Greta,” the big young man said, putting the palm of an enormous hand against Solanka’s chest and applying an impressive amount of pressure; Solanka staggered backward and hit a wall.
But the young woman called off her attack dog. “It’s okay, Ed. Eddie, really, it’s fine.” Just then, mercifully, the line began to move rapidly. Malik Solanka rushed forward into the auditorium and sat down at some distance from the vampire group. As the lights went down he saw those piercing green eyes looking intently at him across the art-house crowd.
4
He stayed out all night, but there was no peace to be found, even when walking through the dead of night, much less in the already bustling hour after the dawn. There was no dead of night. He could not remember his exact route, had the impression of having gone across town and back on or around Broadway, but he could remember the sheer volume of the white and colored noise. He could remember the noise dancing in abstract shapes before his red-rimmed eyes. The coat of his linen suit weighed heavily, damply, on his shoulders, yet in the name of rectitude, of how things should be done, he kept it on; also his straw Panama hat. The noise of the city increased almost daily, or perhaps it was his sensitivity to that noise which was being turned up to the screaming point. Garbage trucks like giant cockroaches moved through the city, roaring. He was never out of earshot of a siren, an alarm, a large vehicle’s reverse-gear bleeps, the beat of some unbearable music.
The hours went by. Kieslowski’s characters stayed with him. What were the roots of our actions? Two brothers, estranged from each other and from their dead father, were almost deranged by the power of his priceless stamp collection. A man was told he was impotent and found he could not bear the idea of his loving wife having a sexual future without him. Mysteries drive us all. We only glimpse their veiled faces, but their power pushes us onward, toward darkness. Or into the light.
As he turned into his
They looked gorgeous, Solanka conceded; their daytime Hilfiger uniform had been sloughed off to reveal a very different, preppier style based on Calvin’s classic white-and-tan summerwear, and they all wore shades in spite of the hour. There was a commercial playing in the multiplexes in which a group of fashionable vampires-thanks to Buffy on TV, vampires were hot-sat on a dune in their Ray-Bans and waited for the dawn. The one who had forgotten his shades was fried when the sun’s rays hit him and his comrades laughed as he exploded, baring their fangs. HA-ha-ha-HA. Perhaps, thought Professor Solanka, Mila & Co. were vampires and he was the fool without the protection. Except, of course, that that would mean he was a vampire, too, a refugee from death, able to defy the laws of time.... Mila removed her sunglasses and looked him provocatively in the eye, and at once he remembered who it was that she resembled.
“What do you know, it’s Mr. Garbo, who vants to be alone,” the peroxide centurion was saying, nastily, indicating that he was ready for all the trouble creaky old Professor Solanka cared to put his way. But Malik was trapped by Mila’s gaze. “Oh, my,” he said. “Oh, my, excuse me, it’s Little Brain. Excuse me, but it’s my doll.” The giant centurion found this to be an opaque, and therefore objectionable utterance, and indeed, in Solanka’s manner there was something more than surprise; something bilious, almost hostile, something that might have been disgust. “Take it easy, Greta,” the big young man said, putting the palm of an enormous hand against Solanka’s chest and applying an impressive amount of pressure; Solanka staggered backward and hit a wall.
But the young woman called off her attack dog. “It’s okay, Ed. Eddie, really, it’s fine.” Just then, mercifully, the line began to move rapidly. Malik Solanka rushed forward into the auditorium and sat down at some distance from the vampire group. As the lights went down he saw those piercing green eyes looking intently at him across the art-house crowd.
4
He stayed out all night, but there was no peace to be found, even when walking through the dead of night, much less in the already bustling hour after the dawn. There was no dead of night. He could not remember his exact route, had the impression of having gone across town and back on or around Broadway, but he could remember the sheer volume of the white and colored noise. He could remember the noise dancing in abstract shapes before his red-rimmed eyes. The coat of his linen suit weighed heavily, damply, on his shoulders, yet in the name of rectitude, of how things should be done, he kept it on; also his straw Panama hat. The noise of the city increased almost daily, or perhaps it was his sensitivity to that noise which was being turned up to the screaming point. Garbage trucks like giant cockroaches moved through the city, roaring. He was never out of earshot of a siren, an alarm, a large vehicle’s reverse-gear bleeps, the beat of some unbearable music.
The hours went by. Kieslowski’s characters stayed with him. What were the roots of our actions? Two brothers, estranged from each other and from their dead father, were almost deranged by the power of his priceless stamp collection. A man was told he was impotent and found he could not bear the idea of his loving wife having a sexual future without him. Mysteries drive us all. We only glimpse their veiled faces, but their power pushes us onward, toward darkness. Or into the light.
As he turned into his
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