economics, and of war—he found, on his first day “up” at King’s, that he couldn’t get out of bed. His body felt heavier than usual, as if gravityitself were trying to hold him back. More down than up, he ignored several knocks on the door of his somewhat Scandinavian-modern room. (It was the year of the Beatles’
Rubber Soul
, and he spent a good deal of it humming “Norwegian Wood.”) But in the early evening a particularly insistent pounding forced him out of bed. At the door wearing a huge Old Etonian grin and Rupert Brooke’s wavy blond hair was the tall, relentlessly friendly figure of “Jan Pilkington-Miksa—I’m half-Polish, you know,” the welcoming angel at the gateway to the future, who brought him forth on a tide of loud bonhomie into his new life.
Jan Pilkington-Miksa, the very Platonic form of the English public schoolboy, looked exactly like all the creatures at Rugby who had made his life so unpleasant, but he was the sweetest natured of young men, and seemed to have been sent as a sign that things were going to be different this time around. And so they were; Cambridge largely healed the wounds that Rugby had inflicted, and showed him that there were other, more attractive Englands to inhabit, in which he could easily feel at home.
So much for the first burden. As for economics, he was rescued by a second welcoming angel, the director of studies, Dr. John Broadbent, an Eng. lit. don so magnificently groovy that he could easily have been (though he was not) one of the models for the supercool and ultra-permissive Dr. Howard Kirk, hero of Malcolm Bradbury’s novel
The History Man
. Dr. Broadbent asked him, when he gloomily said that he was supposed to change subjects because his father insisted on it, “And what do
you
want to do?” Well, he didn’t want to read economics, obviously; he had a history exhibition and he wanted to read history. “Leave it to me,” Dr. Broadbent said, and wrote Anis Rushdie a gentle but fierce letter stating that in the opinion of the college Anis’s son Salman was not qualified to read economics and that if he continued to insist upon doing so it would be better to remove him from the university to make room for someone else. Anis Rushdie never mentioned economics again.
The third burden, too, was soon lifted. The war in the subcontinent ended, and everyone he loved was safe. His university life began.
He did the usual things: made friends, lost his virginity, learnedhow to play the mysterious matchstick game featured in
L’année dernière à Marienbad
, played a melancholy game of croquet with E. M. Forster on the day Evelyn Waugh died, slowly understood the meaning of the word “Vietnam,” became less conservative, and was elected to the Footlights, became a minor bulb in that dazzling group of illuminati—Clive James, Rob Buckman, Germaine Greer—and watched Germaine perform her Stripping Nun routine, bumping and grinding her way out of her sisterly habit to reveal a full frogman’s outfit beneath, on the tiny club stage in Petty Cury on the floor below the office of the Chinese Red Guards where Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book was on sale. He also inhaled, saw one friend die of bad acid in the room across the hall, saw another succumb to drug-induced brain damage, was introduced to Captain Beef heart and the Velvet Underground by a third friend who died soon after they graduated; enjoyed miniskirts and see-through blouses; wrote briefly for the student paper
Varsity
until it decided it didn’t need his services; acted in Brecht, Ionesco and Ben Jonson; and crashed Trinity May Ball with the future art critic of the London
Times
to listen to Françoise Hardy sing the anthem of young loveless anguish, “Tous les garçons et les filles.”
In later life he often spoke of the happiness of his Cambridge years, and agreed with himself to forget the hours of howling loneliness when he sat alone in a room and wept, even if King’s Chapel was right
Rubber Soul
, and he spent a good deal of it humming “Norwegian Wood.”) But in the early evening a particularly insistent pounding forced him out of bed. At the door wearing a huge Old Etonian grin and Rupert Brooke’s wavy blond hair was the tall, relentlessly friendly figure of “Jan Pilkington-Miksa—I’m half-Polish, you know,” the welcoming angel at the gateway to the future, who brought him forth on a tide of loud bonhomie into his new life.
Jan Pilkington-Miksa, the very Platonic form of the English public schoolboy, looked exactly like all the creatures at Rugby who had made his life so unpleasant, but he was the sweetest natured of young men, and seemed to have been sent as a sign that things were going to be different this time around. And so they were; Cambridge largely healed the wounds that Rugby had inflicted, and showed him that there were other, more attractive Englands to inhabit, in which he could easily feel at home.
So much for the first burden. As for economics, he was rescued by a second welcoming angel, the director of studies, Dr. John Broadbent, an Eng. lit. don so magnificently groovy that he could easily have been (though he was not) one of the models for the supercool and ultra-permissive Dr. Howard Kirk, hero of Malcolm Bradbury’s novel
The History Man
. Dr. Broadbent asked him, when he gloomily said that he was supposed to change subjects because his father insisted on it, “And what do
you
want to do?” Well, he didn’t want to read economics, obviously; he had a history exhibition and he wanted to read history. “Leave it to me,” Dr. Broadbent said, and wrote Anis Rushdie a gentle but fierce letter stating that in the opinion of the college Anis’s son Salman was not qualified to read economics and that if he continued to insist upon doing so it would be better to remove him from the university to make room for someone else. Anis Rushdie never mentioned economics again.
The third burden, too, was soon lifted. The war in the subcontinent ended, and everyone he loved was safe. His university life began.
He did the usual things: made friends, lost his virginity, learnedhow to play the mysterious matchstick game featured in
L’année dernière à Marienbad
, played a melancholy game of croquet with E. M. Forster on the day Evelyn Waugh died, slowly understood the meaning of the word “Vietnam,” became less conservative, and was elected to the Footlights, became a minor bulb in that dazzling group of illuminati—Clive James, Rob Buckman, Germaine Greer—and watched Germaine perform her Stripping Nun routine, bumping and grinding her way out of her sisterly habit to reveal a full frogman’s outfit beneath, on the tiny club stage in Petty Cury on the floor below the office of the Chinese Red Guards where Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book was on sale. He also inhaled, saw one friend die of bad acid in the room across the hall, saw another succumb to drug-induced brain damage, was introduced to Captain Beef heart and the Velvet Underground by a third friend who died soon after they graduated; enjoyed miniskirts and see-through blouses; wrote briefly for the student paper
Varsity
until it decided it didn’t need his services; acted in Brecht, Ionesco and Ben Jonson; and crashed Trinity May Ball with the future art critic of the London
Times
to listen to Françoise Hardy sing the anthem of young loveless anguish, “Tous les garçons et les filles.”
In later life he often spoke of the happiness of his Cambridge years, and agreed with himself to forget the hours of howling loneliness when he sat alone in a room and wept, even if King’s Chapel was right
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