Joseph Anton: A Memoir (34 page)

In early December he went with Bill, his Polish girlfriend, Alicja, Zafar and Marianne to Little Bardfield for the weekend. Zafar was intensely excited and so was he. Marianne however was in a strange state of mind. A few days earlier she had actually apologized for “lying” but now the mad glint was back in her eye and at midnight she dropped another of her bombshells. She and Bill, she said, had become lovers. He asked to talk to Bill alone and they went into the rectory’s small TV room. Bill confessed that yes, it had happened once, and he had immediately felt like a fool, and hadn’t known how to tell the truth. They spoke for an hour and a half, both of them knowing that their friendship hung in the balance. They said what needed to be said, loudly and softly, in anger and finally with laughter. In the end they agreed to put the matter away and say no more about it. He, too, felt like a fool, who had to make a decision about his marriage all over again. It was like giving up smoking and then starting up again. He had done that too. After five years as a nonsmoker he was back on the drug. He was feeling angry with himself. He had to break both these bad habits soon.

15 Hermitage Lane was a small fortlike building on an anonymous street corner. It was ugly and had almost no furniture. Cosima bullied the landlords into supplying basic furnishings, a worktable and chair, a couple of armchairs, kitchen equipment. But for as long as he stayed there it continued to look like an uninhabited space. This was where he found a way of getting back to work, and
Haroun and the Sea of Stories
began, at last, to progress.

Four Iranian men were arrested in Manchester on December 15, 1989, suspected of being members of a hit squad. One of them, Mehrdad Kokabi, was charged with conspiracy to commit arson and cause explosions in bookshops. After that it was even harder to get Peter Mayer to commit to a publication date for the paperback of
The Satanic Verses
. “Maybe by the middle of next year,” he told Andrew and Gillon. And, catastrophically, Random House suddenly got cold feet about signing up his future books. Alberto Vitale, chairman of Random
House, Inc., declared that they had made an “underestimate of the danger,” and on December 8, Random backed out of the deal. Now he had no paperback and no publisher. Should he just stop writing? The answer was on his worktable, where
Haroun
was insisting on being written. And Bill spoke to him with great sweetness.
Granta
magazine was beginning a publishing venture, Granta Books. “Let us do it,” he said. “I’ll show you that it’s better for us to do it than a big corporation.”

The Brandenburg Gate was opened and the two Berlins became one. In Romania, Ceausescu fell. He agreed to write a review of Thomas Pynchon’s silence-breaking novel
Vineland
for
The New York Times
. Samuel Beckett died. He spent another weekend with Zafar at the old rectory, and his son’s love lifted his spirits as nothing else could. Then it was Christmas and the novelist Graham Swift insisted he spend it with him and his partner, Candice Rodd, at their south London home. He spent New Year’s Eve with friends too: Michael Herr and his wife, Valerie, who had formed the irresistible habit of calling each other “Jim.” No
darlings
or
honeys
or
babes
for them. In his low American drawl and her bright English chirp they Jimmed the Old Year out. “Hey, Jim?” “Yes, Jim?” “Happy New Year, Jim.” “Happy New Year to you too, Jim.” “I love you, Jim.” “I love you too, Jim.” 1990 arrived with a smile in the company of Jim and Jim.

And Marianne was there too. Yes. And Marianne.

H
E HAD STARTED RECEIVING LETTERS FROM A WOMAN NAMED
N
ALINI
Mehta in Delhi. He did not know anyone by that name, but she was certain she knew him, not just socially, but carnally, pornographically,
biblically
. She knew the dates and places of their assignations and could describe the hotel rooms and the views from the windows. The letters were not only well written but intelligent, and the handwriting, in thin blue ballpoint, was strong and expressive. The photographs were terrible, though: badly taken, poorly lit, the different stages of undress all a little foolish, none of them remotely erotic, though the woman in them was obviously beautiful. He did not reply, not even to try to dissuade her from writing, knowing that would be a bad mistake. The passion with which the writer insisted on their love made him fear for her. Mental illness still bore a stigma in the minds of many Indians. Families denied that such an affliction could have struck one of their members. Any problems were hushed up instead of being properly treated. That Nalini Mehta’s letters continued to arrive, that their frequency even began to increase, indicated that she was not being given the loving help she needed.

His own situation exercised her greatly. She “knew” he could not be getting the loving attention
he
needed. Once she had seen in the newspapers that his wife was no longer beside him she pleaded to be allowed to replace her. She would come to him and make him feel good. She would do everything for him and stand beside him and look after him and wrap him in her love. How could he not agree, after everything they had meant to each other—everything they still felt for each other? He had to send for her. “Send for me now,” she wrote. “I will come at once.”

She told him she had studied English literature at Lady Shri Ram College in Delhi. He remembered that his friend Maria, a Goan writer, had taught there, so he called her to ask if she knew the name. “Nalini,”
she said sadly. “Of course. My most brilliant student, but completely unbalanced.” And he had been right: Her family refused to admit the girl was ill or to get her proper medical care. “I don’t know what’s to be done,” Maria said.

Then the letters changed. I’m coming, she said. I’m coming to England so that I can be there for you. She had met an Englishwoman of her own age in Delhi and had got herself invited to stay with that woman’s retired parents in Surrey somewhere. She had her ticket. She was leaving
tomorrow
, then
today
. She had arrived. A few days later she walked unannounced into the London agency and barged into Gillon Aitken’s office. Gillon told him afterward, “Well, she is very striking, my dear, and she was quite dressed up, and she said she was a friend of yours, so of course I asked her in.” At once she insisted that she be given his address and phone number, because he was expecting her to join him, and the matter was extremely urgent, she had to go to him immediately. That very day, if possible. Gillon saw that something was badly wrong. He did tell Nalini, not unkindly, that he would be happy to pass on a message and if she left a contact number he would pass that on as well. It was at this point that Nalini Mehta offered him sex. Gillon was startled. “My dear, it doesn’t happen in my office every day, or even at home.” He declined the offer. She became insistent. They could clear the papers off his desk and she would have sex with him right there and then, on the wooden desktop, and then he would give her the phone number and address. Gillon became firm. No, really, that was not an option, he told her. Would she please keep her clothes on. She deflated and became tearful. She had no money, she said. She had spent what little she had getting to the agency from her friend’s parents’ Surrey home. If he could lend her say a hundred pounds she would repay him as soon as she could. When Andrew Wylie heard the story he said, “She was done for the moment she asked Gillon for money. That was a fatal move.” Rising to his great height, Gillon guided her to the door.

Several days passed, perhaps a week. Then at Hermitage Lane the police had a question. Did he know, Phil Pitt asked him, which was to say, had he had any dealings with a lady name of Nalini Mehta? He told the officer what he knew. “Why,” he said, “has something happened
to her?” Something had happened. She had disappeared from the home of her friend’s extremely worried parents, to whom she had been talking incessantly about her intimacy with Salman Rushdie, whom she would soon be going to stay with. When she had been missing for two days the fretting couple called the police. Given the circumstances surrounding Mr. Rushdie, they said, and considering how loosely she was talking, somebody might have done her a mischief. It was several more days before she was found in Piccadilly Circus by a bobby on the beat, her hair unkempt, wearing the sari she had worn when she left Surrey five or six days earlier, and telling anyone who would listen that she was “Salman Rushdie’s girlfriend,” that they were “in love,” and that she had flown to England at his request, to live with him.

Her Delhi acquaintance’s parents didn’t really want her back. The police had no reason to hold her; she hadn’t committed any crime. She had nowhere to go. He called her old English teacher Maria and said, “Can you help us get in touch with her parents?” And, fortunately, she could. After some initial reluctance and some defensive remarks to the effect that there was nothing wrong with his daughter, Nalini’s father, Mr. Mehta, agreed to go to London to bring her home. After that there were a few more letters, but they eventually stopped coming. This was, he hoped, a good sign. Maybe she was recovering her health. Her need to be loved had been very great and it had pushed her into delusion. He hoped she was now receiving the real, familial love and care that would allow her to escape from the trap her mind had built for her.

He did not then understand that before the year was out his mind would build a trap for him and he, too, desperate for love, would plunge toward delusion and self-destruction, as though into a lover’s embrace.

He had dreams of vindication. They were detailed dreams, his critics and would-be murderers coming to him bareheaded and shamefaced, begging for forgiveness. He wrote them down and for a few seconds each time they made him feel better. He was working on his silence-breaking essay and his Herbert Read lecture and the conviction
that he could explain, he could make people understand, kept growing.
The Guardian
ran a nasty ad promoting a piece by Hugo Young: a picture of a bandaged Penguin alongside the line
DOES SALMAN RUSHDIE HAVE ANY REGRETS?
Hugo Young’s piece, when it appeared, continued this process of shifting the blame from the men of violence to the target of their attack, saying that he should be “humbled by what he had wrought,” and it only made him more determined to stand his ground and demonstrate the rightness of that stand.

It was the first anniversary of the Bradford book burning. A newspaper survey of 100 British bookshops showed that 57 were in favor of the publication of a paperback of
The Satanic Verses
, 27 were against it and 16 had no opinion. The Bradford Council of Mosques’ spokesman said: “We cannot let go of this issue. It is crucial to our future.” Kalim Siddiqui wrote a letter to
The Guardian
saying that “we [Muslims] have to support the death sentence on Rushdie.” A few days later Siddiqui traveled to Tehran and was granted a private audience with Khomeini’s successor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

He wrote day and night, pausing only when he could spend time with Zafar. There was a last, charmed weekend at the old rectory under Miss Bastard’s gentle supervision. Marianne, who was generally in a bad mood, unable to write, feeling that she had no life, that she was “living a lie,” and that her book’s publication had been ruined by her association with him, was a little more cheerful than usual, and he found a way not to ask himself why he was with her again. When they left Little Bardfield for good and returned to Hermitage Lane he was visited by Mr. Greenup and told that he would not be permitted to deliver the Herbert Read lecture. There was that word again,
permitted
, which, like its brother
allowed
, turned him into a captive, not a “principal.” The police had informed the Institute of Contemporary Arts that they would be unable to protect the event if he were to appear. For him to do so, Greenup said, would be irresponsible and selfish and the Metropolitan Police would not collude with him in his folly.

The ICA people were obviously spooked by the police advice. He told them he was prepared to come and speak even without protection but that was too scary for them. In the end he was obliged to give in. He would find someone else to deliver the lecture on his behalf, he
said, and they agreed to that suggestion with relief. The first person he called was Harold Pinter. He explained the situation and made his request. Without a moment’s hesitation, and with his usual volubility, Harold replied: “Yes.” He was able to go to see Harold and Antonia Fraser at their home in late January and the next day, inspired by their enthusiasm, courage and determination, wrote for fourteen hours without pausing and completed the final version of “Is Nothing Sacred?” Gillon came to Hermitage Lane—as the place had been found by Cosima Somerset and was being “fronted” by the literary agency, Gillon, the “tenant,” was allowed to visit, and was brought in by the police after the usual dry-cleaning run—and sat in that bleak beige underfurnished house to read both the lecture and “In Good Faith,” an
explication de texte
of
The Satanic Verses
, which was also a plea for a better understanding of it and its author, to be published as a single seven-thousand-word piece in the new
Independent on Sunday
. Gillon took the work away and delivered the ICA lecture to Harold. It was time to restart work on
Haroun
.