Joseph Anton: A Memoir (36 page)

He was a Conrad scholar and he knew about the sailor James Wait aboard the
Narcissus
. He, too, knew that he must live until he died; and he did.

At Eton Road that night in March 1990 Edward told him he had spoken to Arafat about the case—and for Edward to talk to Yasser Arafat, whom he had disliked for so long because of his personal corruption and his sanctioning of terrorism, was no small thing—and Arafat (who was a secularist and an anti-Islamist as well as being corrupt and a terrorist) had replied, “Of course I support him, but the Muslims in the intifada … what can I do …” “Maybe you should write about the intifada,” Edward suggested. “Yours is a very important voice for us and it should be heard again on these issues.” Yeah, maybe, he replied. They let the subject drop and spoke of books and music and mutual friends. His appetite for nonstop discussion of the
fatwa
was limited and many of his friends saw that and thoughtfully changed the subject. When he was able to see people it felt like a break from captivity and the last things he wanted to discuss were his chains.

He was forcing himself to focus and spending hours each day polishing and revising the draft of
Haroun
. But the week was not going as planned. He was told by the police that the Havel meeting was off—apparently the Czechs had canceled it because of fears for the president’s safety. Instead, he was to telephone Havel’s hotel room at 6
P.M.
and they would be able to talk. This was a huge disappointment. He
was unable to speak for hours. But at six precisely he called the number he had been given. The phone rang for a long time and then a man’s voice came on the line. “This is Salman Rushdie,” he said. “Am I speaking to President Havel?” The man on the other end of the line actually giggled. “No, no,” he said. “Is not here the president. Is secretary.” “I see,” he said. “But I was told to call at this time to speak to him.” Then, after a brief pause, the secretary replied. “Yes. You must please wait some time. The president is in the bathroom.”

Now
, he thought to himself,
I know there has been a revolution in Czechoslovakia
. The president had already decreed that his motorcades be composed of cars of many colors, just to cheer things up, and had invited the Rolling Stones to play for him, and given his first American interview to Lou Reed because the Czech Velvet Revolution had taken its name from the Velvet Underground (thus making the Velvets the only band in history to help create a revolution instead of just singing about it like, for example, the Beatles). This was a president worth waiting for while he took his time in the toilet.

After several minutes he heard footsteps and then Havel was on the line. He had a very different story about the cancelation of the meeting. He had not wanted the meeting to take place at the Czech embassy. “I do not trust that place,” he said. “There are still many people of old regime, many strange people wandering about, many colonels.” The new ambassador, Havel’s man, had only been in post for two days and had not had time to clean the stables. “I will not go in that place,” Havel said. The British had responded by saying that there was nowhere else that they were prepared to allow the meeting to occur. “Imagine this,” Havel said. “There is nowhere in Britain they can make safe for you and me.” It was plain, he said, that the British government did not want the meeting to occur. Perhaps the image of the great Václav Havel embracing a writer whose own prime minister refused to be seen with him would be a little embarrassing? “It is bad,” Havel said. “I have wanted to do this very much.”

However, he said, at his press conference he had said many things. “I have told them we are in permanent contact,” he said, and laughed. “And maybe it is true, through Harold or such. But I have told them:
permanent contact
. Also, deep solidarity. I have said this too.”

He told Havel how much he liked his
Letters to Olga
, written by the celebrated dissident from prison to his wife, and how much they had to say to him in his present situation. “This book,” Havel replied, “you know, when we wrote to each other at that time, we had to say many things in riddles, in a kind of code. There are parts of it I don’t understand myself. But I have a much better book coming soon.” Havel wanted copies of “Is Nothing Sacred?” and “In Good Faith.” “Permanent contact,” he concluded with another laugh, and said goodbye.

Marianne was still at war with him the next day. “You’re obsessed by what happens to you,” she blazed, and yes, perhaps that was true. “Every day of your life there’s some drama,” and yes, unfortunately that was all too often true. He was obsessed with himself, she shouted; he couldn’t handle “equality,” and he was an “ugly drunk.”
Where did that come from
, he wondered, and then she delivered the rest of the blow. “You’re trying to repeat your parents’ marriage.” He was guilty of his father’s alcohol abuse. Yes, of course.

Meanwhile, at a Muslim Youth Conference in Bradford, a sixteen-year-old girl called for Rushdie to be stoned to death. The media coverage of the “Affair” had become—for the moment, anyway—sympathetic to him, almost pitying. “Poor Salman Rushdie.” “The hapless author.” He did not wish to be poor, hapless, pitiable. He did not want to be merely a victim. There were important intellectual, political and moral issues at stake here. He wanted to be a part of the argument: to be a protagonist.

Andrew and Gillon came to see him at Hermitage Lane after meeting the Penguin chiefs at the London home of their colleague Brian Stone, the agent for the Agatha Christie estate. They were a formidable negotiating team because they were such an odd couple: the very tall, languid, plummy-voiced Englishman and the aggressive, bullet-headed American with his checkered past, his fringe membership in the Warhol Factory crew, and his laser-beam eyes. They were a classic hard man—soft man duo, and what made them even more effective was that the people they negotiated with made the mistake of assuming that
Andrew was the tough guy and Gillon the softie. Actually, Andrew was driven by passion and emotion and was entirely capable of amazing you by bursting into tears. Gillon was the killer.

Even Gillon and Andrew found Penguin all but impossible to deal with. This latest meeting was, yet again, inconclusive. Mayer said Penguin would hold to the end-of-June deadline for the paperback but would not give a date. They all agreed with Gillon and Andrew that if the book was not published by June 30, they would insist on getting the publication rights back on July 1 so that they could try to make other arrangements. Gillon said, “I think Mayer may be open to that idea.” (Four days later Gillon called to say that Mayer had “half-accepted” the idea of the reversion of rights, but wanted to “negotiate” it—in other words, he wanted money in return. However, his colleague Trevor Glover had said at the meeting with Andrew and Gillon that Penguin’s security costs were so high that they had lost money on the hardcover publication, and publishing the paperback would mean an “increased loss,” so it was hard for Mayer to argue that he needed to be compensated for doing something—giving up the paperback rights—that would, if Glover was to be believed, actually save him money. “We’re pursuing it,” Gillon said. “If we reach the first of July and Mayer hasn’t published and asks for money,” he said, “at that point, I’d go public.”)

Andrew believed Penguin was underpaying royalties and withholding a large sum of money that should have been paid. Penguin denied this angrily but Andrew sent in an auditor and discovered a very substantial underpayment indeed. Penguin did not apologize.

The police had suggested a wig. Their best wig man had been to see him and taken a sample of his hair. He was extremely dubious but had been reassured by several of the prot officers that wigs really worked. “You’ll be able to walk down the street without attracting attention,” they said. “Trust us.” He received unexpected confirmation of this from Michael Herr. “In the matter of disguise you don’t have to change much, Salman,” Michael said, speaking slowly and blinking rapidly. “Just the key signs.” The wig was made and arrived in a brown cardboard box looking like a small sleeping animal. When he put it on his head he felt outlandishly stupid. The police said it looked great.
“Okay,” he said, dubiously. “Let’s take it for a walk.” They drove him to Sloane Street and parked near Harvey Nichols. When he got out of the car every head turned to stare at him and several people burst into wide grins or even laughter. “Look,” he heard a man’s voice say, “there’s that bastard Rushdie in a wig.” He got back into the Jaguar and never wore the wig again.

Ambassador Maurice Busby was a man who didn’t officially exist. As America’s head of counterterrorism, his name could not be spoken on radio or television, or printed in any newspaper or magazine. His movements could not be reported and his location was, to use an adjective Vice President Cheney afterward made famous, undisclosed. He was the ghost in the American machine.

“Joseph Anton” had been thinking of going to America when the Hermitage Lane contract expired, to have a few weeks or months out of the cage. The Special Branch had told him from the beginning that their responsibility for him ended at the British frontier. The rules of the game said that whenever a “principal” left the United Kingdom to visit another country the security forces of that country had to be informed so that they could decide what, if anything, they wanted to do about his visit. When the Americans were told about his plans Mr. Maurice Busby asked for a meeting. It would be a nonexistent man’s encounter with an invisible man: as if Calvino and H. G. Wells had decided to collaborate on a story. He was taken to an anonymous office building on the south bank of the Thames and led into a large room that was entirely empty except for two straight chairs. He and Ambassador Busby sat facing each other and the American got straight to the point. He was welcome in America, the ambassador said, and he should be in no doubt about that. America sympathized with him and he should know that his case was “on the U.S. agenda vis-à-vis Iran.” His wish to visit the United States was in principle approved. However the United States respectfully asked him to consider postponing the trip by “three to four months.” Ambassador Busby had been authorized to tell him in deep confidence that there was real movement regarding the American hostages in Lebanon and it was likely that there could be releases soon. He hoped Mr. Rushdie would appreciate the
sensitivity of the situation. Mr. Rushdie did appreciate it. He concealed his deep disappointment and agreed to the nonexistent man’s request. Gloomily he asked Gillon to extend his tenancy at Hermitage Lane.

Marianne had left to go on her book tour in America. He kept trying to persuade himself that they still loved each other. In his journals he discounted everything that was wrong between them and insisted on their largely imaginary happiness. Such is the need for love. It makes men see visions of paradise and ignore the evidence of their eyes and ears that they are in hell.

Haroun
was finished. He shaved off his beard, leaving only a mustache. On Wednesday, April 4, Zafar was brought to Hermitage Lane and his father handed him the manuscript of “his” book. The bright happiness on the boy’s face was the only reward the author needed. Zafar read the book quickly and said he loved it. Other early readings by friends were also positive. But who would publish it, he wondered. Would everyone back away? Tony Lacey at Viking Penguin had told Gillon, in confidence, that the paperback of
The Satanic Verses
would “probably” be published on May 28. At last, he thought. Once that hurdle had been crossed maybe that story could begin to end. Lacey also talked to Gillon about
Haroun
. “Now that the paperback is coming out, maybe we could publish the new book as well. We’re proud to publish him, you know.” Tony was a good, decent man, trying to continue to be a real publisher in an unreal situation.

Alone at Hermitage Lane he reached the end of his Super Mario game, defeating the big bad Bowser himself and rescuing the insufferably pink Princess Toadstool. He was glad Marianne was not there to witness his triumph. On the phone she was ranting again about his alleged
amours
and the untrustworthiness of his friends. He tried not to pay attention. That afternoon Pauline had taken Zafar into the house at St. Peter’s Street because there were things of his that he wanted, his boxing gloves, his punch-ball, various games. “My dad and I used to go up
on the roof here,” he said to Pauline sadly. “It was really hard to get used to him being in hiding. I can’t wait for him to come out.” She took him for pizza and he spent the meal quoting from
Haroun
. “You can chop liver, but you can’t chop me.”

He had asked Pauline to bring out a few things for him as well but several of them were missing. All his old photograph albums, five of them, in which his entire life before Marianne was contained, were gone. So was his personal copy, copy number one, of the limited edition of twelve numbered and signed copies of
The Satanic Verses
. (Later, Rick Gekoski, an American antiquarian bookseller based in London, sold him Ted Hughes’s copy of this limited edition, copy number eleven. It cost him £2,200 to buy this copy of his own book.) Nobody had keys to the house except Pauline, Sameen, and Marianne. Two years later the journalist Philip Weiss wrote a profile of him in
Esquire
that was shockingly unpleasant about him and pretty nice about Marianne. At least one of the illustrations had clearly come from the missing photograph albums. Under pressure from Andrew
Esquire
admitted that the photograph had been supplied by Marianne. She claimed it had been given to her as a gift. Around the same time a “final typescript” of
The Satanic Verses
, also missing from his study at St. Peter’s Street, was being offered to dealers for sale. Rick Gekoski told him that Marianne was saying that this, too, had been a “gift,” and had eventually withdrawn the text from the market, unhappy about the prices she was being given. It was the wrong copy; the most valuable manuscript, the “working” text covered in his handwritten annotations and corrections, remained in his possession. The photograph albums were never found or returned.