Joseph Anton: A Memoir (51 page)

Elizabeth had been “looked after” by Scott’s wife, Barbara, and she told him the security people had not let her enter the conference room, and made her sit in a garage. She was graceful about it, but now it was his turn to get furious. They were taken to stay at the welcoming home of an extremely talkative seventy-five-year-old gentleman named Maurice Rosenblatt, a powerful liberal lobbyist who had played
an important part in the downfall of Senator Joseph McCarthy. While Rosenblatt soliloquized Andrew was still fuming with rage about the canceled Congress meeting. Then Scott called and Andrew went for him. “I’ll tell you what an asshole you are later,” Scott said, and asked to speak to Mr. Rushdie, to whom he said, “I don’t owe Andrew an explanation, but I do owe you one.” As they were talking Peter Galbraith, a senior staff member for the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, whom he had never met, but knew as the son of John Kenneth Galbraith and, more salaciously perhaps, as the young university lover of Benazir Bhutto, came through on the other line to say that the meeting was on again. There would be a lunch at the senators’ private dining room hosted by Senators Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Patrick Leahy, and many other senators would come. The temperature came down rapidly. Andrew calmed down and apologized to Scott, Scott felt vindicated, and there was much relief. They went to bed exhausted but feeling a good deal better.

It was their first time in Washington and the next day he and Elizabeth had their first sight of the citadels and fortresses of American might. Then Elizabeth was left to explore the Smithsonian and the Botanical Gardens and he was taken to the Capitol and Senator Leahy was advancing toward him, big and avuncular and bear-pawed. And here were Senators Simon, Lugar, Cranston, Wofford, Pell, and the great man himself, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, skyscraper tall as befitted the senior senator from New York, bow-tied, with that professionally puckish grin. They listened carefully as he went through the situation and then it was Senator Simon who leaped in first, insisting that the Senate pass a resolution of support. Soon they were all coming up with proposals, and it was exciting, no doubt about that, to have these men rallying to his flag. By the end of lunch (chicken salad, no possibility of alcohol) Moynihan had taken charge and suggested that he and Leahy draft a resolution and put it to the Senate. It was a huge step.

Andrew had arranged for everyone at the meeting to be given copies of the
Satanic Verses
paperback, but now, amazingly, the senators pulled out multiple copies of earlier books and wanted them personalized and signed for themselves and their families too. He was not often impressed by book signings but this one was an astonishment.

Then another surprise. The senators led him to an antechamber of the Foreign Affairs Committee and there was a huge throng of journalists and photographers waiting for them. Scott had been “working his ass off” and Andrew owed him an apology. Andrew did in fact apologize later that day. “I don’t really do this,” Scott said. “I’m a writer not a publicist. Normally I’m trying to break down security around a story, not maintain it.” But his affability returned.

And so now here was the author of
The Satanic Verses
, “just an author on a book tour,” giving a press conference at the heart of America’s power with the senators standing behind him like a backup group, all holding copies of The Paperback in their hands. If they had broken out into a little
doo-wop, shang-a-lang
chorus it would not, on that day of amazements, have been very surprising.

He spoke about this being one battle in a larger war, about the assault on creative and intellectual freedoms across the Muslim world, and expressed his gratitude to the gathered senators for their support. Moynihan took the microphone and said it was an honor to be standing beside him. He was plainly no longer in England. That was not what politicians said about him there.

They had dinner—in a restaurant!—with Scott and Barbara Armstrong and Christopher and Carol Hitchens. Marianne was living in D.C., Christopher said, but he didn’t think she would say anything hostile because it would mess up her “connections” with “the people she wants to know.” She did indeed remain silent, which was a blessing. The next day he recorded a one-hour special with Charlie Rose and in the afternoon did a one-hour phone-in program with John Hockenberry for NPR. A nine-year-old girl called Erin called to ask, “Mr. Rushdie, do you have fun writing your books?” He said he had had a lot of fun writing
Haroun
. “Oh,
sure
,” Erin said, “I’ve read
that
book.
That’s
a
good
book.” Later a Muslim called Susan came on the air and wept a lot and when Hockenberry asked her if she thought Mr. Rushdie should be killed she said, “I’d have to read up on that.”

Scott had called his friend Bob Woodward for help and was very struck, he said, “by the depth of Bob’s commitment.” Woodward had arranged something pretty special: a tea with the legendary Katherine Graham, owner of
The Washington Post
.

In the car on the way to Mrs. Graham’s house he felt so tired that he almost fell asleep. But adrenaline was a helpful little biochemical and once he was in the great lady’s presence he was alert again. The op-ed columnist Amy Schwartz was there. She wrote the editorials about him, he was told. Not all of them had been friendly. David Ignatius, the foreign editor, was there too, and wanted to discuss the approaching Iranian elections. Don Graham, Mrs. Graham’s son, was “one hundred percent on board,” Scott told him.

He had to do almost all the talking. The
Post
journalists asked questions and he answered. Mrs. Graham hardly spoke, except when he asked her directly why she thought the U.S. administration had acted so offhandedly. “This is such a strange government,” she said. “It has so few power centers. Baker’s one. He’s a funny man, always seems to have his own private agenda.” Ignatius chipped in to echo something Woodward had also said. “The best route to the administration might be through Barbara Bush.” After the meeting he said to Scott that he would just have to hope that the
Post
would back him now. “Kay Graham wouldn’t have seen you,” Scott said, “if the decision to support hadn’t already been taken.” So it was work well done.
The New York Times
had already said it would back him if other papers came in too. If Graham was in, so would Sulzberger be, and Andrew thought he could bring in Dow Jones and Scott believed he could deliver Gannett. He would draft a two-part statement for them all to sign: support for the paperback publication and support for its author against the
fatwa
, and, at the end, a demand that the U.S. administration join in and lend its support as well.

In fact,
The New York Times
didn’t wait to sign a support statement. As if energized by his meeting with its Washington rivals, the
Times
ran an editorial on the morning after his tea with Queen Kay, attacking the White House and State Department for their hands-off approach.
“This is sadly consistent with three years of official waffling ever since Ayatollah Khomeini denounced
The Satanic Verses
as blasphemous and called for the death of its author and publishers. Mr. Rushdie has since lived in hiding. His Japanese translator was stabbed to death, his Italian translator wounded in a knife attack. Meanwhile exiled opponents of the Iranian regime were assassinated in France and Switzerland. If this is not state-sponsored terrorism,
what is? Yet the West’s response has been shamefully squeamish.… Far more than Mr. Rushdie’s life is at risk if Western states do not jointly warn Iran that it cannot win the trade it covets until it ceases exporting and exhorting terrorism.”
Nations acted in their own self-interest. For Iran to cancel the
fatwa
it would be necessary to show Iran that it was in its interest to do so. This was what he had said to Mrs. Graham and to Mike Wallace before her. Now
The New York Times
was saying it too.

Elizabeth was taken to her plane and a few hours later he was on an RAF flight out of America. The high life was over. In London the police didn’t want to take him to Angela Carter’s memorial event at the Ritzy cinema in Brixton. He came down to earth with a bump, and argued for a long time until they agreed he could go. Elizabeth went separately as usual. The Ritzy, gaudy, down-at-the-heels, seemed perfect for Angela. On the stage there was a large three-panel screen painted by Corinna Sargood in very bright colors, featuring macaws. And a big spray of flowers. On the walls there were panels showing movie scenes. Nuruddin Farah embraced him and said, “There is a woman I am very serious about I want you to meet.” He replied, “There is a woman I am very serious about I want
you
to meet.” Eva Figes hugged him too. “It’s so nice to have you to touch instead of seeing you on TV.” Lorna Sage spoke, wonderfully describing Angela’s laugh—the mouth opened wide in a great rictus and then her silent shaking for several minutes before the noise came. She had met Angela after reading
Heroes and Villains
and had praised her writing effusively. “I must have sounded very strange,” she said, “because after a while Angela drew herself up and said, ‘I’m not gay, you know.’ ” After the ceremony the police made him leave at once. Clarissa and Zafar were there too but he wasn’t allowed to say hello to them. “I came after you but you’d gone,” Zafar told him later. He had followed his father out of the side door and watched him being whisked away.

41 St. Peter’s Street was empty, most of the furniture in storage, or given away to Sameen and Pauline, or used to furnish Elizabeth’s new flat near Hampstead Heath. The keys were sent to Robert McCrum and then the sale was complete. A chapter of life was closing.

On April 9 Melvyn Bragg and Michael Foot threw a joint election-night party at Melvyn’s Hampstead house. The night began in a celebratory mood with high expectations of an end to the long years of “Tory misrule.” But as the evening went on it became plain that Kinnock had lost. He had never seen a party die so fast. He left early because it was just too sad to stay there among all the broken hopes.

One week later Helen Hammington asked for another meeting. He told her he would want his lawyer present, and his solicitor Bernie Simons was brought to Hampstead Lane. Helen Hammington looked uneasy and embarrassed as she told him of the “revised plans” for his protection. As she spoke it became clear that she, and Howley behind her, were climbing down completely. The protection would continue until the threat level dropped. If the new house “went overt” then they would take that in their stride.

He would always believe that he had America—the senators, the newspapers—to thank for this little success. America had made it impossible for Britain to walk away from his defense.

O
N A VISIT TO
M
IJAS LONG AGO
—M
IJAS, WHERE
M
ANUEL
C
ORTÉS HAD
hidden from Franco for three decades, spending his days in an alcove behind a wardrobe and, when his family had to move house, dressing up like an old woman to walk the streets of the town whose mayor he had been—he had met a photographer of German origin named Gustavo Thorlichen, a tall, handsome man with aquiline features, sleek silver hair, and three good stories to tell. The Mijas expat tribe whispered that he was probably an ex-Nazi because he had ended up in South America. In fact he had fled Germany in the 1930s to Argentina to escape the Nazis. One day in Buenos Aires he had been summoned to take photographs of Eva Perón, “one of four photographers,” the Perón aide told him on the phone, “to be so honored.” He took a deep breath and replied, “Thank you for the honor, but when you ask me to take photographs, you should ask me to come by myself, and in these circumstances I must respectfully decline.” There was a silence, and then the aide said, “You can be thrown out of Argentina for what you have just said.” “If I can be thrown out for saying that,” Gustavo answered, “then it’s not worth staying.” He put down the phone, went into the bedroom and told his wife, “Start packing.” Twenty minutes later the phone rang again and the same aide’s voice said, “Evita will see you tomorrow morning at eleven, alone.” After that he became the personal photographer of both Eva and Juan Perón, and the famous photograph of Evita’s face in death was, he said, his.

That was the first good story. The second involved hanging out with the young Che Guevara in La Paz and being called a “great photographic artist” in Che’s “motorcycle diaries.” The third was about being in a bookstore in Buenos Aires as a young photographer, just starting out, and recognizing the much older man shuffling into the store as Jorge Luis Borges. He screwed up his courage, approached the great writer, and said he was working on a book of photographs that
would be a portrait of Argentina and he would be very proud if Borges were to write a foreword. To ask a blind man to write the preface to a book of images was crazy, he knew that, but he asked anyway. Borges said to him, “Let’s go for a walk.” As they strolled through the city Borges described the buildings around him with photographic accuracy. But every so often there was a new building in the place of a demolished old one. Then Borges would stop and say, “Describe it. Start on the ground floor and go up.” As Gustavo spoke he could see Borges putting up the new building in his mind and fixing it in its place. At the end of the walk Borges agreed to write the foreword.