Joseph Anton: A Memoir (70 page)

He told Frances Coady and Caroline Michel, who were stunned. They had planned the book launch on the basis of the agreement with the police that was now, at the last minute, being broken. He told Frances D’Souza also. “I’m at the end of my rope,” he said. “I won’t put up with this anymore.” If he was to receive protection it could not be of this judgmental, ungenerous kind. If this
diktat
was confirmed he would go to war in public. The tabloids would vilify him, but they did that anyway. Let England decide.

He was at war with policemen who believed he had done nothing of value in his life. Perhaps not all of Scotland Yard thought this way, however. Dick Wood reported that Assistant Commissioner David Veness, the most senior officer to enter the story so far, had “green-lighted” the Hampstead reading, saying he would “tell the fussers to calm down.” Rab Connolly was at home, perhaps brooding about losing his job when he delivered his ultimatum. But in the end there was no ultimatum. On Monday Howley ordered Connolly to cancel the event and Connolly called the bookstore and did so without telling either the publishers or the author himself.

This was no longer just a battle that could be won using conventional
weapons. It was about to go thermonuclear. He demanded a meeting at Scotland Yard the next morning and took Frances Coady and Caroline Michel with him to represent Random House, to point out that their publishing plan was being severely damaged by the police. They met the shamefaced members of the Malachite team—Helen Hammington had come in on her broken leg, and Dick Wood and Rab Connolly were there, all of them raw and aggrieved because they had been fighting with their boss, who wasn’t accustomed to such insubordination, and the results had not been pretty. They were senior officers, but Howley had “shouted at them.” The commander’s decision, Helen said, her face grim and set below her close-cropped hair, was “absolute.” The meeting was over.

This was when he, in a calculated strategy, deliberately went off the deep end and began to shout. He knew nobody in this office was to blame for what was happening, and that, in fact, they had laid their careers on the line for him; but if he couldn’t get past them, he had lost, and he had just decided not to lose. So cold-bloodedly, knowing it was his only chance, he blew his stack. If Helen couldn’t change the decision, he yelled, then she had bloody well better get him into a room with somebody who could, because Random House and he had acted strictly in accordance with what the police had said was possible,
months ago
, and this last-minute high-handedness just damn well wouldn’t do, it wouldn’t do
at all
, and if he didn’t get into that room
right now
he would go public in the loudest and most aggressive way, so get me in there, Helen, or else. Or fucking
else
. Five minutes later he was alone in an office with Commander John Howley.

If he had been fire with Helen, now he would be ice. Howley was giving him his best cold stare but he could out-freeze him. The policeman spoke first. “Because of your renewed high profile,” Howley said—meaning the
démarche
—“we believe that the news media will pick up the story of the reading and put it on the main news.” And after that there would be screaming hordes of Muslims outside the store. “That can’t be allowed.” He kept his voice low as he replied. “The decision is unacceptable,” he said. “I do not believe your public-order argument. You are also being discriminatory. On the same page of today’s
Times
that has a story about the possible Iranian
thaw is an advertisement for a Thatcher book-related event, and you are protecting that. In addition, because Mr. Veness gave the green light just yesterday, everyone at Waterstone’s and Random House knows what’s going on, so this will become public even if I do nothing. And I must tell you that I’m not going to do nothing. If you don’t reverse your decision I will call a press conference and give interviews to every major newspaper, radio program and TV channel denouncing you. I have never done anything but thank the police up to now, but I can and will change my tune.”

“If you do that,” Howley said, “you will look very bad.”

“Probably,” he replied, “but guess what?
You will look very bad as well
. So here’s the choice. You let the event go ahead, and neither of us looks bad, or you prohibit it, in which case we both do. You choose.”

“I’ll think about what you’ve said,” Howley said in his gray, clipped voice. “I’ll let you know by the end of the day.”

Andy Ashcroft called at 1
P.M.
The G7 had joined the campaign and agreed to call for an end to the
fatwa
. The EU was pushing hard for Rafsanjani’s signature and for all the conditions of the French
démarche
. “You mustn’t settle for just a
fatwa-free
Europe,” he told Ashcroft. “And the Iranians, in commentary after the announcement, should enjoin Muslims in the West to abide by local laws.” Ashcroft said he was “pretty optimistic.” “I’ve been having a row with the Special Branch,” he told the Foreign Office aide, “and it would be good if you could give things a nudge, because it wouldn’t look good to be having a public row right now.” Ashcroft laughed. “I’ll see what I can do.”

Two and a half hours later Dick Wood called to say that Howley had backed down. The reading was two days away. It wasn’t to be advertised until the morning of the event. That was the compromise being offered.

He took it.

All the seats at Waterstone’s were sold by lunchtime. “Imagine if we’d advertised on Monday as planned,” said the Hampstead branch manager, Paul Bagley. “We’d have sold thousands.” Hampstead High
Street was swarming with uniformed police officers, and there wasn’t a single demonstrator in sight. Not a single gentleman with a beard, placard and righteously outraged expression. Not one. Where were the suits and mobile phones, the “thousand violent fanatics” of the Hizb ut-Tahrir? Not there, that was where. If it hadn’t been for the hordes of police in the street it would have looked like a completely ordinary literary event.

It wasn’t, of course. It was his first preannounced public reading in almost seven years. It was the publication day of his first adult novel since
The Satanic Verses
. The Waterstone’s people told Caroline Michel afterward that it was the best reading they had ever heard, which was nice; for the reader himself it felt like a miracle. He was with his own audience again, after so very long. To hear their laughter, to feel that they were moved: extraordinary. He read the opening of the novel, and the bit about the Lenins, and the “Mother India” passage. Afterward hundreds of copies of the book rushed out into the London night, held in happy hands. And not a single demonstrator ever showed up.

He had crossed his Rubicon. There could be no turning back. The Cambridge Waterstone’s people had been there and wanted to go ahead with their event, this time with two days’ prior advertising. Dick Wood said that “everyone at the office was very pleased.” He wondered if that included Commander Howley. One day, then two days, then more. Step by step, back toward his real life. Away from Joseph Anton, in the direction of his own name.

He sent bottles of champagne to the officers who had fought for him against the bigwigs of Scotland Yard.

The noise about the “French initiative” was getting louder by the day.
The Independent
reported that the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s European-based cells of hit men had written to Khamenei complaining that he had been ordered to call all his dogs off, a straw in the wind that hinted both that the dogs were indeed being called off and that Khamenei might not be opposed to their kenneling. Then Arne Ruth of
Dagens Nyheter
reported a “very exciting” meeting in Stockholm. Along with other Swedish journalists he had met the Iranian
minister, Larijani, who had said, extraordinarily, that he wanted articles written stressing Iran’s “admiration for Salman Rushdie’s work” because they wanted to “change the psychological attitudes.” Even more astounding was Larijani’s on-the-record statement that the
fatwa
did not need to be enforced as it was not in Iran’s best interests. This was the same Larijani who had frequently demanded Mr. Rushdie’s death. On the matter of Sanei of the Bounty, however, Larijani did not budge. The government couldn’t do anything about that. Then, a witticism. Why didn’t Mr. Rushdie sue Sanei under Iranian law?
Oh, werry good
, he thought, lapsing briefly into Dickensian vowels.
Werry werry good indeed
.

The wind was swirling. The straws were blowing in many directions. If there was an answer blowing in that wind, he had no idea what it was.

Elizabeth was upset that there were no signs of a pregnancy. She told him he should have a “sperm test.” There were these moments of strain between them. It worried them both.

Caroline Michel said, “Yes, media excitement is at a great height, and it can be used to make a better life for you.” He did not want to remain forever trapped in a shadow world of diplomats, intelligence spooks, terrorists and counterterrorists. If he gave up his own portrait of the world and accepted this one then he would never escape. He was trying to understand how to think and act in response to what might be about to happen. It would be quite a tightrope act. If the Swedish diplomat Jan Eliasson was right about the need for a positive response in the media then he should perhaps say that things were better but not over; that it was the beginning of the end, but not the end; a cease-fire, but not yet a final peace. Ayatollah Meshkini had recently said that
any
fatwa
could be annulled, and many had been
. Should he mention that? Probably not. The Iranians would probably not be thrilled if he quoted their ayatollahs back at them.

Andrew Green of the Foreign Office called to brief him about
what was planned. The Iranian text would take the form of “a letter from Foreign Minister Velayati stating that his deputy Va’ezi was authorized to give the Iranian view,” which would not be stated in Velayati’s letter, but in an “annexe” to it, and which would also be published in the Iranian press. Was that acceptable to him or not, Green wanted to know. It sounded as if the Foreign Office thought it wasn’t enough. This was a long way from Rafsanjani’s signature, after all.

Larry Robinson called from the U.S. embassy. He felt that the Europeans were pushing for acceptance, but the United States and United Kingdom did not want to. He was worried that Iran was setting up a “deniable assassination.” (Elizabeth, too, felt he might be killed at one of his hard-won readings, but Rab Connolly said that the “spies” were saying that the “bad guys” weren’t planning to do that.)

What to do? He really didn’t know. What on earth should he do?

The media were treating this moment as if it was the end of the
fatwa
story, but maybe it wasn’t, in which case he would lose everyone’s attention, but the danger would remain. Or, alternatively, by going for it, by bouncing things forward, perhaps he could use the media to create an atmosphere in which the threat really would come to an end.

If the EU rejected the Iranian reply to the
démarche
, it could allow Iran to accuse the EU of bad faith and hairsplitting, and to suggest that the West did not want to solve the
fatwa
problem—that he was being used by the West as a pawn in a larger game. And maybe he was. The U.S. administration and, to an extent, the British government wanted to tighten the political screws on Iran and in that effort the
fatwa
was useful to them, no doubt of it. But if he accepted the Iranian reply then the defense campaign would fizzle, and the
fatwa
and bounty offer would remain in place. He felt out of his depth.

The day of the Iranian reply was also the day of the Cambridge reading. Two days’ notice had created an enormous audience, and of course the shop was nervous, he was told he had to come in the back door, if he tried to walk in the front door the event would be canceled. But it was happening, and once again there was no sign of a demonstration.
His own instinct, backed by his conversations with artists and journalists in the British Asian community, was that the energy had long gone out of the British Muslim protests. That phase was over.

At 12:45
P.M.
there was shocking and unexpected news. The deputy foreign minister, Va’ezi, had told IRNA, the Iranian news agency, that Iran had rejected the European
démarche
, and the French initiative was dead. That very morning Iran had been briefing the media that Va’ezi’s piece of paper would satisfy all the EU’s demands, and now here he was saying that no written guarantee had been given, and none would be.

Just like that.

It was impossible to know what had happened in Tehran. Somebody had lost a fight and someone else had won it.

Elizabeth burst into tears. He became oddly calm. He must use the planned press conference to go back onto the attack. By refusing to say that they would not engage in terrorism, the Iranians had revealed that they might well do so. The collapse of this initiative left Iran naked in the bright light of the world’s attention. This was what he had to say, as loudly as he could.

Strangely he was not afraid for himself, but he did not know how to talk to those who loved him, how to tell Zafar the disappointing news, what to say to Sameen. He did not know how to give weeping Elizabeth strength, or where to find hope. It felt as if there might not be any hope. But he knew that he had to—that he would—continue, taking his lead from Beckett’s mighty Unnamable.
I can’t go on. I’ll go on
.

And of course life did go on. One thing had become clearer than ever: He had to take his freedom where he could get it. An “official” end was no longer looking possible, but America beckoned him for another summer break. The uninterest of U.S. policemen in his protection was just fine, in fact it was a real boon. That year Elizabeth, Zafar and he were able to have twenty-five happy summer days of American freedom. Zafar and Elizabeth flew out together on a direct flight; he used Rudolf Scholten’s friends at Austrian Airlines to bring him to JFK via Vienna: a very long way around, but no matter, he was there!
And Andrew was there! And they drove straight out to Water Mill for nine wonderful days on Gibson Beach, and at friends’ homes, doing nothing and everything. The simplicity of it—and the contrast with his sequestered British life—brought tears to his eyes. And after Water Mill they went by car and ferry to Martha’s Vineyard, where they would be the guests of Doris Lockhart Saatchi on her Chilmark property for eight days more. His main memory of that trip would be of William Styron’s genitalia. Elizabeth and he visited the Styrons at their Vineyard Haven home and there on the porch was the great writer in khaki shorts, sitting with his legs splayed and wearing no underpants, his treasures generously and fully on display. This was more than he had ever hoped to know about the author of
The Confessions of Nat Turner
and
Sophie’s Choice
, but all information was useful, he supposed, and he duly filed it away for later use.