Joseph Anton: A Memoir (74 page)

It would be another year before the diligent researches of Vijay’s team turned up the hidden document that won the case—the document in which a high officer of the Himachal government had perjured himself in a sworn affidavit stating that he knew that Salman
Rushdie had become a citizen of Pakistan. But Salman Rushdie had never held any citizenship other than Indian and British. Perjury was a serious crime, carrying a mandatory jail sentence, and when they knew that Vijay Shankardass had the untruthful affidavit in his possession the Himachal authorities would suddenly become extremely cooperative. In April 1997 the house would once again be in his name, vacated in reasonable condition by the government officer who had squatted there, and Vijay collected the keys.

His favorite comments about
The Moor’s Last Sigh
were those from Indian friends who got in touch after reading the now-unbanned book to ask how he’d managed to write it without visiting India. “You sneaked in, didn’t you?” they suggested. “You came quietly and soaked stuff up. Otherwise how would you have known all those things?” That put a big smile on his face. His greatest worry had been that his “novel of exile” would read like a foreigner’s book, disconnected from the Indian reality. He thought of Nuruddin Farah carrying Somalia in his heart wherever he traveled, and was proud that he had managed to write his book from the private India he carried everywhere with him.

The novel was getting some of the best notices of his life, confirmations that the long derailment had not crippled him. There was a little U.S. book tour, but it was expensive. A small aircraft had to be hired. U.S. police forces insisted on the need for security, so a private security firm headed by an experienced fellow named Jerome H. Glazebrook had to be engaged. It was generous of Sonny Mehta to absorb most of these costs, though the venues contributed, and so did he. Sonny came with him on the tour and threw lavish parties in Miami (where everyone seemed to be a thriller writer, and where, after he asked Carl Hiaasen to fill him in about Miami, Hiaasen took a deep breath and stopped talking two hours later, giving a high-speed master class on Floridian political shenanigans) and in San Francisco (where Czesław Miłosz, Robin Williams, Jerry Brown, Linda Ronstadt and Angela Davis were among the guests). These were slightly furtive events, with the guests not being told the truth about the author’s identity or the location of the bash until the last minute.
Miami and San Francisco’s finest were frisked by security guards in case they were thinking of making a little extra cash by going after the bounty.

Sonny and he even had time for a weekend in Key West, where they were joined by Gita Mehta, who was looking well and was back to her buoyant, loquacious best. He thought of this unusual and costly book tour as Sonny’s silent way of apologizing for the problems he had caused at the time of
Haroun and the Sea of Stories
, and was happy to let bygones be bygones. The day after he got back to London
The Moor’s Last Sigh
won him a British Book Award, a “Nibbie,” as the “author of the year.” (The book of the year Nibbie went to the cookbook writer Delia Smith who, in her acceptance speech, unusually referred to herself in the third person, “Thank you for honoring a Delia Smith book.”) A great cheer went up when his award was announced.
I mustn’t forget that there is an England that’s on my side
, he told himself. Given the continued attacks on his character in the papers he had come to think of collectively as the
Daily Insult
, it would have been easy, but wrong, to forget that.

Back in the house on Bishop’s Avenue, life with the police was hard to readjust to. They locked doors at night but never unlocked them in the morning. They compulsively closed curtains but they never opened them again. The chairs they sat upon broke under their weight and the wooden floor in the entrance hall cracked under their heavy feet. It was the seventh anniversary of the
fatwa
. No British newspaper published a sympathetic or appreciative word. It was an old, boring story that didn’t seem to be going anywhere; not news. He wrote a piece for
The Times
in which he tried to argue that the purposes of the
fatwa
had been defeated, even if the
fatwa
itself was still extant: The book had not been suppressed and nor had its author. He thought of the era of fear and self-censorship that the
fatwa
had brought into being—in which the Oxford University Press had refused to publish an extract from
Midnight’s Children
in an English-language teaching text on the grounds that it was “too sensitive”; in which the Egyptian writer Alaa Hamed (together with his publisher and printer) had been sentenced to eight
years in prison for writing a novel,
A Distance in a Man’s Mind
, that was judged to be a threat to social peace and national unity; in which Western publishers spoke openly of avoiding any text that might be thought critical of Islam—and he didn’t believe his own article. He had had a few small successes, but the real victory had by no means been won.

He kept trying to talk to Elizabeth about America. In America they wouldn’t have to live with four policemen or the constant accusation of costing the nation a fortune without having performed any service to it. They had had a taste of that freedom in the last couple of summers; they could have much more of it. Whenever he raised the subject she scowled mutinously and wouldn’t discuss it. He began to see that she had a fear of freedom, or at least of freedom with him. She felt safe only inside the bubble of the protection. If he insisted on stepping outside it, she might very well be unwilling to take that step with him. For the first time (shocking himself) he began to imagine a life without her. He left for Paris to launch the French edition of
The Moor’s Last Sigh;
the tension between them had not died down.

In Paris
les gentilhommes du RAID
were up to their usual tricks. They closed down the entire street in front of the Hôtel de l’Abbaye near Saint-Sulpice. They refused him permission to appear in any public place. “If he doesn’t like it,” they had told his publishers, “he doesn’t have to come.” But the good news was that the book was getting a great welcome, fighting for the top spot in the bestseller lists against Umberto Eco’s latest and
The Horse Whisperer
. There were also political meetings with the foreign minister, Hervé de Charette, and the minister of culture, Philippe Douste-Blazy.
Chez
Bernard-Henri Lévy he met the grand old man of the cinema and the
nouveau roman
, Alain Robbe-Grillet, whose novel
La Jalousie
and screenplay for
L’Année Dernière à Marienbad
he greatly admired. Robbe-Grillet was planning to make a film in Cambodia at the end of the year, starring Jean-Louis Trintignant and BHL’s wife, Arielle Dombasle. Trintignant was to play a pilot who crashed in the Cambodian jungle and then saw fantasies of Arielle in his subsequent delirium while being tended to in a jungle village by
un médecin assez sinistre
. The part of the sinister doctor, Robbe-Grillet enthused, is perfect for you, Salman. Two weeks in Cambodia in December! Philippe Douste-Blazy will arrange everything!
(Douste-Blazy, present at the occasion, nodded agreeably, and apologized, also, for the RAID overreaction. “On your next visits we will use only two security guards.”) He asked Robbe-Grillet if he could see a script and Robbe-Grillet nodded impatiently, yes, of course, of course, but you must do it! It will be fantastic! The doctor, it is you!

No screenplay was ever sent to him. The film was never made.

One other thing happened in Paris. Caroline Lang, Jack Lang’s brilliant and beautiful daughter, came to keep him company at the Hôtel de l’Abbaye one afternoon, and because of her beauty, and the wine, and the difficulties with Elizabeth, they became lovers; and immediately afterward decided not to do that again, but to remain friends. After their few hours together he had to appear live on TV, on Bernard Pivot’s
Bouillon de Culture
, and felt that the emotional upheaval caused by his infidelity meant that he gave a poor account of himself.

Andrew Wylie and Gillon had come to the end of the road and had decided to end their association. Andrew came to the house, very upset, raging a little, but mainly grieving. “It became plain to me,” Andrew said, at once sorrowful and outraged, “that Gillon has never been my partner. Brian Stone is Gillon’s partner.” Brian was their associate, the agent who controlled the Agatha Christie estate. “The nameplate at the London agency,” Andrew said bitterly, “still reads Atken and Stone.” Their fight had been about money, but also about their different visions. Andrew had grand, expansionist dreams; Gillon was cautious and, always, financially prudent. It had not been a pleasant split; an ugly divorce, like most divorces. Andrew was like a jilted lover, simultaneously contemptuous and in despair.

He was deeply troubled by his agents’ split-up. Gillon and Andrew had been twin pillars of strength in the past years, and he had relied on them absolutely. Neither of them had flinched for a moment in the face of the Islamic attack, and their courage had shamed many publishers into being braver than they might otherwise have been. He couldn’t imagine doing without either of them, but now he would have to choose, although Gillon gracefully made the choice easier by calling
the next day to say, “My dear, it’s obvious you must go with Andrew. He was your agent first, he brought you to me, and of course you must stay with him, that’s absolutely right.”

They had gone through so much, done so much together. Their relationship had deepened far beyond the normal author-agent cordiality. They had become close friends. And yet now he would have to lose Gillon. He had never imagined such a day, had always thought that both Gillon and Andrew would be his agents forever. “Okay,” he said to Gillon. “Thank you. But as far as I’m concerned nothing has changed between us.”

“We’ll have lunch soon,” said Gillon, and that was that.

Italy had assumed the rotating presidency of the European Union and was in the process of persuading all EU member states to accept a letter, to be signed by the EU and Iran jointly, that accepted that the
fatwa
was eternally valid, in return for a short statement from Iran that it would not carry it out. Frances D’Souza’s sources told her that the EU troika of foreign ministers was going to Tehran to discuss terrorism, and was refusing even to bring up the
fatwa
unless this text was agreed to—which means, she said, agreed to by him. The British government was holding out, but was worried about its isolation. He asked Frances to inform her sources that he had not fought for seven years to have the European Union agree on the validity of an extraterritorial murder order. He would not agree to such a statement in a million years. “Fuck them, the expedient bastards,” he said. He would not collaborate in this hideous piece of amorality.

The “Italian letter” was never signed or sent.

He spoke to Gail Rebuck at Random House about getting her to take over paperback publication of
The Satanic Verses
. She said that Alberto Vitale now seemed “receptive” but she needed some reassurances about security. He suggested to Gail and to Caroline Michel that they get reports from all European publishers of the
Verses
paperback in translation, and from Central Books, the Consortium’s UK distributors,
about their security measures, if any, and arrange a meeting with Helen Hammington, Dick Wood and Rab Connolly to get their view.
Inch by inch
, he thought.
We’ll get there, but it’s
so
painfully slow
.

Elizabeth heard that Carol Knibb, her cousin who had raised her after her mother died, was suffering from chronic lymphocytic leukemia, the same CLL that Edward Said was fighting in New York. Elizabeth was overwhelmed by the news. Carol was the closest thing she had to a family. He, too, was profoundly saddened. Carol was a sweet, kind woman. “It’s a fightable cancer,” he said to Elizabeth. “We can help her fight. She should talk to Edward’s doctor Kanti Rai on Long Island.”

Death came indiscriminately to the sweet and the sour. Two weeks after hearing about Carol’s cancer he had news of a death he could not mourn. The malevolent gnome Kalim Siddiqui had issued his last threat. He had been attending a conference in Pretoria, South Africa, when a heart attack killed him. It emerged that he had recently had bypass surgery but had gone on ranting and raving when a wiser man would have opted for a quieter life. So he could be said to have chosen his end.
It couldn’t have happened to a nicer man
, he thought, but made no public comment.

Michael Foot called, very pleased. “What’s the name of the Muslim God? Their God, what’s the fellow called?” Allah, Michael. “Oh yes, Allah, of course that’s right. Well, he’s clearly not on old Siddiqui’s side, eh? Eh?”
Come in Dr. Siddiqui your time is up
.

Elizabeth had gone to visit Carol in Derbyshire. When she came back she was happy to hear of Siddiqui’s last exit. She also read the just-completed twenty-page synopsis of the new novel,
The Ground Beneath Her Feet
, and loved it so much that the gulf between them closed and was forgotten. And the next day—the universe didn’t like him to be happy for too long—he was taken to Spy Central to be told some genuinely frightening news.

It was never comforting to approach the large sand-colored fortress on the river, even if it was improbably decorated with Christmas trees; he never came here to be cheered up. Today in an anonymous boardroom he was faced with the afternoon and the morning, Mr. P—— M—— and Mr. A—— M——, the head of counterterrorism for the
Middle East and the man on the Iran desk. Rab Connolly and Dick Wood were there too, in a “listening capacity.” “The security services now know,” AM said, “that Iran, by which we mean Khamenei the supreme leader and intelligence minister Fallahian, have set in motion a long-term plan to find and assassinate you. They are prepared to take a long time and spend a lot of money. The plan may have been in place for as long as two years already, but we have only become sure of its existence in the last few months.” “It is our duty to tell you this,” said PM. “This is why we are meeting you today under our real names.”