Read Online Shalimar the Clown by Salman Rushdie - Free Book Online Page A

see, the huge splash of blood across the glass, the thick drag of blood down toward the ground, and the body of her father, Ambassador Maximilian Ophuls, war hero and holder of the Légion d’Honneur, lying motionless and soaked in a darkening crimson lake. His throat had been slashed so violently that the weapon, one of his own Sabatier kitchen knives, which had been dropped beside his corpse, had all but severed his head.
    She didn’t open the door. Her father wasn’t there, just a mess that needed cleaning up. Where was Olga? Somebody needed to inform the janitor. There was work for a janitor to do. Moving steadily, her back straight and her head held high, India called and entered the elevator. In the elevator she stood with her hands clasped in front of her like a child reciting a poem. When she was back in her apartment she shut and locked the front door. In the little vestibule beneath a round mirror there stood a wooden Shaker chair, and she sat down on it, her hands still clasped and resting now on her lap.
    She wanted the noise to stop, the shouting, the braying sirens. This was a quiet neighborhood. She closed her eyes. The telephone was ringing which didn’t matter. There was a knocking, then a louder knocking at her door which didn’t matter either. A kitchen knife belonged in a kitchen and had no business on the sidewalk. An investigation was called for. This was not a matter for her. She was just the daughter. She was just the illegitimate but only child. She didn’t even know if there was a will. It was important to go on sitting down. If she could keep sitting here for a year or two it would be all right. Sometimes the joy takes a long time to come around again.
    It was a big day. A man had proposed marriage. The poster boy had proposed. Soon there would be a ring and all the customary et cetera. Right now he had climbed across from his balcony to hers and was outside her sliding glass doors yelling honey honey. Honey open up it’s me it’s Jim. This was a matter for the police. She had work to do. When your work went well it gave you perspective, you could see things as they were, the distortions were minimized, the otherness went away. The driver with blood on his hands and great spreading scarlet stains on his clothes. She remembered seeing that, had made herself un-see it. She could have saved her father and had not done so. There had been portents. She had seen flowers at Shalimar’s feet, flowers growing from the sidewalk where he stood, also on his chest, bursting through his shirt. It was not her business to believe these things, the things she saw when her eyes betrayed her. It was not her place to save her father. It was her place to sit perfectly still until the joy came around.

    Alouette, gentille alouette,
    Alouette, je te plumerai.

    She sat straddling her father’s shoulders, facing him, and they sang.
Et le cou! Et le cou! Et la tête! Et la tête! Alouette! Alouette! Ohhhh . . .
and she somersaulted backward away from him, somersaulted away, her hands in his hands, her hands in his hands, her hands forever and nevermore in his.



T here was the earth and there were the planets. The earth was not a planet. The planets were the grabbers. They were called this because they could seize hold of the earth and bend its destiny to their will. The earth was never of their kind. The earth was the subject. The earth was the grabbee.
    There were nine grabbers in the cosmos, Surya the Sun, Soma the Moon, Budha the Mercury, Mangal the Mars, Shukra the Venus, Brihaspati the Jupiter, Shani the Saturn, and Rahu and Ketu, the two shadow planets. The shadow planets actually existed without actually existing. They were heavenly bodies without bodies. They were out there but they lacked physical form. They were also the dragon planets: two halves of a single bisected dragon. Rahu was the dragon’s head and Ketu was the dragon’s tail. A dragon, too, was a creature that actually existed without