Read Online Shame by Salman Rushdie - Free Book Online

each other by the half-conscious percep-
tion of their likeness; but there were also other forces at work.
These forces may all be conveniently collected under a single
heading, and this phrase, too, has been mentioned before: it is
'courting Disaster'.
    It had not escaped the notice of the town gossips that Eduardo had
arrived, birdcage in hand, fedora on head, a mere two months
after the customs officer Zoroaster had been sent up to these parts,
minus wife, plus eight-year-old daughter. So it wasn't long before
mule-wallahs and ironmongers and scootered divines had worked
out that this Zoroaster's previous posting had been in the same
zone of creepery cathedrals and coconut beaches whose memory
could be smelled on Rodrigues's white suit and in his Portuguese
name. Tongues began to wag: 'So where is that customs-wallah's
wife? Divorced, sent back to her mother, murdered in a rage of
the passions? Look at that Farah, she doesn't look like her daddy,
not one bit!' But these tongues were also obliged to admit that
Farah Zoroaster did not look one bit like the teacher either, so
that avenue was reluctantly closed off, especially when it became
plain that Rodrigues and Zoroaster were on extremely cordial
terms. 'So why does a customs officer get shunted out here to
this end-of-the-earth job?' Farah had a simple answer. 'My stupid
father is a type who goes on dreaming after he has woken up. He
thinks one day we will return to where we have never been,
that damn land of Ahuramazda, and this no-good Irani frontier is
the closest we could get. Can you imagine?' she howled, 'He
volunteered.'
    Gossip is like water. It probes surfaces for their weak places,
until it finds the breakthrough point; so it was only a matter of
time before the good people of Q. hit upon the most shameful,
scandalous explanation of all. 'O God, a grown man in love with
    Shame ? 44
    a little child. Eduardo and Farah - what do you mean it can't
happen, happens every day, only a few years back there was that
other � yes, that must be it, these Christians are big perverts, God
preserve us, he follows his little floozy up here to the backyard of
the universe, and who knows what encouragement she gives,
because a woman knows how to tell a man if he is wanted or not
wanted, of course, even at eight years old, these things are in the
blood.'
    Neither Eduardo nor Farah gave, in their behaviour, the slightest
indication that the rumours were rooted in fact. It is true that
Eduardo did not marry during the years of Farah's growing
towards womanhood; but it is also true that Farah, known as 'Disas-
ter', was also called 'the ice block' on account of her sub-zero
coldness towards her many admirers, a frigidity which extended
also to her relations with Eduardo Rodrigues. 'But of course they
put up a good front, what do you think?' - the gossips were able
to point out, triumphantly, that they had been justified by events
in the end.
    Omar Khayyam Shakil, for all his love of watching-and-
listening, pretended to turn a deaf ear to all these stories; such are
the effects of love. But they got inside him anyway, they got
under his skin and into his blood and worked their way, like little
splinters, to his heart; until he, too, proved himself guilty of the
alleged Christian perversions of the schoolteacher Rodrigues.
Choose yourself a father and you also choose your inheritance.
(But Sufiya Zinobia must wait for a few pages yet.)
    I have idled away too many paragraphs in the company of
gossips; let's get back on to solid ground: Eduardo Rodrigues,
accompanied gossip-feedingly by Farah, collecting Omar Khayyam
on his first schoolday, a fact which bore witness to the residual
influence of the Shakil name in the town. In the following
months, Eduardo discovered the boy's exceptional aptitude for
learning, and wrote to his mothers offering his services as a private
tutor who could help realize their child's potential. It is