REVIEW
The book of beautiful lies
By Ruel S. De Vera
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 22:49:00 01/04/2009
Filed Under: Books, Literature
IT has been told that the greatest storytellers had the power to breathe life into the imaginary. That gift is on delirious display, in various guises and directions, within the pages of “The Enchantress of Florence: A Novel” by Salman Rushdie (Random House, New York, 2008, 355 pages).
Rushdie (“The Satanic Verses”) writes like no one else these days, in bejeweled sentences gilded into the veins of solid, page-long paragraphs, evoking Old World opulence in his delivery of wonder and words: “In this half-discovered world every day brought news of fresh enchantments. The visionary, revelatory dream-poetry of the quotidian had not yet been crushed by blinkered, prosy fact. Himself a teller of tales, he had been driven out of his door by stories of wonder, and by one in particular, a story which could make his fortune or else cost him his life.”
That man, that magnificent trickster, emerges from the heart of “Enchantress” and stays with you for quite a while. He is the yellow-haired liar, quick with words and robbing gestures, the treacherous charlatan known as Uccello di Firenze and Mogor dell’Amore and Niccolo Vespucci, whoever he may be, purportedly with roots in faraway Florence.
He has made his way to the city of Sikri, ruled by the emperor Abul-Fath Jalaluddin Muhammad, also known as Akbar the Great.
He is also known as the Sublime Radiance, Star of India, Sun of Glory, and so on, a man who, it is said, changed everything upon coming home from another war. “That was the day on which it became clear that a new kind of being was on the throne, and that nothing in the world would remain the same.”
Through the eyes of both the so-called Mogor and Akbar, we see this impossible palace built for Akbar, a place of endless wonder and intelligence, with a harem unlike any other, for Akbar’s favorite wife, Jodha, lives, though she is but an imagined creature: “She was an impossibility, a fantasy of perfection. They feared her, knowing that, being impossible, she was irresistible, and that was why the king loved her best.”
But this is both destination and starting point, as “Enchantress” traces the truly unusual journey that Mogor has been on in order to get here even as readers witness what happens now that he has met Akbar.
Stories fly forward and back, sometimes at the same time. Soon the book becomes a tale of two cities—Sikri and Florence—but which one is imaginary and which one is real?
“The city is an enchantress,” Rushdie warns. “When it kisses you, you are lost, whether you be commoner or king.”
Rushdie skillfully meshes disparate histories until it is nearly impossible to tell which is true and which is not. We met a dazzling array of characters, such as the warrior Argalia the Turk; the man who would eventually become Niccolo Machiavelli; the skilled prostitute called Skeleton; her rotund counterpart called Mattress; and, above all, the book’s namesake, Qara Köz, Angelica the First, Lady Black Eyes, the hidden princess, and yes, enchantress of Florence.
Secret
It is around her that “Enchantress” spins out from, but how and why that is remains the book’s secret until the very end. Like Mogor and Akbar, her many names stand for many things, and it is in each story that the threads of “Enchantress” find footing.
After all, these are stories about stories: “If the borderline between the worlds could be crossed in one direction, Akbar understood, it could also be crossed in the other. A dreamer could become his dream.”
It is, of course, love, tragic, total, terrible, that somehow links them all. “Enchantress” feels confusing at the start, but it behooves the reader to just enjoy Rushdie’s lush narrative until the gambit is revealed—as the author reminds us, “Language upon a silvered tongue affords enchantment enough” —and then the novel gallops, as there are executions, sacrifices, escapes, disasters, births and, finally, answers from the most unexpected sources.
This is Rushdie at the height of his own powers. “Enchantress” cannot be hurried; the book imposes its will on the reader, slowing them down, making them savor each decorated line.
In bringing to life what is only imagined, Rushdie is Mogor and Akbar: “He has crossed the world to leave one story behind and to tell another. He wants to step into the tale he is telling and begin a new life inside it. He is a creature of fables.”
For at the heart of the “Enchantress of Florence,” Salman Rushdie unleashes the power of the lie, how by making up something so devastatingly beautiful, it is sometimes more powerful than the truth, and preferable to it.
Available in hardcover at National Book Store
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