Free Fury by Salman Rushdie

the laws of supply and demand being what they were, that Wislawa would turn out to be one of the fortunate few in the public seats, the sun-kissed bleachers of eternity.
    This and much else Solanka restrained himself from saying. Instead he pointed out cobwebs and dust, to be answered only by that gummy smile and a gesture of Krakovian incomprehension. “I work for Mrs. Jay long time.” This answer dealt, in Wislawa’s view, with all complaints. After the second week Solanka gave up asking, wiped down the mantels himself, got rid of the cobwebs, and took his shirts to the good Chinese laundry just around the corner on Columbus. But her soul, her nonexistent soul, continued intermittently to insist on his pastoral, his uncaring care.
    Solanka’s head began to spin lightly. Sleep-deprived, wild of thought, he headed for his bedroom. Behind him through the thick, humid air he could hear his dolls, alive now and jabbering behind their closed door, each loudly telling the other his or her “back-story” the tale of how she or he came to be. The imaginary tale, which he, Solanka, had made up for each of them. If a doll had no back-story, its market value was low. And as with dolls so with human beings. This was what we brought with us on our journey across oceans, beyond frontiers, through life: our little storehouse of anecdote and what-happened-next, our private once-upon-a-time. We were our stories, and when we died, if we were very lucky, our immortality would be in another such tale.
    This was the great truth against which Malik Solanka had set his face. It was precisely his back-story that he wanted to destroy. Never mind where he came from or who, when little Malik could barely walk, had deserted his mother and so given him permission, years later, to do the same. To the devil with stepfathers and pushes on the top of a young boy’s head and dressing up and weak mothers and guilty Desdemonas and the whole useless baggage of blood and tribe. He had come to America as so many before him to receive the benison of being Ellis Islanded, of starting over. Give me a name, America, make of me a Buzz or Chip or Spike. Bathe me in amnesia and clothe me in your powerful unknowing. Enlist me in your J. Crew and hand me my mouse ears! No longer a historian but a man without histories let me be. I’ll rip my lying mother tongue out of my throat and speak your broken English instead. Scan me, digitize me, beam me up. If the past is the sick old Earth, then, America, be my flying saucer. Fly me to the rim of space. The moon’s not far enough.
    But still through the ill-fitting bedroom window the stories came pouring in. What would Saul and Gayfryd - “she became the Stanley Cup of trophy wives when trophy wives were as common as Porsches” - do now that they were down to their last $40 or $50 million? ... And hurray, Muffie Potter Ashton’s pregnant! ... And wasn’t that Paloma Huffington de Woody getting friendly with S. J. “Yitzhak” Perelman on Gibson’s Beach, Sagaponack? ... And did you hear about Griffin and his great big beautiful Dahl? ... What, Nina’s planning to launch a perfume? But, my dear, she’s so over, she’s starting to smell like roadkill. . . And Meg and Dennis, just moved to Splitsville, are squabbling over who gets not just the CD collection but the guru.... Which big-name Hollywood actress has been whispering that a new young star’s elevation has Sapphic origins involving a major studio boss? ... And have you read Karen’s latest, Thin Thighs for Life? ... And Lotus, coolest of niteries, nixed O. J. Simpson’s birthday bash! Only in America, kids, only in America!
    With his hands over his ears, and still wearing his ruined linen suit, Professor Solanka slept.
     

5
    The telephone woke him at noon. Jack Rhinehart, the phone-smasher, invited Professor Solanka over to watch the Holland-Yugoslavia Euro 2000 quarterfinal on Pay-Per-View. Malik accepted, surprising them both. “Glad to get you out