Gibreel rejects Rekha’s bargain

Gibreel rejects Rekha’s bargain at the point when her haunting offers a way out of the madness overtaking him—and demands that he surrender to a love he will not affirm. His refusal makes the encounter a test of faith and agency, though the relief that follows leads him toward a dangerous certainty about himself.

The Bargain and Its Terms

Rekha Merchant appears in jewels and finery, first mocking Gibreel’s standing as an angel. Then she claims that his tribulations have been her doing: she says she is taking revenge because she died for love of him, and that she has been turning his life inside out. Her offer is conditional. Gibreel must say that he loves her and, once a week, show that love when she comes to lie with him; she also asks for a night when things might be as they were during the ball-bearing man’s business absences.

In return, Rekha promises to stop the insanities with which she says she is persecuting him. She would also end his urge to change or redeem the city, leaving him free to live with Alleluia Cone and become a great film star. She insists that she does not seek equal status with Alleluia, only a secondary place in Gibreel’s affections. The bargain makes the price of relief explicit: not a general concession, but spoken love and recurring intimacy with a dead woman.

Rekha’s Claimed Role in Earlier Encounters

Rekha presents her influence as extending beyond the current persecution. She says she can take whatever form Gibreel prefers, and points to his encounter in the boathouse at Rosa Diamond’s home, asking who arranged it. She also invokes the image of Alleluia as a climber, suggesting that the apparitions and encounters Gibreel has experienced may have been shaped by Rekha’s presence. These are Rekha’s claims within the encounter, not an independent account of how every earlier event occurred; their force lies in how they recast Gibreel’s apparent escape from her as another scene she may have staged.

Refusal and Its Immediate Aftermath

At dawn, Gibreel opens his eyes to find Rekha unable to sing, silenced by expectations and uncertainty. He refuses the offer, calling it a trick and declaring, “There is no God but God.” He denies that Rekha is either the divine Entity or its adversary, dismissing her instead as mist, and rejects any compromise with her. His answer denies her the cosmic status she claims while also refusing the intimate terms she has offered.

Gibreel then sees Rekha’s emeralds and brocades fall away, followed by her flesh; her skeleton crumbles, and what remains flies into the sun with a shriek. She does not return until near the end. Convinced that he has passed a test, Gibreel feels his burden lift and takes his growing lightness as proof that the power of flight is returning. He imagines stepping from the parapet or leaping from a bridge without touching land, and resolves to show the city a great sight. The bargain is broken, but the confidence produced by its rejection feeds Gibreel’s belief that he can transcend ordinary human limits.