Midnight's Children (44 page)

“Shh, mumani, shh,” I beg, “Hanif mamu will hear!”

“Let him hear!” she stormed, weeping copiously now; “Let his mother hear also, in Agra; they will make me die for shame!”

Reverend Mother had never liked her actress daughter-in-law. I overheard her once telling my mother: “To marry an actress, whatsitsname, my son has made his bed in the gutter, soon, whatsitsname, she will be making him drink alcohol and also eat some pig.” Eventually, she accepted the inevitability of the match with bad grace; but she took to writing improving epistles to Pia. “Listen, daughter,” she wrote, “don’t do this actressy thing. Why to do such shameless behavior? Work, yes, you girls have modern ideas, but to dance naked on the screen! When for a small sum only you could acquire the concession on a good petrol pump. From my own pocket I would get it for you in two minutes. Sit in an office, hire attendants; that is proper work.” None of us ever knew whence Reverend Mother acquired her dream of petrol pumps, which would be the growing obsession of her old age; but she bombarded Pia with it, to the actress’s disgust.

“Why that woman doesn’t ask me to be shorthand typist?” Pia wailed to Hanif and Mary and me at breakfast. “Why not taxi-driver, or handloom weaver? I tell you, this pumpery-shumpery makes me wild.”

My uncle quivered (for once in his life) on the edge of anger. “There is a child present,” he said, “and she is your mother; show her respect.”

“Respect she can have,” Pia flounced from the room, “but she wants
gas
”.

… And my most-treasured bit-part of all was played out when during Pia and Hanifs regular card-games with friends, I was promoted to occupy the sacred place of the son she never had. (Child of an unknown union, I have had more mothers than most mothers have children; giving birth to parents has been one of my stranger talents—a form of reverse fertility beyond the control of contraception, and even of the Widow herself.) In the company of visitors, Pia Aziz would cry: “Look, friends, here’s my own crown prince! The jewel in my ring! The pearl in my necklace!” And she would draw me towards her, cradling my head so that my nose was pushed down against her chest and nestled wonderfully between the soft pillows of her indescribable … unable to cope with such delights, I pulled my head away. But I was her slave; and I know now why she permitted herself such familiarity with me. Prematurely testicled, growing rapidly, I nevertheless wore (fraudulently) the badge of sexual innocence: Saleem Sinai, during his sojourn at his uncle’s home, was still in shorts. Bare knees proved my childishness to Pia; deceived by ankle-socks, she held my face against her breasts while her sitar-perfect voice whispered in my good ear: “Child, child, don’t fear; your clouds will soon roll by.”

For my uncle, as well as my histrionic aunt, I acted out (with growing polish) the part of surrogate son. Hanif Aziz was to be found during the day on the striped sofa, pencil and exercise book in hand, writing his pickle epic. He wore his usual lungi wound loosely around his waist and fastened with an enormous safety-pin; his legs protruded hairily from its folds. His fingernails bore the stains of a lifetime of Gold Flakes; his toenails seemed similarly discolored. I imagined him smoking cigarettes with his toes. Highly impressed by the vision, I asked him if he could, in fact, perform this feat; and without a word, he inserted Gold Flake between big toe and its sidekick and wound himself into bizarre contortions. I clapped wildly, but he seemed to be in some pain for the rest of the day.

I ministered to his needs as a good son should, emptying ashtrays, sharpening pencils, bringing water to drink; while he, who after his fabulist beginnings had remembered that he was his father’s son and dedicated himself against everything which smacked of the unreal, scribbled out his ill-fated screenplay.

“Sonny Jim,” he informed me, “this damn country has been dreaming for five thousand years. It’s about time it started waking up.” Hanif was fond of railing against princes and demons, gods and heroes, against, in fact, the entire iconography of the Bombay film; in the temple of illusions, he had become the high priest of reality; while I, conscious of my miraculous nature, which involved me beyond all mitigation in the (Hanif-despised) myth-life of India, bit my lip and didn’t know where to look.

Hanif Aziz, the only realistic writer working in the Bombay film industry, was writing the story of a pickle-factory created, run and worked in entirely by women. There were long scenes describing the formation of a trade union; there were detailed descriptions of the pickling process. He would quiz Mary Pereira about recipes; they would discuss, for hours, the perfect blend of lemon, lime and garam masala. It is ironic that this arch-disciple of naturalism should have been so skillful (if unconscious) a prophet of his own family’s fortunes; in the indirect kisses of the
Lovers of Kashmir
he foretold my mother and her Nadir-Qasim’s meetings at the Pioneer Café; and in his un-filmed chutney scenario, too, there lurked a prophecy of deadly accuracy.

He besieged Homi Catrack with scripts. Catrack produced none of them; they sat in the small Marine Drive apartment, covering every available surface, so that you had to pick them off the toilet seat before you could lift it; but Catrack (out of charity? Or for another, soon-to-be-revealed reason?) paid my uncle a studio salary. That was how they survived, Hanif and Pia, on the largess of the man who would, in time, become the second human being to be murdered by mushrooming Saleem.

Homi Catrack begged him, “Maybe just one love scene?” And Pia, “What do you think, village people are going to give their rupees to see women pickling Alfonsos?” But Hanif, obdurately: “This is a film about work, not kissing. And nobody pickles Alfonsos. You must use mangoes with bigger stones.”

The ghost of Joe D’Costa did not, so far as I know, follow Mary Pereira into exile; however, his absence only served to increase her anxiety. She began, in these Marine Drive days, to fear that he would become visible to others besides herself, and reveal, during her absence, the awful secrets of what happened at Doctor Narlikar’s Nursing Home on Independence night. So each morning she left the apartment in a state of jelly-like worry, arriving at Buckingham Villa in near-collapse; only when she found that Joe had remained both invisible and silent did she relax. But after she returned to Marine Drive, laden with samosas and cakes and chutneys, her anxiety began to mount once again … but as I had resolved (having troubles enough of my own) to keep out of all heads except the Children’s, I did not understand why.

Panic attracts panic; on her journeys, sitting in jam-packed buses (the trams had just been discontinued), Mary heard all sorts of rumors and tittle-tattle, which she relayed to me as matters of absolute fact. According to Mary, the country was in the grip of a sort of supernatural invasion. “Yes, baba, they say in Kurukshetra an old Sikh woman woke up in her hut and saw the old-time war of the Kurus and Pandavas happening right outside! It was in the papers and all, she pointed to the place where she saw the chariots of Arjun and Karna, and there were truly wheel-marks in the mud! Baap-re-baap, such so-bad things: at Gwalior they have seen the ghost of the Rani of Jhansi; rakshasas have been seen many-headed like Ravana, doing things to women and pulling down trees with one finger. I am good Christian woman, baba; but it gives me fright when they tell that the tomb of Lord Jesus is found in Kashmir. On the tombstones are carved two pierced feet and a local fisherwoman has sworn she saw them bleeding—real blood, God save us!—on Good Friday … what is happening, baba, why these old things can’t stay dead and not plague honest folk?” And I, wide-eyed, listening; and although my uncle Hanif roared with laughter, I remain, today, half-convinced that in that time of accelerated events and diseased hours the past of India rose up to confound her present; the new-born, secular state was being given an awesome reminder of its fabulous antiquity, in which democracy and votes for women were irrelevant … so that people were seized by atavistic longings, and forgetting the new myth of freedom reverted to their old ways, their old regionalist loyalties and prejudices, and the body politic began to crack. As I said: lop off just one fingertip and you never know what fountains of confusion you will unleash.

“And cows, baba, have been vanishing into thin air; poof! and in the villages, the peasants must starve.”

It was at this time that I, too, was possessed by a strange demon; but in order that you may understand me properly, I must begin my account of the episode on an innocent evening, when Hanif and Pia Aziz had a group of friends round for cards.

My aunty was prone to exaggerate; because although
Filmfare
and
Screen Goddess
were absent, my uncle’s house was still a popular place. On card-evenings, it would burst at the seams with jazzmen gossiping about quarrels and reviews in American magazines, and singers who carried throat-sprays in their handbags, and members of the Uday Shankar dance-troupe, which was trying to form a new style of dance by fusing Western ballet with bharatanatyam; there were musicians who had been signed up to perform in the All-India Radio music festival, the Sangeet Sammelan; there were painters who argued violently amongst each other. The air was thick with political, and other, chatter. “As a matter of fact, I am the only artist in India who paints with a genuine sense of ideological commitment!”—“O, it’s too bad about Ferdy, he’ll never get another band after this”—“Menon? Don’t talk to me about Krishna. I knew him when he had principles. I, myself, have never abandoned …” “… Ohé, Hanif, yaar, why we don’t see Lal Qasim here these days?” And my uncle, looking anxiously towards me: “Shh … what Qasim? I don’t know any person by that name.”

… And mingling with the hubbub in the apartment, there was the evening color and noise of Marine Drive: promenaders with dogs, buying chambeli and channa from hawkers; the cries of beggars and bhel-puri vendors; and the lights coming on in a great arcing necklace, round and up to Malabar Hill … I stood on the balcony with Mary Pereira, turning my bad ear to her whispered rumors, the city at my back and the crowding, chattering card-schools before my eyes. And one day, amongst the card-players, I recognized the sunken-eyed, ascetic form of Mr. Homi Catrack. Who greeted me with embarrassed heartiness: “Hi there, young chap! Doing fine? Of course, of course you are!”

My uncle Hanif played rummy dedicatedly; but he was in the thrall of a curious obsession—namely, that he was determined never to lay down a hand until he completed a thirteen-card sequence in hearts. Always hearts; all the hearts, and nothing but the hearts would do. In his quest for this unattainable perfection, my uncle would discard perfectly good threes-of-a-kind, and whole sequences of spades clubs diamonds, to the raucous amusement of his friends. I heard the renowned shehnai-player Ustad Changez Khan (who dyed his hair, so that on hot evenings the tops of his ears were discolored by running black fluid) tell my uncle; “Come on, mister; leave this heart business, and just play like the rest of us fellows.” My uncle confronted temptation; then boomed above the din, “No, dammit, go to the devil and leave me to my game!” He played cards like a fool; but I, who had never seen such singleness of purpose, felt like clapping.

One of the regulars at Hanif Aziz’s legendary card-evenings was a
Times of India
staff photographer, who was full of sharp tales and scurrilous stories. My uncle introduced me to him: “Here’s the fellow who put you on the front page, Saleem. Here is Kalidas Gupta. A terrible photographer; a really badmaash type. Don’t talk to him too long; he’ll make your head spin with scandal!” Kalidas had a head of silver hair and a nose like an eagle. I thought he was wonderful. “Do you really know scandals?” I asked him; but all he said was, “Son, if I told, they would make your ears burn.” But he never found out that the evil genius, the
éminence grise
behind the greatest scandal the city had ever known was none other than Saleem Snotnose … I mustn’t race ahead. The affair of the curious baton of Commander Sabarmati must be recounted in its proper place. Effects must not (despite the tergiversatory nature of time in 1958) be permitted to precede causes.

I was alone on the balcony. Mary Pereira was in the kitchen helping Pia to prepare sandwiches and cheese-pakoras; Hanif Aziz was immersed in his search for the thirteen hearts; and now Mr. Homi Catrack came out to stand beside me. “Breath of fresh air,” he said. “Yes, sir,” I replied. “So,” he exhaled deeply. “So, so. Life is treating you good? Excellent little fellow. Let me shake you by the hand.” Ten-year-old hand is swallowed up by film magnate’s fist (the left hand; the mutilated right hand hangs innocently by my side) … and now a shock. Left palm feels paper being thrust into it—sinister paper, inserted by dexterous fist! Catrack’s grip tightens; his voice becomes low, but also cobra-like, sibilant; inaudible in the room with the green-striped sofa, his words penetrate my one good ear: “Give this to your aunty Secretly secretly. Can do? And keep mum; or I’ll send the police to cut your tongue out.” And now, loud and cheery. “Good! Glad to see you in such high spirits!” Homi Catrack is patting me on the head; and moving back to his game.

Threatened by policemen, I have remained silent for two decades; but no longer. Now, everything has to come out.

The card-school broke up early: “The boy has to sleep,” Pia was whispering, “Tomorrow he goes to school again.” I found no opportunity of being alone with my aunt; I was tucked up on my sofa with the note still clutched in my left fist. Mary was asleep on the floor … I decided to feign a nightmare. (Deviousness did not come unnaturally to me.) Unfortunately, however, I was so tired that I fell asleep; and, in the event, there was no need to pretend: because I dreamed the murder of my classmate Jimmy Kapadia.

… We are playing football in the main stairwell at school, on red tiles, slipping sliding. A black cross set in the blood-red tiles. Mr. Crusoe at the head of the stairs: “Mustn’t slide down the banisters boys that cross is where one boy fell.” Jimmy plays football on the cross. “The cross is lies,” Jimmy says, “They tell you lies to spoil your fun.” His mother calls up on the telephone. “Don’t play Jimmy your bad heart.” The bell. The telephone, replaced, and now the bell … Ink-pellets stain the classroom air. Fat Perce and Glandy Keith have fun. Jimmy wants a pencil, prods me in the ribs. “Hey man, you got a pencil, give. Two ticks, man.” I give. Zagallo enters. Zagallo’s hand is up for silence: look at my hair growing on his palm! Zagallo in pointy tin-soldier hat … I must have my pencil back. Stretching out my finger giving Jimmy a poke. “Sir, please look sir, Jimmy fell!” “Sir I saw sir Snotnose poked!” “Snotnose shot Kapadia, sir!” “Don’t play Jimmy your bad heart!” “You be quiet,” Zagallo cries, “Jongle feelth, shut up.”