Midnight's Children (21 page)

“Moth-eaten! Look, Begum: moth-eaten! You forgot to put in any naphthalene balls!”

But now the countdown will not be denied … eighteen hours; seventeen; sixteen … and already, at Doctor Narlikar’s Nursing Home, it is possible to hear the shrieks of a woman in labor. Wee Willie Winkie is here; and his wife Vanita; she had been in a protracted, unproductive labor for eight hours now. The first pangs hit her just as, hundreds of miles away, M. A. Jinnah announced the midnight birth of a Muslim nation … but still she writhes on a bed in the Narlikar Home’s “charity ward” (reserved for the babies of the poor) … her eyes are standing half-way out of her head, her body glistens with sweat, but the baby shows no signs of coming, nor is its father present; it is eight o’clock in the morning, but there is still the possibility that, given the circumstances, the baby could be waiting for midnight.

Rumors in the city: “The statue galloped last night!” … “And the stars are unfavorable!” … But despite these signs of ill-omen, the city was poised, with a new myth glinting in the corners of its eyes. August in Bombay: a month of festivals, the month of Krishna’s birthday and Coconut Day; and this year—fourteen hours to go, thirteen, twelve—there was an extra festival on the calendar, a new myth to celebrate, because a nation which had never previously existed was about to win its freedom, catapulting us into a world which, although it had five thousand years of history, although it had invented the game of chess and traded with Middle Kingdom Egypt, was nevertheless quite imaginary; into a mythical land, a country which would never exist except by the efforts of a phenomenal collective will—except in a dream we all agreed to dream; it was a mass fantasy shared in varying degrees by Bengali and Punjabi, Madrasi and Jat, and would periodically need the sanctification and renewal which can only be provided by rituals of blood. India, the new myth—a collective fiction in which anything was possible, a fable rivalled only by the two other mighty fantasies: money and God.

I have been, in my time, the living proof of the fabulous nature of this collective dream; but for the moment, I shall turn away from these generalized, macrocosmic notions to concentrate upon a more private ritual; I shall not describe the mass blood-letting in progress on the frontiers of the divided Punjab (where the partitioned nations are washing themselves in one another’s blood, and a certain Punchinello-faced Major Zulfikar is buying refugee property at absurdly low prices, laying the foundations of a fortune that will rival the Nizam of Hyderabad’s); I shall avert my eyes from the violence in Bengal and the long pacifying walk of Mahatma Gandhi. Selfish? Narrow-minded? Well, perhaps; but excusably so, in my opinion. After all, one is not born every day.

Twelve hours to go. Amina Sinai, having awakened from her flypaper nightmare, will not sleep again until after … Ramram Seth is filling her head, she is adrift in a turbulent sea in which waves of excitement alternate with deep, giddying, dark, watery hollows of fear. But something else is in operation, too. Watch her hands—as, without any conscious instructions, they press down, hard, upon her womb; watch her lips, muttering without her knowledge: “Come on, slowpoke, you don’t want to be late for the newspapers!”

Eight hours to go … at four o’clock that afternoon, William Methwold drives up the two-storey hillock in his black 1946 Rover. He parks in the circus-ring between the four noble villas; but today he visits neither goldfish-pond nor cactus-garden; he does not greet Lila Sabarmati with his customary, “How goes the pianola? Everything tickety-boo?”—nor does he salute old man Ibrahim who sits in the shade of a ground-floor verandah, rocking in a rocking-chair and musing about sisal; looking neither towards Catrack nor Sinai, he takes up his position in the exact center of the circus-ring. Rose in lapel, cream hat held stiffly against his chest, center-parting glinting in afternoon light, William Methwold stares straight ahead, past clocktower and Warden Road, beyond Breach Candy’s map-shaped pool, across the golden four o’clock waves, and salutes; while out there, above the horizon, the sun begins its long dive towards the sea.

Six hours to go. The cocktail hour. The successors of William Methwold are in their gardens—except that Amina sits in her tower-room, avoiding the mildly competitive glances being flung in her direction by Nussie-next-door, who is also, perhaps, urging her Sonny down and out between her legs; curiously they watch the Englishman, who stands as still and stiff as the ramrod to which we have previously compared his center-parting; until they are distracted by a new arrival. A long, stringy man, wearing three rows of beads around his neck, and a belt of chicken-bones around his waist; his dark skin stained with ashes, his hair loose and long—naked except for beads and ashes, the sadhu strides up amongst the red-tiled mansions. Musa, the old bearer, descends upon him to shoo him away; but hangs back, not knowing how to command a holy man. Cleaving through the veils of Musa’s indecision, the sadhu enters the garden of Buckingham Villa; walks straight past my astonished father; seats himself, cross-legged, beneath the dripping garden tap.

“What do you want here, sadhuji?”—Musa, unable to avoid deference; to which the sadhu, calm as a lake: “I have come to await the coming of the One. The Mubarak—He who is Blessed. It will happen very soon.”

Believe it or not: I was prophesied twice! And on that day on which everything was so remarkably well-timed, my mother’s sense of timing did not fail her; no sooner had the sadhu’s last word left his lips than there issued, from a first-floor tower-room with glass tulips dancing in the windows, a piercing yell, a cocktail containing equal proportions of panic, excitement and triumph … “Arré Ahmed!” Amina Sinai yelled, “Janum, the baby! It’s coming—bang on time!”

Ripples of electricity through Methwold’s Estate … and here comes Homi Catrack, at a brisk emaciated sunken-eyed trot, offering: “My Studebaker is at your disposal, Sinai Sahib; take it now—go at once!” … and when there are still five hours and thirty minutes left, the Sinais, husband and wife, drive away down the two-storey hillock in the borrowed car; there is my father’s big toe pressing down on the accelerator; there are my mother’s hands pressing down on her moon-belly; and they are out of sight now, around the bend, past Band Box Laundry and Reader’s Paradise, past Fatbhoy jewels and Chimalker toys, past One yard of Chocolates and Breach Candy gates, driving towards Doctor Narlikar’s Nursing Home where, in a charity ward, Wee Willie’s Vanita still heaves and strains, spine curving, eyes popping, and a midwife called Mary Pereira is waiting for her time, too … so that neither Ahmed of the jutting lip and squashy belly and fictional ancestors, nor dark-skinned prophecy-ridden Amina were present when the sun finally set over Methwold’s Estate, and at the precise instant of its last disappearance—five hours and two minutes to go—William Methwold raised a long white arm above his head. White hand dangled above brilliantined black hair; long tapering white fingers twitched towards center-parting, and the second and final secret was revealed, because fingers curled, and seized hair; drawing away from his head, they failed to release their prey; and in the moment after the disappearance of the sun Mr. Methwold stood in the afterglow of his Estate with his hairpiece in his hand.

“A baldie!” Padma exclaims. “That slicked-up hair of his … I knew it; too good to be true!”

Bald, bald; shiny-pated! Revealed: the deception which had tricked an accordionist’s wife. Samson-like, William Methwold’s power had resided in his hair; but now, bald patch glowing in the dusk, he flings his thatch through the window of his motor-car; distributes, with what looks like carelessness, the signed title-deeds to his palaces; and drives away. Nobody at Methwold’s Estate ever saw him again; but I, who never saw him once, find him impossible to forget.

Suddenly everything is saffron and green. Amina Sinai in a room with saffron walls and green woodwork. In a neighboring room, Wee Willie Winkie’s Vanita, green-skinned, the whites of her eyes shot with saffron, the baby finally beginning its descent through inner passages that are also, no doubt, similarly colorful. Saffron minutes and green seconds tick away on the clocks on the walls. Outside Doctor Narlikar’s Nursing Home, there are fireworks and crowds, also conforming to the colors of the night—saffron rockets, green sparkling rain; the men in shirts of zafaran hue, the women in saris of lime. On a saffron-and-green carpet, Doctor Narlikar talks to Ahmed Sinai. “I shall see to your Begum personally,” he says, in gentle tones the color of the evening, “Nothing to worry about. You wait here; plenty of room to pace.” Doctor Narlikar, who dislikes babies, is nevertheless an expert gynecologist. In his spare time he lectures writes pamphlets berates the nation on the subject of contraception. “Birth Control,” he says, “is Public Priority Number One. The day will come when I get that through people’s thick heads, and then I’ll be out of a job.” Ahmed Sinai smiles, awkward, nervous. “Just for tonight,” my father says, “forget lectures—deliver my child.”

It is twenty-nine minutes to midnight. Doctor Narlikar’s Nursing Home is running on a skeleton staff; there are many absentees, many employees who have preferred to celebrate the imminent birth of the nation, and will not assist tonight at the births of children. Saffron-shirted, green-skirted, they throng in the illuminated streets, beneath the infinite balconies of the city on which little dia-lamps of earthenware have been filled with mysterious oils; wicks float in the lamps which line every balcony and rooftop, and these wicks, too, conform to our two-tone color scheme: half the lamps burn saffron, the others flame with green.

Threading its way through the many-headed monster of the crowd is a police car, the yellow and blue of its occupants’ uniforms transformed by the unearthly lamplight into saffron and green. (We are on Colaba Causeway now, just for a moment, to reveal that at twenty-seven minutes to midnight, the police are hunting for a dangerous criminal. His name: Joseph D’Costa. The orderly is absent, has been absent for several days, from his work at the Nursing Home, from his room near the slaughterhouse, and from the life of a distraught virginal Mary.)

Twenty minutes pass, with aaahs from Amina Sinai, coming harder and faster by the minute, and weak tiring aaahs from Vanita in the next room. The monster in the streets has already begun to celebrate; the new myth courses through its veins, replacing its blood with corpuscles of saffron and green. And in Delhi, a wiry serious man sits in the Assembly Hall and prepares to make a speech. At Methwold’s Estate goldfish hang stilly in ponds while the residents go from house to house bearing pistachio sweetmeats, embracing and kissing one another—green pistachio is eaten, and saffron laddoo-balls. Two children move down secret passages while in Agra an ageing doctor sits with his wife, who has two moles on her face like witchnipples, and in the midst of sleeping geese and motheaten memories they are somehow struck silent, and can find nothing to say. And in all the cities all the towns all the villages the little dia-lamps burn on window-sills porches verandahs, while trains burn in the Punjab, with the green flames of blistering paint and the glaring saffron of fired fuel, like the biggest dias in the world.

And the city of Lahore, too, is burning.

The wiry serious man is getting to his feet. Anointed with holy water from the Tanjore River, he rises; his forehead smeared with sanctified ash, he clears his throat. Without written speech in hand, without having memorized any prepared words, Jawaharlal Nehru begins: “… Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny; and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge—not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially …”

It is two minutes to twelve. At Doctor Narlikar’s Nursing Home, the dark glowing doctor, accompanied by a midwife called Flory, a thin kind lady of no importance, encourages Amina Sinai: “Push! Harder! … I can see the head! …” while in the neighboring room one Doctor Bose—with Miss Mary Pereira by his side—presides over the terminal stages of Vanita’s twenty-four-hour labor … “Yes; now; just one last try, come on; at last, and then it will be over! …” Women wail and shriek while in another room men are silent. Wee Willie Winkie—incapable of song—squats in a corner, rocking back and forth, back and forth … and Ahmed Sinai is looking for a chair. But there are no chairs in this room; it is a room designated for pacing; so Ahmed Sinai opens a door, finds a chair at a deserted receptionist’s desk, lifts it, carries it back into the pacing room, where Wee Willie Winkie rocks, rocks, his eyes as empty as a blind man’s … will she live? won’t she? … and now, at last, it is midnight.

The monster in the streets has begun to roar, while in Delhi a wiry man is saying, “… At the stroke of the midnight hour, while the world sleeps, India awakens to life and freedom …” And beneath the roar of the monster there are two more yells, cries, bellows, the howls of children arriving in the world, their unavailing protests mingling with the din of independence which hangs saffron-and-green in the night sky—“A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new; when an age ends; and when the soul of a nation long suppressed finds utterance …” while in a room with saffron-and-green carpet Ahmed Sinai is still clutching a chair when Doctor Narlikar enters to inform him: “On the stroke of midnight, Sinai brother, your Begum Sahiba gave birth to a large, healthy child: a son!” Now my father began to think about me (not knowing …); with the image of my face filling his thoughts he forgot about the chair; possessed by the love of me (even though …), filled with it from top of head to fingertips, he let the chair fall.

Yes, it was my fault (despite everything) … it was the power of my face, mine and nobody else’s, which caused Ahmed Sinai’s hands to release the chair; which caused the chair to drop, accelerating at thirty-two feet per second, and as Jawaharlal Nehru told the Assembly Hall, “We end today a period of ill-fortune,” as conch-shells blared out the news of freedom, it was on my account that my father cried out too, because the falling chair shattered his toe.