Midnight's Children (60 page)

Wind-blown newspapers visited my shack to inform me that my uncle, Mustapha Aziz, had been the victim of unknown assassins; I neglected to shed a tear. But there were other pieces of information; and from these, I must build reality.

On one sheet of paper (smelling of turnips) I read that the Prime Minister of India went nowhere without her personal astrologer. In this fragment, I discerned more than turnip-whiffs; mysteriously, my nose recognized, once again, the scent of personal danger. What I am obliged to deduce from this warning aroma: soothsayers prophesied me; might not soothsayers have undone me at the end? Might not a Widow, obsessed with the stars, have learned from astrologers the secret potential of any children born at that long-ago midnight hour? And was that why a Civil Servant, expert in genealogies, was asked to trace… and why he looked at me strangely in the morning? Yes, you see, the scraps begin to fit together! Padma, does it not become clear? Indira is India and India is Indira… but might she not have read her own father's letter to a midnight child, in which her own, sloganized centrality was denied; in which the role of mirror-of-the-nation was bestowed upon me? You see? You see?… And there is more, there is even clearer proof, because here is another scrap of the Times of India, in which the Widow's own news agency Samachar quotes her when she speaks of her 'determination to combat the deep and widespread conspiracy which has been growing'. I tell you: she did not mean the Janata Morcha! No, the Emergency had a black part as well as a white, and here is the secret which has lain concealed for too long beneath the mask of those stifled days: the truest, deepest motive behind the declaration of a State of Emergency was the smashing, the pulverizing, the irreversible discombobulation of the children of midnight. (Whose Conference had, of course, been disbanded years before; but the mere possibility of our re-unification was enough to trigger off the red alert.)

Astrologers-I have no doubt-sounded the alarums; in a black folder labelled m.c.c., names were gathered from extant records; but there was more to it than that. There were also betrayals and confessions; there were knees and a nose-a nose, and also knees.

Scraps, shreds, fragments: it seems to me that, immediately before 1 awoke with the scent of danger in my nostrils, I had dreamed that I was sleeping. I awoke, in this most unnerving of dreams, to find a stranger in my shack: a poetic-looking fellow with lank hair that wormed over his ears (but who was very thin on top). Yes: during my last sleep before what-has-to-be-described, I was visited by the shade of Nadir Khan, who was staring perplexedly at a silver spittoon, inlaid with lapis lazuli, asking absurdly, 'Did you steal this?-Because otherwise, you must be-is it possible?-my Mumtaz's little boy?' And when I confirmed, 'Yes, none other, I am he-,' the dream-spectre of Nadir-Qasim issued a warning: 'Hide. There is little time. Hide while you can.'

Nadir, who had hidden under my grandfather's carpet, came to advise me to do likewise; but too late, too late, because now I came properly awake, and smelled the scent of danger blaring like trumpets in my nose… afraid without knowing why, I got to my feet; and is it my imagination or did Aadam Sinai open blue eyes to stare gravely into mine? Were my son's eyes also filled with alarm? Had flap-ears heard what a nose had sniffed out? Did father and son commune wordlessly in that instant before it all began? I must leave the question-marks hanging, unanswered; but what is certain is that Parvati, my Laylah Sinai, awoke also and asked, 'What's up, mister? What's got your goat?'-And I, without fully knowing the reason: 'Hide; stay in here and don't come out.'

Then I went outside.

It must have been morning, although the gloom of the endless midnight hung over the ghetto like a fog… through the murky light of the Emergency, I saw children playing seven-tiles, and Picture Singh, with his umbrella folded under his left armpit, urinating against the walls of the Friday Mosque; a tiny bald illusionist was practising driving knives through the neck of his ten-year-old apprentice, and already a conjurer had found an audience, and was persuading large woollen balls to drop from the armpits of strangers; while in another corner of the ghetto, Chand Sahib the musician was practising his trumpet-playing, placing the ancient mouthpiece of a battered horn against his neck and playing it simply by exercising his throat-muscles… there, over there, were the three contortionist triplets, balancing surahis of water on their heads as they returned to their huts from the colony's single stand-pipe… in short, everything seemed in order. I began to chide myself for my dreams and nasal alarums; but then it started.

The vans and bulldozers came first, rumbling along the main road; they stopped opposite the ghetto of the magicians. A loudspeaker began to blare: 'Civic beautification programme… authorized operation of Sanjay Youth Central Committee… prepare instantly for evacuation to new site… this slum is a public eyesore, can no longer be tolerated… all persons will follow orders without dissent.' And while a loudspeaker blared, there were figures descending from vans: a brightly-coloured tent was being hastily erected, and there were camp beds and surgical equipment… and now from the vans there poured a stream of finely-dressed young ladies of high birth and foreign education, and then a second river of equally-well-dressed young men: volunteers, Sanjay Youth volunteers, doing their bit for society… but then I realized no, not volunteers, because all the men had the same curly hair and lips-like-women's-labia, and the elegant ladies were all identical, too, their features corresponding precisely to those of Sanjay's Menaka, whom news-scraps had described as a 'lanky beauty', and who had once modelled nighties for a mattress company… standing in the chaos of the slum clearance programme, I was shown once again that the ruling dynasty of India had learned how to replicate itself; but then there was no time to think, the numberless labia-lips and lanky-beauties were seizing magicians and old beggars, people were being dragged towards the vans, and now a rumour spread through the colony of magicians: 'They are doing nasbandi-sterilization is being performed!'-And a second cry: 'Save your women and children!'-And a riot is beginning, children who were just now playing seven-tiles are hurling stones at the elegant invaders, and here is Picture Singh rallying the magicians to his side, waving a furious umbrella, which had once been a creator of harmony but was now transmuted into a weapon, a flapping quixotic lance, and the magicians have become a defending army, Molotov cocktails are magically produced and hurled, bricks are drawn out of conjurers' bags, the air is thick with yells and missiles and the elegant labia-lips and lanky-beauties are retreating before the harsh fury of the illusionists; and there goes Picture Singh, leading the assault against the tent of vasectomy… Parvati or Laylah, disobeying orders, is at my side now, saying, 'My God, what are they-', and at this moment a new and more formidable assault is unleashed upon the slum: troops are sent in against magicians, women and children.

Once, conjurers card-tricksters puppeteers and mesmerists marched triumphantly beside a conquering army; but all that is forgotten now, and Russian guns are trained on the inhabitants of the ghetto. What chance do Communist wizards have against socialist rifles? They, we, are running now, every which way, Parvati and I are separated as the soldiers charge, I lose sight of Picture Singh, there are rifle-butts beating pounding, I see one of the contortionist triplets fall beneath the fury of the guns, people are being pulled by the hair towards the waiting yawning vans; and I, too, am running, too late, looking over my shoulder, stumbling on Dalda-cans empty crates and the abandoned sacks of the terrified illusionists, and over my shoulder through the murky night of the Emergency I see that all of this has been a smoke-screen, a side-issue, because hurtling through the confusion of the riot comes a mythical figure, an incarnation of destiny and destruction: Major Shiva has joined the fray, and he is looking only for me. Behind me, as I run, come the pumping knees of my doom…

… The picture of a hovel comes into my mind: my son! And not only my son: a silver spittoon, inlaid with lapis lazuli! Somewhere in the confusion of the ghetto a child has been left alone… somewhere a talisman, guarded for so long, has been abandoned. The Friday Mosque watches impassively as I swerve duck run between the tilting shacks, my feet leading me towards flap-eared son and spittoon… but what chance did I have against those knees? The knees of the war hero are coming closer closer as I flee, the joints of my nemesis thundering towards me, and he leaps, the legs of the war hero fly through the air, closing like jaws around my neck, knees squeezing the breath out of my throat, I am falling twisting but the knees hold tight, and now a voice-the voice of treachery betrayal hate!-is saying, as knees rest on my chest and pin me down in the thick dust of the slum: 'So, little rich boy: we meet again. Salaam.' I spluttered; Shiva smiled.

O shiny buttons on a traitor's uniform! Winking blinking like silver… why did he do it? Why did he, who had once led anarchistic apaches through the slums of Bombay, become the warlord of tyranny? Why did midnight's child betray the children of midnight, and take me to my fate? For love of violence, and the legitimizing glitter of buttons on uniforms? For the sake of his ancient antipathy towards me? Or-I find this most plausible-in exchange for immunity from the penalties imposed on the rest of us… yes, that must be it; O birthright-denying war hero! O mess-of-pottage-corrupted rival… But no, I must stop all this, and tell the story as simply as possible: while troops chased arrested dragged magicians from their ghetto, Major Shiva concentrated on me. I, too, was pulled roughly towards a van; while bulldozers moved forwards into the slum, a door was slammed shut… in the darkness I screamed, 'But my son!-And Parvati, where is she, my Laylah?-Picture Singh! Save me, Pictureji!'-But there were bulldozers now, and nobody heard me yelling.

Parvati-the-witch, by marrying me, fell victim to the curse of violent death that hangs over all my people… I do not know whether Shiva, having locked me in a blind dark van, went in search of her, or whether he left her to the bulldozers… because now the machines of destruction were in their element, and the little hovels of the shanty-town were slipping sliding crazily beneath the force of the irresistible creatures, huts snapping like twigs, the little paper parcels of the puppeteers and the magic baskets of the illusionists were being crushed into a pulp; the city was being beautified, and if there were a few deaths, if a girl with eyes like saucers and a pout of grief upon her lips fell beneath the advancing juggernauts, well, what of it, an eyesore was being removed from the face of the ancient capital… and rumour has it that, during the death-throes of the ghetto of the magicians, a bearded giant wreathed in snakes (but this may be an exaggeration) ran-full-tilt!-through the wreckage, ran wildly before the advancing bulldozers, clutching in his hand the handle of an irreparably-shattered umbrella, searching searching, as though his life depended on the search.

By the end of that day, the slum which clustered in the shadow of the Friday Mosque had vanished from the face of the earth; but not all the magicians were captured; not all of them were carted off to the barbed-wire camp called Khichripur, hotch-potch-town, on the far side of the Jamuna River; they never caught Picture Singh, and it is said that the day after the bulldozing of the magicians' ghetto, a new slum was reported in the heart of the city, hard by the New Delhi railway station. Bulldozers were rushed to the scene of the reported hovels; they found nothing. After that the existence of the moving slum of the escaped illusionists became a fact known to all the inhabitants of the city, but the wreckers never found it. It was reported at Mehrauli; but when vasectomists and troops went there, they found the Qutb Minar unbesmirched by the hovels of poverty.. Informers said it had appeared in the gardens of the Jantar Mantar, Jai Singh's Mughal observatory; but the machines of destruction, rushing to the scene, found only parrots and sun-dials. Only after the end of the Emergency did the moving slum come to a standstill; but that must wait for later, because it is time to talk, at long last, and without losing control, about my captivity in the Widows' Hostel in Benares.

Once Resham Bibi had wailed, 'Ai-o-ai-o!'-and she was right: I brought destruction down upon the ghetto of my saviours; Major Shiva, acting no doubt upon the explicit instructions of the Widow, came to the colony to seize me; while the Widow's son arranged for his civic-beautification and vasectomy programmes to carry out a diversionary manoeuvre. Yes, of course it was all planned that way; and (if I may say so) most efficiently. What was achieved during the riot of the magicians: no less a feat than the unnoticed capture of the one person on earth who held the key to the location of every single one of the children of midnight-for had I not, night after night, tuned in to each and every one of them? Did I not carry, for all time, their names addresses faces in my mind? I will answer that question: I did. And I was captured.

Yes, of course it was all planned that way. Parvati-the-witch had told me all about my rival; is it likely that she would not have mentioned me to him? I will answer that question, too: it is not likely at all. So our war hero knew where, in the capital, lurked the one person his masters wanted most (not even my uncle Mustapha knew where I went after I left him; but Shiva knew!)-and, once he had turned traitor, bribed, I have no doubt, by everything from promises of preferment to guarantees of personal safety, it was easy for him to deliver me into the hands of his mistress, the Madam, the Widow with the particoloured hair.

Shiva and Saleem, victor and victim; understand our rivalry, and you will gain an understanding of the age in which you live. (The reverse of this statement is also true.)

I lost something else that day, besides my freedom: bulldozers swallowed a silver spittoon. Deprived of the last object connecting me to my more tangible, historically-verifiable past, I was taken to Benares to face the consequences of my inner, midnight-given life.