Midnight's Children (64 page)

We sat there for-what? minutes, hours, weeks?-and there were the glowing eyes of blind women leading invisible guests to their seats; and gradually, in the dark, I became aware of being surrounded by soft, amorous susurrations, like the couplings of velvet mice; I heard the chink of glasses held by twined arms, and gentle brushings of lips; with one good ear and one bad ear, I heard the sound of illicit sexuality filling the midnight air… but no, I did not want to know what was happening; although my nose was able to smell, in the susurrating silence of the Club, all manner of new stories and beginnings, of exotic and forbidden loves, and little invisible contretemps and who-was-going-too-jar, in fact all sorts of juicy tit-bits, I chose to ignore them all, because this was a new world in which I had no place. My son, Aadam, however, sat beside me with ears burning with fascination; his eyes shone in the darkness as he listened, and memorized, and learned… and then there was light.

A single shaft of light spilled into a pool on the floor of the Midnight-Confidential Club. From the shadows beyond the fringe of the illuminated area, Aadam and I saw Picture Singh sitting stiffly, cross-legged, next to a handsome Brylcreemed youth; each of them was surrounded by musical instruments and the closed baskets of their art. A loudspeaker announced the beginning of that legendary contest for the tide of Most Charming Man In The World; but who was listening? Did anyone even pay attention, or were they too busy with lips tongues hands? This was the name of Pictureji's opponent: the Maharaja of Cooch Naheen.

(I don't know: it's easy to assume a tide. But perhaps, perhaps he really was the grandson of that old Rani who had once, long ago, been a friend of Doctor Aziz; perhaps the heir to the supporter-of-the-Hummingbird was pitted, ironically, against the man who might have been the second Mian Abdullah! It's always possible; many maharajas have been poor since the Widow revoked their civil-list salaries.)

How long, in that sunless cavern, did they struggle? Months, years, centuries? I cannot say: I watched, mesmerized, as they strove to outdo one another, charming every kind of snake imaginable, asking for rare varieties to be sent from the Bombay snake-farm (where once Doctor Schaapsteker…); and the Maharaja matched Picture Singh snake for snake, succeeding even in charming constrictors, which only Pictureji had previously managed to do. In that infernal Club whose darkness was another aspect of its proprietor's obsession with the colour black (under whose influence he tanned his skin darker darker every day at the Sun 'n' Sand), the two virtuosi goaded snakes into impossible feats, making them tie themselves in knots, or bows, or persuading them to drink water from wine-glasses, and to jump through fiery hoops… defying fatigue, hunger and age, Picture Singh was putting on the show of his life (but was anyone looking? Anyone at all?)-and at last it became clear that the younger man was tiring first; his snakes ceased to dance in time to his flute; and finally, through a piece of sleight-of-hand so fast that I did not see what happened, Picture Singh managed to knot a king cobra around the Maharaja's neck.

What Picture said: 'Give me best, captain, or I'll tell it to bite.'

That was the end of the contest. The humiliated princeling left the Club and was later reported to have shot himself in a taxi. And on the floor of his last great battle, Picture Singh collapsed like a falling banyan tree… blind attendants (to one of whom I entrusted Aadam) helped me carry him from the field.

But the Midnight-Confidential had one trick left up its sleeve. Once a night-just to add a little spice-a roving spotlight searched out one of the illicit couples, and revealed them to the hidden eyes of their fellows: a touch of luminary Russian roulette which, no doubt, made life more thrilling for the city's young cosmopolitans… and who was the chosen victim that night? Who, horn-templed stain-faced cucumber-nosed, was drowned in scandalous light? Who, made as blind as female attendants by the voyeurism of light-bulbs, almost dropped the legs of his unconscious friend?

Saleem returned to the city of his birth to stand illuminated in a cellar while Bombayites tittered at him from the dark.

Quickly now, because we have come to the end of incidents, I record that, in a back room in which light was permitted, Picture Singh recovered from his fainting fit; and while Aadam slept soundly, one of the blind waitresses brought us a congratulatory, reviving meal. On the thali of victory: samosas, pakoras, rice, dal, puris; and green chutney. Yes, a little aluminium bowl of chutney, green, my God, green as grasshoppers… and before long a puri was in my hand; and chutney was on the puri; and then I had tasted it, and almost imitated the fainting act of Picture Singh, because it carried me back to a day when I emerged nine-fingered from a hospital and went into exile at the home of Hanif Aziz, and was given the best chutney in the world… the taste of the chutney was more than just an echo of that long-ago taste-it was the old taste itself, the very same, with the power of bringing back the past as if it had never been away… in frenzy of excitement, I grabbed the blind waitress by the arm; scarcely able to contain myself, I blurted out: 'The chutney! Who made it?' I must have shouted, because Picture, 'Quiet, captain, you'll wake the boy… and what's the matter? You look like you saw your worst enemy's ghost!' And the blind waitress, a little coldly: 'You don't like the chutney?' I had to hold back an almighty bellow. 'I like it,' I said in a voice caged in bars of steel, 'I like it-now will you tell me where it's from?' And she, alarmed, anxious to get away: 'It's Braganza Pickle; best in Bombay, everyone knows.'

I made her bring me the jar; and there, on the label, was the address: of a building with a winking, saffron-and-green neon goddess over the gate, a factory watched over by neon Mumbadevi, while local trains went yellow-and-browning past: Braganza Pickles (Private) Ltd, in the sprawling north of the town.

Once again an abracadabra, an open-sesame: words printed on a chutney-jar, opening the last door of my life… I was seized by an irresistible determination to track down the maker of that impossible chutney of memory, and said, 'Pictureji, I must go…'

I do not know the end of the story of Picture Singh; he refused to accompany me on my quest, and I saw in his eyes that the efforts of his struggle had broken something inside him, that his victory was, in fact, a defeat; but whether he is still in Bombay (perhaps working for Mr Shroff), or back with his washer-woman; whether he is still alive or not, I am not able to say… 'How can I leave you?' I asked, desperately, but he replied, 'Don't be a fool, captain; you have something you must do, then there is nothing to do but do it. Go, go, what do I want with you? Like old Resham told you: go, go quickly, go!'

Taking Aadam with me, I went.

Journey's end: from the underworld of the blind waitresses, I walked north north north, holding my son in my arms; and came at last to where flies are gobbled by lizards, and vats bubble, and strong-armed women tell bawdy jokes; to this world of sharp-lipped overseers with conical breasts, and the all-pervasive clank of pickle-jars from the bottling-plant… and who, at the end of my road, planted herself in front of me, arms akimbo, hair glistening with perspiration on the forearms? Who, direct as ever, demanded, 'You, mister: what you want?'

'Me!' Padma is yelling, excited and a little embarrassed by the memory. 'Of course, who else? Me me me!'

'Good afternoon, Begum,' I said. (Padma interjects: 'O you-always so polite and all!') 'Good afternoon; may I speak to the manager?'

O grim, defensive, obstinate Padma! 'Not possible, Manager Begum is busy. You must make appointment, come back later, so please go away just now.'

Listen: I would have stayed, persuaded, bullied, even used force to get past my Padma's arms; but there was a cry from the catwalk-this catwalk, Padma, outside the offices!-the catwalk from which someone whom I have not been willing to name until now was looking down, across gigantic pickle-vats and simmering chutneys-someone rushing down clattering metal steps, shrieking at the top of her voice:

'O my God, O my God, O Jesus sweet Jesus, baba, my son, look who's come here, arre baba, don't you see me, look how thin you got, come, come, let me kiss you, let me give you cake!'

Just as I had guessed, the Manager Begum of Braganza Pickles (Private) Ltd, who called herself Mrs Braganza, was of course my erstwhile ayah, the criminal of midnight, Miss Mary Pereira, the only mother I had left in the world.

Midnight, or thereabouts. A man carrying a folded (and intact) black umbrella walks towards my window from the direction of the railway tracks, stops, squats, shits. Then sees me silhouetted against light and, instead of taking offence at my voyeurism, calls: 'Watch this!' and proceeds to extrude the longest turd I have ever seen. 'Fifteen inches!' he calls, 'How long can you make yours?' Once, when I was more energetic, I would have wanted to tell his life-story; the hour, and his possession of an umbrella, would have been all the connections I needed to begin the process of weaving him into my life, and I have no doubt that I'd have finished by proving his indispensability to anyone who wishes to understand my life and benighted times; but now I'm disconnected, unplugged, with only epitaphs left to write. So, waving at the champion defecator, I call back: 'Seven on a good day,' and forget him.

Tomorrow. Or the day after. The cracks will be waiting for August 15th. There is still a little time: I'll finish tomorrow.

Today I gave myself the day off and visited Mary. A long hot dusty bus-ride through streets beginning to bubble with the excitement of the coming Independence Day, although I can smell other, more tarnished perfumes: disillusion, venality, cynicism… the nearly-thirty-one-year-old myth of freedom is no longer what it was. New myths are needed; but that's none of my business.

Mary Pereira, who now calls herself Mrs Braganza, lives with her sister Alice, now Mrs Fernandas, in an apartment in the pink obelisk of the Narlikar women on the two-storey hillock where once, in a demolished palace, she slept on a servant's mat. Her bedroom occupies more or less the same cube of air in which a fisherman's pointing finger led a pair of boyish eyes out towards the horizon; in a teak rocking-chair, Mary rocks my son, singing 'Red Sails In The Sunset'. Red dhow-sails spread against the distant sky.

A pleasant enough day, on which old days are recalled. The day when I realized that an old cactus-bed had survived the revolution of the Narlikar women, and borrowing a spade from the mail, dug up a long-buried world: a tin globe containing yellowed ant-eaten jumbo-size baby-snap, credited to Kalidas Gupta, and a Prime Minister's letter. And days further off: for the dozenth time we chatter about the change in Mary Pereira's fortunes. How she owed it all to her dear Alice. Whose poor Mr Fernandes died of colour-blindness, having become confused, in his old Ford Prefect, at one of the city's then-few traffic lights. How Alice visited her in Goa with the news that her employers, the fearsome and enterprising Narlikar women, were willing to put some of their tetrapod-money into a pickle firm. 'I told them, nobody makes achar-chutney like our Mary,' Alice had said, with perfect accuracy, 'because she puts her feelings inside them.' So Alice turned out to be a good girl in the end. And baba, what do you think, how could I believe the whole world would want to eat my poor pickles, even in England they eat. And now, just think, I sit here where your dear house used to be, while God-knows what-all has happened to you, living like a beggar so long, what a world, baapu-re!

And bitter-sweet lamentations: O, your poor mummy-daddy! That fine madam, dead! And the poor man, never knowing who loved him or how to love! And even the Monkey… but I interrupt, no, not dead: no, not true, not dead. Secretly, in a nunnery, eating bread.

Mary, who has stolen the name of poor Queen Catharine who gave these islands to the British, taught me the secrets of the pickling process. (Finishing an education which began in this very air-space when I stood in a kitchen as she stirred guilt into green chutney.) Now she sits at home, retired in her white-haired old-age, once more happy as an ayah with a baby to raise. 'Now you finished your writing-writing, baba, you should take more time for your son.' But Mary, I did it for him. And she, switching the subject, because her mind makes all sorts of flea-jumps these days: 'O baba, baba, look at you, how old you got already!'

Rich Mary, who never-dreamed she would be rich, is still unable to sleep on beds. But drinks sixteen Coca-Colas a day, unworried about teeth, which have all fallen out anyway. A flea-jump: 'Why you getting married so sudden sudden?' Because Padma wants. No, she is not in trouble, how could she, in my condition? 'Okay, baba, I only asked.'

And the day would have wound down peacefully, a twilight day near the end of time, except that now, at last, at the age of three years, one month and two weeks. Aadam Sinai uttered a sound.

'Ab…' Arre, O my God, listen, baba, the boy is saying something! And Aadam, very carefully: 'Abba…' Father. He is calling me father. But no, he has not finished, there is strain on his face, and finally my son, who will have to be a magician to cope with the world I'm leaving him, completes his awesome first word: '…cadabba.'

Abracadabra! But nothing happens, we do not turn into toads, angels do not fly in through the window: the lad is just flexing his muscles. I shall not see his miracles…. Amid Mary's celebrations of Aadam's achievement, I go back to Padma, and the factory; my son's enigmatic first incursion into language has left a worrying fragrance in my nostrils.

Abracadabra: not an Indian word at all, a cabbalistic formula derived from the name of the supreme god of the Basilidan gnostics, containing the number 365, the number of the days of the year, and of the heavens, and of the spirits emanating from the god Abraxas. 'Who,' I am wondering, not for the first time, 'does the boy imagine he is?'

My special blends: I've been saving them up. Symbolic value of the pickling process: all the six hundred million eggs which gave birth to the population of India could fit inside a single, standard-sized pickle-jar; six hundred million spermatozoa could be lifted on a single spoon. Every pickle-jar (you will forgive me if I become florid for a moment) contains, therefore, the most exalted of possibilities: the feasibility of the chutnification of history; the grand hope of the pickling of time! I, however, have pickled chapters. Tonight, by screwing the lid firmly on to ajar bearing the legend Special Formula No. 30; 'Abracadabra', I reach the end of my long-winded autobiography; in words and pickles, I have immortalized my memories, although distortions are inevitable in both methods. We must live, I'm afraid, with the shadows of imperfection.