Midnight's Children (46 page)

The gradual disintegration of the Midnight Children’s Conference—which finally fell apart on the day the Chinese armies came down over the Himalayas to humiliate the Indian fauj—was already well under way. When novelty wears off, boredom, and then dissension, must inevitably ensue. Or (to put it another way) when a finger is mutilated, and fountains of blood flow out, all manner of vilenesses become possible … whether or not the cracks in the Conference were the (active-metaphorical) result of my finger-loss, they were certainly widening. Up in Kashmir, Narada-Markandaya was falling into the solipsistic dreams of the true narcissist, concerned only with the erotic pleasures of constant sexual alterations; while Soumitra the time-traveler, wounded by our refusal to listen to his descriptions of a future in which (he said) the country would be governed by a urine-drinking dotard who refused to die, and people would forget everything they had ever learned, and Pakistan would split like an amoeba, and the prime ministers of each half would be assassinated by their successors, both of whom—he swore despite our disbelief—would be called by the same name … wounded Soumitra became a regular absentee from our nightly meetings, disappearing for long periods into the spidery labyrinths of Time. And the sisters from Baud were content with their ability to bewitch fools young and old. “What can this Conference help?” they inquired. “We already have too many lovers.” And our alchemist member was busying himself in a laboratory built for him by his father (to whom he had revealed his secret); preoccupied with the Philosopher’s Stone, he had very little time for us. We had lost him to the lure of gold.

And there were other factors at work as well. Children, however magical, are not immune to their parents; and as the prejudices and world-views of adults began to take over their minds, I found children from Maharashtra loathing Gujaratis, and fair-skinned northerners reviling Dravidian “blackies”; there were religious rivalries; and class entered our councils. The rich children turned up their noses at being in such lowly company; Brahmins began to feel uneasy at permitting even their thoughts to touch the thoughts of untouchables; while, among the low-born, the pressures of poverty and Communism were becoming evident … and, on top of all this, there were clashes of personality, and the hundred squalling rows which are unavoidable in a parliament composed entirely of half-grown brats.

In this way the Midnight Children’s Conference fulfilled the prophecy of the Prime Minister and became, in truth, a mirror of the nation; the passive-literal mode was at work, although I railed against it, with increasing desperation, and finally with growing resignation … “Brothers, sisters!” I broadcast, with a mental voice as uncontrollable as its physical counterpart, “Do not let this happen! Do not permit the endless duality of masses-and-classes, capital-and-labor, them-and-us to come between us! We,” I cried passionately, “must be a third principle, we must be the force which drives between the horns of the dilemma; for only by being other, by being new, can we fulfill the promise of our birth!” I had supporters, and none greater than Parvati-the-witch; but I felt them slipping away from me, each distracted by his or her own life … just as, in truth, I was being distracted by mine. It was as though our glorious congress was turning out to be no more than another of the toys of childhood, as though long trousers were destroying what midnight had created … “We must decide on a program,” I pleaded, “our own Five Year Plan, why not?” But I could hear, behind my anxious broadcast, the amused laughter of my greatest rival; and there was Shiva in all our heads, saying scornfully, “No, little rich boy; there is no third principle; there is only money-and-poverty, and have-and-lack, and right-and-left; there is only me-against-the-world! The world is not ideas, rich boy; the world is no place for dreamers or their dreams; the world, little Snotnose, is things. Things and their makers rule the world; look at Birla, and Tata, and all the powerful: they make things. For things, the country is run. Not for people. For things, America and Russia send aid; but five hundred million stay hungry. When you have things, then there is time to dream; when you don’t, you fight.” The Children, listening fascinatedly as we fought … or perhaps not, perhaps even our dialogue failed to hold their interest. And now I: “But people are not things; if we come together, if we love each other, if we show that this, just this, this people-together, this Conference, this children-sticking-together-through-thick-and-thin, can be that third way …” But Shiva, snorting: “Little rich boy, that’s all just wind. All that importance-of-the-individual. All that possibility-of-humanity. Today, what people are is just another kind of thing.” And I, Saleem, crumbling: “But … free will … hope … the great soul, otherwise known as
mahatma
, of mankind … and what of poetry, and art, and …” Whereupon Shiva seized his victory: “You see? I knew you’d turn out to be like that. Mushy, like overcooked rice. Sentimental as a grandmother. Go, who wants your rubbish? We all have lives to live. Hell’s bells, cucumber-nose, I’m fed up with your Conference. It’s got nothing to do with one single thing.”

You ask: these are ten-year-olds? I reply: Yes, but. You say: did ten-year-olds, or even almost-elevens, discuss the role of the individual in society? And the rivalry of capital and labor? Were the internal stresses of agrarian and industrialized zones made explicit? And conflicts in socio-cultural heritages? Did children of less than four thousand days discuss identity, and the inherent conflicts of capitalism? Having got through fewer than one hundred thousand hours, did they contrast Gandhi and Marxlenin, power and impotence? Was collectivity opposed to singularity? Was God killed by children? Even allowing for the truth of the supposed miracles, can we now believe that urchins spoke like old men with beards?

I say: maybe not in these words; maybe not in words at all, but in the purer language of thought; but yes, certainly, this is what was at the bottom of it all; because children are the vessels into which adults pour their poison, and it was the poison of grown-ups which did for us. Poison, and after a gap of many years, a Widow with a knife.

In short: after my return to Buckingham Villa, even the salt of the midnight children lost its savor; there were nights, now, when I did not even bother to set up my nationwide network; and the demon lurking inside me (it had two heads) was free to get on with its devilment. (I never knew about Shiva’s guilt or innocence of whore-murders; but such was the influence of Kali-Yuga that I, the good guy and natural victim, was certainly responsible for two deaths. First came Jimmy Kapadia; and second was Homi Catrack.)

If there is a third principle, its name is childhood. But it dies; or rather, it is murdered.

We all had our troubles in those days. Homi Catrack had his idiot Toxy, and the Ibrahims had other worries: Sonny’s father Ismail, after years of bribing judges and juries, was in danger of being investigated by the Bar Commission; and Sonny’s uncle Ishaq, who ran the second-rate Embassy Hotel near Flora Fountain, was reputedly deep in debt to local gangsters, and worried constantly about being “bumped off” (in those days, assassinations were becoming as quotidian as the heat) … so perhaps it isn’t surprising that we had all forgotten about the existence of Professor Schaapsteker. (Indians grow larger and more powerful as they age; but Schaapsteker was a European, and his kind unfortunately fade away with the years, and often completely disappear.)

But now, driven, perhaps, by my demon, my feet led me upstairs to the top floor of Buckingham Villa, where I found a mad old man, incredibly tiny and shrunken, whose narrow tongue darted constantly in and out between his lips—flicking, licking: the former searcher after antivenes, assassin of horses, Sharpsticker Sahib, now ninety-two and no longer of his eponymous Institute, but retired into a dark top-floor apartment filled with tropical vegetation and serpents pickled in brine. Age, failing to draw his teeth and poison-sacs, had turned him instead into the incarnation of snakehood; like other Europeans who stay too long, the ancient insanities of India had pickled his brains, so that he had come to believe the superstitions of the Institute orderlies, according to whom he was the last of a line which began when a king cobra mated with a woman who gave birth to a human (but serpentine) child … it seems that all my life I’ve only had to turn a corner to tumble into yet another new and fabulously transmogrified world. Climb a ladder (or even a staircase) and you find a snake awaiting you.

The curtains were always drawn; in Schaapsteker’s rooms, the sun neither rose nor set, and no clocks ticked. Was it the demon, or our mutual sense of isolation which drew us together? … Because, in those days of the Monkey’s ascendancy and the Conference’s decline, I began to ascend the stairs whenever possible, and listen to the ravings of the crazy, sibilant old man.

His first greeting to me, when I stumbled into his unlocked lair, was: “So, child—you have recovered from the typhoid.” The sentence stirred time like a sluggish dust-cloud and rejoined me to my one-year-old self; I remembered the story of how Schaapsteker had saved my life with snake-poison. And afterwards, for several weeks, I sat at his feet, and he revealed to me the cobra which lay coiled within myself.

Who listed, for my benefit, the occult powers of snakes? (Their shadows kill cows; if they enter a man’s dreams, his wife conceives; if they are killed, the murderer’s family is denied male issue for twenty generations.) And who described to me—with the aid of books and stuffed corpses—the cobra’s constant foes? “Study your enemies, child,” he hissed, “or they will surely kill you.” … At Schaapsteker’s feet, I studied the mongoose and the boar, the dagger-billed adjutant bird and the barasinha deer, which crushes snakes’ heads under its feet; and the Egyptian ichneumon, and ibis; the four-feet-high secretary bird, fearless and hook-beaked, whose appearance and name made me think suspicious thoughts about my father’s Alice Pereira; and the jackal buzzard, the stink cat, the honey ratel from the hills; the road runner, the peccary, and the formidable cangamba bird. Schaapsteker, from the depths of his senility, instructed me in life. “Be wise, child. Imitate the action of the snake. Be secret; strike from the cover of a bush.”

Once he said: “You must think of me as another father. Did I not give you your life when it was lost?” With this statement he proved that he was as much under my spell as I under his; he had accepted that he, too, was one of that endless series of parents to whom I alone had the power of giving birth. And although, after a time, I found the air in his chambers too oppressive, and left him once more to the isolation from which he would never again be disturbed, he had shown me how to proceed. Consumed by the two-headed demon of revenge, I used my telepathic powers (for the first time) as a weapon; and in this way I discovered the details of the relationship between Homi Catrack and Lila Sabarmati. Lila and Pia were always rivals in beauty; it was the wife of the heir-apparent to the title of Admiral of the Fleet who had become the film magnate’s new fancy-woman. While Commander Sabarmati was at sea on manoeuvres, Lila and Homi were performing certain maneuvers of their own; while the lion of the seas awaited the death of the then-Admiral, Homi and Lila, too, were making an appointment with the Reaper. (With my help.)

“Be secret,” said Sharpsticker Sahib; secretly, I spied on my enemy Homi, and on the promiscuous mother of Eyeslice and Hairoil (who were very full of themselves of late, ever since, in fact, the papers announced that Commander Sabarmati’s promotion was a mere formality.
Only a matter of time
…). “Loose woman,” the demon within me whispered silently, “Perpetrator of the worst of maternal perfidies! We shall turn you into an awful example; through you we shall demonstrate the fate which awaits the lascivious. O unobservant adulteress! Did you not see what sleeping around did to the illustrious Baroness Simki von der Heiden?—who was, not to put too fine a point upon it, a bitch, just like yourself.”

My view of Lila Sabarmati has mellowed with age; after all, she and I had one thing in common—her nose, like mine, possessed tremendous powers. Hers, however, was a purely worldly magic: a wrinkle of nasal skin could charm the steeliest of Admirals; a tiny flare of the nostrils ignited strange fires in the hearts of film magnates. I am a little regretful about betraying that nose; it was a little like stabbing a cousin in the back.

What I discovered: every Sunday morning at ten a.m., Lila Sabarmati drove Eyeslice and Hairoil to the Metro cinema for the weekly meetings of the Metro Cub Club. (She volunteered to take the rest of us, too; Sonny and Cyrus, the Monkey and I piled into her Indian-made Hindustan car.) And while we drove towards Lana Turner or Robert Taylor or Sandra Dee, Mr. Homi Catrack was also preparing himself for a weekly rendezvous. While Lila’s Hindustan puttered along beside railway-lines, Homi was knotting a cream silk scarf around his throat; while she halted at red lights, he donned a Technicolored bush-coat; when she was ushering us into the darkness of the auditorium, he was putting on gold-rimmed sunglasses; and when she left us to watch our film, he, too, was abandoning a child. Toxy Catrack never failed to react to his departures by wailing kicking thrashing-of-legs; she knew what was going on, and not even Bi-Appah could restrain her.

Once upon a time there were Radha and Krishna, and Rama and Sita, and Laila and Majnu; also (because we are not unaffected by the West) Romeo and Juliet, and Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. The world is full of love stories, and all lovers are in a sense the avatars of their predecessors. When Lila drove her Hindustan to an address off Colaba Causeway, she was Juliet coming out on to her balcony; when cream-scarfed, gold-shaded Homi sped off to meet her (in the same Studebaker in which my mother had once been rushed to Doctor Narlikar’s Nursing Home), he was Leander swimming the Hellespont towards Hero’s burning candle. As for my part in the business—I will not give it a name.

I confess: what I did was no act of heroism. I did not battle Homi on horseback, with fiery eyes and flaming sword; instead, imitating the action of the snake, I began to cut pieces out of newspapers. From
GOAN LIBERATION COMMITTEE LAUNCHES SATYAGRAHA CAMPAIGN
I extracted the letters
“COM”
;
SPEAKER OF E-PAK ASSEMBLY DECLARED MANIAC
gave me my second syllable,
“MAN.”
I found “
DER
” concealed in
NEHRU CONSIDERS RESIGNATION AT CONGRESS ASSEMBLY;
into my second word now, I excised
“SAB”
from
RIOTS, MASS ARRESTS IN RED-RUN KERALA: SABOTEURS RUN AMOK: GHOSH ACCUSES CONGRESS GOONDAS
, and got
“ARM”
from
CHINESE ARMED FORCES’ BORDER ACTIVITIES SPURN BANDUNG PRINCIPLES
. To complete the name, I snipped the letters
“ATI”
from
DULLES FOREIGN POLICY IS INCONSISTENT, ERRATIC, P.M. AVERS
. Cutting up history to suit my nefarious purposes, I seized on
WHY INDIRA GHANDI IS CONGRESS PRESIDENT NOW
and kept the
“WHY”;
but I refused to be tied exclusively to politics, and turned to advertising for the
“DOES YOUR”
in
DOES YOUR CHEWING GUM LOSE ITS FLAVOR? BUT P. K. KEEPS ITS SAVOR!
A sporting human-interest story,
MOHUN BAGAN CENTER-FORWARD TAKES WIFE
, gave me its last word, and
“GO TO
” I took from the tragic
MASSES GO TO ABUL KALAM AZAD’S FUNERAL
. Now I was obliged to find my words in little pieces once again:
DEATH ON SOUTH COL: SHERPA PLUNGES
provided me with a much-needed
“COL,”
but “
ABA
” was hard to find, turning up at last in a cinema advertisement:
ALI-BABA, SEVENTEENTH SUPERCOLOSSAL WEEK—PLANS FILLING UP FAST!
… Those were the days when Sheikh Abdullah, the Lion of Kashmir, was campaigning for a plebiscite in his state to determine its future; his courage gave me the syllable
“CAUSE,”
because it led to this headline:
ABDULLAH “INCITEMENT” CAUSE OF HIS RE-ARREST—GOVT SPOKESMAN
. Then, too, Acharya Vinobha Bhave, who had spent ten years persuading landowners to donate plots to the poor in his bhoodan campaign, announced that donations had passed the million-acre mark, and launched two new campaigns, asking for the donations of whole villages (“gramdan”) and of individual lives (“jivandan”). When J. P. Narayan announced the dedication of his life to Bhave’s work, the headline
NARAYAN WALKS IN BHAVE’S WAY
gave me
my
much-sought
“WAY.”
I had nearly finished now; plucking an
“ON”
from
PAKISTAN ON COURSE FOR POLITICAL CHAOS: FACTION STRIFE BEDEVILS PUBLIC AFFAIRS
, and a “
SUNDAY
” from the masthead of the
Sunday Blitz
, I found myself just one word short. Events in East Pakistan provided me with my finale.
FURNITURE HURLING SLAYS DEPUTY E-PAK SPEAKER: MOURNING PERIOD DECLARED
gave me
“MOURNING,”
from which, deftly and deliberately, I excised the letter “U.” I needed a terminal question-mark, and found it at the end of the perennial query of those strange days:
AFTER NEHRU, WHO?