Salman Rushdie - Midnight's children

Mumtaz made the paans for Nadir but did not like the taste herself. She spat streams of nibu-pani. His jets were red and hers were lime. It was the happiest time of her life. And she said afterwards, at the ending of the long silence, 'We would have had children in the end; only then it wasn't right, that's all.' Mumtaz Aziz loved children all her life.

Meanwhile, Reverend Mother moved sluggishly through the months in the grip of a silence which had become so absolute that even the servants received their instructions in sign language, and once the cook Daoud had been staring at her, trying to understand her somnolently frantic signalling, and as a result had not been looking in the direction of the boiling pot of gravy which fell upon his foot and fried it like a five-toed egg; he opened-his mouth to scream but no sound emerged, and after that he became convinced that the old hag had the power of witchery, and became too scared to leave her service. He stayed until his death, hobbling around the courtyard and being attacked by the geese.

They were not easy years. The drought led to rationing, and what with the proliferation of meatless days and riceless days it was hard to feed an extra, hidden mouth. Reverend Mother was forced to dig deep into her pantry, which thickened her rage like heat under a sauce. Hairs began to grow out of the moles on her face. Mumtaz noticed with concern that her mother was swelling, month by month. The unspoken words inside her were blowing her up… Mumtaz had the impression that her mother's skin was becoming dangerously stretched.

And Doctor Aziz spent his days out of the house, away from the deadening silence, so Mumtaz, who spent her nights underground, saw very little in those days of the father whom she loved; and Emerald kept her promise, telling the Major nothing about the family secret; but conversely, she told her family nothing about her relationship with him, which was fair, she thought; and in the cornfield Mustapha and Hanif and Rashid the rickshaw boy became infected with the listlessness of the times; and finally the house on Cornwallis Road drifted as far as August 9th, 1945, and things changed.

Family history, of course, has its proper dietary laws. One is supposed to swallow and digest only the permitted parts of it, the halal portions of the past, drained of their redness, their blood. Unfortunately, this makes the stories less juicy; so I am about to become the first and only member of my family to flout the laws of halal. Letting no blood escape from the body of the tale, I arrive at the unspeakable part; and, undaunted, press on.

What happened in August 1945? The Rani of Cooch Naheen died, but that's not what I'm after, although when she went she had become so sheetly-white that it was difficult to see her against the bed-clothes; having fulfilled her function by bequeathing my story a silver spittoon, she had the grace to exit quickly… also in 1945, the monsoons did not fail. In the Burmese jungle, Orde Wingate and his Chindits, as well as the army of Subhas Chandra Bose, which was fighting on the Japanese side, were drenched by the returning rains. Satyagraha demonstrators in Jullundur, lying non-violently across railway lines, were soaked to the skin. The cracks in the long-parched earth began to close; there were towels wedged against the doors and windows of the house on Cornwallis Road, and they had to be wrung out and replaced constandy. Mosquitoes sprouted in the pools of water standing by every roadside. And the cellar-Mumtaz's Taj Mahal grew damp, until at last she fell ill. For some days she told nobody, but when her eyes became red-rimmed and she began to shake with fever, Nadir, fearing pneumonia, begged her to go to her father for treatment. She spent the next many weeks back in her maiden's bed, and Aadam Aziz sat by his daughter's bedside, putting cooling flannels on her forehead while she shook. On August 6th the illness broke. On the morning of the 9th Mumtaz was well enough to take a little solid food.

And now my grandfather fetched an old leather bag with the word heidelberg burned into the leather at the base, because he had decided that, as she was very run-down, he had better give her a thorough physical check-up. As he unclasped the bag, his daughter began to cry.

(And now we're here. Padma: this is it.)

Ten minutes later the long time of silence was ended for ever as my grandfather emerged roaring from the sick-room. He bellowed for his wife, his daughters, his sons. His lungs were strong and the noise reached Nadir Khan in the cellar. It would not have been difficult for him to guess what the fuss was about.

The family assembled in the drawing-room around the radiogram, beneath the ageless photographs. Aziz carried Mumtaz into the room and set her down on a couch. His face looked terrible. Can you imagine how the insides of his nose must have felt? Because he had this bombshell to drop: that, after two years of marriage, his daughter was still a virgin.

It had been three years since Reverend Mother had spoken. 'Daughter, is this thing true?' The silence, which had been hanging in the corners of the house like a torn cobweb, was finally blown away; but Mumtaz just nodded: Yes. True.

Then she spoke. She said she loved her husband and the other thing would come right in the end. He was a good man and when it was possible to have children he would surely find it possible to do the thing. She said a marriage should not depend on the thing, she had thought, so she had not liked to mention it, and her father was not right to tell everyone out loud like he had. She would have said more; but now Reverend Mother burst.

Three years of words poured out of her (but her body, stretched by the exigencies of storing them, did not diminish). My grandfather stood very still by the Telefunken as the storm broke over him. Whose idea had it been? Whose crazy fool scheme, whatsitsname, to let this coward who wasn't even a man into the house? To stay here, whatsitsname, free as a bird, food and shelter for three years, what did you care about meatless days, whatsitsname, what did you know about the cost of rice? Who was the weakling, whatsitsname, yes, the white-haired weakling who had permitted this iniquitous marriage? Who had put his daughter into that scoundrel's, whatsitsname, bed? Whose head was full of every damn fool incomprehensible thing, whatsitsname, whose brain was so softened by fancy foreign ideas that he could send his child into such an unnatural marriage? Who had spent his life offending God, whatsitsname, and on whose head was this a judgment? Who had brought disaster down upon his house… she spoke against my grandfather for an hour and nineteen minutes and by the time she had finished the clouds had run out of water and the house was full of puddles. And, before she ended, her youngest daughter Emerald did a very curious thing.

Emerald's hands rose up beside her face, bunched into fists, but with index fingers extended. Index fingers entered ear-holes and seemed to life Emerald out of her chair until she was running, fingers plugging ears, running-full-tilt!-without her dupatta on, out into the street, through the puddles of water, past the rickshaw-stand, past the paan-shop where the old men were just emerging cautiously into the clean fresh air of after-the-rain, and her speed amazed the urchins who were on their marks, waiting to begin their game of dodging in and out between the betel-jets, because nobody was used to seeing a young lady, much less one of the Teen Batti, running alone and distraught through the rain-soaked streets with her fingers in her ears and no dupatta around her shoulders. Nowadays, the cities are full of modern, fashionable, dupatta-less misses; but back then the old men clicked their tongues in sorrow, because a woman without a dupatta was a woman without honour, and why had Emerald Bibi chosen to leave her honour at home? The old ones were baffled, but Emerald knew. She saw, clearly, freshly in the after-rain air, that the fountain-head of her family's troubles was that cowardly plumpie (yes, Padma) who lived underground. If she could get rid of him everyone would be happy again… Emerald ran without pausing to the Cantonment district. The Cantt, where the army was based; where Major Zulfikar would be! Breaking her oath, my aunt arrived at his office.