Salman Rushdie - Midnight's children

1956. Ahmed Sinai and Dr Narlikar played chess and argued-my father was a bitter opponent of Nasser, while Narlikar admired him openly. 'The man is bad for business,' Ahmed said; 'But he's got style,' Narlikar responded, glowing passionately, 'Nobody pushes him around.' At the same time, Jawaharlal Nehru was consulting astrologers about the country's Five Year Plan, in order to avoid another Karamstan; and while the world combined aggression and the occult, I lay concealed in a washing-chest which wasn't really big enough for comfort any more; and Amina Sinai became filled with guilt.

She was already trying to put out of her mind her adventure at the race-track; but the sense of sin which her mother's cooking had given her could not be escaped; so it was not difficult for her to think of the verrucas as a punishment… not only for the years-ago escapade at Mahalaxmi, but for failing to save her husband from the pink chitties of alcoholism; for the Brass Monkey's untamed, unfeminine ways; and for the size of her only son's nose. Looking back at her now, it seems to me that a fog of guilt had begun to form around her head-her black skin exuding black cloud which hung before her eyes. (Padma would believe it; Padma would know what I mean!) And as her guilt grew, the fog thickened-yes, why not?-there were days when you could hardly see her head above her neck!… Amina had become one of those rare people who take the burdens of the world upon their own backs; she began to exude the magnetism of the willingly guilty; and from then on everyone who came into contact with her felt the most powerful of urges to confess their own, private guilts. When they succumbed to my mother's powers, she would smile at them with a sweet sad foggy smile and they would go away, lightened, leaving their burdens on her shoulders; and the fog of guilt thickened. Amina heard about servants being beaten and officials being bribed; when my uncle Hanif and his wife the divine Pia came to call they related their quarrels in minute detail; Lila Sabarmati confided her infidelities to my mother's graceful, inclined, long-suffering ear; and Mary Pereira had to fight constantly against the almost-irresistible temptation to confess her crime.

Faced with the guilts of the world, my mother smiled foggily and shut her eyes tight; and by the time the roof fell in on her head her eyesight was badly impaired; but she could still see the washing-chest.

What was really at the bottom of my mother's guilt? I mean really, beneath verrucas and djinns and confessions? It was an unspeakable malaise, an affliction which could not even be named, and which no longer confined itself to dreams of an underworld husband… my mother had fallen (as my father would soon fall) under the spell of the telephone.

In the afternoons of that summer, afternoons as hot as towels, the telephone would ring. When Ahmed Sinai was asleep in his room, with his keys under his pillow and umbilical cords in his almirah, telephonic shrilling penetrated the buzzing of the heat insects; and my mother, verruca-hobbled, came into the hall to answer. And now, what expression is this, staining her face the colour of drying blood?… Not knowing that she's being observed, what fish-like flutterings of lips are these, what strangulated mouthings?… And why, after listening for a full five minutes, does my mother say, in a voice like broken glass, 'Sorry: wrong number'? Why are diamonds glistening on her eyelids?… The Brass Monkey whispered to me, 'Next time it rings, let's find out.'

Five days later. Once more it is afternoon; but today Amina is away, visiting Nussie-the-duck, when the telephone demands attention. 'Quick! Quick or it'll wake him!' The Monkey, agile as her name, picks up the receiver before Ahmed Sinai has even changed the pattern of his snoring… 'Hullo? Yaas? This is seven zero five six one; hullo?' We listen, every nerve on edge; but for a moment there is nothing at all. Then, when we're about to give up, the voice comes. '… Oh… yes… hullo…' And the Monkey, shouting almost, 'Hullo? Who is it, please?' Silence again; the voice, which has not been able to prevent itself from speaking, considers its answer; and then, '… Hullo… This is Shanti Prasad Truck Hire Company, please?…' And the Monkey, quick as a flash: 'Yes, what d'you want?' Another pause; the voice, sounding embarrassed, apologetic almost, says, 'I want to rent a truck.'

О feeble excuse of telephonic voice! О transparent flummery of ghosts! The voice on the phone was no truck-renter's voice; it was soft, a little fleshy, the voice of a poet… but after that, the telephone rang regularly; sometimes my mother answered it, listened in silence while her mouth made fish-motions, and finally, much too late, said, 'Sorry, wrong number'; at other times the Monkey and I clustered around it, two ears to earpiece, while the Monkey took orders for trucks. I wondered: 'Hey, Monkey, what d'you think? Doesn't the guy ever wonder why the trucks don't arrive?' And she, wide-eyed, flutter-voiced: 'Man, do you suppose… maybe they do!'

But I couldn't see how; and a tiny seed of suspicion was planted in me, a tiny glimmering of a notion that our mother might have a secret-our Amma! Who always said, 'Keep secrets and they'll go bad inside you; don't tell things and they'll give you stomach-ache!'-a minute spark which my experience in the washing-chest would fan into a forest fire. (Because this time, you see, she gave me proof.)

And now, at last, it is time for dirty laundry. Mary Pereira was fond of telling me, 'If you want to be a big man, baba, you must be very clean. Change clothes,' she advised, 'take regular baths. Go, baba, or I'll send you to the washerman, and he'll wallop you on his stone.' She also threatened me with bugs: 'All right, stay filthy, you will be nobody's darling except the flies'. They will sit on you while you sleep; eggs they'll lay under your skin!' In part, my choice of hiding-place was an act of defiance. Braving dhobis and houseflies, I concealed myself in the unclean place; I drew strength and comfort from sheets and towels; my nose ran freely into the stone-doomed linens; and always, when I emerged into the world from my wooden whale, the sad mature wisdom of dirty washing lingered with me, teaching me its philosophy of coolness and dignity-despite-everything and the terrible inevitability of soap.

One afternoon in June, I tiptoed down the corridors of the sleeping house towards my chosen refuge; sneaked past my sleeping mother into the white-tiled silence of her bathroom; lifted the lid off my goal; and plunged into its soft continuum of (predominantly white) textiles, whose only memories were of my earlier visits. Sighing softly, I pulled down the lid, and allowed pants and vests to massage away the pains of being alive, purposeless and nearly nine years old.

Electricity in the air. Heat, buzzing like bees. A mantle, hanging somewhere in the sky, waiting to fall gently around my shoulders… somewhere, a finger reaches towards a dial; a dial whirs around and around, electrical pulses dart along cable, seven, zero, five, six, one, The telephone rings. Muffled shrilling of a bell penetrates the washing-chest, in which a nearlynineyearold boy lies uncomfortably concealed… I, Saleem, became stiff with the fear of discovery, because now more noises entered the chest: squeak of bedsprings; soft clatter of slippers along corridor; the telephone, silenced in mid-shrill; and-or is this imagination? Was her voice too soft to hear?-the words, spoken too late as usual: 'Sorry. Wrong number.'

And now, hobbling footsteps returning to the bedroom; and the worst fears of the hiding boy are fulfilled. Doorknobs, turning, scream warnings at him; razor-sharp steps cut him deeply as they move across cool white dies. He stays frozen as ice, still as a stick; his nose drips silently into dirty clothes. A pajama-cord-snake-like harbinger of doom!-inserts itself into his left nostril. To sniff would be to die: he refuses to think about it.