Salman Rushdie - Midnight's children

For the sake of their privacy, I am refusing to distinguish the voices from one another; and for other reasons. For one thing, my narrative could not cope with five hundred and eighty-one fully-rounded personalities; for another, the children, despite their won-drously discrete and varied gifts, remained, to my mind, a sort of many-headed monster, speaking in the myriad tongues of Babel; they were the very essence of multiplicity, and I see no point in dividing them now. (But there were exceptions. In particular, there was Shiva; and there was Parvati-the-witch.)

… Destiny, historical role, numen: these were mouthfuls too large for ten-year-old gullets. Even, perhaps, for mine; despite the ever-present admonitions of the fisherman's pointing finger and the Prime Minister's letter, I was constantly distracted from my sniff-given marvels by the tiny occurrences of everyday life, by feeling hungry or sleepy, by monkeying around with the Monkey, or going to the cinema to see Cobra Woman or Vera Cruz, by my growing longing for long trousers and by the inexplicable below-the-belt heat engendered by the approaching School Social at which we, the boys of the Cathedral and John Connon Boys' High School, would be permitted to dance the box-step and the Mexican Hat Dance with the girls from our sister institution-such as Masha Miovic the champion breast-stroker ('Нее hee,' said Glandy Keith Colaco) and Elizabeth Purkiss and Janey Jackson-European girls, my God, with loose skirts and kissing ways!-in short, my attention was continually seized by the painful, engrossing torture of growing up.

Even a symbolic gander must come down, at last, to earth; so it isn't nearly enough for me now (as it was not then) to confine my story to its miraculous aspects; I must return (as I used to return) to the quotidian; I must permit blood to spill.

The first mutilation of Saleem Sinai, which was rapidly followed by the second, took place one Wednesday early in 1958-the Wednesday of the much-anticipated Social-under the auspices of the Anglo-Scottish Education Society. That is, it happened at school.

Saleem's assailant: handsome, frenetic, with a barbarian's shaggy moustache: I present the leaping, hair-tearing figure of Mr Emil Zagallo, who taught us geography and gymnastics, and who, that morning, unintentionally precipitated the crisis of my life. Zagallo claimed to be Peruvian, and was fond of calling us jungle-Indians, bead-lovers; he hung a print of a stern, sweaty soldier in a pointy tin hat and metal pantaloons above his blackboard and had a way of stabbing a finger at it in times of stress and shouting, 'You see heem, you savages? Thees man eez civilization! You show heem respect: he's got a sword!' And he'd swish his cane through the stonewalled air. We called him Pagal-Zagal, crazy Zagallo, because for all his talk of llamas and conquistadores and the Pacific Ocean we knew, with the absolute certainty of rumour, that he'd been born in a Mazagaon tenement and his Goanese mother had been abandoned by a decamped shipping agent; so he was not only an 'Anglo' but probably a bastard as well. Knowing this, we understood why Zagallo affected his Latin accent, and also why he was always in a fury, why he beat his fists against the stone walk of the classroom; but the knowledge didn't stop us being afraid. And this Wednesday morning, we knew we were in for trouble, because Optional Cathedral had been cancelled.

The Wednesday morning double period was Zagallo's geography class; but only idiots and boys with bigoted parents attended it, because it was also the time when we could choose to troop off to St Thomas's Cathedral in crocodile formation, a long line of boys of every conceivable religious denomination, escaping from school into the bosom of the Christians' considerately optional God. It drove Zagallo wild, but he was helpless; today, however, there was a dark glint in his eye, because the Croaker (that is to say, Mr Crusoe the headmaster) had announced at morning Assembly that Cathedral was cancelled. In a bare, scraped voice emerging from his face of an anaesthetized frog, he sentenced us to double geography and Pagal-Zagal, taking us all by surprise, because we hadn't realized that God was permitted to exercise an option, too. Glumly we trooped into Zagallo's lair; one of the poor idiots whose parents never allowed them to go to Cathedral whispered viciously into my ear, 'You jus' wait: hell really get you guys today.'

Padma: he really did.

Seated gloomily in class: Glandy Keith Colaco, Fat Perce Fishwala, Jimmy Kapadia the scholarship boy whose father was a taxi-driver, Hairoil Sabarmati, Sonny Ibrahim, Cyrus-the-great and I. Others, too, but there's no time now, because with eyes narrowing in delight, crazy Zagallo is calling us to order.

'Human geography,' Zagallo announces. 'Thees ees what? Kapadia?'

'Please sir don't know sir.' Hands fly into the air-five belong to church-banned idiots, the sixth inevitably to Cyrus-the-great. But Zagallo is out for blood today: the godly are going to suffer. 'Feelth from the jongle,' he buffets Jimmy Kapadia, then begins to twist an ear casually, 'Stay in class sometimes and find out!'

'Ow ow ow yes sir sorry sir…' Six hands are waving but Jimmy's ear is in danger of coming off. Heroism gets the better of me… 'Sir please stop sir he has a heart condition sir!' Which is true; but the truth is dangerous, because now Zagallo is rounding on me: 'So, a leetle arguer, ees eet?' And I am being led by my hair to the front of the class. Under the relieved eyes of my fellow-pupils-thank God it's him not us-I writhe in agony beneath imprisoned tufts.

'So answer the question. You know what ees human geography?'

Pain fills my head, obliterating all notions of telepathic cheatery: 'Aiee sir no sir ouch!'

… And now it is possible to observe a joke descending on Zagallo, a joke pulling his face apart into the simulacrum of a smile; it is possible to watch his hand darting forward, thumb-and-forefinger extended; to note how thumb-and-forefinger close around the tip of my nose and pull downwards… where the nose leads, the head must follow, and finally the nose is hanging down and my eyes are obliged to stare damply at Zagallo's sandalled feet with their dirty toehails while Zagallo unleashes his wit.

'See, boys-you see what we have here? Regard, please, the heedeous face of thees primitive creature. It reminds you of?'

And the eager responses: 'Sir the devil sir.' 'Please sir one cousin of mine!' 'No sir a vegetable sir I don't know which.' Until Zagallo, shouting above the tumult, 'Silence! Sons of baboons! Thees object here'-a tug on my nose-'thees is human geography!'

'How sir where sir what sir?'

Zagallo is laughing now. 'You don't see?' he guffaws. 'In the face of thees ugly ape you don't see the whole map of India?'

'Yes sir no sir you show us sir!'

'See here-the Deccan peninsula hanging down!' Again ouchmy-nose.

'Sir sir if that's the map of India what are the stains sir?' It is Glandy Keith Colaco feeling bold. Sniggers, titters from my fellows. And Zagallo, taking the question in his stride: 'These stains,' he cries, 'are Pakistan! Thees birthmark on the right ear is the East Wing; and thees horrible stained left cheek, the West! Remember, stupid boys: Pakistan ees a stain on the face of India!'

'Ho ho,' the class laughs, 'Absolute master joke, sir!'

But now my nose has had enough; staging its own, unprompted revolt against the grasping thumb-and-forefinger, it unleashes a weapon of its own… a large blob of shining goo emerges from the left nostril, to plop into Mr Zagallo's palm. Fat Perce Fishwala yells, 'Lookit that, sir! The drip from his nose, sir! Is that supposed to be Ceylon?'

His palm smeared with goo, Zagallo loses his jokey mood. 'Animal,' he curses me, 'You see what you do?' Zagallo's hand releases my nose; returns to hair. Nasal refuse is wiped into my neatly-parted locks. And now, once again, my hair is seized; once again, the hand is pulling… but upwards now, and my head has jerked upright, my feet are moving on to tiptoe, and Zagallo, 'What are you? Tell me what you are!'