Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie [105]
O feeble excuse of telephonic voice! O transparent flummery of ghosts! The voice on the phone was no truck-renter’s voice; it was soft, a little fleshly, 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 ear-piece, 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