Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie [122]
“But hey, man, that’s no-fair man, why don’t you do it yourself?”
“Listen, Sonny,” I pleaded, “you’re my friend, right?”
“Yeah, but you didn’t even help …”
“That was my sister, Sonny, so how could I?”
“No, so you have to do your own dirty …”
“Hey, Sonny, man, think. Think only. These girls need careful handling, man. Look how the Monkey flies off the handle! You’ve got the experience, yaar, you’ve been through it. You’ll know how to go gently this time. What do I know, man? Maybe she doesn’t like me even. You want me to have my clothes torn off, too? That would make you feel better?”
And innocent, good-natured Sonny, “… Well, no …?”
“Okay, then. You go. Sing my praises a little. Say never mind about my nose. Character is what counts. You can do that?”
“… Weeeelll … I … okay, but you talk to your sis also, yah?”
“I’ll talk, Sonny. What can I promise? You know what she’s like. But I’ll talk to her for sure.”
You can lay your strategies as carefully as you like, but women will undo them at a stroke. For every victorious election campaign, there are twice as many that fail … from the verandah of Buckingham Villa, through the slats of the chick-blind, I spied on Sonny Ibrahim as he canvassed my chosen constituency … and heard the voice of the electorate, the rising nasality of Evie Burns, splitting the air with scorn: “Who? Him? Whynt’cha tell him to jus’ go blow his nose? That sniffer? He can’t even ride a bike!”
Which was true.
And there was worse to come; because now (although a chick-blind divided the scene into narrow slits) did I not see the expression on Evie’s face begin to soften and change?—did Evie’s hand (sliced lengthways by the chick) not reach out towards my electoral agent?—and weren’t those Evie’s fingers (the nails bitten down to the quick) touching Sonny’s temple-hollows, the fingertips getting covered in dribbled Vaseline?—and did Evie say or did she not: “Now you, f’r instance: you’re cute”? Let me sadly affirm that I did; it did; they were; she did.
Saleem Sinai loves Evie Burns; Evie loves Sonny Ibrahim; Sonny is potty about the Brass Monkey; but what does the Monkey say?
“Don’t make me sick, Allah,” my sister said when I tried—rather nobly, considering how he’d failed me—to argue Sonny’s case. The voters had given the thumbs-down to us both.
I wasn’t giving in just yet. The siren temptations of Evie Burns—who never cared about me, I’m bound to admit—led me inexorably towards my fall. (But I hold nothing against her; because my fall led to a rise.)
Privately, in my clocktower, I took time off from my trans-subcontinental rambles to consider the wooing of my freckled Eve. “Forget middlemen,” I advised myself, “You’ll have to do this personally.” Finally, I formed my scheme: I would have to share her interests, to make her passions mine … guns have never appealed to me. I resolved to learn how to ride a bike.
Evie, in those days, had given in to the many demands of the hillock-top children that she teach them her bicycle-arts; so it was a simple matter for me to join the queue for lessons. We assembled in the circus-ring; Evie, ring-mistress supreme, stood in the center of five wobbly, furiously concentrating cyclists … while I stood beside her, bikeless. Until Evie’s coming I’d shown no interest in wheels, so I’d never been given any … humbly, I suffered the lash of Evie’s tongue.
“Where’ve you been living, fat nose? I suppose you wanna borrow mine?”
“No,” I lied penitently, and she relented. “Okay, okay,” Evie shrugged, “Get in the saddle and lessee whatchou’re made of.”
Let me reveal at once that, as I climbed on to the silver Arjuna Indiabike, I was filled with the purest elation; that, as Evie walked roundandround, holding the bike by the handlebars, exclaiming, “Gotcha balance yet? No? Geez, nobody’s got all year!”—as Evie and I