Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie [163]
Imagine, if you can, my sudden joy; imagine with what speed the nightmare fled from my thoughts, as I nestled against my extraordinary aunt’s petticoats! As she re-arranged herself, to get comfortable, and one golden melon caressed my cheek! As Pia’s hand sought out mine and grasped it firmly … now I discharged my duty. When my aunt’s hand wrapped itself around mine, paper passed from palm to palm. I felt her stiffen, silently; then, although I snuggled up closer closer closer, she was lost to me; she was reading in the dark, and the stiffness of her body was increasing; and then suddenly I knew that I had been tricked, that Catrack was my enemy; and only the threat of policemen prevented me from telling my uncle.
(At school, the next day, I was told of Jimmy Kapadia’s tragic death, suddenly at home, of a heart seizure. It is possible to kill a human being by dreaming his death? My mother always said so; and, in that case, Jimmy Kapadia was my first murder victim. Homi Catrack was to be the next.)
When I returned from my first day back at school, having basked in the unusual sheepishness of Fat Perce and Glandy Keith (“Lissen, yaar, how did we know your finger was in the … hey, man, we got free tickets for a picture tomorrow, you want to come?”) and my equally unexpected popularity (“No more Zagallo! Solid, man! You really lost your hair for something good!”), Aunty Pia was out. I sat quietly with Uncle Hanif while, in the kitchen, Mary Pereira prepared dinner. It was a peaceful little family scene; but the peace was shattered, abruptly, by the crash of a slamming door. Hanif dropped his pencil as Pia, having slammed the front door, flung open the living-room door with equal force. Then he boomed cheerfully, “So, wife: what’s the drama?” … But Pia was not to be defused. “Scribble,” she said, her hand slicing air, “Allah, don’t stop for me! So much talent, a person cannot go to the pot in this house without finding your genius. Are you happy, husband? We are making much money? God is good to you?” Still Hanif remained cheerful. “Come Pia, our little guest is here. Sit, have tea …” Actress Pia froze in an attitude of disbelief. “O God! Such a family I have come to! My life is in ruins, and you offer tea; your mother offers petrol! All is madness …” And Uncle Hanif, frowning now: “Pia, the boy …” A shriek. “Ahaaa! The boy—but the boy has suffered; he is suffering now; he knows what it is to lose, to feel forlorn! I, too, have been abandoned: I am great actress, and here I sit surrounded by tales of bicycle-postmen and donkey-cart drivers! What do you know of a woman’s grief? Sit, sit, let some fat rich Parsee film-producer give you charity, never mind that your wife wears paste jewels and no new saris for two years; a woman’s back is broad, but, beloved husband, you have made my days into deserts! Go, ignore me now, just leave me in peace to jump from the window! I will go into the bedroom now,” she concluded, “and if you hear no more from me it is because my heart is broken and I am dead.” More doors slammed: it was a terrific exit.
Uncle Hanif broke a pencil, absent-mindedly, into two halves. He shook his head wonderingly: “What’s got into her?” But I knew. I, bearer of secrets, threatened by policemen, I knew and bit my lip. Because, trapped as I was in the crisis of the marriage of my uncle and aunt, I had broken my recently-made rule and entered Pia’s head; I had seen her visit to Homi Catrack and knew that, for years now, she had been his fancy-woman; I had heard him telling