Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie [234]
And at last—who were they following then? Did names matter any more?—they were given a quarry whose skills must have been the equal-and-opposite of the buddha’s own, otherwise why did it take so long to catch him? At last—unable to escape their training, pursue-relentlessly-arrest-remorselessly, they are in the midst of a mission without an end, pursuing a foe who endlessly eludes them, but they cannot report back to base empty-handed, and on they go, south south south, drawn by eternally-receding scent-trail; and perhaps by something more: because, in my life, fate has never been unwilling to lend a hand.
They have commandeered a boat, because the buddha said the trail led down the river; hungry unslept exhausted in a universe of abandoned rice-paddies, they row after their unseen prey; down the great brown river they go, until the war is too far away to remember, but still the scent leads them on. The river here has a familiar name: Padma. But the name is a local deception; in reality the river is still Her, the mother-water, goddess Ganga streaming down to earth through Shiva’s hair. The buddha has not spoken for days; he just points, there, that way, and on they go, south south south to the sea.
A nameless morning. Ayooba Shaheed Farooq awaking in the boat of their absurd pursuit, moored by the bank of Padma-Ganga—to find him gone. “Allah-Allah,” Farooq yelps, “Grab your ears and pray for pity, he’s brought us to this drowned place and run off, it’s all your fault, you Ayooba, that trick with the jump-leads and this is his revenge!” … The sun, climbing. Strange alien birds in the sky. Hunger and fear like mice in their bellies: and whatif, whatif the Mukti Bahini … parents are invoked. Shaheed has dreamed his pomegranate dream. Despair, lapping at the edges of the boat. And in the distance, near the horizon, an impossible endless huge green wall, stretching right and left to the ends of the earth! Unspoken fear: how can it be, how can what we are seeing be true, who builds walls across the world? … And then Ayooba, “Look-look, Allah!” Because coming towards them across the rice-paddies is a bizarre slow-motion chase: first the buddha with that cucumber-nose, you could spot it a mile off, and following him, splashing through paddies, a gesticulating peasant with a scythe, Father Time enraged, while running along a dyke a woman with her sari caught up between her legs, hair loose, voice pleading screaming, while the scythed avenger stumbles through drowned rice, covered from head to foot in water and mud. Ayooba roars with nervous relief: “The old billy-goat! Couldn’t keep his hands off the local women! Come on, buddha, don’t let him catch you, he’ll slice off both your cucumbers!” And Farooq, “But then what? If the buddha is sliced, what then?” And now Ayooba-the-tank is pulling a pistol out of its holster. Ayooba aiming: both hands held out in front, trying not to shake, Ayooba squeezing: a scythe curves up into the air. And slowly slowly the arms of a peasant rise up as though in prayer; knees kneel in paddy-water; a face plunges below the water-level to touch its forehead to the earth. On the dyke a woman wailing. And Ayooba tells the buddha: “Next time I’ll shoot you instead.” Ayooba-the-tank shaking like a leaf. And Time lies dead in a rice-paddy.
But there is still the meaningless chase, the enemy who will never be seen, and the buddha, “Go that way,” and four of them row on, south south south, they have murdered