Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie [294]
Underneath the colonnade of Block F in Connaught Place, next to a pavement bookstall, a paan-wallah had his little niche. He sat cross-legged behind a green glass counter like a minor deity of the place: I admit him into these last pages because, although he gave off the aromas of poverty, he was, in fact, a person of substance, the owner of a Lincoln Continental motor-car, which he parked out of sight in Connaught Circus, and which he had paid for by the fortunes he earned through his sales of contraband imported cigarettes and transistor radios; for two weeks each year he went to jail for a holiday, and the rest of the time paid several policement a handsome salary. In jail he was treated like a king, but behind his green glass counter he looked inoffensive, ordinary, so that it was not easy (without the benefit of a nose as sensitive as Saleem’s) to tell that this was a man who knew everything about everything, a man whose infinite network of contacts made him privy to secret knowledge … to me he provided an additional and not unpleasant echo of a similar character I had known in Karachi during the time of my Lambretta voyages; I was so busy inhaling the familiar perfumes of nostalgia that, when he spoke, he took me by surprise.
We had set up our act next to his niche; while Pictureji busied himself polishing flutes and donning an enormous saffron turban, I performed the function of barker. “Roll up roll up—once in a lifetime an opportunity such as this—ladees, ladahs, come see come see come see! Who is here? No common bhangi; no street-sleeping fraud; this, citizens, ladies and gents, is the Most Charming Man In The World! Yes, come see come see: his photo has been taken by Eastman-Kodak Limited! Come close and have no fear—PICTURE SINGH is here!” … And other such garbage; but then the paan-wallah spoke:
“I know of a better act. This fellow is not number-one; oh, no, certainly not. In Bombay there is a better man.”
That was how Picture Singh learned of the existence of his rival; and why, abandoning all plans of giving a performance, he marched over to the blandly smiling paan-wallah, reaching into his depths for his old voice of command, and said, “You will tell me the truth about this faker, captain, or I will send your teeth down your gullet until they bite up your stomach.” And the paan-wallah, unafraid, aware of the three lurking policemen who would move in swiftly to protect their salaries if the need arose, whispered to us the secrets of his omniscience, telling us who when where, until Picture Singh said in a voice whose firmness concealed his fear: “I will go and show this Bombay fellow who is best. In one world, captains, there is no room for two Most Charming Men.”
The vendor of betel-nut delicacies, shrugging delicately, expectorated at our feet.
Like a magic spell, the taunts of a paan-wallah opened the door through which Saleem returned to the city of his birth, the abode of his deepest nostalgia. Yes, it was an open-sesame, and when we returned to the ragged tents beneath the railway bridge, Picture Singh scrabbled in the earth and dug up the knotted handkerchief of his security, the dirt-discolored cloth in which he had hoarded pennies for his old age; and when Durga the washerwoman refused to