Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie [34]
Why have I invaded my grandfather’s privacy? Why, when I might have described how, after Mian Abdullah’s death, Aadam buried himself in his work, taking upon himself the care of the sick in the shanty-towns by the railway tracks—rescuing them from quacks who injected them with pepperwater and thought that fried spiders could cure blindness—while continuing to fulfill his duties as university physician; when I might have elaborated on the great love that had begun to grow between my grandfather and his second daughter, Mumtaz, whose dark skin stood between her and the affections of her mother, but whose gifts of gentleness, care and fragility endeared her to her father with his inner torments which cried out for her form of unquestioning tenderness; why, when I might have chosen to describe the by-now-constant itch in his nose, do I choose to wallow in excrement? Because this is where Aadam Aziz was, on the afternoon after his signing of a death certificate, when all of a sudden a voice—soft, cowardly, embarrassed, the voice of a rhymeless poet—spoke to him from the depths of the large old laundry-chest standing in the corner of the room, giving him a shock so profound that it proved laxative, and the enema contraption did not have to be unhooked from its perch. Rashid the rickshaw boy had let Nadir Khan into the thunderbox-room by way of the sweeper’s entrance, and he had taken refuge in the washing-chest. While my grandfather’s astonished sphincter relaxed, his ears heard a request for sanctuary, a request muffled by linen, dirty underwear, old shirts and the embarrassment of the speaker. And so it was that Aadam Aziz resolved to hide Nadir Khan.
Now comes the scent of a quarrel, because Reverend Mother Naseem is thinking about her daughters, twenty-one-year-old Alia, black Mumtaz, who is nineteen, and pretty, flighty Emerald, who isn’t fifteen yet but has a look in her eyes that’s older than anything her sisters possess. In the town, among spittoon-hitters and rickshaw-wallahs, among film-poster-trolley pushers and college students alike, the three sisters are known as the “Teen Batti,” the three bright lights … and how can Reverend Mother permit a strange man to dwell in the same house as Alia’s gravity, Mumtaz’s black, luminous skin and Emerald’s eyes? … “You are out of your mind, husband; that death has hurt your brain.” But Aziz, determinedly: “He is staying.” In the cellars … because concealment has always been a crucial architectural consideration in India, so that Aziz’s house has extensive underground chambers, which can be reached only through trap-doors in the floors, which are covered by carpets and mats … Nadir Khan hears the dull rumble of the quarrel and fears for his fate. My God (I sniff the thoughts of the clammy-palmed poet), the world is gone insane … are we men in this country? Are we beasts? And if I must go, when will the knives come for me? … And through his mind pass images of peacock-feather fans and the new moon seen through glass and transformed into a stabbing, red-stained blade … Upstairs, Reverend Mother says, “The house is full of young unmarried girls, whatsitsname; is this how you show your daughters respect?” And now the aroma of a temper lost; the great destroying rage of Aadam Aziz is unleashed, and instead of pointing out that Nadir Khan will be underground, swept under the carpet where he will scarcely be able to defile daughters; instead of paying due testimony to the verbless bard’s sense of propriety, which is so advanced