Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie [64]
“Don’t cry,” Ahmed is saying now, flapping about the hotel room, “It’s a good house. You know you like the house. And two months … less than two … what, is it kicking? Let me feel … Where? Here?”
“There,” Amina says, wiping her nose, “Such a good big kick.”
“My notion,” Mr. Methwold explains, staring at the setting sun, “is to stage my own transfer of assets. Leave behind everything you see? Select suitable persons—such as yourself, Mr. Sinai!—hand everything over absolutely intact: in tiptop working order. Look around you: everything’s in fine fettle, don’t you agree? Tickety-boo, we used to say. Or, as you say in Hindustani: Sabkuch ticktock hai. Everything’s just fine.”
“Nice people are buying the houses,” Ahmed offers Amina his handkerchief, “nice new neighbours … that Mr. Homi Catrack in Versailles Villa, Parsee chap, but a racehorse-owner. Produces films and all. And the Ibrahims in Sans Souci, Nussie Ibrahim is having a baby, too, you can be friends … and the old man Ibrahim, with so-big sisal farms in Africa. Good family.”
“… And afterwards I can do what I like with the house …?”
“Yes, afterwards, naturally, he’ll be gone …”
“… It’s all worked out excellently,” William Methwold says. “Did you know my ancestor was the chap who had the idea of building this whole city? Sort of Raffles of Bombay. As his descendant, at this important juncture, I feel the, I don’t know, need to play my part. Yes, excellently … when d’you move in? Say the word and I’ll move off to the Taj Hotel. Tomorrow? Excellent. Sabkuch ticktock hai.”
These were the people amongst whom I spent my childhood: Mr. Homi Catrack, film magnate and racehorse-owner, with his idiot daughter Toxy who had to be locked up with her nurse, Bi-Appah, the most fearsome woman I ever knew; also the Ibrahims in Sans Souci, old man Ibrahim Ibrahim with his goatee and sisal, his sons Ismail and Ishaq, and Ismail’s tiny flustery hapless wife Nussie, whom we always called Nussie-the-duck on account of her waddling gait, and in whose womb my friend Sonny was growing, even now, getting closer and closer to his misadventure with a pair of gynecological forceps … Escorial Villa was divided into flats. On the ground floor lived the Dubashes, he a physicist who would become a leading light at the Trombay nuclear research base, she a cipher beneath whose blankness a true religious fanaticism lay concealed—but I’ll let it lie, mentioning only that they were the parents of Cyrus (who would not be conceived for a few months yet), my first mentor, who played girls’ parts in school plays and was known as Cyrus-the-great. Above them was my father’s friend Doctor Narlikar, who had bought a flat here too … he was as black as my mother; had the ability of glowing brightly whenever he became excited or aroused; hated children, even though he brought us into the world; and would unleash upon the city, when he died, that tribe of women who could do anything and in whose path no obstacle could stand. And, finally on the top floor, were Commander Sabarmati and Lila—Sabarmati who was one of the highest flyers in the Navy, and his wife with her expensive tastes; he hadn’t been able to believe his luck in getting her a home so cheaply. They had two sons, aged eighteen months and four months, who would grow up to be slow and boisterous and to be nicknamed Eyeslice and Hairoil; and they didn’t know (how could they?) that I would destroy their lives … Selected by William Methwold, these people who would form the center of my world moved into the Estate and tolerated the curious whims of the Englishman—because the price, after all, was right.
… There are thirty days to go to the transfer of power and Lila Sabarmati is on the telephone, “How can you stand it, Nussie? In every room here there are talking budgies, and in the almirahs I find moth-eaten dresses and used brassières!” … And Nussie is telling Amina, “Goldfish, Allah, I can’t stand the creatures, but Methwold