Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie [77]
The monster in the streets has begun to roar, while in Delhi a wiry man is saying, “… At the stroke of the midnight hour, while the world sleeps, India awakens to life and freedom …” And beneath the roar of the monster there are two more yells, cries, bellows, the howls of children arriving in the world, their unavailing protests mingling with the din of independence which hangs saffron-and-green in the night sky—“A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new; when an age ends; and when the soul of a nation long suppressed finds utterance …” while in a room with saffron-and-green carpet Ahmed Sinai is still clutching a chair when Doctor Narlikar enters to inform him: “On the stroke of midnight, Sinai brother, your Begum Sahiba gave birth to a large, healthy child: a son!” Now my father began to think about me (not knowing …); with the image of my face filling his thoughts he forgot about the chair; possessed by the love of me (even though …), filled with it from top of head to fingertips, he let the chair fall.
Yes, it was my fault (despite everything) … it was the power of my face, mine and nobody else’s, which’ caused Ahmed Sinai’s hands to release the chair; which caused the chair to drop, accelerating at thirty-two feet per second, and as Jawaharlal Nehru told the Assembly Hall, “We end today a period of ill-fortune,” as conch-shells blared out the news of freedom, it was on my account that my father cried out too, because the falling chair shattered his toe.
And now we come to it: the noise brought everyone running; my father and his injury grabbed a brief moment of limelight from the two aching mothers, the two, synchronous midnight births—because Vanita had finally been delivered of a baby of remarkable size: “You wouldn’t have believed it,” Doctor Bose said, “It just kept on coming, more and more of the boy forcing its way out, it’s a real ten-chip whopper all right!” And Narlikar, washing himself: “Mine, too.” But that was a little later—just now Narlikar and Bose were tending to Ahmed Sinai’s toe; midwives had been instructed to wash and swaddle the newborn pair; and now Miss Mary Pereira made her contribution.
“Go, go,” she said to poor Flory, “see if you can help. I can do all right here.”
And when she was alone—two babies in her hands—two lives in her power—she did it for Joseph, her own private revolutionary act, thinking He will certainly love me for this, as she changed name-tags on the two huge infants, giving the poor baby a life of privilege and condemning the rich-born child to accordions and poverty … “Love me, Joseph!” was in Mary Pereira’s mind, and then it was done. On the ankle of a ten-chip whopper with eyes as blue as Kashmiri sky—which were also eyes as blue as Methwold’s—and a nose as dramatic as a Kashmiri grandfather’s—which was also the nose of grandmother from France—she placed this name: Sinai.
Saffron swaddled me as, thanks to the crime of Mary Pereira, I became the chosen child of midnight, whose parents were not his parents, whose son would not be his own … Mary took the child of my mother’s womb, who was not to be her son, another ten-chip pomfret, but with eyes which were already turning brown, and knees as knobbly as Ahmed Sinai’s, wrapped it in green, and brought it to Wee Willie Winkie—who was staring at her blind-eyed, who hardly saw his new son, who never knew about center-partings … Wee Willie Winkie, who had just learned that Vanita had not managed to survive her childbearing. At three minutes past midnight, while doctors fussed over broken toe, Vanita had hemorrhaged and died.
So I was brought to my mother; and she never doubted my authenticity for an instant. Ahmed Sinai, toe in splint, sat on her bed as she said: “Look, janum, the poor fellow, he’s got his grandfather’s nose.” He watched mystified