Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie [95]
What starts fights?
What remnants of guilt fear shame, pickled by time in Mary’s intestines, led her willingly? unwillingly? to provoke the aged bearer in a dozen different ways—by a tilt of the nose to indicate her superior status; by aggressive counting of rosary beads under the nose of the devout Muslim; by acceptance of the title mausi, little mother, bestowed upon her by the other Estate servants, which Musa saw as a threat to his status; by excessive familiarity with the Begum Sahiba—little giggled whispers in corners, just loud enough for formal, stiff, correct Musa to hear and feel somehow cheated?
What tiny grain of grit, in the sea of old age now washing over the old bearer, lodged between his lips to fatten into the dark pearl of hatred—into what unaccustomed torpors did Musa fall, becoming leaden of hand and foot, so that vases were broken, ashtrays spilled, and a veiled hint of forthcoming dismissal—from Mary’s conscious or unconscious lips?—grew into an obsessive fear, which rebounded upon the person who started it off?
And (not to omit social factors) what was the brutalizing effect of servant status, of a servants’ room behind a black-stoved kitchen, in which Musa was obliged to sleep along with gardener, odd-job boy, and hamal—while Mary slept in style on a rush mat beside a new-born child?
And was Mary blameless or not? Did her inability to go to church—because in churches you found confessionals, and in confessionals secrets could not be kept—turn sour inside her and make her a little sharp, a little hurtful?
Or must we look beyond psychology—seeking our answer in statements such as, there was a snake lying in wait for Mary, and Musa was doomed to learn about the ambiguity of ladders? Or further still, beyond snake-and-ladder, should we see the Hand of Fate in the quarrel—and say, in order for Musa to return as explosive ghost, in order for him to adopt the role of Bomb-in-Bombay, it was necessary to engineer a departure … or, descending from such sublimities to the ridiculous, could it be that Ahmed Sinai—whom whisky provoked, whom djinns goaded into excesses of rudeness—had so incensed the aged bearer that his crime, with which he equalled Mary’s record, was committed out of the injured pride of an abused old servitor—and was nothing to do with Mary at all?
Ending questions, I confine myself to facts: Musa and Mary were perpetually at daggers drawn. And yes: Ahmed insulted him, and Amina’s pacifying efforts may not have been successful; and yes: the fuddling shadows of age had convinced him he would be dismissed, without warning, at any moment; and so it was that Amina came to discover, one August morning, that the house had been burgled.
The police came. Amina reported what was missing: a silver spittoon encrusted with lapis lazuli; gold coins; bejewelled samovars and silver tea-services; the contents of a green tin trunk. Servants were lined up in the hall and subjected to the threats of Inspector Johnny Vakeel. “Come on, own up now”—lathistick tapping against his leg—“or you’ll see what we can’t do to you. You want to stand on one leg all day and night? You want water thrown over you, sometimes boiling hot, sometimes freezing cold? We have many methods in the Police Force …” And now a cacophony of noise from servants, Not me, Inspector Sahib, I am honest boy; for pity’s sake, search my things, Sahib! And Amina: “This is too much, sir, you go too far. My Mary I know, anyway, is innocent. I will not have her questioned.” Suppressed irritation of police officer. A search of belongings is instituted—“Just in case, Madam. These fellows have limited intelligence—and maybe you discovered the theft too soon for the felon to abscond with the booty!”
The search succeeds. In the bedroll of Musa the old bearer: a silver spittoon. Wrapped in his puny bundle of clothes: gold coins, a silver samovar. Secreted under his charpoy bed: a missing tea-service. And now Musa has thrown himself at Ahmed Sinai’s feet; Musa is begging, “Forgive, Sahib!