Midnight's Children (18 page)

And his nose? What did that look like? Prominent? Yes, it must have been, the legacy of a patrician French grandmother—from Bergerac!—whose blood ran aquamarinely in his veins and darkened his courtly charm with something crueller, some sweet murderous shade of absinthe.

Methwold’s Estate was sold on two conditions: that the houses be bought complete with every last thing in them, that the entire contents be retained by the new owners; and that the actual transfer should not take place until midnight on August 15th.

“Everything?” Amina Sinai asked. “I can’t even throw away a spoon? Allah, that lampshade … I can’t get rid of one
comb?
”

“Lock, stock and barrel,” Methwold said, “Those are my terms. A whim, Mr. Sinai … you’ll permit a departing colonial his little game? We don’t have much left to do, we British, except to play our games.”

“Listen now, listen, Amina,” Ahmed is saying later on, “You want to stay in this hotel room for ever? It’s a fantastic price; fantastic, absolutely. And what can he do after he’s transferred the deeds? Then you can throw out any lampshade you like. It’s less than two months …”

“You’ll take a cocktail in the garden?” Methwold is saying, “Six o’clock every evening. Cocktail hour. Never varied in twenty years.”

“But my God, the paint … and the cupboards are full of old clothes, janum … we’ll have to live out of suitcases, there’s nowhere to put one suit!”

“Bad business, Mr. Sinai,” Methwold sips his Scotch amid cacti and roses, “Never seen the like. Hundreds of years of decent government, then suddenly, up and off. You’ll admit we weren’t all bad: built your roads. Schools, railway trains, parliamentary system, all worthwhile things. Taj Mahal was falling down until an Englishman bothered to see to it. And now, suddenly, independence. Seventy days to get out. I’m dead against it myself, but what’s to be done?”

“… And look at the stains on the carpets, janum; for two months we must live like those Britishers? You’ve looked in the bathrooms? No water near the pot. I never believed, but it’s true, my God, they wipe their bottoms with paper only! …”

“Tell me, Mr. Methwold,” Ahmed Sinai’s voice has changed, in the presence of an Englishman it has become a hideous mockery of an Oxford drawl, “why insist on the delay? Quick sale is best business, after all. Get the thing buttoned up.”

“… And pictures of old Englishwomen everywhere, baba! No place to hang my own father’s photo on the wall! …”

“It seems, Mr. Sinai,” Mr. Methwold is refilling the glasses as the sun dives towards the Arabian Sea behind the Breach Candy pool, “that beneath this stiff English exterior lurks a mind with a very Indian lust for allegory.”

“And drinking so much, janum … that’s not good.”

“I’m not sure—Mr. Methwold, ah—what exactly you mean by …”

“… Oh, you know: after a fashion, I’m transferring power, too. Got a sort of itch to do it at the same time the Raj does. As I said: a game. Humor me, won’t you, Sinai? After all: the price, you’ve admitted, isn’t bad.”

“Has his brain gone raw, janum? What do you think: is it safe to do bargains if he’s loony?”

“Now listen, wife,” Ahmed Sinai is saying, “this has gone on long enough. Mr. Methwold is a fine man; a person of breeding; a man of honor; I will not have his name … And besides, the other purchasers aren’t making so much noise, I’m sure … Anyway, I have told him yes, so there’s an end to it.”

“Have a cracker,” Mr. Methwold is saying, proffering a plate, “Go on, Mr. S., do. Yes, a curious affair. Never seen anything like it. My old tenants—old India hands, the lot—suddenly, up and off. Bad show. Lost their stomachs for India. Overnight. Puzzling to a simple fellow like me. Seemed like they washed their hands—didn’t want to take a scrap with them. ‘Let it go,’ they said. Fresh start back home. Not short of a shilling, none of them, you understand, but still. Rum. Leaving me holding the baby. Then I had my notion.”

“… Yes, decide, decide,” Amina is saying spiritedly, “I am sitting here like a lump with a baby, what have I to do with it? I must live in a stranger’s house with this child growing, so what? … Oh, what things you make me do …”

“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 Sahib comes himself to feed … and there are half-empty pots of Bovril he says I can’t throw … it’s mad, Amina sister, what are we doing like this?” … And old man Ibrahim is refusing to switch on the ceiling-fan in his bedroom, muttering. “That machine will fall—it will slice my head off in the night—how long can something so heavy stick on a ceiling?” … and Homi Catrack who is something of an ascetic is obliged to lie on a large soft mattress, he is suffering from backache and sleeplessness and the dark rings of inbreeding around his eyes are being circled by the whorls of insomnia, and his bearer tells him, “No wonder the foreign sahibs have all gone away, sahib, they must be dying to get some sleep.” But they are all sticking it out; and there are advantages as well as problems. Listen to Lila Sabarmati (“That one—too beautiful to be good,” my mother said) … “A pianola, Amina sister! And it works! All day I’m sitting sitting, playing God knows what-all! Pale Hands I Loved Beside The Shalimar’ … such fun, too much, you just push the pedals!” … And Ahmed Sinai finds a cocktail cabinet in Buckingham Villa (which was Methwold’s own house before it was ours); he is discovering the delights of fine Scotch whiskey and cries, “So what? Mr. Methwold is a little eccentric, that’s all—can we not humor him? With our ancient civilization, can we not be as civilized as he?” … and he drains his glass at one go. Advantages and disadvantages: ‘All these dogs to look after, Nussie sister,” Lila Sabarmati complains. “I hate dogs, completely. And my little choochie cat,
cho chweet
she is I swear, terrified absolutely!” … And Doctor Narlikar, glowing with pique, “Above my bed! Pictures of children, Sinai brother! I am telling you: fat! Pink! Three! Is that fair?” … But now there are twenty days to go, things are settling down, the sharp edges of things are getting blurred, so they have all failed to notice what is happening: the Estate, Methwold’s Estate, is changing them. Every evening at six they are out in their gardens, celebrating the cocktail hour, and when William Methwold comes to call they slip effortlessly into their imitation Oxford drawls; and they are learning, about ceiling-fans and gas cookers and the correct diet for budgerigars, and Methwold, supervising their transformation, is mumbling under his breath. Listen carefully: what’s he saying? Yes, that’s it. “Sabkuch ticktock hai,” mumbles William Methwold. All is well.

When the Bombay edition of the
Times of India
, searching for a catchy human-interest angle to the forthcoming Independence celebrations, announced that it would award a prize to any Bombay mother who could arrange to give birth to a child at the precise instant of the birth of the new nation, Amina Sinai, who had just awoken from a mysterious dream of flypaper, became glued to newsprint. Newsprint was thrust beneath Ahmed Sinai’s nose; and Amina’s finger, jabbing triumphantly at the page, punctuated the utter certainty of her voice.

“See, janum?” Amina announced. “That’s going to be me.”

There rose, before their eyes, a vision of bold headlines declaring “A Charming Pose of Baby Sinai—the Child of this Glorious Hour!”—a vision of A-l top-quality front-page jumbo-sized baby-snaps; but Ahmed began to argue, “Think of the odds against it, Begum,” until she set her mouth into a clamp of obstinacy and reiterated, “But me no buts; it’s me all right; I just know it for sure. Don’t ask me how.”

And although Ahmed repeated his wife’s prophecy to William Methwold, as a cocktail-hour joke, Amina remained unshaken, even when Methwold laughed. “Woman’s intuition—splendid thing, Mrs. S.! But really, you can scarcely expect us to …” Even under the pressure of the peeved gaze of her neighbor Nussie-the-duck, who was also pregnant, and had also read the
Times of India
, Amina stuck to her guns, because Ramram’s prediction had sunk deep into her heart.

To tell the truth, as Amina’s pregnancy progressed, she had found the words of the fortune-teller pressing more and more heavily down upon her shoulders, her head, her swelling balloon, so that as she became trapped in a web of worries about giving birth to a child with two heads she somehow escaped the subtle magic of Methwold’s Estate, remaining uninfected by cocktail-hours, budgerigars, pianolas and English accents … At first, then, there was something equivocal about her certainty that she could win the
Times
’s prize, because she had convinced herself that if this part of the fortune-teller’s prognostications were fulfilled, it proved that the rest would be just as accurate, whatever their meaning might be. So it was not in tones of unadulterated pride and anticipation that my mother said, “Never mind intuition, Mr. Methwold. This is guaranteed fact.”

To herself she added: “And this, too: I’m going to have a son. But he’ll need plenty of looking after, or else.”

It seems to me that, running deep in the veins of my mother, perhaps deeper than she knew, the supernatural conceits of Naseem Aziz had begun to influence her thoughts and behavior—those conceits which persuaded Reverend Mother that aeroplanes were inventions of the devil, and that cameras could steal your soul, and that ghosts were as obvious a part of reality as Paradise, and that it was nothing less than a sin to place certain sanctified ears between one’s thumb and forefinger, were now whispering in her daughter’s darkling head. “Even if we’re sitting in the middle of all this English garbage,” my mother was beginning to think, “this is still India, and people like Ramram Seth know what they know.” In this way the scepticism of her beloved father was replaced by the credulity of my grandmother; and, at the same time, the adventurous spark which Amina had inherited from Doctor Aziz was being snuffed out by another, and equally heavy, weight.

By the time the rains came at the end of June, the fetus was fully formed inside her womb. Knees and nose were present; and as many heads as would grow were already in position. What had been (at the beginning) no bigger than a full stop had expanded into a comma, a word, a sentence, a paragraph, a chapter; now it was bursting into more complex developments, becoming, one might say, a book—perhaps an encyclopedia—even a whole language … which is to say that the lump in the middle of my mother grew so large, and became so heavy, that while Warden Road at the foot of our two-storey hillock became flooded with dirty yellow rainwater and stranded buses began to rust and children swam in the liquid road and newspapers sank soggily beneath the surface, Amina found herself in a circular first-floor tower room, scarcely able to move beneath the weight of her leaden balloon.