Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie [108]
“O, you Saleem! Such things you talked yesterday! Shame on you, boy: you better go wash out your mouth with soap!” … The morning after my disgrace, Mary Pereira, shaking with indignation like one of her jellies, suggested the perfect means of my rehabilitation. Bowing my head contritely, I went, without a word, into the bathroom, and there, beneath the amazed gaze of ayah and Monkey, scrubbed teeth tongue roofofmouth gums with a toothbrush covered in the sharp foul lather of Coal Tar Soap. The news of my dramatic atonement rushed rapidly around the house, borne by Mary and Monkey; and my mother embraced me, “There, good boy; we’ll say no more about it,” and Ahmed Sinai nodded gruffly at the breakfast table, “At least the boy has the grace to admit when he’s gone too far.”
As my glass-inflicted cuts faded, it was as though my announcement was also erased; and by the time of my ninth birthday, nobody besides myself remembered anything about the day when I had taken the name of Archangels in vain. The taste of detergent lingered on my tongue for many weeks, reminding me of the need for secrecy.
Even the Brass Monkey was satisfied by my show of contrition—in her eyes, I had returned to form, and was once more the goody-two-shoes of the family. To demonstrate her willingness to re-establish the old order, she set fire to my mother’s favorite slippers, and regained her rightful place in the family doghouse. Amongst outsiders, what’s more—displaying a conservatism you’d never have suspected in such a tomboy—she closed ranks with my parents, and kept my one aberration a secret from her friends and mine.
In a country where any physical or mental peculiarity in a child is a source of deep family shame, my parents, who had become accustomed to facial birthmarks, cucumber-nose and bandy legs, simply refused to see any more embarrassing things in me; for my part, I did not once mention the buzzing in my ear, the occasional ringing bells of deafness, the intermittent pain. I had learned that secrets were not always a bad thing.
But imagine the confusion inside my head! Where, behind the hideous face, above the tongue tasting of soap, hard by the perforated eardrum, lurked a not-very-tidy mind, as full of bric-à-brac as nine-year-old pockets … imagine yourself inside me somehow, looking out through my eyes, hearing the noise, the voices, and now the obligation of not letting people know, the hardest part was acting surprised, such as when my mother said Hey Saleem guess what we’re going for a picnic to the Aarey Milk Colony and I had to go Ooo, exciting! when I had known all along because I had heard her unspoken inner voice And on my birthday seeing all the presents in the donors’ minds before they were even unwrapped And the treasure hunt ruined because there in my father’s head was the location of each clue every prize And much harder things such as going to see my father in his ground-floor office, here we are, and the moment I’m in there my head is full of godknowswhat rot because he’s thinking about his secretary, Alice or Fernanda, his latest Coca-Cola girl, he’s undressing her slowly in his head and it’s in my head too, she’s sitting stark naked on a cane-bottomed chair and now getting up, crisscross marks all across her rump, that’s my father thinking, MY FATHER, now he’s looking at me all funny What’s the matter son don’t you feel well Yes fine Abba fine, must go now GOT TO GET AWAY homework to do, Abba, and out, run away before he sees the clue on your face (my father always said that when I was lying there was a red light flashing on my forehead) … You see how hard it is, my uncle Hanif comes to take me to the wrestling, and even before we’ve arrived at Vallabhbhai Patel Stadium on Hornby Vellard I’m feeling sad We’re walking with the crowds past giant cardboard cut-outs of Dara Singh and Tagra Baba and the rest and his sadness, my favorite uncle