Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie [132]
And on my tenth birthday, I stole the initials of the Metro Cub Club—which were also the initials of the touring English cricket team—and gave them to the new Midnight Children’s Conference, my very own M.C.C.
That’s how it was when I was ten: nothing but trouble outside my head, nothing but miracles inside it.
At the Pioneer Café
NO COLORS EXCEPT green and black the walls are green the sky is black (there is no roof) the stars are green the Widow is green but her hair is black as black. The Widow sits on a high high chair the chair is green the seat is black the Widow’s hair has a center-parting it is green on the left and on the right black. High as the sky the chair is green the seat is black the Widow’s arm is long as death its skin is green the fingernails are long and sharp and black. Between the walls the children green the walls are green the Widow’s arm comes snaking down the snake is green the children scream the fingernails are black they scratch the Widow’s arm is hunting see the children run and scream the Widow’s hand curls round them green and black. Now one by one the children mmff are stifled quiet the Widow’s hand is lifting one by one the children green their blood is black unloosed by cutting fingernails it splashes black on walls (of green) as one by one the curling hand lifts children high as sky the sky is black there are no stars the Widow laughs her tongue is green but her teeth are black. And children torn in two in Widow hands which rolling rolling halves of children roll them into little balls the balls are green the night is black. And little balls fly into night between the walls the children shriek as one by one the Widow’s hand. And in a corner the Monkey and I (the walls are green the shadows black) cowering crawling wide high walls green fading into black there is no roof and Widow’s hand comes onebyone the children scream and mmff and little balls and hand and scream and mmff and splashing stains of black. Now only she and I and no more screams the Widow’s hand comes hunting hunting the skin is green the nails are black towards the corner hunting hunting while we shrink closer into the corner our skin is green our fear is black and now the Hand comes reaching reaching and she my sister pushes me out out of the corner while she stays cowering staring the hand the nails are curling scream and mmff and splash of black and up into the high as sky and laughing Widow tearing I am rolling into little balls the balls are green and out into the night the night is black …
The fever broke today. For two days (I’m told) Padma has been sitting up all night, placing cold wet flannels on my forehead, holding me through my shivers and dreams of Widow’s hands; for two days she has been blaming herself for her potion of unknown herbs. “But,” I reassure her, “this time, it wasn’t anything to do with that.” I recognize this fever; it’s come up from inside me and from nowhere else; like a bad stink, it’s oozed through my cracks. I caught exactly such a fever on my tenth birthday, and spent two days in bed; now, as my memories return to leak out of me, this old fever has come back, too. “Don’t worry,” I say, “I caught these germs almost twenty-one years ago.”
We are not alone. It is morning at the pickle-factory; they have brought my son to see me. Someone (never mind who) stands beside Padma at my bedside, holding him in her arms. “Baba, thank God you are better, you don’t know what you were talking in your sickness.” Someone speaks anxiously, trying to force her way into my story ahead of time; but it won’t work … someone, who founded this pickle-factory and its ancillary bottling works, who has been looking after my impenetrable child, just as once … wait on! She nearly wormed it out of me then, but fortunately I’ve still got my wits about me, fever or no fever! Someone will just have to step back and remain cloaked in anonymity until it’s her turn; and that won’t be until the very end. I turn my eyes away from her to look at Padma. “Do not think,” I admonish her, “that because I had a fever, the things I told you were not completely true. Everything happened just as I described.