Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie [244]
“Listen, baby sahib,” Picture Singh was crying, “What do you say, baby-captain? Must I put you over my shoulder and make you belch?”—And now Parvati, tolerantly: “That one, baba, always making joke shoke.” She was smiling radiantly at everyone in sight … but there followed an inauspicious event. A woman’s voice began to wail at the back of the cluster of magicians: “Ai-o-ai-o! Ai-o-o!” The crowd parted in surprise and an old woman burst through it and rushed at Saleem; I was required to defend myself against a brandished frying pan, until Picture Singh, alarmed, seized her by pan-waving arm and bellowed, “Hey, capteena, why so much noise?” And the old woman, obstinately: “Ai-o-ai-o!”
“Resham Bibi,” Parvati said, crossly, “You got ants in your brain?” And Picture Singh, “We got a guest, capteena—what’ll he do with your shouting? Arré, be quiet, Resham, this captain is known to our Parvati personal! Don’t be coming crying in front of him!”
“Ai-o-ai-o! Bad luck is come! You go to foreign places and bring it here! Ai-oooo!”
Disturbed visages of magicians stared from Resham Bibi to me—because although they were a people who denied the supernatural, they were artistes, and like all performers had an implicit faith in luck, good-luck-and-bad-luck, luck … “Yourself you said,” Resham Bibi wailed, “this man is born twice, and not even from woman! Now comes desolation, pestilence and death. I am old and so I know. Arré baba,” she turned plaintively to face me, “Have pity only; go now—go go quick!” There was a murmur—“It is true, Resham Bibi knows the old stories”—but then Picture Singh became angry. “The captain is my honored guest,” he said, “He stays in my hut as long as he wishes, for short or for long. What are you all talking? This is no place for fables.”
Saleem Sinai’s first sojourn at the magicians’ ghetto lasted only a matter of days; but during that short time, a number of things happened to allay the fears which had been raised by ai-o-ai-o. The plain, unadorned truth is that, in those days, the ghetto illusionists and other artistes began to hit new peaks of achievement—jugglers managed to keep one thousand and one balls in the air at a time, and a fakir’s as-yet-untrained protegée strayed on to a bed of hot coals, only to stroll across it unconcerned, as though she had acquired her mentor’s gifts by osmosis; I was told that the rope-trick had been successfully performed. Also, the police failed to make their monthly raid on the ghetto, which had not happened within living memory; and the camp received a constant stream of visitors, the servants of the rich, requesting the professional services of one or more of the colony at this or that gala evening’s entertainment … it seemed, in fact, as though Resham Bibi had got things the wrong way round, and I rapidly became very popular in the ghetto. I was dubbed Saleem Kismeti, Lucky Saleem; Parvati was congratulated on having brought me to the slum. And finally Picture Singh brought Resham Bibi to apologize.
“Pol’gize,” Resham said toothlessly and fled; Picture Singh added, “It is hard for the old ones; their brains go raw and remember upside down. Captain, here everyone is saying you are our luck; but will you go from us soon?”—And Parvati, staring dumbly with saucer eyes which begged no no no; but I was obliged to answer in the affirmative.