Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie [40]
“Now that I’m getting married,” Emerald told Mumtaz, “it’ll be very rude of you if you don’t even try to have a good time. And you should be giving me advice and everything.” At the time, although Mumtaz smiled at her younger sister, she had thought it a great cheek on Emerald’s part to say this; and, unintentionally perhaps, had increased the pressure of the pencil with which she was applying henna tracery to the soles of her sister’s feet. “Hey!” Emerald squealed, “No need to get mad! I just thought we should try to be friends.”
Relations between the sisters had been somewhat strained since Nadir Khan’s disappearance; and Mumtaz hadn’t liked it when Major Zulfikar (who had chosen not to charge my grandfather with harboring a wanted man, and squared it with Brigadier Dodson) asked for, and received, permission to marry Emerald. “It’s like blackmail,” she thought. “And anyway, what about Alia? The eldest shouldn’t be married last, and look how patient she’s been with her merchant fellow.” But she said nothing, and smiled her forebearing smile, and devoted her gift of assiduity to the wedding preparations, and agreed to try and have a good time; while Alia went on waiting for Ahmed Sinai. (“She’ll wait for ever,” Padma guesses: correctly.)
January 1946. Marquees, sweetmeats, guests, songs, fainting bride, stiff-at-attention groom: a beautiful wedding … at which the leather-cloth merchant, Ahmed Sinai, found himself deep in conversation with the newly-divorced Mumtaz. “You love children?—what a coincidence, so do I …” “And you didn’t have any, poor girl? Well, matter of fact, my wife couldn’t …” “Oh, no; how sad for you; and she must have been bad-tempered like anything!” “… Oh, like hell … excuse me. Strength of emotions carried me away.” “—Quite all right; don’t think about it. Did she throw dishes and all?” “Did she throw? In one month we had to eat out of newspaper!” “No, my goodness, what whoppers you tell!” “Oh, it’s no good, you’re too clever for me. But she did throw dishes all the same.” “You poor, poor man.” “No—you. Poor, poor you.” And thinking: “Such a charming chap, with Alia he always looked so bored …” And, “… This girl, I never looked at her, but my goodness me …” And, “… You can tell he loves children; and for that I could …” And, “… Well, never mind about the skin …” It was noticeable that, when it was time to sing, Mumtaz found the spirit to join in all the songs; but Alia remained silent. She had been bruised even more badly than her father in Jallianwala Bagh; and you couldn’t see a mark on her.
“So, gloomy sis, you managed to enjoy yourself after all.”
In June that year, Mumtaz remarried. Her sister—taking her cue from their mother—would not speak to her until, just before they both died, she saw her chance of revenge. Aadam Aziz and Reverend Mother tried, unsuccessfully, to persuade Alia that these things happen, it was better to find out now than later, and Mumtaz had been badly hurt and needed a man to help her recover … besides, Alia had brains, she would be all right.
“But, but,” Alia said, “nobody ever married a book.”
“Change your name,” Ahmed Sinai said. “Time for a fresh start. Throw Mumtaz and her Nadir Khan out of the window, I’ll choose you a new name. Amina. Amina Sinai: you’d like that?”
“Whatever you say, husband,” my mother said.
“Anyway,” Alia, the wise child, wrote in her diary, “who wants to get landed with this marrying business? Not me; never; no.”
Mian Abdullah was a false start for a lot of optimistic people; his assistant (whose name could not be spoken in my father’s house) was my mother’s wrong turning. But those were the years of the drought; many crops planted at that time ended up by coming to nothing.
“What happened to the plumpie?” Padma asks, crossly. “You don’t mean you aren’t going to tell?”
A Public Announcement
THERE FOLLOWED AN illusionist January, a time so still on its surface that 1947 seemed not to have begun at all. (While, of course, in fact …) In which the Cabinet Mission—old Pethick-Lawrence, clever Cripps, military A. V. Alexander—saw their scheme for the transfer of power fail. (But of course, in fact it would only be six months until