For the sake of their privacy, I am refusing to distinguish the voices from one another; and for other reasons. For one thing, my narrative could not cope with five hundred and eighty-one fully-rounded personalities; for another, the children, despite their wondrously discrete and varied gifts, remained, to my mind, a sort of many-headed monster, speaking in the myriad tongues of Babel; they were the very essence of multiplicity, and I see no point in dividing them now. (But there were exceptions. In particular, there was Shiva; and there was Parvati-the-witch.)
… Destiny, historical role, numen: these were mouthfuls too large for ten-year-old gullets. Even, perhaps, for mine; despite the ever-present admonitions of the fisherman’s pointing finger and the Prime Minister’s letter, I was constantly distracted from my sniff-given marvels by the tiny occurrences of everyday life, by feeling hungry or sleepy, by monkeying around with the Monkey, or going to the cinema to see Cobra Woman or Vera Cruz, by my growing longing for long trousers and by the inexplicable below-the-belt heat engendered by the approaching School Social at which we, the boys of the Cathedral and John Connon Boys’ High School, would be permitted to dance the box-step and the Mexican Hat Dance with the girls from our sister institution—such as Masha Miovic the champion breast-stroker (“Hee hee,” said Glandy Keith Colaco) and Elizabeth Purkiss and Janey Jackson—European girls, my God, with loose skirts and kissing ways!—in short, my attention was continually seized by the painful, engrossing torture of growing up.
Even a symbolic gander must come down, at last, to earth; so it isn’t nearly enough for me now (as it was not then) to confine my story to its miraculous aspects; I must return (as I used to return) to the quotidian; I must permit blood to spill.
The first mutilation of Saleem Sinai, which was rapidly followed by the second, took place one Wednesday early in 1958—the Wednesday of the much-anticipated Social—under the auspices of the Anglo-Scottish Education Society. That is, it happened at school.
Saleem’s assailant: handsome, frenetic, with a barbarian’s shaggy moustache: I present the leaping, hair-tearing figure of Mr. Emil Zagallo, who taught us geography and gymnastics, and who, that morning, unintentionally precipitated the crisis of my life. Zagallo claimed to be Peruvian, and was fond of calling us jungle-Indians, bead-lovers; he hung a print of a stern, sweaty soldier in a pointy tin hat and metal pantaloons above his blackboard and had a way of stabbing a finger at it in times of stress and shouting, “You see heem, you savages? Thees man eez civilization! You show heem respect: he’s got a sword!” And he’d swish his cane through the stone-walled air. We called him Pagal-Zagal, crazy Zagallo, because for all his talk of llamas and conquistadores and the Pacific Ocean we knew, with the absolute certainty of rumor, that he’d been in a Mazagaon tenement and his Goanese mother had been abandoned by a decamped shipping agent; so he was not only an “Anglo” but probably a bastard as well. Knowing this, we understood why Zagallo affected his Latin accent, and also why he was always in a fury, why he beat his fists against the stone walls of the classroom; but the knowledge didn’t stop us being afraid. And this Wednesday morning, we knew we were in for trouble, because Optional Cathedral had been cancelled.
The Wednesday morning double period was Zagallo’s geography class; but only idiots and boys with bigoted parents attended it, because it was also the time when we could choose to troop off to St. Thomas’s Cathedral in crocodile formation, a long line of boys of every conceivable religious denomination, escaping from school into the bosom of the Christians’ considerately optional God. It drove Zagallo wild, but he was helpless; today, however, there was a dark glint in his eye, because the Croaker (that is to say, Mr. Crusoe the headmaster) had announced at morning Assembly that Cathedral was cancelled. In a bare, scraped voice emerging from his face of an anesthetized frog, he sentenced us to double geography and Pagal-Zagal, taking us all by surprise, because we hadn’t realized that God was permitted to exercise an option, too. Glumly we trooped into Zagallo’s lair; one of the poor idiots whose parents never allowed them to go to Cathedral whispered viciously into my ear, “You jus’ wait: he’ll really get you guys today.”
Padma: he really did.
Seated gloomily in class: Glandy Keith Colaco, Fat Perce Fishwala, Jimmy Kapadia the scholarship boy whose father was a taxi-driver, Hairoil Sabarmati, Sonny Ibrahim, Cyrus-the-great and I. Others, too, but there’s no time now, because with eyes narrowing in delight, crazy Zagallo is calling us to order.
“Human geography,” Zagallo announces. “Thees ees what? Kapadia?”
“Please sir don’t know sir.” Hands fly into the air—five belong to church-banned idiots, the sixth inevitably to Cyrus-the-great. But Zagallo is out for blood today: the godly are going to suffer. “Feelth from the jongle,” he buffets Jimmy Kapadia, then begins to twist an ear casually, “Stay in class sometimes and find out!”
“Ow ow ow yes sir sorry sir …” Six hands are waving but Jimmy’s ear is in danger of coming off. Heroism gets the better of me … “Sir please stop sir he has a heart condition sir!” Which is true; but the truth is dangerous, because now Zagallo is rounding on me: “So, a leetle arguer, ees eet?” And I am being led by my hair to the front of the class. Under the relieved eyes of my fellow-pupils—thank God it’s him not us—I writhe in agony beneath imprisoned tufts.
“So answer the question. You know what ees human geography?”
Pain fills my head, obliterating all notions of telepathic cheatery: “Aiee sir no sir ouch!”
… And now it is possible to observe a joke descending on Zagallo, a joke pulling his face into the simulacrum of a smile; it is possible to watch his hand darting forward, thumb-and-forefinger extended; to note how thumb-and-forefinger close around the tip of my nose and pull downwards … where the nose leads, the head must follow, and finally the nose is hanging down and my eyes are obliged to stare damply at Zagallo’s sandalled feet with their dirty toenails while Zagallo unleashes his wit.
“See, boys—you see what we have here? Regard, please, the heedeous face of thees primitive creature. It reminds you of?”
And the eager responses: “Sir the devil sir.” “Please sir one cousin of mine!” “No sir a vegetable sir I don’t know which.” Until Zagallo, shouting above the tumult, “Silence! Sons of baboons! Thees object here”—a tug on my nose—“thees is human geography!”
“How sir where sir what sir?”
Zagallo is laughing now. “You don’t see?” he guffaws. “In the face of thees ugly ape you don’t see the whole map of India?”
“Yes sir no sir you show us sir!”
“See here—the Deccan peninsula hanging down!” Again ouch-mynose.
“Sir sir if that’s the map of India what are the stains sir?” It is Glandy Keith Colaco feeling bold. Sniggers, titters from my fellows. And Zagallo, taking the question in his stride: “These stains,” he cries, “are Pakistan! Thees birthmark on the right ear is the East Wing; and thees horrible stained left cheek, the West! Remember, stupid boys: Pakistan ees a stain on the face of India!”
“Ho ho,” the class laughs, “Absolute master joke, sir!”
But now my nose has had enough; staging its own, unprompted revolt against the grasping thumb-and-forefinger, it unleashes a weapon of its own … a large blob of shining goo emerges from the left nostril, to plop into Mr. Zagallo’s palm. Fat Perce Fishwala yells, “Lookit that, sir! The drip from his nose, sir! Is that supposed to be Ceylon?”
His palm smeared with goo, Zagallo loses his jokey mood. “Animal,” he curses me, “You see what you do?” Zagallo’s hand releases my nose; returns to hair. Nasal refuse is wiped into my neatly-parted locks. And now, once again, my hair is seized; once again, the hand is pulling … but upwards now, and my head has jerked upright, my feet are moving on to tiptoe, and Zagallo, “What are you? Tell me what you are!”
“Sir an animal sir!”
The hand pulls harder higher. “Again.” Standing on my toenails now, I yelp: “Aiee sir an an
imal an animal please sir aiee!”
And still harder and still higher … “Once more!” But suddenly it ends; my feet are flat on the ground again; and the class has fallen into a deathly hush.
“Sir,” Sonny Ibrahim is saying, “you pulled his hair out, sir.”
And now the cacophony: “Look sir, blood.” “He’s bleeding sir.” “Please sir shall I take him to the nurse?”
Mr. Zagallo stood like a statue with a clump of my hair in his fist. While I—too shocked to feel any pain—felt the patch on my head where Mr. Zagallo had created a monkish tonsure, a circle where hair would never grow again, and realized that the curse of my birth, which connected me to my country, had managed to find yet one more unexpected expression of itself.
Two days later, Croaker Crusoe announced that, unfortunately, Mr. Emil Zagallo was leaving the staff for personal reasons; but I knew what the reasons were. My uprooted hairs had stuck to his hands, like bloodstains that wouldn’t wash out, and nobody wants a teacher with hair on his palms, “The first sign of madness,” as Glandy Keith was fond of saying, “and the second sign is looking for them.”
Zagallo’s legacy: a monk’s tonsure; and, worse than that, a whole set of new taunts, which my classmates flung at me while we waited for school buses to take us home to get dressed for the Social: “Snotnose is a bal-die!” and, “Sniffer’s got a map-face!” When Cyrus arrived in the bus-queue, I tried to turn the crowd against him, by attempting to set up a chant of “Cyrus-the-great, Born on a plate, In nineteen hundred and forty-eight,” but nobody took up the offer.
So we come to the events of the Cathedral School Social. At which bullies became instruments of destiny, and fingers were transmuted into fountains, and Masha Miovic, the legendary breast-stroker, fell into a dead faint … I arrived at the Social with the nurse’s bandage still on my head. I was late, because it hadn’t been easy to persuade my mother to let me come; so by the time I stepped into the Assembly Hall, beneath streamers and balloons and the professionally suspicious gazes of bony female chaperones, all the best girls were already box-stepping and Mexican-Hatting with absurdly smug partners. Naturally, the prefects had the pick of the ladies; I watched them with passionate envy, Guzder and Joshi and Stevenson and Rushdie and Talyarkhan and Tayabali and Jussawalla and Waglé and King; I tried butting in on them during excuse-mes but when they saw my bandage and my cucumber of a nose and the stains on my face they just laughed and turned their backs … hatred burgeoning in my bosom, I ate potato chips and drank Bubble-Up and Vimto and told myself, “Those jerks; if they knew who I was they’d get out of my way pretty damn quick!” But still the fear of revealing my true nature was stronger than my somewhat abstract desire for the whirling European girls.
“Hey, Saleem, isn’t it? Hey, man, what happened to you?” I was dragged out of my bitter, solitary reverie (even Sonny had someone to dance with; but then, he had his forcep-hollows, and he didn’t wear underpants—there were reasons for his attractiveness) by a voice behind my left shoulder, a low, throaty voice, full of promises—but also of menace. A girl’s voice. I turned with a sort of jump and found myself staring at a vision with golden hair and a prominent and famous chest … my God, she was fourteen years old, why was she talking to me? … “My name is Masha Miovic,” the vision said, “I’ve met your sister.”
Of course! The Monkey’s heroines, the swimmers from Walsingham School, would certainly know the Schools champion breast-stroker! … “I know …” I stuttered, “I know your name.”
“And I know yours,” she straightened my tie, “so that’s fair.” Over her shoulder, I saw Glandy Keith and Fat Perce watching us in drooling paroxysms of envy. I straightened my back and pushed out my shoulders. Masha Miovic asked again about my bandage. “It’s nothing,” I said in what I hoped was a deep voice, “A sporting accident.” And then, working feverishly to hold my voice steady, “Would you like to … to dance?”
“Okay,” said Masha Miovic, “But don’t try any smooching.”
Saleem takes the floor with Masha Miovic, swearing not to smooch. Saleem and Masha, doing the Mexican Hat; Masha and Saleem, box-stepping with the best of them! I allow my face to adopt a superior expression; you see, you don’t have to be a prefect to get a girl! … The dance ended; and, still on top of my wave of elation, I said, “Would you care for a stroll, you know, in the quad?”
Masha Miovic smiling privately. “Well, yah, just for a sec; but hands off, okay?”
Hands off, Saleem swears. Saleem and Masha, taking the air … man, this is fine. This is the life. Goodbye Evie, hello breast-stroke … Glandy Keith Colaco and Fat Perce Fishwala step out of the shadows of the quadrangle. They are giggling: “Hee hee.” Masha Miovic looks puzzled as they block our path. “Hoo hoo,” Fat Perce says, “Masha, hoo hoo. Some date you got there.” And I, “Shut up, you.” Whereupon Glandy Keith, “You wanna know how he got his war-wound, Mashy?” And Fat Perce, “Hee hoo ha.” Masha says, “Don’t be crude; he got it in a sporting accident!” Fat Perce and Glandy Keith are almost falling over with mirth; then Fishwala reveals all. “Zagallo pulled his hair out in class!” Hee hoo. And Keith, “Snotnose is a baldie!” And both together, “Sniffer’s got a map-face!” There is puzzlement on Masha Miovic’s face. And something more, some budding spirit of sexual mischief … “Saleem, they’re being so rude about you!”
“Yes,” I say, “ignore them.” I try to edge her away. But she goes on, “You aren’t going to let them get away with it?” There are beads of excitement on her upper lip; her tongue is in the corner of her mouth; the eyes of Masha Miovic say, What are you? A man or a mouse? … and under the spell of the champion breast-stroker, something else floats into my head: the image of two irresistible knees; and now I am rushing at Colaco and Fishwala; while they are distracted by giggles, my knee drives into Glandy’s groin; before he’s dropped, a similar genuflection has laid Fat Perce low. I turn to my mistress; she applauds, softly. “Hey man, pretty good.”
But now my moment has passed; and Fat Perce is picking himself up, and Glandy Keith is already moving towards me … abandoning all pretence of manhood, I turn and run. And the two bullies are after me and behind them comes Masha Miovic calling, “Where are you running, little hero?” But there’s no time for her now, mustn’t let them get me, into the nearest classroom and try and shut the door, but Fat Perce’s foot is in the way and now the two of them are inside too and I dash at the door, I grab it with my right hand, trying to force it open, get out if you can, they are pushing the door shut, but I’m pulling with the strength of my fear, I have it open a few inches, my hand curls around it, and now Fat Perce slams all his weight against the door and it shuts too fast for me to get my hand out of the way and it’s shut. A thud. And outside, Masha Miovic arrives and looks down at the floor; and sees the top third of my middle finger lying there like a lump of well-chewed bubble-gum. This was the point at which she fainted.
No pain. Everything very far away. Fat Perce and Glandy Keith fleeing, to get help or to hide. I look at my hand out of pure curiosity. My finger has become a fountain: red liquid spurts out to the rhythm of my heart-beat. Never knew a finger held so much blood. Pretty. Now here’s nurse, don’t worry, nurse. Only a scratch. Your parents are being phoned; Mr. Crusoe is getting his car keys. Nurse is putting a great wad of cotton-wool over the stump. Filling up like red candy-floss. And now Crusoe. Get in the car, Saleem, your mother is going straight to the hospital. Yes sir. And the bit, has anybody got the bit? Yes headmaster here it is. Thank you nurse. Probably no use but you never know. Hold this while I drive, Saleem … and holding up my severed fingertip in my unmutilated left hand, I am driven to the Breach Candy Hospital through the echoing streets of night.
At the hospital: white walls stretchers everyone talking at once. Words pour around me like fountains. “O God preserve us, my little piece-of-the-moon, what have they done to you?” To which old Crusoe, “Heh heh. Mrs. Sinai. Accidents will happen. Boys will be.” But my mother,
enraged, “What kind of school? Mr. Caruso? I’m here with my son’s finger in pieces and you tell me. Not good enough. No, sir.” And now, while Crusoe, “Actually the name’s—like Robinson, you know—heh heh,” the doctor is approaching and a question is being asked, whose answer will change the world.
“Mrs. Sinai, your blood group, please? The boy has lost blood. A transfusion may be necessary.” And Amina: “I am A; but my husband, O.” And now she is crying, breaking down, and still the doctor, “Ah; in that case, are you aware of your son’s …” But she, the doctor’s daughter, must admit she cannot answer the question: Alpha or Omega? “Well in that case a very quick test; but on the subject of rhesus?” My mother, through her tears: “Both my husband and I, rhesus positive.” And the doctor, “Well, good, that at least.”
But when I am on the operating table—“Just sit there, son, I’ll give you a local anesthetic, no, madam, he’s in shock, total anesthesia would be impossible, all right son, just hold your finger up and still, help him nurse, and it’ll be over in a jiffy”—while the surgeon is sewing up the stump and performing the miracle of transplanting the roots of the nail, all of a sudden there’s a fluster in the background, a million miles away, and “Have you got a second Mrs. Sinai” and I can’t hear properly … words float across the infinite distance … Mrs. Sinai, you are sure? O and A? A and O? And rhesus positive, both of you? Heterozygous or homozygous? No, there must be some mistake, how can he be … I’m sorry, absolutely and neither A nor … excuse me, Madam, but is he your … not adopted or … The hospital nurse interposes herself between me and the miles-away chatter, but it’s no good, because now my mother is shrieking, “But of course you must believe me, doctor; my God, of course he is our son!”
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