Salman Rushdie Midnight's children Salman Rushdie Midnight's ...

and swallowing infinite hugs kisses chucks under the chin, charging toward
s the moment when he would acquire the essential characteristic of human be
ings: every day, and only in those rare moments when I was left alone with
the fisherman's pointing finger, I tried to heave myself erect in my cot.
(And while I made unavailing efforts to get to my feet, Amina, too, was in
the grip of a useless resolve she was trying to expel from her mind the dre
am of her unnameable husband, which had replaced the dream of flypaper on t
he night after I was born; a dream of such overwhelming reality that it sta
yed with her throughout her waking hours. In it, Nadir Khan came to her bed
and impregnated her; such was the mischievous perversity of the dream that
it confused Amina about the parentage of her child, and provided me, the c
hild of midnight, with a fourth father to set beside Winkie and Methwold an
d Ahmed Sinai. Agitated but helpless in the clutches of the dream, my mothe
r Amina began at that time to form the fog of guilt which would, in later y
ears, surround her head like a dark black wreath.)
I never heard Wee Willie Winkie in his prime. After his blind eyed bereavem
ent, his sight gradually returned; but something harsh and bitter crept int
o his voice. He told us it was asthma, and continued to arrive at Methwold'
s Estate once a week to sing songs which were, like himself, relics of the
Methwold era. 'Good Night, Ladies,' he sang; and, keeping up to date, added
'The Clouds Will Soon Roll By' to his repertoire, and, a little later, 'Ho
w Much Is That Doggie In The Window?' Placing a sizeable infant with menaci
ngly knocking knees on a small mat beside him in the circus ring, he sang s
ongs filled with nostalgia, and nobody had the heart to turn him away. Wink
ie and the fisherman's finger were two of the few survivals of the days of
William Methwold, because after the Englishman's disappearance his successo
rs emptied his palaces of their abandoned contents. Lila Sabarmati preserve
d her pianola; Ahmed Sinai kept his whisky cabinet; old man Ibrahim came to
terms with ceiling fans; but the goldfish died, some from starvation, othe
rs as a result of being so colossally overfed that they exploded in little
clouds of scales and undigested fish food; the dogs ran wild, and eventuall
y ceased to roam the Estate; and the fading clothes in the old almirahs wer
e distributed amongst the sweeper women and other servants on the Estate, s
o that for years afterwards the heirs of William Methwold were cared for by
men and women wearing the increasingly ragged shirts and cotton print dres
ses of their erstwhile masters. But Winkie and the picture on my wall survi
ved; singer and fisherman became institutions of our lives, like the cockta
il hour, which was already a habit too powerful to be broken. 'Each little
tear and sorrow,' Winkie sang, 'only brings you closer to me…' And his voic
e grew worse and worse, until it sounded like a sitar whose resonating drum
, made out of lacquered pumpkin, had been eaten away by mice; 'It's asthma,