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

s stuffed into their necks?
'Damn lucky you called my boys out, Begum Sahiba,' Inspector Vakeel is say
ing. 'That was Joseph D'Costa on our Most Wanted list. Been after him for
a year or thereabouts. Absolute black hearted badmaash. You should see the
walls inside that clocktower! Shelves, filled from floor to ceiling with
home made bombs. Enough explosive power to blow this hill into the sea!'
Melodrama piling upon melodrama; life acquiring the colouring of a Bombay
talkie; snakes following ladders, ladders succeeding snakes; in the midst
of too much incident, Baby Saleem fell ill. As if incapable of assimilatin
g so many goings on, he closed his eyes and became red and flushed. While
Amina awaited the results of Ismail's case against the State authorities;
while the Brass Monkey grew in her womb; while Mary entered a state of sho
ck from which she would fully emerge only when Joseph's ghost returned to
haunt her; while umbilical cord hung in pickle jar and Mary's chutneys fil
led our dreams with pointing fingers; while Reverend Mother ran the kitche
ns, my grandfather examined me and said, 'I'm afraid there is no doubt; th
e poor lad has typhoid.'
'O God in heaven,' Reverend Mother cried out, 'What dark devil has come, wh
atsitsname, to sit upon this house?'
This is how I have heard the story of the illness which nearly stopped me b
efore I'd started: day and night, at the end of August 1948, mother and gra
ndfather looked after me; Mary dragged herself out of her guilt and pressed
cold flannels to my forehead; Reverend Mother sang lullabies and spooned f
ood into my mouth; even my father, forgetting momentarily his own disorders
, stood flapping helplessly in the doorway. But the night came when Doctor
Aziz, looking as broken as an old horse, said, 'There is nothing more I can
do. He will be dead by morning.' And in the midst of wailing women and the
incipient labour of my mother who had been pushed into it by grief and the
tearing of Mary Pereira's hair there was a knock; a servant announced Dr S
chaapsteker; who handed my grandfather a little bottle and said, 'I make no
bones about it: this is kill or cure. Two drops exactly; then wait and see.'
My grandfather, sitting head in hands in the rubble of his medical learning,
asked, 'What is it?' And Dr Schaapsteker, nearly eighty two, tongue flickin
g at the corners of his mouth: 'Diluted venene of the king cobra. It has bee
n known to work.'
Snakes can lead to triumph, just as ladders can be descended: my grandfath
er, knowing I would die anyway, administered the cobra poison. The family
stood and watched while poison spread through the child's body… and six ho
urs later, my temperature had returned to normal. After that, my growth ra
te lost its phenomenal aspects; but something was given in exchange for wh
at was lost: life, and an early awareness of the ambiguity of snakes.