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

oy has suffered; he is suffering now; he knows what it is to lose, to fee
l forlorn! I, too, have been abandoned: I am great actress, and here I sit
surrounded by tales of bicycle postmen and donkey cart drivers! What do you
know of a woman's grief? Sit, sit, let some fat rich Parsee film producer
give you charity, never mind that your wife wears paste jewels and no new s
aris for two years; a woman's back is broad, but, beloved husband, you have
made my days into deserts! Go, ignore me now, just leave me in peace to ju
mp from the window! I will go into the bedroom now,' she concluded, 'and if
you hear no more from me it is because my heart is broken and I am dead.'
More doors slammed: it was a terrific exit.
Uncle Hanif broke a pencil, absent mindedly, into two halves. He shook his
head wonderingly: 'What's got into her?' But I knew. I, bearer of secrets,
threatened by policemen, I knew and bit my lip. Because, trapped as I was i
n the crisis of the marriage of my uncle and aunt, I had broken my recently
made rule and entered Pia's head; I had seen her visit to Homi Catrack and
knew that, for years now, she had been his fancy woman; I had heard him te
lling her that he had tired of her charms, and there was somebody else now;
and I, who would have hated him enough just for seducing my beloved aunt,
found myself hating him twice as passionately for doing her the dishonour o
f discarding her.
'Go to her,' my uncle was saying, 'Maybe you can cheer her up.'
The boy Saleem moves through repeatedly slammed doors to the sanctum of his
tragic aunt; and enters, to find her loveliest of bodies splayed out in wo
ndrous abandon across the marital bed where, only last night, bodies nestle
d against bodies where paper passed from hand .to hand… a hand flutters at
her heart; her chest heaves; and the boy Saleem stammers, 'Aunt, ? aunt, I'
m sorry.'
A banshee wail from the bed. Tragedienne's arms, flying outwards towards me
. 'Hai! Hai, hai! Ai hai hai!' Needing no further invitation, I fly towards
those arms; I fling myself between them, to lie atop my mourning aunt. The
arms close around me, tightertighter, nails digging through my school whit
e shirt, but I don't care! Because something has started twitching below my
S buckled belt. Aunty Pia thrashes about beneath me in her despair and I t
hrash with her, remembering to keep my right hand clear of the action. I ho
ld it stiffly out above the fray. One handed, I begin to caress her, not kn
owing what I'm doing, I'm only ten years old and still in shorts, but I'm c
rying because she's crying, and the room is full of the noise and on the be
d as two bodies thrash, two bodies begin to acquire a kind of rhythm, unnam
eable unthinkable, hips pushing up towards me, while she yells, '?! ? God,
? God, O!' And maybe I am yelling too, I can't say, something is taking ove
r from grief here, while my uncle snaps pencils on a striped sofa, somethin