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

scendancy and the Conference's decline, I began to ascend the stairs whenev
er possible, and listen to the ravings of the crazy, sibilant old man.
His first greeting to me, when I stumbled into his unlocked lair, was: 'So,
child you have recovered from the typhoid.' The sentence stirred time like a
sluggish dust cloud and rejoined me to my one year old self; I remembered t
he story of how Schaapsteker had saved my life with snake poison. And afterw
ards, for several weeks, I sat at his feet, and he revealed to me the cobra
which lay coiled within myself.
Who listed, for my benefit, the occult powers of snakes? (Their shadows kill
cows; if they enter a man's dreams, his wife conceives; if they are killed,
the murderer's family is denied male issue for twenty generations.) And who
described to me with the aid of books and stuffed corpses the cobra's const
ant foes? 'Study your enemies, child,' he hissed, 'or they will surely kill
you.'… At Schaapsteker's feet, I studied the mongoose and the boar, the dagg
er billed adjutant bird and the barasinha deer, which crushes snakes' heads
under its feet; and the Egyptian ichneumon, and ibis; the four feet high sec
retary bird, fearless and hook beaked, whose appearance and name made me thi
nk suspicious thoughts about my father's Alice Pereira; and the jackal buzza
rd, the stink cat, the honey ratel from the hills; the road runner, the pecc
ary, and the formidable cangamba bird. Schaapsteker, from the depths of his
senility, instructed me in life. 'Be wise, child. Imitate the action of the
snake. Be secret; strike from the cover of a bush.'
Once he said: 'You must think of me as another father. Did I not give you
your life when it was lost?' With this statement he proved that he was as
much under my spell as I under his; he had accepted that he, too, was one
of that endless series of parents to whom I alone had the power of giving
birth. And although, after a time, I found the air in his chambers too opp
ressive, and left him once more to the isolation from which he would never
again be disturbed, he had shown me how to proceed. Consumed by the two h
eaded demon of revenge, I used my telepathic powers (for the first time) a
s a weapon; and in this way I discovered the details of the relationship b
etween Homi Catrack and Lila Sabarmati. Lila and Pia were always rivals in
beauty; it was the wife of the heir apparent to the title of Admiral of t
he Fleet who had become the film magnate's new fancy woman. While Commande
r Sabarmati was at sea on manoeuvres, Lila and Homi were performing certai
n manoeuvres of their own; while the lion of the seas awaited' the death o
f the then Admiral, Homi and Lila, too, were making an appointment with th
e Reaper. (With my help.)
'Be secret,' said Sharpsticker sahib; secretly, I spied on my enemy Homi, a
nd on the promiscuous mother of Eyeslice and Hairoil (who were very full of
themselves of late, ever since, in fact, the papers announced that Command
er Sabarmati's promotion was a mere formality. Only a matter of time…). 'Lo