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

und, at long last, some respite from the endless monsoon, and also the towe
ring statue of a black dancing goddess, whom the boy soldiers from Pakistan
could not name; but the buddha knew she was Kali, fecund and awful, with t
he remnants of gold paint on her teeth. The four travellers lay down at her
feet and fell into a rain free sleep which ended at what could have been m
idnight, when they awoke simultaneously to find themselves being smiled upo
n by four young girls of a beauty which was beyond speech. Shaheed, who rec
alled the four houris awaiting him in the camphor garden, thought at first
that he had died in the night; but the houris looked real enough, and their
saris, under which they wore nothing at all, were torn and stained by the
jungle. Now as eight eyes stared into eight, saris were unwound and placed,
neatly folded, on the ground; after which the naked and identical daughter
s of the forest came to them, eight arms were twined with eight, eight legs
were linked with eight legs more; below the statue of multi limbed Kali, t
he travellers abandoned themselves to caresses which felt real enough, to k
isses and love bites which were soft and painful, to scratches which left m
arks, and they realized that this this this was what they had needed, what they had long
hout knowing it, that having passed through the childish regressions and chi
ldlike sorrows of their earliest jungle days, having survived the onset of m
emory and responsibility and the greater pains of renewed accusations, they
were leaving infancy behind for ever, and then forgetting reasons and implic
ations and deafness, forgetting everything, they gave themselves to the four
identical beauties without a single thought in their heads.
After that night, they were unable to tear themselves away from the temple,
except to forage for food, and every night the soft women of their most co
ntented dreams returned in silence, never speaking, always neat and tidy wi
th their saris, and invariably bringing the lost quartet to an incredible u
nited peak of delight. None of them knew how long this period lasted, becau
se in the Sundarbans time followed unknown laws, but at last the day came w
hen they looked at each other and realized they were becoming transparent,
that it was possible to see through their bodies, not clearly as yet, but c
loudily, like staring through mango juice. In their alarm they understood t
hat this was the last and worst of the jungle's tricks, that by giving them
their heart's desire it was fooling them into using up their dreams, so th
at as their dream life seeped out of them they became as hollow and translu
cent as glass. The buddha saw now that the colourlessness of insects and le
eches and snakes might have more to do with the depredations worked on thei
r insectly, leechy, snakish imaginations than with the absence of sunlight…
awakened as if for the first time by the shock of translucency, they looke
d at the temple with new eyes, seeing the great gaping cracks in the solid
rock, realizing that vast segments could come detached and crash down upon