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

ot happy.
As ever, I am obliged to accept responsibility; the scent of mourn fulness
which hung around Parvati the witch was my creation. Because she was twenty
five years old, and wanted more from me than my willingness to be her audi
ence; God knows why, but she wanted me in her bed or, to be precise, to lie
with her on the lengdi of sackcloth which served her for a bed in the hove
l she shared with a family of contortionist triplets from Kerala, three gir
ls who were orphans just like her just like myself.
What she did for me: under the power of her magic, hair began to grow wher
e none had grown since Mr Zagallo pulled too hard; her wizardry caused the
birthmarks on my face to fade under the healing applications of herbal po
ultices; it seemed that even the bandiness of my legs was diminishing unde
r her care. (She could do nothing, however, for my one bad ear; there is n
o magic on earth strong enough to wipe out the legacies of one's parents.)
But no matter how much she did for me, I was unable to do for her the thi
ng she desired most; because although we lay down together beneath the wal
k on the blind side of the Mosque, the moonlight showed me her night time
face turning, always turning into that of my distant, vanished sister… no,
not my sister… into the putrid, vilely disfigured face of Jamila Singer.
Parvati anointed her body with unguent oils imbued with erotic charm; she
combed her hair a thousand times with a comb made from aphrodisiac deer bo
nes; and (I do not doubt it) in my absence she must have tried all manner
of lovers' sorceries; but I was in the grip of an older bewitchment, and c
ould not, it seemed, be released; I was doomed to find the faces of women
who loved me turning into the features of… but you know whose crumbling fe
atures appeared, filling my nostrils with their unholy stench.
'Poor girl,' Padma sighs, and I agree; but until the Widow drained me of pas
t present future, I remained under the Monkey's spell.
When Parvati the witch finally admitted failure, her face developed, over ni
ght, an alarming and pronounced pout. She fell asleep in the hut of the cont
ortionist orphans and awoke with her full lips stuck in a protruding attitud
e of unutterably sensuous pique. Orphaned triplets told her, giggling worrie
dly, what had happened to her face; she tried spiritedly to pull her feature
s back into position, but neither muscles nor wizardry managed to restore he
r to her former self; at last, resigning herself to her tragedy, Parvati gav
e in, so that Resham Bibi told anyone who would listen: 'That poor girl a go
d must have blown on her when she was making a face.'
(That year, incidentally, the chic ladies of the cities were all wearing just
such an expression with erotic deliberation; the haughty mannequins in the E
leganza '73 fashion show all pouted as they walked their catwalks. In the awf
ul poverty of the magicians' slum, pouting Parvati the witch was in the heigh
t of facial fashion.)