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

Midnight
No! But I must.
I don't want to tell it! But I swore to tell it all. No, I renounce, not tha
t, surely some things are better left…? That won't wash; what can't be cured
, must be endured! But surely not the whispering walls, and treason, and sni
p snip, and the women with the bruised chests? Especially those things. But
how can I, look at me, I'm tearing myself apart, can't even agree with mysel
f, talking arguing like a wild fellow, cracking up, memory going, yes, memor
y plunging into chasms and being swallowed by the dark, only fragments remai
n, none of it makes sense any more! But I mustn't presume to judge; must sim
ply continue (having once begun) until the end; sense and nonsense is no lon
ger (perhaps never was) for me to evaluate. But the horror of it, I can't wo
n't mustn't won't can't no! Stop this; begin. No! Yes.
About the dream, then? I might be able to tell it as a dream. Yes, perhaps a
nightmare: green and black the Widow's hair and clutching hand and children
mmff and little balls and one by one and torn in half and little balls go f
lying flying green and black her hand is green her nails are black as black.
No dreams. Neither the time nor the place for. Facts, as remembered. To the
best of one's ability. The way it was: Begin. No choice? None; when was the
re ever? There are imperatives, and logical consequences, and inevitabilitie
s, and recurrences; there are things done to, and accidents, and bludgeoning
s of fate; when was there ever a choice? When options? When a decision freel
y made, to be this or that or the other? No choice; begin. Yes.
Listen:
Endless night, days weeks months without the sun, or rather (because it's imp
ortant to be precise) beneath a sun as cold as a stream rinsed plate, a sun w
ashing us in lunatic midnight light; I'm talking about the winter of 1975 6.
In the winter, darkness; and also tuberculosis.
Once, in a blue room overlooking the sea, beneath the pointing finger of a
fisherman, I fought typhoid and was rescued by snake poison; now, trapped i
n the dynastic webs of recurrence by my recognition of his sonship, our Aad
am Sinai was also obliged to spend his early months battling the invisible
snakes of a disease. The serpents of tuberculosis wound themselves around h
is neck and made him gasp for air… but he was a child of ears and silence,
and when he spluttered, there were no sounds; when he wheezed, no raspings
issued from his throat. In short, my son fell ill, and although his mother,
Parvati or Laylah, went in search of the herbs of her magical gift althoug
h infusions of herbs in well boiled water were constantly administered, the
wraith like worms of tuberculosis refused to be driven away. I suspected,
from the first, something darkly metaphorical in this illness believing tha