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

t some of their tetrapod money into a pickle firm. 'I told them, nobody mak
es achar chutney like our Mary,' Alice had said, with perfect accuracy, 'be
cause she puts her feelings inside them.' So Alice turned out to be a good
girl in the end. And baba, what do you think, how could I believe the whole
world would want to eat my poor pickles, even in England they eat. And now
, just think, I sit here where your dear house used to be, while God knows
what all has happened to you, living like a beggar so long, what a world, b
aapu re!
And bitter sweet lamentations: O, your poor mummy daddy! That fine madam,
dead! And the poor man, never knowing who loved him or how to love! And
even the Monkey… but I interrupt, no, not dead: no, not true, not dead. S
ecretly, in a nunnery, eating bread.
Mary, who has stolen the name of poor Queen Catharine who gave these islands
to the British, taught me the secrets of the pickling process. (Finishing a
n education which began in this very air space when I stood in a kitchen as
she stirred guilt into green chutney.) Now she sits at home, retired in her
white haired old age, once more happy as an ayah with a baby to raise. 'Now
you finished your writing writing, baba, you should take more time for your
son.' But Mary, I did it for him. And she, switching the subject, because he
r mind makes all sorts of flea jumps these days: 'O baba, baba, look at you,
how old you got already!'
Rich Mary, who never dreamed she would be rich, is still unable to sleep o
n beds. But drinks sixteen Coca Colas a day, unworried about teeth, which
have all fallen out anyway. A flea jump: 'Why you getting married so sudde
n sudden?' Because Padma wants. No, she is not in trouble, how could she,
in my condition? 'Okay, baba, I only asked.'
And the day would have wound down peacefully, a twilight day near the end
of time, except that now, at last, at the age of three years, one month an
d two weeks. Aadam Sinai uttered a sound.
'Ab…' Arre, O my God, listen, baba, the boy is saying something! And Aadam,
very carefully: 'Abba…' Father. He is calling me father. But no, he has no
t finished, there is strain on his face, and finally my son, who will have
to be a magician to cope with the world I'm leaving him, completes his awes
ome first word: '…cadabba.'
Abracadabra! But nothing happens, we do not turn into toads, angels do not
fly in through the window: the lad is just flexing his muscles. I shall not
see his miracles…. Amid Mary's celebrations of Aadam's achievement, I go b
ack to Padma, and the factory; my son's enigmatic first incursion into lang
uage has left a worrying fragrance in my nostrils.
Abracadabra: not an Indian word at all, a cabbalistic formula derived from
the name of the supreme god of the Basilidan gnostics, containing the numbe
r 365, the number of the days of the year, and of the heavens, and of the s