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

ely put you straight; but one does not have to be Pope to know that the men
s are not ever blue!' The young father closes his eyes; breathes deeply; co
unter attacks. 'Skins have been dyed blue,' he stumbles. 'The Picts; the bl
ue Arab nomads; with the benefits of education, my daughter, you would see…
' But now a violent snort echoes in the confessional. 'What, Father? You ar
e comparing Our Lord to junglee wild men? ? Lord, I must catch my ears for
shame!'… And there is more, much more, while the young father whose stomach
is giving him hell suddenly has the inspiration that there is something mo
re important lurking behind this blue business, and asks the question; wher
eupon tirade gives way to tears, and the young father says panickily, 'Come
, come, surely the Divine Radiance of Our Lord is not a matter of mere pigm
ent?'… And a voice through the flooding salt water: 'Yes, Father, you're no
t so bad after all; I told him just that, exactly that very thing only, but
he said many rude words and would not listen…' So there it is, him has ent
ered the story, and now it all tumbles out, and Miss Mary Pereira, tiny virginal distrau
a confession which gives us a crucial clue about her motives when, on the n
ight of my birth, she made the last and most important contribution to the e
ntire history of twentieth century India from the time of my grandfather's n
ose bump until the time of my adulthood.
Mary Pereira's confession: like every Mary she had her Joseph. Joseph D'Cost
a, an orderly at a Pedder Road clinic called Dr Narlikar's Nursing Home ('Oh
o!' Padma sees a connection at last), where she worked as a midwife. Things
had been very good at first; he had taken her for cups of tea or lassi or fa
looda and told her sweet things. He had eyes like road drills, hard and full
of ratatat, but he spoke softly and well. Mary, tiny, plump, virginal, had
revelled in his attentions; but now everything had changed.
'Suddenly suddenly he's sniffing the air all the time. In a funny way, nose h
igh up. I ask, 'You got a cold or what, Joe?' But he says no; no, he says, he
's sniffing the wind from the north. But I tell him, Joe, in Bombay the wind
comes off the sea, from the west, Joe…' In a fragile voice Mary Pereira descr
ibes the ensuing rage of Joseph D'Costa, who told her, 'You don't know nothin
g, Mary, the air comes from the north now, and it's full of dying. This indep
endence is for the rich only; the poor are being made to kill each other like
flies. In Punjab, in Bengal. Riots riots, poor against poor. It's in the win
d.'
And Mary: 'You talking crazy, Joe, why you worrying with those so bad thing
s? We can live quietly still, no?'
'Never mind, you don't know one thing.'
'But Joseph, even if it's true about the killing, they're Hindu and Muslim pe
ople only; why get good Christian folk mixed up in their fight? Those ones ha
ve killed each other for ever and ever.'