Midnights Children

Fishwala; while they are distracted by giggles, my knee drives into Glandy’s groin; before he’s dropped, a similar genuflection has laid Fat Perce low. I turn to my mistress; she applauds, softly. “Hey man, pretty good.”
    But now my moment has passed; and Fat Perce is picking himself up, and Glandy Keith is already moving towards me … abandoning all pretence of manhood, I turn and run. And the two bullies are after me and behind them comes Masha Miovic calling, “Where are you running, little hero?” But there’s no time for her now, mustn’t let them get me, into the nearest classroom and try and shut the door, but Fat Perce’s foot is in the way and now the two of them are inside too and I dash at the door, I grab it with my right hand, trying to force it open,
get out if you can
, they are pushing the door shut, but I’m pulling with the strength of my fear, I have it open a few inches, my hand curls around it, and now Fat Perce slams all his weight against the door and it shuts too fast for me to get my hand out of the way and it’s shut. A thud. And outside, Masha Miovic arrives and looks down at the floor; and sees the top third of my middle finger lying there like a lump of well-chewed bubble-gum. This was the point at which she fainted.
    No pain. Everything very far away. Fat Perce and Glandy Keith fleeing, to get help or to hide. I look at my hand out of pure curiosity. My finger has become a fountain: red liquid spurts out to the rhythm of my heart-beat. Never knew a finger held so much blood. Pretty. Now here’s nurse, don’t worry, nurse. Only a scratch.
Your parents are being phoned; Mr. Crusoe is getting his car keys
. Nurse is putting a great wad of cotton-wool over the stump. Filling up like red candy-floss. And now Crusoe. Get in the car, Saleem, your mother is going straight to the hospital. Yes sir. And the bit, has anybody got the
bit?
Yes headmaster here it is. Thank you nurse. Probably no use but you never know. Hold this while I drive, Saleem … and holding up my severed fingertip in my unmutilated left hand, I am driven to the Breach Candy Hospital through the echoing streets of night.
    At the hospital: white walls stretchers everyone talking at once. Words pour around me like fountains. “O God preserve us, my little piece-of-the-moon, what have they done to you?” To which old Crusoe, “Heh heh. Mrs. Sinai. Accidents will happen. Boys will be.” But my mother, enraged, “What kind of school? Mr. Caruso? I’m here with my son’s finger in pieces and you tell me. Not good enough. No, sir.” And now, while Crusoe, “Actually the name’s—like Robinson, you know—heh heh,” the doctor is approaching and a question is being asked, whose answer will change the world.
    “Mrs. Sinai, your blood group, please? The boy has lost blood. A transfusion may be necessary.” And Amina: “I am A; but my husband, O.” And now she is crying, breaking down, and still the doctor, “Ah; in that case, are you aware of your son’s …” But she, the doctor’s daughter, must admit she cannot answer the question: Alpha or Omega? “Well in that case a very quick test; but on the subject of rhesus?” My mother, through her tears: “Both my husband and I, rhesus positive.” And the doctor, “Well, good, that at least.”
    But when I am on the operating table—“Just sit there, son, I’ll give you a local anesthetic, no, madam, he’s in shock, total anesthesia would be impossible, all right son, just hold your finger up and still, help him nurse, and it’ll be over in a jiffy”—while the surgeon is sewing up the stump and performing the miracle of transplanting the roots of the nail, all of a sudden there’s a fluster in the background, a million miles away, and “Have you got a second Mrs. Sinai” and I can’t hear properly … words float across the infinite distance … Mrs. Sinai, you are sure? O and A? A and O? And rhesus positive, both of you? Heterozygous or homozygous? No, there must be some mistake, how can he be … I’m sorry, absolutely and neither A nor … excuse me, Madam, but is he your … not adopted or … The hospital nurse interposes herself between me and the miles-away chatter, but it’s no good, because now my mother is shrieking, “But of course you must believe me, doctor; my God,
of course he is our son!
”
    Neither A nor O. And the rhesus factor: impossibly negative. And zygosity offers no clues. And present in the blood, rare Kell