Midnights Children

to the dismemberment, stone by stone, of the entire fortress. Padma, it’s true: you’ve never been there, never stood in the twilight watching straining, resolute, furry creatures working at the stones, pulling and rocking, rocking and pulling, working the stones loose one at a time … every day the monkeys send stones rolling down the walls, bouncing off angles and outcrops, crashing down into the ditches below. One day there will be no Old Fort; in the end, nothing but a pile of rubble surmounted by monkeys screaming in triumph … and here is one monkey, scurrying along the ramparts—I shall call him Hanuman, after the monkey god who helped Prince Rama defeat the original Ravana, Hanuman of the flying chariots … Watch him now as he arrives at this turret—his territory; as he hops chatters runs from corner to corner of his kingdom, rubbing his rear on the stones; and then pauses, sniffs something that should not be here … Hanuman races to the alcove here, on the topmost landing, in which the three men have left three soft gray alien things. And, while monkeys dance on a roof behind the post office, Hanuman the monkey dances with rage. Pounces on the gray things. Yes, they are loose enough, won’t take much rocking and pulling, pulling and rocking … watch Hanuman now, dragging the soft gray stones to the edge of the long drop of the outside wall of the Fort. See him tear at them: rip! rap! rop! … Look how deftly he scoops paper from the insides of the gray things, sending it down like floating rain to bathe the fallen stones in the ditch! … Paper falling with lazy, reluctant grace, sinking like a beautiful memory into the maw of the darkness; and now, kick! thump! and again kick! the three soft gray stones go over the edge, downdown into the dark, and at last there comes a soft disconsolate plop. Hanuman, his work done, loses interest, scurries away to some distant pinnacle of his kingdom, begins to rock on a stone.
    … While, down below, my father has seen a grotesque figure emerging from the gloom. Not knowing a thing about the disaster which has taken place above, he observes the monster from the shadow of his ruined room: a ragged-pajama’d creature in the headdress of a demon, a papier-mâché devil-top which has faces grinning on every side of it … the appointed representative of the Ravana gang. The collector. Hearts thumping, the three businessman watch this specter out of a peasant’s nightmare vanish into the stairwell leading to the landing; and after a moment, in the stillness of the empty night, hear the devil’s perfectly human oaths. “Mother-sleepers! Eunuchs from somewhere!” … Uncomprehending, they see their bizarre tormentor emerge, rush away into the darkness, vanish. His imprecations … “Sodomizers of asses! Sons of pigs! Eaters of their own excrement!” … linger on the breeze. And up they go now, confusion addling their spirits; Butt finds a torn fragment of gray cloth; Mustapha Kemal stoops over a crumpled rupee; and maybe, yes, why not, my father sees a dark flurry of monkey out of the corner of an eye … and they guess.
    And now their groans and Mr. Butt’s shrill curses, which are echoes of the devil’s oaths; and there’s a battle raging, unspoken, in all their heads: money or godown or godown or money? Businessmen ponder, in mute panic, this central riddle—but then, even if they abandon the cash to the depredations of scavenging dogs and humans, how to stop the fire-raisers?—and at last, without a word having been spoken, the inexorable law of cash-in-hand wins them over; they rush down stone stairs, along grassed lawns, through ruined gates, and arrive— PELL-MELL !—at the ditch, to begin scooping rupees into their pockets, shoveling grabbing scrabbling, ignoring pools of urine and rotting fruit, trusting against all likelihood that tonight—by the grace of—just tonight for once, the gang will fail to wreak its promised revenge. But, of course …
    … But, of course, Ramram the seer was not really floating in midair, six inches above the ground. My mother’s scream faded; her eyes focused; and she noticed the little shelf, protruding from the wall. “Cheap trick,” she told herself, and, “What am I doing here in this God-forsaken place of sleeping vultures and monkey-dancers, waiting to be told who knows what foolishness by a guru who levitates by sitting on a shelf?”
    What Amina Sinai did not know was that, for the second time in