Midnights Children

in the presence of an Englishman it has become a hideous mockery of an Oxford drawl, “why insist on the delay? Quick sale is best business, after all. Get the thing buttoned up.”
    “… And pictures of old Englishwomen everywhere, baba! No place to hang my own father’s photo on the wall! …”
    “It seems, Mr. Sinai,” Mr. Methwold is refilling the glasses as the sun dives towards the Arabian Sea behind the Breach Candy pool, “that beneath this stiff English exterior lurks a mind with a very Indian lust for allegory.”
    “And drinking so much, janum … that’s not good.”
    “I’m not sure—Mr. Methwold, ah—what exactly you mean by …”
    “… Oh, you know: after a fashion, I’m transferring power, too. Got a sort of itch to do it at the same time the Raj does. As I said: a game. Humor me, won’t you, Sinai? After all: the price, you’ve admitted, isn’t bad.”
    “Has his brain gone raw, janum? What do you think: is it safe to do bargains if he’s loony?”
    “Now listen, wife,” Ahmed Sinai is saying, “this has gone on long enough. Mr. Methwold is a fine man; a person of breeding; a man of honor; I will not have his name … And besides, the other purchasers aren’t making so much noise, I’m sure … Anyway, I have told him yes, so there’s an end to it.”
    “Have a cracker,” Mr. Methwold is saying, proffering a plate, “Go on, Mr. S., do. Yes, a curious affair. Never seen anything like it. My old tenants—old India hands, the lot—suddenly, up and off. Bad show. Lost their stomachs for India. Overnight. Puzzling to a simple fellow like me. Seemed like they washed their hands—didn’t want to take a scrap with them. ‘Let it go,’ they said. Fresh start back home. Not short of a shilling, none of them, you understand, but still. Rum. Leaving me holding the baby. Then I had my notion.”
    “… Yes, decide, decide,” Amina is saying spiritedly, “I am sitting here like a lump with a baby, what have I to do with it? I must live in a stranger’s house with this child growing, so what? … Oh, what things you make me do …”
    “Don’t cry,” Ahmed is saying now, flapping about the hotel room, “It’s a good house. You know you like the house. And two months … less than two … what, is it kicking? Let me feel … Where? Here?”
    “There,” Amina says, wiping her nose, “Such a good big kick.”
    “My notion,” Mr. Methwold explains, staring at the setting sun, “is to stage my own transfer of assets. Leave behind everything you see? Select suitable persons—such as yourself, Mr. Sinai!—hand everything over absolutely intact: in tiptop working order. Look around you: everything’s in fine fettle, don’t you agree? Tickety-boo, we used to say. Or, as you say in Hindustani: Sabkuch ticktock hai. Everything’s just fine.”
    “Nice people are buying the houses,” Ahmed offers Amina his handkerchief, “nice new neighbours … that Mr. Homi Catrack in Versailles Villa, Parsee chap, but a racehorse-owner. Produces films and all. And the Ibrahims in Sans Souci, Nussie Ibrahim is having a baby, too, you can be friends … and the old man Ibrahim, with so-big sisal farms in Africa. Good family.”
    “… And afterwards I can do what I like with the house … ?”
    “Yes, afterwards, naturally, he’ll be gone …”
    “… It’s all worked out excellently,” William Methwold says. “Did you know my ancestor was the chap who had the idea of building this whole city? Sort of Raffles of Bombay. As his descendant, at this important juncture, I feel the, I don’t know, need to play my part. Yes, excellently … when d’you move in? Say the word and I’ll move off to the Taj Hotel. Tomorrow? Excellent. Sabkuch ticktock hai.”
    These were the people amongst whom I spent my childhood: Mr. Homi Catrack, film magnate and racehorse-owner, with his idiot daughter Toxy who had to be locked up with her nurse, Bi-Appah, the most fearsome woman I ever knew; also the Ibrahims in Sans Souci, old man Ibrahim Ibrahim with his goatee and sisal, his sons Ismail and Ishaq, and Ismail’s tiny flustery hapless wife Nussie, whom we always called Nussie-the-duck on account of her waddling gait, and in whose womb my friend Sonny was growing, even now, getting closer and closer to his misadventure with a pair of gynecological forceps … Escorial Villa was divided into flats. On the ground floor lived the Dubashes, he a physicist who would become a leading light at the