Midnights Children

whatsitsname! I give thanks to God you have recovered from that photography!”
    After that day, Amina was freed from the exigencies of running her home. Reverend Mother sat at the head of the dining-table, doling out food (Amina took plates to Ahmed, who stayed in bed, moaning from time to time, “Smashed, wife! Snapped—like an icicle!”); while, in the kitchens, Mary Pereira took the time to prepare, for the benefit of their visitors, some of the finest and most delicate mango pickles, lime chutneys and cucumber kasaundies in the world. And now, restored to the status of daughter in her own home, Amina began to feel the emotions of other people’s food seeping into her—because Reverend Mother doled out the curries and meatballs of intransigence, dishes imbued with the personality of their creator; Amina ate the fish salans of stubbornness and the birianis of determination. And, although Mary’s pickles had a partially counteractive effect—since she had stirred into them the guilt of her heart, and the fear of discovery, so that, good as they tasted, they had the power of making those who ate them subject to nameless uncertainties and dreams of accusing fingers—the diet provided by Reverend Mother filled Amina with a kind of rage, and even produced slight signs of improvements in her defeated husband. So that finally the day came when Amina, who had been watching me play incompetently with toy horses of sandalwood in the bath, inhaling the sweet odors of sandalwood which the bathwater released, suddenly rediscovered within herself the adventurous streak which was her inheritance from her fading father, the streak which had brought Aadam Aziz down from his mountain valley; Amina turned to Mary Pereira and said, “I’m fed up. If nobody in this house is going to put things right, then it’s just going to be up to me!”
    Toy horses galloped behind Amina’s eyes as she left Mary to dry me and marched into her bedroom. Remembered glimpses of Mahalaxmi Racecourse cantered in her head as she pushed aside saris and petticoats. The fever of a reckless scheme flushed her cheeks as she opened the lid of an old tin trunk … filling her purse with the coins and rupee notes of grateful patients and wedding-guests, my mother went to the races.
    With the Brass Monkey growing inside her, my mother stalked the paddocks of the racecourse named after the goddess of wealth; braving early-morning sickness and varicose veins, she stood in line at the Tote window, putting money on three-horse accumulators and long-odds outsiders. Ignorant of the first thing about horses, she backed mares known not to be stayers to win long races; she put her money on jockeys because she liked their smiles. Clutching a purse full of the dowry which had lain untouched in its trunk since her own mother had packed it away, she took wild flutters on stallions who looked fit for the Schaapsteker Institute … and won, and won, and won.
    “Good news,” Ismail Ibrahim is saying, “I always thought you should fight the bastards. I’ll begin proceedings at once … but it will take cash, Amina. Have you got cash?”
    “The money will be there.”
    “Not for myself,” Ismail explains, “My services are, as I said, free, gratis absolutely. But, forgive me, you must know how things are, one must give little presents to people to smooth one’s way …”
    “Here,” Amina hands him an envelope, “Will this do for now?”
    “My God,” Ismail Ibrahim drops the packet in surprise and rupee notes in large denominations scatter all over his sitting-room floor, “Where did you lay your hands on …” And Amina, “Better you don’t ask—and I won’t ask how you spend it.”
    Schaapsteker money paid for our food bills; but horses fought our war. The streak of luck of my mother at the racetrack was so long, a seam so rich, that if it hadn’t happened it wouldn’t have been credible … for month after month, she put her money on a jockey’s nice tidy hair-style or a horse’s pretty piebald coloring; and she never left the track without a large envelope stuffed with notes.
    “Things are going well,” Ismail Ibrahim told her, “But Amina sister, God knows what you are up to. Is it decent? Is it legal?” And Amina: “Don’t worry your head. What can’t be cured must be endured. I am doing what must be done.”
    Never once in all that time did my mother take pleasure in her mighty victories; because she was weighed down by more than a