I married Parvati-the-witch on February 23rd, 1975, the second anniversary of my outcast's return to the magicians' ghetto1.
Stiffening2 of Padma: taut3 as a washing-line, my dung-lotus inquires: 'Married?
But last night only you said you wouldn't - and why you haven't told me all these days, weeks, months... ?' I look at her sadly, and remind her that I have already mentioned the death of my poor Parvati, which was not a natural death ... slowly Padma uncoils, as I continue: 'Women have made me; and also unmade.
From Reverend Mother to the Widow, and even beyond, I have been at the mercy of the so-called (erroneously, in my opinion!) gentler sex. It is, perhaps, a matter of connection: is not Mother India, Bharat-Mata, commonly thought of as female? And, as you know, there's no escape from her.'
There have been thirty-two years, in this story, during which I remained unborn; soon, I may complete thirty-one years of my own. For sixty-three years, before and after midnight, women have done their best; and also, I'm bound to say, their worst.
In a blind landowner's house on the shores of a Kashmir! lake, Naseem Aziz doomed5 me to the inevitability6 of perforated sheets; and in the waters of that same lake, Ilse Lubin leaked into history, and I have not forgotten her deathwish; Before Nadir7 Khan hid in his underworld, my grandmother had, by becoming Reverend Mother, begun a sequence of women who changed their names, a sequence which continues even today - and which even leaked into Nadir, who became Qasim, and sat with dancing hands in the Pioneer Cafe; and after Nadir's departure, my mother Mumtaz Aziz became Amina Sinai; And Alia, with the bitterness of ages, who clothed me in the baby-things impregnated with her old-maid fury; and Emerald, who laid a table on which I made pepperpots march; There was the Rani of Cooch Naheen, whose money, placed at the disposal of a humming man, gave birth to the optimism disease, which has recurred8, at intervals9, ever since; and, in the Muslim quarter of Old Delhi, a distant relative called Zohra whose flirtations gave birth, in my father, to that later weakness for Fernandas and Florys; So to Bombay. Where Winkie's Vanita could not resist the centre-parting of William Methwold, and Nussie-the-duck lost a baby-race; while Mary Pereira, in the name of love, changed the baby-tags of history and became a second mother to me ...
Women and women and women: Toxy Catrack, nudging open the door which would later let in the children of midnight; the terrors of her nurse Bi-Appah; the competitive love of Amina and Mary, and what my mother showed me while I lay concealed10 in a washing-chest: yes, the Black Mango, which forced me to sniff11, and unleashed12 what-were-not-Archangels! ... And Evelyn Lilith Burns, cause of a bicycle-accident, who pushed me down a two-storey hillock into the midst of history.
And the Monkey. I musn't forget the Monkey.
But also, also, there was Masha Miovic, goading13 me into finger-loss, and my aunty Pia, filling my heart with revenge-lust14, and Lila Sabarmati, whose indiscretions made possible my terrible, manipulating, newspaper-cut-out revenge; And Mrs Dubash, who found my gift of a Superman comic and built it, with the help of her son, into Lord Khusro Khusrovand; And Mary, seeing a ghost.
In Pakistan, the land of submission15, the home of purity, I watched the transformation16 of Monkey-into-Singer, and fetched bread, and fell in love; it was a woman, Tai Bibi, who told me the truth about myself. And in the heart of my inner darkness, I turned to the Puffias, and was only narrowly saved from the threat of a golden-dentured bride.
Beginning again, as the buddha17, I lay with a latrine-cleaner and was subjected to electrified18 urinals as a result; in the East, a farmer's wife tempted19 me, and Time was assassinated20 in consequence; and there were houris in a temple, and we only just escaped in time.
In the shadow of a mosque21, Resham Bibi issued a warning.
And I married Parvati-the-witch.
'Oof, mister,' Padma exclaims, 'that's too much women!'
I do not disagree; because I have not even included her, whose dreams of marriage and Kashmir have inevitably22 been leaking into me, making me wish, if-only, if-only, so that, having once resigned myself to the cracks, I am now assailed24 by pangs25 of discontent, anger, fear and regret.
But above all, the Widow.
'I swear!' Padma slaps her knee, 'Too much, mister; too much.'
How are we to understand my too-many women? As the multiple faces of Bharat-Mata? Or as even more ... as the dynamic aspect of maya, as cosmic energy, which is represented as the female organ?
Maya, in its dynamic aspect, is called Shakti; perhaps it is no accident that, in the Hindu pantheon, the active power of a deity26 is contained within his queen! Maya-Shakti mothers, but also 'muffles27 consciousness in its dream-web'.
Too-many-women: are they all aspects of Devi, the goddess - who is Shakti, who slew28 the buffalo29-demon, who defeated the ogre Mahisha, who is Kali Durga Chandi Chamunda Uma Sati and Parvati ... and who, when active, is coloured red?
'I don't know about that,' Padma brings me down to earth, 'They are just women, that's all.'
Descending30 from my flight of fancy, I am reminded of the importance of speed; driven on by the imperatives31 of rip tear crack, I abandon reflections; and begin.
This is how it came about: how Parvati took her destiny into her own hands; how a lie, issuing from my lips, brought her to the desperate condition in which, one night, she extracted from her shabby garments a lock of hero's hair, and began to speak sonorous32 words.
Spurned33 by Saleem, Parvati remembered who had once been his arch-enemy; and, taking a bamboo stick with seven knots in it, and an improvized metal hook attached to one end, she squatted34 in her shack35 and recited; with the Hook of Indra in her right hand, and a lock of hair in her left, she summoned him to her. Parvati called to Shiva; believe don't believe, but Shiva came.
From the beginning there were knees and a nose, a nose and knees; but throughout this narrative36 I've been pushing him, the other, into the background (just as once, I banned him from the councils of the Children). He can be concealed no longer, however; because one morning in May 1974 - is it just my cracking memory, or am I right in thinking it was the 18th, perhaps at the very moment at which the deserts of Rajasthan were being shaken by India's first nuclear explosion? Was Shiva's explosion into my life truly synchronous37 with India's arrival, without prior warning, at the nuclear age? - he came to the magicians' slum. Uniformed, gonged-and-pipped, and a Major now, Shiva alighted from an Army motorcycle; and even through the modest khaki of his Army pants it was easy to make out the phenomenal twin bulges38 of his lethal39 knees... India's most decorated war hero, but once he led a gang of apaches in the back-streets of Bombay; once, before he discovered the legitimized violence of war, prostitutes were found throttled40 in gutters41 (I know, I know - no proof); Major Shiva now, but also Wee Willie Winkie's boy, who still remembered the words of long-silenced songs: 'Good Night, Ladies' still echoed on occasion in his ears.
There are ironies42 here, which must not pass unnoticed; for had not Shiva risen as Saleem fell? Who was the slum-dweller now, and who looked down from commanding heights? There is nothing like a war for the re-invention of lives ... On what may well have been May 18th, at any rate, Major Shiva came to the magicians' ghetto, and strode through the cruel streets of the slum with a strange expression on his face, which combined the infinite disdain43 for poverty of the recently-exalted with something more mysterious: because Major Shiva, drawn44 to our humble45 abode46 by the incantations of Parvati-the-witch, cannot have known what force impelled47 him to come.
What follows is a reconstruction48 of the recent career of Major Shiva; I pieced the story together from Parvati's accounts, which I got out of her after our marriage. It seems my arch-rival was fond of boasting to her about his exploits, so you may wish to make allowances for the distortions of truth which such chest-beating creates; however, there seems no reason to believe that what he told Parvati and she repeated to me was very far removed from what-was-the-case.
At the end of the war in the East, the legends of Shiva's awful exploits buzzed through the streets of the cities, leaped on to newspaper and into magazines, and thus insinuated49 themselves into the salons50 of the well-to-do, settling in clouds as thick as flies upon the eardrums of the country's hostesses, so that Shiva found himself elevated in social status as well as military rank, and was invited to a thousand and one different gatherings52 - banquets, musical soirees, bridge parties, diplomatic receptions, party political conferences, great melas and also smaller, local fetes, school sports days and fashionable balls - to be applauded and monopolized53 by the noblest and fairest in the land, to all of whom the legends of his exploits clung like flies, walking over their eyeballs so that they saw the young man through the mist of his legend, coating their fingertips so that they touched him through the magical film of his myth, settling on their tongues so that they could not speak to him as they would to an ordinary human being. The Indian Army, which was at that time fighting a political battle against proposed expenditure54 cuts, understood the value of so charismatic an ambassador, and permitted the hero to circulate amongst his influential55 admirers; Shiva espoused56 his new life with a will.
He grew a luxuriant moustache to which his personal batman applied57 a daily pomade of linseed-oil spiced with coriander; always elegantly turned out in the drawing-rooms of the mighty58, he engaged in political chit-chat, and declared himself a firm admirer of Mrs Gandhi, largely because of his hatred60 for her opponent Morarji Desai, who was intolerably ancient, drank his own urine, had skin which rustled61 like rice-paper, and, as Chief Minister of Bombay, had once been responsible for the banning of alcohol and the persecution62 of young goondas, that is to say hooligans or apaches, or, in other words, of the child Shiva himself... but such idle chatter63 occupied a mere64 fraction of his thoughts, the rest of which were entirely65 taken up with the ladies. Shiva, too, was besotted by too-much-women, and in those heady days after the military victory acquired a secret reputation which (he boasted to Parvati) rapidly grew to rival his official, public fame - a 'black' legend to set beside the 'white' one. What was whispered at the hen-parties and canasta-evenings of the land? What was hissed66 through giggles67 wherever two or three glittering ladies got together?
This: Major Shiva was becoming a notorious seducer68; a ladies'-man; a cuckolder of the rich; in short, a stud.
There were women - he told Parvati - wherever he went: their curving bird-soft bodies quaking beneath the weight of their jewellery and lust, their eyes misted over by his legend; it would have been difficult to refuse them even had he wanted to. But Major Shiva had no intention of refusing. He listened sympathetically to their little tragedies - impotent husbands, beatings, lack-of-attention - to whatever excuses the lovely creatures wished to offer.
Like my grandmother at her petrol pump (but with more sinister69 motives) he gave patient audience to their woes70; sipping71 whisky in the chandeliered splendour of ballrooms72, he watched them batting their eyelids73 and breathing suggestively while they moaned; and always, at last, they contrived74 to drop a handbag, or spill a drink, or knock his swagger-stick from his grasp, so that he would have to stoop to the floor to retrieve75 whatever-had-fallen, and then he would see the notes tucked into their sandals, sticking daintily out from under painted toes.
In those days (if the Major is to be believed) the lovely scandalous begums of India became awfully76 clumsy, and their chap-pals spoke78 of rendezvous-at-midnight, of trellises of bougainvillaea outside bedroom windows, of husbands conveniently away launching ships or exporting tea or buying ball-bearings from Swedes. While these unfortunates were away, the Major visited their homes to steal their most prized possessions: their women fell into his arms. It is possible (I have divided by half the Major's own figures) that at the height of his philanderings there were no less than ten thousand women in love with him.
And certainly there were children. The spawn79 of illicit80 midnights. Beautiful bouncing infants secure in the cradles of the rich. Strewing81 bastards82 across the map of India, the war hero went his way; but (and this, too, is what he told Parvati) he suffered from the curious fault of losing interest in anyone who became pregnant; no matter how beautiful sensuous83 loving they were, he deserted84 the bedrooms of all who bore his children; and lovely ladies with red-rimmed eyes were obliged to persuade their cuckolded husbands that yes, of course it's your baby, darling, life-of-mine, doesn't it look just like you, and of course I'm not sad, why should I be, these are tears of joy..
One such deserted mother was Roshanara, the child-wife of the steel magnate S.
P. Shetty; and at the Mahalaxmi Racecourse in Bombay, she punctured85 the mighty balloon of his pride. He had been promenading86 about the paddock, stooping every few yards to return ladies' shawls and parasols, which seemed to acquire a life of their own and spring out of their owners' hands as he passed; Roshanara Shetty confronted him here, standing87 squarely in his path and refusing to budge88, her seventeen-year-old eyes filled with the ferocious89 pique90 of childhood. He greeted her coolly, touching91 his Army cap, and attempted to pass; but she dug her needle-sharp nails into his arm, smiling dangerously as ice, and strolled along beside him. As they walked she poured her infantile poison into his ear, and her hatred and resentment92 of her former lover gave her the skill to make him believe her. Callously93 she whispered that it was so funny, my God, the way he strutted94 around in high society like some kind of rooster, while all the time the ladies were laughing at him behind his back, O yes, Major Sahib, don't fool yourself, high-class women have always enjoyed sleeping with animals peasants brutes95, but that's how we think of you, my God it's disgusting just to watch you eat, gravy96 down your chin, don't you think we see how you never hold teacups by their handles, do you imagine we can't hear your belches97 and breakings of wind, you're just our pet ape, Major Sahib, very useful, but basically a clown.
After the onslaught of Roshanara Shetty, the young war hero began to see his world differently. Now he seemed to see women giggling98 behind fans wherever he went; he noticed strange amused sidelong glances which he'd never noticed before; and although he tried to improve his behaviour, it was no use, he seemed to become clumsier the harder he tried, so that food flew off his plate on to priceless Kelim rugs and belches broke from his throat with the roar of a train emerging from a tunnel and he broke wind with the rage of typhoons. His glittering new life became, for him, a daily humiliation99; and now he reinterpreted the advances of the beautiful ladies, understanding that by placing their love-notes beneath their toes they were obliging him to kneel demeaningly at their feet ... as he learned that a man may possess every manly100 attribute and still be despised for not knowing how to hold a spoon, he felt an old violence being renewed in him, a hatred for these high-ups and their power, which is why I am sure - why I know - that when the Emergency offered Shiva-of-the-knees the chance of grabbing some power for himself, he did not wait to be asked a second time.
On May 15th, 1974, Major Shiva returned to his regiment101 in Delhi; he claimed that, three days later, he was suddenly seized by a desire to see once more the saucer-eyed beauty whom he had first encountered long ago in the conference of the Midnight Children; the pony-tailed temptress who had asked him, in Dacca, for a single lock of his hair. Major Shiva declared to Parvati that his arrival at the magicians' ghetto had been motivated by a desire to be done with the rich bitches of Indian high society; that he had been besotted by her pouting103 lips the moment he laid eyes on them; and that these were the only reasons for asking her to go away with him. But I have already been overgenerous to Major Shiva - in this, my own personal version of history, I have allowed his account too much space; so I insist that, whatever the knock-kneed Major might have thought, the thing that drew him into the ghetto was quite simply and straightforwardly104 the magic of Parvati-the-witch.
Saleem was not in the ghetto when Major Shiva arrived by motorcycle; while nuclear explosions rocked the Rajasthani wastes, out of sight, beneath the desert's surface, the explosion which changed my life also took place out of my sight. When Shiva grasped Parvati by the wrist, I was with Picture Singh at an emergency conference of the city's many red cells, discussing the ins and outs of the national railway strike; when Parvati, without demurring105, took her place on the pillion of a hero's Honda, I was busily denouncing the government's arrests of union leaders. In short, while I was preoccupied106 with politics and my dream of national salvation107, the powers of Parvati's witchcraft108 had set in motion the scheme which would end with hennaed palms, and songs, and the signing of a contract.
... I am obliged, perforce, to reply on the accounts of others; only Shiva could tell what had befallen him; it was Resham Bibi who described Parvati's departure to me on my return, saying, 'Poor girl, let her go, so sad she has been for so long, what is to blame?'; and only Parvati could recount to me what befell her while she was away.
Because of the Major's national status as a war hero, he was permitted to take certain liberties with military regulations; so nobody took him to task for importing a woman into what were not, after all, married men's quarters; and he, not knowing what had brought about this remarkable109 alteration110 in his life, sat down as requested in a cane111 chair, while she took off his boots, pressed his feet, brought him water flavoured with freshly-squeezed limes, dismissed his batman, oiled his moustache, caressed112 his knees and after all that produced a dinner of biriani so exquisite113 that he stopped wondering what was happening to him and began to enjoy it instead. Parvati-the-witch turned those simple Army quarters into a palace, a Kailasa fit for Shiva-the-god; and Major Shiva, lost in the haunted pools of her eyes, aroused beyond endurance by the erotic protrusion114 of her lips, devoted115 his undivided attentions to her for four whole months: or, to be precise, for one hundred and seventeen nights. On September 12th, however, things changed: because Parvati, kneeling at his feet, fully77 aware of his views on the subject, told him that she was going to have his child.
The liaison116 of Shiva and Parvati now became a tempestuous117 business, filled with blows and broken plates: an earthly echo of that eternal marital118 battle-of-the-gods which their namesakes are said to perform atop Mount Kailasa in the great Himalayas ... Major Shiva, at this time, began to drink; also to whore. The whoring trails of the war hero around the capital of India bore a strong resemblance to the Lambretta-travels of Saleem Sinai along the spoors of Karachi streets; Major Shiva, unmanned in the company of the rich by the revelations of Roshanara Shetty, had taken to paving for his pleasures. And such was his phenomenal fecundity119 (he assured Parvati while beating her) that he ruined the'careers of many a loose woman by giving them babies whom they would love too much to expose; he sired around the capital an army of street-urchins to -mirror the regiment of bastards he had fathered on the begums of the chandeliered salons.
Dark clouds were gathering51 in political skies as well: in Bihar, where corruption120 inflation hunger illiteracy122 landlessness ruled the roost, Jaya-Prakash Narayan led a coalition123 of students and workers against the governing Indira Congress; in Gujarat, there were riots, railway trains were burned, and Morarji Desai went on a fast-unto-death to bring down the corrupt121 government of the Congress (under Chimanbhai Patel) in that drought-ridden state ... it goes without) saying that he succeeded without being obliged to die; in short, while anger seethed124 in Shiva's mind, the country was getting angry, too; and what was being born while something grew in Parvati's belly125? You know the answer: in late 1974, J. P. Narayan and Morarji Desai formed the opposition126 party known as the Janata Morcha: the people's front. While Major Shiva reeled from whore to whore, the Indira Congress was reeling too.
And at last, Parvati released him from her spell. (No other explanation will do; if he was not bewitched, why did he not cast her off the instant he heard of her pregnancy127? And if the spell had not been lifted, how could he have done it at all?) Shaking his head as though awaking from a dream, Major Shiva found himself in the company of a balloon-fronted slum girl, who now seemed to him to represent everything he most feared - she became the personification of the slums of his childhood, from which he had escaped, and which now, through her, through her damnable child, were trying to drag him down down down again ...
dragging her by the hair, he hurled128 her on to his motorcycle, and in a very short time she stood, abandoned, on the fringes of the magicians' ghetto, having been returned whence she came, bringing with her only one thing which she had not owned when she left: the thing hidden inside her like an invisible man in a wicker basket, the thing which was growing growing growing, just as she had planned.
Why do I say that? - Because it must be true; because what followed, followed; because it is my belief that Parvati-the-witch became pregnant in order to invalidate my only defence against marrying her. But I shall only describe, and leave analysis to posterity129.
On a cold day in January, when the muezzin's cries from the highest minaret130 of the Friday Mosque froze as they left his lips and fell upon the city as sacred snow, Parvati returned. She had waited until there could be no possible doubt about her condition; her inner basket bulged131 through the clean new garments of Shiva's now-defunct infatuation. Her lips, sure of their coming triumph, had lost their fashionable pout102; in her saucer-eyes, as she stood on the steps of the Friday Mosque to ensure that as many people as possible saw her changed appearance, there lurked132 a silvered gleam of contentment. That was how I found her when I returned to the chaya of the mosque with Picture Singh. I was feeling disconsolate133, and the sight of Parvati-the-witch on the steps, hands folded calmly over her swollen134 belly, long rope-of-hair blowing gently in the crystal air, did nothing to cheer me up.
Pictureji! and I had gone into the tapering135 tenement136 streets behind the General Post Office, where memories of fortune-tellers peepshow-men healers hung in the breeze; and here Picture Singh had performed an act which was growing more political by the day. His legendary137 artistry drew large good-natured crowds; and he made his snakes enact138 his message under the influence of his weaving flute139 music. While I, in my role of apprentice140, read out a prepared harangue141, serpents dramatized my speech. I spoke of the gross inequities of wealth distribution; two cobras performed, in dumbshow, the mime142 of a rich man refusing to give alms to a beggar. Police harassment143, hunger disease illiteracy, were spoken of and also danced by serpents; and then Picture Singh, concluding his act, began to talk about the nature of red revolution, and promises began to fill the air, so that even before the police materialized out of the back-doors of the post office to break up the meeting with lathi-charges and tear-gas, certain wags in our audience had begun to heckle the Most Charming Man In The World.
Unconvinced, perhaps, by the ambiguous mimes144 of the snakes, whose dramatic content was admittedly a little obscure, a youth shouted out: 'Ohe, Pictureji, you should be in the Government, man, not even Indiramata makes promises as nice as yours!'
Then the tear-gas came and we had to flee, coughing spluttering blind, from riot police, like criminals, crying falsely as we ran. (Just as once, in Jallianwalabagh - but at least there were no bullets on this occasion.) But although the tears were the tears of gas, Picture Singh was indeed cast down into an awesome145 gloom by the heckler's gibe147, which had questioned the hold on reality which was his greatest pride; and in the aftermath of gas and sticks, I, too, was dejected, having suddenly identified a moth4 of unease in my stomach, and realized that something in me objected to Picture's portrayal148 in snake-dance of the unrelieved vilenesses of the rich; I found myself thinking, 'There is good and bad in all - and they brought me up, they looked after me, Pictureji!'
After which I began to see that the crime of Mary Pereira had detached me from two worlds, not one; that having been expelled from my uncle's house I could never fully enter the world-according-to-Picture-Singh; that, in fact, my dream of saving the country was a thing of mirrors and smoke; insubstantial, the maunderings of a fool.
And then there was Parvati, with her altered profile, in the harsh clarity of the winter day.
It was - or am I wrong? I must rush on; things are slipping from me all the time - a day of horrors. It was then - unless it was another day - that we found old Resham Bibi dead of cold, lying in her hut which she had built out of Dalda Vanaspati packing-cases. She had turned bright blue, Krishna-blue, blue as Jesus, the blue of Kashmiri sky, which sometimes leaks into eyes; we burned her on the banks of the Jamuna amongst mud-flats and buffalo, and she missed my wedding as a result, which was sad, because like all old women she loved weddings, and had in the past joined in the preliminary henna-ceremonies with energetic glee, leading the formal singing in which the bride's friends insulted the groom149 and his family. On one occasion her insults had been so brilliant and finely calculated that the groom took umbrage150 and cancelled the wedding; but Resham had been undaunted, saying that it wasn't her fault if young men nowadays were as faint-hearted and inconstant as chickens.
I was absent when Parvati went away; I was not present when she returned; and there was one more curious fact ... unless I have forgotten, unless it was on another day... it seems to me, at any rate, that on the day of Parvati's return, an Indian Cabinet Minister was in his railway carriage, at Samastipur, when an explosion blew him into the history books; that Parvati, who had departed amid the explosions of atom bombs, returned to us when Mr L. N. Mishra, minister for railways and bribery151, departed this world for good. Omens152 and more omens...
perhaps, in Bombay, dead pomfrets were floating belly-side-up to shore.
January 26th, Republic Day, is a good time for illusionists. When the huge crowds gather to watch elephants and fireworks, the city's tricksters go out to earn their living. For me, however, the day holds another meaning; it was on Republic Day that my conjugal153 fate was sealed.
In the days after Parvati's return, the old women of the ghetto formed the habit of holding their ears for shame whenever they passed her; she, who bore her illegitimate child without any appearance of guilt154, would smile innocently and walk on. But on the morning of Republic Day, she awoke to find a rope hung with tattered155 shoes strung up above her door, and began to weep inconsolably, her poise156 disintegrating157 under the force of this greatest of insults. Picture Singh and I, leaving our shack laden158 with baskets of snakes, came across her in her (calculated? genuine?) misery159, and Picture Singh set his jaw160 in an attitude of determination. 'Come back to the hut, captain,' the Most Charming Man instructed me, 'We must talk.'
And in the hut, 'Forgive me, captain, but I must speak. I am thinking it is a terrible thing for a man to go through life without children. To have no son, captain: how sad for you, is it not?' And I, trapped by the lie of impotence, remained silent while Pictureji suggested the marriage which would preserve Parvati's honour and simultaneously161 solve the problem of my self-confessed sterility162; and despite my fears of the face of Jamila Singer, which, superimposed on Parvati's, had the power of driving me to distraction163, I could not find it in myself to refuse.
Parvati -just as she had planned, I'm sure - accepted me at once, said yes as easily and as often as she had said no in the past; and after that the Republic Day celebrations acquired the air of having been staged especially for our benefit, but what was in my mind was that once again destiny, inevitability, the antithesis164 of choice had come to rule my life, once again a child was to be born to a father who was not his father, although by a terrible irony165 the child would be the true grandchild of his father's parents; trapped in the web of these interweaving genealogies166, it may even have occurred to me to wonder what was beginning, what was ending, and whether another secret countdown was in progress, and what would be born with my child.
Despite the absence of Resham Bibi, the wedding went off well enough. Parvati's formal conversion167 to Islam (which irritated Picture Singh, but on which I found myself insisting, in another throwback to an earlier life) was performed by a red-bearded Haji who looked ill-at-ease in the presence of so many teasing, provocative168 members of the ungodly; under the shifting gaze of this fellow who resembled a large and bearded onion she intoned her belief that there was no God but God and that Muhammad was his prophet; she took a name which I chose for her out of the repository of my dreams, becoming Laylah, night, so that she too was caught up in the repetitive cycles of my history, becoming an echo of all the other people who have been obliged to change their names ... like my own mother Amina Sinai, Parvati-the-witch became a new person in order to have a child.
At the henna ceremony, half the magicians adopted me, performing the functions of my 'family'; the other half took Parvati's side, and happy insults were sung late into the night while intricate traceries of henna dried into the palms of her hands and the soles of her feet; and if the absence of Resham Bibi deprived the insults of a certain cutting edge, we were not overly sorry about the fact.
During the nikah, the wedding proper, the happy couple were seated on a dais hastily constructed out of the Dalda-boxes of Resham's demolished169 shack, and the magicians filed solemnly past us, dropping coins of small denominations170 into our laps; and when the new Laylah Sinai fainted everyone smiled contentedly171, because every good bride should faint at her wedding, and nobody mentioned the embarrassing possibility that she might have passed out because of the nausea172 or perhaps the kicking-pains caused by the child inside her basket. That evening the magicians put on a show so wonderful that rumours173 of it spread throughout the Old City, and crowds gathered to watch, Muslim businessmen from a nearby
muhalla in which once a public announcement had been made and silversmiths and milk-shake vendors174 from Chandni Chowk, evening strollers and Japanese tourists who all (on this occasion) wore surgical175 face-masks out of politeness, so as not to infect us with their exhaled176 germs; and there were pink Europeans discussing camera lenses with the Japanese, there were shutters177 clicking and flash bulbs popping, and I was told by one of the tourists that India was indeed a truly wonderful country with many remarkable traditions, and would be just fine and perfect if one did not constantly have to eat Indian food. And at the valima, the consummation ceremony (at which, on this occasion, no bloodstained sheets were held up, with or without perforations, since I had spent our nuptial178 night with my eyes shut tight and my body averted179 from my wife's, lest the unbearable180 features of Jamila Singer come to haunt me. in the bewilderment of the dark), the magicians surpassed their efforts of the wedding-night.
But when all the excitement had died down, I heard (with one good and one bad ear) the inexorable sound of the future stealing up upon us: tick, tock, louder and louder, until the birth of Saleem Sinai - and also of the baby's father - found a mirror in the events of the night of the 25th of June.
While mysterious assassins killed government officials, and narrowly failed to get rid of Mrs Gandhi's personally-chosen Chief Justice, A. N. Ray, the magicians' ghetto concentrated on another mystery: the ballooning basket of Parvati-the-witch.
While the Janata Morcha grew in all kinds of bizarre directions, until it embraced Maoist Communists (such as our very own contortionists, including the rubber-limbed triplets with whom Parvati had lived before our marriage - since the nuptials181, we had moved into a hut of our own, which the ghetto had built for us as a wedding present on the site of Resham's hovel) and extreme right-wing members of the Ananda Marg; until Left-Socialists and conservative Swatantra members joined its ranks ... while the people's front expanded in this grotesque182 manner, I, Saleem, wondered incessantly183 about what might be growing behind the expanding frontage of my wife.
While public discontent with the Indira Congress threatened to crush the government like a fly, the brand-new Laylah Sinai, whose eyes had grown wider than ever, sat as still as a stone while the weight of the baby increased until it threatened to crush her bones to powder; and Picture Singh, in an innocent echo of an ancient remark, said, 'Hey, captain! It's going to be big big: a real ten-chip whopper for sure!'
And then it was the twelfth of June.
History-books newspapers radio-programmes tell us that at two p.m. on June I2th, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was found guilty, by Judge Jag Mohan Lal Sinha of the Allahabad High Court, of two counts of campaign malpractice during the election campaign of 1971; what has never previously184 been revealed is that it was at precisely185 two p.m. that Parvati-the-witch (now Laylah Sinai) became sure she had entered labour.
The labour of Parvati-Laylah lasted for thirteen days. On the first day, while the Prime Minister was refusing to resign, although her convictions carried with them a mandatory186 penalty barring her from public office for six years, the cervix of Parvati-the-witch, despite contractions187 as painful as mule-kicks, obstinately188 refused to dilate189; Saleem Sinai and Picture Singh, barred from the hut of her torment190 by the contortionist triplets who had taken on the dudes of mid-wives, were obliged to listen to her useless shrieks191 until a steady stream of fire-eaters card-sharpers coal-walkers came up and slapped them on the back and made dirty jokes; and it was only in my ears that the ticking could be heard ... a countdown to God-knows what, until I became possessed192 by fear, and told Picture Singh, 'I don't know what's going to come out of her, but it isn't going to be good ...' And Pictureji, reassuringly193: 'Don't you worry, captain! Everything will be fine! A ten-chip whopper, I swear!' And Parvati, screaming screaming, and night fading into day, and on the second day, when in Gujarat Mrs Gandhi's electoral candidates were routed by the Janata Morcha, my Parvati was in the grip of pains so intense that they made her as stiff as steel, and I refused to eat until the baby was born or whatever happened happened, I sat cross-legged outside the hovel of her agony, shaking with terror in the heat, begging don't let her die don't let her die, although I had never made love to her during all the months of our marriage; in spite of my fear of the spectre of Jamila Singer, I prayed and fasted, although Picture Singh, 'For pity's sake, captain,' I refused, and by the ninth day the ghetto had fallen into a terrible hush194, a silence so absolute that not even the calls of the muezzin of the mosque could penetrate195 it, a soundlessness of such immense powers that it shut out the roars of the Janata Morcha demonstrations196 outside Rashtrapati Bhavan, the President's house, a horror-struck muteness of the same awful enveloping197 magic as the great silence which had once hung over my grandparents' house in Agra, so that on the ninth day we could not hear Morarji Desai calling on President Ahmad to sack the disgraced Prime Minister, and the only sounds in the entire world were the ruined whimperings of Parvati-Laylah, as the contractions piled upon her like mountains, and she sounded as though she were calling to us down a long hollow tunnel of pain, while I sat cross-legged being dismembered by her agony with the soundless sound of ticktock in my brain, and inside the hut there were the contortionist triplets pouring water over Parvati's body to replenish198 the moisture which was pouring out of her in fountains, forcing a stick between her teeth to prevent her from biting out her tongue, and trying to force down her eyelids over eyes which were bulging199 so frighteningly that the triplets were afraid they would fall out and get dirty on the floor, and then it was the twelfth day and I was half dead of starvation while elsewhere in the city the Supreme200 Court was informing Mrs Gandhi that she need not resign until her appeal, but must neither vote in the Lok Sabha nor draw a salary, and while the Prime Minister in her exultation201 at this partial victory began to abuse her opponents in language of which a Koli fishwife would have been proud, my Parvati's labour entered a phase in which despite her utter exhaustion202 she found the energy to issue a string of foul-smelling oaths from her colour-drained lips, so that the cesspit stink203 of her obscenities filled our nostrils204 and made us retch, and the three contortionists fled from the hut crying that she had become so stretched, so colourless that you could almost see through her, and she would surely die if the baby did not come now, and in my ears tick tock the pounding tick tock until I was sure, yes, soon soon soon, and when the triplets returned to her bedside in the evening of the thirteenth day they screamed Yes yes she has begun to push, come on Parvati, push push push, and while Parvati pushed in the ghetto, J. P. Narayan and Morarji Desai were also goading Indira Gandhi, while triplets yelled push push push the leaders of the Janata Morcha urged the police and Army to disobey the illegal orders of the disqualified Prime Minister, so in a sense they were forcing Mrs Gandhi to push, and as the night darkened towards the midnight hour, because nothing ever happens at any other time, triplets began to screech205 it's coming coming coming, and elsewhere the Prime Minister was giving birth to a child of her own ... in the ghetto, in the hut beside which I sat cross-legged and starving to death, my son was coming coming coming, the head is out, the triplets screeched206, while members of the Central Reserve Police arrested the heads of the Janata Morcha, including the impossibly ancient and almost mythological207 figures of Morarji Desai and J. P.
Narayan, push push push, and in the heart of that terrible midnight while ticktock pounded in my ears a child was born, a ten-chip whopper all right, popping out so easily in the end that it was impossible to understand what all the trouble had been. Parvati gave a final pitiable little yelp208 and out he popped, while all over India policemen were arresting people, all opposition leaders except members of the pro-Moscow Communists, and also schoolteachers lawyers poets newspapermen trade-unionists, in fact anyone who had ever made the mistake of sneezing during the Madam's speeches, and when the three contortionists had washed the baby and wrapped it in an old sari and brought it out for its father to see, at exactly the same moment, the word Emergency was being heard for the first time, and suspension-of-civil rights, and censorship-of-the-press, and armoured-units-on-special-alert, and arrest-of-subversive-elements; something was ending, something was being born, and at the precise instant of the birth of the new India and the beginning of a continuous midnight which would not end for two long years, my son, the child of the renewed ticktock, came out into the world.
And there is more: because when, in the murky209 half-light of that endlessly prolonged midnight, Saleem Sinai saw his son for the first time, he began to laugh helplessly, his brain ravaged210 by hunger, yes, but also by the knowledge that his relentless211 destiny had played yet another of its grotesque little jokes, and although Picture Singh, scandalized by my laughter which in my weakness was like the giggling of a schoolgirl, cried repeatedly, 'Come on, captain! Don't behave mad now! It is a son, captain, be happy!', Saleem Sinai continued to acknowledge the birth by tittering hysterically212 at fate, because the boy, the baby boy, the-boy-my-son Aadam, Aadam Sinai was perfectly213 formed - except, that is, for his ears. On either side of his head flapped audient protuberances like sails, ears so colossally214 huge that the triplets afterwards revealed that when his head popped out they had thought, for one bad moment, that it was the head of a tiny elephant.
... 'Captain, Saleem captain,' Picture Singh was begging, 'be nice now! Ears are not anything to go crazy for!'
He was born in Old Delhi ... once upon a time. No, that won't do, there's no getting away from the date: Aadam Sinai arrived at a night-shadowed slum on June 25th, 1975. And the time? The time matters, too. As I said: at night. No, it's important to be more ... On the stroke of midnight, as a matter of fact.
Clock-hands joined palms. Oh, spell it out, spell it out: at the precise instant of India's arrival at Emergency, he emerged. There were gasps215; and, across the country, silences and fears. And owing to the occult tyrannies of that benighted216 hour, he was mysteriously handcuffed to history, his destinies indissolubly chained to those of his country. Unprophesied, uncelebrated, he came; no prime ministers wrote him letters; but, just the same, as my time of connection neared its end, his began. He, of course, was left entirely without a say in the matter; after all, he couldn't even wipe his own nose at the time.
He was the child of a father who was not his father; but also the child of a time which damaged reality so badly that nobody ever managed to put it together again; He was the true great-grandson of his great-grandfather, but elephantiasis attacked him in the ears instead of the nose - because he was also the true son of Shiva-and-Parvati; he was elephant-headed Ganesh; He was born with ears which flapped so high and wide that they must have heard the shootings in Bihar and the screams of lathi-charged dock-workers in Bombay ... a child who heard too much, and as a result never spoke, rendered dumb by a surfeit217 of sound, so that between then-and-now, from slum to pickle218 factory, I have never heard him utter a single word; He was the possessor of a navel which chose to stick out instead of in, so that Picture Singh, aghast, cried, 'His bimbi, captain! His bimbi, look!', and he became, from the first days, the gracious recipient219 of our awe146; A child of such grave good nature that his absolute refusal to cry or whimper utterly220 won over his adoptive father, who gave up laughing hysterically at the grotesque ears and began to rock the silent infant gently in his arms; A child who heard a song as he rocked in arms, a song sung in the historical accents of a disgraced ayah: 'Anything you want to be, you kin23 be; you kin be just what-all you want.'
But now that I've given birth to my flap-eared, silent son - there are questions to be answered about that other, synchronous birth. Unpalatable, awkward queries221: did Saleem's dream of saving the nation leak, through the osmotic tissues of history, into the thoughts of the Prime Minister herself? Was my lifelong belief in the equation between the State and myself transmuted222, in 'the Madam's' mind, into that in-those-days-famous phrase: India is Indira and Indira is India? Were we competitors for centrality - was she gripped by a lust for meaning as profound as my own - and was that, was that why... ?
Influence of hair-styles on the course of history: there's another ticklish223 business. If William Methwold had lacked a centre-parting, I might not have been here today; and if the Mother of the Nation had had a coiffure of uniform pigment224, the Emergency she spawned225 might easily have lacked a darker side. But she had white hair on one side and black on the other; the Emergency, too, had a white part -public, visible, documented, a matter for historians - and a black part which, being secret macabre226 untold227, must be a matter for us.
Mrs Indira Gandhi was born in November 1917 to Kamala and Jawaharlal Nehru. Her middle name was Priyadarshini. She was not related to 'Mahatma' M. K. Gandhi; her surname was the legacy228 of. her marriage, in 1952, to one Feroze Gandhi, who became known as 'the nation's son-in-law'. They had two sons, Rajiv and Sanjay, but in 1949 she moved back into her father's home and became his 'official hostess'. Feroze made one attempt to live there, too, but it was not a success.
He became a ferocious critic of the Nehru Government, exposing the Mundhra scandal and forcing the resignation of the then Finance Minister, T. T.
Krishnamachari - T.T.K.' himself. Mr Feroze Gandhi died of a heart seizure229 in 1960, aged59 forty-seven. Sanjay Gandhi, and his ex-model wife Menaka, were prominent during the Emergency. The Sanjay Youth Movement was particularly effective in the sterilization230 campaign.
I have included this somewhat elementary summary just in case you had failed to realize that the Prime Minister of India was, in 1975, fifteen years a widow. Or (because the capital letter may be of use): a Widow.
Yes, Padma: Mother Indira really had it in for me.
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ghetto
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| n.少数民族聚居区，贫民区 | |
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stiffening
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| n. (使衣服等)变硬的材料, 硬化 动词stiffen的现在分词形式 | |
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taut
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| adj.拉紧的，绷紧的，紧张的 | |
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moth
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| n.蛾，蛀虫 | |
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doomed
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| 命定的 | |
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inevitability
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| n.必然性 | |
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nadir
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| n.最低点，无底 | |
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recurred
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| 再发生，复发( recur的过去式和过去分词 )； 治愈 | |
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intervals
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| n.[军事]间隔( interval的名词复数 )；间隔时间；[数学]区间；（戏剧、电影或音乐会的）幕间休息 | |
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concealed
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| a.隐藏的，隐蔽的 | |
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sniff
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| vi.嗅…味道；抽鼻涕；对嗤之以鼻，蔑视 | |
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unleashed
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| v.把（感情、力量等）释放出来，发泄( unleash的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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goading
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| v.刺激( goad的现在分词 )；激励；（用尖棒）驱赶；驱使（或怂恿、刺激）某人 | |
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lust
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| n.性(淫)欲；渴(欲)望；vi.对…有强烈的欲望 | |
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submission
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| n.服从，投降；温顺，谦虚；提出 | |
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transformation
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| n.变化；改造；转变 | |
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Buddha
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| n.佛；佛像；佛陀 | |
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electrified
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| v.使电气化( electrify的过去式和过去分词 )；使兴奋 | |
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tempted
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| v.怂恿（某人）干不正当的事；冒…的险（tempt的过去分词） | |
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assassinated
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| v.暗杀( assassinate的过去式和过去分词 )；中伤；诋毁；破坏 | |
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mosque
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| n.清真寺 | |
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inevitably
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| adv.不可避免地；必然发生地 | |
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kin
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| n.家族，亲属，血缘关系；adj.亲属关系的，同类的 | |
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assailed
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| v.攻击( assail的过去式和过去分词 )；困扰；质问；毅然应对 | |
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pangs
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| 突然的剧痛( pang的名词复数 )； 悲痛 | |
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deity
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| n.神，神性；被奉若神明的人(或物) | |
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muffles
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| v.压抑，捂住( muffle的第三人称单数 )；用厚厚的衣帽包着（自己） | |
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slew
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| v.（使）旋转；n.大量，许多 | |
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buffalo
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| n.(北美)野牛；(亚洲)水牛 | |
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descending
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| n. 下行 adj. 下降的 | |
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imperatives
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| n.必要的事( imperative的名词复数 )；祈使语气；必须履行的责任 | |
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sonorous
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| adj.响亮的，回响的；adv.圆润低沉地；感人地；n.感人，堂皇 | |
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spurned
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| v.一脚踢开，拒绝接受( spurn的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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squatted
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| v.像动物一样蹲下( squat的过去式和过去分词 )；非法擅自占用（土地或房屋）；为获得其所有权；而占用某片公共用地。 | |
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shack
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| adj.简陋的小屋，窝棚 | |
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narrative
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| n.叙述，故事；adj.叙事的，故事体的 | |
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synchronous
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| adj.同步的 | |
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bulges
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| 膨胀( bulge的名词复数 )； 鼓起； （身体的）肥胖部位； 暂时的激增 | |
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lethal
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| adj.致死的；毁灭性的 | |
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throttled
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| v.扼杀( throttle的过去式和过去分词 )；勒死；使窒息；压制 | |
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gutters
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| （路边）排水沟( gutter的名词复数 )； 阴沟； （屋顶的）天沟； 贫贱的境地 | |
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ironies
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| n.反语( irony的名词复数 )；冷嘲；具有讽刺意味的事；嘲弄 | |
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disdain
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| n.鄙视，轻视；v.轻视，鄙视，不屑 | |
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drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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humble
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| adj.谦卑的，恭顺的；地位低下的；v.降低，贬低 | |
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abode
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| n.住处，住所 | |
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impelled
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| v.推动、推进或敦促某人做某事( impel的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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reconstruction
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| n.重建，再现，复原 | |
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insinuated
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| v.暗示( insinuate的过去式和过去分词 )；巧妙或迂回地潜入；（使）缓慢进入；慢慢伸入 | |
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salons
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| n.（营业性质的）店( salon的名词复数 )；厅；沙龙（旧时在上流社会女主人家的例行聚会或聚会场所）；（大宅中的）客厅 | |
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gathering
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| n.集会，聚会，聚集 | |
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gatherings
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| 聚集( gathering的名词复数 )； 收集； 采集； 搜集 | |
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monopolized
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| v.垄断( monopolize的过去式和过去分词 )；独占；专卖；专营 | |
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expenditure
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| n.(时间、劳力、金钱等)支出；使用，消耗 | |
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influential
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| adj.有影响的，有权势的 | |
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espoused
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| v.（决定）支持，拥护（目标、主张等）( espouse的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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applied
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| adj.应用的；v.应用，适用 | |
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mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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aged
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| adj.年老的，陈年的 | |
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hatred
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| n.憎恶，憎恨，仇恨 | |
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rustled
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| v.发出沙沙的声音( rustle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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persecution
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| n. 迫害,烦扰 | |
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chatter
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| vi.／n.喋喋不休；短促尖叫；(牙齿)打战 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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hissed
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| 发嘶嘶声( hiss的过去式和过去分词 )； 发嘘声表示反对 | |
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giggles
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| n.咯咯的笑( giggle的名词复数 )；傻笑；玩笑；the giggles 止不住的格格笑v.咯咯地笑( giggle的第三人称单数 ) | |
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seducer
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| n.诱惑者,骗子,玩弄女性的人 | |
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sinister
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| adj.不吉利的，凶恶的，左边的 | |
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woes
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| 困境( woe的名词复数 )； 悲伤； 我好苦哇； 某人就要倒霉 | |
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sipping
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| v.小口喝，呷，抿( sip的现在分词 ) | |
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72
ballrooms
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| n.舞厅( ballroom的名词复数 ) | |
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73
eyelids
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| n.眼睑( eyelid的名词复数 )；眼睛也不眨一下；不露声色；面不改色 | |
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74
contrived
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| adj.不自然的，做作的；虚构的 | |
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75
retrieve
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| vt.重新得到，收回；挽回，补救；检索 | |
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76
awfully
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| adv.可怕地，非常地，极端地 | |
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77
fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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78
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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79
spawn
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| n.卵，产物，后代，结果；vt.产卵，种菌丝于，产生，造成；vi.产卵，大量生产 | |
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80
illicit
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|
| adj.非法的，禁止的，不正当的 | |
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81
strewing
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| v.撒在…上( strew的现在分词 )；散落于；点缀；撒满 | |
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82
bastards
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| 私生子( bastard的名词复数 )； 坏蛋； 讨厌的事物； 麻烦事 （认为别人走运或不幸时说）家伙 | |
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83
sensuous
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| adj.激发美感的；感官的，感觉上的 | |
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84
deserted
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| adj.荒芜的，荒废的，无人的，被遗弃的 | |
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85
punctured
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| v.在（某物）上穿孔( puncture的过去式和过去分词 )；刺穿（某物）；削弱（某人的傲气、信心等）；泄某人的气 | |
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86
promenading
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| v.兜风( promenade的现在分词 ) | |
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87
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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88
budge
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| v.移动一点儿；改变立场 | |
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89
ferocious
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|
| adj.凶猛的，残暴的，极度的，十分强烈的 | |
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90
pique
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| v.伤害…的自尊心，使生气 n.不满，生气 | |
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91
touching
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| adj.动人的，使人感伤的 | |
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92
resentment
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| n.怨愤，忿恨 | |
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93
callously
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94
strutted
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| 趾高气扬地走，高视阔步( strut的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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95
brutes
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| 兽( brute的名词复数 )； 畜生； 残酷无情的人； 兽性 | |
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96
gravy
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| n.肉汁；轻易得来的钱，外快 | |
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97
belches
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|
| n.嗳气( belch的名词复数 )；喷吐；喷出物v.打嗝( belch的第三人称单数 )；喷出，吐出；打（嗝）；嗳（气） | |
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98
giggling
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| v.咯咯地笑( giggle的现在分词 ) | |
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99
humiliation
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| n.羞辱 | |
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100
manly
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| adj.有男子气概的；adv.男子般地，果断地 | |
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101
regiment
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| n.团，多数，管理；v.组织，编成团，统制 | |
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102
pout
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| v.撅嘴；绷脸；n.撅嘴；生气，不高兴 | |
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103
pouting
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| v.撅（嘴）( pout的现在分词 ) | |
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104
straightforwardly
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| adv.正直地 | |
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105
demurring
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| v.表示异议，反对( demur的现在分词 ) | |
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106
preoccupied
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|
| adj.全神贯注的，入神的；被抢先占有的；心事重重的v.占据（某人）思想，使对…全神贯注，使专心于( preoccupy的过去式) | |
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107
salvation
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| n.（尤指基督）救世，超度，拯救，解困 | |
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108
witchcraft
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| n.魔法，巫术 | |
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109
remarkable
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|
| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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110
alteration
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| n.变更，改变；蚀变 | |
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111
cane
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| n.手杖，细长的茎，藤条；v.以杖击，以藤编制的 | |
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112
caressed
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| 爱抚或抚摸…( caress的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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113
exquisite
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| adj.精美的；敏锐的；剧烈的，感觉强烈的 | |
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114
protrusion
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| n.伸出，突出 | |
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115
devoted
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| adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的 | |
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116
liaison
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| n.联系，（未婚男女间的）暖昧关系，私通 | |
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117
tempestuous
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| adj.狂暴的 | |
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118
marital
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| adj.婚姻的，夫妻的 | |
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119
fecundity
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| n.生产力；丰富 | |
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120
corruption
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| n.腐败，堕落，贪污 | |
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121
corrupt
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| v.贿赂，收买；adj.腐败的，贪污的 | |
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122
illiteracy
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| n.文盲 | |
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123
coalition
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| n.结合体，同盟，结合，联合 | |
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124
seethed
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| （液体）沸腾( seethe的过去式和过去分词 )； 激动，大怒； 强压怒火； 生闷气(~with sth|~ at sth) | |
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125
belly
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| n.肚子，腹部；(像肚子一样)鼓起的部分，膛 | |
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126
opposition
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| n.反对，敌对 | |
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127
pregnancy
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| n.怀孕，怀孕期 | |
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128
hurled
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| v.猛投，用力掷( hurl的过去式和过去分词 )；大声叫骂 | |
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129
posterity
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| n.后裔，子孙，后代 | |
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130
minaret
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| n.（回教寺院的）尖塔 | |
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131
bulged
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| 凸出( bulge的过去式和过去分词 )； 充满； 塞满（某物） | |
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132
lurked
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| vi.潜伏，埋伏（lurk的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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133
disconsolate
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| adj.忧郁的，不快的 | |
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134
swollen
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| adj.肿大的，水涨的；v.使变大，肿胀 | |
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135
tapering
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| adj.尖端细的 | |
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136
tenement
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| n.公寓；房屋 | |
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137
legendary
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| adj.传奇（中）的，闻名遐迩的；n.传奇（文学） | |
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138
enact
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| vt.制定(法律)；上演，扮演 | |
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139
flute
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| n.长笛；v.吹笛 | |
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140
apprentice
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| n.学徒，徒弟 | |
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141
harangue
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| n.慷慨冗长的训话，言辞激烈的讲话 | |
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142
mime
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| n.指手画脚，做手势，哑剧演员，哑剧；vi./vt.指手画脚的表演，用哑剧的形式表演 | |
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143
harassment
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| n.骚扰，扰乱，烦恼，烦乱 | |
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144
mimes
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| n.指手画脚( mime的名词复数 )；做手势；哑剧；哑剧演员v.指手画脚地表演，用哑剧的形式表演( mime的第三人称单数 ) | |
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145
awesome
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| adj.令人惊叹的，难得吓人的，很好的 | |
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146
awe
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| n.敬畏，惊惧；vt.使敬畏，使惊惧 | |
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147
gibe
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| n.讥笑；嘲弄 | |
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148
portrayal
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| n.饰演；描画 | |
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149
groom
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| vt.给（马、狗等）梳毛，照料，使...整洁 | |
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150
umbrage
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| n.不快；树荫 | |
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151
bribery
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| n.贿络行为，行贿，受贿 | |
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152
omens
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| n.前兆，预兆( omen的名词复数 ) | |
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153
conjugal
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| adj.婚姻的，婚姻性的 | |
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154
guilt
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| n.犯罪；内疚；过失，罪责 | |
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155
tattered
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| adj.破旧的，衣衫破的 | |
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156
poise
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| vt./vi. 平衡，保持平衡；n.泰然自若，自信 | |
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157
disintegrating
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| v.（使）破裂[分裂，粉碎]，（使）崩溃( disintegrate的现在分词 ) | |
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158
laden
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| adj.装满了的；充满了的；负了重担的；苦恼的 | |
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159
misery
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| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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160
jaw
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| n.颚，颌，说教，流言蜚语；v.喋喋不休，教训 | |
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161
simultaneously
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| adv.同时发生地，同时进行地 | |
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162
sterility
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| n.不生育，不结果，贫瘠，消毒，无菌 | |
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163
distraction
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| n.精神涣散，精神不集中，消遣，娱乐 | |
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164
antithesis
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| n.对立；相对 | |
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165
irony
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| n.反语，冷嘲；具有讽刺意味的事，嘲弄 | |
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166
genealogies
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| n.系谱，家系，宗谱( genealogy的名词复数 ) | |
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167
conversion
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| n.转化，转换，转变 | |
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168
provocative
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| adj.挑衅的，煽动的，刺激的，挑逗的 | |
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169
demolished
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| v.摧毁( demolish的过去式和过去分词 )；推翻；拆毁（尤指大建筑物）；吃光 | |
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170
denominations
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| n.宗派( denomination的名词复数 )；教派；面额；名称 | |
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171
contentedly
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| adv.心满意足地 | |
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172
nausea
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| n.作呕，恶心；极端的憎恶(或厌恶) | |
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173
rumours
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| n.传闻( rumour的名词复数 )；风闻；谣言；谣传 | |
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174
vendors
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| n.摊贩( vendor的名词复数 )；小贩；（房屋等的）卖主；卖方 | |
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175
surgical
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| adj.外科的，外科医生的，手术上的 | |
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176
exhaled
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| v.呼出，发散出( exhale的过去式和过去分词 )；吐出（肺中的空气、烟等），呼气 | |
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177
shutters
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| 百叶窗( shutter的名词复数 )； （照相机的）快门 | |
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178
nuptial
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| adj.婚姻的，婚礼的 | |
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179
averted
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| 防止，避免( avert的过去式和过去分词 )； 转移 | |
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180
unbearable
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| adj.不能容忍的；忍受不住的 | |
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181
nuptials
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| n.婚礼；婚礼( nuptial的名词复数 ) | |
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182
grotesque
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| adj.怪诞的，丑陋的；n.怪诞的图案，怪人（物） | |
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183
incessantly
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| ad.不停地 | |
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184
previously
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| adv.以前，先前（地） | |
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185
precisely
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| adv.恰好，正好，精确地，细致地 | |
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186
mandatory
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| adj.命令的；强制的；义务的；n.受托者 | |
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187
contractions
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| n.收缩( contraction的名词复数 )；缩减；缩略词；（分娩时）子宫收缩 | |
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188
obstinately
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| ad.固执地，顽固地 | |
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189
dilate
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| vt.使膨胀，使扩大 | |
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190
torment
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| n.折磨；令人痛苦的东西(人)；vt.折磨；纠缠 | |
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191
shrieks
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| n.尖叫声( shriek的名词复数 )v.尖叫( shriek的第三人称单数 ) | |
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192
possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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193
reassuringly
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| ad.安心，可靠 | |
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194
hush
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| int.嘘，别出声；n.沉默，静寂；v.使安静 | |
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195
penetrate
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| v.透(渗)入；刺入，刺穿；洞察，了解 | |
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196
demonstrations
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| 证明( demonstration的名词复数 )； 表明； 表达； 游行示威 | |
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197
enveloping
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| v.包围，笼罩，包住( envelop的现在分词 ) | |
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198
replenish
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| vt.补充；(把…)装满；(再)填满 | |
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199
bulging
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| 膨胀； 凸出（部）； 打气； 折皱 | |
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200
supreme
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| adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的 | |
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201
exultation
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| n.狂喜，得意 | |
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202
exhaustion
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| n.耗尽枯竭，疲惫，筋疲力尽，竭尽，详尽无遗的论述 | |
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203
stink
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| vi.发出恶臭；糟透，招人厌恶；n.恶臭 | |
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204
nostrils
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| 鼻孔( nostril的名词复数 ) | |
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205
screech
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| n./v.尖叫；(发出)刺耳的声音 | |
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206
screeched
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| v.发出尖叫声( screech的过去式和过去分词 )；发出粗而刺耳的声音；高叫 | |
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207
mythological
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| adj.神话的 | |
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208
yelp
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| vi.狗吠 | |
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209
murky
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| adj.黑暗的，朦胧的；adv.阴暗地，混浊地；n.阴暗；昏暗 | |
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210
ravaged
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| 毁坏( ravage的过去式和过去分词 )； 蹂躏； 劫掠； 抢劫 | |
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211
relentless
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| adj.残酷的，不留情的，无怜悯心的 | |
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212
hysterically
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| ad. 歇斯底里地 | |
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213
perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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214
colossally
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215
gasps
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| v.喘气( gasp的第三人称单数 )；喘息；倒抽气；很想要 | |
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216
benighted
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| adj.蒙昧的 | |
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217
surfeit
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| v.使饮食过度；n.(食物)过量，过度 | |
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218
pickle
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| n.腌汁，泡菜；v.腌，泡 | |
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219
recipient
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| a.接受的,感受性强的 n.接受者,感受者,容器 | |
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220
utterly
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| adv.完全地，绝对地 | |
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221
queries
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| n.问题( query的名词复数 )；疑问；询问；问号v.质疑，对…表示疑问( query的第三人称单数 )；询问 | |
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222
transmuted
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| v.使变形，使变质，把…变成…( transmute的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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223
ticklish
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| adj.怕痒的；问题棘手的；adv.怕痒地；n.怕痒，小心处理 | |
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224
pigment
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| n.天然色素，干粉颜料 | |
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225
spawned
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| （鱼、蛙等）大量产（卵）( spawn的过去式和过去分词 )； 大量生产 | |
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226
macabre
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| adj.骇人的，可怖的 | |
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227
untold
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| adj.数不清的，无数的 | |
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228
legacy
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| n.遗产，遗赠；先人(或过去)留下的东西 | |
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229
seizure
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| n.没收；占有；抵押 | |
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230
sterilization
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| n.杀菌，绝育；灭菌 | |
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