Free Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie Page A

goes to Allahabad.' She was bearing the entire expense of the event without complaint or interference; not, let it be said, without making enemies in the town. The Rani did not live like other Indian princes. Instead of teetar-hunts, she endowed scholarships. Instead of hotel scandals, she had politics. And so the rumours began. 'These scholars of hers, man, everyone knows they have to perform extra-curricular duties. They go to her bedroom in the dark, and she never lets them see her blotchy face, but bewitches them into bed with her voice of a singing witch!' Aadam Aziz had never believed in witches. He enjoyed her brilliant circle of friends who were as much at home in Persian as they were in German. But Naseem Aziz, who half-believed the stories about the Rani, never accompanied him to the princess's house. 'If God meant people to speak many tongues,' she argued, 'why did he put only one in our heads?'
    And so it was that none of the Hummingbird's optimists were prepared for what happened. They played hit-the-spittoon, and ignored the cracks in the earth.
     
    Sometimes legends make reality, and become more useful than the facts. According to legend, then-according to the polished gossip of the ancients at the paan-shop-Mian Abdullah owed his downfall to his purchase, at Agra railway station, of a peacock-feather fan, despite Nadir Khan's warning about bad luck. What is more, on that night of crescent moons, Abdullah had been working with Nadir, so that when the new moon rose they both saw it through glass. 'These things matter,' the betel-chewers say. 'We have been alive too long, and we know.' (Padma is nodding her head in agreement.)
    The Convocation offices were on the ground floor of the historical faculty building at the University campus. Abdullah and Nadir were coming to the end of their night's work; the Hummingbird's hum was low-pitched and Nadir's teeth were on edge. There was a poster on the office wall, expressing Abdullah's favourite anti-Partition sentiment, a quote from the poet Iqbal: 'Where can we find a land that is foreign to God?' And now the assassins reached the campus.
    Facts: Abdullah had plenty of enemies. The British attitude to him was always ambiguous. Brigadier Dodson hadn't wanted him in town. There was a knock on the door and Nadir answered it. Six new moons came into the room, six crescent knives held by men dressed all in black, with covered faces. Two men held Nadir while the others moved towards the Hummingbird.
    'At this point,' the betel-chewers say, 'the Hummingbird's hum became higher. Higher and higher, yara, and the assassins' eyes became wide as their members made tents under their robes. Then-Allah, then!-the knives began to sing and Abdullah sang louder, humming high-high like he'd never hummed before. His body was hard and the long curved blades had trouble killing him; one broke on a rib, but the others quickly became stained with red. But now-listen!-Abdullah's humming rose out of the range of our human ears, and was heard by the dogs of the town. In Agra there are maybe eight thousand four hundred and twenty pie-dogs. On that night, it is certain that some were eating, others dying; there were some who fornicated and others who did not hear the call. Say about two thousand of these; that left six thousand four hundred and twenty of the curs, and all of these turned and ran for the University, many of them rushing across the railway tracks from the wrong side of town. It is well known that this is true. Everyone in town saw it, except those who were asleep. They went noisily, like an army, and afterwards their trail was littered with bones and dung and bits of hair… and all the time Abdullahji was humming, humming-humming, and the knives were singing. And know this: suddenly one of the killers' eyes cracked and fell out of its socket. Afterwards the pieces of glass were found, ground into the carpet!'
    They say, 'When the dogs came Abdullah was nearly dead and the knives