Nora Scholtes

`Racing cracks′

: Memory and Time in

Midnight′s Children

The `inexorable ticktock′: as soon

as Saleem′s narration starts, the

countdown is

set off and will not come to an end until the final full stop of

Midnight′s Children

(

MC

82). Throughout the story, Saleem, being a `child of ticktock′, is remorselessly rushed

on (

MC

533). Towards what, one might ask. His childhood memory of a `fisherman′s

pointing finger′, on a picture hanging on his bedroom wall, haunts Saleem throughout

his narration as a reminder of his `inescapable destiny′ (

MC

167). More precisely, the

fisherman is pointing towards a letter send by India′s first Prime Minister on the

occasion of Saleem′s birth which coincided with the birth of India as an independent

nation. With this letter, Nehru proclaims that Saleem′s life will be the `mirror′ of the

life of all Indians (

MC

167). From his birth, Saleem thus carries the burden of being a

reflection of his country and its people. With this enormous responsibility imposed on

him, he is pushed on through his narrative. Literally, Saleem is racing against

increasingly destructive cracks that threaten to destroy his body. On a metaphorical

level, he is fighting against a force beyond his power, a force that ultimately, is going to

win: time. Saleem′s narrative is drenched with a sense of fatalism, of it being `too late′.

The race is already lost, but at least he must resist his defeat as long as he can, that is,

until he has brought his narrative to an end. And all the way through, we hear the

threatening tick tock, always aware that the final point zero is approaching fast and

could surprise us, along with Saleem, at any moment. Interestingly however, where

conventional story tellers build their narratives up towards one big countdown, one

decisive climax, Saleem provides us with numerous countdowns. The first one leading

up to Saleem′s birth, coinciding with India′s independence and partition, followed by a

countdown leading up to Saleem′s amnesia. The birth of his son and his final

annihilation constitute the two last countdowns. However, these countdowns do not

grant his narrative any disclosure or release, but they seem to be endlessly renewed.

Once a countdown is up, a new one begins; each promising a final purpose and

meaning, but each time leaving us unsatisfied.

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In her essay ´The Art of Suspense: Rushdie′s 1001 (Mid-)Nights′, Nancy E.

Batty identifies this narrative technique as a ′suspense strategy′ employed in order to

`defer the end of the narrative act′ (Fletcher,

Reading Rushdie

, 70). She furthermore

argues that the narrator′s constant previewing of events to come is `the most obvious

and effective suspense-creating device in the novel′ (Fletcher 71). Saleem can indeed

regularly be found announcing events to come and characters about to enter his

narrative′s world: `[...] Evelyn Lilith Burns is coming; the Pioneer Café is getting

painfully close; and - more vitally ­ midnight′s other children [...] are pressing

extremely hard′ (

MC

248). Saleem′s intention must indeed be seen as the creation of

suspense as he himself declares early on that `there is nothing like a countdown for

building suspense′ (

MC

142). He thus builds expectation up, deferring its fulfilment as

long as he possibly can.

Batty also draws attention to the fact that, `like the perforated sheet through

which Aadam Aziz views various parts of Naseem′s body, the narrative must always

reveal something while concealing everything else′ (Fletcher 72). Saleem can be seen to

self-consciously use this technique as a storyteller when he says: `[...] I musn′t reveal all

my secrets at once′, or when he proclaims that he `musn′t get ahead of [himself]′ (

MC

10, 233). Thus, we are told that some things cannot be narrated quite yet and need to

wait their turn. The effect produced is one of `deferment of disclosure′, following a

`rigid pattern of promise and fulfilment′ (Fletcher 73-74). However, is the narrator here

indeed fulfilling his promises, or are we not actually cheated out of this fulfilment by

these constant deferments? Meaning is deferred throughout the narrative and in the end,

along with Saleem, we have to ask ourselves if we have not been on a futile quest for

meaning.

This constant deferment of climaxes, or just even the delaying of events, serves

one specific purpose on the metafictional level of Saleem′s narrative: he is forced to

preserve his very existence through the continuation of his narrative. As soon as his

story is finished, he faces annihilation. Thus, the legitimisation of his existence lies

within his narration; while he is narrating, he has `the strength to resist the cracks′ (

MC

168). In other words, his life is restricted to the narrative space and consequently, he

only exists

because

he his narrating. Telling his story thus becomes his very raison

d′être. This is literally true when considering that Saleem is after all only a fictional

narrator, created by Rushdie. As a fiction, Saleem can only ever exist within the frame

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work of the narrative. In his essay `Nietzsche, Genealogy, History′, Michel Foucault

establishes a similar link:

Saleem′s bodily decay is correlated with the progress of his written novel. The

faster, and the more he writes, the more rapid his decay. Clearly, when the

writing is completed, the end of this process can no longer be deferred.

(Bouchard,

Language

, 74)

Saleem is thus, paradoxically, racing against himself, assuming a kind of split

personality: Saleem the writer, an omniscient god-like narrator in control, versus

Saleem the fictional character who fears annihilation.

I think it has become clear by now to what extent

Midnight′s Children

is

preoccupied with the metafictional. It is a piece of fiction that constantly comments on

itself and draws attention to its own processes. As Damian Grant points out, Rushdie′s

novel is `uncompromisingly metafictional′, being a novel about the processes at work

within fiction-creation (41). Distinctions between fiction and reality are blurred and

questioned, making it an essentially postmodernist work. Rushdie plays with

conventional notions of fiction and artificiality. His narrator is persistently trying to

convince his readers that he must be believed, no matter how unbelievable his accounts

sound. Saleem′s `lust for centrality′ can be used as a further example of Rushdie′s

interest in the metafictional (Banerjee 171). Again, as a fictional character, Saleem′s

wish to be at the centre must be seen as a condition of his being at all, that is of his very

existence.

The metafictional dimension gains relevance when related to the novel′s concept

of time. Saleem, besides being a fictional character, is a creator of fiction, he is thus in a

position of power and hence in control of time. As long as he is re-creating his fictional

life story, he masters time and can therefore ignore linearity or chronology, and use time

instead as a flexible background to his narrative. In other words, since he invents his

narrative, he can also invent any temporal structure he wants to. This explains then why

he tries to delay the end of his narrative as long as possible: once the story is told, the

fiction is over and reality sets in. As a result, he vanishes along with his re-creations of

time and history. This leads towards the conclusion that within

Midnight′s Children

,

`meaning is only to be found in the act of telling′ (Banerjee 172).

In her study of Salman Rushdie′s work, Catherine Cundy rightly notes that

`

Midnight′s Children

draws on the models of the seemingly endless and digressive

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Indian epics′ (27). More specifically, `[this] technique of circling back from the past, of

building tale within tale, and persistently delaying climaxes are all features of traditional

narration and orature′ (Ashcroft 184). Rushdie thus borrows elements of traditional

Indian storytelling and weaves them into his Western and predominantly postmodernist

narrative. The final product is a hybrid postcolonial text, a successful fusion of East and

West in terms of both form and content. Grant adds that Rushdie uses a `double-sided,

reversible formula from oral tradition′, a `formula that asserts nothing, that leaves

everything suspended in the light wind of fictional hypothesis′ (47). If nothing is

asserted, nothing is fixed and hence everything becomes mouldable and changeable.

Grant uses the following analogy to describe this narrative structure:

This is a process we might call ´tessellation′, after the way tiles are laid to

overlap on a roof, whereby the narrative is always looping back in

recapitulation, and also looking forward (`proleptically′) in anticipation. The

effect is to bring a depth of field to the present moment, creating an impression

of simultaneity and temporal suspension ­ as the fluid present, the elusive

now

,

is always pressed on by the past and foreshadowed, drawn forward. (39)

This takes us directly to the novel′s fluid concept of time. The narrative is not

linear, not following a chronological mode of narration, but one that ′veers between

past, present and future, presaging not only the arrival of events and characters which

will later be revealed, but also his own annihilation′ (Cundy 28). Cundy uses the

analogy of a `pendulum′ (28) to visualise the movement of this narrative that, starting

from Saleem′s present standpoint in the pickling factory, takes us from the time before

his birth, moving backwards and forwards, allowing us glimpses of things to come. It is

what Saleem calls `the metronome music of Mountbatten′s countdown calendar′ to

independence (

MC

97). Cundy furthermore observes that,

[just] as a metronome or pendulum picks up the speed and regularity of its beat

from the initially wider swing which provides it with its momentum, so the

narrative intermittently takes a swing further back into family and national

history before resuming its steady tick-tock drift between two historical points.

(28)

Past, present and future become one single entity and space in which Saleem travels

freely, ignoring temporal boundaries. Any clear borders disappear, so that the narrative

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