Read Between the Assassinations for Free Online Page B

believe it!
    The jailors will laugh.
    They bring Xerox samosas wrapped in paper; they offer him chai. They consider him a decent fellow. They let him out at midday; he bows low to them and says, “Thank you.” Then Miguel D’Souza, the lawyer for the publishers and booksellers on Umbrella Street, will call the station and yell, “Have you let him off again? Doesn’t the law of the land mean anything to you?” The inspector of the station, Ramesh, keeps the receiver at a distance from his ear and reads the newspaper, looking at the Bombay stock market quotes. That is all Ramesh really wants to do in life: read the stock market quotes.
    By late afternoon, Xerox is back at it. Photocopied or cheaply printed copies of Karl Marx, Mein Kampf, published books, and films and albums are arranged on the blue cloth spread out on the pavement on Lighthouse Hill, and little Ritu sits stiff backed, with her long unbroken nose and faint mustache, watching as the customers pick up the books and flip through them.
    “Put that back in place,” she will say, when a customer has rejected a book. “Put it back exactly where you picked it up from.”
    “ Accounting for Entrance Exams ?” one customer shouts at Xerox. “ Advanced Obstetrics ?” cries another.
    “ The Joy of Sex ?”
    “ Mein Kampf ?”
    “Lee Iacocca?”
    “What’s your best price?” a young man asks, flipping through the book.
    “Seventy-five rupees.”
    “Oh, you’re raping me! It’s too much.”
    The young man walks away, turns around, comes back, and says, “What’s your final best price? I have no time to waste.”
    “Seventy-two rupees. Take it or leave it. I’ve got other customers.”
    The books are photocopied, or sometimes printed, at an old printing press in Salt Market Village. Xerox loves being around the machinery. He strokes the photocopier; he adores the machine, the way it flashes like lightning as it works, the way it whirs and hums. He cannot read English, but he knows that English words have power, and that English books have an aura. He looks at the image of Adolf Hitler from the cover of Mein Kampf, and he feels his power. He looks at the face of Khalil Gibran, poetic and mysterious, and he feels the mystery and poetry. He looks at the face of Lee Iacocca, relaxed with his hands behind his head, and he feels relaxed. That’s why he once told Inspector Ramesh, “I have no wish to make any trouble for you or for the publishers, sir; I just love books: I love making them, holding them, and selling them. My father took out shit for a living, sir; he couldn’t even read or write. He’d be so proud if he could see that I make my living from books.”
    Only one time has Xerox really been in trouble with the police. That was when someone called the station and said that Xerox was selling copies of Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses in violation of the laws of the Republic of India. This time when he was brought to the station in handcuffs there were no courtesies, no cups of chai.
    Ramesh slapped him.
    “Don’t you know the book is banned, you son of a bald woman? You think you are going to start a riot among the Muslims? And get me and every other policeman here transferred to Salt Market Village?”
    “Forgive me,” Xerox begged. “I had no idea that this was a banned book, really…I’m just the son of a man who took out shit, sir. He waited all day long for the boom-box to make a noise. I know my place, sir. I wouldn’t dream of challenging you. It was just a mistake, sir. Forgive me, sir.”
    D’Souza, the booksellers’ lawyer, a small man with black oily hair and a neat mustache, heard what had happened and came to the station. He looked at the banned book—a massive paperback with an image of an angel on the front—and shook his head in disbelief.
    “That fucking untouchable’s son, thinking he’s going to photocopy The Satanic Verses. What balls.”
    He sat at the inspector’s desk and shouted at him, “I told