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 you this would happen if you didn’t punish him! You’re responsible for all this.”

Ramesh glared at Xerox, who was lying penitently on a bed, as he had been ordered to do.

“I don’t think anyone saw him selling it. Things will be fine.”

To calm the lawyer down, Ramesh asked a constable to go fetch a bottle of Old Monk rum. The two of them talked for a while.

Ramesh read passages from out of the book and said, “I don’t get what the fuss is all about, really.”

“Muslims,” D’Souza said, shaking his head. “Violent people. Violent.”

The bottle of Old Monk arrived. They drank it in half an hour, and the constable went to fetch another. In his cell, Xerox lay perfectly still, looking at the ceiling. The policeman and the lawyer went on drinking. D’Souza told Ramesh his frustrations, and the inspector told the lawyer his frustrations. One had wanted to be a pilot, soaring in the clouds and chasing stewardesses, and the other-he had never wanted anything but to dabble in the stock market. That was all.

At midnight, Ramesh asked the lawyer, “Do you want to know a secret?” Stealthily, he walked the lawyer to the cell and showed him the secret. One of the bars of the cell could be removed. The policeman removed it, and swung it, and then put it back in place. “That’s how the evidence is hidden,” he said. “Not that that kind of thing happens often at this station, mind you-but that’s how it is done, when it is done.”

The lawyer giggled. He loosened the bar, slung it over his shoulder, and said, “Don’t I look like Hanuman now?”

“Just like on TV,” the policeman said.

The lawyer asked that the cell door be opened, and it was. The two of them saw the sleeping prisoner lying on his cot, an arm over his face to keep out the jabbing light of the naked bulb above him. A sliver of naked skin was exposed beneath his cheap polyester shirt; a creeper of thick black hair, which looked to his two onlookers like an outgrowth from his groin, was just visible.

“That fucking son of an untouchable. See him snoring.”

“His father took out the shit-and this fellow thinks he’s going to dump shit on us!”

“Selling The Satanic Verses. He’ll sell it under my nose, will he?”

“These people think they own India now. Don’t they? They want all the jobs, and all the university degrees, and all the…”

Ramesh pulled down the snoring man’s trousers; he lifted the bar high up, while the lawyer said, “Do it like Hanuman does on TV!” Xerox woke up screaming. Ramesh handed the bar to D’Souza. The policeman and the lawyer took turns: they smashed the bar against Xerox’s legs just at the knee joint, like the monkey god did on TV, and then they smashed the bar against Xerox’s legs just below the knee joint, like the monkey god did on TV, and then they smashed it into Xerox’s legs just above the knee joint, and then, laughing and kissing each other, the two staggered out, shouting for someone to lock the station up behind them.

Periodically through the night, when he woke up, Xerox resumed his screaming.

In the morning, Ramesh came back, was told by a constable about Xerox, and said, “Shit, it wasn’t a dream, then.” He ordered the constables to take the man in the cell to the Havelock Henry District Hospital, and asked for a copy of the morning paper so he could check the stock market prices.

The next week, Xerox arrived, noisily, because he was on crutches, at the police station, with his daughter behind him.

“You can break my legs, but I can’t stop selling books. I’m destined to do this, sir,” he said. He grinned.

Ramesh grinned too, but he avoided the man’s eyes.

“I’m going up the hill, sir,” Xerox said, lifting up one of his crutches. “I’m going to sell the book.”

Ramesh and the other cops gathered around Xerox and his daughter and begged. Xerox wanted them to phone D’Souza, which they did. The lawyer came with his wig, along with two assistants, also in black gowns and wigs. When he heard why the policemen had summoned him, D’Souza burst into laughter.

“This fellow is just teasing you,” he told Ramesh. “He can’t possibly go up the hill with his legs like that.”

D’Souza pointed a finger at the middle part of Xerox’s body. “And if you do try to sell it, mind-it won’t be just your legs that we break next time.”

A constable laughed.

Xerox looked at Ramesh with his usual ingratiating smile. He bent low with folded palms and said, “So be it.”

D’Souza sat down to drink Old Monk rum with the police men, and they settled into another game of cards. Ramesh said he had lost money on the market the past week; the lawyer sucked at his teeth and shook his head, and said that in a big city like Bombay everyone was a cheat or a liar or a thug.

Xerox turned around on his crutches and walked out of the station. His daughter came behind him. They headed for the Lighthouse Hill. The climb took two hours and a half, and they stopped six times for Xerox to drink tea, or a glass of sugarcane juice. Then his daughter spread out the blue sheet in front of Deshpremi Hemachandra Rao Park, and Xerox lowered himself. He sat on the sheet, stuck his legs out slowly, and put a large paperback down next to him. His daughter sat down too, keeping watch over the book, her back stiff and upright. The book was banned throughout the Republic of India and it was the only thing that Xerox intended to sell that day: The Satanic Verses, by Salman Rushdie.

DAY TWO (AFTERNOON): ST. ALFONSO’S BOYS’ HIGH SCHOOL AND JUNIOR COLLEGE

A short walk from the park rises a massive gray Gothic tower on which is painted a coat of arms and the slogan LUCET ET ARDET. This is the St. Alfonso’s Boys’ High School and Junior College, established 1858, one of the oldest educational establishments in the state of Karnataka. The Jesuit-run school is Kittur’s most famous, and many of its alumni have gone on to the Indian Institute of Technology, the Karnataka Regional Engineering College, and other prestigious universities in India and abroad.

SEVERAL SECONDS, PERHAPS even a full minute, had passed since the explosion, but Lasrado, the chemistry professor, had not moved. He sat at his desk, his arms spread apart, his mouth open. Smoke was billowing from the bench at the back of the room, a yellow dust like pollen had filled the room, and the stench of fireworks was in the air. The students had all left the classroom by now; they watched from the safety of the door.

Gomati Das, the calculus teacher, arrived from next door with most of his class; then came Professor Noronha, the English and ancient history man, bringing his own flock of curious eyes. Father Almeida, the principal, pushed his way through the crowd and entered the acrid classroom, his palm over his nose and mouth. He lowered his hand and cried, “What is the meaning of this nonsense?”