Between the Assassinations by Aravind Adiga Read Free Book Online

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