226
PARTISAN REVIEW
You can throw one thousand rupees at me, I felt like saying. But I didn't
have the courage.
"How do I know how much you pay proofreaders!" I said.
"How much do you get in your present job?" the eyeglasses man
asked.
I told him. I told him the truth.
"We don't pay such low salaries around here. When the proprietor
comes, we can decide that issue then," he said.
But I was frightened that I would lose both jobs.
"That's all right, sir," I said, and got up. ''I'm not
111
a hurry. After
the proprietor comes, I'll join the company."
"As you wish," the eyeglasses man said.
I
LET A WEEK GO BY,
then every day I phoned Saraswati.
"Did the proprietor retu rn?"
"From where?"
"I don't know. I heard he left town?"
"What town?"
I hung up the telephone.
Then another time -
"Has the proprietor arrived in town?"
"Who are you? What business do you have? Is this a job-related
issue? We're not allowed to talk about job-related issues on the tele–
phone, sir."
This time the person on the other side hung up the phone.
The next time -
"When will the proprietor come, sir?"
"I don't know. He left today for Hyderabad."
"When did he return from Utee?"
"Sir, as far as I know, he has not gone to Utee, Kodai Kanal, Dar–
jeeling, or any other cold mountain resort." Then I heard him talk to
someone else. "Some poor journalist is on the line!"
I put the telephone down.
One day a bald man came into my shop. "Do you have Radhika San–
thyanga, Vaijanthi Vilasanga, or some other book of that type?" he
asked.
I threw a half dozen pornographic books on the table in front of him.
Like a fly that immediately knows the location of wounds on a body, he
turned to the juicy parts of the books and with smoldering eyes began
to read them. I knew he wouldn't buy any of them.
"Sir, where do you work?" I asked.
