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newspapermen,” he explained. “I write for our paper — I also distribute it and broadcast it, as you might say.”
    â€œThat’s the communist paper?”
    â€œYou say it as if it certainly must explode. No, sahib. It is a harmless sheet of paper with some facts the people need.”
    â€œDon’t ever give me that ‘sahib’ shit again,” Bruce said angrily. “You want to know what hustled means — me. I’m being hustled, but I know it. Just show me. I don’t intend to apologize for one damned thing, because my world is just as weird as yours.” He was relieved that it was so early in the morning, and that he wouldn’t have to explain to any of his colleagues why he was taking off with a skinny, sad-looking Indian on a strange machine that pretended to be a bicycle.
    â€œWill it hold together?”
    â€œOh, so many years it has held together. Why should the fates be against us now?”
    The bicycle actually worked, and riding side by side, they took off along a maze of streets, dirt roads, and paths that led them out of the city into the countryside. Once out of the central part of the city, they saw fewer of the families crouched around their little fires of cow chips, fewer people sprawled on the street, fewer hands outstretched and pleading for alms. Unlike cities in the West, this city turned to country abruptly. They rode through heavy tropical growth and then into a countryside of rice paddies and vegetable fields, but all of it brown and dry before the monsoon.
    Talking while they rode, Majumdar summed up the contents of his newspaper. “Our lead story, Mr. Bacon —”
    â€œHold on. Right there. If we’re going to spend this day together, I’m Bruce and you’re —”
    â€œJumdar. That’s what they call me. Jumdar.”
    â€œOK. Jumdar. Bruce. None of this sahib shit and no Mr. Bacon. It’s the fucken subservience here —”
    â€œWhich is the mark of oppression!” Majumdar said sharply. “Don’t you understand one damned thing?”
    Silence for fifty yards or so, and then Bruce said, “Thank you for getting angry. No, I don’t know much or understand very much. War makes you used to death. It doesn’t make you smart.”
    Majumdar nodded and was silent for a long moment. Then returned to the paper. “Our lead story is, of course, the famine. I interviewed Mohamout Arfet. He is one of the Congress leaders in our struggle for independence, and he feels, as I do, that somehow the blame for the famine must not rest only on the shoulders of the rice dealers. Most of them are Muslims, and God knows there is enough bitter feeling between the Hindus and the Muslims here in Bengal. The Congress people understand that we are very close to the peasants. The deep, original force behind the famine is the British, and the people must understand that. Then we have a story about a large landholder who has ground down his tenants so hard that sixty percent of them are dead of malaria and malnutrition.”
    â€œYou blame the landlord for the malaria?”
    â€œWhen you are weakened, starving, when your resistance is very low, malaria can be fatal. I live with malaria. A starving man dies with it. Another story — you would call it a sidebar — points to the British lack of concern for the mosquitoes breeding in the swamplands. Then, of course, we have the Party program, a list of the things we propose. Right now, we have a united front with the Congress. The British must leave India. The time has come, and we will wait no longer. The day of the Empire is over. Programmatically, that is number one.”
    â€œAnd where do you fit in?” Bruce demanded. “Where does the Party fit in — the Communist Party, I mean? The British say you are tools of the Soviets, just waiting for the day the British leave and you can hand the country over to