The following is the text from a piece
of paper folded in half and inserted
into the blue notebook
Handwritten in pencil.
A Hat’s Tale
Everything is foretold,
Yet in all we have choice.
Our good deeds sit upon a scale:
Tilt it this way and the sun rises,
Tilt it that and all that remains of the flame is a
spiral of smoke.
Everything is given,
Yet upon us all floats a veil.
The vendor happily extends you credit.
But, as you borrow, he shall write it down.
Every night the collector makes his rounds
And takes from you asleep precisely what is his.
For your debt is inscribed
And your judgment, truth.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2009 by James Andrew Levine, MD, PhD
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Spiegel & Grau, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Levine, James.
The blue notebook / James Levine.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-385-53049-1
1. Teenage girls—India—Fiction. 2. Teenage prostitution—Fiction.
3. Indentured servants—Fiction. 4. Diaries—Authorship—Fiction.
5. India—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3612.E92386B58 2009
813′.6—dc22
2008035259
www.spiegelandgrau.com
v3.0
Table of Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter 1 - The blue notebook
Chapter 2 - Numbered sheets of paper from the Royal Imperial Hotel, Mumbai
Chapter 3 - Plain white paper
Copyright
The Blue Notebook Page 19
