Rushdie Collection Of Stories Explores East And West

“East, West” By Salman Rushdie (Pantheon, $21)

East and West meet, but can they meld? Or does it become necessary, in the final analysis, to choose between them?

This is one of the ideas Salman Rushdie advances in his whimsical, often humorous and sometimes philosophical first collection of short stories, “East, West” (Pantheon, $21).

He gives us East in the tale of the simple rickshaw driver - just a boy, really - who has a vasectomy so a widow who doesn’t want more children will marry him. The authorities give a radio to people who have the operation, he says. And as he pedals around, he holds his hand to his ear as if already listening to his radio. What he doesn’t know is that the gift offer has long since been discontinued.

Meet, too, the wealthy family in Srinagar, Kashmir, whose son and daughter turn up in the most crime-infested slum in town in search of a thief for hire.

From the West we get a “velluminous” tale, recorded on ancient parchment, of course, of Hamlet, Ophelia and Yorick. Ophelia of the beautiful face but with breath so bad that Yorick, the king’s jester, courts her with a wooden peg on his nose and receives a pair of silver nose-plugs from the king as a wedding present.

“At the Auction of the Ruby Slippers” with their magical power in London, all kinds of people turn up - from movie stars to homeless tramps who gobble up canapes until SWAT teams remove them.

Before the auction, a fancy dress party is held. “Wizards, Lions, Scarecrows are in plentiful supply. … There is a scarcity of Tin Men on account of the particular discomfort of the costume.”

In the last of the stories, “The Courter,” Rushdie, India-born and England-educated, describes how the ayah, or nursemaid, of an Indian family living in London is being courted by the European hall porter from an Iron Curtain country.

The time comes when she decides she must go home. She’s sure that will cure the heart palpitations which have been bothering her. Was she torn, the narrator of the story asks, between two loves - India and the hall porter - two ropes pulling in opposite directions “like those movie horses being yanked this way by Clark Gable and that way by Montgomery Clift”?

The narrator continues that in the year the ayah left, he became a British citizen - and notes that he, too, has ropes around his neck, pulling him this way and that, East and West, demanding that he choose.

“I buck, I snort, I whinny, I rear, I kick. Ropes, I do not choose between you. Lassoes, lariats, I choose neither of you, and both. Do you hear? I refuse to choose.”