This is the writer's voice new fiction from the New Yorker. I'm Deborah

Treisman fiction at the New Yorker. On this episode of the writer's voice we'll hear so much and the issue of the magazine. Rushdie has published 12 novels, including the Booker Prize

winning Midnight's Children, The Satanic Versus, The Golden House, and most recently

Kishot, which came out last year.

Now here's Salman Rushdi.

The old man in the Piazza

Every day at about 4 o'clock in the afternoon,

when the sun's heat has begun to diminish.

The Old Man comes into the piazza. He walked slowly, shuffling

his feet which are encased in dusty brown loafers. He is wearing most days a dark blue jacket buttoned all the way up to the neck and navy pants that

fasten with a drawstring at the waist. His hair is white and there is a beret on his head.

He goes to the only cafe in the piazza, the cafe of the fountain,

and sits on a wooden chair at a wooden table and orders a small strong coffee.

At 6 p.m. he orders a beer and a sandwich.

At 8 p.m. he rises, wipes his lips and shuffles away, presumably to his home. We do not need to know where he lives.

Everything of any significance in his life has happened and will happen right here in this little piazza.

He takes his seat. He is the audience, an audience of one. The show is about to begin.

It is a piazza into which seven narrow roads debauch, one at each corner and one each at the

midpoint of three of the piazza's four sides. Only the side with the church is uninterrupted by a cobbled street.

It should be a quiet place, a sleepy provincial square, but it is not. All around the piazza you can hear the loud sounds of people quarrelling six days a week.

On most of these days there are more people in the piazza than live in the locality. It's as if people came here to this peaceful

little square in this peaceful little town to get into fights. They drive 15 kilometers from the big city to express their bad moods.

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