There was at least some humor in the deputy commissioner’s day. The fourth report had come to Crime Branch Headquarters from the Tardeo Police Station. At least six snakes were loose near the Mahalaxmi temple, but there were no reported bitings—meaning, none yet. The duty officer from the Tardeo Station had taken photographs. Detective Patel recognized the broad expanse of stairs leading to the Mahalaxmi. At the top of the steps, where the temple loomed, there was a wide pavilion where the worshipers bought coconut and flowers for their offerings; this was also where the worshipers left their sandals and shoes. But, in the photos, the deputy commissioner could see that the stairs leading to the temple were dotted with stray sandals and shoes—indicating that a panicked crowd had only recently fled up or down the steps. In the aftermath of riots, the ground was always strewn with sandals and shoes; people had run right out of them or up the backs of other people’s heels.
The temple steps were usually crowded; now they were deserted—the flower stalls and the coconut shops were empty of people, too. Everywhere there were only scattered sandals and shoes! At the bottom of the temple stairs, Detective Patel noted the tall woven baskets where the cobras were kept; the baskets were overturned, presumably empty. The snake charmers had fled with everyone else. But where had the cobras gone?
It must have been quite a scene, the deputy commissioner imagined. The worshipers running and screaming, the snakes slithering away. Detective Patel thought that most of the cobras belonging to snake charmers had no venom, although they could still bite.
The puzzle in the photographs was what was missing from the pictures. What had been the crime? Had one snake charmer thrown his cobra at another snake charmer? Had a tourist tripped over one of the cobra baskets? In one second the snakes were loose, in another second people were running out of their shoes. But what was the crime?
Deputy Commissioner Patel sent the snake report back to the Tardeo Police Station. The escaped cobras were their problem. Probably the snakes were venomless; if they were snake charmers’ snakes, at least they were tame. The detective knew that a half-dozen cobras in Mahalaxmi weren’t half as dangerous as Rahul.
At the Mission, Farrokh Is Inspired
It was a surprisingly subdued missionary whom Farrokh delivered to the Jesuits at St. Ignatius. Inside the cloister, Martin Mills exhibited the obedience of a well-trained dog; the once-admired “modesty of the eyes” became a fixed feature of his face—he looked more like a monk than a Jesuit. The doctor couldn’t have known that the Father Rector and Father Cecil and Brother Gabriel had been expecting a loud clown in a Hawaiian shirt; Dr. Daruwalla was disappointed at the almost reverential greeting the scholastic received. In his unpressed Fashion Street shirt—not to mention his haunted, scratched face and his concentration-camp haircut—the new missionary made a serious first impression.
Dr. Daruwalla unaccountably lingered at the mission. Farrokh supposed that he was hoping for an opportunity to warn Father Julian that Martin Mills was a madman; but the doctor was of a considerably mixed mind when it came to involving himself to a greater extent in the newcomer’s future. Furthermore, Farrokh found that it was impossible to get the Father Rector alone. They’d arrived just after the schoolboys had finished lunch. Father Cecil and Brother Gabriel—with not fewer than a combined 145 years between them—insisted on struggling with the scholastic’s suitcase, and this left Father Julian to conduct Martin’s first tour of St. Ignatius. Dr. Daruwalla followed behind.
Since his own school days, Farrokh had spent only intermittent time at the place. He reviewed the examination scrolls in the entrance hall with a detached curiosity. The Indian Certificate of Secondary Education (I.C.S.E.) marked the completion of junior high school. In the Examination Certificate of 1973, St. Ignatius demonstrated its Spanish connection by commemorating the death of Picasso; this must have been Brother Gabriel’s idea. A photograph of the artist was among the photos of that year’s graduates, as if Picasso had also passed the requisite exam; and there were these few words: PICASSO PASSES AWAY. In 1975, the 300th anniversary of Shivaji’s Coronation was commemorated; in ’76, the Montreal Olympics was observed; in ’77, the deaths of both Charlie Chaplin and Elvis were mourned—they were also pictured among the graduates. This yearbook-minded sentimentality was interamixed with religious and nationalistic fervor. The centerpiece of the entrance hall was a larger-than-life statue of the Virgin Mary standing on the head of the serpent with the apple in its mouth, as if she thus circumvented or had altered the Old Testament. And over the entranceway itself were side-by-side portraits—one of the pope of the moment, the other of Nehru as a young man.
Haunted by nostalgia, but more strongly disturbed by a culture that had never become his, Farrokh felt himself losing his faint resolve. Why warn the Father Rector about Martin Mills? Why try to warn any of them? The whole place, perhaps owing its inspiration to St. Ignatius Loyola himself, spoke of survival—not to mention a humbling instinct for repentance. As for the Jesuits’ success in Bombay and the rest of India, Farrokh assumed that the Indian stress on mother-worship gave the Catholics a certain advantage. The cult of the Virgin Mary was just more mother-worship, wasn’t it? Even in an all-boys’ school, the Holy Mother dominated the statuary.
Only a scattering of English names appeared on the examination scrolls, yet passable English was an admissions requirement and fluency in the language was expected of any St. Ignatius graduate; it was the classroom language throughout the school, and the only language posted in writing.
At the student canteen, in the courtyard, was a photograph of the junior school’s most recent trip: there were the boys in their white shirts with navy-blue ties; they wore navy-blue shorts and kneesocks, too—and black shoes. The caption, to this photo said: OUR JUNIORS, INC. OUR MIDGETS AND OUR SUBMIDGETS. (Dr. Daruwalla disapproved of abbreviations.)
In the first-aid room, a boy with a stomach ache lay curled on a cot, above which was tacked a photo of the stereotypical sunset at Haji Ali’s Tomb. The caption that accompanied this sunset was as egregious a non sequitur as any that had thus far been uttered by Martin Mills: YOU ONLY LIVE ONCE, BUT IF YOU LIVE RIGHT, ONCE IS ENOUGH.
Moving on to the music parlor, the doctor was struck by the tunelessness of the piano, which, in combination with the abrasive singing of the untalented music teacher, made it hard for Dr. Daruwalla to recognize even as oft-droned a dirge as “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.” She was an English teacher, a certain Miss Tanuja, and Farrokh overheard Father Julian explaining to Martin Mills that this time-honored method of teaching a language through song lyrics was still popular with the younger children. Since very few of the children were contributing more than mumbles to Miss Tanuja’s braying voice. Farrokh doubted the Father Rector on this point; maybe the problem wasn’t the method but Miss Tanuja.
She struck Dr. Daruwalla as one of those Indian women who remain uncontained by Western clothes, which Miss Tanuja was wearing with special gracelessness and folly. Perhaps the children couldn’t sing “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” because they were distracted by the riotous array of Miss Tanuja’s ensemble; the doctor observed that even Martin Mills appeared to be distracted by her. Farrokh cruelly assumed that Miss Tanuja was desperate to marry. She was very round-faced and of a medium, milk-chocolate complexion, and she wore very sharply angled glasses—of the kind with upward-sweeping wing tips embedded with small, bright gems. Perhaps Miss Tanuja thought that these eyeglasses contrasted pleasingly with the smoothness and roundness of her face.
She had the plump, youthful figure of a high-school voluptuary, but she wore a dark skirt that hugged her hips too tightly and was the wrong length for her. Miss Tanuja was short and the dress chopped her legs off at midcalf, which gave Dr. Daruwalla the impression that her thick ankles were wrists and her fat little feet were hands. Her blouse had a reflecting luminosity of a blue-green nature, as if flecked with algae dredged from a pond; and although the woman’s most pleasing quality was an overall curvaceousness,
she’d chosen a bra that served her badly. From what little Dr. Daruwalla knew of bras, he judged it to be the old-fashioned pointy type—one of those rigidly constructed halters more suitable for protecting women from fencing injuries than for enhancing their natural shapeliness. And between Miss Tanuja’s outrageously uplifted and sharply pointed breasts, there hung a crucifix, as if the Christ on Miss Tanuja’s cross—in addition to his other agonies—were expected to endure the misery of bouncing on the teacher’s ample but spear-headed bosoms.
“Miss Tanuja has been with us for many years,” Father Julian whispered.
“I see,” said Dr. Daruwalla, but Martin Mills merely stared.
Then they passed a classroom of smaller children in I-3. The kids were napping with their heads on their desks—either “midgets” or “sub-midgets,” Farrokh guessed.
“Do you play the piano?” the Father Rector was asking the new missionary.
“I always wanted to learn,” Martin said. Maybe the madman could practice the piano between bouts of orienting himself in The Times of India, Dr. Daruwalla thought.
And to change the subject from his lack of musical skills, the scholastic asked Father Julian about the sweepers, for there were everywhere about the mission an abundance of men and women who were sweeping—they also cleaned the toilets—and the missionary assumed that these sweepers were people from the untouchable castes.
The Father Rector used the words “bhangee” and “maitrani,” but Martin Mills was a man with more of a mission than Father Julian supposed. Martin asked the Father Rector directly: “And do their children attend this school?” All of a sudden, Dr. Daruwalla liked him.
“Well, no—that wouldn’t be suitable, you see,” Father Julian was saying, but Farrokh was impressed by how gracefully Martin Mills interrupted the Father Rector. The scholastic simply breezed into a description of “rescuing” the crippled beggar and the child prostitute; it was Martin’s one-step-at-a-time method, and the missionary virtually waltzed the Father Rector through the steps. First the circus—instead of begging, or the brothel. Then the mastery of the English language—“so civilizing as to be essential”—and then “the intelligent conversion”; Martin Mills also called this “the informed life in Christ.”
A class of seniors, on recess, was enjoying a savage, silent dirt fight in the courtyard, but Dr. Daruwalla marveled how the Jesuits were undistracted by this minor violence; they spoke and listened with the concentration of lions stalking a kill.
“But surely, Martin, you wouldn’t credit yourself with these children’s conversion?” Father Julian said. “That is, should they eventually be converted.”
“Well, no… what do you mean?” Martin asked.
“Only that I never know if I have converted anyone,” the Father Rector replied. “And if these children were converted, how could you presume it happened because of you? Don’t be too proud. If it happens, it was God. It wasn’t you.”
“Why, no—of course not!” said Martin Mills. “If it happens, it was God!”
Was this “obedience”? Dr. Daruwalla wondered.
When Father Julian led Martin to his cubicle, which Dr. Daruwalla imagined as a kind of prison cell with built-in instruments to chastise the flesh, the doctor continued to roam; he wanted to look at the sleeping children again, because that image of sleeping with his head on his desk was more appealing than anything else he could remember about attending St. Ignatius School—it had been so many years ago. But when he peered into I-3 again, a teacher he hadn’t seen before regarded him sternly, as if his presence in the doorway would disturb the children. And this time the doctor noticed the exposed wiring for the fluorescent lights, which were off, and the exposed wiring for the ceiling fan, which was on. Suspended over the blackboard like a puppet on tangled, immobile strings was yet another statue of the Virgin Mary. From Farrokh’s Canadian perspective, this particular Holy Mother was covered with frost, or a light snow; but it was only rising chalk dust from the blackboard that had settled on the statue.
Dr. Daruwalla amused himself by reading as many printed messages and announcements as he could find. There was a plea from the Social Concern Group—“to help less fortunate brothers and sisters.” Prayers were offered for the Souls in Purgatory. There was the pleasing juxtaposition of the Minimax fire extinguisher that was mounted on the wall beside the statue of Christ with the sick child; in fire-extinguisher language, a short list of instructions was printed next to a page from a lined notebook on which a child’s handwriting proclaimed, “Thanks to Infant Jesus and Our Lady of Perpetual Help.” Farrokh felt somewhat more comforted by the presence of the fire extinguisher. The great stone mission had been erected in 1865; the fluorescent lights, the ceiling fans, the vast network of haphazard wiring—these had been added later. The doctor concluded that an electrical fire was entirely possible.
Farrokh tried to familiarize himself with all the meetings that a good Christian could go to. There was an announced Meeting of Liturgical Readers, and the Meeting of the Members of the Cross—“to make parish members more politically conscious.” The present topic of proposed conversation in the Adult Catholic Education Program was “The Christian Today in the World of Non-Christian Religions.” This month, the Hope Alive Center was conducted by Dr. Yusuf Merchant. Dr. Daruwalla wondered what “conducted by” meant. There was a Get to Know Each Other Party for the Altar Service Corps, which Farrokh suspected would be a grim gathering.
Under the archway of the second-floor balcony, the doctor was struck by the unfinished irregularity of the pieces of stained glass—as if the very notion of God were this fragmented, this incomplete. In the Icon Chapel, the doctor abruptly closed a hymnal upon encountering the hymn called “Bring Me Oil.” Then he read the bookmark that he’d removed from the hymnal; the bookmark celebrated St. Ignatius’s upcoming jubilee year—“a labour of love in building youth for 125 years.” There was also the word “world-affirming”; Dr. Daruwalla had never had the slightest idea what this implied. Farrokh peeked into the hymnal again, but even the name of the thing offended him; it was called the “Song Book of the Charismatic Renewal in India”—he hadn’t known that there was any charismatic renewal! And so he exchanged the hymnal for a prayer book, wherein he looked no further than the opening line of the first prayer: “Keep us, Lord, as the apple of Your eye.”
Dr. Daruwalla then discovered the Holy Father’s Intentions for 1990. For January, it was advised that the dialogue between the Catholic and Anglican communities continue in the quest for Christian unity. For February, prayers were offered for those Catholics who, in many parts of the world, suffered either verbal or physical persecution. For March, the parishioners were exhorted to give a more authentic witness for support of the needy—and fidelity to the poverty of the Gospels. Dr. Daruwalla couldn’t read past March, for the phrase “poverty of the Gospels” stopped him. Farrokh felt surrounded by too much that was meaningless to him.
Even Brother Gabriel’s fastidious collecting of icons meant little to the doctor, and the icon-collection room at St. Ignatius was famous in Bombay. To Farrokh, the depictions were lugubrious and obscure. There was a 16th-century Adoration of the Magi, of the Ukrainian School; there was a 15th-century Decapitation of John the Baptist, of the Central Northern School. In the Passing of Our Lord category, there was a Last Supper, a Crucifixion, a Deposition (the taking of Christ’s body from the cross), an Entombment, a Resurrection and an Ascension; they were all icons from the 14th through the 18th centuries, and they varied among the Novgorod School, the Byzantine School, the Moscow School… and so on. There was one called the Dormition of the Virgin, and that did it for Dr. Daruwalla; the doctor didn’t know what the Dormition was.
From the icons, the doctor roamed to the Father Rector’s office, where something resembling a cribbage board was nailed to the closed door; by means of holes and pegs, Father Julian could indicate his whereabouts or availability—“back soon” or “do not disturb,” “rec. room” or “
back late,” “back for supper” or “out of Bombay.” That was when Dr. Daruwalla considered that he should be “out of Bombay”; that he’d been born here didn’t mean that he belonged here.
When he heard the bell signifying the end of school, Farrokh realized that it was already 3:00 in the afternoon. He stood on the second-floor balcony and watched the schoolboys racing through the dusty courtyard. Cars and buses were taking them away; either their mothers or their ayahs were coming to fetch them home. From the perspective of the balcony, Dr. Daruwalla determined that they were the fattest children he’d ever seen in India. This was uncharitable; not half the children at St. Ignatius were half as plump as Farrokh. Nevertheless, the doctor knew that he would no more interfere with the new missionary’s zeal than he would choose to leap from the balcony and kill himself in front of these blameless children.
Farrokh also knew that almost no one of rank at the mission would mistake Martin Mills for Inspector Dhar. The Jesuits weren’t known for their appreciation of so-called Bollywood, the trashy Hindi film scene; young women in soaking-wet saris weren’t their thing. Superheroes and fiendish villains, violence and vulgarity, tawdriness and corniness—and the occasional descending god, intervening in pathetic, merely human affairs… Inspector Dhar was not famous at St. Ignatius. Among the schoolboys, however, more than one student of Martin Mills might note the resemblance. Inspector Dhar was popular with schoolboys.
Dr. Daruwalla still lingered; he had things to do, but he couldn’t make himself leave. He didn’t know that he was writing; it had never begun quite like this before. When the children were gone, he went inside St. Ignatius Church—but not to pray. A huge wheel of unlit candles hung above the center table, which resembled a refectory table only in its shape; in fact, it was a folding table of a household kind—better suited, say, for sorting laundry. The pulpit, to the right of this table (as Farrokh faced the altar), was equipped with an inappropriately shiny microphone; upon this pulpit a Lectionary lay open, from which the doctor assumed that the lector would be reading—possibly at the evening Mass. Dr. Daruwalla couldn’t resist snooping. The Lectionary was open to the Second Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians.
A Son of the Circus Page 45