A Son of the Circus

by John Winslow Irving

  The geneticist at the University of Toronto was quite emphatic to Farrokh: it was far-fetched to imagine that he would find a genetic marker for this autosomal dominant trait—achondroplasia is transmitted by a single autosomal dominant gene. This was a type of dwarfism that resulted from a spontaneous mutation. In the case of a spontaneous mutation, unaffected parents of dwarf children have essentially no further risk of producing another dwarf child; the unaffected brothers and sisters of an achondroplastic dwarf are similarly not at risk—they won’t necessarily produce dwarfs, either. The dwarfs themselves, on the other hand, are quite likely to pass the trait on to their children—half their children will be dwarfs. As for a genetic marker for this dominant characteristic, none could be found.

  Dr. Daruwalla doubted that he knew enough about genetics to argue with a geneticist; the doctor simply continued to draw samples of the dwarfs’ blood, and he kept bringing the photographs of the chromosomes back to Toronto. The U. of T. geneticist was discouraging but fairly friendly, if not sympathetic. He was also the boyfriend of Farrokh’s friend and colleague at the Hospital for Sick Children—Sick Kids, they called the hospital in Toronto. Farrokh’s friend and the geneticist were gay.

  Dr. Gordon Macfarlane, who was the same age as Dr. Daruwalla, had joined the orthopedic group at the Hospital for Sick Children in the same year as Farrokh; their hospital offices were next door to each other. Since Farrokh hated to drive, he often rode back and forth to work with Macfarlane; they both lived in Forest Hill. Early on in their relationship, there’d been those comic occasions when Julia and Farrokh had tried to interest Mac in various single or divorced women. Eventually, the matter of Macfarlane’s sexual orientation grew clear; in no time, Mac was bringing his boyfriend to dinner.

  Dr. Duncan Frasier, the gay geneticist, was renowned for his research on the so-called (and elusive) gay chromosomes; Frasier was used to being teased about it. Biological studies of homosexuality generally irritate everybody. The debate as to whether homosexuality is present at birth or is a learned behavior is always inflamed with politics. Conservatives reject scientific suggestions that sexual orientation is biological; liberals anguish over the possible medical misuse of an identifiable genetic marker for homosexuality—should one be found. But Dr. Frasier’s research had led him to a fairly cautious and reasonable conclusion. There were only two “natural” sexual orientations among humans—one in the majority, one in the minority. Nothing he’d studied about homosexuality, nor anything he’d personally experienced or had ever felt, could persuade Dr. Frasier that either homosexuality or heterosexuality was a matter of choice. Sexual orientation wasn’t a “lifestyle.”

  “We are born with what we desire—whatever it is,” Frasier liked to say.

  Farrokh found it an interesting subject. But if the search for gay genes was so fascinating to Dr. Frasier, it discouraged Dr. Daruwalla that the gay geneticist would entertain no hope of finding a genetic marker for Vinod’s dwarfism. Sometimes Dr. Daruwalla was guilty of thinking that Frasier had no personal interest in dwarfs, whereas gays got the geneticist’s full attention. Nevertheless, Farrokh’s friendship with Macfarlane was unshakable; soon Farrokh was admitting to his gay friend how he’d always disliked the word “gay” in its current, commonplace homosexual sense. To Farrokh’s surprise, Mac had agreed; he said he wished that something as important to him as his homosexuality had a word of its own—a word that had no other meaning.

  “‘Gay’ is such a frivolous word,” Macfarlane had said.

  Dr. Daruwalla’s dislike of the contemporary usage of the word was more a generational matter than a matter of prejudice—or so the doctor believed. It was a word his mother, Meher, had loved but overused. “We had a gay time,” she would say. “What a gay evening we had—even your father was in a gay mood.”

  It disheartened Dr. Daruwalla to see this old-fashioned adjective—a synonym for “jolly” or “merry” or “frolicsome” or “blithe”—take on a much more serious meaning.

  “Come to think of it, ‘straight’ isn’t an original word, either,” Farrokh had said.

  Macfarlane laughed, but his longtime companion, Frasier, responded with a touch of bitterness. “What you’re telling us, Farrokh, is that you accept gays when we’re so quiet about it that we might as well still be in the closet—and provided that we don’t dare call ourselves gay, which offends you. Isn’t that what you’re saying?” But this wasn’t what Farrokh meant.

  “I’m not criticizing your orientation,” Dr. Daruwalla replied. “I just don’t like the word for it.”

  There lingered an air of dismissiveness about Dr. Frasier; the rebuke reminded Dr. Daruwalla of the geneticist’s dismissal of the notion that the doctor might find a genetic marker for the most common type of dwarfism.

  The last time Dr. Daruwalla had brought Dr. Frasier the photographs of the dwarfs’ chromosomes, the gay geneticist had been more dismissive than usual. “Those dwarfs must be bleeding to death, Farrokh,” Frasier told him. “Why don’t you leave the little buggers alone?”

  “If I used the word ‘bugger,’ you would be offended,” Farrokh said. But what did Dr. Daruwalla expect? Dwarf genes or gay genes, genetics was a touchy subject.

  All this left Farrokh feeling full of contempt for his own lack of follow-through on his dwarf-blood project. Dr. Daruwalla didn’t realize that his notion of “follow-through” (or lack thereof) had originated with the radio interview he’d briefly overheard the previous evening—that silliness with the complaining writer. But, at last, the doctor stopped brooding on the dwarf-blood subject.

  Farrokh now made the morning’s second phone call.

  The Enigmatic Actor

  It was early to call John D., but Dr. Daruwalla hadn’t told him about Rahul; the doctor also wanted to stress the importance of John D.’s attending the lunch at the Duckworth Club with Detective Patel and Nancy. To Farrokh’s surprise, it was an alert Inspector Dhar who answered the phone in his suite at the Taj.

  “You sound awake!” Dr. Daruwalla said. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m reading a play—actually, two plays,” John D. replied. “What are you doing? Isn’t it time you were cutting open someone’s knee?”

  This was the famous distant Dhar; the doctor felt he’d created this character, cold and sarcastic. Farrokh immediately launched into the news about Rahul—that he had a female identity these days; that, in all likelihood, the complete sex change had been accomplished. But John D. seemed barely interested. As for participating in the lunch at the Duckworth Club, not even the prospect of taking part in the capture of a serial murderer (or murderess) could engage the actor’s enthusiasm.

  “I have a lot of reading to do,” John D. told Farrokh.

  “But you can’t read all day,” the doctor said. “What reading?”

  “I told you—two plays,” said Inspector Dhar.

  “Oh, you mean homework,” Farrokh said. He assumed that John D. was studying his lines for his upcoming parts at the Schauspielhaus Zürich. The actor was thinking of Switzerland, of his day job, the doctor supposed. John D. was thinking of going home. After all, what was keeping him here? If, under the present threat, he gave up his membership at the Duckworth Club, what would he do with himself? Stay in his suite at the Taj, or at the Oberoi? Like Farrokh, John D. lived at the Duckworth Club when he was in Bombay.

  “But now that the murderer is known, it’s absurd to resign from the club!” Dr. Daruwalla cried. “Any day now, they’re going to catch him!”

  “Catch her,” Inspector Dhar corrected the doctor.

  “Well, him or her,” Farrokh said impatiently. “The point is, the police know who they’re looking for. There won’t be any more killings.”

  “I suppose seventy is enough,” John D. said. He was in a simply infuriating mood, Dr. Daruwalla thought.

  “So, what are these plays?” Farrokh asked, in exasperation.

  “I have only two leading roles this year,” John D. repli
ed. “In the spring, it’s Osborne’s Der Entertainer—I’m Billy Rice—and in the fall I’m Friedrich Hofreiter in Schnitzler’s Das weite Land.”

  “I see,” Farrokh said, but this was all foreign to him. He knew only that John Daruwalla was a respected professional as an actor, and that the Schauspielhaus Zürich was a sophisticated city theater with a reputation for performing both classical and modern plays. In Farrokh’s opinion, they gave short shrift to slapstick; he wondered if there were more slapstick comedies performed at the Bernhard or at the Theater am Hechtplatz—he didn’t really know Zürich.

  The doctor knew only what his brother, Jamshed, had told him, and Jamshed was no veteran theatergoer—he went to see John D. In addition to Jamshed’s possibly philistine opinions, there was what little information Farrokh could force out of the guarded Dhar. The doctor didn’t know if two leading roles a year were enough, or if John D. had chosen only two such roles. The actor went on to say that he had smaller parts in something by Dürrenmatt and something by Brecht. A year ago, he’d made his directing debut—it was something by Max Frisch—and he’d played the eponymous Volpone in the Ben Jonson play. Next year, John D. had said, he hoped to direct Gorki’s Wassa Schelesnowa.

  It was a pity that everything had to be in German, Dr. Daruwalla thought.

  Except for his outstanding success as Inspector Dhar, John D. had never acted in films; he never auditioned. Was he lacking in ambition? Dr. Daruwalla wondered, for it seemed a mistake for Dhar not to take advantage of his perfect English. Yet John D. said he detested England, and he refused to set foot in the United States; he ventured to Toronto only to visit Farrokh and Julia. The actor wouldn’t even stray to Germany to audition for a film!

  Many of the guest performers at the Schauspielhaus Zürich were German actors and actresses—Katharina Thalbach, for example. Jamshed had once told Farrokh that John D. had been romantically linked with the German actress, but John D. denied this. Dhar never appeared in a German theater, and (to Farrokh’s knowledge) there was no one at the Schauspielhaus Zürich to whom the actor had ever been “romantically linked.” Dhar was a friend of the famous Maria Becker, but not romantically a friend. Besides, Dr. Daruwalla guessed, Maria Becker would be a little too old for John D. And Jamshed had reported seeing John D. out to dinner at the Kronenhalle with Christiane Hörbiger, who was also famous—and closer to John D.’s age, the doctor speculated. But Dr. Daruwalla suspected that this sighting was no more significant than spotting John D. with any other of the regular performers at the Schauspielhaus. John D. was also friends with Fritz Schediwy and Peter Ehrlich and Peter Arens. Dhar was seen dining, on more than one occasion, with the pretty Eva Rieck. Jamshed also reported that he frequently saw John D. with the director Gerd Heinz—and as often with a local terror of the avant-garde, Matthias Frei.

  John D., as an actor, eschewed the avant-garde; yet, apparently, he was on friendly terms with one of Zürich’s elder statesmen of such theater. Matthias Frei was a director and occasional playwright, a kind of deliberately underground and incomprehensible fellow—or so Dr. Daruwalla believed. Frei was about the doctor’s age, but he looked older, more rumpled; he was certainly wilder. Jamshed had told Farrokh that John D. even split the expense of renting a flat or a chalet in the mountains with Matthias Frei; one year they would rent something in the Grisons, another year they’d try the Bernese Oberland. Supposedly, it was agreeable for them to share a place because John D. preferred the mountains in the ski season and Matthias Frei liked the hiking in the summer; also, Dr. Daruwalla presumed, Frei’s friends would be people of a different generation from John D.’s friends.

  But, once again, Farrokh’s view of the culture John D. inhabited was marginal. As for the actor’s love life, there was no understanding his aloofness. He’d appeared to have a long relationship with someone in a publishing house—a publicist, or so Farrokh remembered her. She was an attractive, intelligent younger woman. They’d occasionally traveled together, but not to India; for Dhar, India was strictly business. They’d never lived together. And now, Farrokh was told, this publicist and John D. were “just good friends.”

  Julia surmised that John D. didn’t want to have children, and that this would eventually turn most younger women away. But now, at 39, John D. might meet a woman his own age, or a little older—someone who would accept childlessness. Or, Julia had said, perhaps he’d meet a nice divorced woman who’d already had her children—someone whose children would be grownups. That would be ideal for John D., Julia had decided.

  But Dr. Daruwalla didn’t think so. Inspector Dhar had never exhibited a nesting instinct. The rentals in the mountains, a different one each year, utterly suited John D. Even in Zürich, he made a point of owning very little. His flat—which was within walking distance of the theater, the lake, the Limmat, the Kronenhalle—was also rented. He didn’t want a car. He seemed proud of his framed playbills, and even an Inspector Dhar poster or two; in Zürich, Dr. Daruwalla supposed, these Hindi cinema advertisements were probably amusing to John D.’s friends. They could never have imagined that such craziness translated into a raving audience beyond the wildest dreams of the Schauspielhaus.

  In Zürich, Jamshed had observed, John D. was infrequently recognized; he was hardly the best-known of the Schauspielhaus troupe. Not exactly a character actor, he was also no star. In restaurants around town, theatergoers might recognize him, but they wouldn’t necessarily know his name. Only schoolchildren, after a comedy, would ask for his autograph; the children simply held out their playbills to anyone in the cast.

  Jamshed said that Zürich had no money to give to the arts. There’d recently been a scandal because the city wanted to close down the Schauspielhaus Keller; this was the more avant-garde theater, for younger theatergoers. John D.’s friend Matthias Frei had made a big fuss. As far as Jamshed knew, the theater was always in need of money. Technical personnel hadn’t been given an annual raise; if they quit, they weren’t replaced. Farrokh and Jamshed speculated that John D.’s salary couldn’t be very significant. But of course he didn’t need the money; Inspector Dhar was rich. What did it matter to Dhar that the Schauspielhaus Zürich was inadequately subsidized by the city, by the banks, by private donations?

  Julia also implied that the theater somewhat complacently rested on its illustrious history in the 1930s and ’40s, when it was a refuge for people fleeing from Germany, not only Jews but Social Democrats and Communists—or anyone who’d spoken out against the Nazis and as a result either wasn’t permitted to work or was in danger. There’d been a time when a production of Wilhelm Tell was defiant, even revolutionary—a symbolic blow against the Nazis. Many Swiss had been afraid to get involved in the war, yet the Schauspielhaus Zürich had been courageous at a time when any performance of Goethe’s Faust might have been the last. They’d also performed Sartre, and von Hofmannsthal, and a young Max Frisch. The Jewish refugee Kurt Hirschfeld had found a home there. But nowadays, Julia thought, there were many younger intellectuals who might find the Schauspielhaus rather staid. Dr. Daruwalla suspected that “staid” suited John D. What mattered to him was that in Zürich he was not Inspector Dhar.

  When the Hindi movie star was asked where he lived, because it was obvious that he spent very little time in Bombay, Dhar always replied (with characteristic vagueness) that he lived in the Himalayas—“the abode of snow.” But John D.’s abode of snow was in the Alps, and in the city on the lake. The doctor thought that Dhar was probably a Kashmiri name, but neither Dr. Daruwalla nor Inspector Dhar had ever been to the Himalayas.

  Now, on the spur of the moment, the doctor decided to tell John D. his decision.

  “I’m not writing another Inspector Dhar movie,” Farrokh informed the actor. “I’m going to have a press conference and identify myself as the man responsible for Inspector Dhar’s creation. I want to call an end to it, and let you off the hook—so to speak. If you don’t mind,” the doctor added uncertainly.

  “Of course I don’t mi
nd,” John D. said. “But you should let the real policeman find the real murderer—you don’t want to interfere with that.”

  “Well, I won’t!” Dr. Daruwalla said defensively. “But if you’d only come to lunch… I just thought you might remember something. You have an eye for detail, you know.”

  “What sort of detail have you got in mind?” John D. asked.

  “Well, anything you might remember about Rahul, or about that time in Goa. I don’t know, really—just anything!” Farrokh said.

  “I remember the hippie,” said Inspector Dhar. He began with his memory of her weight; after all, he’d carried her down the stairs of the Hotel Bardez and into the lobby. She was very solid. She’d looked into his eyes the whole time, and there was her fragrance—he knew she’d just had a bath.

  Then, in the lobby, she’d said, “If it’s not too much trouble, you could do me a big favor.” She’d showed him the dildo without removing it from her rucksack; Dhar remembered its appalling size, and the head of the thing pointing at him. “The tip unscrews,” Nancy had told him; she was still watching his eyes. “But I’m just not strong enough.” It was screwed together so tightly, he needed to grip the big cock in both hands. And then she stopped him, as soon as he’d loosened the tip. “That’s enough,” she told him. “I’m going to spare you,” she said too softly. “You don’t want to know what’s inside the thing.”

  It had been quite a challenge—to meet her eyes, to stare her down. John D. had focused on the idea of the big dildo inside her; he believed that she would see in his eyes what he was thinking. What he thought he’d seen in Nancy’s eyes was that she’d courted danger before—maybe it had even thrilled her—but that she wasn’t so sure about danger anymore. Then she’d looked away.