A Son of the Circus
Page 66
At St. Ignatius, the jubilee celebration was planned for New Year’s Day, which Martin Mills had also forgotten, and the New Year’s Eve party at the Duckworth Sports Club was a black-tie occasion of uncharacteristic merriment; there would be dancing to a live band and a splendid midnight supper—not to mention the unusual, once-a-year quality of the champagne. No Duckworthian in Bombay would willingly miss the New Year’s Eve party.
John D. and Deputy Commissioner Patel were sure that Rahul would be there—Mr. Sethna had already informed them. They’d spent much of the day rehearsing what Inspector Dhar would say when he and the second Mrs. Dogar danced. Julia had pressed Farrokh’s tuxedo, which needed a lengthy airing on the balcony to rid it of its mothball aroma. But both New Year’s Eve and the Duckworth Club were far from Farrokh’s mind. The doctor was focused on what remained of his journey to Rajkot, after which he still had to travel to Bombay. If Farrokh couldn’t endure another minute of Martin’s arguments, he had to initiate a different conversation.
“Perhaps we should change the subject,” Dr. Daruwalla suggested. “And keep our voices down.”
“As you wish. I promise to keep mine down,” the missionary said with satisfaction.
Farrokh was at a loss to know what to talk about. He tried to think of a long personal story, something which would allow him to talk and talk, and which would render the missionary speechless—powerless to interrupt. The doctor could begin, “I know your twin”; that would lead to quite a long personal story. That would shut Martin Mills up! But, as before, Farrokh felt it wasn’t his place to tell this story; that was John D.’s decision.
“Well, I can think of something to say,” the scholastic said; he’d been politely waiting for Dr. Daruwalla to begin, but he hadn’t waited long.
“Very well—go ahead,” the doctor replied.
“I think that you shouldn’t go witch-hunting for homosexuals,” the Jesuit began. “Not these days. Not when there is understandable sensitivity toward anything remotely homophobic. What do you have against homosexuals, anyway?”
“I have nothing against homosexuals. I’m not homophobic,” Dr. Daruwalla snapped. “And you haven’t exactly changed the subject!”
“You’re not exactly keeping your voice down,” Martin said.
Little India
At the airport in Rajkot, the loudspeaker system had progressed to a new test; more advanced counting skills were being demonstrated. “Eleven, twenty-two, thirty-three, forty-four, fifty-five,” said the tireless voice. There was no telling where this would lead; it hinted at infinity. The voice was without emotion; the counting was so mechanical that Dr. Daruwalla thought he might go mad. Instead of listening to the numbers or enduring the Jesuitical provocations of Martin Mills, Farrokh chose to tell a story. Although it was a true story—and, as the doctor would soon discover, painful to tell—it suffered from the disadvantage that the storyteller had never told it before; even true stories are improved by revision. But the doctor hoped that his tale would illustrate how the missionary’s allegations of homophobia were false, for Dr. Daruwalla’s favorite colleague in Toronto was a homosexual. Gordon Macfarlane was also Farrokh’s best friend.
Unfortunately, the screenwriter began the story in the wrong place. Dr. Daruwalla should have started with his earliest acquaintance of Dr. Macfarlane, including how the two had concurred on the misuse of the word “gay”; that they’d generally agreed with the findings of Mac’s boyfriend, the gay geneticist—regarding the biology of homosexuality—was also interesting. Had Dr. Daruwalla started with a discussion of this subject, he might not have prejudiced Martin Mills against him. But, at the airport in Rajkot, he’d made the mistake of inserting Dr. Macfarlane in the form of a flashback—as if Mac were only a minor character and not a friend who was often foremost on Farrokh’s mind.
He’d begun with the wrong story, about the time he’d been abducted by a crazed cab driver, for Farrokh’s training as a writer of action films had preconditioned him to begin any story with the most violent action he could imagine (or, in this case, remember). But to begin with an episode of racial abuse was misleading to the missionary, who concluded that Farrokh’s friendship with Gordon Macfarlane was secondary to the doctor’s outrage at his own mistreatment as an Indian in Toronto. This was inept storytelling, for Farrokh had meant only to convey how his mistreatment as an obvious immigrant of color in Canada had further solidified his friendship with a homosexual, who was no stranger to discrimination of another kind.
It was a Friday in the spring; many of Farrokh’s colleagues left their offices early on Friday afternoons because they were cottagers, but the Daruwallas enjoyed their weekends in Toronto—their second home was in Bombay. Farrokh had had a cancellation; hence he was free to leave early—otherwise, he would have asked Macfarlane for a ride home or called a cab. Mac also spent his weekends in Toronto and kept late office hours on Friday.
Since it wasn’t yet rush hour, Farrokh thought he’d walk for a while and then hail a taxi from the street, probably in front of the museum. For some years he’d avoided the subway; an uncomfortable racial incident had happened there. Oh, there’d been shouts from the occasional passing car—no one had ever called him a Parsi; in Toronto, few people knew what a Parsi was. What they called out was “Paki bastard!” or “Wog!” or “Babu!” or “Go home!” His pale-brown coloring and jet-black hair made it difficult for them; he wasn’t as identifiable as many Indians. Sometimes they called him an Arab—twice he’d been called a Jew. It was his Persian ancestry; he could pass for a Middle Easterner. But whoever the shouters were, they knew he was foreign—racially different.
Once he’d even been called a Wop! At the time, he’d wondered what sort of idiot could mistake him for an Italian. Now he knew that it wasn’t what he was that bothered the shouters; it was only that he wasn’t one of them. But most often the theme of the slurs subscribed to that view of him which can only clumsily be expressed as “an immigrant of color.” In Canada, it seemed, the prejudice against the immigrant composition of his features was as strong as whatever prejudice existed of the of-color kind.
He stopped taking the subway after an episode with three teenage boys. At first, they hadn’t seemed so threatening—more mischievous. There was a hint of menace only because they sat so deliberately close to him; there were many other places for them to sit. One sat on either side of him, the third across the aisle. The boy to the doctor’s left nudged his arm. “We’ve got a bet going,” the boy said. “What are you?”
Dr. Daruwalla realized later that the only reason he’d found them unthreatening was that they wore their school blazers and ties. After the incident, he could have called their school; he never did.
“I said what are you?” the boy repeated. That was the first moment Farrokh felt threatened.
“I’m a doctor,” Dr. Daruwalla replied.
The boys on either side of him looked decidedly hostile; it was the boy across the aisle who saved him. “My dad’s a doctor,” the boy stupidly remarked.
“Are you going to be a doctor, too?” Farrokh asked him.
The other two got up; they pulled the third boy along with them.
“Fuck you,” the first boy said to Farrokh, but the doctor knew this was a harmless bomb—already defused.
He never took the subway again. But after his worst episode, the subway incident seemed mild. After his worst episode, Farrokh was so upset, he couldn’t remember whether the taxi driver had pulled over before or after the intersection of University and Gerrard; either way, he’d just left the hospital and he was daydreaming. What was odd, he remembered, was that the driver already had a passenger, and that the passenger was riding in the front seat. The driver said, “Don’t mind him. He’s just a friend with nothing to do.”
“I’m not a fare,” the driver’s friend said.
Later, Farrokh remembered only that it wasn’t one of Metro’s taxis or one of Beck’s—the two companies he most often called. It was
probably what they call a gypsy cab.
“I said where are you going?” the driver asked Dr. Daruwalla.
“Home,” Farrokh replied. (It struck him as pointless to add that he’d intended to walk for a while. Here was a taxi. Why not take it?)
“Where’s ‘home’?” the friend in the front seat asked.
“Russell Hill Road, north of St. Clair—just north of Lonsdale,” the doctor answered; he’d stopped walking—the taxi had stopped, too. “Actually, I was going to stop at the beer store—and then go home,” Farrokh added.
“Get in, if you want,” the driver said.
Dr. Daruwalla didn’t feel anxious until he was settled in the back seat and the taxi began to move. The friend in the front seat belched once, sharply, and the driver laughed. The windshield visor in front of the driver’s friend was pushed flat against the windshield, and the glove-compartment door was missing. Farrokh couldn’t remember if these were the places where the driver’s certification was posted—or was it usually on the Plexiglas divider between the front and back seats? (The Plexiglas divider itself was unusual; in Toronto, most taxis didn’t have these dividers.) Anyway, there was no visible driver’s certification inside the cab, and the taxi was already moving too fast for Dr. Daruwalla to get out—maybe at a red light, the doctor thought. But there were no red lights for a while and the taxi ran the first red light it came to; that was when the driver’s friend in the front seat turned around and faced Farrokh.
“So where’s your real home?” the friend asked.
“Russell Hill Road,” Dr. Daruwalla repeated.
“Before that, asshole,” the driver said.
“I was born in Bombay, but I left India when I was a teenager. I’m a Canadian citizen,” Farrokh said.
“Didn’t I tell you?” the driver said to his friend.
“Let’s take him home,” the friend said.
The driver glanced in the rearview mirror and made a sudden U-turn. Farrokh was thrown against the door.
“We’ll show you where your home is, babu,” the driver said.
At no time could Dr. Daruwalla have escaped. When they crawled slowly ahead in the traffic, or when they were stopped at a red light, the doctor was too afraid to attempt it. They were moving fairly fast when the driver slammed on the brakes. The doctor’s head bounced off the Plexiglas shield. Dr. Daruwalla was pressed back into the seat when the driver accelerated. Farrokh felt the tightness of the instant swelling; by the time he gently touched his puffy eyebrow, blood was already running into his eye. Four stitches, maybe six, the doctor’s fingers told him.
The area of Little India is not extensive; it stretches along Gerrard from Coxwell to Hiawatha—some would say as far as Woodfield. Everyone would agree that by the time you get to Greenwood, Little India is over; and even in Little India, the Chinese community is interspersed. The taxi stopped in front of the Ahmad Grocers on Gerrard, at Coxwell; it was probably no coincidence that the grocer was diagonally across the street from the offices of the Canadian Ethnic Immigration Services—this was where the driver’s friend dragged Farrokh out of the back seat. “You’re home now—better stay here,” the friend told Dr. Daruwalla.
“Better yet, babu—go back to Bombay,” the driver added.
As the taxi pulled away, the doctor could see it clearly out of only one eye; he was so relieved to be free of the thugs that he paid scant attention to the identifying marks of the car. It was red—maybe red and white. If Farrokh saw any printed names or numbers, he wouldn’t remember them.
Little India appeared to be mostly closed on Friday. Apparently, no one had seen the doctor roughly pulled out of the taxi; no one approached him, although he was dazed and bleeding—clearly disoriented. A small, potbellied man in a dark suit—his white shirt was ruined from the blood that flowed from his split eyebrow—he clutched his doctor’s bag in one hand. He began to walk. On the sidewalk, dancing in the spring air, kaftans were hanging on a clothes rack. Later, Farrokh struggled to remember the names of the places. Pindi Embroidery? Nirma Fashions? There was another grocery with fresh fruits and vegetables—maybe the Singh Farm? At the United Church, there was a sign saying that the church also served as the Shri Ram Hindu Temple on Sunday evenings. At the corner of Craven and Gerrard, a restaurant claimed to be “Indian Cuisine Specialists.” There was also the familiar advertisement for Kingfisher lager—INSTILLED WITH INNER STRENGTH. A poster, promising an ASIA SUPERSTARS NITE, displayed the usual faces: Dimple Kapadia, Sunny Deol, Jaya Prada—with music by Bappi Lahiri.
Dr. Daruwalla never came to Little India. In the storefront windows, the mannequins in their saris seemed to rebuke him. Farrokh saw few Indians in Toronto; he had no close Indian friends there. Parsi parents would bring him their sick children—on the evidence of his name in the telephone directory, Dr. Daruwalla supposed. Among the mannequins, a blonde in her sari struck Farrokh as sharing his own disorientation.
At Raja Jewellers, someone was staring out the window at him, probably noticing that the doctor was bleeding. There was a South Indian “Pure Vegetarian Restaurant” near Ashdale and Gerrard. At the Chaat Hut, they advertised “all kinds of kulfi, faluda and paan.” At the Bombay Bhel, the sign said FOR TRUE AUTHENTIC GOL GUPPA … ALOO TIKKI … ETC. They served Thunderbolt beer, SUPER STRONG LAGER… THE SPIRIT OF EXCITEMENT. More saris were in a window at Hiawatha and Gerrard. And at the Shree Groceries, a pile of ginger root overflowed the store, extending onto the sidewalk. The doctor gazed at the India Theater… at the Silk Den.
At J. S. Addison Plumbing, at the corner of Woodfield and Gerrard, Farrokh saw a fabulous copper bathtub with ornate faucets; the handles were tiger heads, the tigers roaring—it was like the tub he’d bathed in as a boy on old Ridge Road, Malabar Hill. Dr. Daruwalla began to cry. Staring at the display of copper sinks and drains and other bathroom Victoriana, he was suddenly aware of a man’s concerned face staring back at him. The man came out on the sidewalk.
“You’ve been hurt—may I help you?” the man asked; he wasn’t an Indian.
“I’m a doctor,” said Dr. Daruwalla. “Please just call me a taxi—I know where to go.” He had the taxi take him back to the Hospital for Sick Children.
“You sure you want Sick Kids, mon?” the driver asked; he was a West Indian, a black man—very black. “You don’t look like a sick kid to me.”
“I’m a doctor,” Farrokh said. “I work there.”
“Who done that to you, mon?” the driver asked.
“Two guys who don’t like people like me—or like you,” the doctor told him.
“I know them—they everywhere, mon,” the driver said.
Dr. Daruwalla was relieved that his secretary and his nurse had gone home. He kept a change of clothes in his office; after he was stitched up, he would throw the shirt away… he’d ask his secretary to have the suit dry-cleaned.
He examined the split wound on his eyebrow; using the mirror, he shaved around the gash. This was easy, but he was used to shaving in a mirror; then he contemplated the procaine injection and the sutures—to do these properly in the mirror was baffling to him, especially the sewing. Farrokh called Dr. Macfarlane’s office and asked the secretary to have Mac stop by when he was ready to go home.
Farrokh first tried to tell Macfarlane that he’d hit his head in a taxi because of a reckless driver, the brakes throwing him forward into the Plexiglas divider. Although it was the truth, or only a lie of omission, his voice trailed off; his fear, the insult, his anger—these things were still reflected in his eyes.
“Who did this to you, Farrokh?” Mac asked.
Dr. Daruwalla told Dr. Macfarlane the whole story—beginning with the three teenagers on the subway and including the shouts from the passing cars. By the time Mac had stitched him up—it required five sutures to close the wound—Farrokh had used the expression “an immigrant of color” more times than he’d ever uttered it aloud before, even to Julia. He would never tell Julia about Little India, either; that Mac
knew was comfort enough.
Dr. Macfarlane had his own stories. He’d never been beaten up, but he’d been threatened and intimidated. There were phone calls late at night; he’d changed his number three times. There were also phone calls to his office; two of his former secretaries had resigned, and one of his former nurses. Sometimes letters or notes were shoved under his office door; perhaps these were from the parents of former patients, or from his fellow doctors, or from other people who worked at Sick Kids.
Mac helped Farrokh rehearse how he would describe his “accident” to Julia. It sounded more plausible if it wasn’t the taxi driver’s fault. They decided that an idiot woman had pulled out from the curb without looking; the driver had had no choice but to hit the brakes. (A blameless woman driver had been blamed again.) As soon as he realized he was cut and bleeding, Farrokh had asked the driver to take him back to the hospital; fortunately, Macfarlane was still there and had stitched him up. Just five sutures. His white shirt was a total loss, and he wouldn’t know about the suit until it came back from the cleaner’s.
“Why not just tell Julia what happened?” Mac asked.
“She’ll be disappointed in me—because I didn’t do anything,” Farrokh told him.
“I doubt that,” Macfarlane said.
“I’m disappointed that I didn’t do anything,” Dr. Daruwalla admitted.
“That can’t be helped,” Mac said.
On the way home to Russell Hill Road, Farrokh asked Mac about his work at the AIDS hospice—there was a good one in Toronto.
“I’m just a volunteer,” Macfarlane explained.