A Son of the Circus

by John Irving

  The dwarf was a compulsive list maker, and he enjoyed showing his lists to Dr. Daruwalla. There was quite a long list of Vinod’s acquired circus skills, and a sadly shorter list of the dwarf’s other accomplishments. On the shorter list, Dr. Daruwalla saw it written that the dwarf could drive a car. Farrokh felt certain that Vinod was lying; after all, hadn’t Vinod proposed that very lie which the doctor had used to bleed the dwarfs of the Great Blue Nile?

  “What sort of car can you drive, Vinod?” the doctor asked the recuperating dwarf. “How can your feet reach the pedals?”

  It was to another word on the short list that Vinod proudly pointed. The word was “mechanics”; Farrokh had at first ignored it—he’d skipped straight to “car driving.” Dr. Daruwalla assumed that “mechanics” meant fixing unicycles or other toys of the circus, but Vinod had dabbled in auto mechanics and in unicycles; the dwarf had actually designed and installed hand controls for a car. Naturally, this was inspired by a dwarf item for the Great Blue Nile: ten clowns climb out of one small car. But first a dwarf had to be able to drive the car; that dwarf had been Vinod. The hand controls had been complicated, Vinod confessed. (“Lots of experiments are failing,” Vinod said philosophically.) The driving, the dwarf said, had been relatively easy.

  “You can drive a car,” Dr. Daruwalla said, as if to himself.

  “Both fast and slow!” Vinod exclaimed.

  “The car must have an automatic transmission,” Farrokh reasoned.

  “No clutching—just braking and speeding,” the dwarf explained.

  “There are two hand controls?” the doctor inquired.

  “Who is needing more than two?” the dwarf asked.

  “So … when you slow down or speed up, you must have just one hand on the steering wheel,” Farrokh inferred.

  “Who is needing both hands for steering?” Vinod replied.

  “You can drive a car,” Dr. Daruwalla repeated.

  Somehow, this seemed harder to believe than the Elephant on a Teeterboard or the Cricket-Playing Elephants—for Farrokh could imagine no other life for Vinod. The doctor believed that the dwarf was doomed to be a clown for the Great Blue Nile forever.

  “I am teaching Deepa to do car driving, too,” Vinod added.

  “But Deepa doesn’t need hand controls,” Farrokh observed.

  The dwarf shrugged. “At the Blue Nile, we are naturally driving the same car,” he explained.

  Thus, it was there—in the dwarf’s ward in the Hospital for Crippled Children—that a future hero of “car driving” was first introduced to Dr. Daruwalla. Farrokh simply couldn’t imagine that, 15 years later, a veritable limousine legend would have been born in Bombay. Not that Vinod would immediately escape the circus; all legends take time. Not that Deepa, the dwarf’s wife, would in the end entirely escape the circus. Not that Shivaji, the dwarf’s son, would ever dream of escaping it. But all this was truly happening because Dr. Farrokh Daruwalla wanted blood from dwarfs.

  3

  THE REAL POLICEMAN

  Mrs. Dogar Reminds Farrokh of Someone Else

  For 15 years, Dr. Daruwalla would indulge himself with his memory of Deepa in the safety net. Of course this is an exaggeration, of that kind which caused the doctor to often reflect on his surprise at Vinod becoming a veritable limousine legend in Bombay; in the heyday of the dwarf’s success at car driving, Vinod could never be credited with chauffeuring a limo, much less owning a limousine company. At best, Vinod owned a half-dozen cars; none of them was a Mercedes—including the two that the dwarf drove, with hand controls.

  What Vinod would briefly manage to achieve was a modest profit in the private-taxi business, or “luxury taxis” as they’re called in Bombay. Vinod’s cars were never luxurious—nor could the dwarf have managed private ownership of these thoroughly secondhand vehicles without accepting a loan from Dr. Daruwalla. If the dwarf was even fleetingly a legend, neither the number nor the quality of Vinod’s automobiles was the reason—they were not limousines. The dwarf’s legendary status owed its existence to Vinod’s famous client, the aforementioned actor with the improbable name of Inspector Dhar. At most, Dhar lived part-time in Bombay.

  And poor Vinod could never completely sever his ties to the circus. Shivaji, the dwarf’s dwarf son, was now a teenager; as such, he suffered from strong and contrary opinions. Had Vinod continued to be an active clown in the Great Blue Nile, Shivaji would doubtless have rejected the circus; the contentious boy would probably have chosen to drive a taxi in Bombay—purely out of hatred for the very idea of being a comic dwarf. But since his father had made such an effort to establish a taxi business, and since Vinod had struggled to free himself from the dangerous daily grind of the Great Blue Nile, Shivaji was determined to become a clown. Therefore, Deepa often traveled with her son; and while the Blue Nile was performing throughout Gujarat and Maharashtra, Vinod devoted himself to the car-driving business in Bombay.

  For 15 years, the dwarf had been unable to teach his wife how to drive. Since her fall, Deepa had given up the trapeze, but the Blue Nile paid her to train the child contortionists; while Shivaji developed his skills as a clown, his mother put the plastic ladies through their boneless items. When the dwarf succumbed to missing his wife and son, he’d go back to the Blue Nile. There Vinod eschewed the riskier acts in the dwarf-clown repertoire, contenting himself with instructing the younger dwarfs, his own son among them. But whether clowns are shot off seesaws by elephants, or chased by chimps, or butted by bears, there’s only so much for them to learn. Beyond the demanding drills, which require practice—how to dismount the collapsing unicycle, and so forth—only makeup, timing and falling can be taught. At the Great Blue Nile, it seemed to Vinod that there was mainly falling.

  In his absence from Bombay, Vinod’s taxi enterprise would suffer and the dwarf would feel compelled to return to the city. Since Dr. Daruwalla was only periodically in India, the doctor couldn’t always keep track of where Vinod was; as if trapped in a ceaseless clown item, the dwarf was constantly moving.

  What was also constant was Farrokh’s habit of letting his mind wander to that long-ago night when he had bashed his nose on Deepa’s pubic bone. Not that this was the only circus image that the doctor’s mind would wander to; those scratchy sequins on Deepa’s tight singlet, not to mention the conflicting scents of Deepa’s earthy aroma—these were understandably the most vivid circus images in Farrokh’s memory. And at no time did Dr. Daruwalla daydream so vividly about the circus as he did when anything unpleasant was pending.

  Currently, Farrokh found himself reflecting that, for 15 years, Vinod had steadfastly refused to give the doctor a single Vacutainer of blood. Dr. Daruwalla had drawn the blood from almost every active dwarf clown, in almost every active circus in Gujarat and Maharashtra, but the doctor hadn’t drawn a drop from Vinod. As angry as this fact made him, Farrokh preferred to reflect on it rather than to concern himself with the more pressing problem, which was suddenly at hand.

  Dr. Daruwalla was a coward. That Mr. Lal had fallen on the golf course, without a net, was no reason not to tell Inspector Dhar the upsetting news. Quite simply, the doctor didn’t dare tell Dhar.

  It was characteristic of Dr. Daruwalla to tell belabored jokes, especially when he’d made a disquieting self-discovery. Inspector Dhar was characteristically silent—“characteristically,” depending on which rumors you believed. Dhar knew that Farrokh had been fond of Mr. Lal, and that the doctor’s strident sense of humor was most often engaged when he sought to distract himself from any unhappiness. At the Duckworth Club, Dhar spent most of lunch listening to Dr. Daruwalla go on and on about this new offense to the Parsis: how the recent Parsi dead had been overlooked by the vultures attending to Mr. Lal on the golf course. Farrokh found a forced humor in imagining the more fervent Zoroastrians who’d be up in arms about the interference caused to the vulture community by the dead golfer. Dr. Daruwalla thought they should ask Mr. Sethna if he was offended; throughout lunch the old steward had
managed to look most offended, although the source of the particular offense appeared to be the second Mrs. Dogar. It was clear that Mr. Sethna disapproved of her, whatever her intentions.

  She’d deliberately positioned herself at her table so that she could stare at Inspector Dhar, who never once returned her gaze. Dr. Daruwalla assumed it was just another case of an immodest woman seeking Dhar’s attention—in vain, the doctor knew. He wished he could prepare the second Mrs. Dogar for how rejected she would soon feel from the actor’s obliviousness to her. For a while, she’d even pushed her chair away from the table so that her fetching navel was beautifully framed by the bold colors of her sari; her navel was pointed at Dhar like a single and very determined eye. Although Mrs. Dogar’s advances appeared to go unnoticed by Inspector Dhar, Dr. Daruwalla found it most difficult not to look at her.

  In the doctor’s view, her behavior was shameless for a married, middle-aged lady—Dr. Daruwalla calculated that she was in her early fifties. Yet Farrokh found the second Mrs. Dogar attractive, in a threatening kind of way. He couldn’t locate exactly what it was that attracted him to the woman, whose arms were long and unflatteringly muscular, and whose lean, hard face was handsome and challenging in an almost masculine way. To be sure, her bosom was shapely (if not full) and her bottom was high and firm—especially for a woman her age—and there was no question that her long waist and aforementioned navel were enhancing contributions to the pleasurable impression she made in a sari. But she was too tall, her shoulders were too pronounced and her hands appeared absurdly large and restless; she picked up her silverware and toyed with it as if she were a bored child.

  Furthermore, Farrokh had caught a glimpse of Mrs. Dogar’s feet—actually, just one of her feet, which was bare. She must have kicked her shoes off under her table, but all that Dr. Daruwalla saw was a flash of her gnarled foot; a thin gold chain hung loosely around her surprisingly thick ankle and a wide gold ring gripped one of her clawlike toes.

  Perhaps what attracted the doctor to Mrs. Dogar was how she reminded him of someone else, but he couldn’t think of who it might be. A long-ago movie star, he suspected. Then, as a doctor whose patients were children, he realized that he might have known the new Mrs. Dogar as a child; why this would make the woman attractive to him was yet another, exasperating unknown. Moreover, the second Mrs. Dogar seemed not more than six or seven years younger than Dr. Daruwalla; virtually, they’d been children together.

  Dhar caught the doctor by surprise when he said, “If you could see yourself looking at that woman, Farrokh, I think you’d be embarrassed.” When he was embarrassed, the doctor had an annoying habit of abruptly changing the subject.

  “And you! You should have seen yourself!” Dr. Daruwalla said to Inspector Dhar. “You looked like a bloody police inspector—I mean, you looked like the real bloody thing!”

  It irritated Dhar when Dr. Daruwalla spoke such absurdly unnatural English; it wasn’t even the English with a singsong Hindi lilt, which was also unnatural for Dr. Daruwalla. This was worse; it was something wholly fake—the affected British flavor of that particularly Indian English, the inflections of which were common among young college graduates working as food-and-beverage consultants at the Taj, or as production managers for Britannia Biscuits. Dhar knew that this unsuitable accent was Farrokh’s self-consciousness talking—he was so out of it in Bombay.

  Quietly, but in accentless English, Inspector Dhar spoke to his excited companion. “Which rumor about me are we encouraging today? Should I shout at you in Hindi? Or is this a good day for English as a second language?”

  Dhar’s sardonic tone and expression hurt Dr. Daruwalla, notwithstanding that these mannerisms were trademarks of the fictional character Dr. Daruwalla had created and that all of Bombay had come to loathe. Although the secret screenwriter had grown morally uncertain of his creation, this doubt was not discernible in the unreserved fondness that the doctor felt for the younger man; in public or in private, it was Dr. Daruwalla’s love for Dhar that showed.

  The taunting quality of Dhar’s remarks, not to mention the sting of Dhar’s delivery, wounded Dr. Daruwalla; even so, he regarded the slightly spoiled handsomeness of the actor with great tenderness. Dhar allowed his sneer to soften into a smile. With an affection that alarmed the nearest and ever-observant waiter—the same poor fellow whose daily course had coincided with the shitting crow and with the troublesome tureen and ladle—the doctor reached out and clasped the younger man’s hand.

  In plain English, Dr. Daruwalla whispered, “I’m really just so sorry—I mean, I feel so sorry for you, my dear boy,” he said.

  “Don’t,” Inspector Dhar whispered back. His smile faded and his sneer returned; he freed his hand from the elder man’s grip.

  Tell him now! Dr. Daruwalla told himself, but he didn’t dare—he didn’t know where to begin.

  They were sitting quietly with their tea and some sweets when the real policeman approached their table. They’d already been interrogated by the duty officer from the Tardeo Police Station, an Inspector Somebody—not very impressive. The inspector had arrived with a team of subinspectors and constables in two Jeeps—hardly necessary for a golfing death, Dr. Daruwalla had felt. The Tardeo inspector had been unctuous but condescending to Inspector Dhar and servile to Farrokh.

  “I am hoping you are excusing me, Doctor,” the duty officer had begun; his English was a strain. “I am being most sorry I am taking your time, saar,” the inspector added to Inspector Dhar. Dhar responded in Hindi.

  “You are not examining the body, Doctor?” the policeman asked; he persisted with his English.

  “Certainly not,” Dr. Daruwalla replied.

  “You are never touching the body, saar?” the duty officer asked the famous actor.

  “I are never touching it,” Dhar answered in English—in a flawless imitation of the policeman’s Hindi accent.

  Upon departing, the duty officer’s heavy brogues had scraped a little too loudly on the stone floor of the Duckworth Club’s dining room; thus had the policeman’s exit drawn Mr. Sethna’s predictable disapproval. Doubtless the old steward had also disapproved of the condition of the duty officer’s uniform; his khaki shirt was soiled by the thali the inspector must have encountered for lunch—a generous portion of dhal was slopped on his breast pocket, and a brightly colored stain (the obvious orange-yellow of turmeric) lit up the messy policeman’s drab collar.

  But the second policeman, who now approached their table in the Ladies’ Garden, was no mere inspector; this man was of a higher rank—and of a noticeably elevated neatness. At the very least, he looked like a deputy commissioner. From Farrokh’s research—for the Inspector Dhar screenplays were scrupulously researched, if not aesthetically pleasing—the screenwriter was certain that they were about to be confronted by a deputy commissioner from Crime Branch Headquarters at Crawford Market.

  “All this for golf?” whispered Inspector Dhar, but not so loudly that the approaching detective could hear him.

  Not a Wise Choice of People to Offend

  As the most recent Inspector Dhar movie had pointed out, the official salary of a Bombay police inspector is only 2,500 to 3,000 rupees a month—roughly 100 dollars. In order to secure a more lucrative posting, in an area of heavy crime, an inspector would need to bribe an administrative officer. For a payment in the vicinity of 75,000 to 200,000 rupees (but generally for less than 7,000 dollars), an inspector might secure a posting that would earn him from 300,000 to 400,000 rupees a year (usually not more than 15,000 dollars). One issue posed by the new Inspector Dhar movie concerned just how an inspector making only 3,000 rupees a month could get his hands on the 100,000 rupees that were necessary for the bribe. In the movie, an especially hypocritical and corrupt police inspector accomplishes this by doubling as a pimp and a landlord for a eunuch-transvestite brothel on Falkland Road.

  In the pinched smile of the second policeman who approached Dr. Daruwalla and Inspector Dhar at their table, there could
be discerned the unanimous outrage of the Bombay police force. The prostitute community was no less offended; the prostitutes had greater cause for anger. The most recent movie, Inspector Dhar and the Cage-Girl Killer, seemed to be responsible for putting the lowliest of Bombay’s prostitutes—the so-called cage girls—in particular peril. Because of the movie, about a serial killer who murders cage girls and draws an inappropriately mirthful elephant on their naked bellies, a real murderer appeared to have stolen the idea. Now real prostitutes were being killed and decorated in this cartoonish fashion; the actual murders were unsolved. In the red-light district, on Falkland Road and Grant Road—and throughout the multitude of brothels in the many lanes of Kamathipura—the hardworking whores had expressed a real desire to kill Inspector Dhar.

  The feeling for vengeance toward Dhar was especially strong among the eunuch-transvestite prostitutes. In the movie, a eunuch-transvestite prostitute turns out to be the serial cartoonist and killer. This was offensive to eunuch-transvestites, for by no means were all of them prostitutes—nor were they ever known to be serial killers. They are an accepted third gender in India; they are called “hijras”—an Urdu word of masculine gender meaning “hermaphrodite.” But hijras are not born hermaphrodites; they are emasculated—hence “eunuch” is the truer word for them. They are also a cult; devotees of the Mother Goddess Bahuchara Mata, they achieve their powers—either to bless or to curse—by being neither male nor female. Traditionally, hijras earn their living by begging; they also perform songs and dances at weddings and festivals—most of all, they give their blessings at births (of male infants, especially). And hijras dress as women—hence the term “eunuch-transvestite” comes closest to what they are.