A Son of the Circus

by John Irving

  Therefore, if Farrokh or John D. wanted the dwarf, they left a message for him with the doormen at the Taj and the Oberoi. But there was another reason for Vinod to call. Vinod didn’t like showing up at Dr. Daruwalla’s apartment building unannounced; there was no phone in the lobby, and Vinod refused to see himself as a “servant”—he refused to climb the stairs. When it came to climbing stairs, his dwarfism was a handicap. Dr. Daruwalla had protested, on Vinod’s behalf, to the Residents’ Society. At first, Farrokh had argued that the dwarf was a cripple—cripples shouldn’t be forced to use the stairs. The Residents’ Society had argued that cripples shouldn’t be servants. Dr. Daruwalla had countered that Vinod was an independent businessman; the dwarf was nobody’s servant. After all, Vinod owned a private-taxi company. A chauffeur was a servant, the Residents’ Society said.

  Regardless of the absurd ruling, Farrokh had told Vinod that if he ever had to come to the Daruwallas’ sixth-floor flat, he was to take the restricted residents’ elevator. But whenever Vinod stood in the lobby and waited for the elevator—regardless of the lateness of the hour—his presence would be detected by the first-floor dogs. The first-floor flats harbored a disproportionate number of dogs; and although the doctor was disinclined to believe Vinod’s interpretation—that all dogs hated all dwarfs—he could offer no scientifically acceptable reason why all the first-floor dogs should suddenly awake and commence their frenzied barking whenever Vinod was waiting for the forbidden lift.

  And so it was tediously necessary for Vinod to arrange an exact time for picking up Farrokh or John D. so that the dwarf could wait in the Ambassador at the curb—or in the nearby alley—and not enter the lobby of the apartment building at all. Besides, it sorely tested the delicate ecosystem of the apartment building to have Vinod attract the late-night, furious attention of the first-floor dogs; and Farrokh was already in hot water with the Residents’ Society—his dissent to their opinion on the elevator issue had offended the building’s other residents.

  Since the doctor was the son of an acknowledged great man—and a famously assassinated great man, too—there was other fuel for resenting Dr. Daruwalla. That he lived abroad and could still afford to have his apartment occupied by his servants—often, for years without a single visit—had certainly made him unpopular, if not openly despised.

  That the dogs appeared guilty of discrimination against dwarfs wasn’t the sole reason that Dr. Daruwalla disliked them. Their insane barking disturbed the doctor because of its total irrationality; any irrationality reminded Farrokh of everything he failed to comprehend about India.

  Only that morning he’d stood on his balcony and overheard his fifth-floor neighbor, Dr. Malik Abdul Aziz—a model “Servant of the Almighty”—praying on the balcony below him. When Dhar slept on the balcony, he often commented to Farrokh on how soothing it was to wake up to the prayers of Dr. Aziz.

  “Praise be to Allah, Lord of Creation”—that much Dr. Daruwalla had understood. And later there was something about “the straight path.” It was a very pure prayer—Farrokh had liked it, and he’d long admired Dr. Aziz for his unswerving faith—but Dr. Daruwalla’s thoughts had veered sharply away from religion, in the direction of politics, because he was reminded of the aggressive billboards he’d seen around the city. The messages on such hoardings were essentially hostile; they merely purported to be religious.

  ISLAM IS THE ONE PATH

  TO HUMANITY FOR ALL

  And that wasn’t as bad as those Shiv Sena slogans, which were all over Bombay. (MAHARASHTRA FOR MAHARASHTRIANS. Or, SAY IT WITH PRIDE: I’M A HINDU.)

  Something evil had corrupted the purity of prayer. Something as dignified and private as Dr. Aziz, with his prayer rug rolled out on his own balcony, had been compromised by proselytizing, had been distorted by politics. And if this madness had a sound, Farrokh knew, it would be the sound of irrationally barking dogs.

  Inoperable

  In the apartment building, Dr. Daruwalla and Dr. Aziz were the most consistent early risers; surgeries for both—Dr. Aziz was a urologist. If he prays every morning, so should I, Farrokh thought. Politely, that morning, he had waited for the Muslim to finish. There followed the shuffling sound of Dr. Aziz’s slippers as he rolled up his prayer rug while Dr. Daruwalla leafed through his Book of Common Prayer; Farrokh was looking for something appropriate, or at least familiar. He was ashamed that his ardor for Christianity seemed to be receding into the past, or had his faith entirely retreated? After all, it had been only a minor sort of miracle that had converted him; perhaps Farrokh needed another small miracle to inspire him now. He realized that most Christians were faithful without the incentive of any miracle, and this realization instantly interfered with his search for a prayer. As a Christian, too, he’d lately begun to wonder if he was a fake.

  In Toronto, Farrokh was an unassimilated Canadian—and an Indian who avoided the Indian community. In Bombay, the doctor was constantly confronted with how little he knew India—and how unlike an Indian he thought himself to be. In truth, Dr. Daruwalla was an orthopedist and a Duckworthian, and—in both cases—he was merely a member of two private clubs. Even his conversion to Christianity felt false; he was merely a holiday churchgoer, Christmas and Easter—he couldn’t remember when he’d last partaken of the innermost pleasure of prayer.

  Although it was quite a mouthful—and it was the whole story of what he was supposed to believe, in a nutshell—Dr. Daruwalla had begun his experiment in prayer with the so-called Apostles’ Creed, the standard Confession of the Faith. “ ‘I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth …’ ” Farrokh recited breathlessly, but the capital letters were a distraction to him; he stopped.

  Later, as he had stepped into the elevator, Dr. Daruwalla reflected on how easily his mood for prayer had been lost. He resolved that he would compliment Dr. Aziz on his highly disciplined faith at the first opportunity. But when Dr. Aziz stepped into the elevator at the fifth floor, Farrokh was completely flustered. He scarcely managed to say, “Good morning, Doctor—you’re looking well!”

  “Why, thank you—so are you, Doctor!” said Dr. Aziz, looking somewhat sly and conspiratorial. When the elevator door closed and they were alone together, Dr. Aziz said, “Have you heard about Dr. Dev?”

  Farrokh wondered, Which Dr. Dev? There was a Dr. Dev who was a cardiologist, there was another Dev who was an anesthesiologist—there are a bunch of Devs, he thought. Even Dr. Aziz was known in the medical community as Urology Aziz, which was the only sensible way to distinguish him from a half-dozen other Dr. Azizes.

  “Dr. Dev?” Dr. Daruwalla asked cautiously.

  “Gastroenterology Dev,” said Urology Aziz.

  “Oh, yes, that Dr. Dev,” Farrokh said.

  “But have you heard?” asked Dr. Aziz. “He has AIDS—he caught it from a patient. And I don’t mean from sexual contact.”

  “From examining a patient?” Dr. Daruwalla said.

  “From a colonoscopy, I believe,” said Dr. Aziz. “She was a prostitute.”

  “From a colonoscopy … but how?” Dr. Daruwalla asked.

  “At least forty percent of the prostitutes must be infected with the virus,” Dr. Aziz said. “Among my patients, the ones who see prostitutes test HIV-positive twenty percent of the time!”

  “But from a colonoscopy. I don’t understand how” Farrokh insisted, but Dr. Aziz was too excited to listen.

  “I have patients telling me—a urologist—that they have cured themselves of AIDS by drinking their own urine!” Dr. Aziz said.

  “Ah, yes, urine therapy,” said Dr. Daruwalla. “Very popular, but—”

  “But here is the problem!” cried Dr. Aziz. He pulled a folded piece of paper from his pocket; some words were scrawled on the paper in longhand. “Do you know what the Kama Sutra says?” Dr. Aziz asked Farrokh. Here was a Muslim asking a Parsi (and a convert to Christianity) about a Hindu collection of aphorisms concerning sexual exploits—some would say “love.” Dr. Daruwalla thou
ght it wise to be careful; he said nothing.

  As for urine therapy, it was also wise to say nothing. Moraji Desai, the former prime minister, was a practitioner of urine therapy—and wasn’t there something called the Water of Life Foundation? Best to say nothing about that, too, Farrokh concluded. Besides, Urology Aziz wanted to read something from the Kama Sutra. It would be best to listen.

  “Among the many situations where adultery is allowed,” Dr. Aziz said, “just listen to this: ‘When such clandestine relations are safe and a sure method of earning money.’ ” Dr. Aziz refolded the often-folded piece of paper and returned this evidence to his pocket. “Well, do you see?” he said.

  “What do you mean?” Farrokh asked.

  “Well, that’s the problem—obviously!” Dr. Aziz said.

  Farrokh was still trying to figure out how Dr. Dev had caught AIDS while performing a colonoscopy; meanwhile, Dr. Aziz had concluded that AIDS among prostitutes was caused directly by the bad advice given in the Kama Sutra. (Farrokh doubted that most prostitutes could read.) This was another example of the first-floor dogs—they were barking again. Dr. Daruwalla smiled nervously all the way to the entrance to the alley, where Urology Aziz had parked his car.

  There’d been some brief confusion, because Vinod’s Ambassador had momentarily blocked the alley, but Dr. Aziz was soon on his way. Farrokh had waited in the alley for the dwarf to turn his car around. It was a close, narrow alley—briny-smelling, because of the proximity of the sea, and as warm and steamy as a blocked drain. The alley was a haven for the beggars who frequented the small seaside hotels along Marine Drive. Dr. Daruwalla supposed that these beggars were especially interested in the Arab clientele; they were reputed to give more money. But the beggar who suddenly emerged from the alley wasn’t one of these.

  He was a badly limping boy who could occasionally be seen standing on his head at Chowpatty Beach. The doctor knew that this wasn’t a trick of sufficient promise for Vinod and Deepa to offer the urchin a home at the circus. The boy had slept on the beach—his hair was caked with sand—and the first sunlight had driven him into the alley for a few more hours’ sleep. The two automobiles, arriving and departing, had probably attracted his attention. When Vinod backed the Ambassador into the alley, the beggar blocked the doctor’s way to the car. The boy stood with both arms extended, palms up; there was a veil of mucous over his eyes and a whitish paste marked the corners of his mouth.

  The eyes of the orthopedic surgeon were drawn to the boy’s limp. The beggar’s right foot was rigidly locked in a right-angle position, as if the foot and ankle were permanently fused—a deformity called ankylosis, which was familiar to Dr. Daruwalla from the common congenital condition of clubfoot. Yet both the foot and ankle were unusually flattened—a crush injury, the doctor guessed—and the boy bore his weight on his heel alone. Also, the bad foot was considerably smaller than the good one; this led the doctor to imagine that the injury had damaged the epiphyseal plates, which is the region in bones where growth takes place. It wasn’t only that the boy’s foot had fused with his ankle; his foot had also stopped growing. Farrokh felt certain that the boy was inoperable.

  Just then, Vinod opened the driver’s-side door. The beggar was wary of the dwarf, but Vinod wasn’t brandishing his squash-racquet handles. The dwarf was nevertheless determined to open the rear door for Dr. Daruwalla, who observed that the beggar was taller but frailer than Vinod—Vinod simply pushed the boy out of the way. Farrokh saw the beggar stumble; his mashed foot was as stiff as a hammer. Once inside the Ambassador, the doctor lowered the window only enough so that the boy could hear him.

  “Maaf karo,” Dr. Daruwalla said gently. It was what he always said to beggars: “Forgive me.”

  The boy spoke English. “I don’t forgive you,” he said.

  Also in English, Farrokh said what was on his mind: “What happened to your foot?”

  “An elephant stepped on it,” the cripple replied.

  That would explain it, the doctor thought, but he didn’t believe the story; beggars were liars.

  “Was it being a circus elephant?” Vinod inquired.

  “It was just an elephant stepping off a train,” the boy told the dwarf. “I was a baby, and my father left me lying on the station platform—he was in a bidi shop.”

  “You were stepped on by an elephant while your father was buying cigarettes?” Farrokh asked. This certainly sounded like a tall tale, but the cripple listlessly nodded. “So I suppose your name is Ganesh—after the elephant god,” Dr. Daruwalla asked the boy. Without appearing to notice the doctor’s sarcasm, the cripple nodded again.

  “It was the wrong name for me,” the boy replied.

  Apparently, Vinod believed the beggar. “He is being a doctor,” the dwarf said, pointing to Farrokh. “He is fixing you, maybe,” Vinod added, pointing to the boy. But the beggar was already limping away from the car.

  “You can’t fix what elephants do,” Ganesh said.

  The doctor didn’t believe he could fix what the elephant had done, either. “Maaf karo,” Dr. Daruwalla repeated. Neither stopping nor bothering to look back, the cripple made no further response to Farrokh’s favorite expression.

  Then the dwarf drove Dr. Daruwalla to the hospital, where one surgery for clubfoot and another for wryneck awaited him. Farrokh tried to distract himself by daydreaming about a back operation—a laminectomy with fusion. Then Dr. Daruwalla dreamed of something more ambitious—the placement of Harrington rods for a severe vertebral infection, with vertebral collapse. But even in prepping his surgeries for, the clubfoot and the wryneck, the doctor would keep thinking about how he might fix the beggar’s foot.

  Farrokh could cut through the fibrous tissue and the contracted, shrunken tendons—there were plastic procedures to elongate tendons—but the problem with such a crush injury was the bony fusion; Dr. Daruwalla would have to saw through bone. By damaging the vascular bundles around the foot, he could compromise the blood supply; the result might be gangrene. Of course there was always amputation and the fitting of a prosthesis, but the boy would probably refuse such an operation. In fact, Farrokh knew, his own father would have refused to perform such an operation; as a surgeon, Lowji had lived by the old adage primum non nocere—above all, do no harm.

  Forget the boy, Farrokh had thought. Thus he’d performed the clubfoot and the wryneck and, thereafter, he’d faced the Membership Committee at the Duckworth Club, where he had also lunched with Inspector Dhar, a lunch much disturbed by the death of Mr. Lal and the discomfort that D.C.P. Patel had caused them. (Dr. Daruwalla had had a busy day.)

  And now, as he listened to the phone messages on his answering machine, Farrokh was trying to imagine the precise moment in the bougainvillea by the ninth green when Mr. Lal had been struck down. Perhaps when Dr. Daruwalla was in surgery; possibly before, when he’d encountered Dr. Aziz on the elevator, or one of the times when he’d said “Maaf karo” to the crippled beggar whose English was unbelievably good.

  Doubtless the boy was one of those enterprising beggars who sold himself as a guide to foreign tourists. Cripples were the best hustlers, Farrokh knew. Many of them had maimed themselves; some of them had been purposefully injured by their parents—for being crippled improved their opportunities as beggars. These thoughts of mutilation, especially of self-inflicted wounds, led the doctor to thinking about the hijras again. Then his thoughts returned to the golf-course murder.

  In retrospect, what astonished Dr. Daruwalla was how anyone could have gotten close enough to Mr. Lal to strike the old golfer with his own putter. For how could you sneak up on a man who was flailing away in the flowers? His body would have been twisting from side to side, and bending over to fuss with the stupid ball. And where would his golf bag have been? Not far away. How could anyone approach Mr. Lal’s golf bag, take out the putter and then hit Mr. Lal—all when Mr. Lal wasn’t looking? It wouldn’t work in a movie, Farrokh knew—not even in an Inspector Dhar movie.

  That was whe
n the doctor realized that Mr. Lal’s murderer had to have been someone Mr. Lal knew, and if the murderer had been another golfer—presumably with his own bag of clubs—why would he have needed to use Mr. Lal’s putter? But what a nongolfer could have been doing in the vicinity of the ninth green—and still not have aroused Mr. Lal’s suspicions—was at least for the moment quite beyond the imaginative powers of Inspector Dhar’s creator.

  Farrokh wondered what sort of dogs were barking in the killer’s head. Angry dogs, Dr. Daruwalla supposed, for in the murderer’s mind there was such a terrifying irrationality; the mind of Dr. Aziz would appear reasonable in comparison. But then Farrokh’s speculations on this subject were interrupted by the third phone message. The doctor’s answering machine was truly relentless.

  “Goodness!” cried the unidentified voice. It was a voice of such lunatic exuberance, Dr. Daruwalla presumed it was no one he knew.

  8

  TOO MANY MESSAGES

  For Once, the Jesuits Don’t Know Everything

  At first Farrokh failed to recognize the hysterical enthusiasm that characterized the voice of the ever-optimistic Father Cecil, who was 72 and therefore easily panicked by the challenge to speak clearly and calmly to an answering machine. Father Cecil was the senior priest at St. Ignatius, an Indian Jesuit of unrelenting good cheer; as such, he stood in startling juxtaposition to the Father Rector—Father Julian—who was 68 years old and English and one of those intellectual Jesuits with a caustic disposition. Father Julian was so sarcastic that he was an instant source of renewing Dr. Daruwalla’s combined awe and suspicion of Catholics. But the message was from Father Cecil—therefore free of facetiousness. “Goodness!” Father Cecil began, as if offering a general description of the world he saw all around him.

  What now? thought Dr. Daruwalla. Because he was among the distinguished alumni of St. Ignatius School, Farrokh was frequently asked to give inspirational speeches to the students; in previous years, he’d also addressed the Young Women’s Christian Association. He’d once been an active member of the Catholic and Anglican Community for Christian Unity and the so-called Hope Alive Committee. But such activities failed to interest him anymore. Dr. Daruwalla sincerely hoped that Father Cecil wasn’t calling him with a repeat request for the doctor to relate again the stirring experience of his conversion.