by John Irving
John D. smiled silently over his breakfast. The Daruwalla daughters smiled helplessly at John D. When he looked at his wife, Farrokh was surprised that she was looking straight back at him—she was smiling, too. Clearly, she’d not been listening to a word he was saying. The doctor blushed. Julia’s smile wasn’t in the least cynical; on the contrary, his wife’s expression was so sincerely amorous, Farrokh felt certain that she was determined to remind him of their pleasure the night before—even in front of John D. and the children! And judging from their night together, and the visible randiness of his wife’s thoughts on the morning after, their holiday had become a second honeymoon after all.
Reading in bed would never seem innocent again, the doctor thought, although everything had begun quite innocently. His wife had been reading the Trollope, and Farrokh hadn’t been reading at all; he’d been trying to get up the nerve to read A Sport and a Pastime in front of Julia. Instead, he lay on his back with his fingers intertwined upon his rumbling belly—an excess of pork, or else the dinner conversation had upset him. Over dinner, he’d tried to explain to his family his need to be more creative, his desire to write something, but his daughters had paid no attention to him and Julia had misunderstood him; she’d suggested a medical-advice column—if not for The Times of India, then for The Globe and Mail. John D. had advised Farrokh to keep a diary; the young man said he’d kept one once, and he’d enjoyed it—then a girlfriend had stolen it and he’d gotten out of the habit. At that point, the conversation entirely deteriorated because the Daruwalla daughters had pestered John D. about the number of girlfriends the young man had had.
After all, it was the tail end of the ’60s; even innocent young girls talked as if they were sexually knowledgeable. It disturbed Farrokh that his daughters were clearly asking John D. to tell them the number of young women he’d slept with. Typical of John D., and to Dr. Daruwalla’s great relief, the young man had skillfully and charmingly ducked the question. But the matter of the doctor’s unfulfilled creativity had been dismissed or ignored.
The subject, however, hadn’t eluded Julia. In bed after dinner, propped up with a stack of pillows—while Farrokh lay flat upon his back—his wife had assaulted him with the Trollope.
“Listen to this, Liebchen,” Julia said. “ ‘Early in life, at the age of fifteen, I commenced the dangerous habit of keeping a journal, and this I maintained for ten years. The volumes remained in my possession, unregarded—never looked at—till 1870, when I examined them, and, with many blushes, destroyed them. They convicted me of folly, ignorance, indiscretion, idleness, extravagance, and conceit. But they had habituated me to the rapid use of pen and ink, and taught me how to express myself with facility.’ ”
“I don’t want or need to keep a journal,” Farrokh said abruptly. “And. I already know how to express myself with facility.”
“There’s no need to be defensive,” Julia told him. “I just thought you’d be interested in the subject.”
“I want to create something,” Dr. Daruwalla announced. “I’m not interested in recording the mundane details of my life.”
“I wasn’t aware that our life was altogether mundane,” Julia said.
The doctor, realizing his error, said, “Certainly it’s not. I meant only that I prefer to try my hand at something imaginative—I want to imagine something.”
“Do you mean fiction?” his wife asked.
“Yes,” Farrokh said. “Ideally, I should like to write a novel, but I don’t suppose I could write a very good one.”
“Well, there are all kinds of novels,” Julia said helpfully.
Thus emboldened, Dr. Daruwalla withdrew James Salter’s A Sport and a Pastime from its hiding place, which was under the newspaper on the floor beside the bed. He brought forth the novel carefully, as if it were a potentially dangerous weapon, which it was.
“For example,” Farrokh said, “I don’t suppose I could ever write a novel as good as this one.”
Julia glanced at the Salter quickly before returning her eyes to the Trollope. “No, I wouldn’t think so,” she said.
Aha! the doctor thought. So she has read it! But he asked with forced indifference, “Have you read the Salter?”
“Oh, yes,” his wife said, not taking her eyes off the Trollope. “I brought it along to reread it, actually.”
It was hard for Farrokh to remain casual, but he tried. “So you liked it, I presume?” he inquired.
“Oh, yes—very much,” Julia answered. After a weighty pause, she asked him, “And you?”
“I find it rather good,” the doctor confessed. “I suppose,” he added, “some readers might be shocked, or offended, by certain parts.”
“Oh, yes,” Julia agreed. Then she closed the Trollope and looked at him. “Which parts are you thinking of?”
It hadn’t happened quite as he’d imagined it, but this was what he wanted. Since Julia had most of the pillows, he rolled over on his stomach and propped himself up on his elbows. He began with a somewhat cautious passage. “ ‘He pauses at last,’ ” Farrokh read aloud. “ ‘He leans over to admire her, she does not see him. Hair covers her cheek. Her skin seems very white. He kisses her side and then, without force, as one stirs a favorite mare, begins again. She comes to life with a soft, exhausted sound, like someone saved from drowning.’ ”
Julia also rolled over on her stomach, gathering the pillows to her breasts. “It’s hard to imagine anyone being shocked or offended by that part,” she said.
Dr. Daruwalla cleared his throat. The ceiling fan was stirring the down on the back of Julia’s neck; her thick hair had fallen forward, hiding her eyes from his view. When he held his breath, he could hear her breathing. “ ‘She cannot be satisfied,’ ” he read on, while Julia buried her face in her arms. “ ‘She will not let him alone. She removes her clothes and calls to him. Once that night and twice the next morning he complies and in the darkness between lies awake, the lights of Dijon faint on the ceiling, the boulevards still. It’s a bitter night. Flats of rain are passing. Heavy drops ring in the gutter outside their window, but they are in a dovecote, they are pigeons beneath the eaves. The rain is falling all around them. Deep in feathers, breathing softly, they lie. His sperm swims slowly inside her, oozing out between her legs.’ ”
“Yes, that’s better,” Julia said. When he looked at her, he saw she’d turned her face to look at him; the yellow, unsteady light from the kerosene lamps wasn’t as ghostly pale as the moonlight he’d seen on her face on their first honeymoon, but even this tarnished light conveyed her willingness to trust him. Their wedding night, in the Austrian winter, was in one of those snowy Alpine towns, and their train from Vienna had arrived almost too late for-them to be admitted to the Gasthof, despite their reservation. It must have been 2:00 in the morning by the time they’d undressed and bathed and got into the feather bed, which was as white as the mountains of snow that reflected the moonlight—it was a timeless glowing—in their window.
But on their second honeymoon, Dr. Daruwalla came dangerously close to ruining the mood when he offered a faint criticism of the Salter. “I’m not sure how accurate it is to suggest that sperm swim ‘slowly,’ ” he said, “and technically, I suppose, it’s semen, not sperm, that would be oozing out between her legs.”
“For God’s sake, Farrokh,” his wife said. “Give me the book.”
She had no difficulty locating the passage she was looking for, although the book was unmarked. Farrokh lay on his side and watched her while she read aloud to him. “ ‘She is so wet by the time he has the pillows under her gleaming stomach that he goes right into her in one long, delicious move. They begin slowly. When he is close to coming he pulls his prick out and lets it cool. Then he starts again, guiding it with one hand, feeding it in like a line. She begins to roll her hips, to cry out. It’s like ministering to a lunatic. Finally he takes it out again. As he waits, tranquil, deliberate, his eye keeps falling on lubricants—her face cream, bottles in the armoire. They dis
tract him. Their presence seems frightening, like evidence. They begin once more and this time do not stop until she cries out and he feels himself come in long, trembling runs, the head of his prick touching bone, it seems.’ ”
Julia handed the book back to him. “Your turn,” she said then. She also lay on her side, watching him, but as he began to read to her, she shut her eyes; he saw her face on the pillow almost exactly as he’d seen it that morning in the Alps. St. Anton—that was the place—and he’d awakened to the sound of the skiers’ boots tramping on the hard-packed snow; it seemed that an army of skiers was marching through the town to the ski lift. Only Julia and he were not there to ski. They were there to fuck, Farrokh thought, watching his wife’s sleeping face. And that was how they’d spent the week, making brief forays into the snowy paths of the town and then hurrying back to their feather bed. In the evenings, they’d had no less appetite for the hearty food than the skiers had. Watching Julia as he read to her, Farrokh remembered every day and night in St. Anton.
“ ‘He is thinking of the waiters in the casino, the audience at the cinema, the dark hotels as she lies on her stomach and with the ease of sitting down at a well-laid table, but no more than that, he introduces himself. They he on their sides. He tries not to move. There are only the little, invisible twitches, like a nibbling of fish.’ ”
Julia opened her eyes as Farrokh searched for another passage.
“Don’t stop,” she told him.
Then Dr. Daruwalla found what he was looking for—a rather short and simple part. “ ‘Her breasts are hard,’ ” he read to his wife. “ ‘Her cunt is sopping.’ ” The doctor paused. “I suppose there’d be some readers who’d be shocked or offended by that,” he added.
“Not me,” his wife told him. He closed the book and returned it to the newspaper on the floor. When he rolled back to Julia, she’d arranged the pillows under her hips and lay waiting for him. He touched her breasts first.
“Your breasts are hard,” he said to her.
“They are not,” she told him. “My breasts are old and soft.”
“I like soft better,” he said.
After she kissed him, she said, “My cunt is sopping.”
“It isn’t!” he said instinctively, but when she took his hand and made him touch her, he realized she wasn’t lying.
In the morning, the sunlight passed through the narrow slats of the blinds and stood out in horizontal bars across the bare coffee-colored wall. The newspaper on the floor was stirred by a small lizard, a gecko—only its snout protruded from between the pages—and when Dr. Daruwalla reached to pick up A Sport and a Pastime, the gecko darted under the bed. Sopping! the doctor thought to himself. He opened the book quietly, thinking his wife was still asleep.
“Keep reading—aloud,” Julia murmured.
Lunch Is Followed by Depression
It was with a renewed sexual confidence that Farrokh faced the situation of the morning. Rahul Rai had struck up a conversation with John D., and although—even by the doctor’s standards—Rahul looked fetching in “her” bikini, the small lump of evidence in the bikini’s bottom half provided Dr. Daruwalla with sufficient reason to rescue John D. from a potential confrontation. While Julia sat on the beach with the Daruwalla daughters, the doctor and John D. strolled in a manly and confiding fashion along the water’s edge.
“There’s something you should know about Rahul,” Farrokh began.
“What’s her name?” John D. asked.
“His name is Rahul,” Farrokh explained. “If you were to look under his panties, I’m almost certain you would find a penis and a pair of balls—rather small, in both cases.” They continued walking along the shoreline, with John D. appearing to pay obsessive attention to the smooth, sand-rubbed stones and the rounded, broken bits of shells.
Finally, John D. said, “The breasts look real.”
“Definitely induced—hormonally induced,” Dr. Daruwalla said. The doctor described how estrogens worked … the development of breasts, of hips; how the penis shrank to the size of a little boy’s. The testes were so reduced they resembled vulva. The penis was so shrunken it resembled an enlarged clitoris. The doctor explained as much as he knew about a complete sex-change operation, too.
“Far out,” John D. remarked. They discussed whether Rahul would be more interested in men or women. Since he wanted to be a woman, Dr. Daruwalla deduced that Rahul was sexually interested in men. “It’s hard to tell,” John D. suggested; indeed, when they returned to where the Daruwalla daughters were encamped under a thatch-roofed shelter, there was Rahul Rai in conversation with Julia!
Julia said later, “I think it’s young men who interest him, although I suppose a young woman would do.”
Would do? Dr. Daruwalla thought. Promila had confided to Farrokh that this was a bad time for “poor Rahul.” Apparently, they’d not traveled from Bombay together, but Promila had met her nephew at the Bardez; he’d been alone in the area for more than a week. He had “hippie friends,” Promila said—somewhere near Anjuna—but things hadn’t worked out as Rahul had hoped. Farrokh didn’t desire to know more, but Promila offered her speculations anyway.
“I presume that sexually confusing things must have happened,” she told Dr. Daruwalla.
“Yes, I suppose,” the doctor said. Normally, all of this would have upset Farrokh greatly, but something from his sexual triumphs with Julia had carried over into the following day. Despite everything that was “sexually confusing” about Rahul, which was sexually disturbing to Dr. Daruwalla, not even the doctor’s appetite was affected, although the heat was fierce.
It was unmercifully hot at midday, and there was no perceptible breeze. Along the shoreline, the fronds of the areca and coconut palms were as motionless as the grand old cashew and mango trees farther inland in the dead-still villages and towns. Not even the passing of a three-wheeled rickshaw with a damaged muffler could rouse a single dog to bark. Were it not for the heavy presence of the distilling feni, Dr. Daruwalla would have guessed that the air wasn’t moving at all.
But the heat didn’t dampen the doctor’s enthusiasm for his lunch. He started with an oyster guisado and steamed prawns in a yogurt-mustard sauce; then he tried the vindaloo fish, the gravy for which was so piquant that his upper lip felt numb and he instantly perspired. He drank an ice-cold ginger feni with his meal—actually, he had two—and for dessert he ordered the bebinca. His wife was easily satisfied with a xacuti, which she shared with the girls; it was a fiery curry made almost soothing with coconut milk, cloves and nutmeg. The daughters also tried a frozen mango dessert; Dr. Daruwalla had a taste, but nothing could abate the burning sensation in his mouth. As a remedy, he ordered a cold beer. Then he criticized Julia for allowing the girls to drink so much sugarcane juice.
“In this heat, too much sugar will make them sick,” Farrokh told his wife.
“Listen to who’s talking!” Julia said.
Farrokh sulked. The beer was an unfamiliar brand, which he would never remember. He would recall, however, the part of the label that said LIQUOR RUINS COUNTRY, FAMILY AND LIFE.
But as much as Dr. Daruwalla was a man of unstoppable appetites, his plumpness had never been—nor would it become—displeasing to the eye. He was a fairly small man—his smallness was most apparent in the delicacy of his hands and in the neat, well-formed features of his face, which was round, boyish and friendly—and his arms and legs were thin and wiry; his bum was small, too. Even his little pot belly merely served to emphasize his smallness, his neatness, his tidiness. He liked a small, well-trimmed beard, for he also liked to shave; his throat and the sides of his face were usually clean-shaven. When he wore a mustache, it, too, was neat and small. His skin wasn’t much browner than an almond shell; his hair was black—it would soon turn gray. He would never be bald; his hair was thick, with a slight wave, and he left it long on top, although he kept it cut short on the back of his neck and above his ears, which were also small and lay perfectly flat agains
t his head. His eyes were such a dark-brown color that they looked almost black, and because his face was so small, his eyes seemed large—maybe they were large. If so, only his eyes reflected his appetites. And only in comparison to John D. would someone not have thought of Dr. Daruwalla as handsome—small, but handsome. He was not a fat man, but a plump one—a little, pot-bellied man.
While the doctor struggled to digest his meal, it might have crossed his mind that the others had behaved more sensibly. John D., as if demonstrating the self-discipline and dietary restraint that future movie stars would be wise to imitate, eschewed eating in the midday heat. He chose this time of day to take long walks on the beach; he swam intermittently and lazily—only to cool off. From his languid attitude, it was hard to tell if he walked the beach in order to look at the assembled young women or to afford them the luxury of looking at him.
In the torpid aftermath of his lunch, Dr. Daruwalla barely noticed that Rahul Rai was nowhere to be seen. Farrokh was frankly relieved that the would-be transsexual wasn’t pursuing John D.; and Promila Rai had accompanied John D. for only a short distance along the water’s edge, as if the young man had immediately discouraged her by declaring his intentions to walk to the next village, or to the village after that. Wearing an absurdly wide-brimmed hat—as if it weren’t already too late to protect her cancerous skin—Promila had returned, alone, to the spot of shade allotted by her thatch-roofed shelter, and there she appeared to embalm herself with a variety of oils and chemicals.
Under their own array of thatch-roofed shelters, the Daruwalla daughters applied different oils and chemicals to their vastly younger and superior bodies; then they ventured among the intrepid sunbathers—mostly Europeans, and relatively few of them at this time of year. The Daruwalla girls were forbidden to follow John D. on his midday hikes; both Julia and Farrokh felt that the young man deserved this period of time to be free of them.