A Son of the Circus
Page 26
But the most sensibly behaved person at midday was always the doctor’s wife. Julia retired to the relative cool of their second-floor rooms. There was a shaded balcony with John D.’s sleeping hammock and a cot; the balcony was a good place to read or nap.
It was clearly nap time for Dr. Daruwalla, who doubted he could manage the climb to the second floor of the hotel. From the taverna, he could see the balcony attached to his rooms, and he looked longingly in that direction. He thought the hammock would be nice, and he considered that he would try sleeping there tonight; if the mosquito netting was good, he’d be very comfortable, and all night he’d hear the Arabian Sea. The longer he allowed John D. to sleep there, the more firmly the young man would presume it was his place to sleep. But Farrokh’s renewed sexual interest in Julia gave him pause in regard to his sleeping-hammock plan; there were passages of A Sport and a Pastime he’d not yet discussed with his wife.
Dr. Daruwalla wished he knew what else Mr. James Salter had written. However, as exhilarating as this unexpected stimulation to his marriage had been, Farrokh felt slightly depressed. Mr. Salter’s writing was so far above anything Dr. Daruwalla could hope to imagine—much less hope to achieve—and the doctor had guessed right: one of the lovers dies, strongly implying that a love of such overpowering passion never lasts. Moreover, the novel concluded in a tone of voice that was almost physically painful to Dr. Daruwalla. In the end, Farrokh felt that the very life he led with Julia—the life he cherished—was being mocked. Or was it?
Of the French girl—Anne-Marie, the surviving lover—there is only this final offering: “She is married. I suppose there are children. They walk together on Sundays, the sunlight falling upon them. They visit friends, talk, go home in the evening, deep in the life we all agree is so greatly to be desired.” Wasn’t there an underlying cruelty to this? Because such a life is “greatly to be desired,” isn’t it? Dr. Daruwalla thought. And how could anyone expect the married life to compete with the burning intensity of a love affair?
What disturbed the doctor was that the end of the novel made him feel ignorant, or at least inexperienced. And what was more humiliating, Farrokh felt certain, was that Julia could probably explain the ending to him in such a way that he’d understand it. It was all a matter of tone of voice; perhaps the author had intended irony, but not sarcasm. Mr. Salter’s use of language was crystalline; if something was unclear, the fuzzy-headedness surely should be attributed to the reader.
But more than technical virtuosity separated Dr. Daruwalla from Mr. James Salter, or from any other accomplished novelist. Mr. Salter and his peers wrote from a vision; they were convinced about something, and it was at least partly the passion of these writers’ convictions that gave their novels such value. Dr. Daruwalla was convinced only that he would like to be more creative, that he would like to make something up. There were a lot of novelists like that, and Farrokh didn’t care to embarrass himself by being one of them. He concluded that a more shameless form of entertainment suited him; if he couldn’t write novels, maybe he could write screenplays. After all, movies weren’t as serious as novels; certainly, they weren’t as long. Dr. Daruwalla presumed that his lack of a “vision” wouldn’t hamper his success in the screenplay form.
But his conclusion depressed him. In the search for something to occupy his untapped creativity, the doctor had already accepted a compromise—before he’d even begun! This thought moved him to consider consoling himself with his wife’s affections. But gazing again to the distant balcony didn’t bring the doctor any closer to Julia, and Dr. Daruwalla doubted that imbibing feni and beer was a wise prelude to an amorous adventure—especially in such abiding heat. Something Mr. Salter had written appeared to shimmer over Dr. Daruwalla in the midday inferno: “The more clearly one sees this world, the more one is obliged to pretend it does not exist.” There is a growing list of things I don’t know, the doctor thought.
He didn’t know, for example, the name of the thick vine that had crawled upward from the ground to embrace both the second- and the third-floor balconies of the Hotel Bardez. The vine was put to active use by the small striped squirrels that scurried over it; at night, the geckos raced up and down the vine with far greater speed and agility than any squirrel. When the sun shone against this wall of the hotel, the smallest, palest-pink flowers opened up along the vine, but Dr. Daruwalla didn’t know that these flowers were not what attracted the finches to the vine. Finches are seed eaters, but Dr. Daruwalla didn’t know this, nor did the doctor know that the green parrot perching on the vine had feet with two toes pointing forward and two backward. These were the details he missed, and they contributed to the growing list of things he didn’t know. This was the kind of Everyman he was—a little lost, a little misinformed (or uninformed), almost everywhere he ever was. Yet, even overfed, the doctor was undeniably attractive. Not every Everyman is attractive.
A Dirty Hippie
Dr. Daruwalla grew so drowsy at the littered table, one of the Bardez servant boys suggested he move into a new hammock that was strung in the shade of the areca and coconut palms. Complaining to the boy that he feared the hammock was too near the main beach and he’d be bothered by sand fleas, the doctor nevertheless tested the hammock; Farrokh wasn’t sure it would support his weight. But the hammock held. For the moment, the doctor detected no sand fleas. Therefore, he was obliged to give the boy a tip.
This boy, Punkaj, seemed employed solely for the purpose of tipping, for the messages that he delivered to the Hotel Bardez and the adjacent lean- to restaurant and taverna were usually of his own invention and wholly unnecessary. For example, Punkaj asked Dr. Daruwalla if he should run to the hotel and tell “the Mrs. Doctor” that the doctor was napping in a hammock near the beach. Dr. Daruwalla said no. But in a short while, Punkaj was back beside the hammock. He reported: “The Mrs. Doctor is reading what I think is a book.”
“Go away, Punkaj,” said Dr. Daruwalla, but he tipped the worthless boy nonetheless. Then the doctor lay wondering if his wife was reading the Trollope or rereading the Salter.
Considering the size of his lunch, Farrokh was fortunate that he was able to sleep at all. The strenuousness of his digestive system made a sound sleep impossible, but throughout the grumbling and rumbling of his stomach—and the occasional hiccup or belch—the doctor fitfully dozed and dreamed, and woke up all of a sudden to wonder if his daughters were drowned or suffering from sunstroke or sexual attack. Then he dozed off again.
As Farrokh fell in and out of sleep, the imagined details of Rahul Rai’s complete sex change appeared and disappeared in his mind’s eye, drifting in and out of consciousness like the fumes from the distilling feni. This exotic aberration clashed with Farrokh’s fairly ordinary ideals: his belief in the purity of his daughters, his fidelity to his wife. Only slightly less common was Dr. Daruwalla’s vision of John D., which was simply the doctor’s desire to see the young man rise above the sordid circumstances of his birth and abandonment. And if I could only play a part in that, Dr. Daruwalla dreamed, I might one day be as creative as Mr. James Salter.
But John D.’s only visible qualities were of a fleeting and superficial nature; he was arrestingly handsome, and he was so steadfastly self-confident that his poise concealed his lack of other qualities—sadly, the doctor presumed that John D. lacked other qualities. In this belief, Farrokh was aware that he relied too heavily on his brother’s estimation and his sister-in-law’s confirmation, for both Jamshed and Josefine were chronically worried that the boy had no future. He was “uninvolved” with his studies, they said. But couldn’t this be an early indication of thespian detachment?
Yes, why not? John D. could be a movie star! Dr. Daruwalla decided, forgetting that this notion had originated with his wife. It suddenly seemed to the doctor that John D. was destined to be a movie star, or else he would be nothing. It was Farrokh’s first realization that a hint of despair can start the creative juices flowing. And it must have been these juices, in combi
nation with the more scientifically supported juices of digestion, that got the doctor’s imagination going.
But, just then, a belch so alarming he failed to recognize it as his own awakened Dr. Daruwalla from these imaginings; he shifted in his hammock in order to confirm that his daughters had not been violated by either the forces of nature or the hand of man. Then he fell asleep with his mouth open, the splayed fingers of one hand lolling in the sand.
Dreamlessly, the noonday passed. The beach began to cool. A slight breeze rose; it softly gave sway to the hammock where Dr. Daruwalla lay digesting. Something had left a sour taste in his mouth—the doctor suspected the vindaloo fish or the beer—and he felt flatulent. Farrokh opened his eyes slightly to see if anyone was near his hammock—in which case it would be impolite for him to fart—and there was that pest Punkaj, the worthless servant boy.
“She come back,” Punkaj said.
“Go away, Punkaj,” said Dr. Daruwalla.
“She looking for you—that hippie with her bad foot,” the boy said. He pronounced the word “heepee,” so that Dr. Daruwalla, in his digestive daze, still didn’t understand.
“Go away, Punkaj!” the doctor repeated. Then he saw the young woman limping toward him.
“Is that him? Is that the doctor?” she asked Punkaj.
“You wait there! I ask doctor first!” the boy said to her. At a glance, she could have been 18 or 25, but she was a big-boned young woman, broad-shouldered and heavy-breasted and thick through her hips. She also had thick ankles and very strong-looking hands, and she lifted the boy off the ground—holding him by the front of his shirt—and threw him on his back in the sand.
“Go fuck yourself,” she told him. Punkaj picked himself up and ran toward the hotel. Farrokh swung his legs unsteadily out of the hammock and faced her. When he stood up, he was surprised at how much the late-afternoon breeze had cooled the sand; he was also surprised that the young woman was so much taller than he was. He quickly bent down to put on his sandals; that was when he saw she was barefoot—and that one foot was nearly twice the size of the other. While the doctor was still down on one knee, the young woman rotated her swollen foot and showed him the filthy, inflamed sole.
“I stepped on some glass,” she said slowly. “I thought I picked it all out, but I guess not.”
He took her foot in his hand and felt her lean heavily on his shoulder for balance. There were several small lacerations, all closed and red and puckered with infection, and on the ball of her foot was a fiery swelling the size of an egg; in its center was an inch-long, oozing gash that was scabbed over.
Dr. Daruwalla looked up at her, but she wasn’t looking down at him; she was gazing off somewhere, and the doctor was shocked not only by her stature but by her solidity as well. She had a full, womanly figure and a peasant muscularity; her dirty, unshaven legs were ragged with golden hair, and her cutoff blue jeans were slightly torn at the crotch seam, through which poked an outrageous tuft of her golden pubic hair. She wore a black, sleeveless T-shirt with a silver skull-and-crossbones insignia, and her loose, low-slung breasts hung over Farrokh like a warning. When he stood up and looked into her face, he saw she couldn’t have been older than 18. She had full, round, freckled cheeks, and her lips were badly sun-blistered. She had a child’s little nose, also sunburned, and almost-white blond hair, which was matted and tangled and discolored by the suntan oil she’d used to try to protect her face.
Her eyes were startling to Dr. Daruwalla, not only for their pale, ice-blue color but because they reminded him of the eyes of an animal that wasn’t quite awake—not fully alert. As soon as she noticed he was looking at her, her pupils constricted and fixed hard upon him—also like an animal’s. Now she was wary; all her instincts were suddenly engaged. The doctor couldn’t return the intensity of her gaze; he looked away from her.
“I think I need some antibiotics,” the young woman said.
“Yes, you have an infection,” Dr. Daruwalla said. “I have to lance that swelling. There’s something in there—it has to come out.” She had a pretty good infection going; the doctor had also noticed the lymphangitic streaking.
The young woman shrugged; and when she moved her shoulders only that slightly, Farrokh caught the scent of her. It wasn’t just an acrid armpit odor; there was also something like the tang of urine in the way she smelled, and there was a heavy, ripe smell—faintly rotten or decayed.
“It is essential for you to be clean before I cut into you,” Dr. Daruwalla said. He was staring at the young woman’s hands; there appeared to be dried blood caked under her nails. Once more the young woman shrugged, and Dr. Daruwalla took a step back from her.
“So … where do you want to do it?” she asked, looking around.
At the taverna, the bartender was watching them. In the lean- to restaurant, only one of the tables was occupied. There were three men drinking feni; even these impaired feni drinkers were watching the girl.
“There’s a bathtub in our hotel,” the doctor said. “My wife will help you.”
“I know how to take a bath,” the young woman told him.
Farrokh was thinking that she couldn’t have walked very far on that foot. As she hobbled between the taverna and the hotel, her limp was pronounced; she leaned hard on the rail as they climbed the stairs to the rooms.
“You didn’t walk all the way from Anjuna, did you?” he asked her.
“I’m from Iowa,” she answered. For a moment, Dr. Daruwalla didn’t understand—he was trying to think of an “Iowa” in Goa. Then he laughed, but she didn’t.
“I meant, where are you staying in Goa?” he asked her.
“I’m not staying,” she told him. “I’m taking the ferry to Bombay—as soon as I can walk.”
“But where did you cut your foot?” he asked.
“On some glass,” she said. “It was sort of near Anjuna.”
This conversation, and watching her climb the stairs, exhausted Dr. Daruwalla. He preceded the girl into his rooms; he wanted to alert Julia that he’d found a patient on the beach, or that she’d found him.
Farrokh and Julia waited on the balcony while the young woman took a bath. They waited quite a long time, staring—with little comment—at the girl’s battered canvas rucksack, which she’d left with them on the balcony. Apparently, she wasn’t considering a change of clothes, or else the clothes in the rucksack were dirtier than the clothes she wore, although this was hard to imagine. Odd cloth badges were sewn to the rucksack—the insignia of the times, Dr. Daruwalla supposed. He recognized the peace symbol, the pastel flowers, Bugs Bunny, a U.S. flag with the face of a pig superimposed on it, and another silver skull and crossbones. He didn’t recognize the black-and-yellow cartoon bird with the menacing expression; he doubted it was a version of the American eagle. There was no way the doctor could have been familiar with Herky the Hawk, the wrathful symbol of athletic teams from the University of Iowa. Looking more closely, Farrokh read the words under the black-and-yellow bird: GO, HAWKEYES!
“She must belong to some sort of strange club,” the doctor said to his wife. In response, Julia sighed. It was the way she feigned indifference; Julia was still somewhat in shock at the sight of the huge young woman, not to mention the great clumps of blond hair the girl had grown in her armpits.
In the bathroom, the girl filled and emptied the tub twice. The first time was to shave her legs, but not her underarms—she valued the hair in her armpits as an indication of her rebellion; she thought of it and her pubic hair as her “fur.” She used Dr. Daruwalla’s razor; she thought about stealing it, but then she remembered she’d left her rucksack out on the balcony. The memory distracted her; she shrugged, and put the razor back where she’d found it. As she settled into the second tub of water, she fell instantly asleep—she was so exhausted—but she woke up as soon as her mouth dipped below the water. She soaped herself, she shampooed her hair, she rinsed. Then she emptied the tub and drew a third bath, letting the water rise around her.
She groaned; the water was as hot as she could stand it. She was amazed at the scum on the surface of the water. It was her third bath, but the dirt was still coming out of her.
11
THE DILDO
Behind Every Journey Is a Reason
It was her parents’ fault, she decided. Her name was Nancy, she came from an Iowa pig-farming family of German descent and she’d been a good girl all through high school in a small Iowa town; then she’d gone to the university in Iowa City. Because she was so blond and bosomy, she’d been a popular candidate for the cheerleading squad, although she lacked the requisite personality and wasn’t chosen; still, it was her contact with the cheerleaders that led her to meet so many football players. There was a lot of partying, which Nancy was unfamiliar with, and she’d not only slept with a boy for the first time; she’d slept with her first black person, her first Hawaiian person, and the first person she’d ever known who came from New England—he was from somewhere in Maine, or maybe it was Massachusetts.
She flunked out of the University of Iowa at the end of her first semester; when she went home to the small town she’d grown up in, she was pregnant. She thought she was still a good girl, to the degree that she submitted to her parents’ recommendation without questioning it: she would have the baby, put it up for adoption and get a job. She went to work at the local hardware store, in feed-and-grain supply, while she was still carrying the child; soon she began to doubt the wisdom of her parents’ recommendation—men her father’s age began propositioning her, while she was pregnant.