A Son of the Circus

by John Irving

  Dieter’s questions about Rahul were greeted with sullenness, if not hostility. The only hijra who permitted them to come inside his cage was a fussy middle-aged transvestite who sat before a mirror in growing disappointment with his wig. In the same tiny room, a younger hijra was feeding a watery gray milk to a newborn goat by means of a baby’s bottle.

  On the subject of Rahul, all the younger one would say was, “He is not being one of us.” The older one said only that Rahul was in Goa. Neither of the hijras could be drawn into a discussion of Rahul’s nickname. At the mere mention of “Pretty,” the one who was feeding the goat abruptly pulled the baby bottle out of the goat’s mouth; it made a pop and the goat bleated in surprise. The younger hijra pointed the baby bottle at Nancy and made a disparaging gesture. Nancy interpreted the bottle-pointing as an indication that she wasn’t as pretty as Rahul. She was relieved that Dieter seemed disinclined to fight, although she could sense he was angry; he wasn’t exactly gallant on her behalf, but at least he was angry.

  Back on the street, to assure him she was philosophic about the insult of being ill compared to Rahul, Nancy said something that she hoped sounded tolerant in a live-and-let-live sort of way.

  “Well, they weren’t very nice,” she observed, “but it was nice how they were taking care of the goat.”

  “Don’t be a fool,” Dieter told her. “Some people fuck girls, some people fuck eunuchs in drag—others fuck goats.” This terrible thought made her anxious again; she knew she’d deceived herself if she’d believed she’d stopped falling.

  In Kamathipura, there were other brothels. Outside a warren of small rooms, a fat woman in a magenta sari sat cross-legged on a rope bed supported by orange crates; either the woman or the bed swayed slightly. She was the madam for a higher class of prostitutes than one could find on Falkland Road or Grant Road. Naturally, Dieter didn’t tell Nancy that this was the same brothel where he’d fucked the 13-year-old girl for only five rupees because they had to do it standing up.

  It seemed to Nancy that Dieter knew the enormous madam, but she couldn’t understand their conversation; two of the bolder prostitutes had come out of the brothel to stare at her close up.

  A third girl, who was perhaps 12 or 13, was especially curious; she remembered Dieter from the night before. Nancy saw the blue tattoo on her upper arm, which Dieter later said was just the prostitute’s name. It was impossible for Nancy to know if her body’s other ornaments were of any religious significance or if they were merely decorative. Her bindi—the cosmetic dot on her forehead—was a saffron color edged with gold, and she wore a gold ring in her left nostril.

  The girl’s curiosity was a little too extreme for Nancy, who turned away—Dieter was still talking to the madam. Their conversation had grown heated; vagueness made Dieter angry, and everyone was vague about Rahul.

  “You go to Goa,” the fat madam had advised. “You say you looking for him. Then he find you.” But Nancy could tell that Dieter preferred to be in more control of the situation.

  She also knew what would happen next. Back at the Sea Green Guest House, Dieter was very desirous; anger frequently had this effect on him. First he made Nancy masturbate; then he used the dildo rather roughly on her. She was surprised she was even remotely excited. Afterward, Dieter was still angry. While they waited for an overnight bus to Goa, Nancy was beginning to imagine how she would leave him. The country was so intimidating, it was hard to see herself leaving him if there was no one else.

  On the bus, they saw a small American girl; she was being bothered by some Indian men. Nancy spoke up: “Are you a coward, Dieter? Why don’t you tell those guys to leave that girl alone? Why don’t you ask that girl to sit with us?”

  Nancy Gets Sick

  Remembering when her relationship with Dieter took such a heralded turn, Nancy felt a renewal of self-confidence in the bathroom of the Hotel Bardez. So what if she couldn’t unscrew the dildo? She would find someone with stronger hands, if not a pair of pliers. With that relaxing thought, she threw the dildo across the bathroom; it struck the blue-tiled wall and bounced back toward the bathtub. Thereupon Nancy pulled the plug, the drain gurgled loudly, and Dr. Daruwalla scurried away from his side of the bathroom door.

  On the balcony, he told his wife, “I think she’s finally finished. I believe she threw the cock against the wall—she threw something, anyway.”

  “It’s a dildo,” Julia said. “I wish you wouldn’t call it a cock.”

  “Whatever it is, I believe she threw it,” Farrokh said.

  They listened to the tub; it went on gurgling. Below them, on the patio, the sweeper had awakened from his nap beneath the shade of the potted plant; they could hear him discussing the doctor’s vomit with Punkaj, the servant boy. Punkaj’s opinion was that the culprit was a dog.

  It wasn’t until Nancy stood in the tub to dry herself that the pain in her foot reminded her of why she’d come to where she was. She welcomed whatever small surgery was required to remove the glass; she was a young woman in a position to find a certain anticipated pain almost purifying.

  “Are you a coward, Dieter?” Nancy whispered to herself, just to hear herself say it again; it had been so briefly gratifying.

  The small girl on the bus, who was originally from Seattle, turned out to be an ashram groupie who’d traveled through the subcontinent, constantly changing her religion. She said she’d been thrown out of the Punjab for doing something insulting to the Sikhs, although she hadn’t understood what it was she’d done. She wore a close-fitting, low-cut tank top; it was evident that she didn’t wear a bra. She’d also acquired some silver bangles, which she wore on her wrists; she’d been told that the bangles had been part of someone’s dowry. (They weren’t the usual dowry material.)

  Her name was Beth. She’d lost her fondness for Buddhism when a high-placed bodhisattva had tried to seduce her with chang; Nancy assumed this was something you smoked, but Dieter told her it was Tibetan rice beer, which reputedly made Westerners ill.

  In Maharashtra, Beth said, she’d been to Poona, but only to express her contempt for her fellow Americans who were meditating at the Rajneesh ashram. She’d lost her fondness for what she called “California meditating,” too. No “lousy export guru” was going to win her over.

  Beth was taking a “scholarly approach” to Hinduism. She wasn’t ready to study the Vedas—the ancient spiritual texts, the orthodox Hindu scriptures—under any kind of supervision; Beth would begin with her own interpretations of The Upanishads, which she was currently reading. She showed the small book of spiritual treatises to Nancy and Dieter; it was one of those thin volumes in which the Introduction and the Note on the Translations amounted to more pages than the text.

  Beth didn’t think it odd to pursue her study of Hinduism by journeying to Goa, which attracted more Christian pilgrims than any other kind; she admitted she was going for the beaches, and for the companionship of people like herself. Besides, soon the monsoon would be everywhere, and by then she’d be in Rajasthan; the lakes were lovely during the monsoon—she’d heard about an ashram on a lake. Meanwhile, she was grateful for the company; it was no fun being a woman on your own in India, Beth assured them.

  Around her neck was a rawhide thong, from which dangled a polished vulva-shaped stone. Beth explained that this was her yoni, an object of veneration in Shiva temples. The phallic lingam, representing the penis of Lord Shiva, is placed in the vulvate yoni, representing the vagina of Shiva’s wife, Parvati. Priests pour a libation over the two symbols; worshipers partake of a kind of communion in the runoff.

  After this puzzling account of her unusual necklace, Beth was exhausted and curled up on the seat beside Nancy; she fell asleep with her head in Nancy’s lap. Dieter also fell asleep, in the seat across the aisle, but not before saying to Nancy that he thought it would be great fun to show Beth the dildo. “Let her put that lingam in her stupid yoni,” he said crudely. Nancy sat awake, hating him, as the bus moved through Maharashtra.
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  In the darkness, the most constant sound was the bus driver’s tape recorder, which played only Qawwali; the recorder was turned to a low volume, and Nancy found the religious verses soothing. Of course she didn’t know that they were Muslim verses, nor would she have cared. Beth’s breathing was soft and regular against her thigh; Nancy thought about how long it had been since she’d had a friend—just a friend.

  The dawn light in Goa was the color of sand. Nancy marveled at how childlike Beth appeared in her sleep; in both her small hands, the waif clutched the stone vagina as if this yoni were powerful enough to protect her from every evil on the subcontinent—even from Dieter and Nancy.

  In Mapusa, they changed buses because their bus from Bombay went on to Panjim. They spent a long day in Calangute while Dieter did his business, which amounted to repeatedly harassing the patrons of the bus stop for any information related to Rahul. Along Baga Road, they also stopped at the bars, the hotels and the stalls for cold drinks; in all these places, Dieter spoke privately with someone while Beth and Nancy waited. Everyone claimed to have heard of Rahul, but no one had ever seen him.

  Dieter had arranged for a cottage near the beach. There was only one bathroom, and the toilet and tub needed to be flushed and filled by hand with buckets from an outdoor well, but there were two big beds that looked pretty clean and a standing partition of wooden latticework—it was almost a wall, almost private. They had a propane hot plate for boiling water. A motionless ceiling fan had been installed in the optimistic faith that one day there would also be electricity; and although there were no screens, there were mosquito nets in fair repair on both beds. Outside, there was a cistern of fresh (if not clean) water; the water in the well, with which they flushed the toilet and in which they bathed, was slightly salty. By the cistern was a hut of palm leaves; if they kept the leaves wet, this hut was an adequate cooler for soda and juice and fresh fruit. Beth was disappointed that they were some distance from the beach, Although they could hear the Arabian Sea, especially at night, they had to tramp across an area of dead and rotting palm fronds before they could walk on the sand or even see the water.

  Both these luxuries and inconveniences were wasted on Nancy; upon arrival, she was immediately sick. She vomited; she was so weak from diarrhea that Beth had to fetch the water to flush the toilet for her. Beth also filled the tub for Nancy’s baths. Nancy had a fever with chills so violent and sweating so profuse that she stayed in bed all day and night, except when Beth stripped the sheets and gave them to the dhobi, who came for the laundry.

  Dieter was disgusted with her; he went on about his business of looking for Rahul. Beth fixed her tea and brought her fresh bananas; when Nancy was stronger, Beth cooked her some rice. Because of the fever, Nancy tossed and turned all night and Dieter wouldn’t sleep in the same bed with her. Beth slept in a small corner of the bed beside her; Dieter slept behind the latticework partition, alone. Nancy told herself that, when she was healthy, she would go to Rajasthan with Beth. She hoped Beth hadn’t been revolted by her illness.

  Then, one evening, Nancy woke up and felt a little better. She thought her fever was gone because she was so clear-headed; she thought she was past the vomiting and the diarrhea because she was ravenous. Dieter and Beth were out of the cottage; they’d gone to the disco in Calangute. There was a place called something stupid, like Coco Banana, where Dieter asked a lot of questions about Rahul. Dieter said it was cooler to go there with a girl than to look like a loser, which was apparently what you looked like when you went there alone.

  There was nothing to eat in the cottage but bananas, and Nancy ate three; then she made herself some tea. After that, she went in and out, drawing water for a bath. She was surprised how tired she was after she’d carried the water, and with her fever gone, the bath felt chilly.

  After her bath, she went outside to the palm-hut cooler and drank some bottled sugarcane juice, which she hoped wouldn’t bring back her diarrhea. There was nothing to do but wait for Dieter and Beth to come back. She tried reading The Upanishads, but it had made more sense to her when she had a fever and Beth read it aloud. Besides, she had lit an oil lamp to read and there were suddenly a million mosquitoes. Also, she encountered an exasperating passage in “Katha Upanishad”; it repeated, as a refrain, an irritating sentence: “This in truth is That.” She thought the phrase would drive her crazy if she read it one more time. She blew out the oil lamp and retreated under the mosquito net.

  She brought the entrenching tool into the bed beside her because she was frightened to be alone in the cottage at night. There was not only the threat of bandits, of dacoit gangs; there was a gecko that lived behind the bathroom mirror—it often raced across the bathroom walls and ceiling while Nancy took her bath. She hadn’t seen the gecko tonight. She wished she knew where it was.

  When she’d been feverish, she’d wondered at the shadows cast by the strange gargoyles along the top of the latticework partition; then one night the gargoyles weren’t there, and another night there’d been only one. Now that her fever was gone, she realized the “gargoyles” were in nearly constant motion—they were rats. They favored the vantage point that the partition gave them, to look down upon both beds. Nancy watched them until she fell asleep.

  She was beginning to understand that she was a long way from Bombay, which was a long way from anywhere else. Not even young Vijay Patel—Police Inspector, Colaba Station—could help her here.

  13

  NOT A DREAM

  A Beautiful Stranger

  When Nancy’s fever came back, the sweating didn’t wake her but the chills did. She knew she was delirious because it was impossible that a beautiful woman in a sari could be sitting on the bed beside her, holding her hand. At 31 or 32, the woman was at the very peak of her beauty, and her subtle jasmine scent should have told Nancy that the beautiful woman was not the result of delirium. A woman with such a wonderful smell could never be dreamed. When the woman spoke, even Nancy had reason to doubt that she was any kind of hallucination at all.

  “You’re the one who’s sick, aren’t you?” the woman asked Nancy. “And they’ve left you all alone, haven’t they?”

  “Yes,” Nancy whispered; she was shivering so hard, her teeth were chattering. Although she clutched the entrenching tool, she doubted she could summon the strength to lift it.

  Then, as so often happens in dreams, there was no transition, no logic to the order of events, because the beautiful woman unwound her sari—she completely undressed. Even in the ghostly pallor of the moonlight, she was the color of tea; her limbs looked as smooth and hard as fine wood, like cherry. Her breasts were only slightly bigger than Beth’s, but much more upright, and when she slipped past the mosquito net and into bed beside Nancy, Nancy relinquished her grip on the entrenching tool and allowed the beautiful woman to hold her.

  “They shouldn’t leave you all alone, should they?” the woman asked Nancy.

  “No,” Nancy whispered; her teeth had stopped chattering, and her shivers subsided in the beautiful woman’s strong arms. At first they lay face-to-face, the woman’s firm breasts against Nancy’s softer bosom, their legs entwined. Then Nancy rolled onto her other side and the woman pressed herself against Nancy’s back; in this position, the woman’s breasts touched Nancy’s shoulder blades—the woman’s breath stirred Nancy’s hair. Nancy was impressed by the suppleness of the woman’s long, slender waist—how it curved to accommodate Nancy’s broad hips and her round bottom. And to Nancy’s surprise, the woman’s hands, which gently held Nancy’s heavy breasts, were even bigger than Nancy’s hands.

  “This is better, isn’t it?” the woman asked her.

  “Yes,” Nancy whispered, but her own voice sounded uncharacteristically hoarse and far away. An unshakable drowsiness attended the woman’s embrace, or else this was a new stage in Nancy’s fever, which signaled the beginning of a sleep deeper than dreams.

  Nancy had never slept with a woman’s breasts pressed against her back; she m
arveled at how soothing it was, and she wondered if this was what men felt when they fell asleep this way. Previously, Nancy had fallen asleep with that odd sensation of a man’s inert and usually small penis brushing against her buttocks. It was upon this awareness, and on the edge of sleep, that Nancy was suddenly aware of an unusual situation, which was surely in the area of dream or delirium or both, because she felt—at the same time!—a woman’s breasts pressed against her back and a man’s sleepy penis curled against her buttocks. Another fever dream, Nancy decided.

  “Won’t they be surprised, when they get here?” the beautiful woman asked her, but Nancy’s mind had drifted too far away for her to answer.

  Nancy Is a Witness

  When Nancy woke up, she lay alone in the moonlight, smelling the ganja and listening to Dieter and Beth; they were whispering on the other side of the partition. The rats on the latticework were so still that they appeared to be listening, too—or else the rats were stoned, because Dieter and Beth were smoking up a storm.

  Nancy heard Dieter ask Beth, “What is the first sexual experience that you had some confidence in?” Nancy counted to herself in the silence; of course she knew what Beth was thinking. Then Dieter said, “Masturbation, right?”

  Nancy heard Beth whisper, “Yes.”

  “Everyone is different,” Dieter told Beth philosophically. “You just have to learn what your own best way is.”

  Nancy lay watching the rats while she listened to Dieter. He was successful in getting Beth to relax, although Beth did possess the decency to ask, if only once, “What about Nancy?”

  “Nancy is asleep,” Dieter said. “Nancy won’t object.”

  “I have to be lying on my tummy,” Beth told Dieter, whose grasp of English vernacular wasn’t sound enough for him to understand “tummy.”