A Son of the Circus

by John Irving

  For the first time, Farrokh considered that the madman before him posed a threat to himself that might exceed the danger presented by his striking resemblance to Inspector Dhar.

  “But I thought you were an English teacher,” said Dr. Daruwalla. “As a former student of the place, I can assure you, St. Ignatius is first and foremost a school.” The doctor knew the Father Rector; Dr. Daruwalla could well anticipate that this was precisely what Father Julian would have to say about the matter of saving prostitutes’ souls. But as Farrokh watched Martin step naked from the bath—whereupon, unmindful of his wounds, the missionary began to vigorously towel himself dry—the doctor further anticipated that the Father Rector and all the aged defenders of the faith at St. Ignatius would have a hard time convincing such a zealous scholastic as this that his duties were restricted to improving the English of the upper classes. For as he rubbed and rubbed the towel against the lash marks until his face and torso were striped as bright red as when the whip had only just struck him, Martin Mills was all the while thinking of a reply. Like the crafty Jesuit that he was, he began his answer with a question.

  “Aren’t you a Christian?” the missionary asked the doctor. “I believe my father said you were converted, but that you’re not a Roman Catholic.”

  “Yes, that’s true,” Dr. Daruwalla replied cautiously. He gave Martin Mills a clean pair of his best silk pajamas, but the scholastic preferred to stand naked.

  “Are you familiar with the Calvinist, Jansenist position in regard to free will?” Martin asked Farrokh. “I’m greatly oversimplifying, but this was that dispute born of Luther and those Protestant divines of the Reformation—namely, the idea that we’re doomed by original sin and can expect salvation only through divine grace. Luther denied that good works could contribute to our salvation. Calvin further denied that our faith could save us. According to Calvin, we are all predestined to be saved—or not. Do you believe that?”

  By the way the logic of the Jesuit was leaning, Farrokh guessed that he should not believe that, and so he said, “No—not exactly.”

  “Well, good—then you’re not a Jansenist,” the scholastic said. “They were very discouraging—their doctrine of grace over that of free will was quite defeatist, really. They made us all feel that there was absolutely nothing we could do to be saved—in short, why bother with good works? And so what if we sin?”

  “Are you still oversimplifying?” asked Dr. Daruwalla. The Jesuit regarded the doctor with sly respect; he also took this interruption as a useful time in which to put on the doctor’s silk pajamas.

  “If you’re suggesting that it’s almost impossible to reconcile the concept of free will with our belief in an omnipotent and omniscient God, I agree with you—it’s difficult,” Martin said. “The question of the relationship between human will and divine omnipotence … is that your question?”

  Dr. Daruwalla guessed that this should be his question, and so he said, “Yes—something like that.”

  “Well, that really is an interesting question,” the Jesuit said. “I just hate it when people try to reduce the spiritual world with purely mechanical theories—those behaviorists, for example. Who cares about Loeb’s plant-lice theories or Pavlov’s dog?” Dr. Daruwalla nodded, but he didn’t dare speak; he’d never heard of plant lice. He’d heard of Pavlov’s dog, of course; he could even recall what made the dog salivate and what the saliva meant.

  “We must seem excessively strict to you—we Catholics to you Protestants, I mean,” Martin said. Dr. Daruwalla shook his head. “Oh, yes we do!” the missionary said. “We are a theology of rewards and punishments, which are meted out in the life after death. Compared to you, we make much of sin. We Jesuits, however, tend to minimize those sins of thought.”

  “As opposed to those of deed,” interjected Dr. Daruwalla, for although this was obvious and totally unnecessary to say, the doctor felt that only a fool would have nothing to say, and he’d been saying nothing.

  “To us—to us Catholics, I mean—you Protestants appear, at times, to overemphasize the human propensity toward evil …” And here the missionary paused; but Dr. Daruwalla, unsure whether he should nod or shake his head, just stared stupidly at the bathwater spiraling down the drain, as if the water were his own thoughts, escaping him.

  “Do you know Leibniz?” the Jesuit suddenly asked him.

  “Well, in university … but that was years ago,” the doctor said.

  “The Leibniz assumption is that man’s freedom was not taken from him by his fall, which makes Leibniz quite a friend of ours—of us Jesuits, I mean,” Martin said. “There is some Leibniz I can never forget, such as, ‘Although the impulse and the help come from God, they are at all times accompanied by a certain co-operation of man himself; if not, we could not say that we had acted’—but you agree, don’t you?”

  “Yes, of course,” said Dr. Daruwalla.

  “Well, you see, that’s why I can’t be just an English teacher,” the Jesuit replied. “Naturally, I shall endeavor to improve the children’s English—and to the most perfect degree possible. But, given that I am free to act—‘although the impulse and the help come from God,’ of course—I must do what I can, not only to save my soul but to rescue the souls of others.”

  “I see,” said Dr. Daruwalla, who was also beginning to understand why the enraged transvestite prostitutes had failed to make much of a dent in the flesh or the indomitable will of Martin Mills.

  Furthermore, the doctor found that he was standing in his own living room and watching Martin lie down on the couch, without the slightest recollection of having left the bathroom. That was when the missionary handed the leg iron to the doctor, who received the instrument reluctantly.

  “I can see I will not be needing this here,” the scholastic said. “There will be sufficient adversity without it. St. Ignatius Loyola also changed his mind in regard to these weapons of mortification.”

  “He did?” said Farrokh.

  “I think he overused them—but only out of a positive abhorrence of his earlier sins,” the Jesuit said. “In fact, in the later version of the Spiritual Exercises, St. Ignatius urges against such scourges of the flesh—he is also opposed to heavy fasting.”

  “So am I,” said Dr. Daruwalla, who didn’t know what to do with the cruel leg iron.

  “Please throw it away,” Martin said to him. “And perhaps you’d be so kind as to tell the dwarf to keep the whip—I don’t want it.”

  Dr. Daruwalla knew all about Vinod’s racquet handles; the prospect of what use the dwarf might make of the whip was chilling. Then the doctor noticed that Martin Mills had fallen asleep. With his fingers interlocked on his chest, and with an utterly beatific expression, the missionary resembled a martyr en route to the heavenly kingdom.

  Farrokh brought Julia into the living room to see him. At first, she wouldn’t approach past the glass-topped table—she viewed him as one might view a contaminated corpse—but the doctor encouraged her to take a closer look. The nearer Julia drew to Martin Mills, the more relaxed she became. It was as if—at least, when he was asleep—Martin had a pacifying effect on everyone around him. Eventually, Julia sat on the floor beside the couch. She would say later that he reminded her of John D. as a much younger, more carefree man, although Farrokh maintained that Martin Mills was simply the result of no weight lifting and no beer—meaning that he had no muscles but that he had no belly, either.

  Without remembering when he sat down, the doctor found himself on the floor beside his wife. They were both sitting beside the couch, as if transfixed by the sleeping body, when Dhar came in from the balcony to have a shower and to brush his teeth; from Dhar’s perspective, Farrokh and Julia appeared to be praying. Then the movie star saw the dead person—at least, the person looked dead to Dhar—and without taking too close a look, he said, “Who’s that?”

  Farrokh and Julia were shocked that John D. didn’t immediately recognize his twin; after all, an actor is especially familiar with his o
wn facial features—and under a variety of makeup, including the radical altering of his age—but Dhar had never seen such an expression on his own face. It’s doubtful that Dhar’s face ever reflected beatification, for not even in his sleep had Inspector Dhar imagined the happiness of heaven. Dhar had many expressions, but none of them was saintly.

  Finally, the actor whispered, “Well, okay, I see who it is, but what’s he doing here? Is he going to die?”

  “He’s trying to be a priest,” Farrokh whispered.

  “Jesus Christ!” John D. said. Either he should have whispered or else the particular name he spoke was one that Martin Mills was prone to hear; a smile of such immense gratitude crossed the missionary’s sleeping face that Dhar and the Daruwallas felt suddenly ashamed. Without a word to one another, they tiptoed into the kitchen, as if they were unanimously embarrassed that they’d been spying on a sleeping man; what truly had disturbed them, and had made them feel as if they didn’t belong where they were, was the utter contentment of a man momentarily at peace with his soul—although none of them could have identified what it was that so upset them.

  “What’s wrong with him?” Dhar asked.

  “Nothing’s wrong with him!” Dr. Daruwalla said; then he wondered why he’d said that about a man who’d been whipped and beaten while he was proselytizing among transvestite prostitutes. “I should have told you he was coming,” the doctor added sheepishly, to which John D. merely rolled his eyes; his anger was often understated. Julia rolled her eyes, too.

  “As far as I’m concerned,” Farrokh said to John D., “it’s entirely your decision as to whether or not you want to let him know that you exist. Although I don’t know if now would be the right time to tell him.”

  “Forget about now,” Dhar said. “Tell me what he’s like.”

  Dr. Daruwalla could not utter the first word that came to his lips—the word was “crazy.” On second thought, he almost said, Like you, except that he talks. But this was such a contradictory concept—the very idea of a Dhar who talked might be insulting to Dhar.

  “I said, what’s he like?” John D. repeated.

  “I saw him only when he was asleep,” Julia told John D. Both of them were staring at Farrokh, whose mind—on the matter of what Martin Mills was “like”—was truly blank. Not a single picture came to his mind, although the missionary had managed to argue with him, lecture to him and even educate him—and most of this had transpired while the zealot was naked.

  “He’s somewhat zealous,” the doctor offered cautiously.

  “Zealous?” said Dhar.

  “Liebchen, is that all you can say?” Julia asked Farrokh. “I heard him talking and talking in the bathroom. He must have been saying something!”

  “In the bathroom?” John D. asked.

  “He’s very determined,” Farrokh blurted.

  “I guess that would follow from being ‘zealous,’ ” said Inspector Dhar; he was at his most sarcastic.

  It was exasperating to Dr. Daruwalla that they expected him to be able to summarize the Jesuit’s character on the basis of this one peculiar meeting.

  The doctor didn’t know the history of that other zealot—the greatest zealot of the 16th century, St. Ignatius Loyola—who had so inspired Martin Mills. When Ignatius died without ever having permitted a portrait of himself to be painted, the brothers of the order sought to have a portrait made of the dead man. A famous painter tried and failed. The disciples declared that the death mask, which was the work of an unknown, was also not the true face of the father of the Jesuits. Three other artists tried and failed to capture him, but they had only the death mask for their model. It was finally decided that God did not wish for Ignatius Loyola, His servant, to be painted. Dr. Daruwalla couldn’t have known how greatly Martin Mills loved this story, but it doubtless would have pleased the new missionary to see how the doctor struggled to describe even such a fledgling servant of God as this mere scholastic. Farrokh felt the right word come to his lips, but then it escaped him.

  “He’s well educated,” Farrokh managed to say. Both John D. and Julia groaned. “Well, damn it, he’s complicated!” Dr. Daruwalla shouted. “It’s too soon to know what he’s like!”

  “Ssshhh! You’ll wake him up,” Julia told Farrokh.

  “If it’s too soon to know what he’s like,” John D. said, “then it’s too soon for me to know if I want to meet him.”

  Dr. Daruwalla was irritated; he felt that this was a typical Inspector Dhar thing to say.

  Julia knew what her husband was thinking. “Hold your tongue,” she told him. She made coffee for herself and John D.—for Farrokh, she made a pot of tea. Together, the Daruwallas watched their beloved movie star leave by the kitchen door. Dhar liked to use the back stairs so that he wouldn’t be seen; the early morning—it wasn’t quite 6:00—was one of the few times he could walk from Marine Drive to the Taj without being recognized and surrounded. At that hour, only the beggars would hassle him; they hassled everyone equally. It simply didn’t matter to the beggars that he was Inspector Dhar; many beggars went to the cinema, but what did a movie star matter to them?

  Standing Still: An Exercise

  At exactly 6:00 in the morning, when Farrokh and Julia were sharing a bath together—she soaped his back, he soaped her breasts, but there was no more extensive hanky-panky than that—Martin Mills awoke to the soothing sounds of Dr. Aziz, the praying urologist. “Praise be to Allah, Lord of Creation”—Dr. Aziz’s incantations to Allah drifted upward from his fifth-floor balcony and brought the new missionary instantly to his feet. Although he’d been asleep for less than an hour, the Jesuit felt as refreshed as a normal man who had slept the whole night through; thus invigorated, he bounded to Dr. Daruwalla’s balcony, where he could oversee the morning ritual that Urology Aziz enacted on his prayer rug. From the vantage point of the Daruwallas’ sixth-floor apartment, the view of Back Bay was stunning. Martin Mills could see Malabar Hill and Nariman Point; in the distance, a small city of people had already congregated on Chowpatty Beach. But the Jesuit had not come to Bombay for the view. He followed the prayers of Dr. Aziz with the keenest concentration. There was always something one could learn from the holiness of others.

  Martin Mills did not take prayer for granted. He knew that prayer wasn’t the same as thinking, nor was it an escape from thinking. It was never as simple as mere asking. Instead, it was the seeking of instruction; for to know God’s will was Martin’s heart’s desire, and to attain such a state of perfection—a union with God in mystical ecstasy—required the patience of a corpse.

  Watching Urology Aziz roll up his prayer rug, Martin Mills knew it was the perfect time for him to practice another exercise of Father de Mello’s Christian Exercises in Eastern Form—namely, “stillness.” Most people didn’t appreciate how impossible it was to stand absolutely still; it could be painful, too, but Martin was good at it. He stood so still that, 10 minutes later, a passing fork-tailed kite almost landed on his head. It wasn’t because the missionary so much as blinked that the bird suddenly veered away from him; the light that was reflected in the brightness of the missionary’s eyes frightened the bird away.

  Meanwhile, Dr. Daruwalla was tearing through his hate mail, wherein he found a troubling two-rupee note. The envelope was addressed to Inspector Dhar in care of the film studio; typed on the serial-number side of the money, in capital letters, was this warning: YOU’RE AS DEAD AS LAL. The doctor would show this to Deputy Commissioner Patel, of course, but Farrokh felt he didn’t need the detective’s confirmation in order to know that the typist was the same lunatic who’d typed the message on the money found in Mr. Lal’s mouth.

  Then Julia burst into the bedroom. She’d peeked into the living room to see if Martin Mills was still sleeping, but he wasn’t on the couch. The sliding-glass doors to the balcony were open, but she’d not seen the missionary on the balcony—he was standing so still, she’d missed him. Dr. Daruwalla stuffed the two-rupee note into his pocket and rushed to
the balcony.

  By the time the doctor got there, the missionary had moved ahead to a new prayer tactic—this one being one of Father de Mello’s exercises in the area of “body sensations” and “thought control.” Martin would lift his right foot, move it forward, then put it down. As he did this, he would chant, “Lifting … lifting … lifting,” and then (naturally) “Moving … moving … moving,” and (finally) “Placing … placing … placing.” In short, he was merely walking across the balcony, but with an exaggerated slowness—all the while exclaiming aloud his exact movements. To Dr. Daruwalla, Martin Mills resembled a patient in physical therapy—someone recovering from a recent stroke—for the missionary appeared to be teaching himself how to speak and walk at the same time, with only modest success.

  Farrokh tiptoed back to the bedroom and Julia.

  “Perhaps I’ve underestimated his injuries,” the doctor said. “I’ll have to take him to the office with me. At least for a while, it’s best to keep an eye on him.”

  But when the Daruwallas cautiously approached the Jesuit, he was dressed in clerical garb. He was looking through his suitcase.

  “They took only my culpa beads and my casual clothes,” Martin remarked. “I’ll have to buy some cheap local wear—it would be ostentatious to show up at St. Ignatius looking like this!” Whereupon he laughed and plucked at his startlingly white collar.

  It certainly won’t do to have him walking around Bombay like this, Dr. Daruwalla thought. What was required was the sort of clothing that would allow the madman somehow to fit in. Possibly I could arrange to shave his head, the doctor thought. Julia simply gaped at Martin Mills, but as soon as he began to relate (again!) the tale of his introduction to the city, he completely charmed her, and she became as alternately flirtatious and shy as a schoolgirl. For a man who’d taken a vow of chastity, the Jesuit was remarkably at ease with women—at least with an older woman, Dr. Daruwalla thought.

  The complexities of the day ahead for Dr. Daruwalla were almost as frightening to the doctor as the thought of spending the next 12 hours in the missionary’s discarded leg iron—or being followed around by Vinod, with the angry dwarf wielding the missionary’s whip.