A Son of the Circus

by John Irving

  Then Dr. Tata called with the news about Madhu.

  “Yes, she is certainly sexually active—too many previous partners to count!—and yes, she has a little something venereal,” said Tata Two. “But, under the circumstances, it could be a lot worse.”

  “And you’ll check if she’s HIV-positive?” asked Dr. Daruwalla.

  “We’re checking—we’ll let you know,” Dr. Tata said.

  “So what have you found?” Farrokh asked. “Is it gonorrhea?”

  “No, but there’s some inflammation of the cervix, and a slight discharge,” Dr. Tata explained. “She doesn’t complain of any urethritis—the inflammation in her urethra is so mild, it may go unnoticed. I’m guessing it’s chlamydia I’ll put her on a course of tetracycline. But it’s difficult to diagnose a chlamydial infection—as you know, chlamydiae are not visible under the microscope.”

  “Yes, yes,” said Dr. Daruwalla impatiently; he didn’t know this about chlamydiae, but he didn’t care to know. He had been lectured to enough for one day, commencing with a rehashing of the Protestant Reformation and the Jesuitical approach to free will. All he wanted to know was if Madhu was sexually active. And might there be something venereal that he could pin on the acid-scarred Mr. Garg? All of Mr. Garg’s previous discoveries had carried something venereal; the doctor would have loved to attribute the blame for this to Garg himself. Farrokh didn’t believe that the cause of the sexually transmitted disease was always the brothel that the girl was running away from. Most of all—and the doctor couldn’t have explained why—it was Deepa and Vinod’s seemingly good opinion of Mr. Garg that Dr. Daruwalla wished he could change. Why didn’t the dwarf and his wife see that Mr. Garg was egregiously slimy?

  “So, if she’s not HIV-positive, you’ll call her clean?” Farrokh asked Tata Two.

  “After the course of tetracycline, and provided no one lets her return to the brothel,” Dr. Tata said.

  And provided Deepa doesn’t take the girl back to the Wetness Cabaret, or to Mr. Garg, Farrokh thought. Dr. Daruwalla understood that Deepa would need to return to the Great Blue Nile before the doctor knew the results of Madhu’s HIV test. Vinod would have to look after Madhu and keep her away from Garg; the girl would be safe with the dwarf.

  Meanwhile, the doctor could observe that the morally meddlesome nature of Martin Mills had been momentarily curbed; the missionary was enthralled by Farrokh’s favorite circus photograph—the doctor always kept it on his office desk. It was a picture of Pratap Singh’s adopted sister, Suman, the star of the Great Royal Circus. Suman was in her costume for the Peacock Dance; she stood in the wing of the main tent, helping two little girls into their peacock costumes. The peacocks were always played by little girls. Suman was putting on their peacock heads; she was tucking their hair under the blue-green feathers of the long peacock necks.

  The Peacock Dance was performed in all the Indian circuses. (The peacock is the national bird of India.) In the Great Royal, Suman always played the legendary woman whose lover has been cast under a spell to make him forget her. In the moonlight, she dances with two peacocks; she wears bells on her ankles and wrists.

  But what haunted Dr. Daruwalla about the Peacock Dance was neither Suman’s beauty nor the little girls in their peacock costumes. Instead, it always seemed to him that the little girls (the peacocks) were about to die. The music for the dance was soft and eerie, and the lions were audible in the background. In the darkness outside the ring, the lions were being moved from their cages and into the holding tunnel, which was a long, tubular cage that led to the ring. The lions hated the holding tunnel. They fought among themselves because they were pressed too low to the ground; they could neither go back to their cages nor advance into the ring. Farrokh had always imagined that a lion would escape. When the peacock girls were finished with their dance and running back to their troupe tent—there in the dark avenue, the escaped lion would catch them and kill them.

  After the Peacock Dance, the roustabouts set up the cage for the lions in the ring. To distract the audience from the tedious assembly of the cage and the setting up of the hoops of fire, a motorcycle act was performed in the open wing of the main tent. It was so insanely loud, no one would hear the peacock girls screaming if a lion was loose. The motorcycles raced in opposite directions inside a steel-mesh ball; this was called the Globe of Death, because if the motorcycles ever collided, it was possible that both riders could be killed. But Dr. Daruwalla imagined it was called the Globe of Death because the sound of the motorcycles concealed the fate of the peacock girls.

  The first time he’d seen Suman, she was helping the little girls into their peacock costumes; she seemed to be a mother to them, although she had no children of her own. But it also seemed to Farrokh that Suman was dressing the little girls for the last time. They would run out of the ring, the Globe of Death would begin and the escaped lion would already be waiting for them in the dark avenue of the troupe tents.

  Maybe, if she wasn’t HIV-positive, Madhu would become one of the peacock girls at the Great Blue Nile. Either way, whether she was HIV-positive or a peacock girl, Dr. Daruwalla thought that Madhu’s chances were pretty slim. Garg’s girls were always in need of more than a dose of tetracycline.

  Martin Luther Is Put to Dubious Use

  Martin Mills had insisted on observing Dr. Daruwalla at his doctor’s chores, for the zealot had proclaimed–even before he saw a single one of Dr. Daruwalla’s patients—that the doctor was performing “the Lord’s work.” After all, what activity was nearer to Jesus than healing crippled children? It was right up there with saving their little souls, Farrokh guessed. Dr. Daruwalla had allowed the missionary to follow him as closely as his own shadow, but only because he wanted to observe how the zealot was recovering from his beating. The doctor had alertly anticipated any indications that the scholastic might have suffered a serious head injury, but Martin Mills was ploddingly disproving this theory. Martin’s particular madness seemed in no way trauma-related; rather, it appeared to be the result of blind conviction and a systematic education. Furthermore, after their experience on Fashion Street, Dr. Daruwalla didn’t dare let Martin Mills wander freely in Bombay; yet the doctor hadn’t found the time to deliver the madman to the presumed safety of St. Ignatius.

  On Fashion Street, Martin Mills had been completely unaware of that giant likeness of Inspector Dhar which was freshly plastered above the stalls of the clothes bazaar. The missionary had noticed the other movie advertisement; side by side with Inspector Dhar and the Towers of Silence was a poster for Death Wish, with a sizable likeness of Charles Branson.

  “That looks like Charles Bronson!” the Jesuit had observed.

  “That is Charles Bronson,” Farrokh had informed him. But of himself, in the image of Inspector Dhar, the missionary saw no resemblance. The clothes vendors, however, looked upon the Jesuit with baleful eyes. One refused to sell him anything; the scholastic assumed that the merchant had nothing in the right size. Another screamed at Martin Mills that his appearance on Fashion Street was nothing but a film-publicity stunt. This was probably because the missionary insisted on carrying the crippled beggar. The accusation had been made in Marathi, and the elephant-footed boy had enlivened the exchange by spitting on a rack of the merchant’s clothes.

  “Now, now—even though they revile you, simply smile,” Martin Mills had told the crippled boy. “Show them charity.” The Jesuit must have assumed it was Ganesh and his crushed foot that had caused the outburst.

  It was a wonder they’d escaped from Fashion Street with their lives; Dr. Daruwalla had also managed to persuade Martin Mills to get his hair cut. It was short enough to begin with, but the doctor had said something about the weather growing hotter and hotter, and that in India many ascetics and holy men shaved their heads. The haircut that Farrokh had arranged—with one of those three-rupee curbside barbers who hang out at the end of the clothing stalls on Fashion Street—had been as close to a shaven head as possible. But even as
a “skinhead,” Martin Mills exhibited something of Inspector Dhar’s aggressive quality. The resemblance went well beyond the propensity for the family sneer.

  John D. had little to say; yet he was unstoppably opinionated—and when he was acting, he always knew his lines. Martin Mills, on the other hand, never shut up; but wasn’t what Martin had to say also a recitation? Weren’t they the lines of another kind of actor, the ceaseless intervening of a true believer? Weren’t both twins unstoppably opinionated? Certainly they were both stubborn.

  The doctor was fascinated that barely a majority of Bombayites appeared to recognize Inspector Dhar in Martin Mills; there were almost as many individuals who seemed to see no resemblance whatsoever. Vinod, who knew Dhar well, never doubted that Martin was Dhar. Deepa also knew Dhar, and she was indifferent to the movie star’s fame; because she’d never seen an Inspector Dhar movie, the character meant nothing to her. When Deepa met the missionary in Dr. Daruwalla’s waiting room, she instantly took Martin Mills for what he was: an American do-gooder. But this had long been her opinion of Dhar. If the dwarf’s wife had never seen an Inspector Dhar movie, she had seen Dhar’s TV appearance on behalf of the Hospital for Crippled Children. Dhar had always struck Deepa as a do-gooder and a non-Indian. On the other hand, Ranjit wasn’t fooled. The medical secretary saw only the slightest resemblance to Dhar in the frail missionary. Ranjit didn’t even suspect the two of being twins; his only comment, which he whispered to Dr. Daruwalla, was that he’d never known Dhar had a brother. Given Martin Mills’s ravaged condition, Ranjit assumed he was Dhar’s older brother.

  Dr. Daruwalla’s first concern was to keep Martin Mills in the dark; once the doctor could get the missionary to St. Ignatius, Martin would be kept in perpetual darkness—or so the doctor hoped. Farrokh wanted it to be John D.’s decision whether to know his twin or not. But in the doctor’s office, and in the waiting room, it had been awkward to keep Martin Mills separated from Vinod and Deepa. Short of telling the dwarf and his wife that the missionary was Dhar’s twin, Dr. Daruwalla didn’t know what to do or how to keep them apart.

  It was upon Vinod’s initiative that Madhu and Ganesh were introduced to each other, as if a 13-year-old child prostitute and a 10-year-old beggar who’d allegedly been stepped on by an elephant would instantly have worlds in common. To Dr. Daruwalla’s surprise, the children appeared to hit it off. Madhu was excited to learn that the ugly problem with Ganesh’s eyes—if not the ugly foot—might soon be corrected. Ganesh imagined that he could do very well for himself in the circus, too.

  “With that foot?” Farrokh said. “What could you do in the circus with that foot?”

  “Well, there are things he can do with his arms,” Martin Mills replied. Dr. Daruwalla feared that the Jesuit had been schooled to refute any defeatist argument.

  “Vinod,” Farrokh said beseechingly. “Could the boy even be a roustabout with a limp like that? Do you see them letting him shovel the elephant shit? He could limp after the wheelbarrow, I suppose …”

  “Clowns are limping,” Vinod replied. “I am limping,” the dwarf added.

  “So you’re saying that he can limp and be laughed at, like a clown,” said Dr. Daruwalla.

  “There’s always working in the cook’s tent,” Vinod said stubbornly. “He could be kneading and rolling out the dough for the chapati. He could be chopping up the garlic and the onions for the dhal.”

  “But why would they take him, when there are countless boys with two good feet to do that?” Dr. Daruwalla asked. The doctor kept his eye on Bird-Shit Boy, knowing that his discouraging arguments might meet with the beggar’s disapproval and a corresponding measure of bird shit.

  “We could tell the circus that they had to take the two of them together!” Martin cried. “Madhu and Ganesh—we could say that they’re brother and sister, that one looks after the other!”

  “We could lie, in other words,” said Dr. Daruwalla.

  “For the good of these children, I could lie!” the missionary said.

  “I’ll bet you could!” Farrokh cried. He was frustrated that he couldn’t remember his father’s favorite condemnation of Martin Luther. What had old Lowji said about Luther’s justification for lying? Farrokh wished he could surprise the scholastic with what he recalled as a fitting quotation, but it was Martin Mills who surprised him.

  “You’re a Protestant, aren’t you?” the Jesuit asked the doctor. “You should be advised by what your old friend Luther said: ‘What wrong can there be in telling a downright good lie for a good cause …’ ”

  “Luther is not my old friend!” Dr. Daruwalla snapped. Martin Mills had left something out of the quotation, but Farrokh couldn’t remember what it was. What was missing was the part about this downright good lie being not only for a good cause but also “for the advancement of the Christian Church.” Farrokh knew he’d been fooled, but he lacked the necessary information to fight back; therefore, he chose to fight with Vinod instead.

  “And I suppose you’re telling me that Madhu here is another Pinky—is that it?” Farrokh asked the dwarf.

  This was a sore point between them. Because Vinod and Deepa had been Great Blue Nile performers, they were sensitive to Dr. Daruwalla’s preference for the performers of the Great Royal. There was a “Pinky” in the Great Royal Circus; she was a star. She’d been bought by the circus when she was only three or four. She’d been trained by Pratap Singh and his wife, Sumi. By the time Pinky was seven or eight, she could balance on her forehead at the top of a 10-foot-high bamboo pole; the pole was balanced on the forehead of a bigger girl, who stood on another girl’s shoulders … the act was that kind of impossible thing. It was an item that called for a girl whose sense of balance was one in a million. Although Deepa and Vinod had never performed for the Great Royal Circus, they knew which circuses had high standards—at least higher than the standards at the Great Blue Nile. Yet Deepa brought the doctor these wrecked little whores from Kamathipura and proclaimed them circus material; at best, they were Great Blue Nile material.

  “Can Madhu even stand on her head?” Farrokh asked Deepa. “Can she walk on her hands?”

  The dwarf’s wife suggested that the child could learn. After all, Deepa had been sold to the Great Blue Nile as a boneless girl, a future plastic lady; she had learned to be a trapeze artist, a flyer.

  “But you fell,” the doctor reminded Deepa.

  “She is merely falling into a net!” Vinod exclaimed.

  “There isn’t always a net,” Dr. Daruwalla said. “Did you land in a net, Vinod?” Farrokh asked the dwarf.

  “I am being fortunate in other ways,” Vinod replied. “Madhu won’t be working with clowns—or with elephants,” the dwarf added.

  But Farrokh had the feeling that Madhu was clumsy; she looked clumsy—not to mention the dubious coordination of the limping garlic-and-onion chopper, Madhu’s newly appointed brother. Farrokh felt certain that the elephant-footed boy would find another elephant to step on him. Dr. Daruwalla imagined that the Great Blue Nile might even conceive of a way to display the cripple’s mashed foot; Ganesh would become a minor sideshow event—the elephant boy, they would call him.

  That was when the missionary, on the evidence of less than one day’s experience in Bombay, had said to Dr. Daruwalla, “Whatever the dangers in the circus, the circus will be better for them than their present situation—we know the alternatives to their being in the circus.”

  Vinod had remarked to Inspector Dhar that he was looking surprisingly well recovered from his nightmarish experience on Falkland Road. (Farrokh thought the missionary looked awful.) To keep the dwarf and the missionary from talking further to each other, which Dr. Daruwalla knew would be confusing to them both, the doctor pulled Vinod aside and informed him that he should humor Dhar—“and by no means contradict him”—because the dwarf had correctly diagnosed the movie star. There had been brain damage; it would be delicate to assess how much.

  “Are you having to delouse him, too?”
Vinod had whispered to Farrokh. The dwarf was referring to the reason for the scholastic’s horrible haircut, but Dr. Daruwalla had solemnly agreed. Yes, there had been lice and brain damage.

  “Those are being filthy prostitutes!” Vinod had exclaimed.

  What a morning it had been already! Dr. Daruwalla thought. He’d finally gotten rid of Vinod and Deepa—by sending them with Madhu to Dr. Tata. Dr. Daruwalla had not expected Tata Two to send them back so soon. Farrokh barely had time to get rid of Martin Mills; the doctor wanted the scholastic out of the office and the waiting room before Vinod and Deepa and Madhu returned. What’s more, Dr. Daruwalla wanted time to be alone; the deputy commissioner expected the doctor to come to Crime Branch Headquarters. Doubtless the doctor’s viewing of the photographs of the murdered prostitutes would serve to undermine the collected optimism of the Jesuit, the dwarf and the dwarf’s wife. But before Farrokh could slip away to Crawford Market, where he was meeting Deputy Commissioner Patel, it was necessary for the doctor to create an errand for Martin Mills; if only for an hour or two, the missionary was in need of a mission.

  Another Warning

  The elephant boy was a problem. Ganesh had behaved badly in the exercise yard, where many of the postoperative patients among the crippled children were engaged in their various physical-therapy assignments. Ganesh took this opportunity to squirt several of the more defenseless children with the bird-shit syringe; when Ranjit took the syringe away from the aggressive boy, Ganesh bit Dr. Daruwalla’s faithful secretary on the hand. Ranjit was offended that he’d been bitten by a beggar; dealing with the unruly likes of the elephant-footed boy wasn’t a suitable use of the medical secretary’s training.