A Son of the Circus

by John Irving

  What a screenplay this was going to be—what an improvement on reality! That was when Dr. Daruwalla realized that nothing was preventing him from putting himself in the movie. He wouldn’t presume to make himself a hero—perhaps a minor character with admirable intentions would suffice. But how should he describe himself? Farrokh wondered. The screenwriter didn’t know he was handsome, and to speak of himself as “highly intelligent” sounded defensive; also, in movies, you could only describe how one appeared.

  There was no mirror in the doctor’s office and so he saw himself as he often looked in the full-length mirror in the foyer of the Duckworth Club, which doubtless conveyed to Dr. Daruwalla a Duckworthian sense of himself as an elegant gentleman. Such a gentlemanly doctor could play a small but pivotal role in the screenplay, for the character of the do-gooder missionary would naturally be obsessed with the idea that Ganesh’s limp could be fixed. Ideally, the character of Mr. Martin would bring the boy to be examined by none other than Dr. Daruwalla. The doctor would announce the hard truth: there were exercises that Ganesh could do—these would strengthen his legs, including the crippled leg—but the boy would always limp. (A few scenes of the crippled boy struggling bravely to perform these exercises would be excellent for audience sympathy, the screenwriter believed.)

  Like Rahul, Dr. Daruwalla enjoyed this phase of storytelling—namely, plot. The thrill of exploring one’s options! In the beginning, there were always so many.

  But euphoria, in the case of murder and in the case of writing, is short-lived. Farrokh began to worry that his masterpiece had already been reduced to a romantic comedy. The two kids escape in the right limo; the circus is their salvation. Suman gives up skywalking to marry a missionary, who gives up being a missionary. Even Inspector Dhar’s creator suspected that this ending was too happy. Surely something bad should happen, the screenwriter thought.

  Thus the doctor sat pondering in his office at the Hospital for Crippled Children, with his back to the exercise yard. In such a setting, one might imagine that Dr. Daruwalla must have felt ashamed of himself for trying to imagine some small tragedy.

  Not a Romantic Comedy

  Contrary to Rahul’s opinion, the police had not found the top half of the silver pen with India inscribed on it. Rahul’s money clip had no longer been in the bougainvillea when the deputy commissioner had examined Mr. Lal’s body. The silver was so shiny in the morning sun, it had caught a crow’s sharp eyes. It was the half-pen that led the crow to discover the corpse. The crow had begun by pecking out one of Mr. Lal’s eyes; the bird was busy at the open wound behind Mr. Lal’s ear and at the wound at Mr. Lal’s temple when the first of the vultures settled on the ninth green. The crow had stood its ground until more vultures came; after all, it had found the body first. And before taking flight, the crow had stolen the silver half-pen. Crows were always stealing shiny objects. That this crow had promptly lost its prize in the ceiling fan in the Duckworth Club dining room was not necessarily a comment on the bird’s overall intelligence, but the blade of the fan (at that time of the morning) had moved in and out of the sunlight; the fan had also caught the crow’s sharp eyes. It was a silly place for a crow to land, and a waiter had rudely shooed the shitting bird away.

  As for the shiny object that the crow had held so tenaciously in its beak, it had been left where it occasionally disturbed the mechanism of the ceiling fan. Dr. Daruwalla had observed one such disturbance; the doctor had also observed the landing of the shitting crow upon the fan. And so the top half of the silver pen existed only in the crowded memory of Dr. Daruwalla, and the doctor had already forgotten that the second Mrs. Dogar had reminded him of someone else—an old movie star. Farrokh had also forgotten the pain of his collision with Mrs. Dogar in the foyer of the Duckworth Club. That shiny something, which first Nancy and then Rahul and then the crow had lost, might now be lost forever, for its discovery lay within the limited abilities of Dr. Daruwalla. Frankly, both the memory and the powers of observation of a closet screenwriter are not the best. One might more sensibly rely on the mechanism of the ceiling fan to spit out the half-pen and present it, as a miracle, to Detective Patel (or to Nancy).

  An unlikely miracle of that coincidental kind was exactly what was needed to rescue Martin Mills, for the Mass had been celebrated too late to save the missionary from his worst memories. There were times when every church reminded Martin of Our Lady of Victories. When his mother was in Boston, Martin always went to Mass at Our Lady of Victories on Isabella Street; it was only an eight-minute walk from the Ritz. That Sunday morning of the long Thanksgiving weekend of his ninth-grade year, young Martin slipped out of the bedroom he shared with Arif Koma without waking the Turk up. In the living room of the two-bedroom suite at the hotel, Martin saw that the door to his mother’s bedroom was ajar; this struck the boy as indicative of Vera’s carelessness, and he was about to close the door—before he left the suite to go to Mass—when his mother spoke to him.

  “Is that you, Martin?” Vera asked. “Come kiss me good-morning.”

  Dutifully, although he was loath to see his mother in the strongly scented disarray of her boudoir, Martin went to her. To his surprise, both Vera and her bed were unrumpled; he had the impression that his mother had already bathed and brushed her teeth and combed her hair. The sheets weren’t in their usual knot of apparent bad dreams. Also, Vera’s nightgown was a pretty, almost girlish thing; it was revealing of her dramatic bosom but not sluttishly revealing, as was often the case. Martin cautiously kissed her cheek.

  “Off to church?” his mother asked him.

  “To Mass—yes,” Martin told her.

  “Is Arif still sleeping?” Vera inquired.

  “Yes, I think so,” Martin replied. Arif’s name on his mother’s lips reminded Martin of the painful embarrassment of the night before. “I don’t think you should ask Arif about such … personal things,” Martin said suddenly.

  “Personal? Do you mean sexual?” Vera asked her son. “Honestly, Martin, the poor boy has probably been dying to talk to someone about his terrible circumcision. Don’t be such a prude!”

  “I think Arif is a very private person,” Martin said. “Also,” he added stubbornly, “I think he might be a bit … disturbed.”

  Vera sat up in her bed with new interest. “Sexually disturbed?” she asked her son. “What gives you that idea?”

  It didn’t seem a betrayal, not at the time; Martin thought he was speaking to his mother in order to protect Arif. “He masturbates,” Martin said quietly.

  “Goodness, I should hope so!” Vera exclaimed. “I certainly hope that you do!”

  Martin wouldn’t take this bait, but he replied, “I mean that he masturbates a lot—almost every night.”

  “The poor boy!” Vera remarked. “But you sound so disapproving, Martin.”

  “I think it’s … excessive,” her son told her.

  “I think masturbation is quite healthy for boys your age. Have you discussed masturbation with your father?” Vera asked him.

  “Discussed” wasn’t the right word. Martin had listened to Danny go on and on in reassuring tones in regard to all the desires Danny presumed that Martin was experiencing—how such desires were perfectly natural … that was Danny’s theme.

  “Yes,” Martin told his mother. “Dad thinks masturbation is … normal.”

  “Well, there—you see?” Vera said sarcastically. “If your sainted father says it’s normal, I suppose we should all be trying it!”

  “I’ll be late for Mass,” Martin said.

  “Run along, then,” his mother replied. Martin was about to close the door to her bedroom behind him when his mother gave him a parting shot. “Personally, dear, I think masturbation would be better for you than Mass. And please leave the door open—I like it that way.” Martin remembered to take the room key in case Arif was still sleeping when he came back from Mass—in case his mother was in the bathroom or talking on the telephone.

  When Mass was over, he
looked briefly at a window display of men’s suits in a Brooks Brothers store; the mannequins wore Christmas-tree neckties, but Martin was struck by the smoothness of the mannequins’ skin—it reminded him of Arif’s perfect complexion. Except for his pausing at this window, Martin came straight back to the suite at the Ritz. When he unlocked the door, he was happy he’d brought the room key because he thought his mother was talking on the phone; it was a one-sided conversation—all Vera. But then the awful words themselves were clear to him.

  “I’m going to make you squirt again,” his mother was saying. “I absolutely know you can squirt again—I can feel you. You’re going to squirt again soon—aren’t you? Aren’t you?” The door to his mother’s bedroom was still open—a little wider open than the way she liked it—and Martin Mills could see her naked back, her naked hips and the crack in her shapely ass. She was riding Arif Koma, who lay wordlessly under her; Martin was grateful that he couldn’t see his roommate’s face.

  He quietly let himself out of the suite as his mother continued to urge Arif to squirt. On the short walk back to Isabella Street, Martin wondered if it had been his own revelation of Arif’s penchant for masturbation that had given Vera the idea; probably his mother had already had the seduction in mind, but the masturbation story must have provided her with greater incentive.

  Martin Mills had sat as stupefied in Our Lady of Victories Church as he’d sat waiting for the Mass at St. Ignatius. Brother Gabriel was worried about him. First the late-night-prayers—“I’ll take the turkey, I’ll take the turkey”—and then, even after Mass was over, the missionary knelt on the kneeling pad as if he were waiting for the next Mass. That was exactly what he’d done in Our Lady of Victories on Isabella Street; he’d waited for the next Mass, as if one Mass hadn’t been enough.

  What also troubled Brother Gabriel were the bloodstains on the missionary’s balled-up fists. Brother Gabriel couldn’t have known about Martin’s nose, for the wound had stopped bleeding and was almost entirely concealed by a small scab on one nostril; but Brother Gabriel wondered about the bloody socks that Martin Mills clutched in his hands. The blood had dried between his knuckles and under his nails, and Brother Gabriel feared that the source of the bleeding might have been the missionary’s palms. That’s all we need to make our jubilee year a success, Brother Gabriel thought—an outbreak of stigmata!

  But later, when Martin attended the morning classes, he seemed back on track, so to speak; he was lively with the students, humble with the other teachers—although, as a teacher, he’d had more experience than many of the staff at St. Ignatius School. Watching the new scholastic interact with both the pupils and the staff, the Father Rector suspended his earlier anxieties that the American might be a crazed zealot. And Father Cecil found Martin Mills to be every bit as charming and dedicated as he’d hoped.

  Brother Gabriel kept silent about the turkey prayer and the bloody socks; but he noted the haunted, faraway smile that occasionally stole over the scholastic’s repertoire of otherwise earnest expressions. Martin seemed to be struck by some remembrance, possibly inspired by a face among the upper-school boys, as if the smooth, dark skin of one of the 15-year-olds had called to mind someone he’d once known … or so Brother Gabriel guessed. It was an innocent, friendly smile—almost too friendly, Brother Gabriel thought.

  But Martin Mills was just remembering. Back in school, at Fessenden, after the long Thanksgiving weekend, he’d waited until the lights were out before saying what he wanted to say.

  “Fucker,” Martin quietly said.

  “What’s that?” Arif asked him.

  “I said ‘fucker,’ as in motherfucker,” Martin said.

  “Is this a game?” Arif inquired after too long a pause.

  “You know what I mean, you motherfucker,” said Martin Mills.

  After another long pause, Arif said, “She made me do it—sort of.”

  “You’ll probably get a disease,” Martin told his roommate. Martin didn’t really mean it, nor would he have said it had it occurred to him that Arif might have fallen in love with Vera. He was surprised when Arif pounced on him in the dark and began to hit his face.

  “Don’t ever say that … about your mother!” the Turk cried. “Not about your mother! She’s beautiful!”

  Mr. Weems, the dorm master, broke up the fight; neither of the boys was hurt—neither of them knew how to fight. Mr. Weems was kindly; with rougher boys, he was entirely ineffectual. He was a music teacher, and—with hindsight, this is easy to say—most likely a homosexual, but no one thought of him that way (except a few of the brassier faculty wives, women of the type who thought that any unmarried man over 30 was a queer). Mr. Weems was well liked by the boys, despite his taking no part in the school’s prevailing athleticism. In his report to the Discipline Committee, the dorm master would dismiss the altercation between Martin and Arif as a “spat.” This unfortunate choice of a word would have grave consequences.

  Later, when Arif Koma was diagnosed as suffering from gonorrhea—and when he wouldn’t tell the school doctor where he might have acquired it—the suspicion fell on Martin Mills. That word “spat” connoted a lover’s quarrel—at least to the more manly members of the Discipline Committee. Mr. Weems was instructed to ask the boys if they were homosexuals, if they’d been doing it. The dorm master was more sympathetic to the notion that Arif and Martin might be “doing it” than any of the faculty jocks would have been.

  “If you boys are lovers, then you should see the doctor, too, Martin,” Mr. Weems explained.

  “Tell him!” Martin said to Arif.

  “We’re not lovers,” Arif said.

  “That’s right—we’re not lovers,” Martin repeated. “But go on—tell him. I dare you,” Martin said to Arif.

  “Tell me what?” the dorm master asked.

  “He hates his mother,” Arif explained to Mr. Weems. Mr. Weems had met Vera; he could understand. “He’s going to tell you that I got the disease from his mother—that’s how much he hates her.”

  “He fucked my mother—or, rather, she fucked him,” Martin told Mr. Weems.

  “You see what I mean?” Arif Koma said.

  At most private schools, the faculty is composed of truly saintly people and incompetent ogres. Martin and Arif were fortunate that their dorm master was a teacher of the saintly category; yet Mr. Weems was so well-meaning, he was perhaps more blind to depravity than a normal person.

  “Please, Martin,” the dorm master said. “A sexually transmitted disease, especially at an all-boys’ school, is not something to lie about. Whatever your feelings are for your mother, what we hope to learn here is the truth—not to punish anyone, but only so that we may advise you. How can we instruct you, how can we tell you what we think you should do, if you won’t tell us the truth?”

  “My mother fucked him when she thought I was at Mass,” Martin told Mr. Weems. Mr. Weems shut his eyes and smiled; he did this when he was counting, which he did to summon patience.

  “I was trying to protect you, Martin,” Arif Koma said, “but I can see it’s no use.”

  “Boys, please … one of you is lying,” the dorm master said.

  “Okay—so we tell him,” Arif said to Martin. “What do you say?”

  “Okay,” Martin replied. He knew that he liked Arif; for three years, Arif had been his only friend. If Arif wanted to say they’d been lovers, why not go along with it? There was no one else Martin Mills wanted to please as much as he wanted to please Arif. “Okay,” Martin repeated.

  “Okay what?” Mr. Weems asked.

  “Okay, we’re lovers,” said Martin Mills.

  “I don’t know why he doesn’t have the disease,” Arif explained. “He should have it. Maybe he’s immune.”

  “Are we going to get thrown out of school?” Martin asked the dorm master. He hoped so. It might teach his mother something, Martin thought; at 15, he still thought Vera was educable.

  “All we did was try it,” Arif said. “We didn’t li
ke it.”

  “We don’t do it anymore,” Martin added. This was the first and last time that he’d lied; it made him feel giddy—it was almost as if he were drunk.

  “But one of you must have caught this disease from someone else,” Mr. Weems reasoned. “I mean, it couldn’t have originated here, with you … not if each of you has had no other sexual contact.”

  Martin Mills knew that Arif Koma had been phoning Vera and that she wouldn’t talk to the Turk; Martin knew that Arif had written to Vera, too—and that she’d not written the boy back. But it was only now that Martin realized how far his friend would go to protect Vera. He must have been absolutely gaga about her.

  “I paid a prostitute. I caught this disease from a whore,” Arif told Mr. Weems.

  “Where would you ever see a whore, Arif?” the dorm master asked.

  “You don’t know Boston?” Arif Koma asked him. “I stayed with Martin and his mother at the Ritz. When they were asleep, I left the hotel. I asked the doorman to get me a taxi. I asked the taxi driver to find me a hooker. That’s the way you do it in New York, too,” Arif explained. “Or at least that’s the only way I know how to do it.”

  And so Arif Koma was booted from the Fessenden School for catching a venereal disease from a whore. There was a statute in the school’s book of rules, something pertaining to morally reprehensible behavior with women or girls being punishable by dismissal; under this rubric, the Discipline Committee (despite Mr. Weems’s protestations) expelled Arif. It was judged that having sex with a prostitute was not a gray area when it came to “morally reprehensible behavior with women or girls.”

  As for Martin, Mr. Weems also pleaded on his behalf. His homosexual encounter was a single episode of sexual experimentation; the incident should be forgotten. But the Discipline Committee insisted that Vera and Danny should know. Vera’s first response was to reiterate that masturbation was preferable for boys Martin’s age. All Martin said to his mother-naturally, not in Danny’s hearing—was, “Arif Koma has gonorrhea and so do you.”