by John Irving
There was barely time to talk to Arif before he was sent home. The last thing Martin said to the Turk was, “Don’t hurt yourself trying to protect my mother.”
“But I also like your father,” Arif explained. Once again, Vera had gotten away with murder because no one wanted to hurt Danny.
Arif’s suicide was the bigger shock. The note to Martin didn’t arrive in his Fessenden mailbox until two days after Arif had jumped out of the 10th-floor window of his parents’ apartment on Park Avenue. Dishonored my family—that was all the note said. Martin recalled that it was for the purpose of not dishonoring his parents, or reflecting ill on his family’s reputation, that Arif hadn’t shed a tear at his own circumcision.
There was no blaming Vera for it. The first time she was alone with Martin, Vera said, “Don’t try to tell me that it’s my fault, dear. You told me he was disturbed—sexually disturbed. You said so yourself. Besides, you don’t want to do anything that would hurt your father, do you?”
Actually, it had hurt Danny quite a bit to hear that his son had dabbled in a homosexual experience, even if it was only a single episode. Martin assured his father that he’d only tried it, and that he hadn’t liked it. Still, Martin realized that this was the sole impression Danny had of his son’s sexuality; he’d screwed his Turkish roommate when both boys were only 15 years old. It didn’t occur to Martin Mills that the truth about his sexuality might have been even more painful for Danny—namely, that his son was a 39-year-old virgin who’d never even masturbated. Nor had it occurred to Martin that he might actually have been in love with Arif Koma; certainly this was more plausible, not to mention more justifiable, than Arif falling in love with Vera.
Now here was Dr. Daruwalla “inventing” a missionary called Mr. Martin. The screenwriter knew that he needed to provide motives for Mr. Martin’s decision to become a priest; even in a movie, Farrokh felt that a vow of chastity required some explanation. Having met Vera, the screenwriter should have guessed that the real missionary’s motives in taking a vow of chastity and becoming a priest were not made of the material usually found in a romantic comedy.
A Make-Believe Death; the Real Children
The screenwriter had the good sense to know he was stalling. The problem was, who was going to die? In real life, it was the doctor’s hope that Madhu and Ganesh would be saved by the circus. In the screenplay, it simply wasn’t realistic for both children to live happily ever after. The more believable story was that only one of them would be a survivor. Pinky was the acrobat, the star. The crippled Ganesh could hope for no role more important than that of a cook’s helper—the circus’s servant boy, the circus’s sweeper. The circus would surely start him out at the bottom; he’d be scooping up the elephant shit and washing the lion piss off the stools. From such a shit-and-piss beginning, Ganesh would be fortunate to be promoted to the cook’s tent; cooking food, or serving it, would represent a form of graduation—probably the best that the crippled boy could hope for. This was true for the real Ganesh and for the character in the screenplay—this was realism, Dr. Daruwalla believed.
It should be Pinky who dies, the screenwriter decided. The only reason that the circus accepted the crippled brother in the first place was that they wanted the talented sister; the brother was part of the deal. That was the premise of the story. But if Pinky was to die, why wouldn’t the circus get rid of Ganesh? What use does the circus have for a cripple? Now this is a better story, Farrokh imagined. The burden of performance is suddenly shifted to the cripple; Ganesh must come up with something to do so that the circus will find him worth keeping. A boy without a limp can shovel the elephant shit faster.
But it was the bane of the screenwriter to always be rushing ahead of himself. Before he found something for Ganesh to do at the circus, wasn’t it necessary to determine how Pinky would die? Well, she’s an acrobat—she could always fall, the doctor prematurely decided. Maybe she’s trying to learn Suman’s Skywalk item and she simply falls. But, realistically, Pinky wouldn’t be learning to skywalk from the roof of the main tent. At the Great Royal, Pratap Singh always taught the Skywalk from the roof of the family troupe tent; the rope rungs of the ladder weren’t 80 feet in the air—the upside-down skywalker wasn’t more than a foot or two above the ground. If Farrokh wanted to use the real Great Royal Circus, which he did—and if he wanted to use his actual favorite performers (Pinky and Suman and Pratap, principally)—then the screenwriter could not have a death attributed to carelessness or to some cheap accident. Farrokh meant only to praise the Great Royal and circus life—not to condemn them. No; Pinky’s death couldn’t be the responsibility of the circus—that wasn’t the right story.
That was when Dr. Daruwalla thought of Mr. Garg, the real-life Acid Man. After all, Acid Man was already an established villain in the screenplay; why not use him? (The threat of a lawsuit seemed remote in these moments when sheer invention struck.) Acid Man could be so enthralled by Pinky’s loveliness and ability, he simply can’t bear her rising stardom—or that she’s escaped disfigurement of his special kind. Having lost Pinky to the Great Royal, the fiend performs acts of sabotage at the circus. One of the lion cubs is burned with acid, or maybe one of the dwarf clowns. Poor Pinky is killed by a lion that escapes its cage because Acid Man has burned off the lock.
Great stuff! the screenwriter thought. The irony momentarily eluded Dr. Daruwalla: here he was, plotting the death of his fictional Pinky while at the same time he awaited the real results of Madhu’s HIV test. But Farrokh had once more got ahead of himself; he was trying to imagine what Ganesh could do to make himself irreplaceable to the circus. The boy is a lowly cripple, a mere beggar; he’s clumsy, he’ll always limp—the only stunt he can perform is the bird-shit trick. (The screenwriter made a hasty note to put the bird-shit trick in the screenplay; more comic relief was necessary, now that Pinky was going to be killed by a lion.)
At that moment, Ranjit put through the phone call from Dr. Tata. Farrokh’s forward momentum, his entire train of thought, was interrupted. Farrokh was even more annoyed by the nature of Dr. Tata’s information.
“Oh, dear—dear old Dad,” said Tata Two. “I’m rather afraid he blew this one!”
It wouldn’t have surprised Dr. Daruwalla to learn that the senior Dr. Tata had blown many a diagnosis; after all, the old fool had not known (until the delivery) that Vera was giving birth to twins. What is it this time? Farrokh was tempted to ask. But he more politely inquired, “So he did see Rahul?”
“You bet he did!” said Dr. Tata. “It must have been an exciting examination—Promila claimed that the boy had proved himself to be impotent in an alleged single episode with a prostitute! But I suspect the diagnosis was a bit premature.”
“What was the diagnosis?” Dr. Daruwalla asked.
“Eunuchoidism!” cried Tata Two. “Nowadays, we would use the term hypogonadism. But, call it what you will, this is merely a symptom or syndrome with several possible causes. Rather like the syndrome of headache or dizziness …”
“Yes, yes,” Dr. Daruwalla said impatiently. He could tell that Tata Two had been doing a little research, or perhaps he’d been talking to a better OB/GYN; most OB/GYNs tended to know more about this sort of thing than other doctors—because they were well versed in hormones, Farrokh supposed. “What conditions might cause you to suspect hypogonadism?” Dr. Daruwalla asked Tata Two.
“If I saw a boy or a man with long limbs and an arm span—when he stretches his arms out—that is two inches more than his height. Also, his pubis-to-floor height being greater than his pubis-to-crown height,” Dr. Tata replied. He must be reading from a book, Dr. Daruwalla thought. “And if this boy or man also had absent secondary sexual characteristics …” Tata Two continued, “… you know—voice, muscular development, phallic development, extension of pubic hair up the belly in a diamond pattern …”
“But how could you assess such secondary sexual characteristics as being incomplete, unless the boy is over fifteen or so?”
Dr. Daruwalla asked.
“Well, that’s the problem—you really couldn’t,” said Tata Two.
“Rahul was only twelve or thirteen in 1949!” Farrokh cried. It was preposterous that Promila had pronounced the boy impotent because he hadn’t been able to get an erection, or keep an erection, with a prostitute; it was more preposterous that old Dr. Tata had believed her!
“Well, that’s what I mean by the diagnosis being a bit premature,” Tata Two admitted. “The process of maturation begins at eleven or twelve … is heralded by the hardening of the testes and is usually completed within five years—although some things, like the growth of chest hair, may take another decade.” With the word “heralded,” Dr. Daruwalla was certain that Tata Two was reading from a book.
“In short, you mean that Rahul’s puberty might simply have been delayed. It was entirely too soon to call him a kind of eunuch!” Farrokh cried.
“Well, now, to say ‘eunuchoidism’ isn’t really calling someone ‘a kind of eunuch,’ ” Dr. Tata explained.
“To a twelve- or thirteen-year-old boy, this diagnosis would have come at an impressionable age—wouldn’t you agree?” asked Dr. Daruwalla.
“That’s true,” Tata Two replied. “It might be a more appropriate diagnosis in the case of an eighteen-year-old with a microphallus.”
“Jesus Christ,” said Dr. Daruwalla.
“Well, we must remember that all the Rais were rather strange,” Dr. Tata reasoned.
“Just the sort of family to make the most out of a misdiagnosis,” Dr. Daruwalla remarked.
“I wouldn’t call it a ‘misdiagnosis’—just a bit early to know for sure,” Tata Two said defensively. It was understandable why Dr. Tata then wanted to change the subject. “Oh, I have an answer for you about the girl. Mr. Subhash told me you wanted a rush job.” Actually, Mr. Subhash had told Dr. Daruwalla that the HIV test would take at least two days—more, if the first phase was positive. “Anyway, she’s okay. The test was negative,” Dr. Tata said.
“That was fast,” Dr. Daruwalla replied. “This is the girl who’s named Madhu? Her name is Madhu?”
“Yes, yes,” said Dr. Tata; it was his turn to sound impatient. “I’m looking at the results! The name is Madhu. The test was negative. Mr. Subhash just put the file on my desk.”
How old is Mr. Subhash? Dr. Daruwalla wanted to ask, but he was annoyed enough for one conversation; at least he could get the girl out of town. He thanked Tata Two, then hung up the phone. He wanted to go back to his screenplay, but first he called Ranjit into his office and asked the secretary to notify Mr. Garg that Madhu was not HIV-positive; the doctor himself didn’t want to give Garg the satisfaction.
“That was fast,” Ranjit said; but the screenplay was still occupying the majority of Dr. Daruwalla’s thoughts. At the moment, he was giving more of his attention to those children than to the children in his charge.
The doctor did remember to ask Ranjit to contact the dwarf’s wife; Deepa should be told that Madhu and Ganesh were coming to the circus—and that Dr. Daruwalla needed to know where (in all of Gujarat) the circus was. Farrokh should also have called the new missionary—to forewarn the Jesuit that they would be spending the weekend traveling to the circus with the children—but the screenplay beckoned to him; the fictional Mr. Martin was more compelling to Dr. Daruwalla than Martin Mills.
Unfortunately, the more vividly the screenwriter recalled and described the acts of the Great Royal Circus, the more he dreaded the disappointment he was certain he’d feel when he and Martin Mills delivered the real children to the Great Blue Nile.
20
THE BRIBE
Time to Slip Away
As for Martin Mills and how he compared to the fictional Mr. Martin, Farrokh felt only the slightest guilt; the screenwriter suspected he’d created a lightweight fool out of a heavyweight lunatic, but this was only the faintest suspicion. In the screenplay, the first time the missionary visits the children in the circus, he slips and falls in elephant shit. It hadn’t yet crossed Dr. Daruwalla’s mind that the real missionary had possibly stepped into a worse mess than elephant shit.
As for Elephant Shit, it wouldn’t work as a title. Farrokh had written it in the margin of the page where the phrase first appeared, but now he crossed this out. A film of that title would be banned in India. Besides, who would want to go to a movie called Elephant Shit? People wouldn’t bring their children, and it was a movie for children, Dr. Daruwalla hoped—if it was for anybody, he thought darkly. Thus did self-doubt, the screenwriter’s old enemy, assail him; he seemed to welcome it as a friend.
The screenwriter baited himself with other bad-title possibilities. Limo Roulette was the arty choice. Farrokh worried that dwarfs the world over would be offended by the film, no matter what the title was. In his closet career as a screenwriter, Dr. Daruwalla had managed to offend almost everyone else. Rather than worry about offending dwarfs, the doctor took up the even smaller task of wondering which movie magazine would be the first to misunderstand and mock his efforts. The two he detested most were Stardust and Cine Blitz. He thought they were the most scandalous and libelous of the film-gossip press.
The mere thought of these media goons, this journalistic slime, set Farrokh to worrying about the press conference at which he intended to announce an end to Inspector Dhar. It occurred to Farrokh that if he called for a press conference, no one would attend; the screenwriter would have to ask Dhar to call for such a conference, and Dhar would have to be there—otherwise, it would look like a hoax. Worse, Dhar himself would have to do the talking; after all, he was the movie star. The trashy journalists would be less interested in Dr. Daruwalla’s motives for perpetrating this fraud than in the reasons for Dhar’s complicity. Why had Dhar gone along with the fiction that the actor was his own creator? As always, even at such a revealing press conference as Farrokh had imagined, Dhar would deliver the lines that the screenwriter had written.
The truth would simply be another acting job; moreover, the most important truth would never be told—that it was out of love for John D. that Dr. Daruwalla had invented Inspector Dhar. Such a truth would be wasted on the media sleaze. Farrokh knew that he wouldn’t want to read what mockery would be made of such a love, especially in Stardust or Cine Blitz.
Dhar’s last press conference had been deliberately conducted as a farce. Dhar had chosen the swimming pool at the Taj as the site, for he said he enjoyed the bewildered gaping of foreigners. The journalists were instantly irritated because they’d expected a more intimate environment. “Are you trying to emphasize that you are a foreigner, that you aren’t really Indian at all?” That had been the first question; Dhar had responded by diving into the pool. He’d meant to splash the photographers; that had been no accident. He’d answered only what he wanted to and ignored the rest. It was an interview punctuated by Dhar repeatedly diving into the pool. The journalists said insulting things about him while he was underwater.
Farrokh presumed that John D. would be happy to be free of the role of Inspector Dhar; the actor had enough money, and he clearly preferred his Swiss life. Yet Dr. Daruwalla suspected that, deep down, Dhar had cherished the loathing he’d inspired among the media scum; earning the hatred of the cinema-gossip journalists might have been John D.’s best performance. With that in mind, Farrokh thought he knew what John D. would prefer: no press conference, no announcement. “Let them wonder,” Dhar would say—Dhar had often said.
There was another line that the screenwriter remembered; after all, he’d not only written it—it was repeated in every Inspector Dhar movie near the end of the story. There was always the temptation for Dhar to do something more—to seduce one more woman, to gun down one more villain—but Inspector Dhar knew when to stop. He knew when the action was over. Sometimes to a scheming bartender, sometimes to a fellow policeman of a generally dissatisfied nature, sometimes to a pretty woman who’d been waiting impatiently to make love to him, Inspector Dhar would say, “Time to slip away.�
�� Then he would.
In this case, facing the facts—that he wanted to call an end to Inspector Dhar and that he wanted to finally leave Bombay—Farrokh knew what John D.’s advice would be. “Time to slip away,” Inspector Dhar would say.
Bedbugs Ahead
In the old days, before the doctors’ offices and the examining rooms of the Hospital for Crippled Children were air-conditioned, there’d been a ceiling fan over the desk where Dr. Daruwalla now sat thinking, and the window to the exercise yard was always open. Nowadays, with the window closed and the hum of the air-conditioning a reassuring constant, Farrokh was cut off from the sound of children crying in the exercise yard. When the doctor walked through the yard, or when he was called to observe the progress of one of his postoperative patients in physical therapy, the crying children did not greatly upset him. Farrokh associated some pain with recovery; a joint, after surgery—especially after surgery—had to be moved. But in addition to the cries of pain, there were the whines that children made in anticipation of their pain, and this piteous mewling affected the doctor strongly.
Farrokh turned and faced the closed window with its view of the exercise yard; from the soundless expressions of the children, the doctor could still discern the difference between those children who were in pain and those who were pitifully frightened of the pain they expected. Soundlessly, the therapists were coaxing the children to move; there was the recent hip replacement being told to stand up, there was the new knee being asked to step forward—and the first rotation of the new elbow. The landscape of the exercise yard was timeless to Dr. Daruwalla, who reflected that his ability to hear that which was soundless was the only measure of his humanity that he was certain of. Even with the air-conditioning on, even with the window closed, Dr. Daruwalla could hear the whimpering. Time to slip away, he thought.