A Son of the Circus

by John Irving

  “Come on—you must tell me,” the missionary said. “I’m dying to hear the story of your conversion. Naturally, the Father Rector has told me about it.”

  Naturally, Dr. Daruwalla thought; Father Julian had doubtless made the doctor come off as a deluded, false convert. Then, suddenly, to Farrokh’s surprise, the missionary produced a knife! It was one of those Swiss Army knives that Dhar liked so much—a kind of toolbox unto itself. With something that resembled a leather-punch, the Jesuit was boring a hole into the leg of the chair. The rotting wood fell on the table.

  “It just needs a new screw hole,” Martin explained. “I can’t believe no one knew how to fix it.”

  “I suppose people just sat in the other chairs,” Dr. Daruwalla suggested. While the scholastic wrestled with the chair leg, the nasty little tool on the knife suddenly snapped closed, neatly removing a hunk of Martin’s index finger. The Jesuit bled profusely onto a pad of notepaper.

  “Now, look, you’ve cut yourself …” Dr. Daruwalla began.

  “It’s nothing,” the zealot said, but it was evident that the chair was beginning to make the man of God angry. “I want to hear your story. Come on. I know how it starts … you’re in Goa, aren’t you? You’ve just gone to visit the sainted remains of our Francis Xavier … what’s left of him. And you go to sleep thinking of that pilgrim who bit off St. Francis’s toe.”

  “I went to sleep thinking of nothing at all!” Farrokh insisted, his voice rising.

  “Ssshhh! This is a library,” the missionary reminded Dr. Daruwalla.

  “I know it’s a library!” the doctor cried—too loudly, for they weren’t alone. At first unseen but now emerging from a pile of manuscripts was an old man who’d been sleeping in a corner chair; it was another chair on castors, for it wheeled their way. Its disagreeable rider, who’d been roused from the depths of whatever sleep his reading material had sunk him into, was wearing a Nehru jacket, which (like his hands) was gray from transmitted newsprint.

  “Ssshhh!” the old reader said. Then he wheeled back into his corner of the room.

  “Maybe we should find another place to discuss my conversion,” Farrokh whispered to Martin Mills.

  “I’m going to fix this chair,” the Jesuit replied. Now bleeding onto the chair and the table and the pad of notepaper, Martin Mills jammed the rebellious castor into the inverted chair leg; with another dangerous-looking tool, a stubby screwdriver, he struggled to affix the castor to the chair. “So … you went to sleep … your mind an absolute blank, or so you’re telling me. And then what?”

  “I dreamt I was St. Francis’s corpse …” Dr. Daruwalla began.

  “Body dreams, very common,” the zealot whispered.

  “Ssshhh!” said the old man in the Nehru jacket, from the corner.

  “I dreamt that the crazed pilgrim was biting off my toe!” Farrokh hissed.

  “You felt this?” Martin asked.

  “Of course I felt it!” hissed the doctor.

  “But corpses don’t feel, do they?” the scholastic said. “Oh, well … so you felt the bite, and then?”

  “When I woke up, my toe was throbbing. I couldn’t stand on that foot, much less walk! And there were bite marks—not broken skin, mind you, but actual teeth marks! Those marks were real! The bite was real!” Farrokh insisted.

  “Of course it was real,” the missionary said. “Something real bit you. What could it have been?”

  “I was on a balcony—I was in the air!” Farrokh whispered hoarsely.

  “Try to keep it down,” the Jesuit whispered. “Are you telling me that this balcony was utterly unapproachable?”

  “Through locked doors … where my wife and children were asleep …” Farrokh began.

  “Ah, the children!” Martin Mills cried out. “How old were they?”

  “I wasn’t bitten by my own children!” Dr. Daruwalla hissed.

  “Children do bite, from time to time—or as a prank,” the missionary replied. “I’ve heard that children go through actual biting ages—when they’re especially prone to bite.”

  “I suppose my wife could have been hungry, too,” Farrokh said sarcastically.

  “There were no trees around the balcony?” Martin Mills asked; he was now both bleeding and sweating over the stubborn chair.

  “I see it coming,” Dr. Daruwalla said. “Father Julian’s monkey theory. Biting apes, swinging from vines—is that what you think?”

  “The point is, you were really bitten, weren’t you?” the Jesuit asked him. “People get so confused about miracles. The miracle wasn’t that something bit you. The miracle is that you believe! Your faith is the miracle. It hardly matters that it was something … common that triggered it.”

  “What happened to my toe wasn’t common!” the doctor cried.

  The old reader in the Nehru jacket shot out of his corner on his chair on castors. “Ssshhh!” the old man hissed.

  “Are you trying to read or trying to sleep?” the doctor shouted at the old gentleman.

  “Come on—you’re disturbing him. He was here first,” Martin Mills told Dr. Daruwalla. “Look!” the scholastic said to the old man, as if the angry reader were a child. “See this chair? I’ve fixed it. Want to try it?” The missionary set the chair on all four castors and rolled it back and forth. The gentleman in the Nehru jacket eyed the zealot warily.

  “He has his own chair, for God’s sake,” Farrokh said.

  “Come on—give it a try!” the missionary urged the old reader.

  “I have to find a telephone,” Dr. Daruwalla pleaded with the zealot. “I should make a reservation for lunch. And we should stay with the children—they’re probably bored.” But, to his dismay, the doctor saw that Martin Mills was staring up at the ceiling fan; the tangled string had caught the handyman’s eye.

  “That string is annoying—if you’re trying to read,” the scholastic said. He climbed up on the oval table, which accepted his weight reluctantly.

  “You’ll break the table,” the doctor warned him.

  “I won’t break the table—I’m thinking of fixing the fan,” Martin Mills replied. Slowly and awkwardly, the Jesuit went from kneeling to standing.

  “I can see what you’re thinking—you’re crazy!” Dr. Daruwalla said.

  “Come on—you’re just angry about your miracle,” the missionary said. “I’m not trying to take your miracle away from you. I’m only trying to make you see the real miracle. It is simply that you believe—not the silly thing that made you believe. The biting was only a vehicle.”

  “The biting was the miracle!” Dr. Daruwalla cried.

  “No, no—that’s where you’re wrong,” Martin Mills managed to say, just before the table collapsed under him. Falling, he reached for—and fortunately missed—the fan. The gentleman in the Nehru jacket was the most astonished; when Martin Mills fell, the old reader was cautiously trying out the newly repaired chair. The collapse of the table and the missionary’s cry of alarm sent the old man scrambling. The chair leg with the freshly bored hole rejected the castor. While both the old reader and the Jesuit lay on the floor, Dr. Daruwalla was left to calm down the outraged library staffer who’d shuffled into the reading room in his slippers.

  “We were just leaving,” Dr. Daruwalla told the librarian. “It’s too noisy here to concentrate on anything at all!”

  Sweating and bleeding and limping, the missionary followed Farrokh down the grand staircase, under the frowning statues. To relax himself, Dr. Daruwalla was chanting, “Life imitates art. Life imitates art.”

  “What’s that you say?” asked Martin Mills.

  “Ssshhh!” the doctor told him. “This is a library.”

  “Don’t be angry about your miracle,” the zealot said.

  “It was long ago. I don’t think I believe in anything anymore,” Farrokh replied.

  “Don’t say that!” the missionary cried.

  “Ssshhh!” Farrokh whispered to him.

  “I know, I know,” said Mar
tin Mills. “This is a library.”

  It was almost noon. Outside, in the glaring sunlight, they stared into the street without seeing the taxi that was parked at the curb. Vinod had to walk up to them; the dwarf led them to the car as if they were blind. Inside the Ambassador, the children were crying. They were sure that the circus was a myth or a hoax.

  “No, no—it’s real,” Dr. Daruwalla assured them. “We’re going there, we really are—it’s just that the plane is delayed.” But what did Madhu or Ganesh know about airplanes? The doctor assumed that they’d never flown; flying would be another terror for them. And when the children saw that Martin Mills was bleeding, they were worried that there’d been some violence. “Only to a chair,” Farrokh said. He was angry at himself, for in the confusion he’d forgotten to reserve his favorite table in the Ladies’ Garden. He knew that Mr. Sethna would find a way to abuse him for this oversight.

  A Misunderstanding at the Urinal

  As punishment, Mr. Sethna had given the doctor’s table to Mr. and Mrs. Kohinoor and Mrs. Kohinoor’s noisy, unmarried sister. The latter woman was so shrill, not even the bower of flowers in the Ladies’ Garden could absorb her whinnies or brays. Probably on purpose, Mr. Sethna had seated Dr. Daruwalla’s party at a table in a neglected corner of the garden, where the waiters either ignored you or failed to see you from their stations in the dining room. A torn vine of the bougainvillea hung down from the bower and brushed the back of Dr. Daruwalla’s neck like a claw. The good news was it wasn’t Chinese Day. Madhu and Ganesh ordered vegetarian kabobs; the vegetables were broiled or grilled on skewers. It was a dish that children sometimes ate with their fingers. While the doctor hoped that Madhu’s and Ganesh’s unfamiliarity with knives and forks would go unnoticed, Mr. Sethna speculated on whose children they were.

  The old steward observed that the cripple had kicked his one sandal off; the calluses on the sole of the boy’s good foot were as thick as a beggar’s. The foot the elephant had stepped on was still concealed by the sock, which was already gray-brown, and it didn’t fool Mr. Sethna, who could tell that the hidden foot was oddly flattened—the boy had limped on his heel. On the ball of the bad foot, the sock was still mostly white.

  As for the girl, the steward detected something lascivious in her posture; furthermore, Mr. Sethna concluded that Madhu had never been in a restaurant before—she stared too openly at the waiters. Dr. Daruwalla’s grandchildren would have been better behaved than this; and although Inspector Dhar had proclaimed to the press that he would sire only Indian babies, these children bore no resemblance to the famous actor.

  As for the actor, he looked awful, Mr. Sethna thought. Possibly he’d forgotten to wear his makeup. Inspector Dhar looked pale and in need of sleep; his gaudy shirt was outrageous, there was blood on his pants and overnight his physique had deteriorated—he must be suffering from acute diarrhea, the old steward determined. How else does one manage to lose 15 to 20 pounds in a day? And had the actor’s head been shaved by muggers, or was his hair falling out? On second thought, Mr. Sethna suspected that Dhar was the victim of a sexually transmitted disease. In a sick culture, where movie actors were revered as demigods, a lifestyle contagion was to be expected. That will bring the bastard down to earth, Mr. Sethna thought. Maybe Inspector Dhar has AIDS! The old steward was sorely tempted to place an anonymous phone call to Stardust or Cine Blitz; surely either of these film-gossip magazines would be intrigued by such a rumor.

  “I wouldn’t marry him if he owned the Queen’s Necklace and he offered me half !” cried Mrs. Kohinoor’s unmarried sister. “I wouldn’t marry him if he gave me all of London!”

  If you were in London, I could still hear you, thought Dr. Daruwalla. He picked at his pomfret; the fish at the Duckworth Club was unfailingly overcooked—Farrokh wondered why he’d ordered it. He envied how Martin Mills attacked his meat kabobs. The meat kept falling out of the flatbread; because Martin had stripped the skewers and tried to make a sandwich, the missionary’s hands were covered with chopped onions. A dark-green flag of mint leaf was stuck between the zealot’s upper front teeth. As a polite way of suggesting that the Jesuit take a look at himself in a mirror, Farrokh said, “You might want to use the men’s room here, Martin. It’s more comfortable than the facilities at the airport.”

  Throughout lunch, Dr. Daruwalla couldn’t stop glancing at his watch, even though Vinod had called Indian Airlines repeatedly; the dwarf predicted a late-afternoon departure at the earliest. They were in no hurry. The doctor had called his office only to learn that there were no messages of any importance; there’d been just one call for him, and Ranjit had handled the matter competently. Mr. Garg had phoned for the mailing address, in Junagadh, of the Great Blue Nile Circus; Garg had told Ranjit that he wanted to send Madhu a letter. It was odd that Mr. Garg hadn’t asked Vinod or Deepa for the address, for the doctor had obtained the address from the dwarf’s wife. It was odder still how Garg imagined that Madhu could read a letter, or even a postcard; Madhu couldn’t read. But the doctor guessed that Mr. Garg was euphoric to learn that Madhu was not HIV-positive; maybe the creep wanted to send the poor child a thank-you note, or merely give her good-luck wishes.

  Now, short of telling him that he wore a mint leaf on his front teeth, there seemed no way to compel Martin Mills to visit the men’s room. The scholastic took the children to the card room; there he tried in vain to teach them crazy eights. Soon the cards were speckled with blood; the zealot’s index finger was still bleeding. Rather than unearth his medical supplies from his suitcase, which was in the Ambassador—besides, the doctor had packed nothing as simple as a Band-Aid—Farrokh asked Mr. Sethna for a small bandage. The old steward delivered the Band-Aid to the card room with characteristic scorn and inappropriate ceremony; he presented the bandage to Martin Mills on the silver serving tray, which the steward extended at arm’s length. Dr. Daruwalla took this occasion to tell the Jesuit, “You should probably wash that wound in the men’s room—before you bandage it.”

  But Martin Mills washed and bandaged his finger without once looking in the mirror above the sink, or in the full-length mirror—except at some distance, and only to appraise his lost-and-found Hawaiian shirt. The missionary never spotted the mint leaf on his teeth. He did, however, notice a tissue dispenser near the flush handle for the urinal, and he noted further that every flush handle had a tissue dispenser in close proximity to it. These tissues, when used, were not carelessly deposited in the urinals; rather, there was a silver bucket at the end of the lineup of urinals, something like an ice bucket without ice, and the used tissues were deposited in it.

  This system seemed exceedingly fastidious and ultra-hygienic to Martin Mills, who reflected that he’d never wiped his penis with a tissue before. The process of urinating was made to seem more important, certainly more solemn, by the expectation of wiping one’s penis after the act. At least, this is what Martin Mills assumed the tissues were for. It troubled him that no other Duckworthians were urinating at any of the other urinals; therefore, he couldn’t be sure of the purpose of the tissue dispensers. He was about to finish peeing as usual—that is, without wiping himself—when the unfriendly old steward who had presented the Jesuit with his Band-Aid entered the men’s room. The silver serving tray was stuck in one armpit and rested against the forearm of the same arm, as if Mr. Sethna were carrying a rifle.

  Because someone was watching him, Martin Mills thought he should use a tissue. He tried to wipe himself as if he always completed a responsible act of urination in this fashion; but he was so unfamiliar with the process, the tissue briefly caught on the end of his penis and then fell into the urinal. What was the protocol in the case of such a mishap? Martin wondered. The steward’s beady eyes were fastened on the. Jesuit. As if inspired, Martin Mills seized several fresh tissues, and with these held between his bandaged index finger and his thumb, he plucked the lost tissue from the urinal. With a flourish, he deposited the bunch of tissues in the silver bucket, which tilted sud
denly, and almost toppled; the missionary had to steady it with both hands. Martin tried to smile reassuringly to Mr. Sethna, but he realized that because he’d grabbed the silver bucket with both hands, he’d neglected to return his penis to his pants. Maybe this was why the old steward looked away.

  When Martin Mills had left the men’s room, Mr. Sethna gave the missionary’s urinal a wide berth; the steward peed as far away as possible from where the diseased actor had peed. It was definitely a sexually transmitted disease, Mr. Sethna thought. The steward had never witnessed such a grotesque example of urination. He couldn’t imagine the medical necessity of dabbing one’s penis every time one peed. The old steward didn’t know for certain if there were other Duckworthians who made the same use of the tissue dispensers as Martin Mills had made. For years, Mr. Sethna had assumed that the tissues were for wiping one’s fingers. And now, after he’d wiped his fingers, Mr. Sethna accurately deposited his tissue in the silver bucket, ruefully reflecting on the fate of Inspector Dhar. Once a demigod, now a terminal patient. For the first time since he’d poured hot tea on the head of that fop wearing the wig, the world struck Mr. Sethna as fair and just.

  In the card room, while Martin Mills had been experimenting at the urinal, Dr. Daruwalla realized why the children had such difficulty in grasping crazy eights, or any other card game. No one had ever taught them their numbers; not only could they not read, they couldn’t count. The doctor was holding up his fingers with the corresponding playing card—three fingers with the three of hearts—when Martin Mills returned from the men’s room, still sporting the mint leaf on his front teeth.