A Son of the Circus

by John Irving

  “What was that? Did you see that?” the missionary asked, his head whipping around.

  “A dead bullock,” answered Dr. Daruwalla. “Please talk to me, Martin.”

  “I know it was dead,” said Martin Mills. “What’s a bullock?”

  “A castrated bull—a steer,” Farrokh replied.

  “There’s another one!” the scholastic cried, his head turning again.

  “No, that was a cow,” the doctor said.

  “I saw a camel earlier,” Martin remarked. “Did you see the camel?”

  “Yes, I saw it,” Farrokh answered him. “Now tell me a story. It will be dark soon.”

  “A pity—there’s so much to see!” said Martin Mills.

  “Distract me, for God’s sake!” Dr. Daruwalla cried. “I know you like to talk—tell me anything at all!”

  “Well … what do you want me to tell you about?” the missionary asked. Farrokh wanted to kill him.

  The girl had fallen asleep. They’d made her sit between them because they were afraid she’d lean against one of the rear doors; now she could lean only against them. Asleep, Madhu seemed as frail as a rag doll; they had to press against her and hold her shoulders to keep her from flopping around.

  Her scented hair brushed against Dr. Daruwalla’s throat at the open collar of his shirt; her hair smelled like clove. Then the Land Rover would swerve and Madhu would slump against the Jesuit, who took no notice of her. But Farrokh felt her hip against his. As the Land Rover again pulled out to pass, Madhu’s shoulder ground against the doctor’s ribs; her hand, which was limp, dragged across his thigh. Sometimes, when Farrokh could feel Madhu breathe, he held his breath. The doctor wasn’t looking forward to the awkwardness of spending the night in the same room with her. It was not only from Ramu’s reckless driving that Farrokh sought some distraction.

  “Tell me about your mother,” Dr. Daruwalla said to Martin Mills. “How is she?” In the failing but lingering light, the doctor could see the missionary’s neck tighten; his eyes narrowed. “And your father—how’s Danny doing?” the doctor added, but the damage had already been done. Farrokh could tell that Martin hadn’t heard him the second time; the Jesuit was searching the past. The landscape of hideously slain animals flew by, but the zealot no longer noticed.

  “All right, if that’s what you want. I’m going to tell you a little story about my mother,” said Martin Mills. Somehow, Dr. Daruwalla knew that the story wouldn’t be “little.” The missionary wasn’t a minimalist; he favored description. In fact, Martin left out no detail; he told Farrokh absolutely everything he could remember. The exquisiteness of Arif Koma’s complexion, the different odors of masturbation—not only Arif’s, but also the smell that lingered on the U.C.L.A. babysitter’s fingers.

  Thus they hurtled through the darkened countryside and the dimly lit towns, where the reek of cooking and excrement assailed them—together with the squabbling of chickens, the barking of dogs and the savage threats of the shouting, almostrunover pedestrians. Ramu apologized that his driver’s-side window was missing; not only did the rushing night air grow cooler, but the back-seat passengers were struck by flying insects. Once, something the size of a hummingbird smacked against Martin’s forehead; it must have stung, and for five minutes or more it lay buzzing and whirring on the floor before it died—whatever it was. But the missionary’s story was unstoppable; nothing could deter him.

  It took him all the way to Junagadh to finish. As they entered the brightly lit town, the streets were teeming; two crowds were surging against each other. A loudspeaker on a parked truck played circus music. One crowd was coming from the early-evening show, the other hurrying to line up for the show that was to start later on.

  I should tell the poor bastard everything, Dr. Daruwalla was thinking. That he has a twin, that his mother was always a slut, that Neville Eden was probably his real father. Danny was too dumb to be the father; both John D. and Martin Mills were smart. Neville, although Farrokh had never liked him, had been smart. But Martin’s story had struck Farrokh speechless. Moreover, the doctor believed that these revelations should be John D.’s decision. And although Dr. Daruwalla wanted to punish Vera in almost any way that he could, the one thing that Martin had said about Danny contributed further to the doctor’s silence: “I love my father—I just wish I didn’t pity him.”

  The rest of the story was all about Vera; Martin hadn’t said another word about Danny. The doctor decided that it wasn’t a good time for the Jesuit to hear that his probable father was a two-timing, bisexual shit named Neville Eden. This news would not help Martin to pity Danny any less.

  Besides, they were almost at the circus. The elephant-footed boy was so excited, he was kneeling on the front seat and waving out the window at the mob. The circus music, which was blaring at them over the loudspeaker, had managed to wake up Madhu.

  “Here’s your new life,” Dr. Daruwalla told the child prostitute. “Wake up and see it.”

  A Racist Chimpanzee

  Although Ramu never stopped blowing the horn, the Land Rover barely crawled through the crowd. Several small boys clung to the door handles and the rear bumper, allowing themselves to be dragged along the road. Everyone stared into the back seat. Madhu was mistaken to be anxious; the crowd wasn’t staring at her. It was Martin Mills who drew their attention; they were unused to white men. Junagadh wasn’t a tourist town. The missionary’s skin was as pale as dough in the glare from the streetlights. Because they were forced to move ahead so slowly, it grew hot in the car, but when Martin rolled his rear window down, people reached inside the Land Rover just to touch him.

  Far ahead of them, a dwarf clown on stilts was leading the throng. It was even more congested at the circus because it was too early to let the crowd in; the Land Rover had to inch its way through the well-guarded gate. Once inside the compound, Dr. Daruwalla appreciated a familiar sensation: the circus was a cloister, a protected place; it was as exempt from the mayhem of Junagadh as St. Ignatius stood, like a fort, within the chaos of Bombay. The children would be safe here, provided that they gave the place a chance—provided that the circus gave them a chance.

  But the first omen was inhospitable: Deepa didn’t meet them; the dwarf’s wife and son were sick—confined to their tent. And, almost immediately, Dr. Daruwalla could sense how the Great Blue Nile compared unfavorably to the Great Royal. There was no owner of the charm and dignity of Pratap Walawalkar; in fact, the owner of the Great Blue Nile was away. No dinner was waiting for them in the owner’s tent, which they never saw. The ringmaster was a Bengali named Das; there was no food in Mr. Das’s tent, and the sleeping cots were all in a row, as in a spartan barracks; a minimum of ornamentation was draped on the walls. The dirt floor was completely covered with rugs; bolts of brightly colored fabric, for costumes, were hung high in the apex of the tent, out of everyone’s way, and the trappings of a temple were prominently displayed alongside the TV and VCR.

  A cot like all the others was identified as Madhu’s; Mr. Das was putting her between two older girls, who (he said) would mind her. Mrs. Das, the ringmaster assured them, would “mind” Madhu, too. As for Mrs. Das, she didn’t get off her cot to greet them. She sat sewing sequins on a costume, and only as they were leaving the tent did she speak to Madhu.

  “I am meeting you tomorrow,” she told the girl.

  “What time shall we come in the morning?” Dr. Daruwalla asked, but Mrs. Das—who manifested something of the victimized severity of an unexpectedly divorced aunt—didn’t answer him. Her head remained lowered, her eyes on her sewing.

  “Don’t come too early, because we’ll be watching television,” Mr. Das told the doctor.

  Well, naturally … Dr. Daruwalla thought.

  Ganesh’s cot would be set up in the cook’s tent, where Mr. Das escorted them—and where he left them. He said he had to prepare for the 9:30 show. The cook, whose name was Chandra, assumed that Ganesh had been sent to help him; Chandra began to identify his utensils t
o the cripple, who listened indifferently—Dr. Daruwalla knew that the boy wanted to see the lions.

  “Kadhai,” a wok. “Jhara,” a slotted spoon. “Kisni,” a coconut grater. From outside the cook’s tent, in the darkness, they also listened to the regular coughs of the lions. The crowd still hadn’t been admitted to the main tent but they were present in the darkness, like the lions, as a kind of background murmur.

  Dr. Daruwalla didn’t notice the mosquitoes until he began to eat. The doctor and the others ate standing up, off stainless-steel plates—curried potatoes and eggplant with too much cumin. Then they were offered a plate of raw vegetables—carrots and radishes, onions and tomatoes—which they washed down with warm orange soda. Good old Gold Spot. Gujarat was a dry state, because Gandhi was born there—the tedious teetotaler. Farrokh reflected that he would probably be awake all night. He’d been counting on beer to keep him away from his screenplay, to help him sleep. Then he remembered that he’d be sharing a room with Madhu; in that case, it would be best to stay awake all night and to not have any beer.

  Throughout their hasty, unsatisfying meal, Chandra progressed to naming vegetables to Ganesh, as if the cook assumed the boy had lost his language in the same accident that had mangled his foot. (“Aloo,” potato. “Chawli,” a white pea. “Baingan,” eggplant.) As for Madhu, she appeared neglected, and she was shivering. Surely she had a shawl or a sweater in her small bag, but all their bags were still in the Land Rover, which was parked God knew where; Ramu, their driver, was God knew where, too. Besides, it was almost time for the late show.

  When they stepped into the avenue of troupe tents, they saw that the performers were already in costume; the elephants were being led down the aisle. In the wing of the main tent, the horses were standing in line. A roustabout had already saddled the first horse. Then a trainer prodded a big chimpanzee with a stick, launching the animal into what appeared to be a vertical leap of at least five feet. The horse had started forward, just a nervous step or two, when the chimpanzee landed on the saddle. There the chimp squatted on all fours; when the trainer touched the saddle with his stick, the chimpanzee performed a front flip on the horse’s back—and then another.

  The band was already on the platform stage above the arena, which was still filling with the crowd. The visitors would be in the way if they stood in the wing, but Mr. Das, the ringmaster, hadn’t appeared; there was no one to show them to their seats. Martin Mills suggested that they find seats for themselves before the tent was full; Dr. Daruwalla resented such informality. While the doctor and the missionary were arguing about what to do, the chimp doing front flips on the horse grew distracted. Martin Mills was the distraction.

  The chimpanzee was an old male named Gautam, because even as a baby he’d demonstrated a remarkable similarity to Buddha; he could sit in the same position and stare at the same thing for hours. As he’d aged, Gautam had extended his capacity for meditation to include certain repetitive exercises; the front flips on the horse’s back were but one example. Gautam could repeat the move tirelessly; whether the horse was galloping or standing still, the chimpanzee always landed on the saddle. There was, however, a diminished enthusiasm to Gautam’s front flips, and to his other activities as well. His trainer, Kunal, attributed Gautam’s emotional decline to the big chimp’s infatuation with Mira, a young female chimpanzee. Mira was new to the Great Blue Nile, and Gautam could be observed pining for her—often at inappropriate times.

  If he saw Mira when he was doing front flips, Gautam would miss not only the saddle but the whole horse. Hence Mira rode a horse far back in the procession of animals that paraded around the main tent during the Grand Entry. It was only when Gautam was warming up in the wing that the old chimpanzee could spot Mira; she was kept near the elephants, because Gautam was afraid of elephants. At some trancelike distance in Gautam’s mind, this view of Mira—as the big chimp waited for the curtains to open and the Grand Entry music to begin—satisfied him. He kept doing front flips, mechanically, almost as if the jumps were triggered by a mild electrical shock, at about five-second intervals. In the corner of Gautam’s eye, Mira was a faraway presence; nevertheless, she was enough of a presence to soothe him.

  Gautam became extremely unhappy if his view of Mira was blocked. Only Kunal was allowed to pass between the chimp and his view of Mira. Kunal never stood anywhere near Gautam without a stick in his hand. Gautam was big for a chimp; according to Kunal, the ape weighed 145 pounds and was almost five feet tall.

  Simply put, Martin Mills was standing in the wrong place at the wrong time. After the attack, Kunal speculated that Gautam might have imagined that the missionary was another male chimpanzee; not only had Martin blocked Gautam’s view of Mira, but Gautam might have assumed that the missionary was seeking Mira’s affection—for Mira was a very affectionate female, and her friendliness (to male chimpanzees) was something that regularly drove Gautam insane. As for why Gautam might have mistaken Martin Mills for an ape, Kunal suggested that the paleness of the scholastic’s skin would surely have struck Gautam as unnatural for a human being. If Martin’s skin color was a novelty to the people of Junagadh—who, after all, had gawked at him and pawed him over in the passing Land Rover—Martin’s skin was only slightly less foreign to Gautam’s experience. Since, to Gautam, Martin Mills didn’t look like a human being, the ape probably thought that the missionary was a male chim

  It was with a logic of this kind that Gautam interrupted his front flips on the horse’s back. The chimpanzee screamed once and bared his fangs; then he vaulted from the rump of the horse and over the back of another horse, landing on Martin’s shoulders and chest and driving the missionary to his back on the ground. There Gautam sunk his teeth into the side of the surprised Jesuit’s neck. Martin was fortunate to have protected his throat with his hand, but this meant that his hand was bitten, too. When it was over, there was a deep puncture wound in Martin’s neck and a slash wound from the heel of his hand to the ball of his thumb; and a small piece of the missionary’s right earlobe was missing. Gautam was too strong to be pulled off the struggling scholastic, but Kunal was able to beat the ape away with his stick. The whole time Mira was shrieking; it was hard to tell if her cries signified requited love or disapproval.

  The discussion of whether the chimp attack had been racially motivated or sexually inspired, or both, continued throughout the late-evening show. Martin Mills refused to allow Dr. Daruwalla to attend to his wounds until the performance was concluded; the Jesuit insisted that the children would learn a valuable lesson from his stoicism, which the doctor regarded as a stupid stoicism of the show-must-go-on variety. Both Madhu and Ganesh were distracted by the missionary’s missing earlobe and the other gory evidence of the savage biting that the zealot had suffered; Madhu hardly watched the circus at all. Farrokh, however, paid close attention. The doctor was content to let the missionary bleed. Dr. Daruwalla didn’t want to miss the performance.

  A Perfect Ending

  The better acts had been borrowed from the Great Royal—in particular, an item called Bicycle Waltz, for which the band played “The Yellow Rose of Texas.” A thin, muscular woman of an obvious sinewy strength performed the Skywalk at a fast, mechanical pace. The audience was unfrightened for her; even without a safety net, there was no palpable fear that she could fall. While Suman looked beautiful and vulnerable—as could be expected of a young woman hanging upside down at 80 feet—the skywalker at the Great Blue Nile resembled a middle-aged robot. Her name was Mrs. Bhagwan, and Farrokh recognized her as the knife thrower’s assistant; she was also his wife.

  In the knife-throwing item, Mrs. Bhagwan was spread-eagled on a wooden wheel; the wheel was painted as a target, with Mrs. Bhagwan’s belly covering the bull’s-eye. Throughout the act, the wheel revolved faster and faster, and Mr. Bhagwan hurled knives at his wife. When the wheel was stopped, the knives were stuck every which way in the wood; not even the crudest pattern could be discerned, except that there were no knives sticking in M
rs. Bhagwan’s spread-eagled body.

  Mr. Bhagwan’s other specialty was the item called Elephant Passing, which almost every circus in India performs. Mr. Bhagwan lies in the arena, sandwiched between mattresses that are then covered with a plank; an elephant walks this plank, over Mr. Bhagwan’s chest. Farrokh observed that this was the only act that didn’t prompt Ganesh to say he could learn it, although being crippled wouldn’t have interfered with the boy’s ability to lie under a passing elephant.

  Once, when Mr. Bhagwan had been stricken with acute diarrhea, Mrs. Bhagwan had replaced her husband in the Elephant Passing item. But the woman was too thin for Elephant Passing. There was a story that she’d bled internally for days and that, even after she’d recovered, she was never the same again; both her diet and her disposition had been ruined by the elephant.

  Of Mrs. Bhagwan, Farrokh understood that her version of the Skywalk and her passive contribution to the knife-throwing act were one and the same; it was less a skill she had learned, or even a drama to be enacted, than a mechanical submission to her fate. Her husband’s errant knife or the fall from 80 feet—they were one and the same. Mrs. Bhagwan was a robot, Dr. Daruwalla believed. Possibly the Elephant Passing had done this to her.

  Mr. Das confided this feeling to Farrokh. When the ringmaster briefly joined them in the audience—to apologize for Gautam’s rude attack, and to add his own ideas to the doctor’s and the Jesuit’s speculations regarding the ape’s racism and/or sexual jealousy—Mr. Das attributed Mrs. Bhagwan’s lackluster performance to her elephant episode.

  “But in other ways it’s better since she’s been married,” Mr. Das admitted. Before Mrs. Bhagwan’s marriage, she’d complained bitterly about her menstrual cycle—how hanging upside down when she was bleeding was unusually uncomfortable. “And before she was married, of course it wasn’t proper for her to use a tampon,” Mr. Das added.