A Son of the Circus

by John Irving

“Wouldn’t it be better if I unzipped it?” the actor asked. “I mean, when we’re dancing?”

  “Well, yes, that would be best,” Dr. Daruwalla said.

  Still looking west into the sunset, Nancy said, “Just don’t unzip me too far. I don’t care what the script says—if you unzip me too far, I’ll let you know it.”

  “It’s time,” said Detective Patel. No one was sure how long he’d been on the balcony.

  In departing, it was fortunate that none of them really looked at one another; their faces conveyed a certain dread of the event, like mourners preparing to attend the funeral of a child. The deputy commissioner was almost avuncular; he affectionately patted Dr. Daruwalla’s shoulder, he warmly shook Inspector Dhar’s hand, he held his troubled wife at her waist—his fingers familiarly spreading to the small of her back, where he knew she felt some occasional pain. It was his way of saying, I’m in charge—everything’s going to be okay.

  But there was that interminable period when they had to wait in the policeman’s car; Vinod had taken Dhar and Muriel ahead. As the driver, the deputy commissioner sat up front with the screenwriter, who wanted Dhar and Muriel to be already dancing when the Daruwallas and their guests, the Patels, arrived. In the back seat, Julia sat with Nancy. The detective avoided his wife’s eyes in the rearview mirror; Patel also tried not to grip the steering wheel too tightly—he didn’t want any of them to see how nervous he was.

  The passing headlights flowed like water along Marine Drive, and when the sun finally dipped into the Arabian Sea, the sea turned quickly from pink to purple to burgundy to black, like the phases of a bruise. The doctor said, “They must be dancing by now.” The detective started the car, easing them into the flow of traffic.

  In a misguided effort to sound positive, Dr. Daruwalla said, “Let’s go get the bitch, let’s put her away.”

  “Not tonight,” Detective Patel said quietly. “We won’t catch her tonight. Let’s just hope she takes the bait.”

  “She’ll take it,” Nancy said from the back seat.

  There was nothing the deputy commissioner wanted to say. He smiled. He hoped he looked confident. But the real policeman knew there was really no getting ready for Rahul.

  Just Dancing

  Mr. Sethna had to wonder what was going on; wonderment was not among the few expressions that the old Parsi favored. To anyone who observed the steward’s sour, intolerant visage, Mr. Sethna was simply expressing his contempt for New Year’s Eve; he thought the party at the Duckworth Club was superfluous. Pateti, the Parsi New Year, comes in the late summer or the early fall; it is followed a fortnight later by the anniversary of the prophet Zarathustra’s birth. By the time of the New Year’s Eve party at the Duckworth Club, Mr. Sethna had already celebrated his New Year. As for the Duckworthian version of New Year’s Eve, Mr. Sethna viewed it as a tradition for Anglophiles. It was also morbid that New Year’s Eve at the Duckworth Club was doubly special to those many Duckworthians who enjoyed the party as an anniversary—this year it was the 90th anniversary—of Lord Duckworth’s suicide.

  The steward also thought that the events of the evening were foolishly ordered. Duckworthians, in general, were an older crowd, especially at this time of year; with a 22-year waiting list for membership, one would expect the members to be “older,” but this was also the result of the younger Duckworthians being away at school—for the most part, in England. In the summer months, when the student generation was back in India, Duckworthians appeared to be younger. But now here were all these older people, who should be eating their dinners at a reasonable hour; they were expected to drink and dance until the midnight supper was served—an ass-backward order of events, Mr. Sethna believed. Feed them early and then let them dance—if they’re able. The effects of too much champagne on empty stomachs were particularly deleterious to the elderly. Some couples lacked the stamina to last until the midnight supper. And wasn’t the point of the silly evening—apparently, the only point—to last until midnight?

  From the way he was dancing, Dhar couldn’t last until midnight, Mr. Sethna presumed; yet the steward was impressed at how the actor had rebounded from his dreadful appearance of the day before. On Saturday, the diseased man had been ghostly pale and dabbing at his penis over the urinal—a sickening sight. Now here he was on Sunday night, tanned and looking positively beefy; he was dancing up a storm. Perhaps the actor’s sexually transmitted disease was in remission, Mr. Sethna speculated, as Dhar continued to hurl Muriel around the dance floor. And where had the movie-star slime found a woman like that?

  Once, there’d been a banner draped from the marquee of the Bombay Eros Palace, and the woman painted on that banner had looked like Muriel, Mr. Sethna remembered. (The woman had actually been Muriel, of course; the Wetness Cabaret was a step down from the Bombay Eros Palace.) Mr. Sethna had never seen a Duckworthian in such a costume as Muriel wore. The glitter of her turquoise sequins, her plunging neckline, her miniskirt at midthigh … her dress hugged her bum so tightly, Mr. Sethna expected that some of her sequins would pop off and litter the dance floor. Muriel had maintained the high, hard athletic bum of a dancer; and although she was certainly a few years older than Inspector Dhar, she looked as if she could both outdance and outsweat him. Their dancing lacked the element of courtship; they were brutally aggressive—astonishingly rough with each other—which implied to the disapproving steward that dancing was merely the public forum in which they lewdly hinted at the violence of their more private lovemaking.

  Mr. Sethna also observed that everyone was watching them. By design, Mr. Sethna knew, they kept to that portion of the dance floor which was visible from the main dining room, forcing numerous couples to see them perform their gyrations. Nearest to this view of the ballroom was the table Mr. Sethna had reserved for Mr. and Mrs. Dogar; the steward had followed Detective Patel’s instructions to the letter, taking care that the second Mrs. Dogar was shown to the chair that offered her the very best view of Dhar dancing.

  From the Ladies’ Garden, the Daruwallas’ table looked in upon the main dining room; from where the doctor and the detective were seated, they could observe Mrs. Dogar but not the ballroom. It wasn’t Dhar they wanted to see. Blessedly, the big blonde had hidden her unusual navel, Mr. Sethna observed; Nancy was dressed like the headmistress of a school—or a nanny, or a clergyman’s wife—but the steward nevertheless detected her lawlessness, her penchant for unpredictable or inexplicable behavior. She sat with her back to Mrs. Dogar, staring into the gathering darkness beyond the trellis; at this hour, the bougainvillea had the luster of velvet. The exposed nape of Nancy’s neck—the downy blond hair that looked so soft there—reminded Mr. Sethna of her furry navel.

  The doctor’s sleek tuxedo and black silk tie clashed with the deputy commissioner’s badly wrinkled Nehru suit; Mr. Sethna determined that most Duckworthians were never in contact with that element of society which could recognize policemen by their clothes. The steward approved of Julia’s gown, which was a proper gown—the long skirt almost brushing the floor, the long sleeves ruffled at the cuffs, the neckline not a mandarin choker but a decent distance above any discernible cleavage. Ah, the old days, Mr. Sethna mourned; as if anticipating his thoughts, the band responded with a slower number.

  Dhar and Muriel, breathing hard, relaxed a little too languidly into each other’s arms; she hung on his neck, his hand resting possessively on the hard beaded sequins at her hip. She appeared to be whispering to him—actually, she was just singing the words to the song, for Muriel knew every song that this band knew, and many more besides—while Inspector Dhar smiled knowingly at what she was saying. There was his sneer, which was almost a smirk—that look of disdain, which was at once decadent and bored. Actually, Dhar was amused by Muriel’s accent; he thought the stripper was very funny. But what the second Mrs. Dogar saw did not amuse her. She saw John D. dancing with a tart, a presumably loose woman—and one close to Mrs. Dogar’s age. Women like that were so easy; surely Dhar could do
better, Rahul thought.

  On the dance floor, the staid Duckworthians who dared to dance—they’d been waiting for a slow number—kept their distance from Dhar and Muriel, who was clearly no lady. Mr. Sethna, the old eavesdropper and lip-reader extraordinaire, easily caught what Mr. Dogar said to his wife. “Has the actor brought an actual prostitute to the party? I must say she looks like a whore.”

  “I think she’s a stripper,” said Mrs. Dogar—Rahul had honed a sharp eye for such social details.

  “Perhaps she’s an actress,” Mr. Dogar said.

  “She’s acting, but she’s no actress,” Mrs. Dogar replied.

  From what Farrokh could see of Rahul, the transsexual had inherited the reptilian scrutiny of her Aunt Promila; it was as if, when she looked at you, she were seeing a different life-form—certainly not a fellow human being.

  “It’s hard to tell from here,” said Dr. Daruwalla. “I don’t know if she’s attracted to him or if she wants to kill him.”

  “Maybe with her,” said the deputy commissioner, “the feeling is one and the same.”

  “Whatever else she feels, she’s attracted,” Nancy said. Her back was the only part of her that Rahul could see, if Rahul had been looking. But Rahul had eyes for John D. only.

  When the band played a faster number, Dhar and Muriel grew even rougher with each other, as if invigorated by the slower interlude or by their closer contact. A few of the cheap sequins were torn from Muriel’s dress; they glittered on the dance floor, reflecting the light from the ballroom chandelier—when Dhar or Muriel stepped on them, they crunched. A constant rivulet of sweat ran its course in Muriel’s cleavage, and Dhar was bleeding slightly from a scratch on his wrist; the cuff of his white shirt was dotted with blood. Because of how tightly he held Muriel at her waist, a sequin had scratched him. He paid the scratch only passing attention, but Muriel took his wrist in her hands and covered the cut with her mouth. In this way, with his wrist to her lips, they kept dancing. Mr. Sethna had seen such things only in the movies. The steward didn’t realize that this was what he was seeing: a screenplay by Farrokh Daruwalla, a movie starring Inspector Dhar.

  When Muriel left the Duckworth Club, she made a fuss over her departure. She danced one last dance (another slow one) with her shawl on; she downed a nearly full glass of champagne in the foyer. Then the exotic dancer leaned on Vinod’s head while the dwarf walked her to the Ambassador.

  “A to-do worthy of a slut,” said Mr. Dogar. “I suppose she’s going back to the brothel.”

  But Rahul merely glanced at the time. The second Mrs. Dogar was a close observer of Bombay’s low life; she knew that the hour for the first show at the Eros Palace was fast approaching, or maybe Dhar’s tart worked at the Wetness Cabaret—the first show there was 15 minutes later.

  When Dhar asked the Sorabjees’ daughter to dance, a new tension could be felt throughout the main dining room and the Ladies’ Garden. Even with her back to the action, Nancy knew that something unscripted had happened.

  “He’s asked someone else to dance, hasn’t he?” she said; her face and the nape of her neck were flushed.

  “Who’s that young girl? She’s not part of our plan!” said Detective Patel.

  “Trust him—he’s a great improviser,” the screenwriter said. “He always understands who he is and what his role is. He knows what he’s doing.”

  Nancy was pinching a pearl on her necklace; her thumb and index finger were white. “You bet he knows,” she said Julia turned around, but she couldn’t see the ballroom—only the look of loathing that was unconcealed on Mrs. Dogar’s face.

  “It’s little Amy Sorabjee—she must be back from school,” Dr. Daruwalla informed his wife.

  “She’s only a teenager!” Julia cried.

  “I think she’s a little older,” the real policeman replied.

  “It’s a brilliant move!” the screenwriter said. “Mrs. Dogar doesn’t know what to think!”

  “I know how she feels,” Nancy told him.

  “It’ll be all right, sweetie,” the deputy commissioner told his wife. When he took her hand, she pulled it away.

  “Am I next?” Nancy asked. “Do I wait in line?”

  Almost every face in the main dining room was turned toward the ballroom. They watched the unstoppable sweating movie star with his bulky shoulders and his beer belly; he was twirling little Amy Sorabjee around as if she were no heavier than her clothes.

  Although the Sorabjees and the Daruwallas were old friends, Dr. and Mrs. Sorabjee had been surprised at Dhar’s spur-of-the-moment invitation—and that Amy had accepted. She was a silly girl in her twenties, a former university student who hadn’t merely come home for the holiday; she’d been withdrawn from school. Granted, Dhar wasn’t mashing her; the actor was behaving like a proper gentleman—excessively charming, possibly, but the young lady seemed delighted. Theirs was a different kind of dancing from Dhar’s performance with Muriel; the friskiness of the youthful girl was appealingly offset by the sure, smooth quality of the older man’s gestures.

  “Now he’s seducing children!” Mr. Dogar announced to his wife. “He’s going to dance his way through all the women—I’m sure he’ll ask you, too, Promila!”

  Mrs. Dogar was visibly upset. She excused herself for the ladies’ room, where she was reminded of how she hated this aspect of being a woman—waiting to pee. There was too long a line; Rahul slipped through the foyer and into the closed and darkened administrative offices of the old club. There was enough moonlight for her to type by, and she rolled a two-rupee note into the typewriter that was nearest a window. On the money, the typed message was as spontaneous as her feelings at the moment.

  A MEMBER NO MORE

  This was a message meant for Dhar’s mouth, and Mrs. Dogar slipped it into her purse where it could keep company with the message she’d already typed for her husband.

  … BECAUSE DHAR IS STILL A MEMBER

  It comforted Mrs. Dogar to have these two-rupee notes in place; she always felt better when she was prepared for every contingency. She slipped back through the foyer and into the ladies’ room, where the line ahead of her wasn’t so long. When Rahul returned to her table in the main dining room, Dhar was dancing with a new partner.

  Mr. Sethna, who’d been happily monitoring the conversation between the Dogars, was thrilled to note Mr. Dogar’s observation to his coarse wife: “Now Dhar’s dancing with that hefty Anglo who came with the Daruwallas. I think she’s the white half of a mixed marriage. Her husband looks like a pathetic civil servant.”

  But Mrs. Dogar was prevented from seeing the new dancers. Dhar had wheeled Nancy into the part of the ballroom that wasn’t visible from the main dining room. Only intermittently did a glimpse of them appear. Earlier, Rahul had taken little notice of the big blonde. When Mrs. Dogar glanced at the Daruwallas’ table, the Daruwallas were bent in conversation with the out-of-place “pathetic civil servant,” as her husband had described him. Maybe he was a minor magistrate, Rahul guessed—or some controlling little guru who’d met his Western wife in an ashram.

  Then Dhar and the heavy woman danced into view. Mrs. Dogar sensed the strength with which they gripped each other—the woman’s broad hand held fast to Dhar’s neck, and the biceps of his right arm was locked in her armpit (as if he were trying to lift her up). She was taller than he was; from the way she grasped his neck, it was impossible for Rahul to tell if Nancy was pulling Dhar’s face into the side of her throat or if she was struggling to prevent him from nuzzling her. What was remarkable was that they were whispering fiercely to each other; neither one of them was listening, but they were talking urgently and at the same time. When they danced out of her sight again, Rahul couldn’t stand it; Mrs. Dogar asked her husband to dance.

  “He’s got her! I told you he could do it,” said Dr. Daruwalla.

  “This is only the beginning,” the deputy commissioner replied. “This is just the dancing.”

  Happy New Year

  For
tunately for Mr. Dogar, it was a slow dance. His wife steered him past several faltering couples, who were disconcerted that Muriel’s fallen sequins still crunched underfoot Mrs. Dogar had Dhar and the big blonde in her sights.

  “Is this in the script?” Nancy was whispering to the actor. “This isn’t in the script, you bastard!”

  “We’re supposed to make something of a scene—like an old lovers’ quarrel,” Dhar whispered.

  “You’re embracing me!” Nancy told him.

  “You’re squeezing me back,” he whispered.

  “I wish I was killing you!” Nancy whispered.

  “She’s here,” Dhar said softly. “She’s following us.”

  With a pang, Rahul observed that the blond wench had gone limp in Dhar’s arms—and she’d been resisting him; that had been obvious. Now it appeared to Mrs. Dogar that Dhar was supporting the heavy woman; the blonde might otherwise have fallen to the dance floor, so lifelessly was she draped on the actor. She’d thrown her arms over his shoulders and locked her hands behind his back; her face was buried in his neck—awkwardly, because she was taller. Rahul could see that Nancy was shaking her head while Dhar went on whispering to her. The blonde had that pleasing air of submission about her, as if she’d already given up; Rahul was reminded of the kind of woman who’d let you make love to her or let you kill her without a breath of complaint—like someone with a high fever, Rahul thought.

  “Does she recognize me?” Nancy was whispering; she trembled, and then stumbled. Dhar had to hold her up with all his strength.

  “She can’t recognize you, she doesn’t recognize you—she’s just curious about what’s between us,” the actor replied.

  “What is between us?” Nancy whispered. Where her hands were locked together, he felt her dig her knuckles into his spine.

  “She’s coming closer,” Dhar warned Nancy. “She doesn’t recognize you. She just wants to look. I’m going to do it now,” he whispered.