A Son of the Circus

by John Irving

  “Do you see a lot of nuns in this district at that hour?” the deputy commissioner asked her.

  “Of course not!” the madam cried. She’d asked the nun what she wanted, and the nun had replied that she was searching for a Christian girl from Kerala; the madam responded that she had no Kerala Christians in her house.

  “And what color was the nun’s habit?” Patel asked, although he knew the answer would be “gray,” which it was. It wasn’t an unusual color for a habit of tropical weight, but it was also something that could have been fashioned from the same gray suit that Mrs. Dogar had worn when she came to the brothel. The baggy suit had probably fitted over the habit; then, in turn, the habit fit over the suit, or parts of the habit and the suit were one and the same—at least the same fabric. The white shirt could have various uses; maybe it was rolled, like a high collar, or else it could cover the head, like a kind of cowl. The detective presumed that the alleged nun didn’t have a mustache. (“Of course not!” the madam declared.) And because the nun had covered her head, the madam wouldn’t have noticed the pompadour.

  The only reason the madam had found the dead girl so soon was that she’d been unable to fall back asleep; first, one of the all-night customers was shouting, and then, when it was finally quiet, the madam had heard the sound of water boiling, although it wasn’t time for tea. In the dead girl’s cubicle, a pot of water had come to a boil on a heating coil; that was how the madam discovered the body. Otherwise, it might have been 8:00 or 9:00 in the morning before the other prostitutes would have noticed that tiny Asha wasn’t up and about.

  The deputy commissioner asked the madam about the sound of someone trying to open the door from the street—the sound that had awakened her. Wouldn’t the door have made the same sound if it had been opened from the inside, and then closed behind the departing nun? The madam admitted that this would have made the same sound; in short, if the madam hadn’t heard the door, she never would have seen the nun. And by the time Mrs. Dogar took a taxi home, she was no longer a nun at all.

  Detective Patel was exceedingly polite in asking the madam a most obvious question: “Would you consider the idea that the not-so-old man and the nun were in fact the same person?” The madam shrugged; she doubted she could identify either of them. When the deputy commissioner pressed her on this point, all the madam would add was that she’d been sleepy; both the not-so-old man and the nun had woken her up.

  Nancy was still not awake when Detective Patel returned to his flat; he’d already typed a scathing report, demoting the surveillance officer and consigning him to the mailroom of Grime Branch Headquarters. The deputy commissioner wanted to be home when his wife woke up; he also didn’t want to call Inspector Dhar and Dr. Daruwalla from the police station. Detective Patel thought he’d let them all sleep a little longer.

  The deputy commissioner determined that Asha’s neck had been broken so cleanly for two reasons. One, she was small; two, she’d been completely relaxed. Rahul must have coaxed her over onto her stomach, as if to prepare her for sex in that position. But of course there’d been no sex. The deep fingerprint bruises in the prostitute’s eye sockets—and on her throat, just below her jaw—suggested that Mrs. Dogar had grabbed Asha’s face from behind; she’d wrenched the small girl’s head back and to one side, until Asha’s neck snapped.

  Then Rahul had rolled Asha onto her back in order to make the drawing on her belly. Although the drawing was of the usual kind, it was of less than the usual quality; it suggested undue haste, which was strange—there was no urgency for Mrs. Dogar to leave the brothel. Yet something had compelled Rahul to hurry. As for the fearsome “new twist” to this killing, it sickened Detective Patel. The dead girl’s lower lip was bitten clean through. Asha could not have been bitten so savagely while she was alive; her screams would have awakened the entire brothel. No; the bite had occurred after the murder and after the drawing. The minimal amount of bleeding indicated that Asha had been bitten after her heart had stopped. It was the idea of biting the girl that had made Mrs. Dogar hurry, the policeman thought. She couldn’t wait to finish the drawing because Asha’s lower lip was so tempting to her.

  Even such slight bleeding had made a mess, which was uncharacteristic of Rahul. It must have been Mrs. Dogar who put the pot of water on the heating coil; her own face, at least her mouth, must have been marked with the prostitute’s blood. When the water was warm, Rahul dipped some of the dead girl’s clothes in the pot and used them to wash the blood off herself. Then she left—as a nun—forgetting that the heating coil was on. The boiling water had brought the madam. Although the nun had been a smart idea, this had otherwise been a sloppy job.

  Nancy woke up about 8:00; she had a hangover, but Detective Patel didn’t hesitate to tell her what had happened. He could hear her being sick in the bathroom; he called the actor first, then the screenwriter. He told Dhar about the lip, but not the doctor; with Dr. Daruwalla, the deputy commissioner wanted to emphasize the importance of a good script for Dhar’s lunch with Mrs. Dogar. Patel told them both that he would have to arrest Rahul today; he hoped he had enough circumstantial evidence to arrest her. Whether or not he had enough evidence to keep her—that was another story. That was what he was counting on the actor and the screenwriter for: they had to make something happen over lunch.

  Deputy Commissioner Patel was encouraged by one thing that the gullible surveillance officer had told him. After the disguised Mrs. Dogar had shuffled out of the taxi and into her house, the lights were turned on in a ground-floor room—not a bedroom—and these lights remained on well after daybreak. The deputy commissioner hoped that Rahul had been drawing.

  As for Dr. Daruwalla, his first good night’s sleep—for five nights, and counting—had been interrupted rather early. He had no surgeries scheduled for New Year’s Day, and no office appointments, either; he’d been planning to sleep in. But upon hearing from Detective Patel, the screenwriter called John D. immediately. There was a lot to do before Dhar’s lunch at the Duckworth Club; there would be much rehearsing—some of it would be awkward, because Mr. Sethna would have to be involved. The deputy commissioner had already notified the old steward.

  It was from John D. that Farrokh heard about Asha’s lower lip.

  “Rahul must have been thinking of you!” Dr. Daruwalla cried.

  “Well, we know she has a thing about biting,” Dhar told the doctor. “In all likelihood, it started with you.”

  “What do you mean?” Dr. Daruwalla asked, for John D. hadn’t told him that Mrs. Dogar had confessed to gnawing on the doctor’s toe.

  “It all started with the big toe of your right foot, in Goa,” John D. began. “That was Rahul who bit you. You were right all along—it was no monkey.”

  The Wrong Madhu

  That Monday, well before meat-feeding time at the Great Blue Nile Circus in Junagadh, the elephant-footed boy would wake up to the steady coughs of the lions; their low roars rose and fell as regularly as breathing. It was a cold morning in that part of Gujarat. For the first time in his life, Ganesh could see his own breath; the huffs of breath from the lions were like blasts of steam escaping from their cages.

  The Muslims delivered the meat in a wooden wagon, dotted with flies; the entire floor of the wagon was lifted from the cart and placed on the ground between the cook’s tent and the big cats’ cages—the raw beef was piled on this slab of rough wood, which was the approximate size of a double door. Even in the cold morning air, the flies hovered over the meat, which Chandra sorted. Sometimes there was mutton mixed in with the beef, and the cook wanted to rescue it; mutton was too expensive for lions and tigers.

  The big cats were bellowing now; they could smell the meat, and some of them could see the cook separating the choicer pieces of mutton. If the elephant boy was frightened by how savagely the lions and tigers devoured the raw beef, Dr. Daruwalla would never learn of it; nor would the doctor ever know if the sight of the lions slipping in the meat grease upset the cripple. At the
circus, it was one of the few things that always upset the doctor.

  That same Monday, someone proposed to marry Madhu. The proposal, as was only proper, was first offered to Mr. and Mrs. Das; the ringmaster and his wife were surprised. Not only had they not begun to train the girl, but, because Madhu was untrained, she wasn’t in evidence among the performers; yet the marriage proposal was offered by a gentleman who claimed to have been in the audience for the late-evening show on Sunday. Here he was, the following morning, professing his instant devotion!

  The Bengali ringmaster and his wife had children of their own; their kids had rejected the circus life. But Mr. and Mrs. Das had trained many other children to be circus acrobats; they were kind to these adopted kids and especially protective of the girls. After all, when these girls were properly trained, they were of some value—not only to the circus. They had acquired a little glamour; they’d even earned some money, which they’d had no occasion to spend—hence the ringmaster and his wife were used to keeping dowries for them.

  Mr. and Mrs. Das conscientiously advised the girls whether or not a marriage proposal was worthy of acceptance or negotiation, and they routinely gave up these adopted daughters—always to decent marriages, and often making their own contributions to the girls’ dowries. In many cases, the ringmaster and his wife had grown so fond of these children that it broke their hearts to see them go. Almost all the girls would eventually leave the circus; the few who stayed became trainers.

  Madhu was very young and totally unproven, and she had no dowry. Yet here was a gentleman of means, well dressed, clearly a city person—he owned property and managed an entertainment business in Bombay—and he was offering Madhu a marriage proposal that Mr. and Mrs. Das found extremely generous; he would take the poor girl without a dowry. Doubtless, in these premarital negotiations, there would have been some substantive discussion of the remuneration that the ringmaster and his wife deserved, for (who knows?) Madhu might have become a star of the Great Blue Nile. From Mr. and Mrs. Das’s point of view, they were offered a sizable payment for a sullen girl who might never prove herself to be any kind of acrobat at all. It wasn’t as if they were being asked to part with a young woman they’d grown fond of; they’d barely had time to talk with Madhu.

  It may have crossed the Bengalis’ minds to consult the doctor or the missionary; Mr. and Mrs. Das at least should have discussed the would-be marriage with Deepa, but the dwarf’s wife was still sick. So what if Deepa was the one who’d spotted Madhu as a future boneless girl? The dwarf’s wife was still confined to her tent. Moreover, the ringmaster held a grudge against Vinod. Mr. Das was envious of the dwarf’s car-driving business; since Vinod had left the Great Blue Nile, the dwarf hadn’t hesitated to exaggerate his success. And the ringmaster’s wife felt herself to be vastly superior to the dwarf’s wife; to consult with Deepa was beneath Mrs. Das—even if Deepa were healthy. Besides, Mrs. Das quickly persuaded her husband that Madhu’s marriage proposal was a good deal. (It was certainly a good deal for them.)

  If Madhu wasn’t interested, they’d keep the silly child in the circus; but if the unworthy girl had the wisdom to recognize her good fortune, the ringmaster and his wife would let her go, with their blessings. As for the crippled brother, the gentleman from Bombay appeared to know nothing about him. Mr. and Mrs. Das felt some responsibility for the fact that the elephant-footed boy would be left on his own; they had considered it prudent to promise Dr. Daruwalla and Martin Mills that Ganesh would be given every chance to succeed. The ringmaster and his wife saw no reason to discuss Ganesh with Deepa; the cripple hadn’t been a discovery of hers—she’d only claimed to discover the boneless girl. And what if the dwarf’s wife had something contagious?

  A phone call to the doctor or the missionary would have been an appreciated courtesy—if nothing more. But there were no telephones at the circus; a trip to either the post office or the telegraph office would have been required, and Madhu surprised the ringmaster and his wife by her immediate and unrestrained acceptance of the marriage proposal. She didn’t feel that the gentleman was too old for her, as Mr. Das had feared; nor was Madhu repelled by the gentleman’s physical appearance, which had been the primary concern of Mrs. Das. The ringmaster’s wife was repulsed by the gentleman’s disfiguring scar—some sort of burn, she supposed—but Madhu made no mention of it, nor did she otherwise seem to mind such a hideous flaw.

  Probably sensing, in advance, Dr. Daruwalla’s disapproval, the ringmaster would wisely send a telegram to Martin Mills; the missionary had struck Mr. and Mrs. Das as the more relaxed of the two—by which they meant the more accepting. Furthermore, the Jesuit had seemed slightly less concerned for Madhu’s prospects—or else the doctor’s concern had been more apparent. And because it was Jubilee Day at St. Ignatius, the school offices were closed; it would be Tuesday before anyone handed the telegram to Martin. Mr. Garg would already have brought his young wife back to the Wetness Cabaret.

  Naturally, it was in the Bengali’s best interests to make his telegram sound upbeat.

  THAT GIRL MADHU / IT IS BEING HER LUCKY DAY / VERY ACCEPTABLE MATRIMONIAL MADE BY MIDDLE-AGED BUT MOST SUCCESSFUL BUSINESSMAN / IT IS WHAT SHE IS WANTING EVEN IF SHE ISN’T LOVING HIM EXACTLY AND IN SPITE OF HIS SCAR / MEANWHILE THE CRIPPLE IS BEING AFFORDED EVERY OPPORTUNITY OF WORKING HARD HERE / REST BEING ASSURED / DAS

  By the time Dr. Daruwalla would hear the news, the doctor would be kicking himself; he should have known all along—for why else would Mr. Garg have asked Ranjit for the address of the Great Blue Nile? Surely Mr. Garg, like Dr. Daruwalla, knew that Madhu couldn’t read; Acid Man had never intended to send the girl a letter. And when Ranjit gave Farrokh the message (that Garg had requested the circus’s address), the faithful secretary failed to inform the doctor that Garg had also inquired when the doctor was returning from Junagadh. That same Sunday, when Dr. Daruwalla left the circus, Mr. Garg went there.

  Farrokh wouldn’t be persuaded by Vinod’s notion—that Garg was so smitten by Madhu, he couldn’t let her go. Maybe Mr. Garg had been unprepared for how much he would miss Madhu, the dwarf said. Deepa insisted on the importance of the fact that Acid Man had actually married Madhu; surely Garg had no intentions of sending the girl back to a brothel—not after he’d married her. The dwarf’s wife would add that perhaps it was Madhu’s “lucky day.”

  But this particular news wouldn’t find its way to Dr. Daruwalla on Jubilee Day. This news would wait. Waiting with it was worse news. Ranjit would hear it first, and the medical secretary would elect to spare the doctor such bad tidings; they were unsuitable tidings for New Year’s Day. But the busy office of Tata Two was in full operation on this holiday Monday—there were no holidays for Tata Two. It was Dr. Tata’s ancient secretary, Mr. Subhash, who informed Ranjit of the problem. The two old secretaries conversed in the manner of hostile but toothless male dogs.

  “I am having information for the doctor only,” Mr. Subhash began, without bothering to identify himself.

  “Then you’ll have to wait until tomorrow,” Ranjit informed the fool.

  “This is Mr. Subhash, in Dr. Tata’s office,” the imperious secretary said.

  “You’ll still have to wait until tomorrow,” Ranjit told him. “Dr. Daruwalla isn’t here today.”

  “This is being important information—the doctor is definitely wanting to know it as soon as possible,” Mr. Subhash said.

  “Then tell me,” Ranjit replied.

  “Well … she is having it,” Mr. Subhash announced dramatically.

  “You’ve got to be clearer than that,” Ranjit told him.

  “That girl, Madhu—she is testing positive for HIV,” Mr. Subhash said. Ranjit knew this contradicted the information he’d seen in Madhu’s file; Tata Two had already told Dr. Daruwalla that Madhu’s test was negative. If the girl was carrying the AIDS virus, Ranjit assumed that Dr. Daruwalla wouldn’t have allowed her to go to the circus.

  “The ELISA is being positive, and this is being con
firmed by Western Blot,” Mr. Subhash was saying.

  “But Dr. Tata himself told Dr. Daruwalla that Madhu’s test was negative,” Ranjit said.

  “That was definitely the wrong Madhu,” old Mr. Subhash said dismissively. “Your Madhu is being HIV-positive.”

  “This is a serious mistake,” Ranjit remarked.

  “There is being no mistake,” Mr. Subhash said indignantly. “This is merely a matter of there being two Madhus.” But there was nothing “merely” about the matter.

  Ranjit transcribed his phone conversation with Mr. Subhash into a neatly typed report, which he placed on Dr. Daruwalla’s desk; from the existing evidence, the medical secretary concluded that Madhu and Mr. Garg might be sharing something a little more serious than chlamydia. What Ranjit couldn’t have known was that Mr. Garg had gone to Junagadh and retrieved Madhu from the circus; probably Garg had made his plans to bring the girl back to Bombay only after he’d been told that Madhu was not HIV-positive—but maybe not. In the world of the Wetness Cabaret, and throughout the brothels in Kamathipura, a certain fatalism was the norm.

  The news about the wrong Madhu would wait for Dr. Daruwalla, too. What was the point of hurrying evil tidings? After all, Ranjit believed that Madhu was still with the circus in Junagadh. As for Mr. Garg, Dr. Daruwalla’s secretary wrongly assumed that Acid Man had never left Bombay. And when Martin Mills called Dr. Daruwalla’s office, Ranjit saw no reason to inform the missionary that Madhu was carrying the AIDS virus. The zealot wanted his bandages changed; he’d been advised by the Father Rector that clean bandages would be more suitable for the Jubilee Day celebration. Ranjit told Martin that he’d have to call the doctor at home. Because Farrokh was hard at work—rehearsing for Rahul, with John D. and old Mr. Sethna—Julia took the message. She was surprised to hear that Dhar’s twin had been bitten by a presumed-to-be-rabid chimpanzee. Martin was surprised, and his feelings were hurt, to hear that Dr. Daruwalla hadn’t informed his wife of the painful episode.