A Son of the Circus

by John Irving

  It was one of those little misunderstandings that no one would ever solve; it was a suitably sour note on which to leave one’s country for the last time, Farrokh thought. Nor was he pleased by The Times of India, with which Vinod had wrapped the stolen sign. Of great prominence in the news lately was the report of food poisoning in East Delhi. Two children had died and eight others were hospitalized after they’d consumed some “stale” food from a garbage dump in the Shakurpur area. Dr. Daruwalla had been following this report with the keenest attention; he knew that the children hadn’t died from eating “stale” food—the stupid newspaper meant “rotten” or “contaminated.”

  As far as Farrokh was concerned, the airplane couldn’t take off fast enough. Like Dhar, the doctor preferred the aisle seat because he planned to drink beer and he would need to pee; Julia would sit by the window. It would be almost 10:00 in the morning, London time, before they landed in England. It would be dark all the way to Delhi. Literally, before he even left, the doctor thought he’d already seen the last of India.

  Although Martin Mills might be tempted to say that it was God’s will (that Dr. Daruwalla was saying good-bye to Bombay), the doctor wouldn’t have agreed. It wasn’t God’s will; it was India, which wasn’t for everybody—as Father Julian, unbeknownst to Dr. Daruwalla, had said. It was not God’s will, Farrokh felt certain; it was just India, which was more than enough.

  When Air India 185 lifted off the runway in Sahar, Dhar’s thug taxi driver was again cruising the streets of Bombay; the dwarf was still crying—he was too upset to sleep. Vinod had returned to town too late to catch the last show at the Wetness Cabaret, where he’d been hoping to get a glimpse of Madhu; he’d have to look for her another night. It depressed the dwarf to keep cruising the red-light district, although it was a night like any night—Vinod might have found and saved a stray. At 3:00 A.M., the dwarf felt that the brothels resembled a failed circus. The ex-clown imagined the cages of lifeless animals—the rows of tents, full of exhausted and injured acrobats. He drove on.

  It was almost 4:00 in the morning when Vinod parked the Ambassador in the alley alongside the Daruwallas’ apartment building on Marine Drive. No one saw him slip into the building, but the dwarf roamed around the lobby, breathing heavily, until he had all the first-floor dogs barking. Then Vinod swaggered back to his taxi; he felt only mildly uplifted by the insults of the screaming residents, who’d earlier been disturbed by the report that their all-important elevator sign had been stolen.

  Wherever the sad dwarf drove, the life of the city seemed to be eluding him; still, he wouldn’t go home. In the predawn light, Vinod stopped the Ambassador to joke with a traffic policeman in Mazagaon.

  “Where is the traffic being?” Vinod asked the constable. The policeman had his baton out, as if there were a crowd or a riot to direct. No one was anywhere around: not another car, not a single bicycle, not one pedestrian. Of the sidewalk sleepers, the few who were awake hadn’t risen beyond a sitting position or from their knees. The constable recognized Dhar’s thug driver—every policeman knew Vinod. The constable said there’d been a disturbance—a religious procession streaming out of Sophia Zuber Road—but Vinod had missed it. The abandoned traffic policeman said he’d be obliged to the dwarf if Vinod would drive him the length of Sophia Zuber Road, just to prove that there was no more trouble. And so, with the lonely constable in the car, Vinod cautiously proceeded through one of Bombay’s better slums.

  There wasn’t much to see; more sidewalk sleepers were waking up, but the slum dwellers were still sleeping. At that part of Sophia Zuber Road where Martin Mills, almost a month ago, had encountered the mortally wounded cow, Vinod and the traffic policeman saw the tail end of a procession—a few sadhus chanting, the usual flower flingers. There was a huge clotted bloodstain in the gutter of the road, where the cow had finally died; the earlier disturbance, the religious procession, had been merely the removal of the dead cow’s body. Some zealots had managed to keep the cow alive all this time.

  This zeal was also not God’s will, Dr. Daruwalla would have said; this doomed effort was also “just India,” which was more than enough.

  27

  EPILOGUE

  The Volunteer

  On a Friday in May, more than two years after the Daruwallas had returned to Toronto from Bombay, Farrokh felt an urge to show Little India to his friend Macfarlane. They took Mac’s car. It was their lunch hour, but the traffic on Gerrard was so congested, they soon realized they wouldn’t have much time for lunch; they might barely have time to get to Little India and back to the hospital.

  They’d been spending their lunch hour together for the past 18 months, ever since Macfarlane had tested HIV-positive; Mac’s boyfriend—Dr. Duncan Frasier, the gay geneticist—had died of AIDS over a year ago. As for debating the merits of his dwarf-blood project, Farrokh had found no one to replace Frasier, and Mac hadn’t found a new boyfriend.

  The shorthand nature of the conversation between Dr. Daruwalla and Dr. Macfarlane, in regard to Mac’s living with the AIDS virus, was a model of emotional restraint.

  “How have you been doing?” Dr. Daruwalla would ask.

  “Good,” Dr. Macfarlane would reply. “I’m off AZT—switched to DDI. Didn’t I tell you?”

  “No—but why? Were your T cells dropping?”

  “Kind of,” Mac would say. “They dropped below two hundred. I was feeling like shit on AZT, so Schwartz decided to switch me to DDI. I feel better—I’m more energetic now. And I’m taking Bactrim prophylactically … to prevent PCP pneumonia.”

  “Oh,” Farrokh would say.

  “It isn’t as bad as it sounds. I feel great,” Mac would say. “If the DDI stops working, there’s DDC and many more—I hope.”

  “I’m glad you feel that way,” Farrokh would find himself saying.

  “Meanwhile,” Macfarlane would say, “I’ve got this little game going. I sit and visualize my healthy T cells—I picture them resisting the virus. I see my T cells shooting bullets at the virus, and the virus being cut down in a hail of gunfire—that’s the idea, anyway.”

  “Is that Schwartz’s idea?” Dr. Daruwalla would ask.

  “No, it’s my idea!”

  “It sounds like Schwartz.”

  “And I go to my support group,” Mac would add. “Support groups seem to be one of the things that correlate with long-term survival.”

  “Really,” Farrokh would say.

  “Really,” Macfarlane would repeat. “And of course what they call taking charge of your illness—not being passive, and not necessarily accepting everything your doctor tells you.”

  “Poor Schwartz,” Dr. Daruwalla would reply. “I’m glad I’m not your doctor.”

  “That makes two of us,” Mac would say.

  This was their two-minute drill; usually, they could cover the subject that quickly—at least they tried to. They liked to let their lunch hour be about other things: for example, Dr. Daruwalla’s sudden desire to take Dr. Macfarlane to Little India.

  It had been in May when the racist goons had driven Farrokh to Little India against his will; that had also been a Friday, a day when much of Little India had appeared to be closed—or were only the butcher shops closed? Dr. Daruwalla wondered if this was because the Friday prayers were faithfully attended by the local Muslims; it was one of those things he didn’t know. Farrokh knew only that he wanted Macfarlane to see Little India, and he had this sudden feeling that he wanted all the conditions to be the same—the same weather, the same shops, the same mannequins (if not the same saris).

  Doubtless, Dr. Daruwalla had been inspired by something he’d read in the newspapers, probably something about the Heritage Front. It greatly upset him to read about the Heritage Front—those neo-Nazi louts, that white supremacist scum. Since there were antihate laws in Canada, Dr. Daruwalla wondered why groups like the Heritage Front were allowed to foment so much racist hatred.

  Macfarlane had no difficulty finding a place to park; as befor
e, Little India was fairly deserted—in this respect, it wasn’t like India at all. Farrokh stopped walking in front of the Ahmad Grocers on Gerrard, at Coxwell; he pointed diagonally across the street to the boarded-up offices of the Canadian Ethnic Immigration Services—it looked closed for good, not just because it was Friday.

  “This is where I was dragged out of the car,” Dr. Daruwalla explained. They continued walking on Gerrard. Pindi Embroidery was gone, but a clothes rack of kaftans stood lifelessly on the sidewalk. “There was more wind the day I was here,” Farrokh told Mac. “The kaftans were dancing in the wind.”

  At the corner of Rhodes and Gerrard, Nirma Fashions was still in business. They noted the Singh Farm, advertising fresh fruits and vegetables. They viewed the façade of the United Church, which also served as the Shri Ram Hindu Temple; the Reverend Lawrence Pushee, minister of the former, had chosen an interesting theme for the coming Sunday service. A Gandhi quotation forewarned the congregation: “There is enough for everyone’s need but not enough for everyone’s greed.”

  Not only the Canadian Ethnic Immigration Services, but also the Chinese were experiencing hard times; the Luck City Poultry Company was closed down. At the corner of Craven and Gerrard, the “Indian Cuisine Specialists,” formerly the Nirala restaurant, were now calling themselves Hira Moti, and the familiar advertisement for Kingfisher lager promised that the beer was (as always) INSTILLED WITH INNER STRENGTH. A MEGASTARS poster advertised the arrival of Jeetendra and Bali of Patel Rap; Sapna Mukerjee was also performing.

  “I walked along here, bleeding,” Farrokh said to Mac. In the window of either Kala Kendar or Sonali’s, the same blond mannequin was wearing a sari; she still looked out of place among the other mannequins. Dr. Daruwalla thought of Nancy.

  They passed Satyam, “the store for the whole family”; they read an old announcement for the Miss Diwali competition. They walked up and down and across Gerrard, with no purpose. Farrokh kept repeating the names of the places. The Kohinoor supermarket, the Madras Durbar, the Apollo Video (promising ASIAN MOVIES), the India Theater—NOW PLAYING, TAMIL MOVIES! At the Chaat Hut, Farrokh explained to Mac what was meant by “all kinds of chaats.” At the Bombay Bhel, they barely had time to eat their aloo tikki and drink their Thunderbolt beer.

  Before they went back to the hospital, the doctors stopped at J. S. Addison Plumbing, at the corner of Woodfield. Dr. Daruwalla was looking for that splendid copper bathtub with the ornate faucets; the handles were tiger heads, the tigers roaring—it was exactly like the tub he’d bathed in as a boy on old Ridge Road, Malabar Hill. He’d had that bathtub on his mind ever since his last, unplanned visit to Little India. But the tub had been sold. What Farrokh found, instead, was another marvel of Victorian ornamentation. It was that same sink spout, with tusks for faucets, which had captured Rahul’s imagination in the ladies’ room of the Duckworth Club; it was that elephant-headed spigot, with the water spraying from the elephant’s trunk. Farrokh touched the two tusks, one for hot water and the other for cold. Macfarlane thought it was ghastly, but Dr. Daruwalla didn’t hesitate to buy it; it was the product of a recognizably British imagination, but it was made in India.

  “Does it have a sentimental value?” Mac asked.

  “Not exactly,” Farrokh replied. Dr. Daruwalla wondered what he’d do with the ugly thing; he knew Julia would absolutely hate it.

  “Those men who drove you here, and left you …” Mac suddenly said.

  “What about them?”

  “Do you imagine that they bring other people here—like they brought you?”

  “All the time,” Farrokh said. “I imagine that they’re bringing people here all the time.”

  Mac thought Farrokh looked mortally depressed and told him so.

  How can I ever feel assimiliated? Dr. Daruwalla wondered. “How am I supposed to feel like a Canadian?” Farrokh asked Mac.

  Indeed, if one could believe the newspapers, there was a growing resistance to immigration; demographers were predicting a “racist backlash.” The resistance to immigration was racist, Dr. Daruwalla believed; the doctor had become very sensitive to the phrase “visible minorities.” He knew this didn’t mean the Italians or the Germans or the Portuguese; they’d come to Canada in the 1950s. Until the last decade, by far the greatest proportion of immigrants came from Britain.

  But not now; the new immigrants came from Hong Kong and China and India—half the immigrants who’d come to Canada in this decade were Asians. In Toronto, almost 40 percent of the population was immigrant—more than a million people.

  Macfarlane suffered to see Farrokh so despondent. “Believe me, Farrokh,” Mac said. “I know it’s no circus to be an immigrant in this country, and although I trust that those thugs who dumped you in Little India have assaulted other immigrants in the city, I don’t believe that they’re transporting people all over town ‘all the time,’ as you say.”

  “Don’t you mean it’s no picnic? You said ‘no circus,’ ” Farrokh told Mac.

  “It’s the same expression,” Macfarlane replied.

  “Do you know what my father said to me?” Dr. Daruwalla asked.

  “Could it be, ‘Immigrants are immigrants all their lives’?” Macfarlane inquired.

  “Oh—I’ve already told you,” Farrokh said.

  “Too many times to count,” Mac replied. “But I suppose you go around thinking of it all the time.”

  “All the time,” Farrokh repeated. He felt grateful for what a good friend Mac was.

  It had been Dr. Macfarlane who’d persuaded Dr. Daruwalla to volunteer his time at the AIDS hospice in Toronto; Duncan Frasier had died there. Farrokh had worked at the hospice for over a year. At first, he suspected his own motives, which he’d confessed to Mac; on Mac’s advice, Farrokh had also discussed his special interest in the hospice with the director of nursing.

  It had been awkward for Farrokh to tell a stranger the story of his relationship with John D.—how this young man, who was like an adopted son to Dr. Daruwalla, had always been a homosexual, but the doctor hadn’t known it until John D. was almost 40; how, even now, when John D.’s sexual orientation was plainly clear, Farrokh and the not-so-young “young” man still didn’t speak of the matter (at least not in depth). Dr. Daruwalla told Dr. Macfarlane and the hospice’s director of nursing that he wanted to be involved with AIDS patients because he wanted to know more about the elusive John D. Farrokh admitted that he was terrified for John D.; that his beloved almost-like-a-son might die of AIDS was Farrokh’s greatest fear. (Yes, he was afraid for Martin, too.)

  Emotional restraint, which was repeatedly demonstrated in Dr. Daruwalla’s friendship with Dr. Macfarlane—their understated conversation regarding the status of Macfarlane’s HIV-positive condition was but one example—prevented Farrokh from admitting to his friend that he was also afraid of watching Mac die of AIDS. But it was perfectly well understood, by both doctors and by the hospice’s director of nursing, that this was another motive underlying Farrokh’s desire to familiarize himself with the functions of an AIDS hospice.

  Dr. Daruwalla believed that the more naturally he could learn to behave in the presence of AIDS patients, not to mention gay men, the closer his relationship with John D. might become. They’d already grown closer together, ever since John D. had told Farrokh that he’d always been gay. Doubtless, Dr. Daruwalla’s friendship with Dr. Macfarlane had helped. But what “father” can ever feel close enough to his “son”—that was the issue, wasn’t it? Farrokh had asked Mac.

  “Don’t try to get too close to John D.,” Macfarlane had advised. “Remember, you’re not his father—and you’re not gay.”

  It had been awkward—how Dr. Daruwalla had first tried to fit in at the hospice. As Mac had warned him, he had to learn that he wasn’t their doctor—he was just a volunteer. He asked lots of doctor-type questions and generally drove the nurses crazy; taking orders from nurses was something Dr. Daruwalla had to get used to. It was an effort for him to limit his expert
ise to the issue of bedsores; he still couldn’t be stopped from prescribing little exercises to combat the muscular wasting of the patients. He so freely dispensed tennis balls for squeezing that one of the nurses nicknamed him “Dr. Balls.” After a while, the name pleased him.

  He was good at taking care of the catheters, and he was capable of giving morphine injections when one of the hospice doctors or nurses asked him to. He grew familiar with the feeding tubes; he hated seeing the seizures. He hoped that he would never watch John D. die with fulminant diarrhea … with an uncontrolled infection … with a spiking fever.

  “I hope not, too,” Mac told him. “But if you’re not prepared to watch me die, you’ll be worthless to me when the time comes.”

  Dr. Daruwalla wanted to be prepared. Usually, his voluntary time was spent in ordinary chores. One night, he did the laundry, just as Macfarlane had proudly bragged about doing it years earlier—all the bed linens and the towels. He also read aloud to patients who couldn’t read. He wrote letters for them, too.

  One night, when Farrokh was working the switchboard, an angry woman called; she was indignant because she’d just learned that her only son was dying in the hospice and no one had officially informed her—not even her son. She was outraged, she said. She wanted to speak to someone in charge; she didn’t ask to speak to her son.

  Dr. Daruwalla supposed that, although he wasn’t “in charge,” the woman might as well speak to him; he knew the hospice and its rules well enough to advise her how to visit—when to come, how to show respect for privacy and so forth. But the woman wouldn’t hear of it.

  “You’re not in charge!” she kept shouting. “I want to speak to a doctor!” she cried. “I want to talk to the head of the place!”