A Son of the Circus

  "I'm glad I'm not the rat he's thinking of," Mr. Sethna said.

  Not the Curry

  Of course there was more wrong with One Day We'll Go to India, Darling than Danny Mills's alcoholism or his unsubtle plagiarism of Dark Victory; much more was amiss than Gordon Hathaway's crass alterations of Danny's "original" screenplay, or the director's attendant hemorrhoids and fungus. To make matters worse, the actress who was playing the dying but saved wife was that talentless beauty and denizen of the gossip columns Veronica Rose. Her friends and colleagues called her Vera, but she was born in Brooklyn with the name Hermione Rosen and she was Gordon Hathaway's niece (the C. of M.'s daughter). Small world, Farrokh would learn.

  The producer, Harold Rosen, would one day find his daughter as tiresomely tasteless as the rest of the world judged her to be upon the merest introduction; however, Harold was as easily bullied by his wife (the C. of M. sister of Gordon Hathaway) as Gordon was. Harold was operating on his wife's assumption that Hermione Rosen, by her transformation to Veronica Rose, would one day be a star. Vera's lack of talent and intelligence would prove too great an obstacle for such a goal--this in tandem with a compulsion to expose her breasts that even Lady Duckworth would have scorned.

  But at the Duckworth Club in the summer of '49, a rumor was in circulation that Vera was soon to have a huge success. Concerning Hollywood, what did Bombay know? That Vera had been cast in the role of the dying but saved wife was all that Lowji Daruwalla knew. It would take a while for Farrokh to find out that Danny Mills had objected to Vera having the part--until she seduced him and made him imagine that he was in love with her. Then he trotted at her heels like a dog. Danny believed it was the intense pressure of the role that had cooled Vera's brief ardor for him--Vera had her own room at the Taj, and she'd refused to sleep with Danny since the commencement of principal photography--but, in truth, she was having an obvious affair with her leading man. It wasn't obvious to Danny, who usually drank himself to sleep and got up late.

  As for the leading man, he was a bisexual named Neville Eden. Neville was an uprooted Englishman and a properly trained actor, if not exactly brimming with natural ability, but his move to Los Angeles had turned sour when a certain predictability in the parts he was offered grew clear to him. He'd become too easy to cast as any number of stereotypical Brits. There was the Brit-twit role--the kind of instant Brit whom more rowdy and less educated Americans deplore--and then there was the sophisticated English gentleman who becomes the love interest of an impressionable American girl before she realizes her mistake and chooses the more substantial (if duller) American male. There was also the role of the visiting British cousin--sometimes this was a war buddy--who would comically display his inability to ride a horse, or to drive a car on the right-hand side of the road, or to successfully engage in fisticuffs in low bars. In all these roles, Neville felt he was supplying moronic reassurance to an audience that equated manliness with qualities only to be found in American men. This discovery tended to irritate him; doubtless it also fueled what he called his "homosexual self."

  About One Day We'll Go to India, Darling Neville was philosophic: at least it was a leading role, and the part wasn't quite in the vein of the dimly perceived British types he was usually asked to portray--after all, in this story he was a happily married Englishman with a dying American wife. But even for Neville Eden the loser combination of Danny Mills, Gordon Hathaway and Veronica Rose was a trifle daunting. Neville knew from past experience that contact with a compromised script, a second-rate director and a floozy for a co-star tended to make him churlish. And Neville cared nothing for Vera, who was beginning to imagine that she was in love with him; yet he found fornicating with her altogether more inspiring, and amusing, than acting with her--and he was mightily bored.

  He was also married, which Vera knew; it caused her great anguish, or at least virulent insomnia. Of course she did not know that Neville was bisexual; this revelation was often the means by which Neville broke off such passing affairs. He'd found it instantly effective--to tell whichever floozy it was that she was the first woman to capture his heart and his attention to such a degree, but that his homosexual self was simply stronger than both of them. That usually worked; that got rid of them, in a hurry. All but the wife.

  As for Gordon Hathaway, he had his hands full; his hemorrhoids and his fungus were trifling in comparison to the certain catastrophe he was facing. Veronica Rose wanted Danny Mills to go home so she could lavish even more obvious attention on Neville Eden. Gordon Hathaway complied with Vera's request only to the degree that he forbade Danny's presence on the set. The writer's presence, Gordon claimed, "fuckin' confused" the cast. But Gordon could hardly comply with his niece's request to send Danny home; he needed Danny every night, to revise the ever-changing script. Understandably, Danny Mills wanted to reinstate his original script, which Neville Eden had agreed was better than the picture they were making. Danny thought Neville was a good chap, though it would have destroyed him to learn that Neville was fornicating with Vera. Vera, above all, dearly desired to sleep, and Dr. Lowji Daruwalla was alarmed by the sleeping pills she requested; yet he was such a fool for movies--he found her "charming," too.

  His son Farrokh wasn't exactly charmed by Veronica Rose; neither was he altogether immune to her attractions. Soon a conflict of emotions engulfed the tender 19-year-old. Vera was clearly a coarse young woman, which is not without allure to 19-year-olds, especially when the woman in question is intriguingly older--Vera was 25. Furthermore, while he knew nothing of the random pleasure Vera took in exposing her breasts, Farrokh found that the actress bore a remarkable resemblance to the old photographs he so relished of Lady Duckworth.

  It had been an evening in the empty dance hall when not even that depth of stone and the constant stirring of the ceiling fans could cool the stifling and humid night air, which had entered the Duckworth Club as heavily as a fog from the Arabian Sea. Even atheists, like Lowji, were praying for the monsoon rains. After dinner, Farrokh had escorted Vera from the table to the dance hall, not to dance with her but to show her Lady Duckworth's photographs.

  "There is someone you resemble," the young man told the actress. "Please come and see." Then he'd smiled at his mother, Meher, who didn't appear to be very happily entertained by the surly arrogance of Neville Eden, who sat to her left, or by the drunken Danny Mills, who sat to her right with his head upon his folded arms, which rested in his plate.

  "Yeah!" Gordon Hathaway said to his niece. "You oughta see the pictures of this broad, Vera. She showed her tits to everybody, too!" By this word "too," Farrokh should have been forewarned, but he supposed Gordon meant only that Lady Duckworth exposed herself "in addition to" her other traits.

  Veronica Rose wore a sleeveless muslin dress that clung to her back where she'd sweated against her chair; her bare upper arms caused excruciating offense to the Duckworthians, and especially to the recently acquired Parsi steward, Mr. Sethna, who thought that for a woman to bare her upper arms in public was a violation of scandalous proportion--the slut might as well show her breasts, too!

  When Vera saw Lady Duckworth's pictures, she was flattered; she lifted her damp blond hair off the back of her slender wet neck and she turned to young Farrokh, who felt an erotic flush at the sight of a rivulet of sweat that coursed from Vera's near armpit. "Maybe I oughta wear my hair like hers," Vera said; then she let her hair fall back in place. As Farrokh followed her to the dining room, he couldn't help but notice--through the drenched back of her dress--that she wore no bra.

  "So how'd ya like the fuckin' exhibitionist?" her uncle asked her upon her return to the table.

  Vera unbuttoned the front of her white muslin dress, showing her breasts to them all--Dr. Lowji Daruwalla and Mrs. Daruwalla, too. And the Lals, dining with the Bannerjees at a nearby table, certainly saw Veronica Rose's breasts very clearly. And Mr. Sethna, so recently dismissed from the Ripon Club for attacking a crass member there with hot tea--Mr. Sethna clutched
his silver serving tray, as if he thought of striking the Hollywood wench dead with it.

  "Well, whatta ya think?" Vera asked her audience. "I don't know if she was an exhibitionist--I think she was just too fuckin' hot!" She added that she wanted to return to the Taj, where at least there was a sea breeze. In truth, she looked forward to feeding the rats that gathered at the water's edge beneath the Gateway of India; the rats were unafraid of people, and Vera enjoyed teasing them with expensive table scraps--the way some people enjoy feeding ducks or pigeons. Thereafter, she would go to Neville's room and straddle him until his cock was sore.

  But in the morning, in addition to suffering the tribulation of her insomnia, Vera was sick; she was sick every morning for a week before she consulted Dr. Lowji Daruwalla, who, even though he was an orthopedist, had no trouble ascertaining that the actress was pregnant.

  "Shit," Vera said. "I thought it was the fuckin' curry."

  But no; it was just the fucking. Either Danny Mills or Neville Eden was the father. Vera hoped it was Neville, because he was better-looking. She also theorized that alcoholism like Danny's was genetic.

  "Christ, it must be Neville!" said Vera Rose. "Danny's so pickled, I think he's sterile."

  Dr. Lowji Daruwalla was understandably taken aback by the crudeness of the lovely movie star, who wasn't really a movie star and who was suddenly terrified that her uncle, the director, would discover that she was pregnant and fire her from the picture. Old Lowji pointed out to Miss Rose that she had fewer than three weeks remaining on the shooting schedule; she wouldn't begin to look pregnant for another three months or more.

  Miss Rose then became obsessed with the question of whether or not Neville Eden would leave his wife and marry her. Dr. Lowji Daruwalla thought not, but he chose to soften the blow with an indirect remark.

  "I believe that Mr. Danny Mills would marry you," the senior Daruwalla offered tactfully, but this truth only depressed Veronica Rose, who commenced to weep. As for weeping, it wasn't as commonplace at the Hospital for Crippled Children as one might suppose. Dr. Lowji Daruwalla led the sobbing actress out of his office and through the waiting room, which was full of injured and crippled and deformed children; they all looked pityingly upon the crying fair-haired lady, imagining that she'd just received some awful news regarding a child of her own. In a sense, she had.

  A Slum Is Born

  At first, the news that Vera was pregnant didn't spread far. Lowji told Meher, and Meher told Farrokh. No one else knew, and a special effort was made to keep this news from Lowji's South Indian secretary, a brilliant young man from Madras. His name was Ranjit and he, too, had high hopes of becoming a screenwriter. Ranjit was only a few years older than Farrokh, his spoken English was impeccable, but thus far his writing had been limited to the excellent case histories of the senior Dr. Daruwalla's patients that he composed, and to his lengthy memos to Lowji concerning what recent articles he'd read in the doctor's orthopedic journals. These memos were written not to gain favor with old Lowji but as a means of giving the busy doctor some shorthand information regarding what he might like to read himself.

  Although he came from a Hindu family of strictly vegetarian Brahmins, Ranjit had told Lowji--in his job interview--that he was wholly without religion and that he considered caste as "largely a means to hold everyone down." Lowji had hired the young man in an instant.

  But that had been five years ago. Although Ranjit totally pleased the senior Daruwalla as a secretary and Lowji had made every effort to further brainwash the young man in an atheistic direction, Ranjit was finding it exceedingly difficult to attract a prospective bride--or, more important, a prospective father-in-law--by the matrimonial advertisements he regularly submitted to The Times of India. He wouldn't advertise that he was a Brahmin and a strict vegetarian, and although these things might not have mattered to him, they were of great concern to prospective fathers-in-law; it was usually the fathers-in-law, not the would-be brides, who responded to the advertisements--if anyone responded.

  And now there was bickering between old Lowji and Ranjit because Ranjit had given in. His most recent advertisement in The Times of India had drawn over 100 responses; this was because he'd presented himself as someone who cared about caste and followed a strict vegetarian diet. After all, he told Lowji, he'd been made to observe these things as a child and they hadn't killed him. "If it helps me to get married," Ranjit said, "sporting a fresh puja mark, so to speak, will not kill me now."

  Lowji was crushed by this traitorousness; he'd considered Ranjit like a third son, and a cohort in atheism. Furthermore, the interviews (with over 100 prospective fathers-in-law) were having a deleterious influence on Ranjit's efficiency; he was exhausted all the time, and no wonder--his mind was reeling with comparisons among 100 future wives.

  But even in this state of mind, Ranjit was very attentive to the office visit of the Hollywood film goddess Veronica Rose. And since it was Ranjit's job to formally compose old Lowji's scribbles into a proper Orthopedic Report, the young man was surprised--after Vera's teary departure--to see that Lowji had scrawled no more than "joint problem" in the sex symbol's file. It was highly unusual for the senior Daruwalla to escort any of his patients home, particularly following a mere office visit--and especially when there were other patients waiting to see him. Furthermore, old Dr. Daruwalla had called his own home and told his wife that he was bringing Miss Rose there. All this for a joint problem? Ranjit thought it was most irregular.

  Fortunately, the rigorous interviews that were the result of his highly successful matrimonial ads didn't allow Ranjit much time or energy for speculation on Vera's "joint problem." His interest was provoked no further than to ask the senior Daruwalla what sort of joint problem the actress was suffering; Ranjit wasn't used to typing up an incomplete Orthopedic Report.

  "Well, actually," Lowji said, "I have referred her to another physician."

  "Not a joint problem then?" Ranjit inquired. All he cared about was correctly typing the report.

  "Possibly gynecological," Lowji answered warily.

  "What sort of joint problem did she think she had?" Ranjit asked in surprise.

  "Her knees," Lowji said vaguely, with a dismissive wave of his hand. "But I judged this to be psychosomatic."

  "The gynecological problem is psychosomatic, too?" Ranjit inquired. He foresaw difficult typing ahead.

  "Possibly," Lowji said.

  "What sort of gynecological problem is it?" Ranjit persisted. At his age, and with his ambition to be a screenwriter, he was thinking that the problem was venereal.

  "Itching," said the senior Daruwalla--and to halt the inquisition at this juncture, he wisely added, "Vaginal itching." No young man, he knew, cared to contemplate this. The matter was closed. Ranjit's Orthopedic Report on Veronica Rose was the closest he would ever come to writing a screenplay (many years later, the younger Dr. Daruwalla would read this report with consistent pleasure--whenever he desired to make some contact with the old days).

  The patient is confused by her knees. She imagines that she has no vaginal itching, which indeed she has, while at the same time she feels some pain in her knees, which in fact she does not have. Most naturally, a gynecologist is recommended.

  And what a gynecologist was selected for the task! Few patients would ever claim that their confidence soared when they placed themselves in the hands of the ancient, accident-prone Dr. Tata. Lowji chose him because he was so senile, he was certain to be discreet; his powers of memory were too depleted for gossip. Sadly, the selection of Dr. Tata was lacking in obstetrical merit.

  At least Lowji had the good sense to entrust his wife with the psychological care of Veronica Rose. Meher tucked the pregnant bombshell into a guest bed in the Daruwalla family mansion on old Ridge Road. Meher treated Vera like a little girl who'd just suffered a tonsillectomy. Although doubtless soothing, this mothering wouldn't solve Vera's problem; nor was Vera much comforted by Meher's claim that, in her own case, she hadn't really remem
bered the agony and the gore of childbirth. Over time, Meher told the knocked-up actress, only the positive parts of the experience stood out in her mind.

  To Lowji, Meher was less optimistic. "Here is a bizarre and thankless situation that you have gotten us into," she informed her husband. Then the situation worsened.

  The next day, Gordon Hathaway called the senior Dr. Daruwalla from the slum set with the bothersome news that Veronica Rose had collapsed between takes. Actually, that was not what had happened. Vera's so-called collapse had had nothing whatsoever to do with her unwanted pregnancy; she'd simply fainted because a cow had licked her and then sneezed on her. Not that this wasn't disturbing to Vera, but the incident--like so many day-to-day occurrences in an actual slum--had been poorly observed and fervently misinterpreted by the horde of onlookers who reported the confused event.

  Farrokh couldn't remember if the rudiments for a real slum existed in the area of Sophia Zuber Road in the summer of '49; he recalled only that there was both a Muslim and a Hindu population in that vicinity, for it wasn't far from where he'd attended school--at St. Ignatius in Mazagaon. Probably, some kind of slum was already there. And certainly today there is a slum of good size and modest respectability on Sophia Zuber Road.

  It's fair to say that Gordon Hathaway's movie set at least contributed to what now passes for acceptable housing in the slum on Sophia Zuber Road, for it was there that the slum set was hastily constructed. Naturally, among those hired as extras--to act the part of the slum residents--were actual citizens of Bombay who were looking for an actual slum to move into. And once they'd moved in, they objected to these movie people, who were constantly invading their privacy. Rather quickly, it had become their slum.

  Also, there was the matter of the latrine. An army of movie-crew coolies--thugs with entrenching tools--had dug the latrine. But one cannot create a new place to shit without expecting people to shit there. A universal code of defecation applies: if some people are shitting somewhere, others will shit there, too. This is only fair. Defecation in India is endlessly creative. Here was a new latrine; quickly it wasn't new. And one mustn't forget the intense heat before the monsoon breaks, and the ensuing floods that attend the onset of the monsoon; these factors, in addition to the sudden plenitude of human excrement, doubtless exacerbated Vera's morning sickness--not to mention her proneness to fainting on that particular day when she was both licked and sneezed on by a cow.