It was a favorite TV commercial among the ninth-grade boys at Fessenden; when they gathered to watch an occasional television show in one of the dorm masters' apartments, the boys were always ready to answer the question that the close-up lips posed: "I challenge you to tell me I'm getting old."
"You're already old!" the boys would shout. Only two of them knew that Veronica Rose the Hollywood actress was Martin's mother. Martin would never have identified her, and Arif Koma was a loyal roommate.
Arif always said, "She looks young enough to me."
So it was doubly embarrassing, in the Ritz dining room, when Martin's mother said to Arif, "I'm frightfully uninterested in details. I challenge you to make the difference between an embassy and a consulate interesting--I give you one minute." Martin knew that Arif must have known that the "frightfully" and the "I challenge you" had come from the moisturizer commercial.
In the roommates' secret language, Martin Mills suddenly said, "Frightfully." He thought Arif would understand; Martin was indicating that his own mother merited an "F" word. But Arif was taking Vera seriously.
"An embassy is entrusted with a mission to a government and is headed by an ambassador," the Turk explained. "A consulate is the official premises of a consul, who is simply an official appointed by the government of one country to look after its commercial interests and the welfare of its citizens in another country. My father is the consul general in New York--New York being a place of commercial importance. A consul general is a consular officer of the highest rank, in charge of lower-ranking consular agents."
"That took just thirty seconds," Martin Mills informed his mother, but Vera was paying no attention to the time.
"Tell me about Turkey," she said to Arif. "You have thirty seconds."
"Turkish is the mother tongue of more than ninety percent of the population, and we are more than ninety-nine percent Muslims." Here Arif Koma paused, for Vera had shivered--the word "Muslims" made her shiver every time. "Ethnically, we are a melting pot," the boy continued. "Turks may be blond and blue-eyed; we may be of Alpine stock--that is, round-headed with dark hair and dark eyes. We may be of Mediterranean stock, dark, but long-headed. We may be Mongoloid, with high cheekbones."
"What are you?" Vera interrupted.
"That was only twenty seconds," Martin pointed out, but it was as if he weren't there at the dinner table with them; just the two of them were talking.
"I'm mostly Mediterranean," Arif guessed. "But my cheekbones are a little Mongoloid."
"I don't think so," Vera told him. "And where do your eyelashes come from?"
"From my mother," Arif replied shyly.
"What a lucky mother," said Veronica Rose.
"Who's going to have what?" asked Martin Mills; he was the only one looking at the menu. "I think I'm going to have the turkey."
"You must have some strange customs," Vera said to Arif. "Tell me something strange--I mean, sexually."
"Marriage is permitted between close kin--under the incest rules of Islam," Arif answered.
"Something stranger," Vera demanded.
"Boys are circumcised at any age from about six to twelve," Arif said; his dark eyes were downcast, roaming the menu.
"How old were you?" Vera asked him.
"It's a public ceremony," the boy mumbled. "I was ten."
"So you must remember it very clearly," Vera said.
"I think I'll have the turkey, too," Arif said to Martin.
"What do you remember about it, Arif?" Vera asked him.
"How you behave during the operation reflects on your family's reputation," Arif replied, but as he spoke he looked at his roommate--not at his roommate's mother.
"And how did you behave?" Vera asked.
"I didn't cry--it would have dishonored my family," the boy told her. "I'll have the turkey," he repeated.
"Didn't you two have turkey two days ago?" Vera asked them. "Don't have the turkey again--how boring! Have something different!"
"Okay--I'll have the lobster," Arif replied.
"That's a good choice--I'll have the lobster, too," Vera said. "What are you having, Martin?"
"I'll take the turkey," said Martin Mills. The sudden strength of his own will surprised him; in the power of his will there was already something Jesuitical.
This particular recollection gave the missionary the strength to return his attention to The Times of India, wherein he read about a family of 14 who'd been burned alive; their house had been set on fire by a rival family. Martin Mills wondered what a "rival family" was; then he prayed for the 14 souls who'd been burned alive.
Brother Gabriel, who'd been awakened by roosting pigeons, could see the light shining under Martin's door. Another of Brother Gabriel's myriad responsibilities at St. Ignatius was to foil the pigeons in their efforts to roost at the mission; the old Spaniard could detect pigeons roosting in his sleep. The many columns of the second-floor outdoor balcony afforded the pigeons almost unlimited access to the overhanging cornices. One by one, Brother Gabriel had fenced in the cornices with wire. After he'd shooed away these particular pigeons, he left the stepladder leaning against the column; that way, he would know which cornice to re-enclose with wire in the morning.
When Brother Gabriel passed by Martin Mills's cubicle again, on his way back to bed, the new missionary's light was still on. Pausing by the cubicle door, Brother Gabriel listened; he feared that "young" Martin might be ill. But to his surprise and eternal comfort, Brother Gabriel heard Martin Mills praying. Such late-night litanies suggested to Brother Gabriel that the new missionary was a man very strongly in God's clutches; yet the Spaniard was sure he'd misunderstood what he heard of the prayer. It must be the American accent, old Brother Gabriel thought, for although the tone of voice and the repetition was very much in the nature of a prayer, the words made no sense at all.
To remind himself of the power of his will, which surely was evidence of God's will within him, Martin Mills was repeating and repeating that long-ago proof of his inner courage. "I'll take the turkey," the missionary was saying. "I'll take the turkey," he said again. He knelt on the stone floor beside his cot, clutching the rolled-up copy of The Times of India in his hands.
A prostitute had tried to eat his culpa beads, then she'd thrown them away; a dwarf had his whip; he'd rashly told Dr. Daruwalla to dispose of his leg iron. It would take a while for the stone floor to hurt his knees, but Martin Mills would wait for the pain--worse, he would welcome it. "I'll take the turkey," he prayed. He saw so clearly how Arif Koma was unable to raise his dark eyes to meet Vera's fixed stare, which so steadily scrutinized the circumcised Turk.
"It must have been frightfully painful," Vera was saying. "And you honestly didn't cry?"
"It would have dishonored my family," Arif said again. Martin Mills could tell that his roommate was about to cry; he'd seen Arif cry before. Vera could tell, too.
"But it's all right to cry now," she was saying to the boy. Arif shook his head, but the tears were coming. Vera used her handkerchief to pat Arif's eyes. For a while, Arif completely covered his face with Vera's handkerchief; it was a strongly scented handkerchief, Martin Mills knew. His mother's scent could sometimes make him gag.
"I'll take the turkey, I'll take the turkey, I'll take the turkey," the missionary prayed. It was such a steady-sounding prayer, Brother Gabriel decided; oddly, it reminded him of the pigeons, maniacally roosting on the cornices.
Two Different Men, Both Wide Awake
It was a different issue of The Times of India that Dr. Daruwalla was reading--it was the current day's issue. If the sleeplessness of this night seemed full of the torments of hell for Martin Mills, Dr. Daruwalla was exhilarated to feel so wide awake. Farrokh was merely using The Times of India, which he hated, as a means to energize himself. Nothing enlivened him with such loathing as reading the review of a new Inspector Dhar film. USUAL INSPECTOR DHAR IDIOM, the headline said. Farrokh found this typically infuriating. The reviewer was the sort of cultura
l commissar who'd never stoop to say a single favorable word about any Inspector Dhar film. That dog turd which had prevented Dr. Daruwalla from more than a partial reading of this review had been a blessing; it was a form of foolish self-punishment for the doctor to read the entire thing. The first sentence was bad enough: "The problem with Inspector Dhar is his tenacious umbilical bindings with his first few creations." Farrokh felt that this sentence alone would provide him with the desired fury to write all night.
"Umbilical bindings!" Dr. Daruwalla cried aloud. Then he cautioned himself not to wake up Julia; she was already angry with him. He made further use of The Times of India by putting it under his typewriter; the newspaper would keep the typewriter from rattling against the glass-topped table. He had set up his writing materials in the dining room; his writing desk, which was in the bedroom, was out of the question at this late hour.
But he'd never tried to write in the dining room before. The glass-topped table was too low. It had never been a satisfactory dining-room table; it was more like a coffee table--to eat at it, one sat on cushions on the floor. Now, in an effort to make himself more comfortable, Farrokh tried sitting on two cushions; he rested his elbows on either side of the typewriter. As an orthopedist, Dr. Daruwalla was aware that this position was unwise for his back; also, it was distracting to peer through the glass-topped table at his own crossed legs and bare feet. For a while, the doctor was additionally distracted by what he thought was the unfairness of Julia's being angry with him.
Their dinner at the Ripon Club had been hasty and quarrelsome. It was a difficult day to summarize, and Julia was of the opinion that her husband was condensing too much interesting material in his recitation of the day; she was ready to speculate all night on the subject of Rahul Rai as a serial killer. Moreover, she was perturbed with Farrokh that he thought her presence at the Duckworth Club lunch with Detective Patel and Nancy would be "inappropriate"; after all, John D. was going to be there.
"I'm asking him to be present because of his memory," Dr. Daruwalla had claimed.
"I suppose I don't have a memory," Julia had replied.
Even more frustrating was that Farrokh had not been successful in reaching John D. He'd left messages at both the Taj and the Oberoi concerning an important lunch at the Duckworth Club, but Dhar hadn't returned his calls; probably the actor was still miffed about the unannounced-twin business, not that he would deign to admit it.
As for the efforts now under way to send poor Madhu and the elephant-footed Ganesh to the Great Blue Nile Circus, Julia had questioned the wisdom of Farrokh involving himself in "such dramatic intervention," as she called it; she wondered why he'd never so directly undertaken the dubious rescue of maimed beggars and child prostitutes before. Dr. Daruwalla was irritated because he already suffered from similar misgivings. As for the screenplay that the doctor was dying to begin, Julia expressed further criticism: she was surprised that Farrokh could be so self-centered at such a time--implying that it was selfish of him to be thinking of his own writing when so much that was violent and traumatic was happening in the lives of others.
They'd even had a spat about what to listen to on the radio. Julia chose those channels with programs that made her sleepy; "song miscellany" and "regional light music" were her favorites. But Dr. Daruwalla became caught up in the last stages of an interview with some complaining writer who was incensed that there was "no follow-through" in India. "Everything is left incomplete!" the writer was complaining. "We get to the bottom of nothing!" he cried. "As soon as we poke our noses into something interesting, we take our noses away again!" The writer's anger interested Farrokh, but Julia flipped to a channel featuring "instrumental music"; by the time Dr. Daruwalla found the complaining writer again, the writer's anger was being directed at a news story he'd heard today. A rape and murder had been reported at the Alexandria Girls' English Institution. The account that the writer had heard went as follows: "There was no rape and no murder, as previously and erroneously reported, at the Alexandria Girls' English Institution today." This was the kind of thing that drove the writer crazy; Farrokh guessed it was what he meant by "no follow-through."
"It's truly ridiculous to listen to this!" Julia had said, and so he'd left her with her "instrumental music."
Now Dr. Daruwalla put all this behind him. He thought about limps--all the different kinds he'd seen. He wouldn't use Madhu's name; he would call the girl in his screenplay Pinky, because Pinky was a real star. He would also make the girl much younger than Madhu; that way, nothing sexual could threaten her--not in Dr. Daruwalla's story.
Ganesh was the right name for the boy, but in the movie the boy would be older than the girl. Farrokh would simply reverse the ages of the real children. He would give his Ganesh a bad limp, too, but not nearly so grotesquely crushed a foot as the real Ganesh had; it would be too hard to find a child actor with such a nasty deformity. And the children should have a mother, because the screenwriter had already planned how he would take their mother away. Storytelling was a ruthless business.
Briefly Dr. Daruwalla considered that he'd not only failed to understand the country of his origin; he'd also failed to love it. He realized he was about to invent an India he could both comprehend and love--a simplified version. But his self-doubt passed--as self-doubt must, in order to begin a story.
It was a story set in motion by the Virgin Mary, Farrokh believed. He meant the stone statue of the unnamed saint in St. Ignatius Church--the one that needed to be restrained with a chain and a steel grommet. She wasn't really the Blessed Mother, but she had nevertheless become the Virgin Mary to Dr. Daruwalla. He liked the phrase well enough to write it down--"a story set in motion by the Virgin Mary." It was a pity that it wouldn't work as a title. For a title, he would need to find something shorter; but the simple repetition of this phrase enabled him to begin. He wrote it down again, and then again--"a story set in motion by the Virgin Mary." Then he crossed out every trace of this phrase, so that not even he could read it. Instead, he said it aloud--repeatedly.
Thus, in the dead of night, while almost five million residents of Bombay were fast asleep on the sidewalks of the city, these two men were wide awake and mumbling. One spoke only to himself--"a story set in motion by the Virgin Mary"--and this allowed him to get started. The other spoke not only to himself but to God; understandably, his mumbles were a little louder. He was saying, "I'll take the turkey," and his repetitions--he hoped--would prevent him from being consumed by that past which everywhere surrounded him. It was the past that had given him his tenacious will, which he believed was the will of God within him; yet how he feared the past.
"I'll take the turkey," said Martin Mills. By now his knees were throbbing. "I'll take the turkey, I'll take the turkey, I'll take the turkey."
18
A STORY SET IN MOTION BY THE VIRGIN MARY
Limo Roulette
In the morning, Julia found Farrokh slumped over the glass-topped table as if he'd fallen asleep while looking through the glass at the big toe of his right foot. Julia knew this was the same toe that had been bitten by a monkey, for which the family had suffered some religious disruption; she was thankful that the effects of the monkey bite had been neither fanatical nor long-lasting, but to observe her husband in the apparent position of praying to this same toe was disconcerting.
Julia was relieved to see the pages of the screenplay-in-progress, which she realized had been the true object of Farrokh's scrutiny--not his toe. The typewriter had been pushed aside; the typed pages had many penciled corrections written on them, and the doctor still held the pencil in his right hand. It appeared to Julia that her husband's own writing had served him as a soporific. She assumed she was a witness to the genesis of yet another Inspector Dhar disaster, but she saw at a glance that Dhar was not the voice-over character; after reading the first five pages, she wondered if Dhar was even in the movie. How odd! she thought. Altogether, there were about 25 pages. She took them into the kitchen with her; th
ere she made coffee for herself and tea for Farrokh.
The voice-over was that of a 12-year-old boy who'd been crippled by an elephant. Oh, no--it's Ganesh! Julia thought. She knew the beggar. Whenever she left the apartment building, he was there to follow her; she'd bought him many things, most of which he'd sold, but his unusually good English had charmed her. Unlike Dr. Daruwalla, Julia knew why Ganesh's English was so polished.
Once, when he'd been begging at the Taj, an English couple had spotted him; they were traveling with a shy, lonely boy a little younger than Ganesh, and the child had requested that they find him someone to play with. There was also a nanny in tow, and Ganesh had traveled with this family for over a month. They fed him and clothed him and kept him atypically clean--they had him examined by a doctor, to be sure he wasn't carrying any infectious diseases--just so he could be a playmate for their lonely child. The nanny taught Ganesh English during the several hours of every day that she was under orders to give language instruction to the English boy. And when it was time for the family to return to England, they simply left Ganesh where they'd found him--begging at the Taj. He quickly sold the unnecessary clothes. For a time, Ganesh said, he'd missed the nanny. The story had touched Julia. It also struck her as highly unlikely. But why would the beggar have made it up? Now here was her husband, putting the poor cripple in a movie!
And Farrokh had given Ganesh a sister, a six-year-old girl named Pinky; she was a gifted street acrobat, a sidewalk beggar who performed various tricks. This didn't fool Julia. Julia knew the real Pinky--she was a circus star. It was also obvious that another inspiration for the fictional Pinky was Madhu, Deepa and Vinod's newest child prostitute; in the movie, Farrokh had made Pinky totally innocent. These fictional children were also fortunate to have a mother. (Not for long.)