It didn't seem a betrayal, not at the time; Martin thought he was speaking to his mother in order to protect Arif. "He masturbates," Martin said quietly.
"Goodness, I should hope so!" Vera exclaimed. "I certainly hope that you do!"
Martin wouldn't take this bait, but he replied, "I mean that he masturbates a lot--almost every night."
"The poor boy!" Vera remarked. "But you sound so disapproving, Martin."
"I think it's ... excessive," her son told her.
"I think masturbation is quite healthy for boys your age. Have you discussed masturbation with your father?" Vera asked him.
"Discussed" wasn't the right word. Martin had listened to Danny go on and on in reassuring tones in regard to all the desires Danny presumed that Martin was experiencing--how such desires were perfectly natural ... that was Danny's theme.
"Yes," Martin told his mother. "Dad thinks masturbation is ... normal."
"Well, there--you see?" Vera said sarcastically. "If your sainted father says it's normal, I suppose we should all be trying it!"
"I'll be late for Mass," Martin said.
"Run along, then," his mother replied. Martin was about to close the door to her bedroom behind him when his mother gave him a parting shot. "Personally, dear, I think masturbation would be better for you than Mass. And please leave the door open--I like it that way." Martin remembered to take the room key in case Arif was still sleeping when he came back from Mass--in case his mother was in the bathroom or talking on the telephone.
When Mass was over, he looked briefly at a window display of men's suits in a Brooks Brothers store; the mannequins wore Christmas-tree neckties, but Martin was struck by the smoothness of the mannequins' skin--it reminded him of Arif's perfect complexion. Except for his pausing at this window, Martin came straight back to the suite at the Ritz. When he unlocked the door, he was happy he'd brought the room key because he thought his mother was talking on the phone; it was a one-sided conversation--all Vera. But then the awful words themselves were clear to him.
"I'm going to make you squirt again," his mother was saying. "I absolutely know you can squirt again--I can feel you. You're going to squirt again soon--aren't you? Aren't you?" The door to his mother's bedroom was still open--a little wider open than the way she liked it--and Martin Mills could see her naked back, her naked hips and the crack in her shapely ass. She was riding Arif Koma, who lay wordlessly under her; Martin was grateful that he couldn't see his roommate's face.
He quietly let himself out of the suite as his mother continued to urge Arif to squirt. On the short walk back to Isabella Street, Martin wondered if it had been his own revelation of Arif's penchant for masturbation that had given Vera the idea; probably his mother had already had the seduction in mind, but the masturbation story must have provided her with greater incentive.
Martin Mills had sat as stupefied in Our Lady of Victories Church as he'd sat waiting for the Mass at St. Ignatius. Brother Gabriel was worried about him. First the late-night-prayers--"I'll take the turkey, I'll take the turkey"--and then, even after Mass was over, the missionary knelt on the kneeling pad as if he were waiting for the next Mass. That was exactly what he'd done in Our Lady of Victories on Isabella Street; he'd waited for the next Mass, as if one Mass hadn't been enough.
What also troubled Brother Gabriel were the bloodstains on the missionary's balled-up fists. Brother Gabriel couldn't have known about Martin's nose, for the wound had stopped bleeding and was almost entirely concealed by a small scab on one nostril; but Brother Gabriel wondered about the bloody socks that Martin Mills clutched in his hands. The blood had dried between his knuckles and under his nails, and Brother Gabriel feared that the source of the bleeding might have been the missionary's palms. That's all we need to make our jubilee year a success, Brother Gabriel thought--an outbreak of stigmata!
But later, when Martin attended the morning classes, he seemed back on track, so to speak; he was lively with the students, humble with the other teachers--although, as a teacher, he'd had more experience than many of the staff at St. Ignatius School. Watching the new scholastic interact with both the pupils and the staff, the Father Rector suspended his earlier anxieties that the American might be a crazed zealot. And Father Cecil found Martin Mills to be every bit as charming and dedicated as he'd hoped.
Brother Gabriel kept silent about the turkey prayer and the bloody socks; but he noted the haunted, faraway smile that occasionally stole over the scholastic's repertoire of otherwise earnest expressions. Martin seemed to be struck by some remembrance, possibly inspired by a face among the upper-school boys, as if the smooth, dark skin of one of the 15-year-olds had called to mind someone he'd once known ... or so Brother Gabriel guessed. It was an innocent, friendly smile--almost too friendly, Brother Gabriel thought.
But Martin Mills was just remembering. Back in school, at Fessenden, after the long Thanksgiving weekend, he'd waited until the lights were out before saying what he wanted to say.
"Fucker," Martin quietly said.
"What's that?" Arif asked him.
"I said 'fucker,' as in motherfucker," Martin said.
"Is this a game?" Arif inquired after too long a pause.
"You know what I mean, you motherfucker," said Martin Mills.
After another long pause, Arif said, "She made me do it--sort of."
"You'll probably get a disease," Martin told his roommate. Martin didn't really mean it, nor would he have said it had it occurred to him that Arif might have fallen in love with Vera. He was surprised when Arif pounced on him in the dark and began to hit his face.
"Don't ever say that ... about your mother!" the Turk cried. "Not about your mother! She's beautiful!"
Mr. Weems, the dorm master, broke up the fight; neither of the boys was hurt--neither of them knew how to fight. Mr. Weems was kindly; with rougher boys, he was entirely ineffectual. He was a music teacher, and--with hindsight, this is easy to say--most likely a homosexual, but no one thought of him that way (except a few of the brassier faculty wives, women of the type who thought that any unmarried man over 30 was a queer). Mr. Weems was well liked by the boys, despite his taking no part in the school's prevailing athleticism. In his report to the Discipline Committee, the dorm master would dismiss the altercation between Martin and Arif as a "spat." This unfortunate choice of a word would have grave consequences.
Later, when Arif Koma was diagnosed as suffering from gonorrhea--and when he wouldn't tell the school doctor where he might have acquired it--the suspicion fell on Martin Mills. That word "spat" connoted a lover's quarrel--at least to the more manly members of the Discipline Committee. Mr. Weems was instructed to ask the boys if they were homosexuals, if they'd been doing it. The dorm master was more sympathetic to the notion that Arif and Martin might be "doing it" than any of the faculty jocks would have been.
"If you boys are lovers, then you should see the doctor, too, Martin," Mr. Weems explained.
"Tell him!" Martin said to Arif.
"We're not lovers," Arif said.
"That's right--we're not lovers," Martin repeated. "But go on--tell him. I dare you," Martin said to Arif.
"Tell me what?" the dorm master asked.
"He hates his mother," Arif explained to Mr. Weems. Mr. Weems had met Vera; he could understand. "He's going to tell you that I got the disease from his mother--that's how much he hates her."
"He fucked my mother--or, rather, she fucked him," Martin told Mr. Weems.
"You see what I mean?" Arif Koma said.
At most private schools, the faculty is composed of truly saintly people and incompetent ogres. Martin and Arif were fortunate that their dorm master was a teacher of the saintly category; yet Mr. Weems was so well-meaning, he was perhaps more blind to depravity than a normal person.
"Please, Martin," the dorm master said. "A sexually transmitted disease, especially at an all-boys' school, is not something to lie about. Whatever your feelings are for your mother, what we hope to learn h
ere is the truth--not to punish anyone, but only so that we may advise you. How can we instruct you, how can we tell you what we think you should do, if you won't tell us the truth?"
"My mother fucked him when she thought I was at Mass," Martin told Mr. Weems. Mr. Weems shut his eyes and smiled; he did this when he was counting, which he did to summon patience.
"I was trying to protect you, Martin," Arif Koma said, "but I can see it's no use."
"Boys, please ... one of you is lying," the dorm master said.
"Okay--so we tell him," Arif said to Martin. "What do you say?"
"Okay," Martin replied. He knew that he liked Arif; for three years, Arif had been his only friend. If Arif wanted to say they'd been lovers, why not go along with it? There was no one else Martin Mills wanted to please as much as he wanted to please Arif. "Okay," Martin repeated.
"Okay what?" Mr. Weems asked.
"Okay, we're lovers," said Martin Mills.
"I don't know why he doesn't have the disease," Arif explained. "He should have it. Maybe he's immune."
"Are we going to get thrown out of school?" Martin asked the dorm master. He hoped so. It might teach his mother something, Martin thought; at 15, he still thought Vera was educable.
"All we did was try it," Arif said. "We didn't like it."
"We don't do it anymore," Martin added. This was the first and last time that he'd lied; it made him feel giddy--it was almost as if he were drunk.
"But one of you must have caught this disease from someone else," Mr. Weems reasoned. "I mean, it couldn't have originated here, with you ... not if each of you has had no other sexual contact."
Martin Mills knew that Arif Koma had been phoning Vera and that she wouldn't talk to the Turk; Martin knew that Arif had written to Vera, too--and that she'd not written the boy back. But it was only now that Martin realized how far his friend would go to protect Vera. He must have been absolutely gaga about her.
"I paid a prostitute. I caught this disease from a whore," Arif told Mr. Weems.
"Where would you ever see a whore, Arif?" the dorm master asked.
"You don't know Boston?" Arif Koma asked him. "I stayed with Martin and his mother at the Ritz. When they were asleep, I left the hotel. I asked the doorman to get me a taxi. I asked the taxi driver to find me a hooker. That's the way you do it in New York, too," Arif explained. "Or at least that's the only way I know how to do it."
And so Arif Koma was booted from the Fessenden School for catching a venereal disease from a whore. There was a statute in the school's book of rules, something pertaining to morally reprehensible behavior with women or girls being punishable by dismissal; under this rubric, the Discipline Committee (despite Mr. Weems's protestations) expelled Arif. It was judged that having sex with a prostitute was not a gray area when it came to "morally reprehensible behavior with women or girls."
As for Martin, Mr. Weems also pleaded on his behalf. His homosexual encounter was a single episode of sexual experimentation; the incident should be forgotten. But the Discipline Committee insisted that Vera and Danny should know. Vera's first response was to reiterate that masturbation was preferable for boys Martin's age. All Martin said to his mother-naturally, not in Danny's hearing--was, "Arif Koma has gonorrhea and so do you."
There was barely time to talk to Arif before he was sent home. The last thing Martin said to the Turk was, "Don't hurt yourself trying to protect my mother."
"But I also like your father," Arif explained. Once again, Vera had gotten away with murder because no one wanted to hurt Danny.
Arif's suicide was the bigger shock. The note to Martin didn't arrive in his Fessenden mailbox until two days after Arif had jumped out of the 10th-floor window of his parents' apartment on Park Avenue. Dishonored my family--that was all the note said. Martin recalled that it was for the purpose of not dishonoring his parents, or reflecting ill on his family's reputation, that Arif hadn't shed a tear at his own circumcision.
There was no blaming Vera for it. The first time she was alone with Martin, Vera said, "Don't try to tell me that it's my fault, dear. You told me he was disturbed--sexually disturbed. You said so yourself. Besides, you don't want to do anything that would hurt your father, do you?"
Actually, it had hurt Danny quite a bit to hear that his son had dabbled in a homosexual experience, even if it was only a single episode. Martin assured his father that he'd only tried it, and that he hadn't liked it. Still, Martin realized that this was the sole impression Danny had of his son's sexuality; he'd screwed his Turkish roommate when both boys were only 15 years old. It didn't occur to Martin Mills that the truth about his sexuality might have been even more painful for Danny--namely, that his son was a 39-year-old virgin who'd never even masturbated. Nor had it occurred to Martin that he might actually have been in love with Arif Koma; certainly this was more plausible, not to mention more justifiable, than Arif falling in love with Vera.
Now here was Dr. Daruwalla "inventing" a missionary called Mr. Martin. The screenwriter knew that he needed to provide motives for Mr. Martin's decision to become a priest; even in a movie, Farrokh felt that a vow of chastity required some explanation. Having met Vera, the screenwriter should have guessed that the real missionary's motives in taking a vow of chastity and becoming a priest were not made of the material usually found in a romantic comedy.
A Make-Believe Death; the Real Children
The screenwriter had the good sense to know he was stalling. The problem was, who was going to die? In real life, it was the doctor's hope that Madhu and Ganesh would be saved by the circus. In the screenplay, it simply wasn't realistic for both children to live happily ever after. The more believable story was that only one of them would be a survivor. Pinky was the acrobat, the star. The crippled Ganesh could hope for no role more important than that of a cook's helper--the circus's servant boy, the circus's sweeper. The circus would surely start him out at the bottom; he'd be scooping up the elephant shit and washing the lion piss off the stools. From such a shit-and-piss beginning, Ganesh would be fortunate to be promoted to the cook's tent; cooking food, or serving it, would represent a form of graduation--probably the best that the crippled boy could hope for. This was true for the real Ganesh and for the character in the screenplay--this was realism, Dr. Daruwalla believed.
It should be Pinky who dies, the screenwriter decided. The only reason that the circus accepted the crippled brother in the first place was that they wanted the talented sister; the brother was part of the deal. That was the premise of the story. But if Pinky was to die, why wouldn't the circus get rid of Ganesh? What use does the circus have for a cripple? Now this is a better story, Farrokh imagined. The burden of performance is suddenly shifted to the cripple; Ganesh must come up with something to do so that the circus will find him worth keeping. A boy without a limp can shovel the elephant shit faster.
But it was the bane of the screenwriter to always be rushing ahead of himself. Before he found something for Ganesh to do at the circus, wasn't it necessary to determine how Pinky would die? Well, she's an acrobat--she could always fall, the doctor prematurely decided. Maybe she's trying to learn Suman's Skywalk item and she simply falls. But, realistically, Pinky wouldn't be learning to skywalk from the roof of the main tent. At the Great Royal, Pratap Singh always taught the Skywalk from the roof of the family troupe tent; the rope rungs of the ladder weren't 80 feet in the air--the upside-down skywalker wasn't more than a foot or two above the ground. If Farrokh wanted to use the real Great Royal Circus, which he did--and if he wanted to use his actual favorite performers (Pinky and Suman and Pratap, principally)--then the screenwriter could not have a death attributed to carelessness or to some cheap accident. Farrokh meant only to praise the Great Royal and circus life--not to condemn them. No; Pinky's death couldn't be the responsibility of the circus--that wasn't the right story.
That was when Dr. Daruwalla thought of Mr. Garg, the real-life Acid Man. After all, Acid Man was already an established villain in the sc
reenplay; why not use him? (The threat of a lawsuit seemed remote in these moments when sheer invention struck.) Acid Man could be so enthralled by Pinky's loveliness and ability, he simply can't bear her rising stardom--or that she's escaped disfigurement of his special kind. Having lost Pinky to the Great Royal, the fiend performs acts of sabotage at the circus. One of the lion cubs is burned with acid, or maybe one of the dwarf clowns. Poor Pinky is killed by a lion that escapes its cage because Acid Man has burned off the lock.
Great stuff! the screenwriter thought. The irony momentarily eluded Dr. Daruwalla: here he was, plotting the death of his fictional Pinky while at the same time he awaited the real results of Madhu's HIV test. But Farrokh had once more got ahead of himself; he was trying to imagine what Ganesh could do to make himself irreplaceable to the circus. The boy is a lowly cripple, a mere beggar; he's clumsy, he'll always limp--the only stunt he can perform is the bird-shit trick. (The screenwriter made a hasty note to put the bird-shit trick in the screenplay; more comic relief was necessary, now that Pinky was going to be killed by a lion.)
At that moment, Ranjit put through the phone call from Dr. Tata. Farrokh's forward momentum, his entire train of thought, was interrupted. Farrokh was even more annoyed by the nature of Dr. Tata's information.
"Oh, dear--dear old Dad," said Tata Two. "I'm rather afraid he blew this one!"
It wouldn't have surprised Dr. Daruwalla to learn that the senior Dr. Tata had blown many a diagnosis; after all, the old fool had not known (until the delivery) that Vera was giving birth to twins. What is it this time? Farrokh was tempted to ask. But he more politely inquired, "So he did see Rahul?"
"You bet he did!" said Dr. Tata. "It must have been an exciting examination--Promila claimed that the boy had proved himself to be impotent in an alleged single episode with a prostitute! But I suspect the diagnosis was a bit premature."
"What was the diagnosis?" Dr. Daruwalla asked.
"Eunuchoidism!" cried Tata Two. "Nowadays, we would use the term hypogonadism. But, call it what you will, this is merely a symptom or syndrome with several possible causes. Rather like the syndrome of headache or dizziness ..."