"Yes, yes," Dr. Daruwalla said impatiently. He could tell that Tata Two had been doing a little research, or perhaps he'd been talking to a better OB/GYN; most OB/GYNs tended to know more about this sort of thing than other doctors--because they were well versed in hormones, Farrokh supposed. "What conditions might cause you to suspect hypogonadism?" Dr. Daruwalla asked Tata Two.
"If I saw a boy or a man with long limbs and an arm span--when he stretches his arms out--that is two inches more than his height. Also, his pubis-to-floor height being greater than his pubis-to-crown height," Dr. Tata replied. He must be reading from a book, Dr. Daruwalla thought. "And if this boy or man also had absent secondary sexual characteristics ..." Tata Two continued, "... you know--voice, muscular development, phallic development, extension of pubic hair up the belly in a diamond pattern ..."
"But how could you assess such secondary sexual characteristics as being incomplete, unless the boy is over fifteen or so?" Dr. Daruwalla asked.
"Well, that's the problem--you really couldn't," said Tata Two.
"Rahul was only twelve or thirteen in 1949!" Farrokh cried. It was preposterous that Promila had pronounced the boy impotent because he hadn't been able to get an erection, or keep an erection, with a prostitute; it was more preposterous that old Dr. Tata had believed her!
"Well, that's what I mean by the diagnosis being a bit premature," Tata Two admitted. "The process of maturation begins at eleven or twelve ... is heralded by the hardening of the testes and is usually completed within five years--although some things, like the growth of chest hair, may take another decade." With the word "heralded," Dr. Daruwalla was certain that Tata Two was reading from a book.
"In short, you mean that Rahul's puberty might simply have been delayed. It was entirely too soon to call him a kind of eunuch!" Farrokh cried.
"Well, now, to say 'eunuchoidism' isn't really calling someone 'a kind of eunuch,' " Dr. Tata explained.
"To a twelve-or thirteen-year-old boy, this diagnosis would have come at an impressionable age--wouldn't you agree?" asked Dr. Daruwalla.
"That's true," Tata Two replied. "It might be a more appropriate diagnosis in the case of an eighteen-year-old with a microphallus."
"Jesus Christ," said Dr. Daruwalla.
"Well, we must remember that all the Rais were rather strange," Dr. Tata reasoned.
"Just the sort of family to make the most out of a misdiagnosis," Dr. Daruwalla remarked.
"I wouldn't call it a 'misdiagnosis'--just a bit early to know for sure," Tata Two said defensively. It was understandable why Dr. Tata then wanted to change the subject. "Oh, I have an answer for you about the girl. Mr. Subhash told me you wanted a rush job." Actually, Mr. Subhash had told Dr. Daruwalla that the HIV test would take at least two days--more, if the first phase was positive. "Anyway, she's okay. The test was negative," Dr. Tata said.
"That was fast," Dr. Daruwalla replied. "This is the girl who's named Madhu? Her name is Madhu?"
"Yes, yes," said Dr. Tata; it was his turn to sound impatient. "I'm looking at the results! The name is Madhu. The test was negative. Mr. Subhash just put the file on my desk."
How old is Mr. Subhash? Dr. Daruwalla wanted to ask, but he was annoyed enough for one conversation; at least he could get the girl out of town. He thanked Tata Two, then hung up the phone. He wanted to go back to his screenplay, but first he called Ranjit into his office and asked the secretary to notify Mr. Garg that Madhu was not HIV-positive; the doctor himself didn't want to give Garg the satisfaction.
"That was fast," Ranjit said; but the screenplay was still occupying the majority of Dr. Daruwalla's thoughts. At the moment, he was giving more of his attention to those children than to the children in his charge.
The doctor did remember to ask Ranjit to contact the dwarf's wife; Deepa should be told that Madhu and Ganesh were coming to the circus--and that Dr. Daruwalla needed to know where (in all of Gujarat) the circus was. Farrokh should also have called the new missionary--to forewarn the Jesuit that they would be spending the weekend traveling to the circus with the children--but the screenplay beckoned to him; the fictional Mr. Martin was more compelling to Dr. Daruwalla than Martin Mills.
Unfortunately, the more vividly the screenwriter recalled and described the acts of the Great Royal Circus, the more he dreaded the disappointment he was certain he'd feel when he and Martin Mills delivered the real children to the Great Blue Nile.
20
THE BRIBE
Time to Slip Away
As for Martin Mills and how he compared to the fictional Mr. Martin, Farrokh felt only the slightest guilt; the screenwriter suspected he'd created a lightweight fool out of a heavyweight lunatic, but this was only the faintest suspicion. In the screenplay, the first time the missionary visits the children in the circus, he slips and falls in elephant shit. It hadn't yet crossed Dr. Daruwalla's mind that the real missionary had possibly stepped into a worse mess than elephant shit.
As for Elephant Shit, it wouldn't work as a title. Farrokh had written it in the margin of the page where the phrase first appeared, but now he crossed this out. A film of that title would be banned in India. Besides, who would want to go to a movie called Elephant Shit? People wouldn't bring their children, and it was a movie for children, Dr. Daruwalla hoped--if it was for anybody, he thought darkly. Thus did self-doubt, the screenwriter's old enemy, assail him; he seemed to welcome it as a friend.
The screenwriter baited himself with other bad-title possibilities. Limo Roulette was the arty choice. Farrokh worried that dwarfs the world over would be offended by the film, no matter what the title was. In his closet career as a screenwriter, Dr. Daruwalla had managed to offend almost everyone else. Rather than worry about offending dwarfs, the doctor took up the even smaller task of wondering which movie magazine would be the first to misunderstand and mock his efforts. The two he detested most were Stardust and Cine Blitz. He thought they were the most scandalous and libelous of the film-gossip press.
The mere thought of these media goons, this journalistic slime, set Farrokh to worrying about the press conference at which he intended to announce an end to Inspector Dhar. It occurred to Farrokh that if he called for a press conference, no one would attend; the screenwriter would have to ask Dhar to call for such a conference, and Dhar would have to be there--otherwise, it would look like a hoax. Worse, Dhar himself would have to do the talking; after all, he was the movie star. The trashy journalists would be less interested in Dr. Daruwalla's motives for perpetrating this fraud than in the reasons for Dhar's complicity. Why had Dhar gone along with the fiction that the actor was his own creator? As always, even at such a revealing press conference as Farrokh had imagined, Dhar would deliver the lines that the screenwriter had written.
The truth would simply be another acting job; moreover, the most important truth would never be told--that it was out of love for John D. that Dr. Daruwalla had invented Inspector Dhar. Such a truth would be wasted on the media sleaze. Farrokh knew that he wouldn't want to read what mockery would be made of such a love, especially in Stardust or Cine Blitz.
Dhar's last press conference had been deliberately conducted as a farce. Dhar had chosen the swimming pool at the Taj as the site, for he said he enjoyed the bewildered gaping of foreigners. The journalists were instantly irritated because they'd expected a more intimate environment. "Are you trying to emphasize that you are a foreigner, that you aren't really Indian at all?" That had been the first question; Dhar had responded by diving into the pool. He'd meant to splash the photographers; that had been no accident. He'd answered only what he wanted to and ignored the rest. It was an interview punctuated by Dhar repeatedly diving into the pool. The journalists said insulting things about him while he was underwater.
Farrokh presumed that John D. would be happy to be free of the role of Inspector Dhar; the actor had enough money, and he clearly preferred his Swiss life. Yet Dr. Daruwalla suspected that, deep down, Dhar had cherished the loathing he'd inspired amon
g the media scum; earning the hatred of the cinema-gossip journalists might have been John D.'s best performance. With that in mind, Farrokh thought he knew what John D. would prefer: no press conference, no announcement. "Let them wonder," Dhar would say--Dhar had often said.
There was another line that the screenwriter remembered; after all, he'd not only written it--it was repeated in every Inspector Dhar movie near the end of the story. There was always the temptation for Dhar to do something more--to seduce one more woman, to gun down one more villain--but Inspector Dhar knew when to stop. He knew when the action was over. Sometimes to a scheming bartender, sometimes to a fellow policeman of a generally dissatisfied nature, sometimes to a pretty woman who'd been waiting impatiently to make love to him, Inspector Dhar would say, "Time to slip away." Then he would.
In this case, facing the facts--that he wanted to call an end to Inspector Dhar and that he wanted to finally leave Bombay--Farrokh knew what John D.'s advice would be. "Time to slip away," Inspector Dhar would say.
Bedbugs Ahead
In the old days, before the doctors' offices and the examining rooms of the Hospital for Crippled Children were air-conditioned, there'd been a ceiling fan over the desk where Dr. Daruwalla now sat thinking, and the window to the exercise yard was always open. Nowadays, with the window closed and the hum of the air-conditioning a reassuring constant, Farrokh was cut off from the sound of children crying in the exercise yard. When the doctor walked through the yard, or when he was called to observe the progress of one of his postoperative patients in physical therapy, the crying children did not greatly upset him. Farrokh associated some pain with recovery; a joint, after surgery--especially after surgery--had to be moved. But in addition to the cries of pain, there were the whines that children made in anticipation of their pain, and this piteous mewling affected the doctor strongly.
Farrokh turned and faced the closed window with its view of the exercise yard; from the soundless expressions of the children, the doctor could still discern the difference between those children who were in pain and those who were pitifully frightened of the pain they expected. Soundlessly, the therapists were coaxing the children to move; there was the recent hip replacement being told to stand up, there was the new knee being asked to step forward--and the first rotation of the new elbow. The landscape of the exercise yard was timeless to Dr. Daruwalla, who reflected that his ability to hear that which was soundless was the only measure of his humanity that he was certain of. Even with the air-conditioning on, even with the window closed, Dr. Daruwalla could hear the whimpering. Time to slip away, he thought.
He opened the window and leaned outside. The heat at midday was oppressive in the rising dust, although (for Bombay) the weather had remained relatively cool and dry. The cries of the children commingled with the car horns and the chainsaw clamor of the mopeds. Dr. Daruwalla breathed it all in. He squinted into the dusty glare. He gave the exercise yard an almost detached appraisal; it was a good-bye look. Then the doctor called Ranjit for his messages.
It was no surprise to Dr. Daruwalla that Deepa had already negotiated with the Great Blue Nile; the doctor hadn't expected the dwarf's wife to get a better deal. The circus would attempt to train the talented "sister." They would commit themselves to this effort for three months; they'd feed her, clothe her, shelter her and care for her crippled "brother." If Madhu could be trained, the Great Blue Nile would keep both children; if she was untrainable, the circus would let them go.
In Farrokh's screenplay, the Great Royal paid Pinky three rupees a day while they trained her; the fictional Ganesh worked without pay for his food and shelter. At the Great Blue Nile, Madhu's training was considered a privilege; she wouldn't be paid at all. And for a real boy with a crushed foot, it was enough of a privilege to be fed and sheltered; the real Ganesh would work, too. At the parents' expense--or, in the case of orphans, it was the obligation of the children's "sponsors"--Madhu and Ganesh would be brought to the site of the Great Blue Nile's present location. At this time, the circus was performing in Junagadh, a small city of about 100,000 people in Gujarat.
Junagadh! It would take a day to get there, another day to get back. They would have to fly to Rajkot and then endure a car ride of two or three hours to the smaller town; a driver from the circus would meet their plane--doubtless a reckless roustabout. But the train would be worse. Farrokh knew that Julia hated him to be away overnight, and in Junagadh there would probably be nowhere to stay but the Government Circuit House; lice were likely, bedbugs a certainty. There would be 48 hours of conversation with Martin Mills, and no time to keep writing the screenplay. It had also occurred to the screenwriter that the real Dr. Daruwalla was part of a parallel story-in-progress.
Raging Hormones
When Dr. Daruwalla phoned St. Ignatius School to alert the new missionary to their upcoming journey, the doctor wondered if his writing was prophetic. He'd already described the fictional Mr. Martin as "the most popular teacher at the school"; now here was Father Cecil telling the screenwriter that Martin Mills, on the evidence of his first morning of visiting the classrooms, had instantly made "a most popular impression." Young Martin, as Father Cecil still called him, had even persuaded the Father Rector to permit the teaching of Graham Greene to the upper-school boys; although controversial, Graham Greene was one of Martin Mills's Catholic heroes. "After all, the novelist popularized Catholic issues," Father Cecil said.
Farrokh, who considered himself an old fan of Graham Greene, asked suspiciously, "Catholic issues?"
"Suicide as a mortal sin, for example," Father Cecil replied. (Apparently, Father Julian was allowing Martin Mills to teach The Heart of the Matter to the upper school.) Dr. Daruwalla felt briefly uplifted; on the long trip to Junagadh and back, perhaps the doctor would be able to steer the missionary's conversation to Graham Greene. Who were some of the zealot's other heroes? the doctor wondered.
Farrokh hadn't had a good discussion of Graham Greene in quite a while. Julia and her literary friends were happier discussing more contemporary authors; they found it old-fashioned of Farrokh to prefer rereading those books he regarded as classics. Dr. Daruwalla was intimidated by Martin Mills's education, but possibly the doctor and the scholastic would discover a common ground in the novels of Graham Greene.
Dr. Daruwalla couldn't have known that the subject of suicide was of more interest to Martin Mills than the craft of Graham Greene as a writer. For a Catholic, suicide was a violation of God's dominion over human life. In the case of Arif Koma, Martin reasoned, the Muslim hadn't been in full possession of his faculties; falling in love with Vera surely suggested a loss of faculties, or a vastly different set of faculties altogether.
The denial of ecclesiastical burial was a horror to Martin Mills; however, the Church permitted suicides among those who'd lost their senses or were unaware that they were killing themselves. The missionary hoped that God would judge the Turk's suicide as an out-of-his-head kind. After all, Martin's mother had fucked the boy's brains out. How could Arif have made a sane decision after that?
But if Dr. Daruwalla would be unprepared for Martin Mills's Catholic interpretation of the doctor's much-admired author, Farrokh was also in the dark regarding the unwelcome disturbance that had shaken St. Ignatius School in the late morning, to which Father Cecil made incoherent references. The mission had been disrupted by an unruly intruder; the police had been forced to subdue the violent individual, whose violence Father Cecil attributed to "raging hormones."
Farrokh liked the phrase so much that he wrote it down.
"It was a transvestite prostitute, of all things," Father Cecil whispered into the phone.
"Why are you whispering?" Dr. Daruwalla asked.
"The Father Rector is still upset about the episode," Father Cecil confided to Farrokh. "Can you imagine? A hijra coming here--and during school hours!"
Dr. Daruwalla was amused at the presumed spectacle. "Perhaps he, or she, wanted to be better educated," the doctor suggested to Fa
ther Cecil.
"It claimed it had been invited," Father Cecil replied.
"It!" Dr. Daruwalla cried.
"Well, he or she--whatever it was, it was big and strong. A rampaging prostitute, a crazed cross-dresser!" Father Cecil whispered. "They give themselves hormones, don't they?"
"Not hijras," Dr. Daruwalla replied. "They don't take estrogens; they have their balls and their penises removed--with a single cut. The wound is then cauterized with hot oil. It resembles a vagina."
"Goodness--don't tell me!" Father Cecil said.
"Sometimes, but not usually, their breasts are surgically implanted," Dr. Daruwalla informed the priest.
"This one was implanted with iron!" Father Cecil said enthusiastically. "And young Martin was busy teaching. The Father Rector and I, and poor Brother Gabriel, had to deal with the creature by ourselves--until the police came."
"It sounds exciting," Farrokh remarked.
"Fortunately, none of the children saw it," Father Cecil said.
"Aren't transvestite prostitutes allowed to convert?" asked Dr. Daruwalla, who enjoyed teasing any priest.
"Raging hormones," Father Cecil repeated. "It must have just given itself an overdose."
"I told you--they don't usually take estrogens," the doctor said.
"This one was taking something," Father Cecil insisted.
"May I speak with Martin now?" Dr. Daruwalla asked. "Or is he still busy teaching?"
"He's eating his lunch with the midgets, or maybe he's with the submidgets today," Father Cecil replied.
It was almost time for the doctor's lunch at the Duckworth Club. Dr. Daruwalla left a message for Martin Mills, but Father Cecil struggled with the message to such a degree that the doctor knew he'd have to call again. "Just tell him I'll call him back," Farrokh finally said. "And tell him we're definitely going to the circus."
"Oh, won't that be fun!" Father Cecil said.