A Son of the Circus

  " 'I will fear no evil ...' " said Martin Mills.

  "Yes--that's it. 'I will fear no evil,' " Farrokh repeated.

  Dr. Daruwalla assumed that the plane had left Maharashtra; he guessed they were already flying over Gujarat. Below them, the land was flat and dry-looking in the late-afternoon haze. The sky was as brown as the ground. Limo Roulette or Escaping Maharashtra--the screenwriter couldn't make up his mind between the two titles. Farrokh thought: It depends on what happens--it depends on how the story ends.

  22

  THE TEMPTATION OF DR. DARUWALLA

  On the Road to Junagadh

  At the airport in Rajkot, they were testing the loudspeaker system. It was a test without urgency, as if the loudspeaker were of no real importance--as if no one believed there could be an emergency.

  "One, two, three, four, five," said a voice. "Five, four, three, two, one." Then the message was repeated. Maybe they weren't testing the loudspeaker system, thought Dr. Daruwalla; possibly they were testing their counting skills.

  While the doctor and Martin Mills were gathering the bags, their pilot appeared and handed the Swiss Army knife to the missionary. At first Martin was embarrassed--he'd forgotten that he'd been forced to relinquish the weapon in Bombay. Then he was ashamed, for he'd assumed the pilot was a thief. While this demonstration of social awkwardness was unfolding, Madhu and Ganesh each ordered and drank two glasses of tea; Dr. Daruwalla was left to haggle with the chai vendor.

  "We'll have to be stopping all the way to Junagadh, so you can pee," Farrokh told the children. Then they waited nearly an hour in Rajkot for their driver to arrive. All the while, the loudspeaker system went on counting up to five and down to one. It was an annoying airport, but Madhu and Ganesh had plenty of time to pee.

  Their driver's name was Ramu. He was a roustabout who'd joined the Great Blue Nile Circus in Maharashtra, and this was his second round trip between Junagadh and Rajkot today. He'd been on time to meet the plane in the morning; when he learned that the flight was delayed, he drove back to the circus in Junagadh--only because he liked to drive. It was nearly a three-hour trip one way, but Ramu proudly told them that he usually covered the distance in under two hours. They soon saw why.

  Ramu drove a battered Land Rover, spattered with mud (or the dried blood of unlucky pedestrians and animals). He was a slight young man, perhaps 18 or 20, and he wore a baggy pair of shorts and a begrimed T-shirt. Most notably, Ramu drove barefoot. The padding had worn off the clutch and brake pedals--their smooth metal surfaces looked slippery--and the doubtlessly overused accelerator pedal had been replaced by a piece of wood; it looked as flimsy as a shingle, but Ramu never took his right foot off it. He preferred to operate both the clutch and the brake with his left foot, although the latter pedal received little attention.

  Through Rajkot, they roared into the twilight. They passed a water tower, a women's hospital, a bus station, a bank, a fruit market, a statue of Gandhi, a telegraph office, a library, a cemetery, the Havmore Restaurant and the Hotel Intimate. When they raced through the bazaar area, Dr. Daruwalla couldn't look anymore. There were too many children--not to mention the elderly, who weren't as quick to get out of the way as the children; not to mention the bullock carts and the camel wagons, and the cows and donkeys and goats; not to mention the mopeds and the bicycles and the bicycle rickshaws and the three-wheeled rickshaws, and of course there were cars and trucks and buses, too. At the edge of town, off the side of the road, Farrokh was sure that he spotted a dead man--another "nonperson," as Ganesh would say--but at the speed they were traveling, there was no time for Dr. Daruwalla to ask Martin Mills to verify the shape of death with the frozen face that the doctor saw.

  Once they were out of town, Ramu drove faster. The roustabout subscribed to the open-road school of driving. There were no rules about passing; in the lane of oncoming traffic, Ramu yielded only to those vehicles that were bigger. In Ramu's mind, the Land Rover was bigger than anything on the road--except for buses and a highly selective category of heavy-duty trucks. Dr. Daruwalla was grateful that Ganesh sat in the passenger seat; both the boy and Madhu had wanted that seat, but the doctor was afraid that Madhu would distract the driver--a high-speed seduction. So the girl sulked in the back with the doctor and the missionary while the elephant boy chatted nonstop with Ramu.

  Ganesh had probably expected that the driver would speak only Gujarati; to discover that Ramu was a fellow Maharashtrian who spoke Marathi and Hindi inspired the beggar. Although Farrokh found their conversation difficult to follow, it seemed that Ganesh wanted to list all the possible circus-related activities that a cripple with one good foot might do. For his part, Ramu was discouraging; he preferred to talk about driving while demonstrating his violent technique of up-shifting and downshifting (instead of using the brakes), assuring Ganesh that it would be impossible to match his skill as a driver without a functioning right foot.

  To Ramu's credit, he didn't look at Ganesh when he talked; thankfully, the driver was transfixed by the developing madness on the road. Soon it would be dark; perhaps then the doctor could relax, for it would be better not to see one's own death approaching. After nightfall, there would be only the sudden nearness of a blaring horn and the blinding, onrushing headlights. Farrokh imagined the entanglement of bodies in the rolling Land Rover; a foot here, a hand there, the back of someone's head, a flailing elbow--and not knowing who was who, or in which direction the ground was, or the black sky (for the headlights would surely be shattered, and in one's hair there would be fragments of glass, as fine as sand). They would smell the gasoline; it would be soaking their clothes. At last, they would see the ball of flame.

  "Distract me," Dr. Daruwalla said to Martin Mills. "Start talking. Tell me anything at all." The Jesuit, who'd spent his childhood on the Los Angeles freeways, seemed at ease in the careening Land Rover. The burned-out wrecks off the side of the road were of no interest to him--not even the occasional upside-down car that was still on fire--and the carnage of animals that dotted the highway interested him only when he couldn't identify their remains.

  "What was that? Did you see that?" the missionary asked, his head whipping around.

  "A dead bullock," answered Dr. Daruwalla. "Please talk to me, Martin."

  "I know it was dead," said Martin Mills. "What's a bullock?"

  "A castrated bull--a steer," Farrokh replied.

  "There's another one!" the scholastic cried, his head turning again.

  "No, that was a cow," the doctor said.

  "I saw a camel earlier," Martin remarked. "Did you see the camel?"

  "Yes, I saw it," Farrokh answered him. "Now tell me a story. It will be dark soon."

  "A pity--there's so much to see!" said Martin Mills.

  "Distract me, for God's sake!" Dr. Daruwalla cried. "I know you like to talk--tell me anything at all!"

  "Well ... what do you want me to tell you about?" the missionary asked. Farrokh wanted to kill him.

  The girl had fallen asleep. They'd made her sit between them because they were afraid she'd lean against one of the rear doors; now she could lean only against them. Asleep, Madhu seemed as frail as a rag doll; they had to press against her and hold her shoulders to keep her from flopping around.

  Her scented hair brushed against Dr. Daruwalla's throat at the open collar of his shirt; her hair smelled like clove. Then the Land Rover would swerve and Madhu would slump against the Jesuit, who took no notice of her. But Farrokh felt her hip against his. As the Land Rover again pulled out to pass, Madhu's shoulder ground against the doctor's ribs; her hand, which was limp, dragged across his thigh. Sometimes, when Farrokh could feel Madhu breathe, he held his breath. The doctor wasn't looking forward to the awkwardness of spending the night in the same room with her. It was not only from Ramu's reckless driving that Farrokh sought some distraction.

  "Tell me about your mother," Dr. Daruwalla said to Martin Mills. "How is she?" In the failing but lingering light, the doctor could see the miss
ionary's neck tighten; his eyes narrowed. "And your father--how's Danny doing?" the doctor added, but the damage had already been done. Farrokh could tell that Martin hadn't heard him the second time; the Jesuit was searching the past. The landscape of hideously slain animals flew by, but the zealot no longer noticed.

  "All right, if that's what you want. I'm going to tell you a little story about my mother," said Martin Mills. Somehow, Dr. Daruwalla knew that the story wouldn't be "little." The missionary wasn't a minimalist; he favored description. In fact, Martin left out no detail; he told Farrokh absolutely everything he could remember. The exquisiteness of Arif Koma's complexion, the different odors of masturbation--not only Arif's, but also the smell that lingered on the U.C.L.A. babysitter's fingers.

  Thus they hurtled through the darkened countryside and the dimly lit towns, where the reek of cooking and excrement assailed them--together with the squabbling of chickens, the barking of dogs and the savage threats of the shouting, almostrunover pedestrians. Ramu apologized that his driver's-side window was missing; not only did the rushing night air grow cooler, but the back-seat passengers were struck by flying insects. Once, something the size of a hummingbird smacked against Martin's forehead; it must have stung, and for five minutes or more it lay buzzing and whirring on the floor before it died--whatever it was. But the missionary's story was unstoppable; nothing could deter him.

  It took him all the way to Junagadh to finish. As they entered the brightly lit town, the streets were teeming; two crowds were surging against each other. A loudspeaker on a parked truck played circus music. One crowd was coming from the early-evening show, the other hurrying to line up for the show that was to start later on.

  I should tell the poor bastard everything, Dr. Daruwalla was thinking. That he has a twin, that his mother was always a slut, that Neville Eden was probably his real father. Danny was too dumb to be the father; both John D. and Martin Mills were smart. Neville, although Farrokh had never liked him, had been smart. But Martin's story had struck Farrokh speechless. Moreover, the doctor believed that these revelations should be John D.'s decision. And although Dr. Daruwalla wanted to punish Vera in almost any way that he could, the one thing that Martin had said about Danny contributed further to the doctor's silence: "I love my father--I just wish I didn't pity him."

  The rest of the story was all about Vera; Martin hadn't said another word about Danny. The doctor decided that it wasn't a good time for the Jesuit to hear that his probable father was a two-timing, bisexual shit named Neville Eden. This news would not help Martin to pity Danny any less.

  Besides, they were almost at the circus. The elephant-footed boy was so excited, he was kneeling on the front seat and waving out the window at the mob. The circus music, which was blaring at them over the loudspeaker, had managed to wake up Madhu.

  "Here's your new life," Dr. Daruwalla told the child prostitute. "Wake up and see it."

  A Racist Chimpanzee

  Although Ramu never stopped blowing the horn, the Land Rover barely crawled through the crowd. Several small boys clung to the door handles and the rear bumper, allowing themselves to be dragged along the road. Everyone stared into the back seat. Madhu was mistaken to be anxious; the crowd wasn't staring at her. It was Martin Mills who drew their attention; they were unused to white men. Junagadh wasn't a tourist town. The missionary's skin was as pale as dough in the glare from the streetlights. Because they were forced to move ahead so slowly, it grew hot in the car, but when Martin rolled his rear window down, people reached inside the Land Rover just to touch him.

  Far ahead of them, a dwarf clown on stilts was leading the throng. It was even more congested at the circus because it was too early to let the crowd in; the Land Rover had to inch its way through the well-guarded gate. Once inside the compound, Dr. Daruwalla appreciated a familiar sensation: the circus was a cloister, a protected place; it was as exempt from the mayhem of Junagadh as St. Ignatius stood, like a fort, within the chaos of Bombay. The children would be safe here, provided that they gave the place a chance--provided that the circus gave them a chance.

  But the first omen was inhospitable: Deepa didn't meet them; the dwarf's wife and son were sick--confined to their tent. And, almost immediately, Dr. Daruwalla could sense how the Great Blue Nile compared unfavorably to the Great Royal. There was no owner of the charm and dignity of Pratap Walawalkar; in fact, the owner of the Great Blue Nile was away. No dinner was waiting for them in the owner's tent, which they never saw. The ringmaster was a Bengali named Das; there was no food in Mr. Das's tent, and the sleeping cots were all in a row, as in a spartan barracks; a minimum of ornamentation was draped on the walls. The dirt floor was completely covered with rugs; bolts of brightly colored fabric, for costumes, were hung high in the apex of the tent, out of everyone's way, and the trappings of a temple were prominently displayed alongside the TV and VCR.

  A cot like all the others was identified as Madhu's; Mr. Das was putting her between two older girls, who (he said) would mind her. Mrs. Das, the ringmaster assured them, would "mind" Madhu, too. As for Mrs. Das, she didn't get off her cot to greet them. She sat sewing sequins on a costume, and only as they were leaving the tent did she speak to Madhu.

  "I am meeting you tomorrow," she told the girl.

  "What time shall we come in the morning?" Dr. Daruwalla asked, but Mrs. Das--who manifested something of the victimized severity of an unexpectedly divorced aunt--didn't answer him. Her head remained lowered, her eyes on her sewing.

  "Don't come too early, because we'll be watching television," Mr. Das told the doctor.

  Well, naturally ... Dr. Daruwalla thought.

  Ganesh's cot would be set up in the cook's tent, where Mr. Das escorted them--and where he left them. He said he had to prepare for the 9:30 show. The cook, whose name was Chandra, assumed that Ganesh had been sent to help him; Chandra began to identify his utensils to the cripple, who listened indifferently--Dr. Daruwalla knew that the boy wanted to see the lions.

  "Kadhai," a wok. "Jhara," a slotted spoon. "Kisni," a coconut grater. From outside the cook's tent, in the darkness, they also listened to the regular coughs of the lions. The crowd still hadn't been admitted to the main tent but they were present in the darkness, like the lions, as a kind of background murmur.

  Dr. Daruwalla didn't notice the mosquitoes until he began to eat. The doctor and the others ate standing up, off stainless-steel plates--curried potatoes and eggplant with too much cumin. Then they were offered a plate of raw vegetables--carrots and radishes, onions and tomatoes--which they washed down with warm orange soda. Good old Gold Spot. Gujarat was a dry state, because Gandhi was born there--the tedious teetotaler. Farrokh reflected that he would probably be awake all night. He'd been counting on beer to keep him away from his screenplay, to help him sleep. Then he remembered that he'd be sharing a room with Madhu; in that case, it would be best to stay awake all night and to not have any beer.

  Throughout their hasty, unsatisfying meal, Chandra progressed to naming vegetables to Ganesh, as if the cook assumed the boy had lost his language in the same accident that had mangled his foot. ("Aloo," potato. "Chawli," a white pea. "Baingan," eggplant.) As for Madhu, she appeared neglected, and she was shivering. Surely she had a shawl or a sweater in her small bag, but all their bags were still in the Land Rover, which was parked God knew where; Ramu, their driver, was God knew where, too. Besides, it was almost time for the late show.

  When they stepped into the avenue of troupe tents, they saw that the performers were already in costume; the elephants were being led down the aisle. In the wing of the main tent, the horses were standing in line. A roustabout had already saddled the first horse. Then a trainer prodded a big chimpanzee with a stick, launching the animal into what appeared to be a vertical leap of at least five feet. The horse had started forward, just a nervous step or two, when the chimpanzee landed on the saddle. There the chimp squatted on all fours; when the trainer touched the saddle with his stick, the chimpanzee perfor
med a front flip on the horse's back--and then another.

  The band was already on the platform stage above the arena, which was still filling with the crowd. The visitors would be in the way if they stood in the wing, but Mr. Das, the ringmaster, hadn't appeared; there was no one to show them to their seats. Martin Mills suggested that they find seats for themselves before the tent was full; Dr. Daruwalla resented such informality. While the doctor and the missionary were arguing about what to do, the chimp doing front flips on the horse grew distracted. Martin Mills was the distraction.

  The chimpanzee was an old male named Gautam, because even as a baby he'd demonstrated a remarkable similarity to Buddha; he could sit in the same position and stare at the same thing for hours. As he'd aged, Gautam had extended his capacity for meditation to include certain repetitive exercises; the front flips on the horse's back were but one example. Gautam could repeat the move tirelessly; whether the horse was galloping or standing still, the chimpanzee always landed on the saddle. There was, however, a diminished enthusiasm to Gautam's front flips, and to his other activities as well. His trainer, Kunal, attributed Gautam's emotional decline to the big chimp's infatuation with Mira, a young female chimpanzee. Mira was new to the Great Blue Nile, and Gautam could be observed pining for her--often at inappropriate times.

  If he saw Mira when he was doing front flips, Gautam would miss not only the saddle but the whole horse. Hence Mira rode a horse far back in the procession of animals that paraded around the main tent during the Grand Entry. It was only when Gautam was warming up in the wing that the old chimpanzee could spot Mira; she was kept near the elephants, because Gautam was afraid of elephants. At some trancelike distance in Gautam's mind, this view of Mira--as the big chimp waited for the curtains to open and the Grand Entry music to begin--satisfied him. He kept doing front flips, mechanically, almost as if the jumps were triggered by a mild electrical shock, at about five-second intervals. In the corner of Gautam's eye, Mira was a faraway presence; nevertheless, she was enough of a presence to soothe him.