A Son Of The Circus (50 page)

In a reference to the echoing dogs, which Vinod completely failed to grasp, Martin Mills said, ‘It sounds like a veterinarian’s — I thought he was an orthopedist.’

‘Of
course
he is being an orthopedist!’ Vinod cried. Standing on tiptoe, the dwarf tried to peer into Martin’s ears, as if he were expecting to see some stray brain matter there. But Vinod wasn’t tall enough.

Dr Daruwalla woke to the distant orchestra of the dogs. From the sixth floor, their barks and howls were muted but nonetheless identifiable; the doctor had no doubt as to the cause of their cacophony.

‘That damn dwarf!’ he said aloud, to which Julia didn’t respond; she was familiar with the many things her husband said in his sleep. But when Farrokh got out of bed and put on his robe, Julia was instantly awake.

‘Is it Vinod again?’ she asked him.

‘I assume so,’ Dr Daruwalla replied.

It was a little before 5:00 in the morning when the doctor crept past the closed sliding-glass doors that led to the balcony, which was completely enveloped in a mournful-looking mist. The smog had mingled with a dense sea fog. The doctor couldn’t see Dhar’s cot or the Tortoise mosquito coils with which the actor surrounded himself whenever he slept on the balcony. In the foyer, Farrokh seized a dusty umbrella; he was hoping to give Vinod a good scare. Then the doctor opened his apartment door. The dwarf and the missionary had just exited from the lift; when Dr Daruwalla first saw Martin Mills, the doctor feared that Dhar had violently shaved off his mustache in the smog – thus inflicting on himself a multitude of razor cuts – and then, doubtless depressed, the much-reviled actor had jumped off the sixth-floor balcony.

As for the missionary, he was taken aback to see a man in a black kimono holding a black umbrella – an ominous image. But the umbrella was undaunting to Vinod, who slipped close to Dr Daruwalla and whispered, ‘I am finding him preaching to transvestite prostitutes – the hijras are almost killing him!’

Farrokh knew who Martin Mills was as soon as the missionary spoke; ‘I believe you’ve met my mother and father – my name is Martin, Martin Mills.’

‘Please come in – I’ve been expecting you,’ Dr Daruwalla said, taking the beaten man’s arm.

‘You
have
?’ said Martin Mills.

‘There is being brain damage!’ Vinod whispered to the doctor, who supported the wobbly missionary into the bathroom, where he told Martin to strip. Then the doctor prepared an Epsom-salts bath. While the bath was filling, Farrokh got Julia out of bed and told her to get rid of Vinod.

‘Who’s taking a bath at this hour?’ she asked her husband.

‘It’s John D.’s twin,’ Dr Daruwalla said.

Julia had managed to coax Vinod no farther than the foyer when the phone rang. She answered quickly. Vinod could hear the entire conversation because the man on the other end of the phone was screaming. It was Mr Munim, the first-floor member of the Residents’ Society.

‘I saw him getting on the lift! He woke all the dogs! I saw him — your dwarf!’ Mr Munim shouted.

Julia said, ‘I beg your pardon — we don’t own a dwarf.’

‘You don’t fool me!’ Mr Munim hollered. That movie star’s dwarf– that’s who I mean!’

‘We don’t own a movie star, either,’ Julia told him.

‘You are violating a stated rule!’ Mr Munim screamed.

‘I don’t know what you mean — you must be out of your mind,’ Julia replied.

The taxi-walla used the lift – that midget thug!’ Mr Munim cried.

‘Don’t make me call the police,’ Julia said; then she hung up.

‘I am using the stairs, but they are making me limp –the whole six floors,’ Vinod said. Martyrdom strangely suited him, Julia thought, but she realized that Vinod was lingering in the foyer for a purpose. ‘There are being
five
umbrellas in your umbrella stand,’ the dwarf observed.

‘Would you like to borrow one, Vinod?’ Julia asked him.

‘Only for helping me on the stairs,’ Vinod replied. ‘I am needing a cane.’ He’d left the squash-racquet handles in his taxi; were he to encounter either a first-floor dog or Mr Munim, Vinod wanted a weapon. Therefore, he took an umbrella with him; Julia let him out the kitchen door, which led to the back stairs.

‘Maybe you are never seeing me again,’ Vinod told her. As the dwarf peered down the stairwell, Julia noticed that he was slightly shorter than the umbrella that he’d chosen; Vinod had taken the biggest umbrella.

In the bathtub, Martin Mills looked as if he welcomed the stings from his raised red welts, and he never flinched while Dr Daruwalla sponged off the multitude of minor wounds caused by the gruesome leg iron; the doctor thought that the missionary appeared to miss the leg iron after it had been removed, and Martin twice expressed concern that he’d left his whip in the heroic dwarf’s car.

‘Vinod will surely return it to you,’ Dr Daruwalla said. The doctor was not as amazed by the missionary’s story as the missionary himself was amazed; given the magnitude of the mistaken identity, Dr Daruwalla was astonished that Martin Mills was still alive –not to mention that his wounds were minor. And the more the missionary babbled on and on about his experience, the less he bore any resemblance, in Farrokh’s eyes, to his taciturn twin. Dhar didn’t babble.

‘Well, I mean I
knew
I wasn’t among Christians,’ Martin Mills said, ‘but still I hardly expected the
violent
hostility toward Christianity that I encountered.’

‘Now, now –I wouldn’t jump to
that
conclusion,’ Dr Daruwalla cautioned the agitated scholastic. There is some sensitivity, however, toward proselytizing … of any kind.’

‘Saving souls is
not
proselytizing,’ Martin Mills said defensively.

‘Well, as you say, you were not exactly in Christian territory,’ Dr Daru walla replied.

‘How many of those prostitutes are carrying the
AIDS
virus?’ Martin asked.

‘I’m an orthopedist,’ the doctor reminded the scholastic, ‘but people who know say forty percent – some say sixty.’

‘Either way,’ said Martin Mills, ‘that’s Christian territory.’

For the first time, Farrokh considered that the madman before him posed a threat to himself that might exceed the danger presented by his striking resemblance to Inspector Dhar.

‘But I thought you were an English teacher,’ said Dr Daruwalla. ‘As a former student of the place, I can assure you, St Ignatius is first and foremost a
school
.’ The doctor knew the Father Rector; Dr Daruwalla could well anticipate that this was precisely what Father Julian would have to say about the matter of saving prostitutes’ souls. But as Farrokh watched Martin step naked from the bath – whereupon, unmindful of his wounds, the missionary began to vigorously towel himself dry — the doctor further anticipated that the Father Rector and all the aged defenders of the faith at St Ignatius would have a hard time convincing such a zealous scholastic as this that his duties were restricted to improving the English of the upper classes. For as he rubbed and rubbed the towel against his lash marks until his face and torso were striped as bright red as when the whip had only just struck him, Martin Mills was all the while thinking of a reply. Like the crafty Jesuit that he was, he began his answer with a question.

‘Aren’t you a Christian?’ the missionary asked the doctor. ‘I believe my father said you were converted, but that you’re not a Roman Catholic.’

‘Yes, that’s true,’ Dr Daruwalla replied cautiously. He gave Martin Mills a clean pair of his best silk pajamas, but the scholastic preferred to stand naked.

‘Are you familiar with the Calvinist, Jansenist position in regard to free will?’ Martin asked Farrokh. ‘I’m greatly oversimplifying, but this was that dispute born of Luther and those Protestant divines of the Reformation – namely, the idea that we’re doomed by original sin and can expect salvation only through divine grace. Luther denied that good works could contribute to our salvation. Calvin further denied that our faith could save us. According to Calvin, we are all predestined to be saved – or not. Do you believe that?’

By the way the logic of the Jesuit was leaning, Farrokh guessed that he should
not
believe that, and so he said,’No – not exactly.’

‘Well, good – then you’re not a Jansenist,’ the scholastic said. ‘They were very discouraging — their doctrine of grace over that of free will was quite defeatist, really. They made us all feel that there was absolutely nothing we could do to be saved – in short, why bother with good works? And so what if we sin?’

‘Are you still oversimplifying?’ asked Dr Daruwalla. The Jesuit regarded the doctor with sly respect; he also took this interruption as a useful time in which to put on the doctor’s silk pajamas.

‘If you’re suggesting that it’s almost impossible to reconcile the concept of free will with our belief in an omnipotent and omniscient God, I agree with you — it’s difficult,’ Martin said. ‘The question of the relationship between human will and divine omnipotence … is that your question?’

Dr Daruwalla guessed that this
should
be his question, and so he said, ‘Yes – something like that.’

‘Well, that really is an interesting question,’ the Jesuit said. ‘I just hate it when people try to reduce the spiritual world with purely mechanical theories –those behaviorists, for example. Who cares about Loeb’s plant-lice theories or Pavlov’s dog?’ Dr Daruwalla nodded, but he didn’t dare speak; he’d never heard of plant lice. He’d heard of Pavlov’s dog, of course; he could even recall what made the dog salivate and what the saliva meant.

‘We must seem excessively strict to you — we Catholics to you Protestants, I mean,’ Martin said. Dr Daruwalla shook his head. ‘Oh, yes we do!’ the missionary said. ‘We are a theology of rewards and punishments, which are meted out in the life after death. Compared to you, we make much of sin. We Jesuits, however, tend to minimize those sins of thought.’

‘As opposed to those of deed,’ interjected Dr Daruwalla, for although this was obvious and totally unnecessary to say, the doctor felt that only a fool would have nothing to say, and he’d been saying nothing.

‘To us — to us Catholics, I mean – you Protestants appear, at times, to overemphasize the human propensity toward evil …’ And here the missionary paused; but Dr Daruwalla, unsure whether he should nod or shake his head, just stared stupidly at the bathwater spiraling down the drain, as if the water were his own thoughts, escaping him.

‘Do you know Leibniz?’ the Jesuit suddenly asked him.

‘Well, in university … but that was years ago,’ the doctor said.

‘The Leibniz assumption is that man’s freedom was not taken from him by his fall, which makes Leibniz quite a friend of ours – of us Jesuits, I mean,’ Martin said. ‘There is some Leibniz I can never forget, such as, “Although the impulse and the help come from God, they are at all times accompanied by a certain cooperation of man himself; if not, we could not say that we had acted” – but you agree, don’t you?’

‘Yes, of course,’ said Dr Daruwalla.

‘Well, you see, that’s why I can’t be
just
an English teacher,’ the Jesuit replied. ‘Naturally, I shall endeavor to improve the children’s English – and to the most perfect degree possible. But, given that I am free to act – “although the impulse and the help come from God,” of course – I must do what I can, not only to save
my
soul but to rescue the souls of others.’

‘I see,’ said Dr Daruwalla, who was also beginning to understand why the enraged transvestite prostitutes had failed to make much of a dent in the flesh or the indomitable will of Martin Mills.

Furthermore, the doctor found that he was standing in his own living room and watching Martin lie down on the couch, without the slightest recollection of having left the bathroom. That was when the missionary handed the leg iron to the doctor, who received the instrument reluctantly.

‘I can see I will not be needing this here,’ the scholastic said. There will be sufficient adversity without it. St Ignatius Loyola also changed his mind in regard to these weapons of mortification.’

‘He did?’ said Farrokh.

‘I think he overused them – but only out of a positive abhorrence of his earlier sins,’ the Jesuit said. ‘In fact, in the later version of the
Spiritual Exercises
, St Ignatius urges against such scourges of the flesh — he is also opposed to heavy fasting.’

‘So am I,’ said Dr Daruwalla, who didn’t know what to do with the cruel leg iron.

‘Please throw it away,’ Martin said to him. ‘And perhaps you’d be so kind as to tell the dwarf to keep the whip –I don’t want it.’

Dr Daruwalla knew all about Vinod’s racquet handles; the prospect of what use the dwarf might make of the whip was chilling. Then the doctor noticed that Martin Mills had fallen asleep. With his fingers interlocked on his chest, and with an utterly beatific expression, the missionary resembled a martyr en route to the heavenly kingdom.

Farrokh brought Julia into the living room to see him. At first, she wouldn’t approach past the glass-topped table – she viewed him as one might view a contaminated corpse – but the doctor encouraged her to take a closer look. The nearer Julia drew to Martin Mills, the more relaxed she became. It was as if — at least, when he was asleep – Martin had a pacifying effect on everyone around him. Eventually, Julia sat on the floor beside the couch. She would say later that he reminded her of John D. as a much younger, more carefree man, although Farrokh maintained that Martin Mills was simply the result of no weight lifting and no beer – meaning that he had no muscles but that he had no belly, either.

Without remembering when he sat down, the doctor found himself on the floor beside his wife. They were both sitting beside the couch, as if transfixed by the sleeping body, when Dhar came in from the balcony to have a shower and to brush his teeth; from Dhar’s perspective, Farrokh and Julia appeared to be praying. Then the movie star saw the dead person – at least, the person looked dead to Dhar – and without taking too close a look, he said, ‘Who’s that?’

Farrokh and Julia were shocked that John D. didn’t immediately recognize his twin; after all, an actor is especially familiar with his own facial features — and under a variety of makeup, including the radical altering of his age – but Dhar had never seen such an expression on his own face. It’s doubtful that Dhar’s face ever reflected beatification, for not even in his sleep had Inspector Dhar imagined the happiness of heaven. Dhar had many expressions, but none of them was saintly.