A Son Of The Circus (76 page)

When the doctor had kissed Julia good-bye, he steered the disgruntled boy to Vinod’s waiting taxi; there, in the front seat beside the dwarf, was the sullen Madhu. She was irritated by Dr Daruwalla’s difficulty in understanding her languages. She had to try both Marathi and Hindi before the doctor understood that Madhu was displeased with the way Vinod had dressed her; Deepa had told the dwarf how to dress the girl.

‘I’m not a child,’ the former child prostitute said, although it was clear that it had been Deepa’s intention to make the little whore
look
like a child.

The circus wants you to look like a child,’ Dr Daruwalla told Madhu, but the girl pouted; nor did she respond to Ganesh in a sisterly fashion.

Madhu glanced briefly, and with disgust, at the boy’s viscid eyes; there was a film of tetracycline ointment, which had been recently applied — it tended to give Ganesh’s eyes a glazed quality. The boy would need to continue the medication for a week or more before his eyes looked normal. ‘I thought they were fixing your eyes,’ Madhu said cruelly; she spoke in Hindi. It had been Farrokh’s impression, when he’d been alone with Madhu or alone with Ganesh, that both children endeavored to speak English; now that the kids were together, they lapsed into Hindi and Marathi. At best, the doctor spoke Hindi tentatively –and Marathi hardly at all.

‘It’s important that you behave like a brother and sister,’ Farrokh reminded them, but the cripple’s mood was as sulky as Madhu’s.

‘If she were my sister, I’d beat her up,’ Ganesh said.

‘Not with that foot, you wouldn’t,’ Madhu told him.

‘Now, now,’ said Dr Daruwalla; he’d decided to speak English because he was almost certain that Madhu, as well as Ganesh, could understand him, and he presumed that in English he commanded more authority. ‘This is your lucky day,’ he told them.

‘What’s a lucky day?’ Madhu asked the doctor.

‘It doesn’t mean anything,’ Ganesh said.

‘It’s just an expression,’ Dr Daruwalla admitted, ‘but it does mean something. It means that today it is your good fortune to be leaving Bombay, to be going to the circus.’

‘So you mean that
we’re
lucky – not the day,’ the elephant-footed boy replied.

‘It’s too soon to say if we’re lucky,’ said the child prostitute.

On that note, they arrived at St Ignatius, where the single-minded missionary had been waiting for them. Martin Mills climbed into the back seat of the Ambassador, an air of boundless enthusiasm surrounding him. ‘This is your lucky day!’ the zealot announced to the children.

‘We’ve been through that,’ said Dr Daruwalla. It was only 7:30 on a Saturday morning.

It was 8:30 when they arrived at the terminal for domestic flights in Santa Cruz, where they were told that their flight to Rajkot would be delayed until the end of the day.

‘Indian Airlines!’ Dr Daruwalla exclaimed.

‘At least they are admitting it,’ Vinod said.

Dr Daruwalla decided that they could wait somewhere more comfortable than the Santa Cruz terminal. But before Farrokh could usher them all back inside the dwarf’s taxi, Martin Mills had wandered off and bought the morning newspaper; on their way back to Bombay, in rush-hour traffic, the missionary treated them to snippets from The
Times of India
. It would be 10:30 before they arrived at the Taj. (It was Dr Daruwalla’s eccentric decision that they should wait for their flight to Rajkot in the lobby of the Taj Mahal Hotel.)

‘Listen to this,’ Martin began.’ “Two brothers stabbed… The police have arrested one assailant while two other accused are absconding on a scooter in a rash manner.” An unexpected use of the present tense, not to mention “rash,”’ the English teacher observed. ‘Not to mention “absconding.”’

‘ “Absconding” is a very popular word here,’ Farrokh explained.

‘Sometimes it is the police who are absconding,’ Ganesh said.

‘What did he say?’ the missionary asked.

‘When a crime happens, often the police abscond,’ Farrokh replied. They’re embarrassed that they couldn’t prevent the crime, or that they can’t catch the criminal, so they run away.’ But Dr Daruwalla was thinking that this pattern of behavior didn’t apply to Detective Patel. According to John D,, the deputy commissioner intended to spend the day in the actor’s suite at the Oberoi, rehearsing the best way to approach Rahul. It hurt Farrokh’s feelings that he’d not been invited to participate, or that they hadn’t offered to hold up the rehearsal until the screenwriter returned from the circus; after all, there would be dialogue to imagine and to compose, and although dialogue wasn’t part of the doctor’s day job, it was at least his other business.

‘Let me be sure that I understand this,’ Martin Mills said. ‘Sometimes, when there’s a crime, both the criminals and the police are “absconding.”’

‘Quite so,’ replied Dr Daruwalla. He was unaware that he’d borrowed this expression from Detective Patel. The screenwriter was distracted by pride; he was thinking how clever he’d been, for he’d already made similar disrespectful use of The Times
of India
in his screenplay. (The fictional Mr Martin is always reading something stupid aloud to the fictional children.)

Life imitates art, Farrokh was thinking, when Martin Mills announced, ‘Here’s a refreshingly frank opinion.’ Martin had found the Opinion section of
The Times of India;
he was reading one of the letters. ‘Listen to this,’ the missionary said. ‘ “Our culture will have to be changed. It should start in primary schools by teaching boys not to urinate in the open.” ‘

‘Catch them young, in other words,’ said Dr Daru– j walla.

Then Ganesh said something that made Madhu laugh.

‘What did he say?’ Martin asked Farrokh.

‘He said there’s no place to pee
except
in the open,’ Dr Daruwalla replied.

Then Madhu said something that Ganesh clearly approved of.

‘What did
she
say?’ the missionary asked.

‘She said she prefers to pee in parked cars – particularly at night,’ the doctor told him.

When they arrived at the Taj, Madhu’s mouth was full of betel juice; the blood-red spittle overflowed the corners of her mouth.

‘No betel chewing in the Taj,’ the doctor said. The girl spat the lurid mess on the front tire of Vinod’s taxi; both the dwarf and the Sikh doorman observed, with disgust, how the stain extended into the circular driveway. ‘You won’t be allowed any paan at the circus,’ the doctor reminded Madhu.

‘We’re not at the circus yet,’ said the sullen little whore.

The circular driveway was overcrowded with taxis and an array of expensive-looking vehicles. The elephant-footed boy said something to Madhu, who was amused.

‘What did he say?’ the missionary asked Dr Daruwalla.

‘He said there are lots of cars to pee in,’ the doctor replied. Then he overhead Madhu telling Ganesh that she’d been in a car like one of the expensive-looking cars before; it didn’t sound like an empty boast, but Farrokh resisted the temptation to translate this information for the Jesuit. As much as Dr Daruwalla enjoyed shocking Martin Mills, it seemed prurient to speculate on what a child prostitute had been doing in such an expensive-looking car.

‘What did Madhu say?’ Martin asked Farrokh.

‘She said she would use the ladies’ room, instead,’ Dr Daruwalla lied.

‘Good for you!’ Martin told the girl. When she parted her lips to smile at him, her teeth were brightly smeared from the paan; it was as if her gums were bleeding. The doctor hoped that it was only his imagination that he saw something lewd in Madhu’s smile. When they entered the lobby, Dr Daruwalla didn’t like the way the doorman followed Madhu with his eyes; the Sikh seemed to know that she wasn’t the sort of girl who was permitted at the Taj. No matter how Deepa had told Vinod to dress her, Madhu didn’t look like a child.

Ganesh was already shivering from the air-conditioning; the cripple looked anxious, as if he thought the Sikh doormen might throw him out. The Taj was no place for a beggar and a child prostitute, Dr Daruwalla was thinking; it was a mistake to have brought them here.

‘We’ll just have some tea,’ Farrokh assured the children. ‘We’ll keep checking on the plane,’ the doctor told the missionary. Like Madhu and Ganesh, Martin appeared overwhelmed by the opulence of the lobby. In the few minutes it took Dr Daruwalla to arrange for special treatment from the assistant manager, some lesser official among the hotel staff had already asked the Jesuit and the children to leave. When that misunderstanding was cleared up, Vinod appeared in the lobby with the paper bag containing the Hawaiian shirt. The dwarf was dutifully observing, without comment, what he thought were Inspector Dhar’s delusions – namely, that the famous actor was a Jesuit missionary in training to be a priest. Dr Daruwalla had meant to give the Hawaiian shirt to Martin Mills, but the doctor had forgotten the bag in the dwarf’s taxi. (Not just any taxi-walla would have been permitted in the lobby of the Taj, but Vinod was known as Inspector Dhar’s driver.)

When Farrokh presented the Hawaiian shirt to Martin Mills, the missionary was excited.

‘Oh, it’s wonderful!’ the zealot cried. ‘I used to have one just like it!’

‘Actually, this is the one you used to have,’ Farrokh admitted.

‘No, no,’ Martin whispered. ‘The shirt I used to have was stolen from me – one of those prostitutes took it.’

‘The prostitute gave it back,’ Dr Daruwalla whispered.

‘She
did
! Why, that’s remarkable!’ said Martin Mills. ‘Was she contrite?’

‘
He
, not she,’ said Dr Daruwalla. ‘No – he wasn’t contrite, I think.’

‘What do you mean?
He
…’ the missionary said.

‘I mean that the prostitute was a
him
, not a her,’ the doctor told Martin Mills. ‘He was a eunuch-transvestite — all of them were men. Well, sort of men.’

‘What do you mean? Sort
of. .
.’ the missionary said.

‘They’re called hijras – they’ve been emasculated,’ the doctor whispered. A typical surgeon, Dr Daruwalla liked to describe the procedure in exact detail – including the cauterizing of the wound with hot oil, and not forgetting that part of the female anatomy which the puckered scar resembled when it healed.

When Martin Mills came back from the men’s room, he was wearing the Hawaiian shirt, the brilliant colors of which were a contrast to his pallor. Farrokh assumed that the paper bag now contained the shirt that the missionary had been wearing, upon which poor Martin had been sick.

‘It’s a good thing that we’re getting these children out of this city,’ the zealot gravely told the doctor, who once more happily entertained the notion that life was imitating art. Now, if only the fool would shut up so that the screenwriter could read over his new pages!

Dr Daruwalla knew that they couldn’t spend the whole day at the Taj. The children were already restless. Madhu might proposition stray guests at the hotel, and the elephant boy would probably steal something – those silver trinkets from the souvenir shop, the doctor supposed. Dr Daruwalla didn’t dare leave the children with Martin Mills while he phoned Ranjit to check his messages; he wasn’t expecting any messages, anyway – nothing but emergencies happened on Saturday, and the doctor wasn’t on call this weekend.

The girl’s posture further upset Farrokh; Madhu more than slouched in the soft chair – she lolled. Her dress was hiked up nearly to her hips and she stared into the eyes of every man who passed. This certainly detracted from her looking like a child. Worse, Madhu seemed to be wearing perfume; she smelled a little like Deepa to Dr Daruwalla. (Doubtless Vinod had allowed the girl some access to Deepa’s things, and Madhu had liked the perfume that the dwarf’s wife wore.) Also, the doctor believed that the air-conditioning at the Taj was too comfortable – in fact, it was too cold. At the Government Circuit House in Junagadh, where Dr Daruwalla had arranged for them all to spend the night, there wouldn’t be any air-conditioning – just ceiling fans – and in the circus, where the children would spend the following night (and every night thereafter), there would be only tents. No ceiling fans … and probably the mosquito netting would be in disrepair. Every second they stayed in the lobby of the Taj, Dr Daruwalla realized that he was making it harder for the children to adjust to the Great Blue Nile.

Then a most irksome thing happened. A messenger boy was paging Inspector Dhar. The method for paging at the Taj was rudimentary; some thought it quaint. The messenger tramped through the lobby with a chalkboard that dangled brass chimes, treating everyone in the lobby to an insistent dinging. The messenger boy, who thought that he’d recognized Inspector Dhar, stopped in front of Martin Mills and shook the board with its incessant chimes. Chalked on the board was MR
DHAR
.

‘Wrong man,’ Dr Daruwalla told the messenger boy, but the boy continued to shake the chimes. ‘Wrong man, you moron!’ the doctor shouted. But the boy was no moron; he wouldn’t leave without a tip. Once he got it, he strolled casually away, still chiming. Farrokh was furious.

‘We’re going now,’ he said abruptly.

‘Going where?’ Madhu asked him.

To the circus?’ asked Ganesh.

‘No, not yet — we’re just going somewhere else,’ the doctor informed them.

‘Aren’t we comfortable here?’ the missionary asked.

‘
Too
comfortable,’ Dr Daruwalla replied.

‘Actually, a tour of Bombay would be nice – for me,’ the scholastic said. ‘I realize the rest of you are familiar with the city, but possibly there’s something you wouldn’t mind showing me. Public gardens, perhaps. I also like marketplaces.’

Not a great idea, Farrokh knew – to be dragging Dhar’s twin through public places. Dr Daruwalla was thinking that he could take them all to the Duckworth Club for lunch. It was certain that they wouldn’t run into Dhar at the Taj, because John D. was rehearsing with Detective Patel at the Oberoi; it was therefore likely that they wouldn’t run into John D. at the club, either. As for the outside chance that they might encounter Rahul, it didn’t bother Dr Daruwalla to contemplate having another look at the second Mrs Dogar; the doctor would do nothing to arouse her suspicions. But it was too early to go to lunch at the Duckworth Club, and he had to phone for a reservation; without one, Mr Sethna would be rude to them.