A Son of the Circus

“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.

Too Loud for a Library

Back in the Ambassador, the doctor instructed Vinod to drive them to the Asiatic Society Library, opposite Horniman Circle; this was one of those oases in the teeming city—not unlike the Duckworth Club or St. Ignatius—where the doctor was hoping that Dhar’s twin would be safe. Dr. Daruwalla was a member of the Asiatic Society Library; he’d often dozed in the cool, high-ceilinged reading rooms. The larger-than-life statues of literary geniuses had barely noticed the screenwriter’s quiet ascending and descending of the magnificent staircase.

“I’m taking you to the grandest library in Bombay,” Dr. Daruwalla told Martin Mills. “Almost a million books! Almost as many bibliophiles!”

Meanwhile, the doctor told Vinod to drive the children “around and around.” He also told the dwarf that it was important not to let the kids out of the car. They liked riding in the Ambassador, anyway—the anonymity of cruising the city, the secrecy of staring at the passing world. Madhu and Ganesh were unfamiliar with taxi riding; they stared at everyone as if they themselves were invisible—as if the dwarf’s crude Ambassador were equipped with one-way windows. Dr. Daruwalla wondered if this was because they knew they were safe with Vinod; they’d never been safe before.

The doctor had caught just a departing glimpse of the children’s faces. At that moment, they’d looked frightened—frightened of what? It certainly wasn’t that they feared they were being abandoned with a dwarf; they weren’t afraid of Vinod. No; on their faces Farrokh had seen a greater anxiety—that the circus they were supposedly being delivered to was only a dream, that they would never get out of Bombay.

Escaping Maharashtra: it suddenly s

truck him as a better title than Limo Roulette. But maybe not, Farrokh thought.

“I’m quite fond of bibliophiles,” Martin Mills was saying as they climbed the stairs. For the first time, Dr. Daruwalla was aware of how loudly the scholastic spoke; the zealot was too loud for a library.

“There are over eight hundred thousand volumes here,” Farrokh whispered. “This includes ten thousand manuscripts!”