A Son of the Circus

Naturally, it was in the Bengali’s best interests to make his telegram sound upbeat.

THAT GIRL MADHU / IT IS BEING HER LUCKY DAY / VERY ACCEPTABLE MATRIMONIAL MADE BY MIDDLE-AGED BUT MOST SUCCESSFUL BUSINESSMAN / IT IS WHAT SHE IS WANTING EVEN IF SHE ISN’T LOVING HIM EXACTLY AND IN SPITE OF HIS SCAR / MEANWHILE THE CRIPPLE IS BEING AFFORDED EVERY OPPORTUNITY OF WORKING HARD HERE / REST BEING ASSURED / DAS

By the time Dr. Daruwalla would hear the news, the doctor would be kicking himself; he should have known all along—for why else would Mr. Garg have asked Ranjit for the address of the Great Blue Nile? Surely Mr. Garg, like Dr. Daruwalla, knew that Madhu couldn’t read; Acid Man had never intended to send the girl a letter. And when Ranjit gave Farrokh the message (that Garg had requested the circus’s address), the faithful secretary failed to inform the doctor that Garg had also inquired when the doctor was returning from Junagadh. That same Sunday, when Dr. Daruwalla left the circus, Mr. Garg went there.

Farrokh wouldn’t be persuaded by Vinod’s notion—that Garg was so smitten by Madhu, he couldn’t let her go. Maybe Mr. Garg had been unprepared for how much he would miss Madhu, the dwarf said. Deepa insisted on the importance of the fact that Acid Man had actually married Madhu; surely Garg had no intentions of sending the girl back to a brothel—not after he’d married her. The dwarf’s wife would add that perhaps it was Madhu’s “lucky day.”

But this particular news wouldn’t find its way to Dr. Daruwalla on Jubilee Day. This news would wait. Waiting with it was worse news. Ranjit would hear it first, and the medical secretary would elect to spare the doctor such bad tidings; they were unsuitable tidings for New Year’s Day. But the busy office of Tata Two was in full operation on this holiday Monday—there were no holidays for Tata Two. It was Dr. Tata’s ancient secretary, Mr. Subhash, who informed Ranjit of the problem. The two old secretaries conversed in the manner of hostile but toothless male dogs.

“I am having information for the doctor only,” Mr. Subhash began, without bothering to identify himself.

“Then you’ll have to wait until tomorrow,” Ranjit informed the fool.

“This is Mr. Subhash, in Dr. Tata’s office,” the imperious secretary said.

“You’ll still have to wait until tomorrow,” Ranjit told him. “Dr. Daruwalla isn’t here today.”

“This is being important information—the doctor is definitely wanting to know it as soon as possible,” Mr. Subhash said.

“Then tell me,” Ranjit replied.

“Well … she is having it,” Mr. Subhash announced dramatically.

“You’ve got to be clearer than that,” Ranjit told him.

“That girl, Madhu—she is testing positive for HIV,” Mr. Subhash said. Ranjit knew this contradicted the information he’d seen in Madhu’s file; Tata Two had already told Dr. Daruwalla that Madhu’s test was negative. If the girl was carrying the AIDS virus, Ranjit assumed that Dr. Daruwalla wouldn’t have allowed her to go to the circus.

“The ELISA is being positive, and this is being con

firmed by Western Blot,” Mr. Subhash was saying.

“But Dr. Tata himself told Dr. Daruwalla that Madhu’s test was negative,” Ranjit said.

“That was definitely the wrong Madhu,” old Mr. Subhash said dismissively. “Your Madhu is being HIV-positive.”

“This is a serious mistake,” Ranjit remarked.

“There is being no mistake,” Mr. Subhash said indignantly. “This is merely a matter of there being two Madhus.” But there was nothing “merely” about the matter.

Ranjit transcribed his phone conversation with Mr. Subhash into a neatly typed report, which he placed on Dr. Daruwalla’s desk; from the existing evidence, the medical secretary concluded that Madhu and Mr. Garg might be sharing something a little more serious than chlamydia. What Ranjit couldn’t have known was that Mr. Garg had gone to Junagadh and retrieved Madhu from the circus; probably Garg had made his plans to bring the girl back to Bombay only after he’d been told that Madhu was not HIV-positive—but maybe not. In the world of the Wetness Cabaret, and throughout the brothels in Kamathipura, a certain fatalism was the norm.

The news about the wrong Madhu would wait for Dr. Daruwalla, too. What was the point of hurrying evil tidings? After all, Ranjit believed that Madhu was still with the circus in Junagadh. As for Mr. Garg, Dr. Daruwalla’s secretary wrongly assumed that Acid Man had never left Bombay. And when Martin Mills called Dr. Daruwalla’s office, Ranjit saw no reason to inform the missionary that Madhu was carrying the AIDS virus. The zealot wanted his bandages changed; he’d been advised by the Father Rector that clean bandages would be more suitable for the Jubilee Day celebration. Ranjit told Martin that he’d have to call the doctor at home. Because Farrokh was hard at work—rehearsing for Rahul, with John D. and old Mr. Sethna—Julia took the message. She was surprised to hear that Dhar’s twin had been bitten by a presumed-to-be-rabid chimpanzee. Martin was surprised, and his feelings were hurt, to hear that Dr. Daruwalla hadn’t informed his wife of the painful episode.

Julia graciously accepted the Jesuit’s invitation to the high tea in honor of Jubilee Day; she promised that she’d bring Farrokh to St. Ignatius before the start of the festivities so that the doctor would have plenty of time to change Martin’s bandages. The scholastic thanked Julia, but when he hung up the phone, he felt overcome by the sheer foreignness of his situation. He’d been in India less than a week; suddenly, everything that was unfamiliar was exacting a toll.

To begin with, the zealot had been taken aback by Father Julian’s response to his confession. The Father Rector had been impatient and argumentative; his absolution had been grudging and abrupt—and it had been hastily followed by Father Julian’s insistence that Martin do something about his soiled and bloody bandages. But the priest and the scholastic had encountered a fundamental misunderstanding. At that point in his confession when Martin Mills had admitted to loving the crippled boy more than he could ever love the child prostitute, Father Julian had interrupted him and told him to be less concerned with his own capacity for love, by which the Father Rector meant that Martin should be more concerned with God’s love and God’s will—and that he should be more humble about his own, merely human role. Martin was a member of the Society of Jesus, and he should behave accordingly; he wasn’t just another egocentric social worker—a do-gooder who was constantly evaluating, criticizing and congratulating himself.

“The fate of these children isn’t in your hands,” Father Julian told the scholastic, “nor will one of them suffer, more or less, because of your love for them—or your lack of love for them. Try to stop thinking so much about yourself. You’re an instrument of God’s will—you’re not your own creation.”

This not only struck the zealot as blunt; Martin Mills was confused. That the Father Rector saw the children as already consigned to their fate seemed remarkably Calvinistic for a Jesuit; Martin feared that Father Julian might also be suffering from the influence of Hinduism, for this notion of the children’s “fate” had a karmic ring. And what was wrong with being a social worker? Hadn’t St. Ignatius Loyola himself been a social worker of unflagging zeal? Or did the Father Rector mean only that Martin shouldn’t take the fate of the circus children too personally? That the scholastic had intervened on the children’s behalf did not mean he was responsible for every little thing that might happen to them.

It was in such a spiritual fog that Martin Mills took a walk in Mazagaon; he hadn’t wandered far from the mission before he encountered that slum which Dr. Daruwalla had first shown to him—the former movie-set slum where his evil mother had fainted when she was stepped on and licked by a cow. Martin remembered that he’d vomited from the moving car.

At midmorning, on this busy Monday, the slum was teeming, but the missionary found that it was better to focus on such abjectness in a microcosmic fashion; rather than look up the length of Sophia Zuber Road for as far as he could see, Martin kept his eyes cast down—at his slowly moving feet. He never allowed his gaze to wander above ground level. Most of the slum dwellers were thus cut off at their ankles; he saw only the children’s faces—naturally, the children were begging. He saw the paws and the inquiring noses of scavenging dogs. He saw a moped that had fallen or crashed in the gutter; a garland of marigolds was entwined on its handlebars, as if the moped were being prepared for cremation. He came upon a cow—a whole cow, not just the hooves, because the cow was lying down. It was hard to navigate around the cow. But when Martin Mills stopped walking, even though he’d been walking slowly, he found himself quickly surrounded; it should be stated clearly in every guidebook for tourists—never stand still in a slum.

The cow’s long sad dignified face gazed up at him; its eyes were rimmed with flies. On the cow’s tawny flank, a patch of the smooth hide was abraded—the raw spot was no bigger than a human fist, but it was encrusted with flies. This apparent abrasion was actually the entrance to a deep hole that had been made in the cow by a vehicle transporting a ship’s mast; but Martin hadn’t witnessed the collision, nor did the milling crowd permit him a comprehensive view of the cow’s mortal wound.

Suddenly, the crowd parted; a procession was passing—all Martin saw was a lunatic mob of flower throwers. When the worshipers had filed by, the cow lay sprinkled with rose petals; some of the flowers were stuck to the wound, alongside the flies. One of the cow’s long legs was extended, for the animal was lying on its side; the hoof almost reached the curb. There in the gutter, within inches of the hoof but entirely untouched, was (unmistakably) a human turd. Beyond the serenely undisturbed turd was a vendor’s stall. They were selling something that looked purposeless to Martin Mills; it was a vivid scarlet powder, but the missionary doubted that it was a spice or anything edible. Some of it spilled into the gutter, where its dazzling red particles coated both the cow’s hoof and the human turd.