A Son of the Circus

Jesus in the Parking Lot

Meanwhile, the missionary had provoked mayhem in the area of the chimp cages. Gautam was infuriated to see him—the bandages being even whiter than the scholastic’s skin. On the other hand, the flirtatious Mira reached her long arms through the bars of her cage as if she were beseeching Martin for an embrace. Gautam responded by forcefully urinating in the missionary’s direction. Martin believed he should remove himself from the chimpanzees’ view rather than stand there and encourage their apery, but Kunal wanted the missionary to stay. It would be a valuable lesson to Gautam, Kunal reasoned: the more violently the ape reacted to the Jesuit’s presence, the more Kunal beat the ape. To Martin’s mind, the psychology of disciplining Gautam in this fashion seemed flawed; yet the Jesuit obeyed the trainer’s instructions.

In Gautam’s cage, there was an old tire; the tread was bald and the tire swung from a frayed rope. In his anger, Gautam hurled the tire against the bars of his cage; then he seized the tire and sank his teeth into the rubber. Kunal responded by reaching through the bars and jabbing Gautam with a bamboo pole. Mira rolled onto her back.

When Dr. Daruwalla finally found the missionary, Martin Mills was standing helplessly before this apish drama, looking as guilty and as compromised as a prisoner.

“For God’s sake—why are you standing here?” the doctor asked him. “If you just walked away, all this would stop!”

“That’s what I think,” the Jesuit replied. “But the trainer told me to stay.”

“Is he your trainer or the chimps’ trainer?” Farrokh asked Martin.

Thus the missionary’s good-byes to Ganesh were conducted with the racist ape’s shrieks and howls in the background; it was hard to imagine this as a learning experience for Gautam. The two men followed Ramu to the Land Rover. The last cages they passed were those of the sleepy, disgruntled lions; the tigers looked equally listless and out of humor. The reckless driver ran his fingers along the bars of the big cats’ cages; occasionally a paw (claws extended) flicked out, but Ramu confidently withdrew his hand in time.

“One more hour until meat-feeding time,” Ramu sang to the lions and tigers. “One whole hour.”

It was unfortunate that such a note of mockery, if not an underlying cruelty, described their departure from the Great Blue Nile. Dr. Daruwalla looked only once at the elephant boy’s retreating figure. Ganesh was limping back to the cook’s tent. In the cripple’s unsteady gait, his right heel appeared to bear the weight of two or three boys; like a dewclaw on a dog or a cat, the ball of the boy’s right foot (and his toes) never touched the ground. No wonder he wanted to walk on the sky.

As for Farrokh and Martin, their lives were once again in Ramu’s hands. Their drive to the airport in Rajkot was in daylight. Both the highway’s carnage and the Land Rover’s near misses could be clearly seen. Once again, Dr. Daruwalla sought to be distracted from Ramu’s driving, but the doctor found himself up front in the passenger seat this time, and there was no seat belt. Martin clung to the back of the front seat, his head over Farrokh’s shoulder, which probably blocked whatever view Ramu might have had in the rearview mirror—not that Ramu would even glance at what might be coming up behind him, or that anything could be fast enough to be coming up from behind.

Because Junagadh was the jumping-off point for visits to the Gir Forest, which was the last habitat of the Asian lion, Ramu wanted to know if they’d seen the forest—they hadn’t—and Martin Mills wanted to know what Ramu had said. This would be a long trip, the doctor imagined—Ramu speaking Marathi and Hindi, Farrokh struggling to translate. The missionary was sorry that they hadn’t seen the Gir lions. Maybe when they returned to visit the children, they could see the forest. By then, the doctor suspected, the Great Blue Nile would be playing in another town. There were a few Asian lions in the town zoo, Ramu told them; they could have a quick look at the lions and still manage to catch their plane in Rajkot. But Farrokh wisely vetoed this idea; he knew that any delay in their departure from Junagadh would make Ramu drive to Rajkot all the faster.

Nor was a discussion of Graham Greene as distracting as Farrokh had hoped. The Jesuit’s “Catholic interpretation” of The Heart of the Matter wasn’t at all what the doctor was looking for; it was infuriating. Not even a novel as profoundly about faith as The Power and the Glory could or should be discussed in strictly “Catholic” terms, Dr. Daruwalla argued; the doctor quoted, from memory, that passage which he loved. “ ‘There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.’

“Perhaps you’ll tell me what is especially Catholic about that,” the doctor challenged the scholastic, but Martin skillfully changed the subject.

“Let us pray that this door opens and lets the future in for our children at the circus,” the Jesuit said. What a sneaky mind he had!

Farrokh didn’t dare ask him anything more about his mother; not even Ramu’s driving was as daunting as the possibility of another story about Vera. What Farrokh desired to hear was more about the homosexual inclinations of Dhar’s twin; the doctor was chiefly curious to learn whether or not John D. was so inclined, but Dr. Daruwalla felt uncertain of how to inspire such a subject of conversation with John D.’s twin. However, it would be an easier subject to broach with Martin than with John D.

“You say you were in love with a man, and that your feelings for him finally lessened,” the doctor began.

“That’s correct,” the scholastic said stiffly.

“But can you point to any moment or to any single episode that marked the end of your infatuation?” Farrokh asked. “Did anything happen—was there an incident that convinced you? What made you decide you could resist such an attraction and become a priest?” This was beating around the bush, Dr. Daruwalla knew, but the doctor had to begin somewhere.

“I saw how Christ existed for me. I saw that Jesus had never abandoned me,” the zealot said.

“Do you mean you had a vision?” Farrokh asked.

“In a way,” the Jesuit said mysteriously. “I was at a low point in my relationship with Jesus. And I’d reached a very cynical decision. There is no lack of resistance that is as great a giving-up as fatalism—I’m ashamed to say I was totally fatalistic.”

“Did you actually see Christ or didn’t you?” the doctor asked him.

“Actually, it was only a statue of Christ,” the missionary admitted.

“You mean it was real?” Farrokh asked.

“Of course it was real—it was at the end of a parking lot, at the school where I taught. I used to see it every day—twice a day, in fact,” Martin said. “It was just a white stone statue of Christ in a typical pose.” And there, in the back seat of the speeding Land Rover, the zealot rotated both his palms toward heaven, apparently to demonstrate the pose of the supplicant.

“It sounds truly tasteless—Christ in a parking lot!” Dr. Daruwalla remarked.

“It wasn’t very artistic,” the Jesuit replied. “Occasionally, as I recall, the statue was vandalized.”

“I can’t imagine why,” Farrokh muttered.

“Well, anyway, I had stayed at the school quite late one night—I was directing a school play, another musical … I can’t remember which one. And this man who’d been such an obsession for me … he was also staying late. But his car wouldn’t start—he had an awful car—and he asked me for a ride home.”