A Son of the Circus

I’m not telling you half! the doctor almost hollered. But Farrokh bit his tongue again. In the slanting light of the late afternoon, the lurid movie posters displayed the confident image of Martin Mills’s twin. Many of the posters for Inspector Dhar and the Towers of Silence were already defaced; yet through the tatters and the muck flung from the street, Dhar’s sneer seemed to be assessing them.

In reality, John D. had been rehearsing a different role, for the seduction of the second Mrs. Dogar was out of Inspector Dhar’s genre. Rahul wasn’t the usual cinema bimbo. If Dr. Daruwalla had known who’d bitten him in his hammock at the Hotel Bardez, the doctor would have agreed with Martin Mills, for Farrokh truly had been bitten by the Devil himself … by the Devil herself, the second Mrs. Dogar would prefer.

As the dwarf’s taxi came into Bombay, it was momentarily stalled near an Iranian restaurant—of a kind not quite in a class with Lucky New Moon or Light of Asia, Dr. Daruwalla was thinking. The doctor was hungry. Towering over the restaurant was a nearly destroyed Inspector Dhar poster; the movie star was ripped open from his cheek to his waist, but his sneer was undamaged. Beside the mutilated Dhar was a poster of Lord Ganesha; the elephant-headed deity might have been advertising an upcoming religious festival, but the traffic began to move before Farrokh could translate the announcement.

The god was short and fat, but surpassingly beautiful to his believers; Lord Ganesha’s elephant face was as red as a China rose and he sported the lotus smile of a perpetual daydreamer. His four human arms swarmed with bees—doubtless attracted by the perfume of the ichor flowing in his godly veins—and his three all-seeing eyes looked down upon Bombay with a benevolence that challenged Dhar’s sneer. Lord Ganesha’s potbelly hung almost to his human feet; his toenails were as long and brightly painted as a woman’s. In the sharply angled light, his one unbroken tusk gleamed.

“That elephant is everywhere!” exclaimed the Jesuit. “What happened to its other tusk?”

The myth that Farrokh had loved best as a child was that Lord Ganesha broke off his own tusk and threw it at the moon; the moon had mocked the elephant-headed god for his portliness and for being clumsy. Old Lowji had liked this story; he’d told it to Farrokh and Jamshed when they were small boys. Only now did Dr. Daruwalla wonder if this was a real myth, or if it was only Lowji’s myth; the old man wasn’t above making up a myth of his own.

There were other myths; there was more than one story about Ganesh’s birth, too. In a South Indian version, Parvati saw the sacred syllable “Om,” and her mere glance transformed it into two coupling elephants, who gave birth to Lord Ganesha and then resumed the form of the sacred syllable. But in a darker version, which attests to the reputed sexual antagonism between Parvati and her husband, Lord Shiva, a considerable jealousy attended Shiva’s feelings for Parvati’s son, who—not unlike the baby Jesus—was never described as being born from Parvati in the “natural” manner.

In the darker myth, it was Shiva’s evil eye that beheaded the newborn Ganesh, who wasn’t born with an elephant’s head. The only way the child could live was if someone else’s head—someone facing north—was found and attached to the headless boy. What was found, after a great battle, was an unfortunate elephant, and in the violent course of the elephant’s beheading, one tusk was broken.

But because he’d first heard it as a boy, Farrokh preferred the myth of the moon.

“Excuse me—did you hear me?” Martin asked the doctor. “I was inquiring what happened to that elephant’s other tusk.”

“He broke it himself,” Dr. Daruwalla replied. “He got pissed off and threw it at the moon.” In the rearview mirror, the dwarf gave the doctor the evil eye; a good Hindu, Vinod wasn’t amused by Dr. Daruwalla’s blasphemy. Surely Lord Ganesha was never “pissed off,” which was strictly a mortal weakness.

The missionary’s sigh was intended to convey his long-suffering patience with whatever vexatious mood the doctor was in. “There you go again,” the Jesuit said. “Still keeping something from me.”

24

THE DEVIL HERSELF

Getting Ready for Rahul

Although Deputy Commissioner Patel had insulted Mr. Sethna, the disapproving steward relished his new role as a police informant, for self-importance was Mr. Sethna’s middle name; also, the deputy commissioner’s stated objective of entrapping the second Mrs. Dogar greatly pleased the old Parsi. Nonetheless, Mr. Sethna faulted Detective Patel for not trusting him more completely; it irritated the steward that he was given his instructions without being informed of the overall plan. But the extent of the intrigue against Rahul was contingent on how Rahul responded to John D.’s sexual overtures. In rehearsing Inspector Dhar’s seduction of Mrs. Dogar, both the real policeman and the actor were forced to consider more than one outcome. That was why they’d been waiting for Farrokh to come back from the circus; not only did they want the screenwriter to provide Dhar with some dialogue—Dhar also needed to know some alternative conversation, in case his first advances were rebuffed.

This was vastly more demanding dialogue than Dr. Daruwalla was accustomed to writing, for it was not just that he was required to anticipate the various responses that Rahul might make; the screenwriter also needed to guess what Mrs. Dogar might like—that is, sexually. Would she be more attracted to John D. if he was gentlemanly or if he was crude? For flirtation, did she favor the discreet approach or the explicit? A screenwriter could only suggest certain directions in which the dialogue might roam; Dhar could charm her, tease her, tempt her, shock her, but the particular approach that the actor chose would necessarily be a spontaneous decision. John D. had to rely on his instincts for what would work. After Dr. Daruwalla’s most revealing conversations with Dhar’s twin, the doctor could only wonder what John D.’s “instincts” were.

Farrokh wasn’t prepared to find Detective Patel and Inspector Dhar waiting for him in his Marine Drive apartment. To begin with, Dr. Daruwalla wondered why they were so well dressed; he still didn’t realize it was New Year’s Eve—not until he saw what Julia was wearing. Then it puzzled him why everyone had dressed for New Year’s Eve so early; no one ever showed up for the party at the Duckworth Club before 8:00 or 9:00.

But no one had wanted to waste time dressing when they could be rehearsing, and they couldn’t properly rehearse Dhar’s options for dialogue until after the screenwriter was home from the circus and had written the lines. Farrokh felt flattered—having first suffered the keenest disappointment for being left out of the process—but he was also overwhelmed; he’d been writing for the last three nights, and he feared he might be written-out. And he hated New Year’s Eve; the night seemed to prey on his natural inclination toward nostalgia (especially at the Duckworth Club), although Julia did enjoy the dancing.

Dr. Daruwalla expressed his regret that there wasn’t time to tell them what had happened at the circus; interesting things had transpired there. That was when John D. said something insensitive by stating that preparing himself for the seduction of the second Mrs. Dogar was “no circus”; those were the disparaging words he used—meaning that the doctor should save his silly circus stories for another, more frivolous time.

Detective Patel came to the point even more bluntly. The top half of the silver ballpoint pen had not only revealed Rahul’s fingerprints; a speck of dried blood had been removed from the pocket clasp—it was human blood, of Mr. Lal’s type. “May I remind you, Doctor,” said the deputy commissioner, “it is still necessary to determine what Rahul would have been doing with the top half of the pen … during the murder of Mr. Lal.”

“It’s also necessary for Mrs. Dogar to admit that the top half of the pen is hers,” John D. interrupted.

“Yes, thank you,” Patel said, “but the top half of the pen isn’t incriminating evidence—at least not by itself. What we really need to establish is that no one else could have made those drawings. I’m told that drawings like those are as identifiable as a signature, but it’s necessary to induce Mrs. Dogar to draw.”

“If there was a way for me to suggest to her that she should show me what it might be like … between us,” Dhar told the screenwriter. “Maybe I could ask her to give me just a hint of what she preferred—I mean, sexually. Or I could ask her to tease me with something—I mean, something sexually explicit,” the actor said.

“Yes, yes—I get the picture,” Dr. Daruwalla said impatiently.

“And then there are the two-rupee notes,” the real policeman said. “If Rahul is thinking of killing anyone else, perhaps there exist some notes with the appropriate warnings or messages already typed on the money.”

“Surely that would be incriminating evidence, as you call it,” Farrokh said.

“I would prefer all three—a connection to the top half of the pen, a drawing and something typed on the money,” Patel replied. “That would be evidence enough.”

“How fast do you want to go?” Farrokh asked. “In a seduction, there’s usually the setting up—some kind of mutual sexual spark is ignited. Then there’s the assignation—or at least a discussion of the trysting place, if not the actual tryst.”

It was of small comfort to the screenwriter when Inspector Dhar said ambiguously, “I think I’d prefer to avoid the actual tryst, if it’s possible—if things don’t have to go that far.”