A Son of the Circus

They could see Mr. Sethna hovering around Mrs. Dogar’s table like a nervous ghost. They couldn’t see Dhar’s left hand—it was under the table. Speculation was rife that his hand was on Rahul’s thigh, or in her lap.

“Let’s just keep talking,” Patel told them cheerfully.

“Fuck you, fuck Rahul, fuck Dhar,” Nancy told Patel. “Fuck you, too,” she said to Farrokh. “Not you—I like you,” she told Julia.

“Thank you, dear,” Julia replied.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Nancy said.

“Your poor lip,” Mrs. Dogar was saying to John D. This much Mr. Sethna understood; they would understand this much from the Ladies’ Garden, too, because they saw Rahul touch Dhar’s lower lip with her long index finger—it was just a brief, feather-light touch. Dhar’s lower lip was a luminous navy blue.

“I hope you’re not in a biting mood today,” John D. told her.

“I’m in a very good mood today,” Mrs. Dogar replied. “I want to know where you’re going to take me, and what you’re going to do to me,” she said coquettishly. It was embarrassing how young and cute she seemed to think she was. Her lips were pursed, which exaggerated the deep wrinkles at the corners of her savage mouth; her smile was small and coy, as if she were blotting lipstick in a mirror. Although her makeup mostly concealed the mark, there was a tiny inflamed cut across the green-tinted eyelid of one of her eyes; it caused her to blink, as if the eye itself were sore. But it was only a small irritation, the tiniest scratch; it was all that the prostitute named Asha had been able to do to her—to flick back one hand, to poke at Rahul’s eye—maybe a second or two before Rahul broke her neck.

“You’ve scratched your eye, haven’t you?” Inspector Dhar observed, but he felt no stiffening in Mrs. Dogar’s thighs; under the table, she gently pressed her thighs together on his hand.

“I must have been thinking of you in my sleep,” she said dreamily. When she closed her eyes, her eyelids had the silver-green iridescence of a lizard; when she parted her lips, her long teeth were wet and shiny—her warm gums were the color of strong tea.

It made John D.’s lip throb to look at her, but he continued to press his palm against the inside of her thigh. He hated this part of the script. Dhar suddenly said, “Did you draw me a picture of what you want?” He felt the muscles in both her thighs grip his hand tightly—her mouth was also tightly closed—and her eyes opened wide and fixed on his lip.

“You can’t expect me to show you here,” Mrs. Dogar said.

“Just a peek,” John D. begged her. “Otherwise, I’ll be in too much of a hurry to eat.”

Had he not been so easily offended by vulgarity, Mr. Sethna would have been in eavesdropper heaven; yet the steward was trembling with disapproval and responsibility. It struck the old Parsi as an awkward moment to bring them the menus, but he knew he needed to be near her purse.

“It’s disgusting how much people eat—I loathe eating,” Mrs. Dogar said. Dhar felt her thighs go slack; it was as if her concentration span were shorter than a child’s—as if she were losing her sexual interest, and for no better reason than the merest mention of food.

“We don’t have to eat at all—we haven’t ordered,” Dhar reminded her. “We could just go—now,” he suggested, but even as he spoke he was prepared to hold her in her chair (if need be) with his left hand. The thought of being alone with her, in a suite at either the Oberoi or the Taj, would have frightened John D., except that he knew Detective Patel would never allow Rahul to leave the Duckworth Club. But Mrs. Dogar was almost strong enough to stand up, despite the downward pressure of Dhar’s hand. “Just one picture,” the actor pleaded with her. “Just show me something.”

Rahul exhaled thinly through her nose. “I’m in too good a mood to be exasperated with you,” she told him. “But you’re a very naughty boy.”

“Show me,” Dhar said. In her thighs, he thought he felt those seemingly involuntary shivers that are visible on the flanks of a horse. When she turned to her purse, John D. raised his eyes to Mr. Sethna, but the old Parsi appeared to be suffering from stage fright; the steward clutched the menus in one hand, his silver serving tray in the other. How could the old fool upend Mrs. Dogar’s purse if he didn’t have a free hand? John D. wondered.

Rahul took the purse into her lap; Dhar could feel the bottom of it, for it briefly rested on his wrist. There was more than one drawing, and Mrs. Dogar appeared to hesitate before she withdrew all three; but she still didn’t show him any of them. She held the drawings protectively in her right hand; with her left hand, she returned her purse to the empty chair—that was when Mr. Sethna sprang into erratic action. He dropped the serving tray; there was a resounding silvery clatter upon the dining room’s stone floor. Then the steward stepped on the tray—he actually appeared to trip over it—and the menus flew from his hand into Mrs. Dogar’s lap. Instinctively, she caught them, while the old Parsi staggered past her and collided with the all-important chair. There went her purse, upside down on the floor, but nothing spilled out of it until Mr. Sethna clumsily attempted to pick the purse up; then everything was everywhere. Of the three drawings, which Rahul had left unattended on the table, John D. could see only the one on top. It was enough.

The woman in the picture bore a striking resemblance to what Mrs. Dogar might have looked like as a young girl. Rahul had never exactly been a young girl, but this portrait reminded John D. of how she had looked in Goa 20 years ago. An elephant was mounting her, but this elephant had two trunks. The first trunk—it was in the usual

place for an elephant’s trunk—was deeply inside the young woman’s mouth; in fact, it had emerged through the back of her head. The second trunk, which was the elephant’s preposterous penis, had penetrated the woman’s vagina; it was this trunk that had burst between the woman’s shoulder blades. Approximately at the back of the woman’s neck, John D. could see that the elephant’s two trunks were touching each other; the actor could also see that the elephant was winking. Dhar would never see the other two drawings; he wouldn’t want to. The movie star stepped quickly behind Mrs. Dogar’s chair and pushed the fumbling Mr. Sethna out of the way.

“Allow me,” Dhar said, bending to the spilled contents of her purse. Mrs. Dogar’s mood had been so improved by her recent killing, she was remarkably unprovoked by the apparent accident.

“Oh, purses! They’re such a nuisance!” Rahul said. Flirtatiously, she allowed her hand to touch the back of Inspector Dhar’s neck. He was kneeling between her chair and the empty chair; he was gathering the contents of her purse, which he then put on the table. Quite casually, the actor pointed to the top half of the silver ballpoint pen, which he’d placed between a mirror and a jar of moisturizer.

“I don’t see the bottom half of this,” the actor said. “Maybe it’s still in your purse.” Then he handed her the purse, which was easily half full, and he pretended to look under the table for the bottom half of the silver ballpoint pen—that part which Nancy had kept so well polished these 20 years.

When John D. lifted his face to her, he was still kneeling; as such, his face was level with her small, well-shaped breasts. Mrs. Dogar was holding the top half of the pen. “A rupee for your thoughts,” said Inspector Dhar; it was something he said in all his movies.

Rahul’s lips were parted; she looked quizzically down at Dhar—her scratched eye blinking once, and then again. Her lips softly closed and she once more exhaled thinly through her nose, as if such controlled breathing helped her to think.

“I thought I’d lost this,” Mrs. Dogar said slowly.

“It appears you’ve lost the other half,” John D. replied; he stayed on his knees because he imagined that she liked looking down on him.

“This is the only half I ever had,” Rahul explained.

Dhar stood up and walked behind her chair; he didn’t want her to grab the drawings. When John D. returned to his seat, Rahul was staring at the half-pen.