A Son of the Circus

“What similarities?” John D. asked.

“That’s what I mean by arrogant—he’s arrogant and rude,” Martin told Farrokh.

“And when did you decide not to go to New York?” the doctor asked the ex-missionary. Dr. Daruwalla was especially interested in the part of the story where the twins told Vera off.

“We were working on our telegram to the bitch before we landed,” John D. replied.

“But what did the telegram say?” Farrokh asked.

“I don’t remember,” John D. would always answer.

“Of course you remember!” cried Martin Mills. “You wrote it! He wouldn’t let me write a word of the telegram,” Martin told Dr. Daruwalla. “He said he was in the business of one-liners—he insisted on doing it himself.”

“What you wanted to say to her wouldn’t have fit in a telegram,” John D. reminded his twin.

“What he said to her was unspeakably cruel. I couldn’t believe how cruel he could be. And he didn’t even know her!” Martin Mills told the doctor.

“He asked me to send the telegram. He had no second thoughts,” John D. told Farrokh.

“But what was it that you said? What did the damn telegram say?” Dr. Daruwalla cried.

“It was unspeakably cruel,” Martin repeated.

“She had it coming, and you know it,” said the ex-Inspector Dhar.

Whatever the telegram said, Dr. Daruwalla knew that Vera didn’t live very long after she received it. There was only her hysterical phone call to Farrokh, who was still in Bombay; Vera called the doctor’s office and left a message with Ranjit.

“This is Veronica Rose—the actress,” she told Dr. Daruwalla’s secretary. Ranjit knew who she was; he would never forget typing the report on the problem Vera had with her knees, which turned out to be gynecological—“vaginal itching,” Dr. Lowji Daruwalla had said.

“Tell the fucking doctor I know that he betrayed me!” Vera said to Ranjit.

“Is it your … knees again?” the old secretary had asked her.

Dr. Daruwalla never returned her call. Vera never made it back to California before she died; her death was related to the sleeping pills she regularly took, which she’d irregularly mixed with vodka.

Martin would stay in Europe. Switzerland suited him, he said. And the outings in the Alps—although the former scholastic had never been athletically inclined, these outings with John D. were wonderful for Martin Mills. He couldn’t be taught to downhill-ski (he was too uncoordinated), but he liked cross-country skiing and hiking; he loved being with his brother. Even John D. admitted, albeit belatedly, that they loved being with each other.

The ex-missionary kept himself busy; he taught at City University (in the general-studies program) and at the American International School of Zürich—he was active at the Swiss Jesuit Centre, too. Occasionally, he would travel to other Jesuit institutions; there were youth centers and students’ homes in Basel and Bern, and adult-education centers in Fribourg and Bad Schönbrunn—Martin Mills was doubtless effective as an inspirational speaker. Farrokh could only imagine that this meant more Christ-in-the-parking-lot sermonizing; the former zealot hadn’t lost his energy for improving the attitudes of others.

As for John D., he continued in his craft; the journeyman actor was content with his roles at the Schauspielhaus Zürich. His friends were in the theater, or affiliated with the university, or with a publishing firm of excellent reputation—and of course he saw a great deal of Farrokh’s brother, Jamshed, and Jamshed’s wife (and Julia’s sister), Josefine.

It was to this social circle that John D. would introduce his twin. An oddity at first—everyone is interested in a twins-separated-at-birth story—Martin made many friends in this community; in three years, the ex-missionary probably had more friends than the actor. In fact, Martin’s first lover was an ex-boyfriend of John D.’s, which Dr. Daruwalla found strange; the twins made a joke of it—probably to exasperate him, the doctor thought.

As for lovers, Matthias Frei died; the onetime terror of the Zürich avant-garde had been John D.’s longstanding partner. It was Julia who informed Farrokh of this; she’d known for quite some time that John D. and Frei were a couple. “Frei didn’t die of AIDS, did he?” the doctor asked his wife. She gave him the same sort of look that John D. would have given him; it was that smile from movie posters of faded memory, recalling the cutting sneer of Inspector Dhar.

“No, Frei didn’t die of AIDS—he had a heart attack,” Julia told her husband.

No one

ever tells me anything! the doctor thought. It was just like that twinly conversation on Swissair 197, Bombay to Zürich, which would occupy a sizable part of Farrokh’s imagination, largely because John D. and Martin Mills were so secretive about it.

“Now, listen to me, both of you,” Dr. Daruwalla would tell the twins. “I’m not prying, I do respect your privacy—it’s just that you know how much dialogue interests me. This feeling of closeness between you, for it’s obvious to me that the two of you are close … did it come from your very first meeting? It must have happened on the plane! There’s surely something more between you than your mutual hatred of your late mother—or did the telegram to Vera really bring you together?”

“The telegram wasn’t dialogue—I thought you were interested only in our dialogue,” John D. replied.

“Such a telegram would never have occurred to me!” said Martin Mills.

“I couldn’t get a word in edgewise,” John D. repeated. “We didn’t have any dialogue. Martin had one monologue after another.”