A Son of the Circus

“You’re going to think it’s funny,” Farrokh admitted to Julia, “but I swear I ran right into her bosom.”

“Then it’s no wonder she hurt you, Liebchen,” Julia replied. It was Julia’s opinion that the second Mrs. Dogar had no bosom to speak of.

Dr. Daruwalla could sense his wife’s impatience on John D.’s behalf, but less for the fact that Inspector Dhar had been left alone than that the dear boy hadn’t been forewarned of the pending arrival of his twin. Yet even this dilemma struck the doctor as trivial—as insubstantial as the second Mrs. Dogar’s bosom—in comparison to the big blonde in the bathtub at the Hotel Bardez. Twenty years couldn’t lessen the impact of what had happened to Dr. Daruwalla there, for it had changed him more than anything in his whole life had changed him, and the long-ago memory of it endured unfaded, although he’d never returned to Goa. All other beach resorts had been ruined for him by the unpleasant association.

Julia recognized her husband’s expression. She could see how far away he was; she knew exactly where he was. Although she wanted to reassure John D. that the doctor would join them soon, it would have been heartless of her to leave her husband; dutifully, she remained seated beside him. Sometimes she thought she ought to tell him that it was his own curiosity that had got him into trouble. But this wasn’t entirely a fair accusation; dutifully, she remained silent. Her own memory, although it didn’t torture her with the same details that made the doctor miserable, was surprisingly vivid. She could still see Farrokh on the balcony of the Hotel Bardez, where he’d been as restless and bored as a little boy.

“What a long bath the hippie is taking!” the doctor had said to his wife.

“She looked like she needed a long bath, Liebchen,” Julia had told him. That was when Farrokh pulled the hippie’s rucksack closer to him and peered into the top of it; the top wouldn’t quite close.

“Don’t look at her things!” Julia told him.

“It’s just a book,” Farrokh said; he pulled the copy of Clea from the top of the rucksack. “I was just curious to know what she was reading.”

“Put it back,” Julia said.

“I will!” the doctor said, but he was reading the marked passage, the same bit about the “umbrageous violet” and the “velvet rind” that one customs official and two policemen had already found so spellbinding. “She has a poetic sensibility,” Dr. Daruwalla said.

“I find that hard to believe,” Julia told him. “Put it back!”

But putting the book back presented the doctor with a new difficulty: something was in the way.

“Stop groping through her things!” Julia said.

“The damn book doesn’t fit,” Farrokh said. “I’m not groping through her things.” An overpowering mustiness embraced him from the depths of the rucksack, a stale exhalation. The hippie’s clothing felt damp. As a married man with daughters, Dr. Daruwalla was particularly sensitive to an abundance of dirty underpants in any woman’s laundry. A mangled bra clung to his wrist as he tried to extract his hand, and still the copy of Clea wouldn’t lie flat at the top of the rucksack; something poked against the book. What the hell is this thing? the doctor wondered. Then Julia heard him gasp; she saw him spring away from the rucksack as if an animal had bitten his hand.

“What is it?” she cried.

“I don’t know!” the doctor moaned. He staggered to the rail of the balcony, where he gripped the tangled branches of the clinging vine. Several bright-yellow finches with seeds falling from their beaks exploded from among the flowers, and a gecko sprang from the branch nearest the doctor’s right hand; it wriggled into the open end of a drainpipe just as Dr. Daruwalla leaned over the balcony and vomited onto the patio below. Fortunately, no one was having afternoon tea there. There was only one of the hotel’s sweepers, who’d fallen asleep in a curled position in the shade of a large potted plant. The doctor’s falling vomit left the sweeper undisturbed.

“Liebchen!” Julia cried.

“I’m all right,” Farrokh said. “It’s nothing, really—it’s just … lunch.” Julia was staring at the hippie’s rucksack as if she expected something to crawl out from under the copy of Clea.

“What was it—what did you see?” she asked Farrokh.

“I’m not sure,” he said, but Julia was thoroughly exasperated with him.

“You don’t know, you’re not sure, it’s nothing, really—it just made you throw up!” she said. She reached for the rucksack. “Well, if you don’t tell me, I’ll just see for myself.”

“No, don’t!” the doctor cried.

“Then tell me,” Julia said.

“I saw a penis,” Farrokh said.

Not even Julia could think of anything to say.

“I mean, it can’t be a real penis,” he continued. “I don’t mean that it’s someone’s severed penis, or anything ghastly like that.”

“What do you mean?” Julia asked him.

“I mean, it’s a very lifelike, very graphic, very large male member—it’s an enormous cock, with balls!” Dr. Daruwalla said.

“Do you mean a dildo?” Julia asked him. Farrokh was shocked that she knew the word; he barely knew it himself. A colleague in Toronto, a fellow surgeon, kept a collection of pornographic magazines in his hospital locker, and it was only in one of these that Dr. Daruwalla had ever seen a dildo; the advertisement hadn’t been nearly as realistic as the terrifying thing in the hippie’s rucksack.

“I think it is a dildo, yes,” Farrokh said.