A Son of the Circus

Nancy had been too overwhelmed to question him, which she realized (as she sank deeper into Dr. Daruwalla’s bathtub) was a pattern she had finally broken. She submerged the dildo, holding it against her stomach. Because the dildo had not been reseated with wax, there were bubbles. Afraid that the Deutsche marks might get wet, Nancy stopped toying with the instrument. Instead, she thought of the entrenching tool in her rucksack; the doctor had surely heard it clank against the floor.

Dieter had bought it at an army-surplus shop in Bombay. The tool was an olive-drab color; fully extended, it was a spade with a short, two-foot handle which could be folded by means of an iron hinge, and the blade of the spade could be turned at a right angle to the handle until it resembled a foot-long hoe. If Dieter were alive, he would be the first to agree that it could also be successfully employed as a tomahawk. He’d told Nancy that the entrenching tool might be useful in Goa, both for defense against the dacoits—bandits occasionally preyed upon the hippies there—and for digging the spontaneous latrine. Nancy now smiled ruefully as she reflected on the expanded features of the tool. Certainly, she’d found it adequate for digging Dieter’s grave.

When she shut her eyes and sank deeper into the tub, she could still taste the sweet, smoky tea that they served at the Olympia; she could remember its dry, bitter aftertaste, too. With her eyes shut and the warm water holding her, she could remember her changing expression in the pitted mirrors of the café. The tea had made her feel lightheaded. She was unfamiliar with the red spittle from the betel chewing that was expectorated everywhere around them, and not even the Hindi film songs and the Qawwali on the jukebox in the Olympia had prepared her for the assault of noise along Falkland Road. A drunken man followed her and pulled her hair until Dieter knocked him down and kicked him.

“The better brothels are in the rooms above the cages,” Dieter told her knowingly. A boy with a goatskin full of water collided with her; she was sure he’d meant to step on her foot. Someone pinched her breast, but she didn’t see who it was—man, woman or child.

Dieter pulled her into a bidi shop, where they also sold stationery and silver trinkets and the small pipes for smoking ganja.

“Hey, ganja-man—Mistah bhang-walla!” the proprietor greeted Dieter. He smiled happily at Nancy as he pointed to Dieter. “He Mistah bhang-master—the very best ganja-walla!” the proprietor said appreciatively.

Nancy was fingering an unu

sual ballpoint pen; it was real silver, and Made in India was written in script lengthwise along the pen. The bottom part said Made in, the top part said India; the pen wouldn’t close securely if the script wasn’t perfectly aligned. She thought this was a stupid flaw. Also, when you wrote with the pen, the words were all wrong; in Made India, the pen said—and in Made was upside down. “Very best quality,” the proprietor told her. “Made in England!”

“It says it’s made in India,” Nancy said.

“Yes—they make it in India, too!” the proprietor agreed.

“You’re a shitty liar,” Dieter told him, but he bought Nancy the pen.

Nancy was thinking she’d like to go somewhere cool and write postcards. In Iowa, wouldn’t they be surprised to hear where she was? But, at the same time, she was thinking, They’ll never hear from me again. Bombay both terrified and exhilarated her; it was so foreign and seemingly lawless that Nancy felt she could be anybody she wanted to be. It was the clean slate she was looking for, and in the back of her mind, with the persistence of something permanent, was that impossible goal of purity to which she’d been drawn in the person of Inspector Patel.

In the overly dramatic manner of many fallen young women, Nancy believed that only two roads remained open to her: she could keep on falling until she was indifferent to her own defilement, or else she could aspire to acts of social conscience so great and self-sacrificing that she could reclaim her innocence and redeem everything. In the world she’d descended to, there were only these choices: stay with Dieter or go to Inspector Patel. But what had she to give to Vijay Patel? Nancy feared it was nothing that the good policeman wanted.

Later, in the doorway of a transvestite brothel, a hijra exposed himself so boldly and suddenly that Nancy hadn’t time to look away. Even Dieter was forced to admit that there was no evidence of a penis—not even a little one. As to what was there, Nancy wasn’t sure. Dieter concluded that Rahul might be one of these—“a kind of radical eunuch,” he said.

Dieter’s questions about Rahul were greeted with sullenness, if not hostility. The only hijra who permitted them to come inside his cage was a fussy middle-aged transvestite who sat before a mirror in growing disappointment with his wig. In the same tiny room, a younger hijra was feeding a watery gray milk to a newborn goat by means of a baby’s bottle.

On the subject of Rahul, all the younger one would say was, “He is not being one of us.” The older one said only that Rahul was in Goa. Neither of the hijras could be drawn into a discussion of Rahul’s nickname. At the mere mention of “Pretty,” the one who was feeding the goat abruptly pulled the baby bottle out of the goat’s mouth; it made a pop and the goat bleated in surprise. The younger hijra pointed the baby bottle at Nancy and made a disparaging gesture. Nancy interpreted the bottle-pointing as an indication that she wasn’t as pretty as Rahul. She was relieved that Dieter seemed disinclined to fight, although she could sense he was angry; he wasn’t exactly gallant on her behalf, but at least he was angry.

Back on the street, to assure him she was philosophic about the insult of being ill compared to Rahul, Nancy said something that she hoped sounded tolerant in a live-and-let-live sort of way.

“Well, they weren’t very nice,” she observed, “but it was nice how they were taking care of the goat.”

“Don’t be a fool,” Dieter told her. “Some people fuck girls, some people fuck eunuchs in drag—others fuck goats.” This terrible thought made her anxious again; she knew she’d deceived herself if she’d believed she’d stopped falling.

In Kamathipura, there were other brothels. Outside a warren of small rooms, a fat woman in a magenta sari sat cross-legged on a rope bed supported by orange crates; either the woman or the bed swayed slightly. She was the madam for a higher class of prostitutes than one could find on Falkland Road or Grant Road. Naturally, Dieter didn’t tell Nancy that this was the same brothel where he’d fucked the 13-year-old girl for only five rupees because they had to do it standing up.

It seemed to Nancy that Dieter knew the enormous madam, but she couldn’t understand their conversation; two of the bolder prostitutes had come out of the brothel to stare at her close up.

A third girl, who was perhaps 12 or 13, was especially curious; she remembered Dieter from the night before. Nancy saw the blue tattoo on her upper arm, which Dieter later said was just the prostitute’s name. It was impossible for Nancy to know if her body’s other ornaments were of any religious significance or if they were merely decorative. Her bindi—the cosmetic dot on her forehead—was a saffron color edged with gold, and she wore a gold ring in her left nostril.

The girl’s curiosity was a little too extreme for Nancy, who turned away—Dieter was still talking to the madam. Their conversation had grown heated; vagueness made Dieter angry, and everyone was vague about Rahul.

“You go to Goa,” the fat madam had advised. “You say you looking for him. Then he find you.” But Nancy could tell that Dieter preferred to be in more control of the situation.

She also knew what would happen next. Back at the Sea Green Guest House, Dieter was very desirous; anger frequently had this effect on him. First he made Nancy masturbate; then he used the dildo rather roughly on her. She was surprised she was even remotely excited. Afterward, Dieter was still angry. While they waited for an overnight bus to Goa, Nancy was beginning to imagine how she would leave him. The country was so intimidating, it was hard to see herself leaving him if there was no one else.

On the bus, they saw a small American girl; she was being bothered by some Indian men. Nancy spoke up: “Are you a coward, Dieter? Why don’t you tell those guys to leave that girl alone? Why don’t you ask that girl to sit with us?”

Nancy Gets Sick

Remembering when her relationship with Dieter took such a heralded turn, Nancy felt a renewal of self-confidence in the bathroom of the Hotel Bardez. So what if she couldn’t unscrew the dildo? She would find someone with stronger hands, if not a pair of pliers. With that relaxing thought, she threw the dildo across the bathroom; it struck the blue-tiled wall and bounced back toward the bathtub. Thereupon Nancy pulled the plug, the drain gurgled loudly, and Dr. Daruwalla scurried away from his side of the bathroom door.

On the balcony, he told his wife, “I think she’s finally finished. I believe she threw the cock against the wall—she threw something, anyway.”

“It’s a dildo,” Julia said. “I wish you wouldn’t call it a cock.”