A Son of the Circus

Then, as so often happens in dreams, there was no transition, no logic to the order of events, because the beautiful woman unwound her sari—she completely undressed. Even in the ghostly pallor of the moonlight, she was the color of tea; her limbs looked as smooth and hard as fine wood, like cherry. Her breasts were only slightly bigger than Beth’s, but much more upright, and when she slipped past the mosquito net and into bed beside Nancy, Nancy relinquished her grip on the entrenching tool and allowed the beautiful woman to hold her.

“They shouldn’t leave you all alone, should they?” the woman asked Nancy.

“No,” Nancy whispered; her teeth had stopped chattering, and her shivers subsided in the beautiful woman’s strong arms. At first they lay face-to-face, the woman’s firm breasts against Nancy’s softer bosom, their legs entwined. Then Nancy rolled onto her other side and the woman pressed herself against Nancy’s back; in this position, the woman’s breasts touched Nancy’s shoulder blades—the woman’s breath stirred Nancy’s hair. Nancy was impressed by the suppleness of the woman’s long, slender waist—how it curved to accommodate Nancy’s broad hips and her round bottom. And to Nancy’s surprise, the woman’s hands, which gently held Nancy’s heavy breasts, were even bigger than Nancy’s hands.

“This is better, isn’t it?” the woman asked her.

“Yes,” Nancy whispered, but her own voice sounded uncharacteristically hoarse and far away. An unshakable drowsiness attended the woman’s embrace, or else this was a new stage in Nancy’s fever, which signaled the beginning of a sleep deeper than dreams.

Nancy had never slept with a woman’s breasts pressed against her back; she m

arveled at how soothing it was, and she wondered if this was what men felt when they fell asleep this way. Previously, Nancy had fallen asleep with that odd sensation of a man’s inert and usually small penis brushing against her buttocks. It was upon this awareness, and on the edge of sleep, that Nancy was suddenly aware of an unusual situation, which was surely in the area of dream or delirium or both, because she felt—at the same time!—a woman’s breasts pressed against her back and a man’s sleepy penis curled against her buttocks. Another fever dream, Nancy decided.

“Won’t they be surprised, when they get here?” the beautiful woman asked her, but Nancy’s mind had drifted too far away for her to answer.

Nancy Is a Witness

When Nancy woke up, she lay alone in the moonlight, smelling the ganja and listening to Dieter and Beth; they were whispering on the other side of the partition. The rats on the latticework were so still that they appeared to be listening, too—or else the rats were stoned, because Dieter and Beth were smoking up a storm.

Nancy heard Dieter ask Beth, “What is the first sexual experience that you had some confidence in?” Nancy counted to herself in the silence; of course she knew what Beth was thinking. Then Dieter said, “Masturbation, right?”

Nancy heard Beth whisper, “Yes.”

“Everyone is different,” Dieter told Beth philosophically. “You just have to learn what your own best way is.”

Nancy lay watching the rats while she listened to Dieter. He was successful in getting Beth to relax, although Beth did possess the decency to ask, if only once, “What about Nancy?”

“Nancy is asleep,” Dieter said. “Nancy won’t object.”

“I have to be lying on my tummy,” Beth told Dieter, whose grasp of English vernacular wasn’t sound enough for him to understand “tummy.”

Nancy heard Beth roll over. There was no sound for a while, and then there came a change in Beth’s breathing, to which Dieter whispered some encouragement. There was the sound of messy kissing, and Beth panting, and then Beth uttered that special sound, which made the rats run along the top of the latticework partition and caused Nancy to reach for the entrenching tool with her big hands.

While Beth was still moaning, Dieter said to her, “Just wait right there. I have a surprise for you.”

The surprise for Nancy was that the entrenching tool was gone; she was sure she’d brought it to bed with her. She wanted to crack Dieter in the shins with it, just to drop him to his knees so that she could tell him what she thought of him. She’d give Beth one more chance. As she groped under the mosquito net and along the floor beside the bed, looking for the entrenching tool, Nancy still hoped that she and Beth could go to Rajasthan together.

That was when her hand found the jasmine-scented sari that the beautiful woman in the dream had worn. Nancy pulled the sari into bed with her and breathed it in; the scent of it brought the beautiful woman back to her mind—the woman’s unusually large, strong hands … the woman’s unusually upright, firm breasts. Last came the memory of the woman’s unusual penis, which had curled like a snail against Nancy’s buttocks as Nancy drifted into sleep.

“Dieter?” Nancy tried to whisper, but her voice made no sound. It was exactly as they’d told Dieter in Bombay: you go to Goa not to find Rahul but to let Rahul find you. Dieter had been right about one thing: there were chicks with dicks. Rahul wasn’t a hijra—he was a zenana, after all.

Nancy could hear Dieter in the bathroom, looking for the dildo in the semidarkness. She heard a bottle break against the stone floor. Dieter must have placed the bottle precariously on the edge of the tub; not much moonlight penetrated the bathroom, and he probably needed to search for the dildo with both hands. Briefly, Dieter cursed; he must have cursed in German because Nancy didn’t catch the word.

Beth called out to Dieter—she’d obviously forgotten that Nancy was supposed to be sleeping. “Did you break your Coke, Dieter?” Beth called; her own question dissolved her into mindless giggles—Dieter was addicted to Coca-Cola.

“Ssshhh!” Dieter said from the bathroom.

“Ssshhh!” Beth repeated; she made a failed effort to stifle her laughter.

The next sound that Nancy heard was one she’d been fearing, but she’d been unable to find her voice—to warn Dieter that someone else was here. She heard what she was sure was the entrenching tool, the spade end, as it made full-force contact with what sounded like the base of Dieter’s skull. A metallic after-ring followed the blow, but surprisingly little noise attended Dieter falling. Then there was the second sound of violent contact, almost as if a spade or a heavy shovel had been swung against the trunk of a tree. Nancy realized that Beth hadn’t heard this because Beth was sucking on the ganja pipe as if the fire had died in the bowl and she was trying to revive it.

Nancy lay very still, holding the jasmine-scented sari in her arms. The spectral figure with the small, upright breasts and the little boy’s penis passed close to Nancy’s bed without a sound. It was no wonder that Rahul was called Pretty, Nancy thought.

“Beth!” Nancy tried to say, but once again her voice had abandoned her.

From the other side of the partition, a sudden light came through the latticework in patches; the shadows of the startled rats were cast upon the ceiling. Nancy could see through the latticing. Beth had completely opened the mosquito net in order to light an oil lamp; she was looking for more ganja for the pipe when the naked tea-colored body appeared beside her bed. Rahul’s big hands held the entrenching tool with the handle nestled in the delicate curve of the small of his back, the spade end concealed between his shoulder blades.

“Hi,” Rahul said to Beth.