A Son of the Circus

As she emerged from her endless baths in Dr. Daruwalla’s tub, Nancy couldn’t remember if the murders were two or three days old. She did, however, remember a glaring error in her judgment. She’d already told Dr. Daruwalla that she was taking the ferry to Bombay; that was decidedly unwise. When the doctor and his wife helped her onto the table on the balcony, they mistook her silence for anxiety regarding the small surgery, but Nancy was thinking of how to rectify her mistake. She hardly flinched at the anesthetic, and while Dr. Daruwalla probed for the broken glass, Nancy calmly said, “You know, I’ve changed my mind about Bombay. I’m going south instead. I’ll take the bus from Calangute to Panjim, then I’ll take the bus to Margao. I want to go to Mysore, where they make the incense—you know? Then I want to go to Kerala. What do you think of that?” she asked the doctor. She wanted him to remember her false itinerary.

“I think you must be a very ambitious traveler!” said Dr. Daruwalla. He extracted a surprisingly big, half-moon-shaped piece of glass from her foot; it was probably a piece from the thick heel of a Coke bottle, the doctor told her. He disinfected the smaller cuts once they were free of glass fragments. He packed the larger wound with iodophor gauze. Dr. Daruwalla also gave Nancy an antibiotic that he’d brought with him to Goa for his children. She’d have to see a doctor in a few days—sooner, if there was any redness around the wound or if she had a fever.

Nancy wasn’t listening; she was worrying how she would pay him. She didn’t think it would be proper to ask the doctor to unscrew

the dildo; she also didn’t think he looked strong enough. Farrokh, in his own way, was also distracted by his thoughts about the dildo.

“I can’t pay you very much,” Nancy told the doctor.

“I don’t want you to pay me at all!” Dr. Daruwalla said. He gave her his card; it was just his habit.

Nancy read the card and said, “But I told you—I’m not going to Bombay.”

“I know, but if you feel feverish or the infection worsens, you should call me—from wherever you are. Or if you see a doctor who can’t understand you, have the doctor call me,” Farrokh said.

“Thank you,” Nancy told him.

“And don’t walk on it any more than you have to,” the doctor told her.

“I’ll be on the bus,” Nancy insisted.

As she was limping to the stairs, the doctor introduced her to John D. She was in no mood to meet such a handsome young man, and although he was very polite to her—he even offered to help her down the stairs—Nancy felt extremely vulnerable to his kind of European superiority. He showed not the slightest spark of sexual interest in her, and this hurt her more than her foot did. But she said good-bye to Dr. Daruwalla and allowed John D. to carry her downstairs; she knew she was heavy, but he looked strong. The desire to shock him grew overwhelming. Besides, she knew he was strong enough to unscrew the dildo.

“If it’s not too much trouble,” she said to him in the lobby of the hotel, “you could do me a big favor.” She showed him the dildo without removing it from her rucksack. “The tip unscrews,” she told him, watching his eyes. “But I’m just not strong enough.” She continued to regard his face while he gripped the big cock in both hands; she would remember him because of how poised he was.

As soon as he loosened the tip, she stopped him.

“That’s enough,” she told him; she didn’t want him to see the money. It disappointed her that he seemed unshockable, but she kept trying. She resolved she would look into his eyes until he had to look away. “I’m going to spare you,” she said softly. “You don’t want to know what’s inside the thing.”

She would remember him for his instinctive sneer, for John D. was an actor long before he was Inspector Dhar. She would remember that sneer, the same sneer with which Inspector Dhar would later incense all of Bombay. It was Nancy who had to look away from him; she would remember that, too.

She avoided the bus stand in Calangute; she would try to hitchhike to Panjim, even if it meant she had to walk—or defend herself with the entrenching tool. She hoped she still had a day or two before the bodies were found. But before she located the road to Panjim, she remembered the big piece of glass the doctor had removed from her foot. After showing it to her, he’d put it in an ashtray on a small table near the hammock; probably he would throw it away, she thought. But what if he heard about the broken glass in the hippie grave—it would soon be called the “hippie grave”—and what if he wondered if the piece of glass from her foot would match?

It was late at night when Nancy returned to the Hotel Bardez. The door to the lobby was locked, and the boy who slept on a rush mat in the lobby all night was still engaged in talking to the dog that spent every night with him; that was why the dog never heard Nancy when she climbed the vine to the Daruwallas’ second-floor balcony. Her procaine injection had worn off and her foot throbbed; but Nancy could have screamed in pain and knocked over the furniture and still she would never have awakened Dr. Daruwalla.

The doctor’s lunch has been described. It would be superfluous to provide similar detail regarding the doctor’s dinner; suffice it to say that he substituted the vindaloo-style pork for the fish, and he further indulged in a pork stew called sorpotel, which features pig’s liver and is abundantly flavored with vinegar. Yet it was the dried duckling with tamarind that dominated the aroma of his heavy breathing, and his snores were scented with sharp blasts of a raw red wine, which he would deeply regret in the morning. He should have stuck to beer. Julia was grateful that Dr. Daruwalla had elected to sleep in the hammock on the balcony, where only the Arabian Sea—and the lizards and insects that in the night were legion—would be disturbed by the doctor’s windy noises. Julia also desired a rest from the passions inspired by Mr. James Salter’s artistry. For the moment, her private speculations concerning the departed hippie’s dildo had cooled Julia’s sexual ardor.

As for the insect and lizard life that clung to the mosquito net enclosing the cherubic doctor in his hammock, the gecko and mosquito world appeared to be charmed by both the doctor’s music and his vapors. The doctor had bathed just before retiring, and his plump pale-brown body was everywhere dusted with Cuticura powder—from his neck to between his toes. His closely shaven throat and cheeks were refreshed with a powerful astringent redolent of lemons. He’d even shaved his mustache off, leaving only a little clump of a beard on his chin; he was almost as smooth-faced as a baby. Dr. Daruwalla was so clean and he smelled so wonderful that Nancy had the impression that only the mosquito net prevented the geckos and mosquitoes from devouring him.

At a level of sleep so deep it seemed to Farrokh that he had died and lay buried somewhere in China, the doctor dreamed that his most ardent admirers were digging up his body—to prove a point. The doctor wished they would leave him undisturbed, for he felt he was at peace; in truth, he’d passed out in the hammock in a stupor of overeating—not to mention the effect of the wine. To dream that he was prey to gravediggers was surely an indication of his overindulgence.

So what if my body is a miracle, he was dreaming—please just leave it alone!

Meanwhile, Nancy found what she was looking for; in the ashtray, where it had left only a spot of dried blood, lay the half-moon-shaped piece of glass. As she took it, she heard Dr. Daruwalla cry out, “Leave me in China!” The doctor thrashed his legs, and Nancy saw that one of his beautiful eggshell-brown feet had escaped the mosquito net and was protruding from the hammock—exposed to the terrors of the night. This disturbance sent the geckos darting in all directions and caused the mosquitoes to swarm.

Well, Nancy thought, the doctor had done her a favor, hadn’t he? She stood stock-still until she was sure Dr. Daruwalla was sound asleep; she didn’t want to wake him up, but it was hard for her to leave him when his gorgeous foot was prey to the elements. Nancy contemplated how she might safely return Farrokh’s foot to the mosquito net, but her newfound good sense persuaded her not to risk it. She descended the vine from the balcony to the patio; this required the use of both her hands, and so she delicately held the piece of broken glass in her teeth—careful that it not cut her tongue or her lips. She was limping along the dark road to Calangute when she threw the glass away. It was lost in a dense grove of palms, where it disappeared without a sound—as unseen by any living eye as Nancy’s lost innocence.

The Wrong Toe

Nancy had been fortunate to leave the Hotel Bardez when she had. She never knew that Rahul was a guest there, nor did Rahul know that Nancy had been Dr. Daruwalla’s patient. This was extremely lucky, because Rahul also climbed the vine to the Daruwallas’ second-floor balcony—on the very same night. Nancy had come and gone; but when Rahul arrived on the balcony, Dr. Daruwalla’s poor foot was still vulnerable to the nighttime predators.

Rahul himself had come as a predator. He’d learned from Dr. Daruwalla’s innocent daughters that John D. usually slept in the hammock on the balcony. Rahul had come to the balcony to seduce John D. The sexually curious may find it interesting to speculate whether or not Rahul would have met with success in his attempted seduction of the beautiful young man, but John D. was spared this test because Dr. Daruwalla was sleeping in the hammock on this busy night.

In the darkness—not to mention that he was blinded by his overeagerness—Rahul was confused. The body asleep under the mosquito net was certainly of a desirable fragrance. Maybe it was the moonlight that played tricks with skin color. Possibly it was only the moonlight which gave Rahul the impression that John D. had grown a little clump of a beard. As for the toes of the doctor’s exposed foot, they were tiny and hairless, and the foot itself was as small as a young girl’s. Rahul found that the ball of the foot was endearingly fleshy and soft, and he thought that the sole of Dr. Daruwalla’s foot was almost indecently pink—in contrast to the doctor’s sleek, brown ankle.

Rahul knelt by the doctor’s small foot; he stroked it with his large hand; he brushed his cheek against the doctor’s freshly scented toes. Naturally, it would have startled him if Dr. Daruwalla had cried out, “But I don’t want to be a miracle!”

The doctor was dreaming that he was Francis Xavier, dug up from his grave and taken against his will to the Basilica de Bom Jesus in Goa. More accurately, he was dreaming that he was Francis Xavier’s miraculously preserved body, and things were about to be done to his body—also against his will. But despite the terror of what was happening to him, in his dream Farrokh couldn’t give utterance to his fears; he was so heavily sedated with food and wine that he was forced to suffer in silence—even though he anticipated that a crazed pilgrim was about to eat his toe. After all, he knew the story.