A Son of the Circus

“So you’re saying that he can limp and be laughed at, like a clown,” said Dr. Daruwalla.

“There’s always working in the cook’s tent,” Vinod said stubbornly. “He could be kneading and rolling out the dough for the chapati. He could be chopping up the garlic and the onions for the dhal.”

“But why would they take him, when there are countless boys with two good feet to do that?” Dr. Daruwalla asked. The doctor kept his eye on Bird-Shit Boy, knowing that his discouraging arguments might meet with the beggar’s disapproval and a corresponding measure of bird shit.

“We could tell the circus that they had to take the two of them together!” Martin cried. “Madhu and Ganesh—we could say that they’re brother and sister, that one looks after the other!”

“We could lie, in other words,” said Dr. Daruwalla.

“For the good of these children, I could lie!” the missionary said.

“I’ll bet you could!” Farrokh cried. He was frustrated that he couldn’t remember his father’s favorite condemnation of Martin Luther. What had old Lowji said about Luther’s justification for lying? Farrokh wished he could surprise the scholastic with what he recalled as a fitting quotation, but it was Martin Mills who surprised him.

“You’re a Protestant, aren’t you?” the Jesuit asked the doctor. “You should be advised by what your old friend Luther said: ‘What wrong can there be in telling a downright good lie for a good cause …’ ”

“Luther is not my old friend!” Dr. Daruwalla snapped. Martin Mills had left something out of the quotation, but Farrokh couldn’t remember what it was. What was missing was the part about this downright good lie being not only for a good cause but also “for the advancement of the Christian Church.” Farrokh knew he’d been fooled, but he lacked the necessary information to fight back; therefore, he chose to fight with Vinod instead.

“And I suppose you’re telling me that Madhu here is another Pinky—is that it?” Farrokh asked the dwarf.

This was a sore point between them. Because Vinod and Deepa had been Great Blue Nile performers, they were sensitive to Dr. Daruwalla’s preference for the performers of the Great Royal. There was a “Pinky” in the Great Royal Circus; she was a star. She’d been bought by the circus when she was only three or four. She’d been trained by Pratap Singh and his wife, Sumi. By the time Pinky was seven or eight, she could balance on her forehead at the top of a 10-foot-high bamboo pole; the pole was balanced on the forehead of a bigger girl, who stood on another girl’s shoulders … the act was that kind of impossible thing. It was an item that called for a girl whose sense of balance was one in a million. Although Deepa and Vinod had never performed for the Great Royal Circus, they knew which circuses had high standards—at least higher than the standards at the Great Blue Nile. Yet Deepa brought the doctor these wrecked little whores from Kamathipura and proclaimed them circus material; at best, they were Great Blue Nile material.

“Can Madhu even stand on her head?” Farrokh asked Deepa. “Can she walk on her hands?”

The dwarf’s wife suggested that the child could learn. After all, Deepa had been sold to the Great Blue Nile as a boneless girl, a future plastic lady; she had learned to be a trapeze artist, a flyer.

“But you fell,” the doctor reminded Deepa.

“She is merely falling into a net!” Vinod exclaimed.

“There isn’t always a net,” Dr. Daruwalla said. “Did you land in a net, Vinod?” Farrokh asked the dwarf.

“I am being fortunate in other ways,” Vinod replied. “Madhu won’t be working with clowns—or with elephants,” the dwarf added.

But Farrokh had the feeling that Madhu was clumsy; she looked clumsy—not to mention the dubious coordination of the limping garlic-and-onion chopper, Madhu’s newly appointed brother. Farrokh felt certain that the elephant-footed boy would find another elephant to step on him. Dr. Daruwalla imagined that the Great Blue Nile might even conceive of a way to display the cripple’s mashed foot; Ganesh would become a minor sideshow event—the elephant boy, they would call him.

That was when the missionary, on the evidence of less than one day’s experience in Bombay, had said to Dr. Daruwalla, “Whatever the dangers in the circus, the circus will be better for them than their present situation—we know the alternatives to their being in the circus.”

Vinod had remarked to Inspector Dhar that he was looking surprisingly well recovered from his nightmarish experience on Falkland Road. (Farrokh thought the missionary looked awful.) To keep the dwarf and the missionary from talking further to each other, which Dr. Daruwalla knew would be confusing to them both, the doctor pulled Vinod aside and informed him that he should humor Dhar—“and by no means contradict him”—because the dwarf had correctly diagnosed the movie star. There had been brain damage; it would be delicate to assess how much.

“Are you having to delouse him, too?”

Vinod had whispered to Farrokh. The dwarf was referring to the reason for the scholastic’s horrible haircut, but Dr. Daruwalla had solemnly agreed. Yes, there had been lice and brain damage.

“Those are being filthy prostitutes!” Vinod had exclaimed.

What a morning it had been already! Dr. Daruwalla thought. He’d finally gotten rid of Vinod and Deepa—by sending them with Madhu to Dr. Tata. Dr. Daruwalla had not expected Tata Two to send them back so soon. Farrokh barely had time to get rid of Martin Mills; the doctor wanted the scholastic out of the office and the waiting room before Vinod and Deepa and Madhu returned. What’s more, Dr. Daruwalla wanted time to be alone; the deputy commissioner expected the doctor to come to Crime Branch Headquarters. Doubtless the doctor’s viewing of the photographs of the murdered prostitutes would serve to undermine the collected optimism of the Jesuit, the dwarf and the dwarf’s wife. But before Farrokh could slip away to Crawford Market, where he was meeting Deputy Commissioner Patel, it was necessary for the doctor to create an errand for Martin Mills; if only for an hour or two, the missionary was in need of a mission.

Another Warning

The elephant boy was a problem. Ganesh had behaved badly in the exercise yard, where many of the postoperative patients among the crippled children were engaged in their various physical-therapy assignments. Ganesh took this opportunity to squirt several of the more defenseless children with the bird-shit syringe; when Ranjit took the syringe away from the aggressive boy, Ganesh bit Dr. Daruwalla’s faithful secretary on the hand. Ranjit was offended that he’d been bitten by a beggar; dealing with the unruly likes of the elephant-footed boy wasn’t a suitable use of the medical secretary’s training.

On a day that had barely begun, Dr. Daruwalla was already exhausted. Nevertheless, the doctor made quick and clever use of the biting episode. If Martin Mills was so sure that Bird-Shit Boy was capable of contributing to the daily chores of a circus, perhaps the missionary could be persuaded to take some responsibility for the little beggar. Martin Mills was eager to take responsibility for the elephant boy; the zealot would be likely to claim responsibility for a world of cripples, Farrokh imagined. Thereupon Dr. Daruwalla assigned Martin Mills the task of taking Ganesh to Parsi General Hospital; the doctor wanted the crippled beggar to be examined by Eye, Ear, Nose and Throat Jeejeebhoy—Double E-NT Jeejeebhoy, as he was called. Dr. Jeejeebhoy was an expert on the eye problems that were epidemic in India.

Although there was a rheumy discharge and Ganesh had said that his eyelids were gummed shut every morning, there wasn’t that softness of the eyeballs that Dr. Daruwalla thought of as end-stage or “white” eyes; then the cornea is dull and opaque, and the patient is blind. Farrokh hoped that, whatever was wrong with Ganesh, it was in an early stage. Vinod had admitted that the circus wouldn’t take a boy who was going blind—not even the Great Blue Nile.

But before Farrokh could hurry the elephant boy and the Jesuit on their way to Parsi General, which wasn’t far, Martin Mills had spontaneously come to the aid of a woman in the waiting room. She was the mother of a crippled child; the missionary had dropped to his knees at her feet, which Farrokh found to be an irritating habit of the zealot. The woman was frightened by the gesture. Also, she wasn’t in need of aid; she was not bleeding from her lips and gums, as the scholastic had declared—she was merely eating betel nut, which the Jesuit had never seen.

Dr. Daruwalla ushered Martin from the waiting room to his office, where the doctor believed that the missionary could do slightly less harm. Dr. Daruwalla insisted that Ganesh come with them, for the doctor was fearful that the dangerous beggar might bite someone else. Thereupon Farrokh calmly told Martin Mills what paan was—the local version of betel. The areca nut is wrapped in a betel leaf. Other common ingredients are rose syrup, aniseed, lime paste … but people put almost everything in the betel leaf, even cocaine. The veteran betel-nut eater has red-stained lips and teeth and gums. The woman the missionary had alarmed was not bleeding; she was merely eating paan.