A Son of the Circus

“Then it would take longer—I know!” Dr. Daruwalla cried. “Please just order the test immediately. That’s why I called.”

“Only Dr. Tata is ordering the testing,” Mr. Subhash said. “But of course I am telling him what you are wanting.”

“Thank you,” Dr. Daruwalla replied.

“Is there anything else you are wanting?” Mr. Subhash asked.

There had been something else, but Farrokh had forgotten what it was that he’d meant to ask Tata Two. Doubtless it would come back to him.

“Please just ask Dr. Tata to call me,” Farrokh replied.

“And what is being the subject you are wishing to discuss with Dr. Tata?” Mr. Subhash asked.

“It is a subject of discussion between doctors,” Dr. Daruwalla said.

“I am telling him,” Mr. Subhash said testily.

Dr. Daruwalla resolved that he would never again complain about the nincompoopish matrimonial activities of Ranjit. Ranjit was competent and he was polite. Moreover, Dr. Daruwalla’s secretary had steadfastly maintained his enthusiasm for the doctor’s dwarf-blood project. No one else had ever encouraged the doctor’s genetic studies—least of all, the dwarfs. Dr. Daruwalla had to admit that even his own enthusiasm for the project was slipping.

The ELISA test for HIV was simple in comparison to Farrokh’s genetic studies, for the latter had to be performed on cells (rather than on serum). Whole blood needed to be sent for the studies, and the unclotted blood had to be transported at room temperature. Blood specimens could cross international boundaries, although the paperwork was formidable; the specimens were usually shipped on dry ice, to preserve the proteins. But in the case of a genetic study, shipping dwarf blood from Bombay to Toronto was risky; it was likely that the cells would be killed before reaching Canada.

Dr. Daruwalla had solved this problem with the help of an Indian medical school in Bombay; the doctor let their research lab perform the studies and prepare the slides. The lab gave Farrokh finished sets of photographs of the chromosomes; it was easy to carry the photographs back to Toronto. But there the dwarf-blood project had stalled. Through a close friend and colleague—a fellow orthopedic surgeon at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto—Farrokh had been introduced to a geneticist at the university. Even this contact proved fruitless, for the geneticist maintained that there was no identifiable genetic marker for this type of dwarfism.

The geneticist at the University of Toronto was quite emphatic to Farrokh: it was far-fetched to imagine that he would find a genetic marker for this autosomal dominant trait—achondroplasia is transmitted by a single autosomal dominant gene. This was a type of dwarfism that resulted from a spontaneous mutation. In the case of a spontaneous mutation, unaffected parents of dwarf children have essentially no further risk of producing another dwarf child; the unaffected brothers and sisters of an achondroplastic dwarf are similarly not at risk—they won’t necessarily produce dwarfs, either. The dwarfs themselves, on the other hand, are quite likely to pass the trait on to their children—half their children will be dwarfs. As for a genetic marker for this dominant characteristic, none could be found.

Dr. Daruwalla doubted that he knew enough about genetics to argue with a geneticist; the doctor simply continued to draw samples of the dwarfs’ blood, and he kept bringing the photographs of the chromosomes back to Toronto. The U. of T. geneticist was discouraging but fairly friendly, if not sympathetic. He was also the boyfriend of Farrokh’s friend and colleague at the Hospital for Sick Children—Sick Kids, they called the hospital in Toronto. Farrokh’s friend and the geneticist were gay.

Dr. Gordon Macfarlane, who was the same age as Dr. Daruwalla, had joined the orthopedic group at the Hospital for Sick Children in the same year as Farrokh; their hospital offices were next door to each other. Since Farrokh hated to drive, he often rode back and forth to work with Macfarlane; they both lived in Forest Hill. Early on in their relationship, there’d been those comic occasions when Julia and Farrokh had tried to interest Mac in various single or divorced women. Eventually, the matter of Macfarlane’s sexual orientation grew clear; in no time, Mac was bringing his boyfriend to dinner.

Dr. Duncan Frasier, the gay geneticist, was renowned for his research on the so-called (and elusive) gay chromosomes; Frasier was used to being teased about it. Biological studies of homosexuality generally irritate everybody. The debate as to whether homosexuality is present at birth or is a learned behavior is always inflamed with politics. Conservatives reject scientific suggestions that sexual orientation is biological; liberals anguish over the possible medical misuse of an identifiable genetic marker for homosexuality—should one be found. But Dr. Frasier’s research had led him to a fairly cautious and reasonable conclusion. There were only two “natural” sexual orientations among humans—one in the majority, one in the minority. Nothing he’d studied about homosexuality, nor anything he’d personally experienced or had ever felt, could persuade Dr. Frasier that either homosexuality or heterosexuality was a matter of choice. Sexual orientation wasn’t a “lifestyle.”

“We are born with what we desire—whatever it is,” Frasier liked to say.

Farrokh found it an interesting subject. But if the search for gay genes was so fascinating to Dr. Frasier, it discouraged Dr. Daruwalla that the gay geneticist would entertain no hope of finding a genetic marker for Vinod’s dwarfism. Sometimes Dr. Daruwalla was guilty of thinking that Frasier had no personal interest in dwarfs, whereas gays got the geneticist’s full attention. Nevertheless, Farrokh’s friendship with Macfarlane was unshakable; soon Farrokh was admitting to his gay friend how he’d always disliked the word “gay” in its current, commonplace homosexual sense. To Farrokh’s surprise, Mac had agreed; he said he wished that something as important to him as his homosexuality had a word of its own—a word that had no other meaning.

“ ‘Gay’ is such a frivolous word,” Macfarlane had said.

Dr. Daruwalla’s dislike of the contemporary usage of the word was more a generational matter than a matter of prejudice—or so the doctor believed. It was a word his mother, Meher, had loved but overused. “We had a gay time,” she would say. “What a gay evening we had—even your father was in a gay mood.”

It disheartened Dr. Daruwalla to see this old-fashioned adjective—a synonym for “jolly” or “merry” or “frolicsome” or “blithe”—take on a much more serious meaning.

“Come to think of it, ‘straight’ isn’t an original word, either,” Farrokh had said.

Macfarlane laughed, but his longtime companion, Frasier, responded with a touch of bitterness. “What you’re telling us, Farrokh, is that you accept gays when we’re so quiet about it that we might as well still be in the closet—and provided that we don’t dare call ourselves gay, which offends you. Isn’t that what you’re saying?” But this wasn’t what Farrokh meant.

“I’m not criticizing your orientation,” Dr. Daruwalla replied. “I just don’t like the word for it.”

There lingered an air of dismissiveness about Dr. Frasier; the rebuke reminded Dr. Daruwalla of the geneticist’s dismissal of the notion that the doctor might find a genetic marker for the most common type of dwarfism.

The last time Dr. Daruwalla had brought Dr. Frasier the photographs of the dwarfs’ chromosomes, the gay geneticist had been more dismissive than usual. “Those dwarfs must be bleeding to

death, Farrokh,” Frasier told him. “Why don’t you leave the little buggers alone?”

“If I used the word ‘bugger,’ you would be offended,” Farrokh said. But what did Dr. Daruwalla expect? Dwarf genes or gay genes, genetics was a touchy subject.

All this left Farrokh feeling full of contempt for his own lack of follow-through on his dwarf-blood project. Dr. Daruwalla didn’t realize that his notion of “follow-through” (or lack thereof) had originated with the radio interview he’d briefly overheard the previous evening—that silliness with the complaining writer. But, at last, the doctor stopped brooding on the dwarf-blood subject.

Farrokh now made the morning’s second phone call.