John Irving - A Son of the Circus

“Please, Martin,” the dorm master said. “A sexually transmitted disease, especially at an all-boys’ school, is not something to lie about. Whatever your feelings are for your mother, what we hope to learn here is the truth—not to punish anyone, but only so that we may advise you. How can we instruct you, how can we tell you what we think you should do, if you won’t tell us the truth?”

“My mother fucked him when she thought I was at Mass,” Martin told Mr. Weems. Mr. Weems shut his eyes and smiled; he did this when he was counting, which he did to summon patience.

“I was trying to protect you, Martin,” Arif Koma said, “but I can see it’s no use.”

“Boys, please… one of you is lying,” the dorm master said.

“Okay—so we tell him,” Arif said to Martin. “What do you say?”

“Okay,” Martin replied. He knew that he liked Arif; for three years, Arif had been his only friend. If Arif wanted to say they’d been lovers, why not go along with it? There was no one else Martin Mills wanted to please as much as he wanted to please Arif. “Okay,” Martin repeated.

“Okay what? ” Mr. Weems asked.

“Okay, we’re lovers,” said Martin Mills.

“I don’t know why he doesn’t have the disease,” Arif explained. “He should have it. Maybe he’s immune.”

“Are we going to get thrown out of school?” Martin asked the dorm master. He hoped so. It might teach his mother something, Martin thought; at 15, he still thought Vera was educable.

“All we did was try it,” Arif said. “We didn’t like it.”

“We don’t do it anymore,” Martin added. This was the first and last time that he’d lied; it made him feel giddy—it was almost as if he were drunk.

“But one of you must have caught this disease from someone else,” Mr. Weems reasoned. “I mean, it couldn’t have originated here, with you… not if each of you has had no other sexual contact.”

Martin Mills knew that Arif Koma had been phoning Vera and that she wouldn’t talk to the Turk; Martin knew that Arif had written to Vera, too—and that she’d not written the boy back. But it was only now that Martin realized how far his friend would go to protect Vera. He must have been absolutely gaga about her.

“I paid a prostitute. I caught this disease from a whore,” Arif told Mr. Weems.

“Where would you ever see a whore, Arif?” the dorm master asked.

“You don’t know Boston?” Arif Koma asked him. “I stayed with Martin and his mother at the Ritz. When they were asleep, I left the hotel. I asked the doorman to get me a taxi. I asked the taxi driver to find me a hooker. That’s the way you do it in New York, too,” Arif explained. “Or at least that’s the only way I know how to do it.”

And so Arif Koma was booted from the Fessenden School for catching a venereal disease from a whore. There was a statute in the school’s book of rules, something pertaining to morally reprehensible behavior with women or girls being punishable by dismissal; under this rubric, the Discipline Committee (despite Mr. Weems’s protestations) expelled Arif. It was judged that having sex with a prostitute was not a gray area when it came to “morally reprehensible behavior with women or girls.”

As for Martin, Mr. Weems also pleaded on his behalf. His homosexual encounter was a single episode of sexual experimentation; the incident should be forgotten. But the Discipline Committee insisted that Vera and Danny should know. Vera’s first response was to reiterate that masturbation was preferable for boys Martin’s age. All Martin said to his mother-naturally, not in Danny’s hearing—was, “Arif Koma has gonorrhea and so do you.”

There was barely time to talk to Arif before he was sent home. The last thing Martin said to the Turk was, “Don’t hurt yourself trying to protect my mother.”

“But I also like your father,” Arif explained. Once again, Vera had gotten away with murder because no one wanted to hurt Danny.

Arif’s suicide was the bigger shock. The note to Martin didn’t arrive in his Fessenden mailbox until two days after Arif had jumped out of the 10th-floor window of his parents’ apartment on Park Avenue. Dishonored my family —that was all the note said. Martin recalled that it was for the purpose of not dishonoring his parents, or reflecting ill on his family’s reputation, that Arif hadn’t shed a tear at his own circumcision.

There was no blaming Vera for it. The first time she was alone with Martin, Vera said, “Don’t try to tell me that it’s my fault, dear. You told me he was disturbed—sexually disturbed. You said so yourself. Besides, you don’t want to do anything that would hurt your father, do you?”

Actually, it had hurt Danny quite a bit to hear that his son had dabbled in a homosexual experience, even if it was only a single episode. Martin assured his father that he’d only tried it, and that he hadn’t liked it. Still, Martin realized that this was the sole impression Danny had of his son’s sexuality; he’d screwed his Turkish roommate when both boys were only 15 years old. It didn’t occur to Martin Mills that the truth about his sexuality might have been even more painful for Danny—namely, that his son was a 39-year-old virgin who’d never even masturbated. Nor had it occurred to Martin that he might actually have been in love with Arif Koma; certainly this was more plausible, not to mention more justifiable, than Arif falling in love with Vera.

Now here was Dr. Daruwalla “inventing” a missionary called Mr. Martin. The screenwriter knew that he needed to provide motives for Mr. Martin’s decision to become a priest; even in a movie, Farrokh felt that a vow of chastity required some explanation. Having met Vera, the screenwriter should have guessed that the real missionary’s motives in taking a vow of chastity and becoming a priest were not made of the material usually found in a romantic comedy.

The screenwriter had the good sense to know he was stalling. The problem was, who was going to die? In real life, it was the doctor’s hope that Madhu and Ganesh would be saved by the circus. In the screenplay, it simply wasn’t realistic for both children to live happily ever after. The more believable story was that only one of them would be a survivor. Pinky was the acrobat, the star. The crippled Ganesh could hope for no role more important than that of a cook’s helper—the circus’s servant boy, the circus’s sweeper. The circus would surely start him out at the bottom; he’d be scooping up the elephant shit and washing the lion piss off the stools. From such a shit-and-piss beginning, Ganesh would be fortunate to be promoted to the cook’s tent; cooking food, or serving it, would represent a form of graduation—probably the best that the crippled boy could hope for. This was true for the real Ganesh and for the character in the screenplay—this was realism, Dr. Daruwalla believed.

It should be Pinky who dies, the screenwriter decided. The only reason that the circus accepted the crippled brother in the first place was that they wanted the talented sister; the brother was part of the deal. That was the premise of the story. But if Pinky was to die, why wouldn’t the circus get rid of Ganesh? What use does the circus have for a cripple? Now this is a better story, Farrokh imagined. The burden of performance is suddenly shifted to the cripple; Ganesh must come up with something to do so that the circus will find him worth keeping. A boy without a limp can shovel the elephant shit faster.

But it was the bane of the screenwriter to always be rushing ahead of himself. Before he found something for Ganesh to do at the circus, wasn’t it necessary to determine how Pinky would die? Well, she’s an acrobat—she could always fall, the doctor prematurely decided. Maybe she’s trying to learn Suman’s Skywalk item and she simply falls. But, realistically, Pinky wouldn’t be learning to skywalk from the roof of the main tent. At the Great Royal, Pratap Singh always taught the Skywalk from the roof of the family troupe tent; the rope rungs of the ladder weren’t 80 feet in the air—the upside-down skywalker wasn’t more than a foot or two above the ground. If Farrokh wanted to use the real Great Royal Circus, which he did—and if he wanted to use his actual favorite performers (Pinky and Suman and Pratap, principally)—then the screenwriter could not have a death attributed to carelessness or to some cheap accident. Farrokh meant only to praise the Great Royal and circus life—not to condemn them. No; Pinky’s death couldn’t be the responsibility of the circus—that wasn’t the right story.