John Irving - A Son of the Circus

As for Elephant Shit , it wouldn’t work as a title. Farrokh had written it in the margin of the page where the phrase first appeared, but now he crossed this out. A film of that title would be banned in India. Besides, who would want to go to a movie called Elephant Shit? People wouldn’t bring their children, and it was a movie for children, Dr. Daruwalla hoped—if it was for anybody, he thought darkly. Thus did self-doubt, the screenwriter’s old enemy, assail him; he seemed to welcome it as a friend.

The screenwriter baited himself with other bad-title possibilities. Limo Roulette was the arty choice. Farrokh worried that dwarfs the world over would be offended by the film, no matter what the title was. In his closet career as a screenwriter, Dr. Daruwalla had managed to offend almost everyone else. Rather than worry about offending dwarfs, the doctor took up the even smaller task of wondering which movie magazine would be the first to misunderstand and mock his efforts. The two he detested most were Stardust and Cine Blitz . He thought they were the most scandalous and libelous of the film-gossip press.

The mere thought of these media goons, this journalistic slime, set Farrokh to worrying about the press conference at which he intended to announce an end to Inspector Dhar. It occurred to Farrokh that if he called for a press conference, no one would attend; the screenwriter would have to ask Dhar to call for such a conference, and Dhar would have to be there—otherwise, it would look like a hoax. Worse, Dhar himself would have to do the talking; after all, he was the movie star. The trashy journalists would be less interested in Dr. Daruwalla’s motives for perpetrating this fraud than in the reasons for Dhar’s complicity. Why had Dhar gone along with the fiction that the actor was his own creator? As always, even at such a revealing press conference as Farrokh had imagined, Dhar would deliver the lines that the screenwriter had written.

The truth would simply be another acting job; moreover, the most important truth would never be told—that it was out of love for John D. that Dr. Daruwalla had invented Inspector Dhar. Such a truth would be wasted on the media sleaze. Farrokh knew that he wouldn’t want to read what mockery would be made of such a love, especially in Stardust or Cine Blitz .

Dhar’s last press conference had been deliberately conducted as a farce. Dhar had chosen the swimming pool at the Taj as the site, for he said he enjoyed the bewildered gaping of foreigners. The journalists were instantly irritated because they’d expected a more intimate environment. “Are you trying to emphasize that you are a foreigner, that you aren’t really Indian at all?” That had been the first question; Dhar had responded by diving into the pool. He’d meant to splash the photographers; that had been no accident. He’d answered only what he wanted to and ignored the rest. It was an interview punctuated by Dhar repeatedly diving into the pool. The journalists said insulting things about him while he was underwater.

Farrokh presumed that John D. would be happy to be free of the role of Inspector Dhar; the actor had enough money, and he clearly preferred his Swiss life. Yet Dr. Daruwalla suspected that, deep down, Dhar had cherished the loathing he’d inspired among the media scum; earning the hatred of the cinema-gossip journalists might have been John D.’s best performance. With that in mind, Farrokh thought he knew what John D. would prefer: no press conference, no announcement. “Let them wonder,” Dhar would say—Dhar had often said.

There was another line that the screenwriter remembered; after all, he’d not only written it—it was repeated in every Inspector Dhar movie near the end of the story. There was always the temptation for Dhar to do something more—to seduce one more woman, to gun down one more villain—but Inspector Dhar knew when to stop. He knew when the action was over. Sometimes to a scheming bartender, sometimes to a fellow policeman of a generally dissatisfied nature, sometimes to a pretty woman who’d been waiting impatiently to make love to him, Inspector Dhar would say, “Time to slip away.” Then he would.

In this case, facing the facts—that he wanted to call an end to Inspector Dhar and that he wanted to finally leave Bombay—Farrokh knew what John D.’s advice would be. “Time to slip away,” Inspector Dhar would say.

In the old days, before the doctors’ offices and the examining rooms of the Hospital for Crippled Children were air-conditioned, there’d been a ceiling fan over the desk where Dr. Daruwalla now sat thinking, and the window to the exercise yard was always open. Nowadays, with the window closed and the hum of the air-conditioning a reassuring constant, Farrokh was cut off from the sound of children crying in the exercise yard. When the doctor walked through the yard, or when he was called to observe the progress of one of his postoperative patients in physical therapy, the crying children did not greatly upset him. Farrokh associated some pain with recovery; a joint, after surgery— especially after surgery—had to be moved. But in addition to the cries of pain, there were the whines that children made in anticipation of their pain, and this piteous mewling affected the doctor strongly.

Farrokh turned and faced the closed window with its view of the exercise yard; from the soundless expressions of the children, the doctor could still discern the difference between those children who were in pain and those who were pitifully frightened of the pain they expected. Soundlessly, the therapists were coaxing the children to move; there was the recent hip replacement being told to stand up, there was the new knee being asked to step forward—and the first rotation of the new elbow. The landscape of the exercise yard was timeless to Dr. Daruwalla, who reflected that his ability to hear that which was soundless was the only measure of his humanity that he was certain of. Even with the air-conditioning on, even with the window closed, Dr. Daruwalla could hear the whimpering. Time to slip away, he thought.

He opened the window and leaned outside. The heat at midday was oppressive in the rising dust, although (for Bombay) the weather had remained relatively cool and dry. The cries of the children commingled with the car horns and the chainsaw clamor of the mopeds. Dr. Daruwalla breathed it all in. He squinted into the dusty glare. He gave the exercise yard an almost detached appraisal; it was a good-bye look. Then the doctor called Ranjit for his messages.

It was no surprise to Dr. Daruwalla that Deepa had already negotiated with the Great Blue Nile; the doctor hadn’t expected the dwarf’s wife to get a better deal. The circus would attempt to train the talented “sister.” They would commit themselves to this effort for three months; they’d feed her, clothe her, shelter her and care for her crippled “brother.” If Madhu could be trained, the Great Blue Nile would keep both children; if she was untrainable, the circus would let them go.

In Farrokh’s screenplay, the Great Royal paid Pinky three rupees a day while they trained her; the fictional Ganesh worked without pay for his food and shelter. At the Great Blue Nile, Madhu’s training was considered a privilege; she wouldn’t be paid at all. And for a real boy with a crushed foot, it was enough of a privilege to be fed and sheltered; the real Ganesh would work, too. At the parents’ expense—or, in the case of orphans, it was the obligation of the children’s “sponsors”—Madhu and Ganesh would be brought to the site of the Great Blue Nile’s present location. At this time, the circus was performing in Junagadh, a small city of about 100,000 people in Gujarat.