John Irving - A Son of the Circus

“We’ll see,” Dhar said. When he looked at Nancy, she was looking at him.

“You’re not sneering,” Nancy said.

“Sweetie,” said Detective Patel, taking her hand.

“I need to go to the ladies’ room,” she said. “You show me where it is,” she said to Dhar. But before his wife or the actor could stand up, the deputy commissioner stopped them.

“Just a trivial matter, before you go,” the detective said. “What is this nonsense about you and the dwarf brawling with prostitutes on Falkland Road—what is this nonsense about?” Detective Patel asked Dhar.

“That wasn’t him,” said Dr. Daruwalla quickly.

“So there’s some truth to the rumor of a Dhar imposter?” the detective asked.

“Not an imposter—a twin,” the doctor replied.

“You have a twin? ” Nancy asked the actor.

“Identical,” said Dhar.

“That’s hard to believe,” she said.

“They’re not at all alike, but they’re identical,” Farrokh explained.

“It’s not the best time for you to have a twin in Bombay,” Detective Patel told the actor.

“Don’t worry—the twin is totally out of it. A missionary!” Farrokh declared.

“God help us,” Nancy said.

“Anyway, I’m taking the twin out of town for a couple of days—at least overnight,” Dr. Daruwalla told them. The doctor started to explain about the children and the circus, but no one was interested.

“The ladies’ room,” Nancy said to Dhar. “Where is it?”

Dhar was about to take her arm when she walked past him untouched; he followed her to the foyer. Almost everyone in the dining room watched her walk—the woman who’d stood on a chair.

“It will be nice for you to get out of town for a couple of days,” the deputy commissioner said to Dr. Daruwalla. Time to slip away, Farrokh was thinking; then he realized that even the moment of Nancy leaving the Ladies’ Garden with Dhar had been planned.

“Was there something you wanted her to say to him, something only she could say—alone?” the doctor asked the detective.

“Oh, what a very good question,” Patel replied. “You’re learning, Doctor,” the deputy commissioner added. “I’ll bet you could write a better movie now.”

In the foyer, Nancy said to Dhar, “I’ve thought about you almost as much as I’ve thought about Rahul. Sometimes, you upset me more.”

“I never intended to upset you,” Dhar replied.

“What have you intended? What do you intend?” she asked him.

When he didn’t answer her, Nancy asked him, “How did you like lifting me? You’re always carrying me. Do I feel heavier to you?”

“We’re both a little heavier than we were,” Dhar answered cautiously.

“I weigh a ton, and you know it,” Nancy told him. “But I’m not trash—I never was.”

“I never thought you were trash,” Dhar told her.

“You should never look at people the way you look at me,” Nancy said. He did it again; there was his sneer. “That’s what I mean,” she told him. “I hate you for it—the way you make me feel. Later, after you’re gone, it makes me keep thinking about you. I’ve thought about you for twenty years.” She was about three inches taller than the actor; when she reached out suddenly and touched his upper lip, he stopped sneering. “That’s better. Now say something,” Nancy told him. But Dhar was thinking about the dildo—if she still had it. He couldn’t think of what to say. “You know, you really should take some responsibility for the effect you have on people. Do you ever think about that?”

“I think about it all the time—I’m supposed to have an effect,” Dhar said finally. “I’m an actor.”

“You sure are,” Nancy said. She could see him stop himself from shrugging; when he wasn’t sneering, she liked his mouth more than she thought was possible. “Do you want me? Do you ever think about that? ” she asked him. She saw him thinking about what to say, so she didn’t wait. “You don’t know how to read what I want, do you?” she asked him. “You’re going to have to be better than this with Rahul. You can’t tell me what I want to hear because you don’t really know if I want you, do you? You’re going to have to read Rahul better than you can read me,” Nancy repeated.

“I can read you,” Dhar told her. “I was just trying to be polite.”

“I don’t believe you—you don’t convince me,” Nancy said. “Bad acting,” she added, but she believed him.

In the ladies’ room, when she washed her hands in the sink. Nancy saw the absurd faucet—the water flowing from the single spigot, which was an elephant’s trunk. Nancy adjusted the degree of hot and cold water, first with one tusk, then the other. Twenty years ago, at the Hotel Bardez, not even four baths had made her feel clean; now Nancy felt unclean again. She was at least relieved to see that there was no winking eye; that much Rahul had imagined, with the help of many murdered women’s navels.

She’d also noticed the pull-down platform on the inside of the toilet-stall door; the handle that lowered the shelf was a ring through an elephant’s trunk. Nancy reflected on the psychology that had compelled Rahul to select one elephant and reject the other.

When Nancy returned to the Ladies’ Garden, she offered only a matter-of-fact comment on her discovery of what she believed to be the source of inspiration for Rahul’s belly drawings. The deputy commissioner and the doctor rushed off to the ladies’ room to see the telltale elephant for themselves; their opportunity to view the Victorian faucet was delayed until the last woman had vacated the ladies’ room. Even from a considerable distance—from the far side of the dining room—Mr. Sethna was able to observe that Inspector Dhar and the woman with the obscene navel had nothing to say to each other, although they were left alone in the Ladies’ Garden for an uncomfortable amount of time.

Later, in the car, Detective Patel spoke to Nancy—before they’d left the driveway of the Duckworth Club. “I have to go back to headquarters, but I’ll take you home first,” he told her.

“You should be more careful about what you ask me to do. Vijay,” Nancy said.

“I’m sorry, sweetie,” Patel replied. “But I wanted to know your opinion. Can I trust him?” The deputy commissioner saw that his wife was about to cry again.

“You can trust me! ” Nancy cried.

“I know I can trust you, sweetie,” Patel said. “But what about him? Do you think he can do it?”

“He’ll do anything you tell him, if he knows what you want,” Nancy answered.

“And you think Rahul will go for him?” her husband asked. “Oh, yes,” she said bitterly.

“Dhar is a pretty cool customer!” said the detective admiringly.

“Dhar is as queer as a three-dollar bill,” Nancy told him.

Not being from Iowa, Detective Patel had some difficulty with the concept of how “queer” a three-dollar bill was—not to mention that, in Bombay, they call a bill a note. “You mean that he’s gay—a homosexual?” her husband asked.

“No doubt about it. You can trust me,” Nancy repeated. They were almost home before she spoke again. “A very cool customer,” she added.

“I’m sorry, sweetie,” said the deputy commissioner, because he saw that his wife couldn’t stop crying.

“I do love you, Vijay,” she managed to say.

“I love you, too , sweetie,” the detective told her.

In the Ladies’ Garden, the sun now slanted sideways through the latticework of the bower; the same shade of pinkness from the bougainvillea dappled the tablecloth, which Mr. Sethna had brushed free of crumbs. It seemed to the old steward that Dhar and Dr. Daruwalla would never leave the table. They’d long ago stopped talking about Rahul—or, rather, Mrs. Dogar. For the moment, they were both more interested in Nancy.