John Irving - A Son of the Circus

“Ssshhh!” the doctor hissed. The marble statues frowned down upon them; 80 or 90 of the library staffers had long ago assumed the frowning air of the statuary, and Dr. Daruwalla foresaw that the zealot with his booming voice would soon be rebuked by one of the slipper-clad, scolding types who scurried through the musty recesses of the Asiatic Society Library. To avoid a confrontation, the doctor steered the scholastic into a reading room with no one in it.

The ceiling fan had snagged the string that turned the fan on and off, and only the slight ticking of the string against the blades disturbed the silence of the moldering air. The dusty books sagged on the carved teak shelves; numbered cartons of manuscripts were stacked against the bookcases; wide-bottomed, leather-padded chairs surrounded an oval table that was strewn with pencils and pads of notepaper. Only one of these chairs was on castors; it was tilted, for it was four-legged and had only three castors—the missing castor, like a paperweight, held down one of the pads of notepaper.

The American zealot, as if compelled by his countrymen’s irritating instinct to appear handy with all things, instantly undertook the task of repairing the broken chair. There were a half-dozen other chairs that the doctor and the missionary could have sat in, and Dr. Daruwalla suspected that the chair with the detached castor had probably maintained its disabled condition, untouched, for the last 10 or 20 years; perhaps the chair had been partially destroyed in celebration of Independence—more than 40 years ago! Yet here was this fool, determined to make it right. Is there no place in town I can take this idiot? Farrokh wondered. Before the doctor could stop the zealot, Martin Mills had upended the chair on the oval table, where it made a loud thump.

“Come on—you must tell me,” the missionary said. “I’m dying to hear the story of your conversion. Naturally, the Father Rector has told me about it.”

Naturally, Dr. Daruwalla thought; Father Julian had doubtless made the doctor come off as a deluded, false convert. Then, suddenly, to Farrokh’s surprise, the missionary produced a knife! It was one of those Swiss Army knives that Dhar liked so much—a kind of toolbox unto itself. With something that resembled a leather-punch, the Jesuit was boring a hole into the leg of the chair. The rotting wood fell on the table.

“It just needs a new screw hole,” Martin explained. “I can’t believe no one knew how to fix it.”

“I suppose people just sat in the other chairs,” Dr. Daruwalla suggested. While the scholastic wrestled with the chair leg, the nasty little tool on the knife suddenly snapped closed, neatly removing a hunk of Martin’s index finger. The Jesuit bled profusely onto a pad of notepaper.

“Now, look, you’ve cut yourself …” Dr. Daruwalla began.

“It’s nothing,” the zealot said, but it was evident that the chair was beginning to make the man of God angry. “I want to hear your story. Come on. I know how it starts… you’re in Goa, aren’t you? You’ve just gone to visit the sainted remains of our Francis Xavier… what’s left of him. And you go to sleep thinking of that pilgrim who bit off St. Francis’s toe.”

“I went to sleep thinking of nothing at all!” Farrokh insisted, his voice rising.

“ Ssshhh! This is a library,” the missionary reminded Dr. Daruwalla.

“I know it’s a library!” the doctor cried—too loudly, for they weren’t alone. At first unseen but now emerging from a pile of manuscripts was an old man who’d been sleeping in a corner chair; it was another chair on castors, for it wheeled their way. Its disagreeable rider, who’d been roused from the depths of whatever sleep his reading material had sunk him into, was wearing a Nehru jacket, which (like his hands) was gray from transmitted newsprint.

“Ssshhh!” the old reader said. Then he wheeled back into his corner of the room.

“Maybe we should find another place to discuss my conversion,” Farrokh whispered to Martin Mills.

“I’m going to fix this chair,” the Jesuit replied. Now bleeding onto the chair and the table and the pad of notepaper, Martin Mills jammed the rebellious castor into the inverted chair leg; with another dangerous-looking tool, a stubby screwdriver, he struggled to affix the castor to the chair. “So… you went to sleep… your mind an absolute blank, or so you’re telling me. And then what?”

“I dreamt I was St. Francis’s corpse …” Dr. Daruwalla began.

“Body dreams, very common,” the zealot whispered.

“Ssshhh!” said the old man in the Nehru jacket, from the corner.

“I dreamt that the crazed pilgrim was biting off my toe!” Farrokh hissed.

“You felt this?” Martin asked.

“Of course I felt it!” hissed the doctor.

“But corpses don’t feel, do they?” the scholastic said. “Oh, well… so you felt the bite, and then?”

“When I woke up, my toe was throbbing . I couldn’t stand on that foot, much less walk! And there were bite marks—not broken skin, mind you, but actual teeth marks! Those marks were real! The bite was real!” Farrokh insisted.

“Of course it was real,” the missionary said. “Something real bit you. What could it have been?”

“I was on a balcony—I was in the air! ” Farrokh whispered hoarsely.

“Try to keep it down,” the Jesuit whispered. “Are you telling me that this balcony was utterly unapproachable?”

“Through locked doors… where my wife and children were asleep …” Farrokh began.

“Ah, the children! ” Martin Mills cried out. “How old were they?”

“I wasn’t bitten by my own children!” Dr. Daruwalla hissed.

“Children do bite, from time to time—or as a prank,” the missionary replied. “I’ve heard that children go through actual biting ages —when they’re especially prone to bite.”

“I suppose my wife could have been hungry, too,” Farrokh said sarcastically.

“There were no trees around the balcony?” Martin Mills asked; he was now both bleeding and sweating over the stubborn chair.

“I see it coming,” Dr. Daruwalla said. “Father Julian’s monkey theory. Biting apes, swinging from vines—is that what you think?”

“The point is, you were really bitten, weren’t you?” the Jesuit asked him. “People get so confused about miracles. The miracle wasn’t that something bit you. The miracle is that you believe! Your faith is the miracle. It hardly matters that it was something… common that triggered it.”

“What happened to my toe wasn’t common! ” the doctor cried.

The old reader in the Nehru jacket shot out of his corner on his chair on castors. “Ssshhh!” the old man hissed.

“Are you trying to read or trying to sleep? ” the doctor shouted at the old gentleman.

“Come on—you’re disturbing him. He was here first,” Martin Mills told Dr. Daruwalla. “Look!” the scholastic said to the old man, as if the angry reader were a child. “See this chair? I’ve fixed it. Want to try it?” The missionary set the chair on all four castors and rolled it back and forth. The gentleman in the Nehru jacket eyed the zealot warily.

“He has his own chair, for God’s sake,” Farrokh said.

“Come on—give it a try!” the missionary urged the old reader.

“I have to find a telephone,” Dr. Daruwalla pleaded with the zealot. “I should make a reservation for lunch. And we should stay with the children—they’re probably bored.” But, to his dismay, the doctor saw that Martin Mills was staring up at the ceiling fan; the tangled string had caught the handyman’s eye.