John Irving - A Son of the Circus

A cot like all the others was identified as Madhu’s; Mr. Das was putting her between two older girls, who (he said) would mind her. Mrs. Das, the ringmaster assured them, would “mind” Madhu, too. As for Mrs. Das, she didn’t get off her cot to greet them. She sat sewing sequins on a costume, and only as they were leaving the tent did she speak to Madhu.

“I am meeting you tomorrow,” she told the girl.

“What time shall we come in the morning?” Dr. Daruwalla asked, but Mrs. Das—who manifested something of the victimized severity of an unexpectedly divorced aunt—didn’t answer him. Her head remained lowered, her eyes on her sewing.

“Don’t come too early, because we’ll be watching television,” Mr. Das told the doctor.

Well, naturally… Dr. Daruwalla thought.

Ganesh’s cot would be set up in the cook’s tent, where Mr. Das escorted them—and where he left them. He said he had to prepare for the 9:30 show. The cook, whose name was Chandra, assumed that Ganesh had been sent to help him; Chandra began to identify his utensils to the cripple, who listened indifferently—Dr. Daruwalla knew that the boy wanted to see the lions.

“Kadhai,” a wok. “Jhara,” a slotted spoon. “Kisni,” a coconut grater. From outside the cook’s tent, in the darkness, they also listened to the regular coughs of the lions. The crowd still hadn’t been admitted to the main tent but they were present in the darkness, like the lions, as a kind of background murmur.

Dr. Daruwalla didn’t notice the mosquitoes until he began to eat. The doctor and the others ate standing up, off stainless-steel plates—curried potatoes and eggplant with too much cumin. Then they were offered a plate of raw vegetables—carrots and radishes, onions and tomatoes—which they washed down with warm orange soda. Good old Gold Spot. Gujarat was a dry state, because Gandhi was born there—the tedious teetotaler. Farrokh reflected that he would probably be awake all night. He’d been counting on beer to keep him away from his screenplay, to help him sleep. Then he remembered that he’d be sharing a room with Madhu; in that case, it would be best to stay awake all night and to not have any beer.

Throughout their hasty, unsatisfying meal, Chandra progressed to naming vegetables to Ganesh, as if the cook assumed the boy had lost his language in the same accident that had mangled his foot. (“Aloo,” potato. “Chawli,” a white pea. “Baingan,” eggplant.) As for Madhu, she appeared neglected, and she was shivering. Surely she had a shawl or a sweater in her small bag, but all their bags were still in the Land Rover, which was parked God knew where; Ramu, their driver, was God knew where, too. Besides, it was almost time for the late show.

When they stepped into the avenue of troupe tents, they saw that the performers were already in costume; the elephants were being led down the aisle. In the wing of the main tent, the horses were standing in line. A roustabout had already saddled the first horse. Then a trainer prodded a big chimpanzee with a stick, launching the animal into what appeared to be a vertical leap of at least five feet. The horse had started forward, just a nervous step or two, when the chimpanzee landed on the saddle. There the chimp squatted on all fours; when the trainer touched the saddle with his stick, the chimpanzee performed a front flip on the horse’s back—and then another.

The band was already on the platform stage above the arena, which was still filling with the crowd. The visitors would be in the way if they stood in the wing, but Mr. Das, the ringmaster, hadn’t appeared; there was no one to show them to their seats. Martin Mills suggested that they find seats for themselves before the tent was full; Dr. Daruwalla resented such informality. While the doctor and the missionary were arguing about what to do, the chimp doing front flips on the horse grew distracted. Martin Mills was the distraction.

The chimpanzee was an old male named Gautam, because even as a baby he’d demonstrated a remarkable similarity to Buddha; he could sit in the same position and stare at the same thing for hours. As he’d aged, Gautam had extended his capacity for meditation to include certain repetitive exercises; the front flips on the horse’s back were but one example. Gautam could repeat the move tirelessly; whether the horse was galloping or standing still, the chimpanzee always landed on the saddle. There was, however, a diminished enthusiasm to Gautam’s front flips, and to his other activities as well. His trainer, Kunal, attributed Gautam’s emotional decline to the big chimp’s infatuation with Mira, a young female chimpanzee. Mira was new to the Great Blue Nile, and Gautam could be observed pining for her—often at inappropriate times.

If he saw Mira when he was doing front flips, Gautam would miss not only the saddle but the whole horse. Hence Mira rode a horse far back in the procession of animals that paraded around the main tent during the Grand Entry. It was only when Gautam was warming up in the wing that the old chimpanzee could spot Mira; she was kept near the elephants, because Gautam was afraid of elephants. At some trancelike distance in Gautam’s mind, this view of Mira—as the big chimp waited for the curtains to open and the Grand Entry music to begin—satisfied him. He kept doing front flips, mechanically, almost as if the jumps were triggered by a mild electrical shock, at about five-second intervals. In the corner of Gautam’s eye, Mira was a faraway presence; nevertheless, she was enough of a presence to soothe him.

Gautam became extremely unhappy if his view of Mira was blocked. Only Kunal was allowed to pass between the chimp and his view of Mira. Kunal never stood anywhere near Gautam without a stick in his hand. Gautam was big for a chimp; according to Kunal, the ape weighed 145 pounds and was almost five feet tall.

Simply put, Martin Mills was standing in the wrong place at the wrong time. After the attack, Kunal speculated that Gautam might have imagined that the missionary was another male chimpanzee; not only had Martin blocked Gautam’s view of Mira, but Gautam might have assumed that the missionary was seeking Mira’s affection—for Mira was a very affectionate female, and her friendliness (to male chimpanzees) was something that regularly drove Gautam insane. As for why Gautam might have mistaken Martin Mills for an ape, Kunal suggested that the paleness of the scholastic’s skin would surely have struck Gautam as unnatural for a human being. If Martin’s skin color was a novelty to the people of Junagadh—who, after all, had gawked at him and pawed him over in the passing Land Rover—Martin’s skin was only slightly less foreign to Gautam’s experience. Since, to Gautam, Martin Mills didn’t look like a human being, the ape probably thought that the missionary was a male chim

It was with a logic of this kind that Gautam interrupted his front flips on the horse’s back. The chimpanzee screamed once and bared his fangs; then he vaulted from the rump of the horse and over the back of another horse, landing on Martin’s shoulders and chest and driving the missionary to his back on the ground. There Gautam sunk his teeth into the side of the surprised Jesuit’s neck. Martin was fortunate to have protected his throat with his hand, but this meant that his hand was bitten, too. When it was over, there was a deep puncture wound in Martin’s neck and a slash wound from the heel of his hand to the ball of his thumb; and a small piece of the missionary’s right earlobe was missing. Gautam was too strong to be pulled off the struggling scholastic, but Kunal was able to beat the ape away with his stick. The whole time Mira was shrieking; it was hard to tell if her cries signified requited love or disapproval.