John Irving - A Son of the Circus

“And I’m just asking you for a fix on my character,” Inspector Dhar replied. “It’s always easier when I know who I’m supposed to be.”

There was the old Dhar, Dr. Daruwalla thought—sarcastic to the core. Farrokh was relieved to see that the movie star had regained his self-confidence.

That was when Nancy came out on the balcony. “I’m not interrupting anything, am I?” she asked, but she went straight to the railing and leaned on it; she didn’t wait for an answer.

“No, no,” Dr. Daruwalla mumbled.

“That’s west, isn’t it?” Nancy asked. She was pointing to the sunset.

“The sun usually sets in the west,” Dhar said.

“And if you went west across the sea—from Bombay straight across the Arabian Sea—what would you come to?” Nancy asked. “Make it west and a little north,” she added.

“Well,” Dr. Daruwalla said cautiously. “West and a little north from here is the Gulf of Oman, then the Persian Gulf …”

“Then Saudi Arabia,” Dhar interrupted.

“Keep going,” Nancy told him. “Keep going west and a little north.”

“That would take you across Jordan… into Israel, and into the Mediterranean,” Farrokh said.

“Or across North Africa,” said Inspector Dhar.

“Well, yes,” Dr. Daruwalla said. “Across Egypt… what’s after Egypt?” he asked John D.

“Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco,” the actor replied. “You could pass through the Straits of Gibraltar, or touch the coast of Spain, if you like.”

“Yes—that’s the way I want to go,” Nancy told him. “I touch the coast of Spain. Then what?”

“Then you’re in the North Atlantic,” Dr. Daruwalla said.

“Go west,” Nancy said. “And a little north.”

“New York?” Dr. Daruwalla guessed.

“I know the way from there,” Nancy said suddenly. “From there I go straight west.”

Both Dhar and Dr. Daruwalla didn’t know what Nancy would come to next; they weren’t familiar with the geography of the United States.

“Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois,” Nancy told them. “Maybe I’d have to go through New Jersey before I got to Pennsylvania.”

“Where are you going?” Dr. Daruwalla asked.

“Home,” Nancy answered. “Home to Iowa—Iowa comes after Illinois.”

“Do you want to go home?” John D. asked her.

“Never,” Nancy said. “I never want to go home.”

The screenwriter saw that the zipper of the gray sheath dress was a straight line down her back; it clasped at the top of her high mandarin collar.

“If you wouldn’t mind,” Farrokh said to her, “perhaps you could have your husband unfasten the zipper of your dress. If it were unzipped just a little—down to somewhere between your shoulder blades—that would be better. When you’re dancing, I mean,” the doctor added.

“Wouldn’t it be better if I unzipped it?” the actor asked. “I mean, when we’re dancing?”

“Well, yes, that would be best,” Dr. Daruwalla said.

Still looking west into the sunset, Nancy said, “Just don’t unzip me too far. I don’t care what the script says—if you unzip me too far, I’ll let you know it.”

“It’s time,” said Detective Patel. No one was sure how long he’d been on the balcony.

In departing, it was fortunate that none of them really looked at one another; their faces conveyed a certain dread of the event, like mourners preparing to attend the funeral of a child. The deputy commissioner was almost avuncular; he affectionately patted Dr. Daruwalla’s shoulder, he warmly shook Inspector Dhar’s hand, he held his troubled wife at her waist—his fingers familiarly spreading to the small of her back, where he knew she felt some occasional pain. It was his way of saying, I’m in charge—everything’s going to be okay.

But there was that interminable period when they had to wait in the policeman’s car; Vinod had taken Dhar and Muriel ahead. As the driver, the deputy commissioner sat up front with the screenwriter, who wanted Dhar and Muriel to be already dancing when the Daruwallas and their guests, the Patels, arrived. In the back seat, Julia sat with Nancy. The detective avoided his wife’s eyes in the rearview mirror; Patel also tried not to grip the steering wheel too tightly—he didn’t want any of them to see how nervous he was.

The passing headlights flowed like water along Marine Drive, and when the sun finally dipped into the Arabian Sea, the sea turned quickly from pink to purple to burgundy to black, like the phases of a bruise. The doctor said, “They must be dancing by now.” The detective started the car, easing them into the flow of traffic.

In a misguided effort to sound positive, Dr. Daruwalla said, “Let’s go get the bitch, let’s put her away.”

“Not tonight,” Detective Patel said quietly. “We won’t catch her tonight. Let’s just hope she takes the bait.”

“She’ll take it,” Nancy said from the back seat.

There was nothing the deputy commissioner wanted to say. He smiled. He hoped he looked confident. But the real policeman knew there was really no getting ready for Rahul.

Mr. Sethna had to wonder what was going on; wonderment was not among the few expressions that the old Parsi favored. To anyone who observed the steward’s sour, intolerant visage, Mr. Sethna was simply expressing his contempt for New Year’s Eve; he thought the party at the Duckworth Club was superfluous. Pateti, the Parsi New Year, comes in the late summer or the early fall; it is followed a fortnight later by the anniversary of the prophet Zarathustra’s birth. By the time of the New Year’s Eve party at the Duckworth Club, Mr. Sethna had already celebrated his New Year. As for the Duckworthian version of New Year’s Eve, Mr. Sethna viewed it as a tradition for Anglophiles. It was also morbid that New Year’s Eve at the Duckworth Club was doubly special to those many Duckworthians who enjoyed the party as an anniversary—this year it was the 90th anniversary—of Lord Duckworth’s suicide.

The steward also thought that the events of the evening were foolishly ordered. Duckworthians, in general, were an older crowd, especially at this time of year; with a 22-year waiting list for membership, one would expect the members to be “older,” but this was also the result of the younger Duckworthians being away at school—for the most part, in England. In the summer months, when the student generation was back in India, Duckworthians appeared to be younger. But now here were all these older people, who should be eating their dinners at a reasonable hour; they were expected to drink and dance until the midnight supper was served—an ass-backward order of events, Mr. Sethna believed. Feed them early and then let them dance—if they’re able. The effects of too much champagne on empty stomachs were particularly deleterious to the elderly. Some couples lacked the stamina to last until the midnight supper. And wasn’t the point of the silly evening—apparently, the only point—to last until midnight?

From the way he was dancing, Dhar couldn’t last until midnight, Mr. Sethna presumed; yet the steward was impressed at how the actor had rebounded from his dreadful appearance of the day before. On Saturday, the diseased man had been ghostly pale and dabbing at his penis over the urinal—a sickening sight. Now here he was on Sunday night, tanned and looking positively beefy; he was dancing up a storm. Perhaps the actor’s sexually transmitted disease was in remission, Mr. Sethna speculated, as Dhar continued to hurl Muriel around the dance floor. And where had the movie-star slime found a woman like that?

Once, there’d been a banner draped from the marquee of the Bombay Eros Palace, and the woman painted on that banner had looked like Muriel, Mr. Sethna remembered. (The woman had actually been Muriel, of course; the Wetness Cabaret was a step down from the Bombay Eros Palace.) Mr. Sethna had never seen a Duckworthian in such a costume as Muriel wore. The glitter of her turquoise sequins, her plunging neckline, her miniskirt at midthigh… her dress hugged her bum so tightly, Mr. Sethna expected that some of her sequins would pop off and litter the dance floor. Muriel had maintained the high, hard athletic bum of a dancer; and although she was certainly a few years older than Inspector Dhar, she looked as if she could both outdance and outsweat him. Their dancing lacked the element of courtship; they were brutally aggressive—astonishingly rough with each other—which implied to the disapproving steward that dancing was merely the public forum in which they lewdly hinted at the violence of their more private lovemaking.