John Irving - A Son of the Circus

“It’s certainly an exciting idea,” said Inspector Dhar.

“You’re not sneering, are you?” Mrs. Dogar asked him.

“Certainly not! I’m just remembering,” the actor replied. “Twenty years ago, I couldn’t get up the nerve to approach you—I didn’t know how to begin.”

“Twenty years ago, I wasn’t complete,” Rahul reminded him. “If you had approached me, what would you have done?”

“Frankly, I was too young to think of doing” Dhar replied. “I think I just wanted to see you!”

“I don’t suppose that seeing me is all you have in mind today,” Mrs. Dogar said.

“Certainly not!” said Inspector Dhar, but he couldn’t muster the courage to squeeze her hand; she was everywhere so dry and cool and light of touch, but she was also very hard.

“Twenty years ago, I tried to approach you,” Rahul admitted.

“It must have been too subtle for me—at least I missed it,” John D. remarked.

“At the Bardez, I was told you slept in the hammock on the balcony,” Rahul told him. “I went to you. The only part of you that was outside the mosquito net was your foot. I put your big toe in my mouth. I sucked it—actually, I bit you. But it wasn’t you. It was Dr. Daruwalla. I was so disgusted, I never tried again.”

This was not the conversation Dhar had expected. John D.’s options for dialogue didn’t include a response to this interesting story, but while he was at a loss for words, the band saved him; they changed to a faster number. People were leaving the dance floor in droves, including Nancy with Mr. Dogar. Nancy led the old man to his table; he was almost breathless by the time she got him seated.

“Who are you, dear?” he managed to ask her.

“Mrs. Patel,” Nancy replied.

“Ah,” the old man said. “And your husband …” What Mr. Dogar meant was, What does he do? He wondered: Which sort of civil-service employee is he?

“My husband is Mr. Patel,” Nancy told him; when she left him, she walked as carefully as possible to the Daruwallas’ table.

“I don’t think she recognized me,” Nancy told them, “but I couldn’t look at her. She looks the same, but ancient.”

“Are they dancing?” Dr. Daruwalla asked. “Are they talking, too?”

“They’re dancing and they’re talking—that’s all I know,” Nancy told the screenwriter. “I couldn’t look at her,” she repeated.

“It’s all right, sweetie,” the deputy commissioner said. “You don’t have to do anything more.”

“I want to be there when you catch her, Vijay,” Nancy told her husband.

“Well, we may not catch her in a place where you want to be,” the detective replied.

“Please let me be there,” Nancy said. “Am I zipped up?” she asked suddenly; she rotated her shoulders so that Julia could see her back.

“You’re zipped up perfectly, dear,” Julia told her.

Mr. Dogar, alone at his table, was gulping champagne and catching his breath, while Mr. Sethna plied him with hors d’oeuvres. Mrs. Dogar and Dhar were dancing in that part of the ballroom where Mr. Dogar couldn’t see them.

“There was a time when I wanted you,” Rahul was telling John D. “You were a beautiful boy.”

“I still want you,” Dhar told her.

“It seems you want everybody,” Mrs. Dogar said. “Who’s the stripper?” she asked him. He had no dialogue for this.

“Just a stripper,” Dhar answered.

“And who’s the fat blonde?” Rahul asked him. This much Dr. Daruwalla had prepared him for.

“She’s an old story,” the actor replied. “Some people can’t let go.”

“You can have your choice of women—younger women, too,” Mrs. Dogar told him. “What do you want with me?” This introduced a moment in the dialogue that the actor was afraid of; this required a quantum leap of faith in Farrokh’s script. The actor had little confidence in his upcoming line.

“I need to know something,” Dhar told Rahul. “Is your vagina really made from what used to be your penis?”

“Don’t be crude,” Mrs. Dogar said; then she started laughing.

“I wish there was another way to ask the question,” John D. admitted. When she laughed more uncontrollably, her hands gripped him harder; he could feel the strength of her hands for the first time. “I suppose I could have been more indirect,” Dhar continued, for her laughter encouraged him. “I could have said, ‘What sort of sensitivity do you have in that vagina of yours, anyway? I mean, does it feel sort of like a penis?’” The actor stopped; he couldn’t make himself continue. The screenwriter’s dialogue wasn’t working—Farrokh was frequently hit-or-miss with dialogue.

Besides, Mrs. Dogar had stopped laughing. “So you’re just curious—is that it?” she asked him. “You’re attracted to the oddity of it.”

Along the thin blue vein at Rahul’s throat, there appeared a cloudy drop of sweat; it ran quickly between her taut breasts. John D. thought that they hadn’t been dancing that hard. He hoped it was the right time. He took her around her waist with some force, and she followed his lead; when they crossed that part of the dance floor which made them visible to Mrs. Dogar’s husband—and to Mr. Sethna—Dhar saw that the old steward had understood his signal. Mr. Sethna turned quickly from the dining room toward the foyer, and the actor again wheeled Mrs. Dogar into the more private part of the ballroom.

“I’m an actor,” John D. told Rahul. “I can be anyone you want me to be—I can do absolutely anything you like. You just have to draw me a picture.” (The actor winced; he had Farrokh to thank for that clunker, too.)

“What an eccentric presumption!” Mrs. Dogar said. “Draw you a picture of what?”

“Just give me an idea of what appeals to you. Then I can do it,” Dhar told her.

“You said, ‘Draw me a picture’—I heard you say it,” Mrs. Dogar said.

“I meant, just tell me what you like—I mean sexually,” the actor said.

“I know what you mean , but you said ‘draw,’” Rahul replied coldly.

“Didn’t you used to be an artist? Weren’t you going to art school?” the actor asked. (What the hell is Mr. Sethna doing? Dhar was thinking. John D. was afraid that Rahul smelled a rat.)

“I didn’t learn anything in art school,” Mrs. Dogar told him.

In the utility closet, off the foyer, Mr. Sethna had discovered that he couldn’t read the writing in the fuse box without his glasses, which he kept in a drawer in the kitchen. It took the steward a moment to decide whether or not to kill all the fuses.

“The old fool has probably electrocuted himself!” Dr. Daruwalla was saying to Detective Patel.

“Let’s try to keep calm,” the policeman said.

“If the lights don’t go out, let Dhar improvise—if he’s such a great improviser,” Nancy said.

“I want you not as a curiosity,” Dhar said suddenly to Mrs. Dogar. “I know you’re strong, I think you’re aggressive—I believe you can assert yourself.” (It was the worst of Dr. Daruwalla’s dialogue, the actor thought—it was sheer groping.) “I want you to tell me what you like. I want you to tell me what to do.”

“I want you to submit to me,” Rahul said.

“You can tie me up, if you want to,” Dhar said agreeably.

“I mean more than that,” Mrs. Dogar said. Then the ballroom and the entire first floor of the Duckworth Club were pitched into darkness. There was a communal gasp and a fumbling in the band; the number they were playing persisted through a few more toots and thumps. From the dining room came an artless clapping. Noises of chaos could be heard from the kitchen. Then the knives and forks and spoons began their impromptu music against the water glasses.