John Irving - A Son of the Circus

“What happened to your lip?” she finally asked him in a whisper—her expression still girlish but sly, even conspiratorial.

“When the lights went out, I danced into a wall,” Dhar told her.

“I think that horrid woman did it to you,” Amy Sorabjee dared to say. “It looks like she bit you!”

John D. just kept dancing; the way his lip had swollen, it hurt to sneer.

“Everyone thinks she’s a horrid woman, you know,” Amy said; Dhar’s silence had made her less sure of herself. “And who was that first woman you were with?” Amy asked him. “The one who left?”

“She’s a stripper,” said Inspector Dhar.

“Go on—not really!” Amy cried.

“Yes, really,” John D. replied.

“And who is the blond lady?” Amy asked. “I thought she looked about to cry.”

“She’s a former friend,” the actor answered; he was tired of the girl now. A young girl’s idea of intimacy was getting answers to all her questions.

John D. was sure that Vinod would already be waiting outside; surely the dwarf had returned from taking Muriel to the Wetness Cabaret. Dhar wanted to go to bed, alone; he wanted to put more ice on his lip, and he wanted to apologize to Farrokh, too. It had been unkind of the actor to imply that preparing himself for the seduction of Mrs. Dogar was “no circus”; John D. knew what the circus meant to Dr. Daruwalla—the actor could have more charitably said that getting ready for Rahul was “no picnic.” And now here was the insatiable Amy Sorabjee, trying to get him (and herself) into some unnecessary trouble. Time to slip away, the actor thought.

Just then, Amy took a quick look over Dhar’s shoulder; she wanted to be exactly sure where her parents were. A doddering threesome had blocked Dr. and Mrs. Sorabjee from Amy’s view—Mr. Bannerjee was struggling to dance with his wife and the widow Lal—and Amy seized this moment of privacy, for she knew she was only briefly free of her parents’ scrutiny. She brushed her soft lips against John D.’s cheek; then she whispered overbreathlessly in the actor’s ear. “I could kiss that lip and make it better!” she said.

John D., smoothly, just kept dancing. His unresponsiveness made Amy feel insecure, and so she whispered more plaintively—at least more matter-of-factly—“I prefer older men.”

“Do you?” the movie star said. “Why, so do I,” Inspector Dhar told the silly girl. “So do I!”

That got rid of her; it always worked. At last, Inspector Dhar could slip away.

It was January 1, 1990, a Monday. It was also Jubilee Day at St. Ignatius School in Mazagaon—the start of the mission’s 126th year. Well-wishers were invited to a high tea, which amounted to a light supper in the early evening; this was scheduled to follow a special late-afternoon Mass. This was also the occasion that would formally serve to introduce Martin Mills to the Catholic community in Bombay; therefore, Father Julian and Father Cecil regretted that the scholastic had returned from the circus in such mutilated condition. The previous night, Martin had frightened Brother Gabriel, who mistook the mauled figure with his bloodstained and unraveling bandages for the wandering spirit of a previously persecuted Jesuit—some poor soul who’d been tortured and then put to death.

Earlier that same night, the zealot had prevailed upon Father Cecil to hear his confession. Father Cecil was so tired, he fell asleep before he could give Martin absolution. Typically, Martin’s confession seemed unending—nor had Father Cecil caught the gist of it before he nodded off. It struck the old priest that Martin Mills was confessing nothing more serious than a lifelong disposition to complain.

Martin had begun by enumerating his several disappointments with himself, beginning with the period of his novitiate at St. Aloysius in Massachusetts. Father Cecil tried to listen closely, for there was a tone of urgency in the scholastic’s voice; yet young Martin’s capacity for finding fault with himself was vast—the poor priest soon felt that his participation in Martin’s confession was superfluous. For example, as a novice at St. Aloysius, Martin confessed, a significantly holy event had been entirely wasted on him; Martin had been unimpressed by the visit of the sacred arm of St. Francis Xavier to the Massachusetts novitiate. (Father Cecil didn’t think this was so bad.)

The acolyte bearing the saint’s severed arm was the famous Father Terry Finney, S.J.; Father Finney had selflessly undertaken the task of carrying the golden reliquary around the world. Martin confessed that, to him, the holy arm had been nothing but a skeletal limb under glass, like something partially eaten—like a leftover, Martin Mills had observed. Only now could the scholastic bear to confess having had such blasphemous thoughts. (By this time, Father Cecil was fast asleep.)

There was more; it troubled Martin that the issue of Divine Grace had taken him years to resolve to his satisfaction. And sometimes the scholastic felt he was merely making a conscious effort not to think about it. Old Father Cecil really should have heard this, for Martin Mills was dangerously full of doubt. The confession would eventually lead young Martin to his present disappointment with himself, which was the way he’d behaved on the trip to and from the circus.

The scholastic said he was guilty of loving the crippled boy more than he loved the child prostitute; his abhorrence of prostitution caused him to feel almost resigned to the girl’s fate. And Dr. Daruwalla had provoked the Jesuit on the sensitive matter of homosexuality; Martin was sorry that he’d spoken to the doctor in an intellectually arrogant fashion. At this point, Father Cecil was sleeping so soundly, the poor priest never woke when he slumped forward in the confessional and his nose poked between the latticework where Martin Mills could see it.

When Martin saw the old priest’s nose, he knew that Father Cecil was dead to the world. He didn’t want to embarrass the poor man; however, it wasn’t right to leave him sleeping in such an uncomfortable position. That was why the missionary crept away and went looking for Brother Gabriel; that was when poor Brother Gabriel mistook the wildly bandaged scholastic for a persecuted Christian from the past. After his fear had subsided, Brother Gabriel went to wake up Father Cecil, who thereafter suffered a sleepless night; the priest couldn’t remember what Martin Mills had confessed, or whether or not he’d given the zealot absolution.

Martin slept blissfully. Even without absolution, it had felt good to say all those things against himself; tomorrow was soon enough for someone to hear his full confession—perhaps he’d ask Father Julian this time. Although Father Julian was scarier than Father Cecil, the Father Rector was also a bit younger. Thus, with his conscience clear and no bugs in his bed, Martin would sleep through the night. Full of doubt one minute, brimming with conviction the next, the missionary was a walking contradiction—he was dependably unreliable.

Nancy also slept through the night; one couldn’t claim that she slept “blissfully,” but at least she slept. Surely the champagne helped. She wouldn’t hear the ringing of the phone, which Detective Patel answered in the kitchen. It was 4:00 on the morning of New Year’s Day, and at first the deputy commissioner was relieved that the call was not from the surveillance officer who’d been assigned to watch the Dogars’ house on old Ridge Road, Malabar Hill; it was a homicide report from the red-light district in Kamathipura—a prostitute had been murdered in one of the arguably better brothels. Ordinarily, no one would have awakened the deputy commissioner with such a report, but both the investigating officer and the medical examiner were certain that the crime was Dhar-related. Once again, there was the elephant drawing on the belly of the murdered whore, but there was also a fearsome new twist to this killing, which the caller was sure Detective Patel would want to see.