John Irving - A Son of the Circus

When John D. lifted his face to her, he was still kneeling; as such, his face was level with her small, well-shaped breasts. Mrs. Dogar was holding the top half of the pen. “A rupee for your thoughts,” said Inspector Dhar; it was something he said in all his movies.

Rahul’s lips were parted; she looked quizzically down at Dhar—her scratched eye blinking once, and then again. Her lips softly closed and she once more exhaled thinly through her nose, as if such controlled breathing helped her to think.

“I thought I’d lost this,” Mrs. Dogar said slowly.

“It appears you’ve lost the other half,” John D. replied; he stayed on his knees because he imagined that she liked looking down on him.

“This is the only half I ever had,” Rahul explained.

Dhar stood up and walked behind her chair; he didn’t want her to grab the drawings. When John D. returned to his seat, Rahul was staring at the half-pen.

“You might as well have lost that half,” John D. told her. “You can’t use it for anything.”

“But you’re wrong!” Mrs. Dogar cried. “It’s really marvelous as a money clip.”

“A money clip,” the actor repeated.

“Look here,” Rahul began. There was no money among the spilled contents of her purse, which John D. had spread on the table; she had to search in her purse. “The problem with money clips,” Mrs. Dogar told him, “is that they’re conceived for a big wad of money… the sort of wad of money that men are always flashing out of their pockets, you know.”

“Yes, I know,” said Inspector Dhar. He watched her fishing in her purse for some smaller bills. She pulled out a 10-rupee note, and two 5s, and when the actor saw the two 2-rupee notes with the unnatural typing on them, he raised his eyes to Mr. Sethna and the old steward began his hurried shuffle across the dining room to the Ladies’ Garden.

“Look here,” Rahul repeated. “When you have just a few small notes, which most women must carry—for tipping, for the odd beggar—this is the perfect money clip. It holds just a few notes, but quite snugly …” Her voice trailed away because she saw that Dhar had covered the drawings with his hand; he was sliding the three drawings across the tablecloth when Rahul reached out and grabbed his pinky finger, which she sharply lifted, breaking it. John D. still managed to pull the drawings into his lap. The pinky finger of his right hand pointed straight up, as if it grew out of the back of his hand; it was dislocated at the big knuckle joint. With his left hand, Dhar was able to protect the drawings from Mrs. Dogar’s grasp. She was still struggling with him—she was trying to get the drawings away from him with her right hand—when Detective Patel hooked her neck in the crook of his elbow and pinned her left arm behind her chair.

“You’re under arrest,” the deputy commissioner told her.

“The top half of the pen is a money clip,” said Inspector Dhar. “She uses it for small notes. When she put the note in Mr. Lal’s mouth, the makeshift money clip must have fallen by the body—you know the rest. There’s some typing on those two-rupee notes,” Dhar told the real policeman.

“Read it to me,” Patel said. Mrs. Dogar held herself very still; her free right hand, which had ceased struggling with John D. for the drawings, floated just above the tablecloth, as if she were about to give them all her blessing.

“‘A member no more,’” Dhar read aloud.

“That one was for you,” the deputy commissioner told him.

“‘…because Dhar is still a member,’” Dhar read.

“Who was that one for?” the policeman asked Rahul, but Mrs. Dogar was frozen in her chair, her hand still conducting an imaginary orchestra above the tablecloth; her eyes had never left Inspector Dhar. The top drawing had become wrinkled in the tussle, but John D. smoothed all three drawings against the tablecloth. He was careful not to look at them.

“You’re quite an artist,” the deputy commissioner told Rahul, but Mrs. Dogar just kept staring at Inspector Dhar.

Dr. Daruwalla regretted that he looked at the drawings; the second was worse than the first, and the third was the worst of all. He knew he would go to his grave still thinking of them. Julia alone had the sense to remain in the Ladies’ Garden; she knew there was no good reason to come any closer. But Nancy must have felt compelled to confront the Devil herself; it would be uncomfortable for her later to recall the last words between Dhar and Rahul.

“I really wanted you—I wasn’t kidding,” Mrs. Dogar said to the actor.

To Dr. Daruwalla’s surprise, John D. said to Mrs. Dogar, “I wasn’t kidding, either.”

It must have been hard for Nancy to feel that the focus of her victimization had shifted so far from herself; it still galled her that Rahul didn’t remember who she was.

“I was in Goa,” Nancy announced to the killer.

“Don’t say anything, sweetie,” her husband told her.

“Say anything you feel like saying, sweetie,” Rahul said.

“I had a fever and you crawled into bed with me,” Nancy said.

Mrs. Dogar appeared to be thoughtfully surprised. She stared at Nancy as she had previously stared at the top half of the pen, her recognition traveling over time. “Why, is it really you , dear?” Rahul asked Nancy. “But what on earth has happened to you?”

“You should have killed me when you had the chance,” Nancy told her.

“You look already dead to me,” Mrs. Dogar said.

“Please kill her, Vijay,” Nancy said to her husband.

“I told you this wouldn’t be very satisfying, sweetie.” That was all the deputy commissioner would say to her.

When the uniformed constables and the subinspectors came, Detective Patel told them to put away their weapons. Rahul was not resisting arrest. The deep and unknown satisfactions of the previous night’s murder seemed to radiate from Mrs. Dogar; she was no more violent on this New Year’s Monday than whatever brief impulse had urged her to break John D.’s pinky finger. The serial killer’s smile was serene.

Understandably, the deputy commissioner was worried about his wife. He told her he’d have to go directly to Crime Branch Headquarters, but surely she could get a ride home. Dhar’s dwarf driver had already made his presence known; Vinod was prowling the foyer of the Duckworth Club. Detective Patel suggested that perhaps Dhar wouldn’t mind taking Nancy home in his private taxi.

“Not a good idea.” That was all Nancy would say to her husband.

Julia said that she and Dr. Daruwalla would bring Nancy home. Dhar offered to have Vinod drive Nancy home—just the dwarf, alone. That way, she wouldn’t have to talk to anyone.

Nancy preferred this plan. “I’m safe around dwarfs,” she said. “I like dwarfs.”

When she’d gone with Vinod, Detective Patel asked Inspector Dhar how he liked being a real policeman. “It’s better in the movies,” the actor replied. “In the movies, things happen the way they should happen.”

After the deputy commissioner had departed with Rahul, John D. let Dr. Daruwalla snap his pinky finger into place. “Just look away—look at Julia,” the doctor recommended. Then he popped the dislocated finger back where it belonged. “We’ll take an X ray tomorrow,” Dr. Daruwalla said. “Maybe we’ll splint it, but not until it’s stopped swelling. For now, keep putting it in ice.”

At the table in the Ladies’ Garden, John D. responded to this advice by submersing his pinky in his water glass; most of the ice in the glass had melted, so Dr. Daruwalla summoned Mr. Sethna for more. Because the old Parsi seemed deeply disappointed that no one had congratulated him on his performance, Dhar said, “Mr. Sethna, that was really brilliant—how you fell over your own tray, for example. The distracting sound of the tray itself, your particularly purposeful but graceful awkwardness… truly brilliant.”