John Irving - A Son of the Circus

Jubilee Day was definitely not the doctor’s sort of celebration. He felt a vague loathing for such a hearty gathering of Christians in a non-Christian country; the atmosphere of religious complicity was uncomfortably claustrophobic. Julia found him engaged in standoffish if not openly antisocial behavior; he’d been reading the examination scrolls in the entrance hall and had wandered to that spot, at the foot of the courtyard stairs, where the statue of Christ with the sick child was mounted on the wall alongside the fire extinguisher. Julia knew why Farrokh was loitering there; he was hoping that someone would speak to him and he could then comment on the irony of juxtaposing Jesus with a fire-fighting tool.

“I’m going to take you home,” Julia warned him. Then she noticed how tired he looked, and how utterly out of place—how lost. Christianity had tricked him; India was no longer his country. When Julia kissed his cheek, she realized he’d been crying.

“Please do take me home,” Farrokh told her.

Danny Mills died following a New Year’s Eve party in New York. It was Tuesday, January 2, before Martin Mills and Dr. Daruwalla were notified. The delay was attributed to the time difference—New York is 10½ hours behind Bombay—but the real reason was that Vera hadn’t spent New Year’s Eve with Danny. Danny, who was almost 75, died alone. Vera, who was 65, didn’t discover Danny’s body until the evening of New Year’s Day.

When Vera returned to their hotel, she wasn’t fully recovered from a tryst with a rising star of a light-beer commercial—an unbefitting fling for a woman her age. She doubtless failed to note the irony that Danny had died with the DO NOT DISTURB sign hanging optimistically from their hotel-room door. The medical examiner concluded that Danny had choked on his own vomit, which was (like his blood) nearly 20 percent alcohol.

In her two telegrams, Vera cited no clinical evidence; yet she managed to convey Danny’s inebriation to Martin in pejorative terms.

YOUR FATHER DIED DRUNK IN A NEW YORK HOTEL

This also communicated to her son the sordidness, not to mention the inconvenience; Vera was going to have to spend nearly all of that Tuesday shopping. Coming from California—their visit was intended to be short—neither Danny nor Vera had packed for an extended stay in the January climate.

Vera’s telegram to Martin continued in a bitter vein.

BEING CATHOLIC, ALTHOUGH HARDLY A MODEL OF THE SPECIES, I’M SURE DANNY WOULD HAVE WANTED YOU TO ARRANGE SOME SUITABLE SERVICE OR LAST BIT OR WHATEVER IT’S CALLED

“Hardly a model of the species” was the sort of language Vera had learned from the moisturizer commercial of her son’s long-ago and damaged youth.

The last dig was pure Vera—even in what passed for grief, she took a swipe at her son.

WILL OF COURSE UNDERSTAND COMPLETELY IF YOUR VOW OF POVERTY MAKES IT IMPOSSIBLE FOR YOU TO ASSIST ME IN THIS MATTER / MOM

There followed only the name of the hotel in New York. Martin’s “vow of poverty” notwithstanding, Vera wasn’t offering to pay for his trip with her money.

Her telegram to Dr. Daruwalla was also pure Vera.

I FAIL TO IMAGINE HOW DANNY’S DEATH SHOULD ALTER YOUR DECISION TO KEEP MARTIN FROM ANY KNOWLEDGE OF HIS TWIN

So suddenly it’s my decision, Dr. Daruwalla thought.

PLEASE DON’T UPSET POOR MARTIN WITH MORE BAD NEWS

So now it’s “poor Martin” who would be upset! Farrokh observed.

SINCE MARTIN HAS CHOSEN POVERTY FOR A PROFESSION, AND DANNY HAS LEFT ME A WOMAN OF INSUFFICIENT MEANS, PERHAPS YOU’LL BE SO KIND AS TO AID MARTIN WITH THE AIRFARE / OF COURSE IT’S DANNY WHO WOULD HAVE WANTED HIM HERE / VERA

The only good news, which Dr. Daruwalla didn’t know at the time, was that Danny Mills had left Vera a woman of even less means than she supposed. Danny had bequeathed what little he had to the Catholic Church—secure in the knowledge that if he’d given anything to Martin, that’s what Martin would have done with the money. In the end, not even Vera would consider the amount worth fighting for.

In Bombay, the day after Jubilee Day was a big one for news. Danny’s death and Vera’s manipulations overlapped with Mr. Das’s announcement that Madhu had left the Great Blue Nile with her new husband; both Martin Mills and Dr. Daruwalla had little doubt that Madhu’s new husband was Mr. Garg. Farrokh was so sure of this that his brief telegram to the Bengali ringmaster was a statement, not a question.

YOU SAID THAT THE MAN WHO MARRIED MADHU HAD A SCAR / ACID, I PRESUME

Both the doctor and the missionary were outraged that Mr. and Mrs. Das had virtually sold Madhu to a man like Garg, but Martin urged Farrokh not to take the ringmaster to task. In the spirit of encouraging the Great Blue Nile to support the efforts of the elephant-footed cripple, Dr. Daruwalla concluded his telegram to Mr. Das in Junagadh on a tactful note.

I TRUST THAT THE BOY GANESH WILL BE WELL LOOKED AFTER

He didn’t “trust”; he hoped .

In the light of Ranjit’s message from Mr. Subhash (that Tata Two had given Dr. Daruwalla the HIV test results for the wrong Madhu), the doctor had sizably less hope for Madhu than for Ganesh. Ranjit’s account of Mr. Subhash’s offhand manner—the ancient secretary’s virtual dismissal of the error—was infuriating, but even a proper apology from Dr. Tata wouldn’t have lessened the fact that Madhu was HIV-positive. She didn’t have AIDS yet; she was merely carrying the virus.

“How can you even think ‘merely’?” cried Martin Mills, who seemed to be more devastated by Madhu’s medical destiny than by the news of Danny’s death; after all, Danny had been dying for years.

It was only midmorning; Martin had to interrupt their phone conversation in order to teach a class. Farrokh agreed to keep the missionary informed of the day’s developments. The upper-school boys at St. Ignatius were about to receive a Catholic interpretation of Graham Greene’s The Heart of the Matter , while Dr. Daruwalla attempted to find Madhu. But the doctor discovered that Garg’s phone number was no longer in service; Mr. Garg was lying low. Vinod told Dr. Daruwalla that Deepa had already talked to Garg; according to the dwarf’s wife, the owner of the Wetness Cabaret had complained about the doctor.

“Garg is thinking you are being too moral with him,” the dwarf explained.

It was not morality that the doctor wanted to discuss with Madhu, or with Garg. The doctor’s disapproval of Garg notwithstanding, Dr. Daruwalla wanted the opportunity to tell Madhu what it meant to be HIV-positive. Vinod implied that any opportunity for direct communication with Madhu was unpromising.

“It is working better another way,” the dwarf suggested. “You are telling me. I am telling Deepa. She is telling Garg. Garg is telling the girl.”

It was hard for Dr. Daruwalla to accept this as a “better” way, but the doctor was beginning to understand the essence of the dwarf’s Good Samaritanism. Rescuing children from the brothels was simply what Vinod and Deepa did with their spare time; they would just keep doing it—needing to succeed at it might have diminished their efforts.

“Tell Garg he was misinformed,” Dr. Daruwalla told Vinod. “Tell him Madhu is HIV-positive.”

Interestingly, if Garg was uninfected, his odds were good; he probably wouldn’t contract HIV from Madhu. (The nature of HIV transmission is such that it’s not that easy for a woman to give it to a man.) Depressingly, if Garg was infected, Madhu had probably contracted it from him.

The dwarf must have sensed the doctor’s depression; Vinod knew that a functioning Good Samaritan can’t dwell on every little failure. “We are only showing them the net,” Vinod tried to explain. “We are not being their wings.”