John Irving - A Son of the Circus

John D. was nowhere to be seen. Dr. Daruwalla knew that the actor was always the first to board a plane— any plane—but the doctor kept looking for him. Aesthetically, Farrokh would have been disappointed if Inspector Dhar and Martin Mills met in the security lineup; the screenwriter wanted the twins to meet on the plane. Ideally, they should be sitting down, Dr. Daruwalla thought.

As he waited in line and then shuffled forward, and then waited again, Martin looked almost normal. There was something pathetic about his wearing the tropical-weight black suit over the Hawaiian shirt; he’d surely have to buy something warmer in Zürich, the expense of which had prompted Dr. Daruwalla to hand him several hundred Swiss francs—at the last minute, so that Martin had no time to refuse the money. And there was something barely noticeable but odd about his habit of closing his eyes while he waited in line. When the line stopped moving, Martin closed his eyes and smiled; then the line would inch forward, Martin with it, looking like a man refreshed. Farrokh knew what the fool was doing. Martin Mills was making sure that Jesus Christ was still in the parking lot.

Not even a mob of Indian workers returning from the Gulf could distract the former Jesuit from the lastest of his spiritual exercises. The workers were what Farrokh’s mother, Meher, used to call the Persia-returned crowd, but these workers weren’t coming from Iran; they were returning from Kuwait—their two-in-ones or their three-in-ones were blasting. In addition to their boom boxes, they carried their foam mattresses; their plastic shoulder bags were bursting with whiskey bottles and wristwatches and assorted aftershaves and pocket calculators—some had even stolen the cutlery from the plane. Sometimes the workers went to Oman—or Qatar or Dubai. In Meher’s day, the so-called Persia-returned crowd had brought back gold ingots in their hands—at least a sovereign or two. Nowadays, Farrokh guessed, they weren’t bringing home much gold. Nevertheless, they got drunk on the plane. But even as he was jostled by the most unruly of these Persia-returned people, Martin Mills kept closing his eyes and smiling; as long as Jesus was still in that parking lot, all was right with Martin’s world.

For his remaining days in Bombay, Dr. Daruwalla would regret that, when he closed his eyes, he saw no such reassuring vision; no Christ—not even a parking lot. He told Julia that he was suffering the sort of recurring dream that he hadn’t had since he’d first left India for Austria; it was a common dream among adolescents, old Lowji had told him—for one reason or another, you find yourself naked in a public place. Long ago, Farrokh’s opinionated father had offered an unlikely interpretation. “It’s a new immigrant’s dream,” Lowji had declared. Maybe it was, Farrokh now believed. He’d left India many times before, but this was the first time he would leave his birthplace with the certain knowledge that he wasn’t coming back; he’d never felt so sure.

For most of his adult life, he’d lived with the discomfort (especially in India) of feeling that he wasn’t really Indian. Now how would he feel, living in Toronto with the discomfort of knowing that he’d never truly been assimilated there? Although he was a citizen of Canada, Dr. Daruwalla knew he was no Canadian; he would never feel “assimilated.” Old Lowji’s nasty remark would haunt Farrokh forever: “Immigrants are immigrants all their lives!” Once someone makes such a negative pronouncement, you might refute it but you never forget it; some ideas are so vividly planted, they become visible objects, actual things.

For example, a racial insult—not forgetting the accompanying loss of self-esteem. Or one of those more subtle Anglo-Saxon nuances, which frequently assailed Farrokh in Canada and made him feel that he was always standing at the periphery; this could be simply a sour glance—that familiar dour expression which attended the most commonplace exchange. The way they examined the signature on your credit card, as if it couldn’t possibly comply with your signature; or when they gave you back your change, how their looks always lingered on the color of your upturned palm—it was a different color from the back of your hand. The difference was somehow greater than that difference which they took for granted—namely, between their palms and the backs of their hands. (“Immigrants are immigrants all their lives!”)

The first time he saw Suman perform the Skywalk at the Great Royal Circus, Farrokh didn’t believe she could fall; she looked perfect—she was so beautiful and her steps were so precise. Then, one time, he saw her standing in the wing of the main tent before her performance. He was surprised that she wasn’t stretching her muscles. She wasn’t even moving her feet; she stood completely still. Maybe she was concentrating, Dr. Daruwalla thought; he didn’t want her to notice him looking at her—he didn’t want to distract her.

When Suman turned to him, Farrokh realized that she really must have been concentrating because she didn’t acknowledge him and she was always very polite; she looked right past him, or through him. The fresh puja mark on her forehead was smudged. It was the slightest flaw, but when Dr. Daruwalla saw the smudge, he instantly knew that Suman was mortal. From that moment, Farrokh believed she could fall. After that, he could never relax when he saw her skywalking—she seemed unbearably vulnerable. If someone ever were to tell him that Suman had fallen and died, Dr. Daruwalla would see her lying in the dirt with her puja mark smeared. (“Immigrants are immigrants all their lives” was this kind of smudge.)

It might have helped Dr. Daruwalla if he could have left Bombay as quickly as the twins had left. But retiring movie stars and ex-missionaries can leave town faster than doctors; surgeons have their operating schedules and their recovering patients. As for screenwriters, like other writers, they have their messy little details to attend to, too.

Farrokh knew he would never talk to Madhu; at best, he might communicate with her, or learn of her condition, through Vinod or Deepa. The doctor wished the child might have had the good luck to die in the circus; the death he’d created for his Pinky character—killed by a lion who mistakes her for a peacock—was a lot quicker than the one he imagined for Madhu.

Similarly, the screenwriter entertained little hope that the real Ganesh would succeed at the circus, at least not to the degree that the fictional Ganesh succeeds. There would be no skywalking for the elephant boy, which was a pity—it was such a perfect ending. If the real cripple became a successful cook’s helper, that would be ample satisfaction for Farrokh. To this end, he wrote a friendly letter to Mr. and Mrs. Das at the Great Blue Nile; although the elephant-footed boy could never be trained as an acrobat, the doctor wanted the ringmaster and his wife to encourage Ganesh to be a good cook’s helper. Dr. Daruwalla also wrote to Mr. and Mrs. Bhagwan—the knife thrower and his wife-assistant, the skywalker. Perhaps the skywalker would be so kind as to gently disabuse the elephant boy of his silly idea that he could perform the Skywalk. Possibly Mrs. Bhagwan could show Ganesh how hard it was to skywalk. She might let the cripple try it, using the model of that ladderlike device which hung from the roof of her own troupe tent; that would show him how impossible skywalking was—it would also be a safe exercise.

As for his screenplay, Farrokh had again titled it Limo Roulette; he came back to this title because Escaping Maharashtra struck him as overoptimistic, if not wholly improbable. The screenplay had suffered from even the briefest passage of time. The horror of Acid Man, the sensationalism of the lion striking down the star of the circus (that innocent little girl)… Farrokh feared that these elements echoed a Grand Guignol drama, which he recognized as the essence of an Inspector Dhar story. Maybe the screenwriter hadn’t ventured as far from his old genre as he’d first imagined.