John Irving - A Son of the Circus

The shorthand nature of the conversation between Dr. Daruwalla and Dr. Macfarlane, in regard to Mac’s living with the AIDS virus, was a model of emotional restraint.

“How have you been doing?” Dr. Daruwalla would ask.

“Good,” Dr. Macfarlane would reply. “I’m off AZT—switched to DDI. Didn’t I tell you?”

“No—but why? Were your T cells dropping?”

“Kind of,” Mac would say. “They dropped below two hundred. I was feeling like shit on AZT, so Schwartz decided to switch me to DDI. I feel better—I’m more energetic now. And I’m taking Bactrim prophylactically… to prevent PCP pneumonia.”

“Oh,” Farrokh would say.

“It isn’t as bad as it sounds. I feel great,” Mac would say. “If the DDI stops working, there’s DDC and many more—I hope.”

“I’m glad you feel that way,” Farrokh would find himself saying.

“Meanwhile,” Macfarlane would say, “I’ve got this little game going. I sit and visualize my healthy T cells—I picture them resisting the virus. I see my T cells shooting bullets at the virus, and the virus being cut down in a hail of gunfire—that’s the idea, anyway.”

“Is that Schwartz’s idea?” Dr. Daruwalla would ask.

“No, it’s my idea!”

“It sounds like Schwartz.”

“And I go to my support group,” Mac would add. “Support groups seem to be one of the things that correlate with long-term survival.”

“Really,” Farrokh would say.

“Really,” Macfarlane would repeat. “And of course what they call taking charge of your illness—not being passive, and not necessarily accepting everything your doctor tells you.”

“Poor Schwartz,” Dr. Daruwalla would reply. “I’m glad I’m not your doctor.”

“That makes two of us,” Mac would say.

This was their two-minute drill; usually, they could cover the subject that quickly—at least they tried to. They liked to let their lunch hour be about other things: for example, Dr. Daruwalla’s sudden desire to take Dr. Macfarlane to Little India.

It had been in May when the racist goons had driven Farrokh to Little India against his will; that had also been a Friday, a day when much of Little India had appeared to be closed—or were only the butcher shops closed? Dr. Daruwalla wondered if this was because the Friday prayers were faithfully attended by the local Muslims; it was one of those things he didn’t know. Farrokh knew only that he wanted Macfarlane to see Little India, and he had this sudden feeling that he wanted all the conditions to be the same—the same weather, the same shops, the same mannequins (if not the same saris).

Doubtless, Dr. Daruwalla had been inspired by something he’d read in the newspapers, probably something about the Heritage Front. It greatly upset him to read about the Heritage Front—those neo-Nazi louts, that white supremacist scum. Since there were antihate laws in Canada, Dr. Daruwalla wondered why groups like the Heritage Front were allowed to foment so much racist hatred.

Macfarlane had no difficulty finding a place to park; as before, Little India was fairly deserted—in this respect, it wasn’t like India at all. Farrokh stopped walking in front of the Ahmad Grocers on Gerrard, at Coxwell; he pointed diagonally across the street to the boarded-up offices of the Canadian Ethnic Immigration Services—it looked closed for good, not just because it was Friday.

“This is where I was dragged out of the car,” Dr. Daruwalla explained. They continued walking on Gerrard. Pindi Embroidery was gone, but a clothes rack of kaftans stood lifelessly on the sidewalk. “There was more wind the day I was here,” Farrokh told Mac. “The kaftans were dancing in the wind.”

At the corner of Rhodes and Gerrard, Nirma Fashions was still in business. They noted the Singh Farm, advertising fresh fruits and vegetables. They viewed the façade of the United Church, which also served as the Shri Ram Hindu Temple; the Reverend Lawrence Pushee, minister of the former, had chosen an interesting theme for the coming Sunday service. A Gandhi quotation forewarned the congregation: “There is enough for everyone’s need but not enough for everyone’s greed.”

Not only the Canadian Ethnic Immigration Services, but also the Chinese were experiencing hard times; the Luck City Poultry Company was closed down. At the corner of Craven and Gerrard, the “Indian Cuisine Specialists,” formerly the Nirala restaurant, were now calling themselves Hira Moti, and the familiar advertisement for Kingfisher lager promised that the beer was (as always) INSTILLED WITH INNER STRENGTH. A MEGASTARS poster advertised the arrival of Jeetendra and Bali of Patel Rap; Sapna Mukerjee was also performing.

“I walked along here, bleeding,” Farrokh said to Mac. In the window of either Kala Kendar or Sonali’s, the same blond mannequin was wearing a sari; she still looked out of place among the other mannequins. Dr. Daruwalla thought of Nancy.

They passed Satyam, “the store for the whole family”; they read an old announcement for the Miss Diwali competition. They walked up and down and across Gerrard, with no purpose. Farrokh kept repeating the names of the places. The Kohinoor supermarket, the Madras Durbar, the Apollo Video (promising ASIAN MOVIES), the India Theater—NOW PLAYING, TAMIL MOVIES! At the Chaat Hut, Farrokh explained to Mac what was meant by “all kinds of chaats.” At the Bombay Bhel, they barely had time to eat their aloo tikki and drink their Thunderbolt beer.

Before they went back to the hospital, the doctors stopped at J. S. Addison Plumbing, at the corner of Woodfield. Dr. Daruwalla was looking for that splendid copper bathtub with the ornate faucets; the handles were tiger heads, the tigers roaring—it was exactly like the tub he’d bathed in as a boy on old Ridge Road, Malabar Hill. He’d had that bathtub on his mind ever since his last, unplanned visit to Little India. But the tub had been sold. What Farrokh found, instead, was another marvel of Victorian ornamentation. It was that same sink spout, with tusks for faucets, which had captured Rahul’s imagination in the ladies’ room of the Duckworth Club; it was that elephant-headed spigot, with the water spraying from the elephant’s trunk. Farrokh touched the two tusks, one for hot water and the other for cold. Macfarlane thought it was ghastly, but Dr. Daruwalla didn’t hesitate to buy it; it was the product of a recognizably British imagination, but it was made in India.

“Does it have a sentimental value?” Mac asked.

“Not exactly,” Farrokh replied. Dr. Daruwalla wondered what he’d do with the ugly thing; he knew Julia would absolutely hate it.

“Those men who drove you here, and left you …” Mac suddenly said.

“What about them?”

“Do you imagine that they bring other people here—like they brought you?”

“All the time,” Farrokh said. “I imagine that they’re bringing people here all the time.”

Mac thought Farrokh looked mortally depressed and told him so.

How can I ever feel assimiliated? Dr. Daruwalla wondered. “How am I supposed to feel like a Canadian?” Farrokh asked Mac.

Indeed, if one could believe the newspapers, there was a growing resistance to immigration; demographers were predicting a “racist backlash.” The resistance to immigration was racist, Dr. Daruwalla believed; the doctor had become very sensitive to the phrase “visible minorities.” He knew this didn’t mean the Italians or the Germans or the Portuguese; they’d come to Canada in the 1950s. Until the last decade, by far the greatest proportion of immigrants came from Britain.

But not now; the new immigrants came from Hong Kong and China and India—half the immigrants who’d come to Canada in this decade were Asians. In Toronto, almost 40 percent of the population was immigrant—more than a million people.