John Irving - A Son of the Circus

A car was passing; it threatened to break the spell that the doctor was under, for Dr. Daruwalla was halfway around the world from the corner of Lonsdale and Russell Hill Road. “Go home!” someone shouted to him from the window of the passing car.

It was an irony that the doctor didn’t hear this, for he was in a position to inform the person that going home was easier said than done. More sounds, torn from the window of the moving car, were muffled by the snow—receding laughter, possibly a racial slur. But Dr. Daruwalla heard none of it. His eyes had risen from the Christmas tree in the window; at first he’d blinked at the falling snow, but then he allowed his eyes to close—the snow coolly covered his eyelids.

Farrokh saw the elephant-footed boy in his singlet with the blue-green sequins—as the little beggar was never dressed in real life. Farrokh saw Ganesh descending in the spotlight, twirling down—the cripple’s teeth clamped tightly on the dental trapeze. This was the completion of another successful Skywalk, which in reality had never happened and never would. The real cripple was dead; it was only in the retired screenwriter’s mind that Ganesh was a skywalker. Probably the movie would never be made. Yet, in his mind’s eye, Farrokh saw the elephant boy walk without a limp across the sky. To Dr. Daruwalla, this existed; it was as real as the India the doctor thought he’d left behind. Now he saw that he was destined to see Bombay again. Farrokh knew there was no escaping Maharashtra, which was no circus.

That was when he knew he was going back—again and again, he would keep returning. It was India that kept bringing him back; this time, the dwarfs would have nothing to do with it. Farrokh knew this as distinctly as he could hear the applause for the skywalker. Dr. Daruwalla heard them clapping as the elephant boy descended on the dental trapeze; the doctor could hear them cheering for the cripple.

Julia, who’d stopped the car and was waiting for her distracted husband, honked the horn. But Dr. Daruwalla didn’t hear her. Farrokh was listening to the applause—he was still at the circus.

Published by Ballantine Books:

Until I Find You

The Fourth Hand

My Movie Business

A Widow for One Year

Trying to Save Piggy Sneed

A Son of the Circus

A Prayer for Owen Meany

The Cider House Rules

The Hotel New Hampshire

The World According to Garp

The 158-Pound Marriage

The Water-Method Man

Setting Free the Bears

The Cider House Rules

A Ballantine Book

Published by The Random House Publishing Group

Copyright © 1994 by Garp Enterprises, Ltd.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an inprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to North Point Press, a division of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, for permission to reprint excerpts from A Sport and a Pastime by James Salter. Copyright © 1967 by James Salter. Reprinted by permission of North Point Press, a division of Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

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Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 93-44750

eISBN: 978-0-307-42393-1

This edition published by arrangement with Random House, Inc.

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