John Irving - A Son of the Circus

“You could have an abortion,” the senior Dr. Daruwalla suggested.

“Don’t you dare mention that word to me,” said Veronica Rose. “I’m not that kind of person—I was brought up with certain moral values!”

While the Daruwallas puzzled over Vera’s “moral values,” the van was rocked violently from side to side by a rowdy mob of men and boys. Lipstick and eyeliner rolled off the shelves of the van—and powders, and moisturizers, and rouge. A jar of sterile water crashed, and one of alcohol; Farrokh caught a falling box of gauze pads, and another of Band-Aids, as his father made his way to the sliding panel door. Veronica Rose screamed so loudly that she didn’t hear what old Lowji shouted to the men outside; nor did she hear the sound of the several beatings, as various thugs among the film-crew coolies fell upon the mob with the entrenching tools they’d used to dig the not-so-new latrine. Miss Rose lay on her back, clutching the sides of her trembling cot, as small, colorful jars of this and that dropped harmlessly on her.

“Oh, I hate this country!” she yelled.

“It is merely a passing riot,” Meher assured her.

“I hate it, I hate it, I hate it!” Vera cried. “It is the most awful country in the world—I simply hate it!”

It occurred to young Farrokh to ask the actress why , then, she would ever want to leave her own baby here in Bombay, but he felt he was too ignorant of the cultural differences between Miss Rose and himself to be critical. Farrokh wished to remain forever ignorant of the differences between these movie people and himself. At 19, young men are given to moral generalizations of a sweeping kind. To hold the rest of the United States responsible for the behavior of the former Hermione Rosen was a tad severe; nevertheless, Farrokh felt himself edging away from a future residence in the United States.

In short, Veronica Rose made Farrokh feel physically ill. Surely the woman should take some responsibility for her own pregnancy. And she’d tarnished Farrokh’s sacred memory of Lady Duckworth’s exhibitionism! In legend, Lady Duckworth’s self-exposure had seemed elegant but not greatly tempting. In Farrokh’s mind, Lady Duckworth’s breasts were only a symbolic display. But, forever after, Farrokh was left with the more tangible memory of Vera’s raw tits—they were such a sincerely carnal offering.

With all this trash in his past, it’s little wonder that Farrokh was still sitting at his table in the darkening Ladies’ Garden of the Duckworth Club. In the time it had taken the younger Dr. Daruwalla to recall such a past, Mr. Sethna had provided him with another cold Kingfisher. Farrokh hadn’t touched his new beer. The faraway look in Dr. Daruwalla’s eyes was almost as distant as that gaze of death which the doctor had recently seen in the eyes of Mr. Lal, although (it’s already been said) the vultures had spoiled a clear impression.

At the Great Royal Circus, about an hour before the early-evening performance, a stooped man carrying a burning brazier would walk along the avenue of troupe tents; live coals were glowing in the brazier, and the aromatic camphor smoke drifted into the tents of the acrobats and the animal trainers. The camphor man would pause by each tent to be sure that enough smoke wafted inside. In addition to the medicinal properties attributed to camphor—it was often used as a counter-irritant for infections and in the treatment of itching—the smoke was of superstitious importance to the circus performers. They believed that inhaling camphor smoke protected them from the evil eye and the dangers of their profession—animal attacks, falling.

When Mr. Sethna saw Dr. Daruwalla close his eyes and throw back his head and draw a deep breath of the flowery air in the Ladies’ Garden, the old Parsi steward mistook the reason. Mr. Sethna wrongly assumed that Farrokh had felt an evening breeze and therefore was enjoying a sudden infusion of the scent from the surrounding bougainvillea. But Dr. Daruwalla was sniffing for the camphor man, as if the doctor’s memories of the past were in need of both a disinfectant and a blessing.

As for Vera, young Farrokh wouldn’t be a witness to the woman’s worst behavior; he would be back in school in Vienna when Veronica Rose gave birth to twins and elected to leave one of them in the city she hated—she took the other one home with her. This was a shocking decision, but Farrokh wasn’t surprised; Vera was a spur-of-the-moment sort of woman, and Farrokh had observed the monsoon months of her pregnancy—he knew the kind of insensitivity that she was capable of. In Bombay, the monsoon rains begin in mid-June and last until September. To most Bombayites, the rains are a relief from the heat, despite the blocked drains. It was only July when the shooting of the terrible film was finished and the movie rabble left Bombay—alas, leaving poor Vera behind for the remainder of the monsoon and beyond.

It was for “soul-searching” that she told them all she was staying. Neville Eden didn’t care whether she was staying or going; he’d taken Subodh Rai to Italy—a pasta diet, Neville told young Farrokh with relish, improved one’s stamina for the rigors of buggery. Gordon Hathaway was attempting to edit One Day Well Go to India, Darling in Los Angeles; despite changing its title to The Dying Wife , no amount or convolution of editing could save the picture. Every day, Gordon cursed his family for burdening him with a niece as willful and untalented as Vera.

Danny Mills was drying out in a private sanitarium in Laguna Beach, California; the sanitarium was slightly ahead of its time—it favored vigorous calisthenics in tandem with a grapefruit-and-avocado diet. Danny was also being sued by a limousine company, because Harold Rosen the producer was no longer paying for Danny’s so-called business trips. (When Danny couldn’t stand it another second in the sanitarium, he’d call a limo to drive him to L.A. and wait for him while he consumed a hearty beef-oriented dinner and two or three bottles of a good red wine; then the limo would return him to Laguna Beach, where Danny would arrive sated but with his tongue the shape and color of a raw chicken liver. Whenever he was drying out, it was red wine he craved above all else.) Danny wrote to Vera daily—staggeringly claustrophobic love letters, some of them running 20 typed pages. The gist of these letters was always the same and quite simple to understand: that Danny would “change” if Vera would marry him.

Vera, meanwhile, had made her plans, presuming the complete cooperation of the Daruwallas. She would move into hiding, with Dr. Lowji and his family, until the child was born. The prenatal care and delivery would be the responsibility of the senile friend of the senior Dr. Daruwalla, the ancient and accident-prone Dr. Tata. It was unusual for Dr. Tata to make house calls, but he agreed, given his friendship with the Daruwallas and his understanding of the extreme sensitivity ascribed to the hypochondriac movie star. This was just as well, Meher said, because Veronica Rose would not have responded confidently to the peculiar sign with large lettering that was posted outside Dr. Tata’s office building.

It was surely wise to spare Vera the knowledge that Dr. Tata found it necessary to advertise his services as “best” and “most famous,” for Vera would doubtless conclude that Dr. Tata suffered from insecurity. And so Dr. Tata made frequent house calls to the esteemed Daruwalla residence on Ridge Road; because Dr. Tata was far too old to drive a car safely, his arrivals and departures were usually marked by the presence of taxis in the Daruwallas’ driveway—except for one time when Farrokh observed Dr. Tata stumbling into the driveway from the back seat of a private car. This wouldn’t have been of special interest to the young man except that the car was driven by Promila Rai; beside her in the passenger seat was her allegedly hairless nephew, Rahul—the very boy whose sexual ambiguity so discomforted Farrokh.