John Irving - A Son of the Circus

It had been an unbeatable tactic. Invite the man to grab one racquet handle, then break his wrist with the other handle. The hell with a man’s head—Vinod often couldn’t reach a man’s head, anyway. A broken wrist usually stopped a fight; if a fool wanted to keep fighting, he would be fighting with one hand against two squash-racquet handles. If the film press had turned the dwarf into a bodyguard and a thug, Vinod didn’t mind. He was genuinely protective of Inspector Dhar.

Mr. Sethna disapproved of such violence, and of the Sport Shop racquet stringers who happily provided Vinod with his arsenal of squash-racquet handles. The ball boys also gave the dwarf dozens of discarded tennis balls. In the car-driving business, as Vinod described it, there was a lot of “just waiting” in his car. The former clown and acrobat liked to keep busy. By squeezing the dead tennis balls, Vinod strengthened his hands; the dwarf also claimed that this exercise relieved his arthritis, although Dr. Daruwalla believed that aspirin was probably a more reliable source of relief.

It had occurred to Mr. Sethna that Dr. Daruwalla’s longstanding relationship with Vinod was probably the reason the doctor didn’t drive a car; it had been years since Farrokh had even owned a car in Bombay. The dwarf’s reputation as Dhar’s driver tended to obscure, for most observers, the fact that Vinod also drove for Dr. Daruwalla. It spooked Mr. Sethna how the doctor and the dwarf seemed so aware of each other-even as the dwarf loaded up his car with squash-racquet handles and old tennis balls, even as the doctor went on sitting in the Ladies’ Garden. It was as if Farrokh always knew that Vinod was available—as if the dwarf were waiting only for him. Well, either for him or for Dhar.

It now occurred to Mr. Sethna that Dr. Daruwalla was intending to occupy his luncheon table through the dinner hours; perhaps the doctor was expecting dinner guests and had decided it was the simplest way to hold the table. But when the old steward inquired of Dr. Daruwalla about the number of place settings, Mr. Sethna was informed that the doctor was going home for “supper.” Promptly, as if he’d been awakened from a dream, Farrokh got up to leave.

Mr. Sethna observed and overheard him calling his wife from the telephone in the foyer.

“Nein, Liebchen,” said Dr. Daruwalla. “I have not told him—there wasn’t a good moment to tell him.” Then Mr. Sethna listened to Dr. Daruwalla on the subject of the murder of Mr. Lal. So it is a murder! Mr. Sethna thought. Bonked by his own putter! And when he heard the part about the two-rupee note in Mr. Lal’s mouth, and specifically the intriguing threat that was connected to Inspector Dhar—MORE MEMBERS DIE IF DHAR REMAINS A MEMBER—Mr. Sethna felt that his eavesdropping efforts had been rewarded, at least for this day.

Then something mildly remarkable happened. Dr. Daruwalla hung up the phone and turned into the foyer without first looking-where he was going, and who should he run smack into but the second Mrs. Dogar. The doctor bumped into her so hard, Mr. Sethna was excited by the possibility that the vulgar woman would be knocked down. But instead it was Farrokh who fell. More astonishing, upon the collision, Mrs. Dogar was shoved backward into Mr . Dogar—and he fell down, too. What a fool for marrying such a younger, stronger woman! Mr. Sethna thought. Then there was the usual bowing and apologizing, and everyone assured everyone else that he or she was absolutely fine. Sometimes the absurdities of good manners, which were demonstrated in such profusion at the Duckworth Club, gave Mr. Sethna gas.

Thus, finally, Farrokh escaped from the old steward’s overseeing eye. But while he waited for Vinod to fetch the car, Dr. Daruwalla—unobserved by Mr. Sethna—touched the sore spot in his ribs, where there would surely be a bruise, and he marveled at the hardness and sturdiness of the second Mrs. Dogar. It was like running into a stone wall!

It crossed the doctor’s mind that Mrs. Dogar was sufficiently masculine to be a hijra—not a hijra prostitute, of course, but just an ordinary eunuch-transvestite. In which case Mrs. Dogar might not have been eyeballing Inspector Dhar for the purpose of seducing him; instead, she might have had it in her mind to castrate him!

Farrokh felt ashamed of himself for thinking like a screenwriter again. How many Kingfishers have I had? he wondered; it relieved him to hold the beer accountable for his far-fetched fantasizing. In truth, he knew nothing about Mrs. Dogar—where she’d come from—but hijras occupied such a marginal position in Indian society; the doctor was aware that most of them came from the lower classes. Whoever she was, the second Mrs. Dogar was an upper-class woman. And Mr . Dogar—although he was a foolish old fart, in Farrokh’s opinion—was a Malabar Hill man; he came from old money, and lots of it. Nor was Mr. Dogar such a fool that he wouldn’t know the difference between a vagina and a burn scar from the famous hijra hot-oil treatment.

While he waited for Vinod, Dr. Daruwalla watched the second Mrs. Dogar help Mr. Dogar into their car. She towered over the poor parking-lot attendant, who sheepishly opened the driver’s-side door for her. Farrokh was unsurprised to see that Mrs. Dogar was the driver in the family. He’d heard all about her fitness training, which he knew included weight lifting and other unfeminine pursuits. Perhaps she takes testosterone, too, the doctor imagined, for the second Mrs. Dogar looked as if her sex hormones were raging—her male sex hormones, Dr. Daruwalla speculated. He’d heard that such women sometimes develop a clitoris as large as a finger, as long as a young boy’s penis!

When either too much Kingfisher or his run-amuck imagination caused Dr. Daruwalla to speculate in this fashion, the doctor was grateful that he was merely an orthopedic surgeon. He truly didn’t want to know too much about these other things. Yet Farrokh had to force himself from further contemplation, for he found that he was wondering what would be worse: that the second Mrs. Dogar sought to emasculate Inspector Dhar, or that she was in amorous pursuit of the handsome actor— and that she possessed a clitoris of an altogether unseemly size.

Dr. Daruwalla was in such a transfixed state of mind, he didn’t notice that Vinod had one-handedly wheeled into the circular driveway of the Duckworth Club and was, with his other hand, belatedly applying the brakes. The dwarf nearly ran the doctor down. At least this served to take Dr. Daruwalla’s mind off the second Mrs. Dogar. If only for the moment, Farrokh forgot her.

The better of the dwarf’s two taxis—of those two that were equipped with hand controls—was in the shop. “The carburetor is being revised,” Vinod explained. Since Dr. Daruwalla had no idea how one accomplished a carburetor revision, he didn’t press the dwarf for details. They departed the Duckworth Club in Vinod’s decaying Ambassador, which was the off-white color of a pearl—like graying teeth, Farrokh reflected. Also, its hand control for acceleration was inclined to stick.

Nevertheless, Dr. Daruwalla abruptly asked the dwarf to drive him past his father’s former house on old Ridge Road, Malabar Hill; this was doubtless because Farrokh had his father and Malabar Hill on his mind. Farrokh and Jamshed had sold the house shortly after their father’s murder—when Meher had decided to live out the rest of her life in the company of her children and her grandchildren, all of whom had already chosen not to live in India. Dr. Daruwalla’s mother would die in Toronto, in the doctor’s guest bedroom. Meher’s death, in her sleep—when it had snowed all night—was as peaceful as the bombing of old Lowji had been violent.