John Irving - A Son of the Circus

But his conclusion depressed him. In the search for something to occupy his untapped creativity, the doctor had already accepted a compromise—before he’d even begun! This thought moved him to consider consoling himself with his wife’s affections. But gazing again to the distant balcony didn’t bring the doctor any closer to Julia, and Dr. Daruwalla doubted that imbibing feni and beer was a wise prelude to an amorous adventure—especially in such abiding heat. Something Mr. Salter had written appeared to shimmer over Dr. Daruwalla in the midday inferno: “The more clearly one sees this world, the more one is obliged to pretend it does not exist.” There is a growing list of things I don’t know, the doctor thought.

He didn’t know, for example, the name of the thick vine that had crawled upward from the ground to embrace both the second- and the third-floor balconies of the Hotel Bardez. The vine was put to active use by the small striped squirrels that scurried over it; at night, the geckos raced up and down the vine with far greater speed and agility than any squirrel. When the sun shone against this wall of the hotel, the smallest, palest-pink flowers opened up along the vine, but Dr. Daruwalla didn’t know that these flowers were not what attracted the finches to the vine. Finches are seed eaters, but Dr. Daruwalla didn’t know this, nor did the doctor know that the green parrot perching on the vine had feet with two toes pointing forward and two backward. These were the details he missed, and they contributed to the growing list of things he didn’t know. This was the kind of Everyman he was—a little lost, a little misinformed (or uninformed), almost everywhere he ever was. Yet, even overfed, the doctor was undeniably attractive. Not every Everyman is attractive.

Dr. Daruwalla grew so drowsy at the littered table, one of the Bardez servant boys suggested he move into a new hammock that was strung in the shade of the areca and coconut palms. Complaining to the boy that he feared the hammock was too near the main beach and he’d be bothered by sand fleas, the doctor nevertheless tested the hammock; Farrokh wasn’t sure it would support his weight. But the hammock held. For the moment, the doctor detected no sand fleas. Therefore, he was obliged to give the boy a tip.

This boy, Punkaj, seemed employed solely for the purpose of tipping, for the messages that he delivered to the Hotel Bardez and the adjacent lean- to restaurant and taverna were usually of his own invention and wholly unnecessary. For example, Punkaj asked Dr. Daruwalla if he should run to the hotel and tell “the Mrs. Doctor” that the doctor was napping in a hammock near the beach. Dr. Daruwalla said no. But in a short while, Punkaj was back beside the hammock. He reported: “The Mrs. Doctor is reading what I think is a book.”

“Go away, Punkaj,” said Dr. Daruwalla, but he tipped the worthless boy nonetheless. Then the doctor lay wondering if his wife was reading the Trollope or rereading the Salter.

Considering the size of his lunch, Farrokh was fortunate that he was able to sleep at all. The strenuousness of his digestive system made a sound sleep impossible, but throughout the grumbling and rumbling of his stomach—and the occasional hiccup or belch—the doctor fitfully dozed and dreamed, and woke up all of a sudden to wonder if his daughters were drowned or suffering from sunstroke or sexual attack. Then he dozed off again.

As Farrokh fell in and out of sleep, the imagined details of Rahul Rai’s complete sex change appeared and disappeared in his mind’s eye, drifting in and out of consciousness like the fumes from the distilling feni. This exotic aberration clashed with Farrokh’s fairly ordinary ideals: his belief in the purity of his daughters, his fidelity to his wife. Only slightly less common was Dr. Daruwalla’s vision of John D., which was simply the doctor’s desire to see the young man rise above the sordid circumstances of his birth and abandonment. And if I could only play a part in that , Dr. Daruwalla dreamed, I might one day be as creative as Mr. James Salter.

But John D.’s only visible qualities were of a fleeting and superficial nature; he was arrestingly handsome, and he was so steadfastly self-confident that his poise concealed his lack of other qualities—sadly, the doctor presumed that John D. lacked other qualities. In this belief, Farrokh was aware that he relied too heavily on his brother’s estimation and his sister-in-law’s confirmation, for both Jamshed and Josefine were chronically worried that the boy had no future. He was “uninvolved” with his studies, they said. But couldn’t this be an early indication of thespian detachment?

Yes, why not? John D. could be a movie star! Dr. Daruwalla decided, forgetting that this notion had originated with his wife. It suddenly seemed to the doctor that John D. was destined to be a movie star, or else he would be nothing. It was Farrokh’s first realization that a hint of despair can start the creative juices flowing. And it must have been these juices, in combination with the more scientifically supported juices of digestion, that got the doctor’s imagination going.

But, just then, a belch so alarming he failed to recognize it as his own awakened Dr. Daruwalla from these imaginings; he shifted in his hammock in order to confirm that his daughters had not been violated by either the forces of nature or the hand of man. Then he fell asleep with his mouth open, the splayed fingers of one hand lolling in the sand.

Dreamlessly, the noonday passed. The beach began to cool. A slight breeze rose; it softly gave sway to the hammock where Dr. Daruwalla lay digesting. Something had left a sour taste in his mouth—the doctor suspected the vindaloo fish or the beer—and he felt flatulent. Farrokh opened his eyes slightly to see if anyone was near his hammock—in which case it would be impolite for him to fart—and there was that pest Punkaj, the worthless servant boy.

“She come back,” Punkaj said.

“Go away, Punkaj,” said Dr. Daruwalla.

“She looking for you—that hippie with her bad foot,” the boy said. He pronounced the word “heepee,” so that Dr. Daruwalla, in his digestive daze, still didn’t understand.

“Go away, Punkaj!” the doctor repeated. Then he saw the young woman limping toward him.

“Is that him? Is that the doctor?” she asked Punkaj.

“You wait there! I ask doctor first!” the boy said to her. At a glance, she could have been 18 or 25, but she was a big-boned young woman, broad-shouldered and heavy-breasted and thick through her hips. She also had thick ankles and very strong-looking hands, and she lifted the boy off the ground—holding him by the front of his shirt—and threw him on his back in the sand.

“Go fuck yourself,” she told him. Punkaj picked himself up and ran toward the hotel. Farrokh swung his legs unsteadily out of the hammock and faced her. When he stood up, he was surprised at how much the late-afternoon breeze had cooled the sand; he was also surprised that the young woman was so much taller than he was. He quickly bent down to put on his sandals; that was when he saw she was barefoot—and that one foot was nearly twice the size of the other. While the doctor was still down on one knee, the young woman rotated her swollen foot and showed him the filthy, inflamed sole.

“I stepped on some glass,” she said slowly. “I thought I picked it all out, but I guess not.”

He took her foot in his hand and felt her lean heavily on his shoulder for balance. There were several small lacerations, all closed and red and puckered with infection, and on the ball of her foot was a fiery swelling the size of an egg; in its center was an inch-long, oozing gash that was scabbed over.