John Irving - A Son of the Circus

Nancy could hear Dieter in the bathroom, looking for the dildo in the semidarkness. She heard a bottle break against the stone floor. Dieter must have placed the bottle precariously on the edge of the tub; not much moonlight penetrated the bathroom, and he probably needed to search for the dildo with both hands. Briefly, Dieter cursed; he must have cursed in German because Nancy didn’t catch the word.

Beth called out to Dieter—she’d obviously forgotten that Nancy was supposed to be sleeping. “Did you break your Coke, Dieter?” Beth called; her own question dissolved her into mindless giggles—Dieter was addicted to Coca-Cola.

“Ssshhh!” Dieter said from the bathroom.

“Ssshhh!” Beth repeated; she made a failed effort to stifle her laughter.

The next sound that Nancy heard was one she’d been fearing, but she’d been unable to find her voice—to warn Dieter that someone else was here. She heard what she was sure was the entrenching tool, the spade end, as it made full-force contact with what sounded like the base of Dieter’s skull. A metallic after-ring followed the blow, but surprisingly little noise attended Dieter falling. Then there was the second sound of violent contact, almost as if a spade or a heavy shovel had been swung against the trunk of a tree. Nancy realized that Beth hadn’t heard this because Beth was sucking on the ganja pipe as if the fire had died in the bowl and she was trying to revive it.

Nancy lay very still, holding the jasmine-scented sari in her arms. The spectral figure with the small, upright breasts and the little boy’s penis passed close to Nancy’s bed without a sound. It was no wonder that Rahul was called Pretty, Nancy thought.

“Beth!” Nancy tried to say, but once again her voice had abandoned her.

From the other side of the partition, a sudden light came through the latticework in patches; the shadows of the startled rats were cast upon the ceiling. Nancy could see through the latticing. Beth had completely opened the mosquito net in order to light an oil lamp; she was looking for more ganja for the pipe when the naked tea-colored body appeared beside her bed. Rahul’s big hands held the entrenching tool with the handle nestled in the delicate curve of the small of his back, the spade end concealed between his shoulder blades.

“Hi,” Rahul said to Beth.

“Hi. Who are you?” Beth said. Then Beth managed a gasp, which caused Nancy to stop looking through the space between the latticework. Nancy lay on her back with the jasmine-scented sari covering her face; she didn’t want to look at the ceiling, either, because she knew that the shadows of the rats would be twitching there.

“Hey, like, what are you?” she heard Beth say. “Are you a boy or a girl?”

“I’m pretty, aren’t I?” Rahul said.

“You sure are… different,” Beth replied.

From the responding sound of the entrenching tool, Nancy guessed that Rahul was displeased to be called “different.” Rahul’s preferred nickname was “Pretty.” Nancy pushed the jasmine-scented sari entirely off the bed and outside the mosquito net. She hoped it fell to the floor very close to where Rahul had left it. Then she lay with her eyes open, staring at the ceiling, where the shadows of the rats scurried back and forth; it was almost as if the second and third blows from the entrenching tool were a kind of starting signal for the rats.

Later, Nancy quietly rolled on her side so that she could peek through the latticing and watch what Rahul was doing; he appeared to be performing a kind of surgery on Beth’s stomach, but Nancy soon realized that Rahul was drawing a picture on Beth’s belly. Nancy shut her eyes and wished that her fever would come back; even though she wasn’t feverish, she was so frightened that she began to shiver. It was the shivers that saved her. When Rahul came to her, Nancy’s teeth were chattering as uncontrollably as before. Instantly, she felt his lack of sexual interest; he was mocking her, or merely curious.

“Is that bad old fever back again?” Rahul asked her.

“I keep dreaming,” Nancy told him.

“Yes, of course you do, dear,” Rahul said.

“I keep trying to sleep but I keep dreaming,” Nancy said.

“Are they bad dreams?” Rahul asked her.

“Pretty bad,” Nancy said.

“Do you want to tell me about them, dear?” Rahul asked her.

“I just want to sleep,” Nancy told him. To her surprise, he let her. He parted the mosquito net and sat on the bed beside her; he rubbed her between her shoulder blades until the shivers went away and she could imitate the regular breathing of a deep sleep—she even parted her lips and tried to imagine that she was already dead. He kissed her once on the temple, and once on the tip of her nose. At last, she felt Rahul’s weight leave the bed. She also felt the entrenching tool, when Rahul gently returned it to her hands. Although she never heard a door open or close, she knew Rahul was gone when she heard the rats racing recklessly through the cottage; they even scampered under the mosquito net and across her bed, as if they were secure in their belief that there were three dead people in the cottage instead of two. That was when Nancy knew it was safe to get up. If Rahul had still been there, the rats would have known.

In the predawn light, Nancy saw that Rahul had used the dhobi pen—and indelible dhobi ink—to decorate Beth’s belly. The laundry-marking pen was a crude wooden handle with a simple, broad nib; the ink was black. Rahul had left the ink bottle and the dhobi pen on Nancy’s pillow. Nancy recalled that she’d picked up the ink bottle and the dhobi pen before putting them both back on her bed; her fingerprints were also all over the handle of the entrenching tool.

She’d become ill so soon upon her arrival; yet it was Nancy’s strong impression that this was a rustic sort of place. She doubted she’d have much success convincing the local police that a beautiful woman with a little boy’s penis had murdered Dieter and Beth. And Rahul had been smart enough not to empty Dieter’s money belt; he’d taken the money belt with him. There was no evidence of robbery. Beth’s jewelry was untouched, and there was even some money in Dieter’s wallet; their passports weren’t stolen. Nancy knew that most of the money was in the dildo, which she didn’t even try to open because Dieter had bled on it and it was sticky to touch. She wiped it with a wet towel; then she packed it in the rucksack with her things.

She thought Inspector Patel would believe her, provided she could get back to Bombay without the local police finding her first. On the surface, Nancy thought, it would be judged a crime of passion—one of those triangular relationships that had turned a little twisted. And the drawing on Beth’s belly gave the murders a hint of diabolism, or at least a flair for sarcasm. The elephant was surprisingly small and unadorned—a frontal view. The head was wider than it was long, the eyes were unmatched and one was squinting—actually, one eye seemed puckered, Nancy thought. The trunk hung slack, pointing straight down; from the end of the trunk, the artist had drawn several broad lines in the shape of a fan—a childish indication that water sprayed from the elephant’s trunk, as from a showerhead or from the nozzle of a hose. These lines extended into Beth’s pubic hair. The entire drawing was the size of a small hand.

Then Nancy realized why the drawing was slightly off center, and why one eye seemed “puckered.” One of the eyes was Beth’s navel, outlined in dhobi ink; the other eye was an imperfect imitation of the navel. Because the navel had real depth, the eyes weren’t the same; one eye appeared to be winking. Beth’s navel was the winking eye. What further contributed to the elephant’s mirthful or mocking expression was that one of its tusks drooped in the normal position; the opposing tusk was raised, almost as if an elephant could lift a tusk in the manner that a human being can cock an eyebrow. This was a small, ironical elephant—an elephant with an inappropriate sense of humor, to be sure.