John Irving - A Son of the Circus

Nancy dressed Beth’s body in the tank top that Beth had been wearing when Nancy first met her; at least it covered the drawing. She left Beth’s sacred yoni in place, at her throat, as if it might prove itself to be a more successful talisman in the next world than it had demonstrated itself to be in this.

The sun rose inland and a tan light filtered through the areca and coconut palms, leaving most of the beach in shade, which was a blessing for Nancy, who labored for over an hour with the entrenching tool; yet she managed to dig no better than a shallow pit near the tidemark for high tide. The pit was already half full of water when she dragged Dieter’s body along the beach and rolled him into the hole. By the time she’d arranged Beth’s body next to his, Nancy was aware of the blue crabs that she’d uncovered with her digging; they were scurrying to bury themselves again. She’d chosen an especially soft stretch of sand, the part of the beach that was nearest the cottage; now Nancy realized why the sand was soft. A tidal inlet cut through the beach and drained into the matted jungle; she’d dug too close to this inlet. Nancy knew the bodies wouldn’t stay buried for long.

Worse, in her haste to clean up the broken glass in the bathroom, she’d stepped on the jagged heel of the Coca-Cola bottle; several pieces of glass had broken off in her foot. She was wrong to think she’d picked all the pieces out, but she was in a hurry. She’d bled so heavily on the bathroom mat, she was forced to roll it up and put it (with the broken glass) in the grave; she buried it, together with the rest of Dieter’s and Beth’s things, including Beth’s silver bangles, which were much too small for Nancy, and Beth’s beloved copy of The Upanishads , which Nancy had no interest in reading herself.

It had surprised Nancy that digging the grave was harder work than dragging Dieter’s body to the beach; Dieter was tall, but he weighed less than she’d ever imagined. It crossed her mind that she could have left him anytime she’d wanted to; she could have picked him up and thrown him against a wall. She felt incredibly strong, but as soon as she’d filled the grave, she was exhausted.

A moment of panic nearly overcame Nancy when she discovered that she couldn’t find the top half of the silver ballpoint pen that Dieter had given her—the pen with Made in India written lengthwise on it in script. The bottom part said Made in , the missing part said India . Nancy had already discovered the flaw in the pen’s design: the pen wouldn’t snap securely together if the script wasn’t perfectly aligned; the top and the bottom were always getting separated. Nancy looked through the cottage for the missing top; she thought it unlikely that Rahul had taken it—it wasn’t the part of the pen that you could write with. Nancy had the part that wrote, and so she kept it; because it was small, it would make its way to the bottom of her rucksack. At least it was real silver.

Nancy knew her fever had finally gone because she was smart enough to take Dieter’s and Beth’s passports; she also reminded herself that their bodies would be found soon. Whoever rented the cottage to Dieter had known there were three of them. She suspected that the police would assume she’d leave by bus from Calangute or by ferry from Panjim. Nancy’s plan was remarkably clear-headed: she would place Dieter’s and Beth’s passports in a conspicuous place at the bus stand in Calangute, but she would take the ferry from Panjim to Bombay. That way, with any luck—and while she was on the ferry—the police would be looking for her in bus stations.

But Nancy would be the beneficiary of better luck than this. When the bodies were discovered, the landlord who rented the cottage to Dieter admitted that he’d seen Beth and Nancy only at a distance. Since Dieter was German, the landlord assumed the other two were Germans; also, he mistook Nancy for a man. After all, she was so big—especially beside Beth. The landlord would tell the police that they were looking for a German hippie male. When the passports were found in Calangute, the police realized that Beth had been an American; yet they persisted in their belief that the murderer was a German man, traveling by bus.

The grave wouldn’t be discovered right away; the tide eroded the sand near the inlet only a little bit at a time. It would be unclear whether the carrion birds or the pye-dogs were the first to catch wind of something; by then, Nancy was gone.

She waited only for the sun to top the palm trees and flood the beach in white light; it took just a few minutes for the sun to dry the wet sand of the grave. With a palm frond, Nancy wiped smooth the stretch of beach leading to the jungle and the cottage; then she limped on her way. It was still early morning when she left Anjuna. She deemed she’d discovered an isolated pocket of eccentrics when she saw the nude sunbathers and swimmers who were almost a tradition in the area. She’d been sick—she didn’t know.

The first day, her foot wasn’t too bad, but she had to walk all over Calangute after she placed the passports. There was no doctor staying at Meena’s or Varma’s. Someone told her that an English-speaking doctor was staying at the Concha Hotel; when she got there, the doctor had checked out. At the Concha, they told her there was an English-speaking doctor in Baga at the Hotel Bardez. The next day, when she went there, they turned her away; by then, her foot was infected.

As she emerged from her endless baths in Dr. Daruwalla’s tub, Nancy couldn’t remember if the murders were two or three days old. She did, however, remember a glaring error in her judgment. She’d already told Dr. Daruwalla that she was taking the ferry to Bombay; that was decidedly unwise. When the doctor and his wife helped her onto the table on the balcony, they mistook her silence for anxiety regarding the small surgery, but Nancy was thinking of how to rectify her mistake. She hardly flinched at the anesthetic, and while Dr. Daruwalla probed for the broken glass, Nancy calmly said, “You know, I’ve changed my mind about Bombay. I’m going south instead. I’ll take the bus from Calangute to Panjim, then I’ll take the bus to Margao. I want to go to Mysore, where they make the incense—you know? Then I want to go to Kerala. What do you think of that?” she asked the doctor. She wanted him to remember her false itinerary.

“I think you must be a very ambitious traveler!” said Dr. Daruwalla. He extracted a surprisingly big, half-moon-shaped piece of glass from her foot; it was probably a piece from the thick heel of a Coke bottle, the doctor told her. He disinfected the smaller cuts once they were free of glass fragments. He packed the larger wound with iodophor gauze. Dr. Daruwalla also gave Nancy an antibiotic that he’d brought with him to Goa for his children. She’d have to see a doctor in a few days—sooner, if there was any redness around the wound or if she had a fever.

Nancy wasn’t listening; she was worrying how she would pay him. She didn’t think it would be proper to ask the doctor to unscrew the dildo; she also didn’t think he looked strong enough. Farrokh, in his own way, was also distracted by his thoughts about the dildo.

“I can’t pay you very much,” Nancy told the doctor.

“I don’t want you to pay me at all!” Dr. Daruwalla said. He gave her his card; it was just his habit.

Nancy read the card and said, “But I told you—I’m not going to Bombay.”

“I know, but if you feel feverish or the infection worsens, you should call me—from wherever you are. Or if you see a doctor who can’t understand you, have the doctor call me,” Farrokh said.

“Thank you,” Nancy told him.