John Irving - A Son of the Circus

As Nancy rode the Yezdi to the ferry, and to her fate, a dull but persistent pain in the big toe of his right foot awakened Dr. Daruwalla from a night of bedlam dreams and indigestion. He freed himself from the mosquito net and swung his legs from the hammock, but when he put only the slightest weight on his right foot, his big toe stabbed him with a sharp pain; for a second, he imagined he was still dreaming he was St. Francis’s body. In the early light, which was a muted brown—not unlike the color of Dr. Daruwalla’s skin—the doctor inspected his toe. The skin was unbroken, but deep bruises of a crimson and purple hue clearly indicated the bite marks. Dr. Daruwalla screamed.

“Julia! I’ve been bitten by a ghost! ” the doctor cried. His wife came running.

“What is it, Liebchen? ” she asked him.

“Look at my big toe!” the doctor demanded.

“Have you been biting yourself?” Julia asked him with unconcealed distaste.

“It’s a miracle! ” shouted Dr. Daruwalla. “It was the ghost of that crazy woman who bit St. Francis!” Farrokh shouted.

“Don’t be a blasphemer,” Julia cautioned him.

“I am being a believer —not a blasphemer!” the doctor cried. He ventured a step on his right foot, but the pain in his big toe was so wilting that he fell, screaming, to his knees.

“Hush or you’ll wake up the children—you’ll wake up everybody!” Julia scolded him.

“Praise the Lord,” Farrokh whispered, crawling back to his hammock. “I believe, God—please don’t torture me further!” He collapsed into the hammock, hugging both his arms around his chest. “What if they come for my arm?” he asked his wife.

Julia was disgusted with him. “I think it must be something you ate,” she said. “Or else you’ve been dreaming about the dildo.”

“I suppose you’ve been dreaming about it,” Farrokh said sullenly. “Here I’ve suffered some sort of conversion and you’re thinking about a big cock!”

“I’m thinking about how you’re behaving in a peculiar fashion,” Julia told him.

“But I’ve had some sort of religious experience! ” Farrokh insisted.

“I don’t see what’s religious about it,” Julia said.

“Look at my toe!” the doctor cried.

“Maybe you bit it in your sleep,” his wife suggested.

“Julia!” Dr. Daruwalla said. “I thought you were already a Christian.”

“Well, I don’t go around yelling and moaning about it,” Julia said.

John D. appeared on the balcony, never realizing that Dr. Daruwalla’s religious experience was very nearly his own experience—of another kind.

“What’s going on?” the young man asked.

“It’s apparently unsafe to sleep on the balcony,” Julia told him. “Something bit Farrokh—some kind of animal.”

“Those are human teeth marks!” the doctor declared. John D. examined the bitten toe with his usual detachment.

“Maybe it was a monkey,” he said.

Dr. Daruwalla curled himself into a ball in the hammock, deciding to give his wife and his favorite young man the silent treatment. Julia and John D. took their breakfast with the Daruwalla daughters on the patio below the balcony; at times they would raise their eyes and look up the vine in the direction where they presumed Farrokh lay sulking. They were wrong; he wasn’t sulking—he was praying. Since the doctor was inexperienced at prayer, his praying resembled an interior monologue of a fairly standard confessional kind—especially that kind which is brought on by a bad hangover.

O God! prayed Dr. Daruwalla. It isn’t necessary to take my arm—the toe convinced me. I don’t need any more convincing. You got me the first time, God . The doctor paused. Please leave the arm alone , he added.

Later, from the lobby of the Hotel Bardez, the syphilitic tea-server thought he heard voices from the Daruwallas’ second-floor balcony. Since Ali Ahmed was known to be almost entirely deaf, it was assumed that he probably always heard “voices.” But Ali Ahmed had actually heard Dr. Daruwalla praying, for by midmorning the doctor was murmuring aloud and the pitch of his prayers was precisely in a register that the syphilitic tea-server could hear.

“I am heartily sorry if I have offended Thee, God!” Dr. Daruwalla murmured intensely. “Heartily sorry—very sorry, really! I never meant to mock anybody—I was only kidding,” he confessed. “St. Francis—you, too—please forgive me!” An unusual number of dogs were barking, as if the pitch of the doctor’s prayers were precisely in a register that the dogs could hear, too. “I am a surgeon, God,” the doctor moaned. “I need my arm— both my arms!” Thus did Dr. Daruwalla refuse to leave the hammock of his miraculous conversion, while Julia and John D. spent the morning plotting how to prevent the doctor from spending another night on the balcony.

Later in the day, as his hangover abated, Farrokh regained a little of his self-confidence. He said to Julia that he thought it would be enough for him to become a Christian; he meant that perhaps it wasn’t necessary for him to become a Catholic . Did Julia think that becoming a Protestant would be good enough? Maybe an Anglican would do. By now, Julia was quite frightened by the depth and color of the bite marks on her husband’s toe; even though the skin was unbroken, she was afraid of rabies.

“Julia!” Farrokh complained. “Here I am worrying about my mortal soul, and you’re worried about rabies!”

“Lots of monkeys have rabies,” John D. offered.

“ What monkeys?” Dr. Daruwalla shouted. “I don’t see any monkeys here! Have you seen any monkeys?”

While they were arguing, they failed to notice Promila Rai and her nephew-with-breasts checking out of the hotel. They were going back to Bombay, but not tonight; Nancy was again fortunate—Rahul wouldn’t be on her ferry. Promila knew that Rahul’s holiday had been disappointing to him, and so she’d accepted an invitation for them both to spend the night at someone’s villa in Old Goa; there would be a costume party, which Rahul might find amusing.

It hadn’t been an entirely disappointing holiday for Rahul. His aunt was generous with her money, but she expected him to make his own contribution toward a much-discussed trip to London; Promila would help Rahul financially, but she wanted him to come up with some money of his own. There were several thousand Deutsche marks in Dieter’s money belt, but Rahul had been expecting more—given the quality and the amount of hashish that Dieter had told everyone he wanted to buy. Of course, there was more, much more—in the dildo.

Promila thought that her nephew was interested in art school in London. She also knew he was seeking a complete sex change, and she knew such operations were expensive; given her loathing for men, Promila was delighted with her nephew’s choice—to become her niece—but she was deluding herself if she thought that the strongest motivating factor behind Rahul’s proposed move to London was “art school.”

If the maid who cleaned Rahul’s room had looked more carefully at the discarded drawings in the wastebasket, she could have told Promila that Rahul’s talent with a pen was of a pornographic persuasion that most art schools would discourage. The self-portraits would have especially disturbed the maid, but all the discarded drawings were nothing but balled-up pieces of paper to her; she didn’t trouble herself to examine them.

They were en route to the villa in Old Goa when Promila peered into Rahul’s purse and saw Rahul’s new, curious money clip; at least he was using it as a money clip—it was really nothing but the top half of a silver pen.