John Irving - A Son of the Circus

Given the hour, Dr. Daruwalla phoned Detective Patel at home. Farrokh was thinking that there were Patels all over Gujarat; there were many Patels in Africa, too. He knew both a hotel-chain Patel and a department-store Patel in Nairobi. He was thinking he knew only one Patel who was a policeman, when—as luck would have it—Nancy answered the phone. All she said was, “Hello,” but the one word was sufficient for Farrokh to recognize her voice. Dr. Daruwalla was too confused to speak, but his silence was all the identification that Nancy needed.

“Is that the doctor?” she asked in her familiar fashion.

Dr. Daruwalla supposed it would be stupid of him to hang up, but for a moment he couldn’t imagine what else to do. He knew from the surprising experience of his long and happy marriage to Julia that there was no understanding what drew or held people together. If the doctor had known that the relationship between Nancy and Detective Patel was deeply connected to the dildo, he would have admitted that his understanding of sexual attraction and compatibility was even less than he supposed. The doctor suspected some elements of interracial interest on the part of both parties—Farrokh and Julia had surely felt this. And in the curious case of Nancy and Deputy Commissioner Patel, Dr. Daruwalla also guessed that Nancy’s bad-girl appearance possibly concealed a good-girl heart; the doctor could easily imagine that Nancy had wanted a cop. As for what had attracted the deputy commissioner to Nancy, Farrokh tended to overestimate the value of a light complexion; after all, he adored the fairness of Julia’s skin, and Julia wasn’t even a blonde. What the doctor’s research for the Inspector Dhar movies had failed to uncover was a characteristic common to many policemen—a love of confession. Poor Vijay Patel was prone to enjoy the confessing of crimes, and Nancy had held nothing back. She’d begun by handing him the dildo.

“You were right,” she’d told him. “It unscrews. Only it was sealed with wax. I didn’t know it came apart. I didn’t know what was in it. But look what I brought into the country,” she said. As Inspector Patel counted the Deutsche marks, Nancy kept talking. “There was more,” she said, “but Dieter spent some, and some of it was stolen.” After a short pause, she added, “There were two murders, but just one drawing.” Then she told him absolutely everything, beginning with the football players. People have fallen in love for stranger reasons.

Meanwhile, still waiting for the doctor’s answer on the telephone, Nancy grew impatient. “Hello?” she said. “Is anyone there? Is that the doctor? ” she repeated.

A born procrastinator, Dr. Daruwalla nevertheless knew that Nancy wouldn’t be denied; still, he didn’t like to be bullied. Countless stupid remarks came to the closet screenwriter’s mind; they were smart-ass, tough-guy wisecracks—the usual voice-over from old Inspector Dhar movies. (“Bad things had happened—worse things were happening. The woman was worth it—after all, she might know something. It was time to put all the cards on the table.”) After a career of such glibness, it was hard for Dr. Daruwalla to know what to say to Nancy. After 20 years, it was difficult to sound casual, but the doctor lamely tried.

“So—it’s you! ” he said.

On her end of the phone, Nancy just waited. It was as if she expected nothing less than a full confession. Farrokh felt he was being treated unfairly. Why should Nancy want to make him feel guilty? He should have known that Nancy’s sense of humor wasn’t easy to locate, but Dr. Daruwalla foolishly kept trying to find it.

“So—how’s the foot?” he asked her. “All better?”

The hollowness of the doctor’s dumb joke contributed to an empty sound that the receiver made against his ear, for Nancy wasn’t talking; her silence echoed, as if the phone call were transnational. Then Dr. Daruwalla heard Nancy say to someone else, “It’s him.” Her voice was indistinct, although her effort to cover the mouthpiece with her hand had been halfhearted. Farrokh couldn’t have known how 20 years had stolen the enthusiasm from many of Nancy’s efforts.

And yet, 20 years ago, she’d reintroduced herself to young Inspector Patel with admirable resolve, not only presenting the policeman with the dildo and the sordid particulars of Dieter’s crimes, but strengthening her confession with her intention to change. Nancy said she sought a life of righting wrongs, and she declared the extent of her attraction to young Patel in such graphic terms that she gave the proper policeman pause. Also, as Nancy had anticipated, she managed to give the inspector pangs of the severest desire, which he wouldn’t act upon, for he was both a highly professional detective and a gentleman—neither an oafish football player nor a jaded European. If the physical attraction that drew Nancy and Inspector Patel together was ever to be acted upon, Nancy knew that she would need to initiate the contact.

Although she trusted that, in the end, she would marry the idealistic detective, certain conditions beyond her control contributed to Nancy’s delay of the matter. For example, there was the distress caused by the disappearance of Rahul. As a most recent and eager convert to the pursuit of justice, Nancy was deeply disappointed that Rahul could not be found. The allegedly murderous zenana, who’d only briefly achieved a legendary status in the brothel area of Bombay, had vanished from Falkland Road and Grant Road and Kamathipura. Also, Inspector Patel discovered that the transvestite known as Pretty had always been an outsider; the hijras hated him—the few who knew him—and his fellow zenanas hated him, too.

Rahul had sold his services for an uncommonly high price, but what he sold was merely his appearance; his good looks, which were the result of his outstanding femininity in juxtaposition to his dominating physical size and strength, made him an attractive showpiece for any transvestite brothel. Once a customer was lured into the brothel by Rahul’s presence, the other zenanas—or the hijras—were the only transvestites who made themselves available for sexual contact. Hence there was to his nickname, Pretty, both an honest appraisal of his powers to attract and a disparagement of his character; for, by his refusal to do more than display himself, Rahul brandished a high-mindedness that insulted the transvestite prostitutes.

They could see he was indifferent to the offense he caused; he was also too big and strong and confident for them to threaten. The hijras hated him because he was a zenana; his fellow zenanas hated him because he’d told them he intended to make himself “complete.” But all the transvestite prostitutes hated Rahul because he wasn’t a prostitute.

There prevailed some nasty rumors about Rahul, although any evidence of these allegations eluded Inspector Patel. Some transvestite prostitutes claimed that Rahul frequented a female brothel in Kamathipura; it further outraged the transvestites to imagine that, when Rahul chose to advertise himself in their brothels on Falkland Road and Grant Road, he was in reality merely slumming. Also, there were ugly stories concerning how Rahul made use of the female prostitutes in Kamathipura; it was claimed that he never had sex with the girls but that he beat them. There was mention of a flexible rubber billy stick. If these rumors were true, the beaten girls would have nothing but raised red welts to show for their pain; such marks faded quickly and were thought to be insubstantial in comparison to broken bones or the deeper, darker discolorations of those bruises inflicted by a harder weapon. There was no legal recourse for the girls who might have suffered such beatings; whoever Rahul was, he was smart. Shortly after murdering Dieter and Beth, he was also out of the country.