John Irving - A Son of the Circus

Vinod grew alert and edgy at this hour, as if—particularly in those little lanes in Kamathipura—he might spot a man who wasn’t entirely human. When he got tired, the dwarf dozed in his car; his car was more home to him than home, at least when Deepa was away at the circus. And when he was bored, Vinod would cruise past the transvestite brothels on Falkland Road and Grant Road. Vinod liked the hijras; they were so bold and so outrageous—they also seemed to like dwarfs. Possibly the hijras thought that dwarfs were outrageous.

Vinod was aware that some of the hijras didn’t like him; they were the ones who knew that the dwarf was Inspector Dhar’s driver—the ones who hated Inspector Dhar and the Cage-Girl Killer . Lately, Vinod had to be a little careful in the brothel area; the prostitute murders had made Dhar and Dhar’s dwarf more than a little unpopular. Thus that hour when most of the brothels “switched over” made Vinod more alert and edgy than usual.

While he cruised, the dwarf was among the first to notice what had changed about Bombay; the change was being enacted before Vinod’s very eyes. Gone was the movie poster of his most famous client, that larger-than-life image of Inspector Dhar which Vinod and all of Bombay had grown so used to—the huge hoardings, the overhead billboards that advertised Inspector Dhar and the Cage-Girl Killer . Dhar’s handsome face, albeit bleeding slightly; the torn white shirt, open to expose Dhar’s muscular chest; the pretty, ravaged young woman slung over Dhar’s strong shoulder; and, always, the blue-gray semi-automatic pistol held in Dhar’s hard right hand. In its place, everywhere in Bombay, was a brand-new poster. Vinod thought that only the semi-automatic was the same, although Inspector Dhar’s sneer was remarkably familiar. Inspector Dhar and the Towers of Silence: this time, the young woman slung over Dhar’s shoulder was noticeably dead—more noticeably, she was a Western hippie.

It was the only safe time to put the posters up; if people had been awake, they would doubtless have attacked the poster-wallas. The old posters in the brothel area had long ago been destroyed; tonight, perhaps, the prostitutes left the poster-wallas unharmed because the prostitutes were happy to see that Inspector Dhar and the Cage-Girl Killer was being replaced with a new offense—this time, to somebody else.

But, upon closer inspection, Vinod noted that not so much was different about the new poster as he’d first observed. The posture of the young woman over Dhar’s shoulder was quite the same, alive or dead; and again, albeit from a slightly different spot, Inspector Dhar’s cruel, handsome face was bleeding. The longer Vinod looked at the new poster, the more he found it to resemble the previous poster; it seemed to the dwarf that Dhar even wore the same torn shirt. This possibly explained why the dwarf had driven around Bombay for more than two hours before he’d noticed that a new Inspector Dhar film had been born into the world. Vinod couldn’t wait to see it.

The unspeakable life of the red-light district teemed all around him—the bartering and the betrayals and the frightening, unseen beatings—or so the excited dwarf imagined. About the most hopeful thing that could be said is that throughout the brothel area of Bombay, no one—truly no one—was fucking a goat.

That week between Christmas and New Year’s, when the first American missionary was due to arrive at St. Ignatius in Mazagaon, the Jesuit mission prepared a celebration in honor of 1990. St. Ignatius was a Bombay landmark; it would soon be 125 years old—in all these years, it had faithfully managed its holy and secular tasks without the assistance of an American. The management of St. Ignatius was a threesome of responsibility, and these three had been almost as successful as the Blessed Trinity. The Father Rector (Father Julian, who was 68 years old and English), the senior priest (Father Cecil, who was 72 and Indian), and Brother Gabriel (who was around 75 and had fled Spain after the Civil War) were a triumvirate of authority that was seldom questioned and never overruled; they were also unanimous in their opinion that St. Ignatius could continue to serve mankind and the heavenly kingdom without the aid of any American—yet one had been offered. To be sure, they would have preferred another Indian, or at least a European, but since these three wise men were of an average age of 71 years and eight months, they were attracted to one aspect of the “young” scholastic, as they called him. At 39, Martin Mills was no kid. Only Dr. Daruwalla would have judged “young” Martin to be unsuitably old for a man who was still in training to be a priest. That the so-called scholastic was almost 40 was at least mildly comforting to Father Julian and Father Cecil and Brother Gabriel, although they shared the conviction that the mission’s 125th jubilee was diminished by their obligation to welcome the former Californian, who was allegedly fond of Hawaiian shirts.

They knew of this laughable eccentricity from the otherwise impressive dossier of Martin Mills, whose letters of recommendation were glowing. However, the Father Rector said that when it came to Americans, one must read between the lines. For example, Father Julian pointed out, Martin Mills had evidently eschewed his native California, although nowhere in his dossier did it say so. He’d been schooled elsewhere in the United States and had taken a teaching job in Boston, which was about as far away from California as one could get. Clearly, said Father Julian, this indicated that Martin Mills had come from a troubled family. Perhaps it was his own mother or father whom he’d “eschewed.”

And along with young Martin’s unexplained attraction to the garish, which Father Julian concluded was the root cause of the scholastic’s reported fondness for Hawaiian shirts, there was mention in the dossier of Martin Mills’s success with apostolic work—even as a novice, and especially with young people. Bombay’s St. Ignatius was a good school, and Martin Mills was expected to be a good teacher; most of the students weren’t Catholics—many weren’t even Christians. “It won’t do to have a crazed American proselyte-hunting among our pupils,” the Father Rector warned, although there was no mention in the dossier of Martin Mills being either “crazed” or a proselyte-hunter.

The dossier did say that he’d undertaken a six-week pilgrimage as part of his novitiate, and that during this pilgrimage he’d spent no money—not a penny. He’d managed to find places to live and work in return for humanitarian services; these included soup kitchens for the homeless, hospitals for handicapped children, homes for the elderly, shelters for AIDS patients and a clinic for babies suffering from fetal alcohol syndrome—this was on a Native American reservation.

Brother Gabriel and Father Cecil were inclined to view Martin Mills’s dossier in a positive light. Father Julian, on the other hand, quoted from Thomas à Kempis’s Imitation of Christ: “Be rarely with young people and strangers.” The Father Rector had read through Martin Mills’s dossier as if it were a code to be deciphered. The task of teaching at St. Ignatius, and otherwise serving the mission, was a part of the typical three-year service in preparation for the priesthood; it was called regency, and it was followed by another three years of theological study. Ordination followed theology; Martin Mills would complete a fourth year of theological study after his ordination.

He’d completed the two-year Jesuit novitiate at St. Aloysius in Massachusetts, which Father Julian said was an extremist’s choice because of the reputed harshness of its winters. This suggested a proneness to self-flagellation and other chastisements of the flesh—even an inclination to fasting, which the Jesuits discouraged; they encouraged fasting only in moderation. But, once again, the Father Rector seemed to be searching through Martin Mills’s dossier for some hidden evidence of the scholastic’s flawed character. Brother Gabriel and Father Cecil pointed out to Father Julian that Martin had joined the New England Province of the Society of Jesus while he was teaching in Boston. The province’s novitiate was in Massachusetts; it was only natural for Martin Mills to have been a novice at St. Aloysius—it hadn’t really been a “choice.”