John Irving - A Son of the Circus

But why had he taught 10 years in a dismal parochial school in Boston? His dossier didn’t say that the school was “dismal”; however, it was admitted that the school was not accredited. Actually, it was a kind of reform school, where young criminals were encouraged to give up their delinquent behavior; as far as the Father Rector could tell, the means by which this was accomplished was theatrical. Martin Mills had directed plays wherein all the roles were acted by former felons and miscreants and thugs! In such an environment Martin Mills had first felt his vocation—namely, he’d felt Christ’s presence and had been drawn to the priesthood. But why did it take 10 years? Father Julian questioned. After completing his novitiate, Martin Mills was sent to Boston College to study philosophy; that met with the Father Rector’s approval. But then, in the midst of his regency, young Martin had requested a three-month “experiment” in India. Did this mean that the scholastic had suffered doubts about his vocation? Father Julian asked.

“Well, we’ll soon see,” Father Cecil said. “He seems perfectly all right to me .” Father Cecil had almost said that Martin Mills seemed perfectly “Loyola-like,” but he’d thought better of it because he knew how the Father Rector distrusted those Jesuits who too consciously patterned their behavior on the life of St. Ignatius Loyola—the founder of the Jesuit order, the Society of Jesus.

Even a pilgrimage could be a fool’s errand when undertaken by a fool. The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola is a handbook for the retreat master, not for the retreatant; it was never intended to be published, much less memorized by would-be priests—not that Martin Mills’s dossier suggested that the missionary had followed the Spiritual Exercises to such an excess. Once again, the Father Rector’s suspicion of Martin Mills’s extreme piety was intuitive. Father Julian suspected all Americans of an unflagging fanaticism, which the Father Rector believed was emboldened by a frightening reliance on self-education—or “reading on a deserted island,” as Father Julian called an American education. Father Cecil, on the other hand, was a kindly man—of that school which said Martin Mills should be given a chance to prove himself.

The senior priest chided the Father Rector for his cynicism: “You don’t know for a fact that our Martin wanted to be a novice at St. Aloysius because he sought the harshness of a New England winter.” Father Cecil further implied that Father Julian was only guessing that Martin Mills had hoped to attend St. Aloysius as a form of penitential practice, to chastise his flesh. Indeed, Father Julian was wrong. Had he known the real reason why Martin Mills wanted St. Aloysius for his novitiate, the Father Rector really would have been worried, for Martin Mills had desired to be a novice at St. Aloysius solely because of his identification with St. Aloysius Gonzaga, that avid Italian whose chastity was so fervent that he refused to look upon his own mother after taking his permanent vows.

This was Martin Mills’s favorite example of that “custody of the senses” which every Jesuit sought to attain. To Martin’s thinking, there was much to admire in the very notion of never again seeing one’s own mother. His mother, after all, was Veronica Rose, and to deny himself even a farewell glimpse of her would certainly be enhancing to his Jesuitical goal of keeping his voice, his body and his curiosity in check. Martin Mills was very much held in check, and both his pious intentions and the life that had fueled them were more fanatically shot through and through with zeal than Father Julian could have guessed.

And now Brother Gabriel—that 75-year-old icon collector—had lost the scholastic’s letter. If they didn’t know when the new missionary was arriving, how could they meet his plane?

“After all,” Father Julian said, “it seems that our Martin likes challenges.”

Father Cecil thought that this was cruel of the Father Rector. For Martin Mills to arrive in Bombay at that dead-of-night hour when the international flights landed in Sahar, and then to have to find his own way to the mission, which would be locked up and virtually impenetrable until early-morning Mass… this was worse than any pilgrimage the missionary had previously undertaken.

“After all,” Father Julian said with characteristic sarcasm, “St. Ignatius Loyola managed to find his way to Jerusalem. No one met his plane.”

It was unfair, Father Cecil thought. And so he’d called Dr. Daruwalla to ask the doctor if he knew when Martin Mills was arriving. But the senior priest had reached only the doctor’s answering machine, and Dr. Daruwalla hadn’t returned his call. And so Father Cecil prayed for Martin Mills in general. In particular, Father Cecil prayed that the missionary would not have too traumatic a first encounter upon his arrival in Bombay.

Brother Gabriel also prayed for Martin Mills in general. In particular, Brother Gabriel prayed that he might yet find the scholastic’s lost letter. But the letter was never found. Long before Dr. Daruwalla drifted into sleep, in the midst of his efforts to locate a movie star who resembled the second Mrs. Dogar, Brother Gabriel gave up looking for the letter and went to bed, where he also fell asleep. When Vinod drove Muriel home—it was while the dwarf and the exotic dancer were considering the vileness of the clientele at the Wetness Cabaret—Father Cecil stopped praying, and then fell asleep, too. And shortly after Vinod noticed that Inspector Dhar and the Towers of Silence was about to be launched upon the sleeping city, Father Julian locked the cloister gate and the school-bus gate and the gate that admitted entrance to St. Ignatius Church. And shortly after that, the Father Rector was sound asleep as well.

At approximately 2:00 in the morning—that very same hour when the poster-wallas were plastering the advertisements for the new Inspector Dhar movie all over Bombay, and when Vinod was cruising by the brothels in Kamathipura—the airplane carrying Dhar’s twin landed safely in Sahar. Dhar himself was at that moment sleeping on Dr. Daruwalla’s balcony.

However, the customs official who looked back and forth from the intense expression of the new missionary to the utterly bland passport photograph of Martin Mills was convinced that he stood face-to-face with Inspector Dhar. The Hawaiian shirt was a mild surprise, for the customs official couldn’t imagine why Dhar would attempt to conceal himself as a tourist; similarly, shaving off the identifying Dhar mustache was a lame disguise—with the upper lip exposed, something of the inimitable Dhar sneer was even more pronounced.

It was a U.S. passport— that was clever! thought the customs official—but the passport admitted that this so-called Martin Mills had been born in Bombay. The customs official pointed to this evidence in the passport; then he winked at the missionary, as a way of indicating to Inspector Dhar that this customs official was nobody’s fool.

Martin Mills was very tired; it had been a long flight, which he’d spent studying Hindi and otherwise informing himself of the particulars of “native behavior.” He knew all about the salaam, for example, but the customs official had distinctly winked at him—he had not salaamed—and Martin Mills hadn’t encountered any information regarding the wink in his reading about native behavior. The missionary didn’t wish to be impolite; therefore, he winked back, and he salaamed a little, too, just to be sure.

The customs official was very pleased with himself. He’d seen the wink in a recent Charles Bronson movie, but he was uncertain if it would be a cool thing to do to Inspector Dhar; above all, in dealing with Dhar, the customs official wanted to be perceived as cool. Unlike most Bombayites and all policemen, the customs official loved Inspector Dhar movies. So far, no customs officials had been portrayed in the films; therefore, none had been offended. And prior to his service as a customs official, he’d been rejected for police work; therefore, the constant mockery of the police—the prevalence of bribe taking, which was basic to every Inspector Dhar movie—was adored by the customs official.