A Son of the Circus Read online

  A Son of the Circus

  John Winslow Irving

  A Hindi film star… an American missionary… twins separated at birth… a dwarf chauffeur… a serial killer… all are on a collision course. In the tradition of A Prayer for Owen Meany, Irving’s characters transcend nationality. They are misfits—coming from everywhere, belonging nowhere. Set almost entirely in India, this is John Irving’s most ambitious novel and a major publishing event.

  John Irving

  A SON OF THE CIRCUS

  For Salman

  AUTHOR’S NOTES

  This novel isn’t about India. I don’t know India. I was there only once, for less than a month. When I was there, I was struck by the country’s foreignness; it remains obdurately foreign to me. But long before I went to India, I began to imagine a man who has been born there and has moved away; I imagined a character who keeps coming back again and again. He’s compelled to keep returning; yet, with each return trip, his sense of India’s foreignness only deepens. India remains unyieldingly foreign, even to him.

  My Indian friends said, “Make him an Indian—definitely an Indian but not an Indian.” They told me that everywhere he goes—including where he lives, outside India—should also strike him as foreign; the point is, he’s always the foreigner. “You just have to get the details right,” they said.

  I went to India at the request of Martin Bell and his wife, Mary Ellen Mark. Martin and Mary Ellen asked me to write a screenplay for them, about the child performers in an Indian circus. I’ve been working on that screenplay and this novel, simultaneously, for more than four years; as of this writing, I’m revising the screenplay, which is also titled A Son of the Circus, although it isn’t the same story as the novel. Probably I’ll continue to rewrite the screenplay until the film is produced—if the film is produced. Martin and Mary Ellen took me to India; in a sense, they began A Son of the Circus.

  I also owe a great deal to those Indian friends who were with me in Bombay in January of 1990—I’m thinking of Ananda Jaisingh, particularly—and to those members of the Great Royal Circus who gave me so much of their time when I was living with the circus in Junagadh. Most of all, I’m indebted to four Indian friends who’ve read and reread the manuscript; their efforts to overcome my ignorance and a multitude of errors made my writing possible. I want to acknowledge them by name; their importance to A Son of the Circus is immeasurable.

  My thanks to Dayanita Singh in New Delhi; to Farrokh Chothia in Bombay; to Dr. Abraham Verghese in El Paso, Texas; and to Rita Mathur in Toronto. I would also like to thank my friend Michael Ondaatje, who introduced me to Rohinton Mistry—it was Rohinton who introduced me to Rita. And my friend James Salter has been extremely tolerant and good-humored in allowing me to make mischievous use of several passages from his elegant novel A Sport and a Pastime. Thanks, Jim.

  As always, I have other writers to thank: my friend Peter Matthiessen, who read the earliest draft and wisely suggested surgery; my friends David Calicchio, Craig Nova, Gail Godwin and Ron Hansen (not to mention his twin brother, Rob) also suffered through earlier drafts. And I’m indebted to Ved Mehta for his advice, through correspondence.

  As usual, I have more than one doctor to thank, too. For his careful reading of the penultimate draft, my thanks to Dr. Martin Schwartz in Toronto. In addition, I’m grateful to Dr. Sherwin Nuland in Hamden, Connecticut, and to Dr. Burton Berson in New York; they provided me with the clinical studies of achondroplasia. (Since this novel was completed, the gene for achondroplasia was found; the chief research biologist of the University of California at Irvine, Dr. John J. Wasmuth, wrote to me that he wished he had read A Son of the Circus before he wrote the article describing identification of the gene for achondroplastic dwarfism—“because I would have plagiarized some of your statements.” I can only guess that my main character, the fictional Dr. Daruwalla, would have been pleased.)

  The generosity of June Callwood, and of John Flannery—the director of nursing at Casey House in Toronto—is also much appreciated. And over the four years I’ve been writing A Son of the Circus, the work of three assistants has been outstanding: Heather Cochran, Alison Rivers and Allan Reeder. But there’s only one reader who’s read, or heard aloud, every draft of this story: my wife, Janet. For, literally, the thousands of pages she’s endured—not to mention her tolerance of enforced travel—I thank her, with all my love.

  Lastly, I want to express my affection for my editor, Harvey Ginsberg, who officially retired before I handed him the 1,094-page manuscript; retired or not, Harvey edited me.

  I repeat: I don’t “know” India, and A Son of the Circus isn’t “about” India. It is, however, a novel set in India—a story about an Indian (but not an Indian), for whom India will always remain an unknown and unknowable country. If I’ve managed to get the details right, my Indian friends deserve the credit.

  —J. I.

  1. THE CROW ON THE CEILING FAN

  Blood from Dwarfs

  Usually, the dwarfs kept bringing him back—back to the circus and back to India. The doctor was familiar with the feeling of leaving Bombay “for the last time”; almost every time he left India, he vowed that he’d never come back. Then the years would pass—as a rule, not more than four or five—and once again he’d be taking the long flight from Toronto. That he was born in Bombay was not the reason; at least this was what the doctor claimed. Both his mother and father were dead; his sister lived in London, his brother in Zürich. The doctor’s wife was Austrian, and their children and grandchildren lived in England and in Canada; none of them wanted to live in India—they rarely visited the country—nor had a single one of them been born there. But the doctor was fated to go back to Bombay; he would keep returning again and again—if not forever, at least for as long as there were dwarfs in the circus.

  Achondroplastic dwarfs comprise the majority of circus clowns in India; they are the so-called circus midgets, but they’re not midgets—they’re dwarfs. Achondroplasia is the most common type of short-limbed dwarfism. An achondroplastic dwarf can be born of normal parents, but the dwarf’s children have a 50 percent chance of being dwarfs. This type of dwarfism is most often the result of a rare genetic event, a spontaneous mutation, which then becomes a dominant characteristic in the dwarf’s children. No one has discovered a genetic marker for this characteristic—and none of the best minds in genetics are bothering to search for such a marker.

  Quite possibly, only Dr. Farrokh Daruwalla had the far-fetched idea of finding a genetic marker for this type of dwarfism. By the passion of such a wishful discovery, the doctor was driven to gather samples of dwarf blood. The whimsy of his idea was plain: his dwarf-blood project was of no orthopedic interest, and he was an orthopedic surgeon; genetics was only one of his hobbies. Yet, although Farrokh’s visits to Bombay were infrequent and the duration of his stay was always short, no one in India had ever drawn blood from so many dwarfs; no one had bled as many dwarfs as Dr. Daruwalla had bled. In those Indian circuses that passed through Bombay, or in such circuses as frequented the smaller towns in Gujarat and Maharashtra, it was with affection that Farrokh was called “the vampire.”

  This is not to suggest that a physician in Dr. Daruwalla’s field in India wouldn’t stumble across a fair number of dwarfs; they suffer from chronic orthopedic problems—aching knees and ankles, not to mention low back pain. Their symptoms are progressive, according to their age and weight; as dwarfs grow older and heavier, their pain gradually radiates into the buttocks, posterior thighs and calves.

  At the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, Dr. Daruwalla saw very few dwarfs; however, at the Hospital for Crippled Children in Bombay—where, from time to time, upon his return visits, Farrokh enjoyed
the title of Honorary Consultant Surgeon—the doctor examined many dwarf patients. But these dwarfs, although they would provide Dr. Daruwalla with their family histories, would not readily give him their blood. It would have been unethical of him to draw the dwarfs’ blood against their will; the majority of orthopedic ailments afflicting achondroplastic dwarfs don’t necessitate testing their blood. Therefore, it was only fair that Farrokh would explain the scientific nature of his research project and that he would ask these dwarfs for their blood. Almost always, the dwarfs said no.

  A case in point was Dr. Daruwalla’s closest dwarf acquaintance in Bombay; in the vernacular of friendship, Farrokh and Vinod went back a long way, for the dwarf was the doctor’s most visceral connection to the circus—Vinod was the first dwarf whom Dr. Daruwalla had asked for blood. They had met in the examining room of the doctor’s office at the Hospital for Crippled Children; their conversation coincided with the religious holiday of Diwali, which had brought the Great Blue Nile Circus to Bombay for an engagement at Cross Maidan. A dwarf clown (Vinod) and his normal wife (Deepa) had brought their dwarf son (Shivaji) to the hospital to have the child’s ears examined. Vinod had never imagined that the Hospital for Crippled Children concerned itself with ears—ears weren’t a common area of orthopedic complaint—but the dwarf correctly assumed that all dwarfs were cripples.

  Yet the doctor could never persuade Vinod to believe in the genetic reasons for either his or his son’s dwarfism. That Vinod came from normal parents and was nonetheless a dwarf was not in Vinod’s view the result of a mutation. The dwarf believed his mother’s story: that, the morning after she conceived, she looked out the window and the first living thing she saw was a dwarf. That Vinod’s wife, Deepa, was a normal woman—“almost beautiful,” by Vinod’s description—didn’t prevent Vinod’s son, Shivaji, from being a dwarf. However, in Vinod’s view, this was not the result of a dominant gene, but rather the misfortune of Deepa forgetting what Vinod had told her. The morning after Deepa conceived, the first living thing she looked at was Vinod, and that was why Shivaji was also a dwarf. Vinod had told Deepa not to look at him in the morning, but she forgot.

  That Deepa was “almost beautiful” (or at least a normal woman), and yet she was married to a dwarf—this was the result of her having no dowry. She’d been sold to the Great Blue Nile Circus by her mother. And since Deepa was still very much a novice trapeze artist, she earned almost no money at all. “Only a dwarf would be marrying her,” Vinod said.

  As for their child, Shivaji, recurrent and chronic middle-ear infections are common among achondroplastic dwarfs until the age of 8 or 10; if untreated, such infections often lead to significant hearing loss. Vinod himself was half deaf. But it simply wasn’t possible for Farrokh to educate Vinod on this matter, or on other matters pertaining to the genetics of his and Shivaji’s type of dwarfism; his so-called trident hands, for example—the stubby fingers were characteristically splayed. Dr. Daruwalla also noted the dwarf’s short, broad feet and the flexed position of his elbows, which could never be fully extended; the doctor tried to make Vinod admit that, like his son’s, his fingertips reached only to his hips, his abdomen protruded and—even lying on his back—the dwarf exhibited the typical forward curvature of the spine. This lumbar lordosis and a tilted pelvis explain why all dwarfs waddle.

  “Dwarfs are just naturally waddling,” Vinod replied. He was religiously stubborn and utterly unwilling to part with as much as a single Vacutainer of his blood. There he sat on the examining table, shaking his head at Dr. Daruwalla’s theories of dwarfism.

  Vinod’s head, like the heads of all achondroplastic dwarfs, was exceedingly large. His face failed to convey a visible intelligence, unless a bulging forehead could be attributed to brain power; the midface, again typical of achondroplasia, was recessed. The cheeks and the bridge of the nose were flattened, although the tip of the nose was fleshy and upturned; the jaw protruded to such a degree that Vinod’s chin was prominent; and while his thrusting head did not communicate the greatest common sense, Vinod’s overall manner proclaimed a personality of great determination. His aggressive appearance was further enhanced by a trait common among achondroplastic dwarfs: because their tubular bones are shortened, their muscle mass is concentrated, creating an impression of considerable strength. In Vinod’s case, a life of tumbling and other acrobatics had given him especially well delineated shoulder muscles; his forearms and his biceps bulged. He was a veteran circus clown, but he looked like a miniature thug. Farrokh was a little afraid of him.

  “And just what are you wanting with my blood?” the dwarf clown asked the doctor.

  “I’m looking for that secret thing which made you a dwarf,” Dr. Daruwalla replied.

  “Being a dwarf is no secret!” Vinod argued.

  “I’m looking for something in your blood that, if I find it, will help other people not to give birth to dwarfs,” the doctor explained.

  “Why are you wanting to put an end to dwarfs?” the dwarf asked.

  “It doesn’t hurt to give blood,” Dr. Daruwalla reasoned. “The needle doesn’t hurt.”

  “All needles are hurting,” Vinod said.

  “So you’re afraid of needles?” Farrokh asked the dwarf.

  “I am just needing my blood right now,” Vinod answered.

  The almost-beautiful Deepa wouldn’t permit the doctor to prick her dwarf child with a needle, either, although both Deepa and Vinod suggested that the Great Blue Nile Circus, which was in Bombay for another week, was full of other dwarfs Who might give Dr. Daruwalla their blood. Vinod said he’d be happy to introduce the doctor to the Blue Nile’s clowns. Furthermore, Vinod advised the doctor to bribe the clowns with alcohol and tobacco, and it was at Vinod’s prompting that Farrokh revised his stated reason for wanting the dwarfs’ blood. “Tell them you are using their blood to give strength to a dying dwarf,” Vinod suggested.

  This was the way the dwarf-blood project began. It had been 15 years ago when Dr. Daruwalla drove to the circus grounds at Cross Maidan. He brought his needles, his plastic needle holders, his glass vials (or Vacutainers). To bribe the dwarfs, he brought two cases of Kingfisher lager and two cartons of Marlboro cigarettes; according to Vinod, the latter were popular among his fellow clowns because of the dwarfs’ high regard for the Marlboro Man. As it turned out, Farrokh should have left the beer at home. In the stillness of the early-evening heat, the Great Blue Nile’s clowns drank too many Kingfishers; two dwarfs fainted while the doctor was drawing their blood, which provided further evidence for Vinod that he should retain every drop of his own.

  Even poor Deepa guzzled a Kingfisher; shortly before her performance, she complained of a slight dizziness, which was exacerbated when she hung by her knees from the high trapeze. Deepa then tried swinging in a sitting position, but the heat had risen to the top of the tent and the dwarf’s wife felt that her head was trapped in the hottest possible air. She felt only a little better when she gripped the bar in both hands and swung herself with more and more force; hers was the simplest exchange for an aerialist to master, but she still hadn’t learned how to let the catcher grab her wrists before she tried to grab his. Deepa simply would release the bar when her body was parallel to the ground; then she’d throw back her head so that her shoulders dropped below the level of her feet, and the catcher would catch hold of her by her ankles. Ideally, when the catcher caught her, Deepa’s head was approximately 50 feet above the safety net, but the dwarf’s wife was a beginner and she let go of the trapeze before her body was fully extended. The catcher had to lunge for her; he was able to grab only one of her feet, and he caught her at an unfortunate angle. Deepa screamed so loudly when her hip was dislocated that the catcher thought the best thing he could do for her was to drop her into the safety net, which he did. Dr. Daruwalla had never seen a more awkward fall.

  A small, dark girl from rural Maharashtra, Deepa might have been 18 but she looked 16 to the doctor; her dwarf son, Shivaji, was not quite two. Her mot
her had sold her to the Great Blue Nile when Deepa was 11 or 12—at an age when her mother might also have been tempted to sell her to a brothel. Deepa knew she was lucky to have been sold to a circus. She was so thin that the Blue Nile had at first tried to train her as a contortionist—a so-called boneless girl, a plastic lady. But as Deepa grew older, she became too inflexible to be “boneless.” Even Vinod was of the opinion that Deepa was too old when she began her training as a flyer; most trapeze artists learn to fly when they’re children.

  The dwarf’s wife was, if not almost beautiful, at least pretty from a certain distance; her forehead was pockmarked and she bore the stigmata of rickets… frontal bossing, rachitic rosary. (It’s called a “rosary” because at every junction of rib and cartilage there’s a marblelike protuberance, like a bead.) Deepa was so small-breasted that her chest was nearly as flat as a boy’s; however, her hips were womanly, and it was partly the way the safety net sagged with her weight that made her appear to be lying facedown in the net while her pelvis was tilted up—toward the empty, swinging trapeze.

  From the way she’d fallen and was lying in the safety net, Farrokh felt almost certain that the problem was Deepa’s hip, not her neck or back. But until someone could keep her from flopping around in the net, the doctor didn’t dare go to her. Vinod had instantly crawled into the net. Now Farrokh told him to clamp Deepa’s head between his knees and hold her shoulders with his hands. Only when the dwarf securely held her—only when Deepa couldn’t move her neck or her back, or even rotate her shoulders—did Dr. Daruwalla dare to enter the net.

  In the time it had taken Vinod to crawl into the net with her, and all the time that the dwarf held his wife’s head tightly between his knees—while Dr. Daruwalla crawled into the sagging net and made his slow, awkward way toward them—the net never stopped swaying and the empty trapeze that dangled above them moved out of rhythm with the net.