A Son of the Circus Read online

  “There is someone you resemble,” the young man told the actress. “Please come and see.” Then he’d smiled at his mother, Meher, who didn’t appear to be very happily entertained by the surly arrogance of Neville Eden, who sat to her left, or by the drunken Danny Mills, who sat to her right with his head upon his folded arms, which rested in his plate.

  “Yeah!” Gordon Hathaway said to his niece. “You oughta see the pictures of this broad, Vera. She showed her tits to everybody, too!” By this word “too,” Farrokh should have been forewarned, but he supposed Gordon meant only that Lady Duckworth exposed herself “in addition to” her other traits.

  Veronica Rose wore a sleeveless muslin dress that clung to her back where she’d sweated against her chair; her bare upper arms caused excruciating offense to the Duckworthians, and especially to the recently acquired Parsi steward, Mr. Sethna, who thought that for a woman to bare her upper arms in public was a violation of scandalous proportion—the slut might as well show her breasts, too!

  When Vera saw Lady Duckworth’s pictures, she was flattered; she lifted her damp blond hair off the back of her slender wet neck and she turned to young Farrokh, who felt an erotic flush at the sight of a rivulet of sweat that coursed from Vera’s near armpit. “Maybe I oughta wear my hair like hers,” Vera said; then she let her hair fall back in place. As Farrokh followed her to the dining room, he couldn’t help but notice—through the drenched back of her dress—that she wore no bra.

  “So how’d ya like the fuckin’ exhibitionist?” her uncle asked her upon her return to the table.

  Vera unbuttoned the front of her white muslin dress, showing her breasts to them all—Dr. Lowji Daruwalla and Mrs. Daruwalla, too. And the Lals, dining with the Bannerjees at a nearby table, certainly saw Veronica Rose’s breasts very clearly. And Mr. Sethna, so recently dismissed from the Ripon Club for attacking a crass member there with hot tea—Mr. Sethna clutched his silver serving tray, as if he thought of striking the Hollywood wench dead with it.

  “Well, whatta ya think?” Vera asked her audience. “I don’t know if she was an exhibitionist—I think she was just too fuckin’ hot!” She added that she wanted to return to the Taj, where at least there was a sea breeze. In truth, she looked forward to feeding the rats that gathered at the water’s edge beneath the Gateway of India; the rats were unafraid of people, and Vera enjoyed teasing them with expensive table scraps—the way some people enjoy feeding ducks or pigeons. Thereafter, she would go to Neville’s room and straddle him until his cock was sore.

  But in the morning, in addition to suffering the tribulation of her insomnia, Vera was sick; she was sick every morning for a week before she consulted Dr. Lowji Daruwalla, who, even though he was an orthopedist, had no trouble ascertaining that the actress was pregnant.

  “Shit,” Vera said. “I thought it was the fuckin’ curry.”

  But no; it was just the fucking. Either Danny Mills or Neville Eden was the father. Vera hoped it was Neville, because he was better-looking. She also theorized that alcoholism like Danny’s was genetic.

  “Christ, it must be Neville!” said Vera Rose. “Danny’s so pickled, I think he’s sterile.”

  Dr. Lowji Daruwalla was understandably taken aback by the crudeness of the lovely movie star, who wasn’t really a movie star and who was suddenly terrified that her uncle, the director, would discover that she was pregnant and fire her from the picture. Old Lowji pointed out to Miss Rose that she had fewer than three weeks remaining on the shooting schedule; she wouldn’t begin to look pregnant for another three months or more.

  Miss Rose then became obsessed with the question of whether or not Neville Eden would leave his wife and marry her. Dr. Lowji Daruwalla thought not, but he chose to soften the blow with an indirect remark.

  “I believe that Mr. Danny Mills would marry you,” the senior Daruwalla offered tactfully, but this truth only depressed Veronica Rose, who commenced to weep. As for weeping, it wasn’t as commonplace at the Hospital for Crippled Children as one might suppose. Dr. Lowji Daruwalla led the sobbing actress out of his office and through the waiting room, which was full of injured and crippled and deformed children; they all looked pityingly upon the crying fair-haired lady, imagining that she’d just received some awful news regarding a child of her own. In a sense, she had.

  A Slum Is Born

  At first, the news that Vera was pregnant didn’t spread far. Lowji told Meher, and Meher told Farrokh. No one else knew, and a special effort was made to keep this news from Lowji’s South Indian secretary, a brilliant young man from Madras. His name was Ranjit and he, too, had high hopes of becoming a screenwriter. Ranjit was only a few years older than Farrokh, his spoken English was impeccable, but thus far his writing had been limited to the excellent case histories of the senior Dr. Daruwalla’s patients that he composed, and to his lengthy memos to Lowji concerning what recent articles he’d read in the doctor’s orthopedic journals. These memos were written not to gain favor with old Lowji but as a means of giving the busy doctor some shorthand information regarding what he might like to read himself.

  Although he came from a Hindu family of strictly vegetarian Brahmins, Ranjit had told Lowji—in his job interview—that he was wholly without religion and that he considered caste as “largely a means to hold everyone down.” Lowji had hired the young man in an instant.

  But that had been five years ago. Although Ranjit totally pleased the senior Daruwalla as a secretary and Lowji had made every effort to further brainwash the young man in an atheistic direction, Ranjit was finding it exceedingly difficult to attract a prospective bride—or, more important, a prospective father-in-law—by the matrimonial advertisements he regularly submitted to The Times of India. He wouldn’t advertise that he was a Brahmin and a strict vegetarian, and although these things might not have mattered to him, they were of great concern to prospective fathers-in-law; it was usually the fathers-in-law, not the would-be brides, who responded to the advertisements—if anyone responded.

  And now there was bickering between old Lowji and Ranjit because Ranjit had given in. His most recent advertisement in The Times of India had drawn over 100 responses; this was because he’d presented himself as someone who cared about caste and followed a strict vegetarian diet. After all, he told Lowji, he’d been made to observe these things as a child and they hadn’t killed him. “If it helps me to get married,” Ranjit said, “sporting a fresh puja mark, so to speak, will not kill me now.”

  Lowji was crushed by this traitorousness; he’d considered Ranjit like a third son, and a cohort in atheism. Furthermore, the interviews (with over 100 prospective fathers-in-law) were having a deleterious influence on Ranjit’s efficiency; he was exhausted all the time, and no wonder—his mind was reeling with comparisons among 100 future wives.

  But even in this state of mind, Ranjit was very attentive to the office visit of the Hollywood film goddess Veronica Rose. And since it was Ranjit’s job to formally compose old Lowji’s scribbles into a proper Orthopedic Report, the young man was surprised—after Vera’s teary departure—to see that Lowji had scrawled no more than “joint problem” in the sex symbol’s file. It was highly unusual for the senior Daruwalla to escort any of his patients home, particularly following a mere office visit—and especially when there were other patients waiting to see him. Furthermore, old Dr. Daruwalla had called his own home and told his wife that he was bringing Miss Rose there. All this for a joint problem? Ranjit thought it was most irregular.

  Fortunately, the rigorous interviews that were the result of his highly successful matrimonial ads didn’t allow Ranjit much time or energy for speculation on Vera’s “joint problem.” His interest was provoked no further than to ask the senior Daruwalla what sort of joint problem the actress was suffering; Ranjit wasn’t used to typing up an incomplete Orthopedic Report.

  “Well, actually,” Lowji said, “I have referred her to another physician.”

  “Not a joint problem then?” Ranjit inquire
d. All he cared about was correctly typing the report.

  “Possibly gynecological,” Lowji answered warily.

  “What sort of joint problem did she think she had?” Ranjit asked in surprise.

  “Her knees,” Lowji said vaguely, with a dismissive wave of his hand. “But I judged this to be psychosomatic.”

  “The gynecological problem is psychosomatic, too?” Ranjit inquired. He foresaw difficult typing ahead.

  “Possibly,” Lowji said.

  “What sort of gynecological problem is it?” Ranjit persisted. At his age, and with his ambition to be a screenwriter, he was thinking that the problem was venereal.

  “Itching,” said the senior Daruwalla—and to halt the inquisition at this juncture, he wisely added, “Vaginal itching.” No young man, he knew, cared to contemplate this. The matter was closed. Ranjit’s Orthopedic Report on Veronica Rose was the closest he would ever come to writing a screenplay (many years later, the younger Dr. Daruwalla would read this report with consistent pleasure—whenever he desired to make some contact with the old days).

  The patient is confused by her knees. She imagines that she has no vaginal itching, which indeed she has, while at the same time she feels some pain in her knees, which in fact she does not have. Most naturally, a gynecologist is recommended.

  And what a gynecologist was selected for the task! Few patients would ever claim that their confidence soared when they placed themselves in the hands of the ancient, accident-prone Dr. Tata. Lowji chose him because he was so senile, he was certain to be discreet; his powers of memory were too depleted for gossip. Sadly, the selection of Dr. Tata was lacking in obstetrical merit.

  At least Lowji had the good sense to entrust his wife with the psychological care of Veronica Rose. Meher tucked the pregnant bombshell into a guest bed in the Daruwalla family mansion on old Ridge Road. Meher treated Vera like a little girl who’d just suffered a tonsillectomy. Although doubtless soothing, this mothering wouldn’t solve Vera’s problem; nor was Vera much comforted by Meher’s claim that, in her own case, she hadn’t really remembered the agony and the gore of childbirth. Over time, Meher told the knocked-up actress, only the positive parts of the experience stood out in her mind.

  To Lowji, Meher was less optimistic. “Here is a bizarre and thankless situation that you have gotten us into,” she informed her husband. Then the situation worsened.

  The next day, Gordon Hathaway called the senior Dr. Daruwalla from the slum set with the bothersome news that Veronica Rose had collapsed between takes. Actually, that was not what had happened. Vera’s so-called collapse had had nothing whatsoever to do with her unwanted pregnancy; she’d simply fainted because a cow had licked her and then sneezed on her. Not that this wasn’t disturbing to Vera, but the incident—like so many day-to-day occurrences in an actual slum—had been poorly observed and fervently misinterpreted by the horde of onlookers who reported the confused event.

  Farrokh couldn’t remember if the rudiments for a real slum existed in the area of Sophia Zuber Road in the summer of ’49; he recalled only that there was both a Muslim and a Hindu population in that vicinity, for it wasn’t far from where he’d attended school—at St. Ignatius in Mazagaon. Probably, some kind of slum was already there. And certainly today there is a slum of good size and modest respectability on Sophia Zuber Road.

  It’s fair to say that Gordon Hathaway’s movie set at least contributed to what now passes for acceptable housing in the slum on Sophia Zuber Road, for it was there that the slum set was hastily constructed. Naturally, among those hired as extras—to act the part of the slum residents—were actual citizens of Bombay who were looking for an actual slum to move into. And once they’d moved in, they objected to these movie people, who were constantly invading their privacy. Rather quickly, it had become their slum.

  Also, there was the matter of the latrine. An army of movie-crew coolies—thugs with entrenching tools—had dug the latrine. But one cannot create a new place to shit without expecting people to shit there. A universal code of defecation applies: if some people are shitting somewhere, others will shit there, too. This is only fair. Defecation in India is endlessly creative. Here was a new latrine; quickly it wasn’t new. And one mustn’t forget the intense heat before the monsoon breaks, and the ensuing floods that attend the onset of the monsoon; these factors, in addition to the sudden plenitude of human excrement, doubtless exacerbated Vera’s morning sickness—not to mention her proneness to fainting on that particular day when she was both licked and sneezed on by a cow.

  Gordon Hathaway and the film crew were shooting the scene where the abductors of the dying wife (Vera) are carrying her through the slum en route to the ashram of the snake guru. This is the moment when the idealistic Jesuit missionary, who just happens to be performing various labors of selflessness in the slum, sees the beautiful and unmistakably blond woman whisked along Sophia Zuber Road by a band of raffians unsuitable for her company. There later follows the distraught husband (Neville) and a stereotypically stupid policeman who has clumsily lost the trail. This is the first meeting between the husband and the Jesuit, but it was not the first meeting between Neville and the arrogant Indian actor Subodh Rai, who played the missionary with inappropriately secular handsomeness and cunning.

  Meanwhile, many of the new slum’s residents had been forced to move out of “their” slum in order for Gordon Hathaway to shoot this scene. Many more future residents of this new slum were crowding around, desirous to move in. Had any of these onlookers not been so transfixed by Veronica Rose, Neville and Subodh could have been observed flirting with each other off-camera; they were playfully pinching and tickling each other when Vera unaccountably found herself face-to-face with the cow.

  Cows, Vera had heard, were holy—although not to the majority of beef-eating bystanders, who were Muslims—but Vera was so shocked to see this cow, first standing in her path and then approaching her, that she took rather a long time to determine what course of action she should choose. By then, the cow’s moist breath was detectable in her cleavage; since she’d been abducted from the Taj (in the movie) in her nightgown, Vera’s cleavage was quite considerable and exposed. The cow was garlanded with flowers; brightly colored beads were strung on thongs tied around its ears. Neither the cow nor Vera seemed to know what to make of this confrontation, although Vera was certain that she didn’t want to cause some religious offense by being in the least aggressive toward the cow.

  “Oh, what pretty flowers!” she remarked. “Oh, what a nice cow!” she said to it. (Veronica Rose’s repertoire of friendly, inoffensive responses was exceedingly small.) She didn’t think she should throw her arms around the cow’s neck and kiss its long, sad face; she wasn’t sure if she should touch the cow at all. But the cow made the first move. It was simply on its way somewhere, and suddenly a film crew in general and a silly woman in particular stood in its way; therefore, it stepped slowly forward—it trod on Vera’s bare foot. Since she’d just been abducted (in the movie), her foot was bare.

  Even in great pain, Vera had such a fear of religious zealotry that she didn’t dare scream in the cow’s face, the wet muzzle of which was now pressed against her chest. Not only because of the humid weather but also because of her fear and pain, Vera was soaked with sweat; whether it was merely the salt on her fair skin, or her inviting fragrance—for doubtless Vera smelled vastly better than the other residents of Sophia Zuber Road—the cow at this moment licked her. Both the length and feel of the cow’s tongue was a new experience for Vera, who fainted when the cow violently sneezed in her face. Then the cow bent over her and licked her chest and shoulders.

  Thereafter, no one saw clearly what happened. There was demonstrable consternation for Miss Rose’s welfare, and some rioting by those onlookers who were outraged by what they’d seen; the rioters themselves were uncertain of what they’d seen. Only Vera would later conclude that the rioters had rioted on behalf of a sacred cow. Neville Eden and Subodh Rai vaguely wonde
red if Vera had fainted in response to their observed sexual interest in each other.

  By the time the Daruwallas found their way to the van, which served as Miss Rose’s makeup room and a first-aid station, the Muslim owner of a bidi shop had spread the word all along Sophia Zuber Road that a blond American movie star, naked to her waist, had licked a cow and thereby caused widespread rioting among the sensitive Hindu population. Such mischief was unnecessary; riots didn’t need reasons. If there was a reason for this one, it was probably that too many people wanted to move into the movie-set slum and they were impatient that they had to wait for the movie; they wanted to start living there immediately. But Vera, of course, would always imagine that everything had happened because of her and the cow.

  It was into the midst of this bedlam that the Daruwalla family arrived to rescue the indelicately pregnant Miss Rose. Her state of mind hadn’t been improved by the cow, but the senior Dr. Daruwalla could conclude only that Vera had a bruised and swollen right foot—and that she was still pregnant. “If Neville won’t have me, I’ll put the baby up for adoption,” Vera said. “But you’ve got to arrange it all here,” she told Lowji and Meher and Farrokh. She felt certain that her “American audience” wouldn’t sympathize with her for a child born out of wedlock; more to the point, her uncle wouldn’t use her in another picture (if he knew); worse, Danny Mills, out of a drunk’s special sentimentality, would insist on adopting the baby himself (if he knew). “This has gotta be strictly between us!” Miss Rose told the helpless Daruwallas. “Find me some fuckin’ rich people who want a white baby!”