A Son of the Circus Read online

  “Mr. Lal,” explained Detective Patel, “was engaged in swinging what I believe they call a ‘mashie,’ or is it a ‘wedgie’—what do they call the club you hit a chip shot with?” Neither Dr. Daruwalla nor Inspector Dhar was a golfer; a mashie or a wedgie sounded close enough to the real and stupid thing to them. “Well, it doesn’t matter,” the detective said. “Mr. Lal was holding one club when he was struck from behind with another—his own putter! We found it and his golf bag in the bougainvillea.”

  Inspector Dhar had assumed a familiar film pose, or else he was merely thinking; he lifted his face as his fingers lightly stroked his chin, which enhanced his sneer. What he said was something that Dr. Daruwalla and Deputy Commissioner Patel had heard him say many times before; he said it in every movie.

  “Forgive me for sounding most theoretical,” Dhar said. This favorite bit of dialogue was of that kind which Dhar preferred to deliver in English, although he’d delivered the line on more than one occasion in Hindi, too. “It seems,” Dhar said, “that the killer didn’t care especially who his victim was. Mr. Lal was not scheduled to meet anyone in the bougainvillea at the ninth green. It was an accident that he was there—the killer couldn’t have known.”

  “Very good,” said D.C.P. Patel. “Please go on.”

  “Since the killer didn’t seem to care who he killed,” Inspector Dhar said, “perhaps it was intended only that the victim be one of us.”

  “Do you mean one of the members?” cried Dr. Daruwalla. “Do you mean a Duckworthian?”

  “It’s just a theory,” said Inspector Dhar. Again, this was an echo; it was something he said in every movie.

  “There is some evidence to support your theory, Mr. Dhar,” Detective Patel said almost casually. The deputy commissioner removed his sunglasses from the breast pocket of his crisp white shirt, which showed not a trace of evidence of his latest meal; he probed deeper into the pocket and extracted a folded square of plastic wrapping, large enough to cover a wedge of tomato or a slice of onion. From the plastic he unwrapped a two-rupee note that had previously been rolled into a typewriter, for typed on the serial-number side of the bill, in capital letters, was this warning: MORE MEMBERS DIE IF DHAR REMAINS A MEMBER.

  “Forgive me, Mr. Dhar, if I ask you the obvious,” said Detective Patel.

  “Yes, I have enemies,” Dhar said, without waiting for the question, “Yes, there are people who’d like to kill me.”

  “But everyone would like to kill him!” cried Dr. Daruwalla. Then he touched the younger man’s hand. “Sorry,” he added.

  Deputy Commissioner Patel returned the two-rupee note to his pocket. As he put on his sunglasses, the detective’s pencil-thin mustache suggested to Dr. Daruwalla a punctiliousness in shaving that the doctor had abandoned in his twenties. Such a mustache, etched both below the nose and above the lip, requires a younger man’s steady hand. At his age, the deputy commissioner must have had to prop his elbow fast against the mirror, for shaving of this kind could only be accomplished by removing the razor blade from the razor and holding the blade just so. A time-consuming vanity for a man in his forties, Farrokh imagined; or maybe someone else shaved the deputy commissioner—possibly a younger woman, with an untrembling hand.

  “In summary,” the detective was saying to Dhar, “I don’t suppose you know who all your enemies are.” He didn’t wait for an answer. “I suppose we could start with all the prostitutes—not just the hijras—and most policemen.”

  “I would start with the hijras,” Farrokh broke in; he was thinking like a screenwriter again.

  “I wouldn’t,” said Detective Patel. “What do the hijras care if Dhar is or isn’t a member of this club? What they want is his penis and his testicles.”

  “You’re telling me,” said Inspector Dhar.

  “I very much doubt that the murderer is a member of this club,” said Dr. Daruwalla.

  “Don’t rule that out,” Dhar said.

  “I won’t,” said Detective Patel. He gave both Dr. Daruwalla and Inspector Dhar his card. “If you call me,” he said to Dhar, “you better call me at home—I wouldn’t leave any messages at Crime Branch Headquarters. You know all about how we policemen can’t be trusted.”

  “Yes,” the actor said. “I know.”

  “Excuse me, Detective Patel,” said Dr. Daruwalla. “Where did you find the two-rupee note?”

  “It was folded in Mr. Lal’s mouth,” the detective said.

  When the deputy commissioner had departed, the two friends sat listening to the late-afternoon sounds. They were so absorbed in their listening that they didn’t notice the prolonged departure of the second Mrs. Dogar. She left her table, then she stopped to look over her shoulder at the unresponsive Inspector Dhar, then she walked only a little farther before she stopped and looked again, then she looked again.

  Watching her, Mr. Sethna concluded that she was insane. Mr. Sethna observed every stage of the second Mrs. Dogar’s most complicated exit from the Ladies’ Garden and the dining room, but Inspector Dhar didn’t appear to see the woman at all. It interested the old steward that Mrs. Dogar had stared so exclusively at Dhar; not once had her gaze shifted to Dr. Daruwalla, and never to the policeman—but then, Detective Patel had kept his back to her.

  Mr. Sethna also watched the deputy commissioner make a phone call from the booth in the foyer. The detective was momentarily distracted by Mrs. Dogar’s agitated condition; as the woman marched to the driveway and ordered the parking-lot attendant to fetch her car, the policeman appeared to make note of her attractiveness, her haste and her expression of something like rage. Perhaps the deputy commissioner was considering whether or not this woman looked like someone who’d recently clubbed an old man to death; in truth, thought Mr. Sethna, the second Mrs. Dogar looked as if she wanted to murder someone. But Detective Patel paid only passing attention to Mrs. Dogar; he seemed more interested in his phone call.

  The apparent topic of conversation was so domestic that it surpassed even the interest of Mr. Sethna, who eavesdropped only long enough to assure himself that D.C.P. Patel was not engaged in police business. Mr. Sethna was certain that the policeman was talking to his wife.

  “No, sweetie,” said the detective, who then listened patiently to the receiver before he said, “No, I would have told you, sweetie.” Then he listened again. “Yes, of course I promise, sweetie,” he finally said. For a while, the deputy commissioner shut his eyes while he listened to the receiver; in observing him, Mr. Sethna felt extremely self-satisfied that he’d never married. “But I haven’t dismissed your theories!” Detective Patel suddenly said into the phone. “No, of course I’m not angry,” he added with resignation. “I’m sorry if I sounded angry, sweetie.”

  Not even as veteran a snoop as Mr. Sethna could stand another word; he decided to permit the policeman to continue his conversation in privacy. It was only a mild surprise to Mr. Sethna that D.C.P. Patel spoke English to his own wife. The old steward concluded that this was why the detective’s English was above average—practice. But at what a demeaning cost! Mr. Sethna returned to that part of the dining room nearest the Ladies’ Garden, and to his lengthy observation of Dr. Daruwalla and Inspector Dhar. They were still absorbed in the late-afternoon sounds. They weren’t much fun to observe, but at least they weren’t married to each other.

  The tennis balls were back in action, and someone was snoring in the reading room; the busboys, making their typical clatter, had cleared every dining table but the table where the doctor and the actor sat with their cold tea. (Detective Patel had polished off all the sweets.) The sounds of the Duckworth Club spoke distinctly for themselves: the sharp shuffling of a fresh deck of cards, the crisp contact of the snooker balls, the steady sweeping out of the dance hall—it was swept at the same time every afternoon, although there were rarely dances on weeknights. There was also a ceaseless insanity to the patter and squeak of the shoes on the polished hardwood of the badminton court; compared to the frenzy of this activity, the
dull whacking of the shuttlecock sounded like someone killing flies.

  Dr. Daruwalla believed that this wasn’t a good moment to give Inspector Dhar more bad news. The murder and the unusual death threat were quite enough for one afternoon. “Perhaps you should come home for supper,” Dr. Daruwalla said to his friend.

  “Yes, I’d like that, Farrokh,” Dhar said. Normally, he might have said something snide about Dr. Daruwalla’s use of the word “supper.” Dhar disliked too loose a use of the word; in the actor’s fussy opinion, the word should be reserved for either a light meal in the early evening or for an after-the-theater repast. In Dhar’s opinion, North Americans tended to use the word as if it were interchangeable with dinner; Farrokh felt that supper was interchangeable with dinner.

  There was something fatherly in his voice to Dhar when Dr. Daruwalla adopted a critical tone. He said to the actor, “It’s quite out of character for you to sound off in such accentless English to a total stranger.”

  “Policemen aren’t exactly strangers to me,” Dhar said. “They talk to each other but they never talk to the press.”

  “Oh, I forgot you knew everything about police business!” Farrokh said sarcastically. But Inspector Dhar was back in character; he was good at keeping quiet. Dr. Daruwalla regretted what he’d said. He’d wanted to say, Oh, dear boy, you may not be the hero of this story! Now he wanted to say, Dear boy, there are people who love you—I love you. You surely must know I do!

  But instead, Dr. Daruwalla said, “As guest chairman of the Membership Committee, I feel I must inform the committeemen of this threat to the other members. We’ll vote on it, but I feel there will be strong opinion that the other members should know.”

  “Of course they should know,” said Inspector Dhar. “And I should not remain a member,” he said.

  It was unthinkable to Dr. Daruwalla that an extortionist and a murderer could so swiftly and concretely disrupt the most cherished aspect of the character of the Duckworth Club, which (in his view) was a deep, almost remote sense of privacy, as if Duckworthians were afforded the luxury of not actually living in Bombay.

  “Dear boy,” said the doctor, “what will you do?”

  Dhar’s answer shouldn’t have surprised Dr. Daruwalla as forcefully as it did; the doctor had heard the response many times, in every Inspector Dhar movie. After all, Farrokh had written the response. “What will I do?” Dhar asked himself aloud. “Find out who it is and get them.”

  “Don’t speak to me in character!” Dr. Daruwalla said sharply. “You’re not in a movie now!”

  “I’m always in a movie,” Dhar snapped. “I was born in a movie! Then I was almost immediately put into another movie, wasn’t I?”

  Since Dr. Daruwalla and his wife thought they were the only people in Bombay who knew exactly where the younger man had come from and everything about who he was, it was the doctor’s turn to keep quiet. In our hearts, Dr. Daruwalla thought, there must abide some pity for those people who have always felt themselves to be separate from even their most familiar surroundings, those people who either are foreigners or who suffer a singular point of view that makes them feel as if they’re foreigners—even in their native lands. In our hearts, Farrokh knew, there also abides a certain suspicion that such people need to feel set apart from their society. But people who initiate their loneliness are no less lonely than those who are suddenly surprised by loneliness, nor are they undeserving of our pity—Dr. Daruwalla felt certain of that. However, the doctor was unsure if he’d been thinking of Dhar or of himself.

  Then Farrokh realized he was alone at the table; Dhar had departed as eerily as he’d arrived. The glint of Mr. Sethna’s silver serving tray caught Dr. Daruwalla’s eye, reminding him of that shiny something which the crow had held so briefly in its beak.

  The old steward reacted to Dr. Daruwalla’s recognition as if summoned. “I’ll have a Kingfisher, please,” the doctor said.

  How the Doctor’s Mind Will Wander

  The late-afternoon light cast longer and longer shadows in the Ladies’ Garden, and Dr. Daruwalla gloomily observed that the bright pink of the bougainvillea had turned a darker shade; it seemed to him that the flowers had a blood-red hue, although this was an exaggeration—quite characteristic of the creator of Inspector Dhar. In reality, the bougainvillea was as pink (and as white) as before.

  Later, Mr. Sethna grew alarmed that the doctor hadn’t touched his favorite beer.

  “Is there something wrong?” the old steward asked, his long finger indicating the Kingfisher lager.

  “No, no—it’s not the beer!” Farrokh said; he took a swallow that gave him little comfort. “The beer is fine,” he said.

  Old Mr. Sethna nodded as if he knew everything that was troubling Dr. Daruwalla; Mr. Sethna presumed to know such things routinely.

  “I know, I know,” muttered the old Parsi. “The old days are gone—it’s not like the old days.”

  Insipid truths were an area of Mr. Sethna’s expertise that Dr. Daruwalla found most irritating. The next thing you know, Farrokh thought, the tedious old fool will tell me that I’m not my esteemed late father. Truly, the steward seemed on the verge of making another observation when an unpleasant sound came from the dining room; it reached Mr. Sethna and Dr. Daruwalla in the Ladies’ Garden with the crass, attention-getting quality of a man cracking his knuckles.

  Mr. Sethna went to investigate. Without moving from his chair, Farrokh already knew what was making the sound. It was the ceiling fan, the one the crow had landed on and used as a shitting platform. Perhaps the crow had bent the blade of the fan, or else the bird had knocked a screw loose; maybe the fan was operated by ball bearings running in a groove, and one of these was out of position, or if there was a ball-and-socket joint, it needed grease. The ceiling fan appeared to catch on something; it clicked as it turned. It faltered; it almost stopped but it kept turning. With each revolution, there was a snapping sound, as if the mechanism were about to grind to a halt.

  Mr. Sethna stood under the fan, staring stupidly up at it. He probably doesn’t remember the shitting crow, Dr. Daruwalla thought. The doctor was readying himself to take charge of the situation when the unpleasant noise simply stopped. The ceiling fan turned freely, as before. Mr. Sethna looked all around, as if he weren’t sure how he’d arrived at this spot in the dining room. Then the steward’s gaze fixed upon the Ladies’ Garden, where Farrokh was still sitting. He’s not the man his father was, the old Parsi thought.

  4. THE OLD DAYS

  The Bully

  Dr. Lowji Daruwalla took a personal interest in the crippling conditions affecting children. As a child, he’d developed tuberculosis of the spine. Although he recovered sufficiently to become India’s most famous pioneer in orthopedic surgery, he always said it was his own experience with spinal deformity—the fatigue and the pain imposed on him—that made his commitment to the care of cripples so steadfast and long-enduring. “A personal injustice is stronger motivation than any instinct for philanthropy,” Lowji said. He tended to speak in statements. As an adult, he would forever be recognized by the telltale gibbousness of Pott’s disease. All his life, Lowji was as humpbacked as a small, upright camel.

  Is it any wonder that his son Farrokh felt inferior to such a commitment? He would enter his father’s field, but only as a follower; he would continue to pay his respects to India, but he’d always feel he was a mere visitor. Education and travel can be humbling; the younger Dr. Daruwalla took naturally to feelings of intellectual inferiority. Possibly Farrokh too simplistically attributed his alienation to the one conviction in his life that was as paralyzing as his conversion to Christianity: that he was utterly without a sense of place, that he was a man without a country, that there was nowhere he could go where he felt he belonged—except the circus and the Duckworth Club.

  But what can be said about a man who keeps his needs and his obsessions largely to himself? When a man expresses what he’s afraid of, his fears and longings undergo revision i
n the telling and retelling—friends and family have their own ways of altering the material—and soon the so-called fears and longings become almost comfortable with overuse. But Dr. Daruwalla held his feelings inside himself. Not even his wife knew how out of it the doctor felt in Bombay—and how could she, if he wouldn’t tell her? Since Julia was Viennese, however little Dr. Daruwalla knew about India, he knew more than she did. And “at home” in Toronto, Farrokh allowed Julia to be the authority; she was the boss there. This was an easy privilege for the doctor to extend to his wife because she believed that he was in charge in Bombay. For so many years now, he’d got away with this.

  Of course his wife knew about the screenplays—but only that he wrote them, not what he truly felt about them. Farrokh was careful to speak lightly of them to Julia. He was quite good at mocking them; after all, they were a joke to everyone else—it was easy for Farrokh to convince his wife that the Inspector Dhar movies were just a joke to him. More important, Julia knew how much Dhar (the dear boy) meant to him. So what if she had no idea how much the screenplays meant to Farrokh, too? And so these things, because they were so deeply concealed, were more important to Dr. Daruwalla than they should have been.

  As for Farrokh’s not belonging, surely the same could never be said of his father. Old Lowji liked to complain about India, and the nature of his complaints was often puerile. His medical colleagues chided him for his intrepid criticism of India; it was fortunate for his patients, they said, that his surgical procedures were more careful—and more accurate. But if Lowji was off-the-wall about his own country, at least it was his own country, Farrokh thought.

  A founder of the Hospital for Crippled Children in Bombay and the chairman of India’s first Infantile Paralysis Commission, the senior Daruwalla published monographs on polio and various bone diseases that were the best of his day. A master surgeon, he perfected procedures for the correction of deformities, such as clubfoot, spinal curvature and wryneck. A superb linguist, he read the work of Little in English, of Stromeyer in German, of Guerin and Bouvier in French. An outspoken atheist, Lowji Daruwalla nevertheless persuaded the Jesuits to establish clinics, both in Bombay and in Poona, for the study and treatment of scoliosis, paralysis due to birth injuries, and poliomyelitis. It was largely Muslim money that he secured to pay for a visiting roentgenologist at the Hospital for Crippled Children; it was wealthy Hindus he hit on for the research and treatment programs he initiated for arthritis. Lowji even wrote a sympathy letter to U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, an Episcopalian, mentioning the number of Indians who suffered from the president’s condition; he received a polite reply and a personal check.