A Son of the Circus

Arif always said, “She looks young enough to me.”

So it was doubly embarrassing, in the Ritz dining room, when Martin’s mother said to Arif, “I’m frightfully uninterested in details. I challenge you to make the difference between an embassy and a consulate interesting—I give you one minute.” Martin knew that Arif must have known that the “frightfully” and the “I challenge you” had come from the moisturizer commercial.

In the roommates’ secret language, Martin Mills suddenly said, “Frightfully.” He thought Arif would understand; Martin was indicating that his own mother merited an “F” word. But Arif was taking Vera seriously.

“An embassy is entrusted with a mission to a government and is headed by an ambassador,” the Turk explained. “A consulate is the official premises of a consul, who is simply an official appointed by the government of one country to look after its commercial interests and the welfare of its citizens in another country. My father is the consul general in New York—New York being a place of commercial importance. A consul general is a consular officer of the highest rank, in charge of lower-ranking consular agents.”

“That took just thirty seconds,” Martin Mills informed his mother, but Vera was paying no attention to the time.

“Tell me about Turkey,” she said to Arif. “You have thirty seconds.”

“Turkish is the mother tongue of more than ninety percent of the population, and we are more than ninety- nine percent Muslims.” Here Arif Koma paused, for Vera had shivered—the word “Muslims” made her shiver every time. “Ethnically, we are a melting pot,” the boy continued. “Turks may be blond and blue-eyed; we may be of Alpine stock—that is, round-headed with dark hair and dark eyes. We may be of Mediterranean stock, dark, but long-headed. We may be Mongoloid, with high cheekbones.”

“What are you?” Vera interrupted.

“That was only twenty seconds,” Martin pointed out, but it was as if he weren’t there at the dinner table with them; just the two of them were talking.

“I’m mostly Mediterranean,” Arif guessed. “But my cheekbones are a little Mongoloid.”

“I don’t think so,” Vera told him. “And where do your eyelashes come from?”

“From my mother,” Arif replied shyly.

“What a lucky mother,” said Veronica Rose.

“Who’s going to have what?” asked Martin Mills; he was the only one looking at the menu. “I think I’m going to have the turkey.”

“You must have some strange customs,” Vera said to Arif. “Tell me something strange—I mean, sexually.”

“Marriage is permitted between close kin—under the incest rules of Islam,” Arif answered.

“Something stranger,” Vera demanded.

“Boys are circumcised at any age from about six to twelve,” Arif said; his dark eyes were downcast, roaming the menu.

“How old were you?” Vera asked him.

“It’s a public ceremony,” the boy mumbled. “I was ten.”

“So you must remember it very clearly,” Vera said.

“I think I’ll have the turkey, too,” Arif said to Martin.

“What do you remember about it, Arif?” Vera asked him.

“How you behave during the operation reflects on your family’s reputation,” Arif replied, but as he spoke he looked at his roommate—not at his roommate’s mother.

“And how did you behave?” Vera asked.

“I didn’t cry—it would have dishonored my family,” the boy told her. “I’ll have the turkey,” he repeated.

“Didn’t you two have turkey two days ago?” Vera asked them. “Don’t have the turkey again—how boring! Have something different!”

“Okay—I’ll have the lobster,” Arif replied.

“That’s a good choice—I’ll have the lobster, too,” Vera said. “What are you having, Martin?”

“I’ll take the turkey,” said Martin Mills. The sudden strength of his own will surprised him; in the power of his will there was already something Jesuitical.

This particular recollection gave the missionary the strength to return his attention to The Times of India, wherein he read about a family of 14 who’d been burned alive; their house had been set on fire by a rival family. Martin Mills wondered what a “rival family” was; then he prayed for the 14 souls who’d been burned alive.

Brother Gabriel, who’d been awakened by roosting pigeons, could see the light shining under Martin’s door. Another of Brother Gabriel’s myriad responsibilities at St. Ignatius was to foil the pigeons in their efforts to roost at the mission; the old Spaniard could detect pigeons roosting in his sleep. The many columns of the second-floor outdoor balcony afforded the pigeons almost unlimited access to the overhanging cornices. One by one, Brother Gabriel had fenced in the cornices with wire. After he’d shooed away these particular pigeons, he left the stepladder leaning against the column; that way, he would know which cornice to re-enclose with wire in the morning.

When Brother Gabriel passed by Martin Mills’s cubicle again, on his way back to bed, the new missionary’s light was still on. Pausing by the cubicle door, Brother Gabriel listened; he feared that “young” Martin might be ill. But to his surprise and eternal comfort, Brother Gabriel heard Martin Mills praying. Such late-night litanies suggested to Brother Gabriel that the new missionary was a man very strongly in God’s clutches; yet the Spaniard was sure he’d misunderstood what he heard of the prayer. It must be the American accent, old Brother Gabriel thought, for although the tone of voice and the repetition was very much in the nature of a prayer, the words made no sense at all.

To remind himself of the power of his will, which surely was evidence of God’s will within him, Martin Mills was repeating and repeating that long-ago proof of his inner courage. “I’ll take the turkey,” the missionary was saying. “I’ll take the turkey,” he said again. He knelt on the stone floor beside his cot, clutching the rolled-up copy of The Times of India in his hands.

A prostitute had tried to eat his culpa beads, then she’d thrown them away; a dwarf had his whip; he’d rashly told Dr. Daruwalla to dispose of his leg iron. It would take a while for the stone floor to hurt his knees, but Martin Mills would wait for the pain—worse, he would welcome it. “I’ll take the turkey,” he prayed. He saw so clearly how Arif Koma was unable to raise his dark eyes to meet Vera’s fixed stare, which so steadily scrutinized the circumcised Turk.

“It must have been frightfully painful,” Vera was saying. “And you honestly didn’t cry?”

“It would have dishonored my family,” Arif said again. Martin Mills could tell that his roommate was about to cry; he’d seen Arif cry before. Vera could tell, too.

“But it’s all right to cry now,” she was saying to the boy. Arif shook his head, but the tears were coming. Vera used her handkerchief to pat Arif’s eyes. For a while, Arif completely covered his face with Vera’s handkerchief; it was a strongly scented handkerchief, Martin Mills knew. His mother’s scent could sometimes make him gag.

“I’ll take the turkey, I’ll take the turkey, I’ll take the turkey,” the missionary prayed. It was such a steady- sounding prayer, Brother Gabriel decided; oddly, it reminded him of the pigeons, maniacally roosting on the cornices.

Two Different Men, Both Wide Awake

It was a different issue of The Times of India that Dr. Daruwalla was reading—it was the current day’s issue. If the sleeplessness of this night seemed full of the torments of hell for Martin Mills, Dr. Daruwalla was exhilarated to feel so wide awake. Farrokh was merely using The Times of India, which he hated, as a means to energize himself. Nothing enlivened him with such loathing as reading the review of a new Inspector Dhar film. USUAL INSPECTOR DHAR IDIOM, the headline said. Farrokh found this typically infuriating. The reviewer was the sort of cultural commissar who’d never stoop to say a single favorable word about any Inspector Dhar film. That dog turd which had prevented Dr.