A Son of the Circus

“Ssshhh! This is a library,” the missionary reminded Dr. Daruwalla.

“I know it’s a library!” the doctor cried—too loudly, for they weren’t alone. At first unseen but now emerging from a pile of manuscripts was an old man who’d been sleeping in a corner chair; it was another chair on castors, for it wheeled their way. Its disagreeable rider, who’d been roused from the depths of whatever sleep his reading material had sunk him into, was wearing a Nehru jacket, which (like his hands) was gray from transmitted newsprint.

“Ssshhh!” the old reader said. Then he wheeled back into his corner of the room.

“Maybe we should find another place to discuss my conversion,” Farrokh whispered to Martin Mills.

“I’m going to fix this chair,” the Jesuit replied. Now bleeding onto the chair and the table and the pad of notepaper, Martin Mills jammed the rebellious castor into the inverted chair leg; with another dangerous-looking tool, a stubby screwdriver, he struggled to affix the castor to the chair. “So… you went to sleep… your mind an absolute blank, or so you’re telling me. And then what?”

“I dreamt I was St. Francis’s corpse …” Dr. Daruwalla began.

“Body dreams, very common,” the zealot whispered.

“Ssshhh!” said the old man in the Nehru jacket, from the corner.

“I dreamt that the crazed pilgrim was biting off my toe!” Farrokh hissed.

“You felt this?” Martin asked.

“Of course I felt it!” hissed the doctor.

“But corpses don’t feel, do they?” the scholastic said. “Oh, well… so you felt the bite, and then?”

“When I woke up, my toe was throbbing. I couldn’t stand on that foot, much less walk! And there were bite marks—not broken skin, mind you, but actual teeth marks! Those marks were real! The bite was real!” Farrokh insisted.

“Of course it was real,” the missionary said. “Something real bit you. What could it have been?”

“I was on a balcony—I was in the air!” Farrokh whispered hoarsely.

“Try to keep it down,” the Jesuit whispered. “Are you telling me that this balcony was utterly unapproachable?”

“Through locked doors… where my wife and children were asleep …” Farrokh began.

“Ah, the children!” Martin Mills cried out. “How old were they?”

“I wasn’t bitten by my own children!” Dr. Daruwalla hissed.

“Children do bite, from time to time—or as a prank,” the missionary replied. “I’ve heard that children go through actual biting ages—when they’re especially prone to bite.”

“I suppose my wife could have been hungry, too,” Farrokh said sarcastically.

“There were no trees around the balcony?” Martin Mills asked; he was now both bleeding and sweating over the stubborn chair.

“I see it coming,” Dr. Daruwalla said. “Father Julian’s monkey theory. Biting apes, swinging from vines—is that what you think?”

“The point is, you were really bitten, weren’t you?” the Jesuit asked him. “People get so confused about miracles. The miracle wasn’t that something bit you. The miracle is that you believe! Your faith is the miracle. It hardly matters that it was something… common that triggered it.”

“What happened to my toe wasn’t common!” the doctor cried.

The old reader in the Nehru jacket shot out of his corner on his chair on castors. “Ssshhh!” the old man hissed.

“Are you trying to read or trying to sleep?” the doctor shouted at the old gentleman.

“Come on—you’re disturbing him. He was here first,” Martin Mills told Dr. Daruwalla. “Look!” the scholastic said to the old man, as if the angry reader were a child. “See this chair? I’ve fixed it. Want to try it?” The missionary set the chair on all four castors and rolled it back and forth. The gentleman in the Nehru jacket eyed the zealot warily.

“He has his own chair, for God’s sake,” Farrokh said.

“Come on—give it a try!” the missionary urged the old reader.

“I have to find a telephone,” Dr. Daruwalla pleaded with the zealot. “I should make a reservation for lunch. And we should stay with the children—they’re probably bored.” But, to his dismay, the doctor saw that Martin Mills was staring up at the ceiling fan; the tangled string had caught the handyman’s eye.

“That string is annoying—if you’re trying to read,” the scholastic said. He climbed up on the oval table, which accepted his weight reluctantly.

“You’ll break the table,” the doctor warned him.

“I won’t break the table—I’m thinking of fixing the fan,” Martin Mills replied. Slowly and awkwardly, the Jesuit went from kneeling to standing.

“I can see what you’re thinking—you’re crazy!” Dr. Daruwalla said.

“Come on—you’re just angry about your miracle,” the missionary said. “I’m not trying to take your miracle away from you. I’m only trying to make you see the real miracle. It is simply that you believe—not the silly thing that made you believe. The biting was only a vehicle.”

“The biting was the miracle!” Dr. Daruwalla cried.

“No, no—that’s where you’re wrong,” Martin Mills managed to say, just before the table collapsed under him. Falling, he reached for—and fortunately missed—the fan. The gentleman in the Nehru jacket was the most astonished; when Martin Mills fell, the old reader was cautiously trying out the newly repaired chair. The collapse of the table and the missionary’s cry of alarm sent the old man scrambling. The chair leg with the freshly bored hole rejected the castor. While both the old reader and the Jesuit lay on the floor, Dr. Daruwalla was left to calm down the outraged library staffer who’d shuffled into the reading room in his slippers.

“We were just leaving,” Dr. Daruwalla told the librarian. “It’s too noisy here to concentrate on anything at all!”

Sweating and bleeding and limping, the missionary followed Farrokh down the grand staircase, under the frowning statues. To relax himself, Dr. Daruwalla was chanting, “Life imitates art. Life imitates art.”

“What’s that you say?” asked Martin Mills.

“Ssshhh!” the doctor told him. “This is a library.”

“Don’t be angry about your miracle,” the zealot said.

“It was long ago. I don’t think I believe in anything anymore,” Farrokh replied.

“Don’t say that!” the missionary cried.

“Ssshhh!” Farrokh whispered to him.

“I know, I know,” said Martin Mills. “This is a library.”

It was almost noon. Outside, in the glaring sunlight, they stared into the street without seeing the taxi that was parked at the curb. Vinod had to walk up to them; the dwarf led them to the car as if they were blind. Inside the Ambassador, the children were crying. They were sure that the circus was a myth or a hoax.

“No, no—it’s real,” Dr. Daruwalla assured them. “We’re going there, we really are—it’s just that the plane is delayed.” But what did Madhu or Ganesh know about airplanes? The doctor assumed that they’d never flown; flying would be another terror for them. And when the children saw that Martin Mills was bleeding, they were worried that there’d been some violence. “Only to a chair,” Farrokh said. He was angry at himself, for in the confusion he’d forgotten to reserve his favorite table in the Ladies’ Garden. He knew that Mr. Sethna would find a way to abuse him for this oversight.

A Misunderstanding at the Urinal

As punishment, Mr. Sethna had given the doctor’s table to Mr. and Mrs. Kohinoor and Mrs. Kohinoor’s noisy,