A Son of the Circus

FORTY YEARS OF FREEDOM

Dr. Daruwalla quickly calculated that the plane had first been put in service in India in 1987. Where it had flown before then was anybody’s guess.

Their departure was further delayed by the need of the petty officials to confiscate Martin Mills’s Swiss Army knife—a potential terrorist’s tool. The pilot would carry the “weapon” in his pocket and hand it over to Martin in Rajkot.

“Well, I suppose I’ll never see it again,” the missionary said; he didn’t say this stoically, but more like a martyr.

Farrokh wasted no time in teasing him. “It can’t matter to you,” the doctor told him. “You’ve taken a vow of poverty, haven’t you?”

“I know what you think about my vows,” Martin replied. “You think that, because I’ve accepted poverty, I must have no fondness for material things. This shirt, for example—my knife, my books. And you think that, because I’ve accepted chastity, I must be free of sexual desire. Well, I’ll tell you: I resisted the commitment to become a priest not only because of how much I did like my few things, but also because I imagined I was in love. For ten years, I was smitten. I not only suffered from sexual desire; I’d embraced a sexual obsession. There was absolutely no getting this person out of my mind. Does this surprise you?”

“Yes, it does,” Dr. Daruwalla admitted humbly. He was also afraid of what the lunatic might confess in front of the children, but Ganesh and Madhu were too enthralled with the airplane’s preparations for takeoff to pay the slightest attention to the Jesuit’s confession.

“I continued to teach at this wretched school—the students were delinquents, not scholars—and all because I had to test myself,” Martin Mills told Dr. Daruwalla. “The object of my desire was there. Were I to leave, to run away, I would never have known if I had the strength to resist such a temptation. And so I stayed. I forced myself into the closest possible proximity to this person, only to see if I had the courage to withstand such an attraction. But I know what you think of priestly denial. You think that priests are people who simply don’t feel these ordinary desires, or who feel them less strongly than you do.”

“I’m not judging you!” said Dr. Daruwalla.

“Yes you are,” Martin replied. “You think you know all about me.”

“This person that you were in love with …” the doctor began.

“It was another teacher at the school,” the missionary answered. “I was crippled by desire. But I kept the object of my desire this close to me!” And here the zealot held his hand in front of his face. “Eventually, the attraction lessened.”

“Lessened?” Farrokh repeated.

“Either the attraction went away or I overcame it,” said Martin Mills. “Finally, I won.”

“What did you win?” Farrokh asked.

“Not freedom from desire,” the would-be priest declared. “It is more like freedom from the fear of desire. Now I know I can resist it.”

“But what about her?” Dr. Daruwalla asked.

“Her?” said Martin Mills.

“I mean, what were her feelings for you?” the doctor asked him. “Did she even know how you felt about her?”

“Him,” the missionary replied. “It was a he, not a she. Does that surprise you?”

“Yes, it does,” the doctor lied. What surprised him was how unsurprised he was by the Jesuit’s confession. The doctor was upset without understanding why; Farrokh felt greatly disturbed, without knowing the reason.

But the plane was taxiing, and even its lumbering movement on the runway was sufficient to panic Madhu; she’d been sitting across the aisle from Dr. Daruwalla and the missionary—now she wanted to move over and sit with the doctor. Ganesh was happily ensconced in the window seat. Awkwardly, Martin Mills changed places with Madhu; the Jesuit sat with the enraptured boy, and the child prostitute slipped into the aisle seat next to Farrokh.

“Don’t be frightened,” the doctor told her.

“I don’t want to go to the circus,” the girl said; she stared down the aisle, refusing to look out the windows. She wasn’t alone in her inexperience; half the passengers appeared to be flying for the first time. One hand reached to adjust the flow of air; then 35 other hands were reaching. Despite the repeated announcement that carry-on baggage be stowed under the seats, the passengers insisted on piling their heavy bags on what the flight attendant kept calling the hat rack, although there were few hats on board. Perhaps the fault lay with the long delay, but there were many flies on board; they were treated with a vast indifference by the otherwise excited passengers. Someone was already vomiting, and they hadn’t even taken off. At last, they took off.

The elephant boy believed he could fly. His animation appeared to be lifting the plane. The little beggar will ride a lion if they tell him to; he’ll wrestle a tiger, Dr. Daruwalla thought. How suddenly the doctor felt afraid for the cripple! Ganesh would climb to the top of the tent—the full 80 feet. Probably in compensation for his useless foot, the boy’s hands and arms were exceptionally strong. What instincts will protect him? the doctor wondered, while in his arms he felt Madhu tremble; she was moaning. In her slight bosom, the beating of her heart throbbed against Farrokh’s chest.

“If we crash, do we burn or fly apart in little pieces?” the girl asked him, her mouth against his throat.

“We won’t crash, Madhu,” he told her.

“You don’t know,” she replied. “At the circus, I could be eaten by a wild animal or I could fall. And what if they can’t train me or if they beat me?”

“Listen to me,” said Dr. Daruwalla. He was a father again. He remembered his daughters—their nightmares, their scrapes and bruises and their worst days at school. Their awful first boyfriends, who were beyond redemption. But the consequences for the crying girl in his arms were greater. “Try to look at it this way,” the doctor said. “You are escaping.” But he could say no more; he knew only what she was escaping—not what she was fleeing to. Out of the jaws of one kind of death, into the jaws of another… I hope not, was all the doctor thought.

“Something will get me,” Madhu replied. With her hot, shallow breathing against his neck, Farrokh instantly knew why Martin Mills’s admission of homosexual desire had distressed him. If Dhar’s twin was fighting against his sexual inclination, what was John D. doing?

Dr. Duncan Frasier had convinced Dr. Daruwalla that homosexuality was more a matter of biology than of conditioning. Frasier had once told Farrokh that there was a 52 percent chance that the identical twin of a gay male would also be gay. Furthermore, Farrokh’s friend and colleague Dr. Macfarlane had convinced him that homosexuality was immutable. (“If homosexuality is a learned behavior, how come it can’t be unlearned?” Mac had said.)

But what upset Dr. Daruwalla was not the doctor’s sudden conviction that John D. must also be a homosexual; rather, it was all the years of John D.’s aloofness and the remoteness of his Swiss life. Neville, not Danny, must have been the twins’ father, after all! And what does it say about me that John D. wouldn’t tell me? the doctor wondered.

Instinctively (as if she were his beloved John D.), Farrokh hugged the girl. Later, he supposed that Madhu only did as she’d been taught to do; she hugged him back, but in an inappropriately wriggling fashion. It shocked him; he pulled away from her when she began to kiss his throat.

“No, please …” he began to say.

Then the missionary spoke to him. Clearly, the elephant boy’s delight with flying had delighted Martin Mills. “Look at him! I’ll bet he’d try to walk on the wing, if we told him it was safe!” the zealot said.

“Yes, I’ll bet he would,” said Dr. Daruwalla, whose gaze never left Madhu’s face. The fear and confusion of the child prostitute were a mirror of Farrokh’s feelings.

“What do you want?” the girl whispered to him.

“No, it’s not what you think… I want you to escape,” the doctor told her. The concept meant nothing to her; she didn’t respond. She continued to stare at him; in her eyes, trust still lingered with her confusion. At the bloodred edge of her lips, the unnatural redness once more overflowed her mouth; Madhu