A Son of the Circus

But exactly what can an orthopedist do?”

“Nothing,” Mac said. “I’m not a doctor there.”

“But of course you’re a doctor—you’re a doctor anywhere!” Farrokh cried. “There must be patients with bedsores. We know what to do with bedsores. And what about pain control?” Dr. Daruwalla was thinking of morphine, a wonderful drug; it disconnects the lungs from the brain. Wouldn’t many of the deaths in an AIDS hospice be respiratory deaths? Wouldn’t morphine be especially useful there? The respiratory distress is unchanged, but the patient is unaware of it. “And what about muscular wasting, from being bedridden?” Farrokh added. “Surely you could instruct families in passive range-of-motion exercises, or dispense tennis balls for the patients to squeeze …”

Dr. Macfarlane laughed. “The hospice has its own doctors. They’re AIDS doctors,” Macfarlane said. “I’m absolutely not a doctor there. That’s something I like about it—I’m just a volunteer.”

“What about the catheters?” Farrokh asked. “They must get blocked, the skin tunnels get inflamed …” His voice fell away; he was wondering if you could unplug them by flushing them with an anticoagulant, but Macfarlane wouldn’t let him finish the thought.

“I don’t do anything medical there,” Mac told him.

“Then what do you do?” Dr. Daruwalla asked.

“One night I did all the laundry,” Macfarlane replied. “Another night I answered the phone.”

“But anyone could do that!” Farrokh cried.

“Yes—any volunteer,” Mac agreed.

“Listen. There’s a seizure, a patient seizes from uncontrolled infection,” Dr. Daruwalla began. “What do you do? Do you give intravenous Valium?”

“I call the doctor,” Dr. Macfarlane said.

“You’re kidding me!” said Dr. Daruwalla. “And what about the feeding tubes? They slip out. Then what? Do you have your own X ray facilities or do you have to take them to a hospital?”

“I call the doctor,” Macfarlane repeated. “It’s a hospice—they’re not there to get well. One night I read aloud to someone who couldn’t sleep. Lately, I’ve been writing letters for a man who wants to contact his family and his friends—he wants to say good-bye, but he never learned how to write.”

“Incredible!” Dr. Daruwalla said.

“They come there to die, Farrokh. We try to help them control it. We can’t help them like we’re used to helping most of our patients,” Macfarlane explained.

“So you just go there, you show up,” Farrokh began. “You check in… tell someone you’ve arrived. Then what?”

“Usually a nurse tells me what to do,” Mac said.

“A nurse tells the doctor what to do!” cried Dr. Daruwalla.

“Now you’re getting it,” Dr. Macfarlane told him.

There was his home on Russell Hill Road. It was a long way from Bombay; it was a long way from Little India, too.

“Honestly, if you want to know what I think,” said Martin Mills, who’d interrupted Farrokh’s story only a half-dozen times, “I think you must drive your poor friend Macfarlane crazy. Obviously, you like him, but on whose terms? On your terms—on your heterosexual doctor terms.”

“But that’s what I am!” Dr. Daruwalla shouted. “I’m a heterosexual doctor!” Several people in the Rajkot airport looked mildly surprised.

“Three thousand, eight hundred and ninety-four,” the voice on the loudspeaker said.

“The point is, could you empathize with a raving gay man?” the missionary asked. “Not a doctor, and someone not even in the least sympathetic to your problems—someone who couldn’t care less about racism, or what happens to immigrants of color, as you say? You think you’re not homophobic, but how much could you care about someone like that?”

“Why should I care about someone like that?” Farrokh screamed.

“That’s my point about you. Do you see what I mean?” the missionary asked. “You’re a typical homophobe.”

“Three thousand, nine hundred and forty-nine,” the voice on the loudspeaker droned.

“You can’t even listen to a story,” Dr. Daruwalla told the Jesuit.

“Mercy!” said Martin Mills.

They were delayed in boarding the plane because the authorities again confiscated the scholastic’s dangerous Swiss Army knife.

“Couldn’t you have remembered to pack the damn knife in your bag?” Dr. Daruwalla asked the scholastic.

“Given the mood you’re in, I’d be foolish to answer questions of that kind,” Martin replied. When they were finally on board the aircraft, Martin said, “Look. We’re both worried about the children—I know that. But we’ve done the best we can for them.”

“Short of adopting them,” Dr. Daruwalla remarked.

“Well, we weren’t in a position to do that, were we?” the Jesuit asked. “My point is, we’ve put them in a position where at least they can help themselves.”

“Don’t make me throw up,” Farrokh said.

“They’re safer in the circus than where they were,” the zealot insisted. “In how many weeks or months would the boy have been blind? How long would it have taken the girl to contract some horrible disease—even the worst? Not to mention what she would have endured before that. Of course you’re worried. So am I. But there’s nothing more we can do.”

“Is this fatalism I hear?” Farrokh asked.

“Mercy, no!” the missionary replied. “Those children are in God’s hands—that’s what I mean.”

“I guess that’s why I’m worried,” Dr. Daruwalla replied.

“You weren’t bitten by a monkey!” Martin Mills shouted.

“I told you I wasn’t,” Farrokh said.

“You must have been bitten by a snake—a poisonous snake,” the missionary said. “Or else the Devil himself bit you.”

After almost two hours of silence—their plane had landed and Vinod’s taxi was navigating the Sunday traffic from Santa Cruz to Bombay—Martin Mills thought of something to add. “Furthermore,” the Jesuit said, “I get the feeling you’re keeping something from me. It’s as if you’re always stopping yourself—you’re always biting your tongue.”

I’m not telling you half! the doctor almost hollered. But Farrokh bit his tongue again. In the slanting light of the late afternoon, the lurid movie posters displayed the confident image of Martin Mills’s twin. Many of the posters for Inspector Dhar and the Towers of Silence were already defaced; yet through the tatters and the muck flung from the street, Dhar’s sneer seemed to be assessing them.

In reality, John D. had been rehearsing a different role, for the seduction of the second Mrs. Dogar was out of Inspector Dhar’s genre. Rahul wasn’t the usual cinema bimbo. If Dr. Daruwalla had known who’d bitten him in his hammock at the Hotel Bardez, the doctor would have agreed with Martin Mills, for Farrokh truly had been bitten by the Devil himself… by the Devil herself, the second Mrs. Dogar would prefer.

As the dwarf’s taxi came into Bombay, it was momentarily stalled near an Iranian restaurant—of a kind not quite in a class with Lucky New Moon or Light of Asia, Dr. Daruwalla was thinking. The doctor was hungry. Towering over the restaurant was a nearly destroyed Inspector Dhar poster; the movie star was ripped open from his cheek to his waist, but his sneer was undamaged. Beside the mutilated Dhar was a poster of Lord Ganesha; the elephant-headed deity might have been advertising an upcoming religious festival, but the traffic began to move before Farrokh could translate the announcement.

The god was short and fat, but surpassingly beautiful to his believers; Lord Ganesha’s elephant face was as red as a China rose and he sported the lotus smile of a perpetual daydreamer. His four human arms swarmed with bees—doubtless attracted by the perfume of the ichor flowing in his godly veins—and his three all-seeing eyes