A Son of the Circus

you lost your bananas? Are you marbles?” the director shouted.

The screenwriter tried to correct the director’s difficulties with English. “The phrases are, ‘Have you lost your marbles?’ and ‘Are you bananas?’—I believe,” Dr. Daruwalla told him.

“That’s what I said!” Gupta shouted; like most directors, Balraj Gupta was always right. The doctor hung up the phone and packed his screenplay. Limo Roulette was the first thing Farrokh put in his suitcase; then he covered it with his Toronto clothes.

Just India

Vinod drove Dr. and Mrs. Daruwalla to the airport; the dwarf wept the whole way to Sahar, and Farrokh was afraid they’d have an accident. The thug driver had lost Inspector Dhar as a client; now, in addition to this tragedy, Vinod was losing his personal physician. It was shortly before midnight on a Monday evening; as if symbolic of Dhar’s last film, the poster-wallas were already covering over some of the advertisements for Inspector Dhar and the Towers of Silence. The new posters weren’t advertising a movie; they were proclamations of a different kind—celebratory announcements of Anti-Leprosy Day. That would be tomorrow, Tuesday, January 30. Julia and Farrokh would be leaving India on Anti-Leprosy Day at 2:50 A.M. on Air India 185. Bombay to Delhi, Delhi to London, London to Toronto (but you don’t have to change planes). The Daruwallas would break up the long flight by staying a few nights in London.

In the intervening time since Dhar and his twin had departed for Switzerland, Dr. Daruwalla was disappointed to have heard so little from them. At first, Farrokh had worried that they were angry with him, or that their meeting had not gone well. Then a postcard came from the Upper Engadine: a cross-country skier, a Langlaufer, is crossing a frozen white lake; the lake is rimmed with mountains, the sky cloudless and blue. The message, in John D.’s handwriting, was familiar to Farrokh because it was another of Inspector Dhar’s repeated lines. In the movies, after the cool detective has slept with a new woman, something always interrupts them; they never have time to talk. Perhaps a gunfight breaks out, possibly a villain sets fire to their hotel (or their bed). In the ensuing and breathless action, Inspector Dhar and his lover have scarcely a moment to exchange pleasantries; they’re usually fighting for their lives. But then there comes the inevitable break in the action—a brief pause before the grenade assault. The audience, already loathing him, is anticipating Dhar’s signature remark to his lover. “By the way,” he tells her, “thanks.” That was John D.’s message on the postcard from the Upper Engadine.

By the way, thanks

Julia told Farrokh it was a touching message, because both twins had signed the postcard. She said it was what newlyweds did with Christmas cards and birthday greetings, but Dr. Daruwalla said (in his experience) it was what people did in doctors’ offices when there was a group gift; the receptionist signed it, the secretaries signed it, the nurses signed it, the other surgeons signed it. What was so special or “touching” about that? John D. always signed his name as just plain “D.” In unfamiliar handwriting, on the same postcard, was the name “Martin.” So they were somewhere in the mountains. Farrokh hoped that John D. wasn’t trying to teach his fool twin how to ski!

“At least they’re together, and they appreciate it,” Julia told him, but Farrokh wanted more. It almost killed him not to know every line of the dialogue between them.

When the Daruwallas arrived at the airport, Vinod weepingly handed the doctor a present. “Maybe you are never seeing me again,” the dwarf said. As for the present, it was heavy and hard and rectangular; Vinod had wrapped it in newspapers. Through his sniffles, the dwarf managed to say that Farrokh was not to open the present until he was on the plane.

Later, the doctor would think that this was probably what terrorists said to unsuspecting passengers to whom they’d handed a bomb; just then the metal detector sounded, and Dr. Daruwalla was quickly surrounded by frightened men with guns. They asked him what was wrapped up in the newspapers. What could he tell them? A present from a dwarf? They made the doctor unwrap the newspapers while they stood at some distance; they looked less ready to shoot than to flee—to “abscond,” as The Times of India would report the incident. But there was no incident.

Inside the newspapers was a brass plaque, a big brass sign; Dr. Daruwalla recognized it immediately. Vinod had removed the offensive message from the elevator of Farrokh’s apartment building on Marine Drive.

SERVANTS ARE NOT ALLOWED

TO USE THE LIFT

UNLESS ACCOMPANIED BY CHILDREN

Julia told Farrokh that Vinod’s gift was “touching,” but although the security officers were relieved, they questioned the doctor about the source of the sign. They wanted to be sure that it hadn’t been stolen from an historically protected building—that it was stolen from somewhere else didn’t trouble them. Perhaps they didn’t like the message any better than Farrokh and Vinod had liked it.

“A souvenir,” Dr. Daruwalla assured them. To the doctor’s surprise, the security officers let him keep the sign. It was cumbersome to carry it on board the plane, and even in first class the flight attendants were bitchy about stowing it out of everyone’s way. First they made him unwrap it (again); then he was left with the unwanted newspapers.

“Remind me never to fly Air India,” the doctor complained to his wife; he announced this loudly enough for the nearest flight attendant to hear him.

“I remind you every time,” Julia replied, also loudly enough. To any fellow first-class passenger overhearing them, they might have seemed the epitome of a wealthy couple who commonly abuse those lesser people whose chore it is to wait on them. But this impression of the Daruwallas would be false; they were simply of a generation that reacted strongly to rudeness from anyone—they were well enough educated and old enough to be intolerant of intolerance. But what hadn’t occurred to Farrokh or Julia was that perhaps the flight attendants were ill mannered about stowing the elevator sign not because of the inconvenience but because of the message; possibly the flight attendants were also incensed that servants weren’t allowed to use the lift unless accompanied by children.

It was one of those little misunderstandings that no one would ever solve; it was a suitably sour note on which to leave one’s country for the last time, Farrokh thought. Nor was he pleased by The Times of India, with which Vinod had wrapped the stolen sign. Of great prominence in the news lately was the report of food poisoning in East Delhi. Two children had died and eight others were hospitalized after they’d consumed some “stale” food from a garbage dump in the Shakurpur area. Dr. Daruwalla had been following this report with the keenest attention; he knew that the children hadn’t died from eating “stale” food—the stupid newspaper meant “rotten” or “contaminated.”

As far as Farrokh was concerned, the airplane couldn’t take off fast enough. Like Dhar, the doctor preferred the aisle seat because he planned to drink beer and he would need to pee; Julia would sit by the window. It would be almost 10:00 in the morning, London time, before they landed in England. It would be dark all the way to Delhi. Literally, before he even left, the doctor thought he’d already seen the last of India.

Although Martin Mills might be tempted to say that it was God’s will (that Dr. Daruwalla was saying good- bye to Bombay), the doctor wouldn’t have agreed. It wasn’t God’s will; it was India, which wasn’t for everybody—as Father Julian, unbeknownst to Dr. Daruwalla, had said. It was not God’s will, Farrokh felt certain; it was just India, which was more than enough.

When Air India 185 lifted off the runway in Sahar, Dhar’s thug taxi driver was again cruising the streets of Bombay; the dwarf was still crying—he was too upset to sleep. Vinod had returned to town too late to catch the last show at the Wetness Cabaret, where he’d been hoping to get a glimpse of Madhu; he’d have to look for her another night. It depressed the dwarf to keep cruising the red-light district, although it was a night like any night— Vinod might have found and saved a stray. At 3:00 A.M., the dwarf felt that the brothels resembled a failed circus. The ex-clown imagined the cages of lifeless animals—the rows of tents, full of exhausted and injured acrobats. He drove on.

It was almost 4:00 in the morning when Vinod parked the Ambassador in the alley alongside the Daruwallas’