A Son of the Circus

drained small amounts of pus—for years. In Bombay, there was also more willingness among patients and surgeons to accept amputations and the quick fitting of a simple prosthesis; such solutions were unacceptable in Toronto, where Dr. Daruwalla was known for a new technique in microvascular surgery.

In India, without removal of the dead bone, there was no cure; often there was too much dead bone to remove—to take it out would compromise the ability of the limb to bear weight. But in Canada, with the aid of prolonged intravenous antibiotics, Farrokh could combine dead-bone removal with a plastic procedure—a muscle and its blood supply are brought into the infected area. Dr. Daruwalla couldn’t duplicate such procedures in Bombay, unless he limited his practice to very rich people in hospitals like Jaslok. At the Hospital for Crippled Children, the doctor resorted to the quick restoration of a limb’s function; this often amounted to an amputation and a prosthesis in place of a cure. To Dr. Daruwalla, a sinus tract draining pus wasn’t the worst thing; in India, he let the pus drain.

And in keeping with the enthusiasm characteristic of converts to Christianity—the doctor was a confirmed Anglican who was both suspicious and in awe of Catholics—Dr. Daruwalla was also exhilarated by the Christmas season, which in Bombay isn’t as garishly festooned with commercial enterprise as it has become in Christian countries. This particular Christmas was cautiously joyous for the doctor: he’d attended a Catholic Mass on Christmas Eve and an Anglican service on Christmas Day. He was a holiday churchgoer, if hardly a regular one; yet his double churchgoing was an inexplicable overdose—Farrokh’s wife was worried about him.

The doctor’s wife was Viennese, the former Julia Zilk—no relation to the city mayor of that name. The former Fraulein Zilk came from an aristocratic and imperious family of Roman Catholics. During the Daruwalla family’s short, infrequent visits to Bombay, the Daruwalla children had attended Jesuit schools; however, this wasn’t because the children were brought up as Catholics—it was only the result of Farrokh maintaining “family connections” with these schools, which were otherwise difficult to get into. The Daruwalla children were confirmed Anglicans; they’d received Anglican schooling in Toronto.

But despite Farrokh’s preference for a Protestant faith, he’d been pleased to entertain his few Jesuit acquaintances on Boxing Day; they were much livelier conversationalists than the Anglicans he knew in Bombay. Christmas itself was a glad tiding, surely; it was a season that produced in the doctor an effusion of goodwill. In the spirit of Christmas, Farrokh could almost forget that the effects of his 20-year-old conversion to Christianity were weakening.

And Dr. Daruwalla didn’t give a second thought to the vulture high above the golf course at the Duckworth Club. The only cloud on the doctor’s horizon was how to tell Inspector Dhar the upsetting news. These were not glad tidings for Dhar. But until this unforeseen bad news, it hadn’t been that bad a week.

It was the week between Christmas and New Year’s. The weather in Bombay was uncommonly cool and dry. The active membership of the Duckworth Sports Club had reached 6,000; considering that there was a 22-year waiting list for new members, this number had been rather gradually achieved. That morning, there was a meeting of the Membership Committee, of which the distinguished Dr. Daruwalla was guest chairman, to determine whether member number 6,000 should receive any special notification of his extraordinary status. The suggestions ranged from a plaque in the snooker room (where there were sizable gaps among the trophies), to a small reception in the Ladies’ Garden (where the usual bloom of the bougainvillea was diminished by an undiagnosed blight), to a simple typewritten memo thumbtacked alongside the list of Temporarily Elected Members.

Farrokh had often objected to the title of this list, which was posted in a locked glass case in the foyer of the Duckworth Club. He complained that “temporarily elected” meant merely nominated—they weren’t elected at all— but this term had been the accepted usage since the club had been founded 130 years ago. A spider crouched beside the short column of names; it had crouched there for so long, it was presumed dead—or perhaps the spider was also seeking permanent membership. This was Dr. Daruwalla’s joke, but the joke was old; it was rumored to have been repeated by all 6,000 members.

It was midmorning, and the committeemen were drinking Thums Up cola and Gold Spot orange soda in the card room when Dr. Daruwalla suggested that the matter be dropped.

“Stopped?” said Mr. Dua, who was deaf in one ear from a tennis injury, never to be forgotten: his doubles partner had double-faulted and flung his racquet. Since he was only “temporarily elected” at the time, this shocking display of bad temper had put an end to the partner’s quest for permanent membership.

“I move,” Dr. Daruwalla now shouted, “that member number six thousand not be notified!” The motion was quickly seconded and passed; not even so much as a typewritten memo would announce the event. Dr. Sorabjee, Farrokh’s colleague at the Hospital for Crippled Children, said facetiously that the decision was among the wisest ever made by the Membership Committee. In truth, Dr. Daruwalla thought, no one wanted to risk disturbing the spider.

In the card room, the committeemen sat in silence, satisfied with the conclusion of their business; the ceiling fans only slightly ruffled the trim decks of cards that stood perfectly in place at the appropriate tables, which were topped with tightly stretched green felt. A waiter, removing an empty Thums Up bottle from the table where the committeemen sat, paused to straighten one errant deck of cards before leaving the room, although only the top two cards of the deck had been edged out of alignment by the nearest ceiling fan.

That was when Mr. Bannerjee walked into the card room, looking for his golfing opponent, Mr. Lal. Old Mr. Lal was late for their regular nine holes, and Mr. Bannerjee told the committee the amusing results of their competition together the day before. Mr. Lal had lost a one-stroke lead in a spectacular blunder on the ninth hole: he’d chipped a shot entirely over the green and into a profusion of the blighted bougainvillea, where he’d hacked away in misery and in vain.

Rather than return to the clubhouse, Mr. Lal had shaken Mr. Bannerjee’s hand and marched in a fury to the bougainvillea; there Mr. Bannerjee had left him. Mr. Lal was intent on practicing how to escape from this trap should he ever blunder into it again. Petals were flying when Mr. Bannerjee parted from his friend; that evening, the gardener (the head mali, no less) was dismayed to observe the damage to the vines and to the flowers. But old Mr. Lal was among the more venerable of the Duckworth’s members—if he insisted on learning how to escape the bougainvillea, no one would be so bold as to prevent him. And now Mr. Lal was late. Dr. Daruwalla suggested to Mr. Bannerjee that quite possibly his opponent was still practicing, and that he should search for him in the rained bougainvillea.

Thus the committee meeting disbanded in characteristic and desultory laughter. Mr. Bannerjee went seeking Mr. Lal in the men’s dressing room; Dr. Sorabjee went off to the hospital for office calls; Mr. Dua, whose deafness somehow suited his retirement from the percussiveness of the tire business, wandered into the snooker room to have a crack at some innocent balls, which he would barely hear. Others stayed where they were, turning to the ready decks of cards, or else they found comfort in the cool leather chairs in the reading room, where they ordered Kingfisher lagers or London Diet beers. It was getting on toward late morning, but it was generally thought to be too early for gin and tonics or adding a shot of rum to the Thums Up colas.

In the men’s dressing room and the clubhouse bar, the younger members and actual athletes were returning from their sets of tennis or their badminton or their squash. For the most part, they were tea drinkers at this time of the morning. Those returning from the golf course heartily complained about the mess of flower petals that by now had drifted over the ninth green. (These golfers wrongly assumed that the bougainvillea blight had taken a new and nasty turn.) Mr. Bannerjee told his story several more times; each time, the efforts of Mr. Lal to defeat the bougainvillea were described in more reckless and damaging terms. A generous good humor pervaded the clubhouse and the dressing room. Mr. Bannerjee didn’t seem to mind that it was now too late in the morning to play golf.

The unexpected cool weather could not change the habits of the Duckworthians; they were used to playing their golf and tennis before 11:00 in the morning or after 4:00 in the afternoon. During the midday hours, the members drank or lunched or simply sat under the ceiling fans or in the deep shade of the Ladies’ Garden, which was never exclusively used by (or especially full of) ladies—not nowadays. Yet the garden’s name was unchanged from purdah times, when the seclusion of women from the sight of men or strangers was practiced by some Muslims and Hindus. Farrokh found this odd, for the founding members of the Duckworth Sports Club were the British, who were still welcome there and even comprised a small proportion of the membership. To Dr. Daruwalla’s knowledge, the British had never practiced purdah. The Duckworth’s founders had intended the club for any and all citizens of Bombay, provided that they’d distinguished themselves in community leadership. As Farrokh and the