A Son of the Circus

Reading in bed would never seem innocent again, the doctor thought, although everything had begun quite innocently. His wife had been reading the Trollope, and Farrokh hadn’t been reading at all; he’d been trying to get up the nerve to read A Sport and a Pastime in front of Julia. Instead, he lay on his back with his fingers intertwined upon his rumbling belly—an excess of pork, or else the dinner conversation had upset him. Over dinner, he’d tried to explain to his family his need to be more creative, his desire to write something, but his daughters had paid no attention to him and Julia had misunderstood him; she’d suggested a medical-advice column—if not for The Times of India, then for The Globe and Mail. John D. had advised Farrokh to keep a diary; the young man said he’d kept one once, and he’d enjoyed it—then a girlfriend had stolen it and he’d gotten out of the habit. At that point, the conversation entirely deteriorated because the Daruwalla daughters had pestered John D. about the number of girlfriends the young man had had.

After all, it was the tail end of the ’60s; even innocent young girls talked as if they were sexually knowledgeable. It disturbed Farrokh that his daughters were clearly asking John D. to tell them the number of young women he’d slept with. Typical of John D., and to Dr. Daruwalla’s great relief, the young man had skillfully and charmingly ducked the question. But the matter of the doctor’s unfulfilled creativity had been dismissed or ignored.

The subject, however, hadn’t eluded Julia. In bed after dinner, propped up with a stack of pillows—while Farrokh lay flat upon his back—his wife had assaulted him with the Trollope.

“Listen to this, Liebchen,” Julia said. “‘Early in life, at the age of fifteen, I commenced the dangerous habit of keeping a journal, and this I maintained for ten years. The volumes remained in my possession, unregarded—never looked at—till 1870, when I examined them, and, with many blushes, destroyed them. They convicted me of folly, ignorance, indiscretion, idleness, extravagance, and conceit. But they had habituated me to the rapid use of pen and ink, and taught me how to express myself with facility.’”

“I don’t want or need to keep a journal,” Farrokh said abruptly. “And. I already know how to express myself with facility.”

“There’s no need to be defensive,” Julia told him. “I just thought you’d be interested in the subject.”

“I want to create something,” Dr. Daruwalla announced. “I’m not interested in recording the mundane details of my life.”

“I wasn’t aware that our life was altogether mundane,” Julia said.

The doctor, realizing his error, said, “Certainly it’s not. I meant only that I prefer to try my hand at something imaginative—I want to imagine something.”

“Do you mean fiction?” his wife asked.

“Yes,” Farrokh said. “Ideally, I should like to write a novel, but I don’t suppose I could write a very good one.”

“Well, there are all kinds of novels,” Julia said helpfully.

Thus emboldened, Dr. Daruwalla withdrew James Salter’s A Sport and a Pastime from its hiding place, which was under the newspaper on the floor beside the bed. He brought forth the novel carefully, as if it were a potentially dangerous weapon, which it was.

“For example,” Farrokh said, “I don’t suppose I could ever write a novel as good as this one.”

Julia glanced at the Salter quickly before returning her eyes to the Trollope. “No, I wouldn’t think so,” she said.

Aha! the doctor thought. So she has read it! But he asked with forced indifference, “Have you read the Salter?”

“Oh, yes,” his wife said, not taking her eyes off the Trollope. “I brought it along to reread it, actually.”

It was hard for Farrokh to remain casual, but he tried. “So you liked it, I presume?” he inquired.

“Oh, yes—very much,” Julia answered. After a weighty pause, she asked him, “And you?”

“I find it rather good,” the doctor confessed. “I suppose,” he added, “some readers might be shocked, or offended, by certain parts.”

“Oh, yes,” Julia agreed. Then she closed the Trollope and looked at him. “Which parts are you thinking of?”

It hadn’t happened quite as he’d imagined it, but this was what he wanted. Since Julia had most of the pillows, he rolled over on his stomach and propped himself up on his elbows. He began with a somewhat cautious passage. “‘He pauses at last,’” Farrokh read aloud. “‘He leans over to admire her, she does not see him. Hair covers her cheek. Her skin seems very white. He kisses her side and then, without force, as one stirs a favorite mare, begins again. She comes to life with a soft, exhausted sound, like someone saved from drowning.’”

Julia also rolled over on her stomach, gathering the pillows to her breasts. “It’s hard to imagine anyone being shocked or offended by that part,” she said.

Dr. Daruwalla cleared his throat. The ceiling fan was stirring the down on the back of Julia’s neck; her thick hair had fallen forward, hiding her eyes from his view. When he held his breath, he could hear her breathing. “‘She cannot be satisfied,’” he read on, while Julia buried her face in her arms. “‘She will not let him alone. She removes her clothes and calls to him. Once that night and twice the next morning he complies and in the darkness between lies awake, the lights of Dijon faint on the ceiling, the boulevards still. It’s a bitter night. Flats of rain are passing. Heavy drops ring in the gutter outside their window, but they are in a dovecote, they are pigeons beneath the eaves. The rain is falling all around them. Deep in feathers, breathing softly, they lie. His sperm swims slowly inside her, oozing out between her legs.’”

“Yes, that’s better,” Julia said. When he looked at her, he saw she’d turned her face to look at him; the yellow, unsteady light from the kerosene lamps wasn’t as ghostly pale as the moonlight he’d seen on her face on their first honeymoon, but even this tarnished light conveyed her willingness to trust him. Their wedding night, in the Austrian winter, was in one of those snowy Alpine towns, and their train from Vienna had arrived almost too late for-them to be admitted to the Gasthof, despite their reservation. It must have been 2:00 in the morning by the time they’d undressed and bathed and got into the feather bed, which was as white as the mountains of snow that reflected the moonlight—it was a timeless glowing—in their window.

But on their second honeymoon, Dr. Daruwalla came dangerously close to ruining the mood when he offered a faint criticism of the Salter. “I’m not sure how accurate it is to suggest that sperm swim ‘slowly,’” he said, “and technically, I suppose, it’s semen, not sperm, that would be oozing out between her legs.”

“For God’s sake, Farrokh,” his wife said. “Give me the book.”

She had no difficulty locating the passage she was looking for, although the book was unmarked. Farrokh lay on his side and watched her while she read aloud to him. “‘She is so wet by the time he has the pillows under her gleaming stomach that he goes right into her in one long, delicious move. They begin slowly. When he is close to coming he pulls his prick out and lets it cool. Then he starts again, guiding it with one hand, feeding it in like a line. She begins to roll her hips, to cry out. It’s like ministering to a lunatic. Finally he takes it out again. As he waits, tranquil, deliberate, his eye keeps falling on lubricants—her face cream, bottles in the armoire. They distract him. Their presence seems frightening, like evidence. They begin once more and this time do not stop until she cries out and he feels himself come in long, trembling runs, the head of his prick touching bone, it seems.’”

Julia handed the book back to him. “Your turn,” she said then. She also lay on her side, watching him, but as he began to read to her, she shut her eyes; he saw her face on the pillow almost exactly as he’d seen it that morning in the Alps. St. Anton—that was the place—and he’d awakened to the sound of the skiers’ boots tramping on the hard-packed snow; it seemed that an army of skiers was marching through the town to the ski lift. Only Julia and he were not there to ski. They were there to fuck, Farrokh thought, watching his wife’s sleeping face. And that was how they’d spent the week, making brief forays into the snowy paths of the town and then hurrying back to their feather bed. In the evenings, they’d had no less appetite for the hearty food than the skiers had. Watching Julia as he read to her, Farrokh remembered every day and night in St. Anton.

“‘He is thinking of the waiters in the casino, the audience at the cinema, the dark hotels as she lies on her stomach and with the ease of sitting down at a well-laid table, but no more than that, he introduces himself. They