A Son of the Circus

do-gooder. But this had long been her opinion of Dhar. If the dwarf’s wife had never seen an Inspector Dhar movie, she had seen Dhar’s TV appearance on behalf of the Hospital for Crippled Children. Dhar had always struck Deepa as a do-gooder and a non-Indian. On the other hand, Ranjit wasn’t fooled. The medical secretary saw only the slightest resemblance to Dhar in the frail missionary. Ranjit didn’t even suspect the two of being twins; his only comment, which he whispered to Dr. Daruwalla, was that he’d never known Dhar had a brother. Given Martin Mills’s ravaged condition, Ranjit assumed he was Dhar’s older brother.

Dr. Daruwalla’s first concern was to keep Martin Mills in the dark; once the doctor could get the missionary to St. Ignatius, Martin would be kept in perpetual darkness—or so the doctor hoped. Farrokh wanted it to be John D.’s decision whether to know his twin or not. But in the doctor’s office, and in the waiting room, it had been awkward to keep Martin Mills separated from Vinod and Deepa. Short of telling the dwarf and his wife that the missionary was Dhar’s twin, Dr. Daruwalla didn’t know what to do or how to keep them apart.

It was upon Vinod’s initiative that Madhu and Ganesh were introduced to each other, as if a 13-year-old child prostitute and a 10-year-old beggar who’d allegedly been stepped on by an elephant would instantly have worlds in common. To Dr. Daruwalla’s surprise, the children appeared to hit it off. Madhu was excited to learn that the ugly problem with Ganesh’s eyes—if not the ugly foot—might soon be corrected. Ganesh imagined that he could do very well for himself in the circus, too.

“With that foot?” Farrokh said. “What could you do in the circus with that foot?”

“Well, there are things he can do with his arms,” Martin Mills replied. Dr. Daruwalla feared that the Jesuit had been schooled to refute any defeatist argument.

“Vinod,” Farrokh said beseechingly. “Could the boy even be a roustabout with a limp like that? Do you see them letting him shovel the elephant shit? He could limp after the wheelbarrow, I suppose …”

“Clowns are limping,” Vinod replied. “I am limping,” the dwarf added.

“So you’re saying that he can limp and be laughed at, like a clown,” said Dr. Daruwalla.

“There’s always working in the cook’s tent,” Vinod said stubbornly. “He could be kneading and rolling out the dough for the chapati. He could be chopping up the garlic and the onions for the dhal.”

“But why would they take him, when there are countless boys with two good feet to do that?” Dr. Daruwalla asked. The doctor kept his eye on Bird-Shit Boy, knowing that his discouraging arguments might meet with the beggar’s disapproval and a corresponding measure of bird shit.

“We could tell the circus that they had to take the two of them together!” Martin cried. “Madhu and Ganesh—we could say that they’re brother and sister, that one looks after the other!”

“We could lie, in other words,” said Dr. Daruwalla.

“For the good of these children, I could lie!” the missionary said.

“I’ll bet you could!” Farrokh cried. He was frustrated that he couldn’t remember his father’s favorite condemnation of Martin Luther. What had old Lowji said about Luther’s justification for lying? Farrokh wished he could surprise the scholastic with what he recalled as a fitting quotation, but it was Martin Mills who surprised him.

“You’re a Protestant, aren’t you?” the Jesuit asked the doctor. “You should be advised by what your old friend Luther said: ‘What wrong can there be in telling a downright good lie for a good cause …’”

“Luther is not my old friend!” Dr. Daruwalla snapped. Martin Mills had left something out of the quotation, but Farrokh couldn’t remember what it was. What was missing was the part about this downright good lie being not only for a good cause but also “for the advancement of the Christian Church.” Farrokh knew he’d been fooled, but he lacked the necessary information to fight back; therefore, he chose to fight with Vinod instead.

“And I suppose you’re telling me that Madhu here is another Pinky—is that it?” Farrokh asked the dwarf.

This was a sore point between them. Because Vinod and Deepa had been Great Blue Nile performers, they were sensitive to Dr. Daruwalla’s preference for the performers of the Great Royal. There was a “Pinky” in the Great Royal Circus; she was a star. She’d been bought by the circus when she was only three or four. She’d been trained by Pratap Singh and his wife, Sumi. By the time Pinky was seven or eight, she could balance on her forehead at the top of a 10-foot-high bamboo pole; the pole was balanced on the forehead of a bigger girl, who stood on another girl’s shoulders… the act was that kind of impossible thing. It was an item that called for a girl whose sense of balance was one in a million. Although Deepa and Vinod had never performed for the Great Royal Circus, they knew which circuses had high standards—at least higher than the standards at the Great Blue Nile. Yet Deepa brought the doctor these wrecked little whores from Kamathipura and proclaimed them circus material; at best, they were Great Blue Nile material.

“Can Madhu even stand on her head?” Farrokh asked Deepa. “Can she walk on her hands?”

The dwarf’s wife suggested that the child could learn. After all, Deepa had been sold to the Great Blue Nile as a boneless girl, a future plastic lady; she had learned to be a trapeze artist, a flyer.

“But you fell,” the doctor reminded Deepa.

“She is merely falling into a net!” Vinod exclaimed.

“There isn’t always a net,” Dr. Daruwalla said. “Did you land in a net, Vinod?” Farrokh asked the dwarf.

“I am being fortunate in other ways,” Vinod replied. “Madhu won’t be working with clowns—or with elephants,” the dwarf added.

But Farrokh had the feeling that Madhu was clumsy; she looked clumsy—not to mention the dubious coordination of the limping garlic-and-onion chopper, Madhu’s newly appointed brother. Farrokh felt certain that the elephant-footed boy would find another elephant to step on him. Dr. Daruwalla imagined that the Great Blue Nile might even conceive of a way to display the cripple’s mashed foot; Ganesh would become a minor sideshow event—the elephant boy, they would call him.

That was when the missionary, on the evidence of less than one day’s experience in Bombay, had said to Dr. Daruwalla, “Whatever the dangers in the circus, the circus will be better for them than their present situation—we know the alternatives to their being in the circus.”

Vinod had remarked to Inspector Dhar that he was looking surprisingly well recovered from his nightmarish experience on Falkland Road. (Farrokh thought the missionary looked awful.) To keep the dwarf and the missionary from talking further to each other, which Dr. Daruwalla knew would be confusing to them both, the doctor pulled Vinod aside and informed him that he should humor Dhar—“and by no means contradict him”—because the dwarf had correctly diagnosed the movie star. There had been brain damage; it would be delicate to assess how much.

“Are you having to delouse him, too?” Vinod had whispered to Farrokh. The dwarf was referring to the reason for the scholastic’s horrible haircut, but Dr. Daruwalla had solemnly agreed. Yes, there had been lice and brain damage.

“Those are being filthy prostitutes!” Vinod had exclaimed.

What a morning it had been already! Dr. Daruwalla thought. He’d finally gotten rid of Vinod and Deepa—by sending them with Madhu to Dr. Tata. Dr. Daruwalla had not expected Tata Two to send them back so soon. Farrokh barely had time to get rid of Martin Mills; the doctor wanted the scholastic out of the office and the waiting room before Vinod and Deepa and Madhu returned. What’s more, Dr. Daruwalla wanted time to be alone; the deputy commissioner expected the doctor to come to Crime Branch Headquarters. Doubtless the doctor’s viewing of the photographs of the murdered prostitutes would serve to undermine the collected optimism of the Jesuit, the dwarf and the dwarf’s wife. But before Farrokh could slip away to Crawford Market, where he was meeting Deputy Commissioner Patel, it was necessary for the doctor to create an errand for Martin Mills; if only for an hour or two, the missionary was in need of a mission.

Another Warning

The elephant boy was a problem. Ganesh had behaved badly in the exercise yard, where many of the