A Son of the Circus

Well, Then

Danny Mills died following a New Year’s Eve party in New York. It was Tuesday, January 2, before Martin Mills and Dr. Daruwalla were notified. The delay was attributed to the time difference—New York is 10½ hours behind Bombay—but the real reason was that Vera hadn’t spent New Year’s Eve with Danny. Danny, who was almost 75, died alone. Vera, who was 65, didn’t discover Danny’s body until the evening of New Year’s Day.

When Vera returned to their hotel, she wasn’t fully recovered from a tryst with a rising star of a light-beer commercial—an unbefitting fling for a woman her age. She doubtless failed to note the irony that Danny had died with the DO NOT DISTURB sign hanging optimistically from their hotel-room door. The medical examiner concluded that Danny had choked on his own vomit, which was (like his blood) nearly 20 percent alcohol.

In her two telegrams, Vera cited no clinical evidence; yet she managed to convey Danny’s inebriation to Martin in pejorative terms.

This also communicated to her son the sordidness, not to mention the inconvenience; Vera was going to have to spend nearly all of that Tuesday shopping. Coming from California—their visit was intended to be short—neither Danny nor Vera had packed for an extended stay in the January climate.

Vera’s telegram to Martin continued in a bitter vein.

“Hardly a model of the species” was the sort of language Vera had learned from the moisturizer commercial of her son’s long-ago and damaged youth.

The last dig was pure Vera—even in what passed for grief, she took a swipe at her son.

There followed only the name of the hotel in New York. Martin’s “vow of poverty” notwithstanding, Vera wasn’t offering to pay for his trip with her money.

Her telegram to Dr. Daruwalla was also pure Vera.

So suddenly it’s my decision, Dr. Daruwalla thought.

So now it’s “poor Martin” who would be upset! Farrokh observed.

The only good news, which Dr. Daruwalla didn’t know at the time, was that Danny Mills had left Vera a woman of even less means than she supposed. Danny had bequeathed what little he had to the Catholic Church—secure in the knowledge that if he’d given anything to Martin, that’s what Martin would have done with the money. In the end, not even Vera would consider the amount worth fighting for.

In Bombay, the day after Jubilee Day was a big one for news. Danny’s death and Vera’s manipulations overlapped with Mr. Das’s announcement that Madhu had left the Great Blue Nile with her new husband; both Martin Mills and Dr. Daruwalla had little doubt that Madhu’s new husband was Mr. Garg. Farrokh was so sure of this that his brief telegram to the Bengali ringmaster was a statement, not a question.

Both the doctor and the missionary were outraged that Mr. and Mrs. Das had virtually sold Madhu to a man like Garg, but Martin urged Farrokh not to take the ringmaster to task. In the spirit of encouraging the Great Blue Nile to support the efforts of the elephant-footed cripple, Dr. Daruwalla concluded his telegram to Mr. Das in Junagadh on a tactful note.

He didn’t “trust”; he hoped.

In the light of Ranjit’s message from Mr. Subhash (that Tata Two had given Dr. Daruwalla the HIV test results for the wrong Madhu), the doctor had sizably less hope for Madhu than for Ganesh. Ranjit’s account of Mr. Subhash’s offhand manner—the ancient secretary’s virtual dismissal of the error—was infuriating, but even a proper apology from Dr. Tata wouldn’t have lessened the fact that Madhu was HIV-positive. She didn’t have AIDS yet; she was merely carrying the virus.

“How can you even think ‘merely’?” cried Martin Mills, who seemed to be more devastated by Madhu’s medical destiny than by the news of Danny’s death; after all, Danny had been dying for years.

It was only midmorning; Martin had to interrupt their phone conversation in order to teach a class. Farrokh agreed to keep the missionary informed of the day’s developments. The upper-school boys at St. Ignatius were about to receive a Catholic interpretation of Graham Greene’s The Heart of the Matter, while Dr. Daruwalla attempted to find Madhu. But the doctor discovered that Garg’s phone number was no longer in service; Mr. Garg was lying low. Vinod told Dr. Daruwalla that Deepa had already talked to Garg; according to the dwarf’s wife, the owner of the Wetness Cabaret had complained about the doctor.

“Garg is thinking you are being too moral with him,” the dwarf explained.

It was not morality that the doctor wanted to discuss with Madhu, or with Garg. The doctor’s disapproval of Garg notwithstanding, Dr. Daruwalla wanted the opportunity to tell Madhu what it meant to be HIV-positive. Vinod implied that any opportunity for direct communication with Madhu was unpromising.

“It is working better another way,” the dwarf suggested. “You are telling me. I am telling Deepa. She is telling Garg. Garg is telling the girl.”

It was hard for Dr. Daruwalla to accept this as a “better” way, but the doctor was beginning to understand the essence of the dwarf’s Good Samaritanism. Rescuing children from the brothels was simply what Vinod and Deepa did with their spare time; they would just keep doing it—needing to succeed at it might have diminished their efforts.

“Tell Garg he was misinformed,” Dr. Daruwalla told Vinod. “Tell him Madhu is HIV-positive.”

Interestingly, if Garg was uninfected, his odds were good; he probably wouldn’t contract HIV from Madhu. (The nature of HIV transmission is such that it’s not that easy for a woman to give it to a man.) Depressingly, if Garg was infected, Madhu had probably contracted it from him.

The dwarf must have sensed the doctor’s depression; Vinod knew that a functioning Good Samaritan can’t dwell on every little failure. “We are only showing them the net,” Vinod tried to explain. “We are not being their wings.”

“Their wings? What wings?” Farrokh asked.

“Not every girl is being able to fly,” the dwarf said. “They are not all falling in the net.”

It occurred to Dr. Daruwalla that he should impart this lesson to Martin Mills, but the scholastic was still in the process of watering down Graham Greene for the upper-school boys. Instead, the doctor called the deputy commissioner.

“Patel here,” said the cold voice. The clatter of typewriters resounded in the background; rising, and then falling out of hearing, was the mindless revving of a motorcycle. Like punctuation to their phone conversation, there came and went the sharp barking of the Dobermans, complaining in the courtyard kennel. Dr. Daruwalla imagined that just out of his hearing a prisoner was professing his innocence, or else declaring that he’d spoken the truth. The doctor wondered if Rahul was there. What would she be wearing?

“I know this isn’t exactly a crime-branch matter,” Farrokh apologized in advance; then he told the deputy commissioner everything he knew about Madhu and Mr. Garg.

“Lots of pimps marry their best girls,” Detective Patel informed the doctor. “Garg runs the Wetness Cabaret, but he’s a pimp on the side.”

“I just want a chance to tell her what to expect,” said Dr. Daruwalla.

“She’s another man’s wife,” Patel replied. “You want me to tell another man’s wife that she has to talk to you?”

“Can’t you ask her?” Farrokh asked.

“I can’t believe I’m speaking to the creator of Inspector Dhar,” the deputy commissioner said. “How does it go? It’s one of my all-time favorites: The police don’t ask—the police arrest, or the police harass.’ Isn’t that the line?”

“Yes, that’s how it goes,” Dr. Daruwalla confessed.

“So do you want me to harass her—and Garg, too?” the policeman asked. When the doctor didn’t answer him, the deputy commissioner continued. “When Garg throws her out on the street, or when she runs away, then I can bring her in for questioning. Then you can talk to her. The problem is, if he throws her out or she runs away, I won’t be able to find her. From what you say, she’s too pretty and smart to be a street prostitute. She’ll go to a brothel, and once she’s in the brothel, she won’t be out on the street. Someone will bring her food; the madam will buy her clothes.”

“And when she gets sick?” the doctor asked.

“There are doctors who go to the brothels,” Patel replied. “When she gets so sick that she can’t be a prostitute, most madams would put her out on the street. But by then she’ll be immune.”

“What do you mean, ‘immune’?” Dr. Daruwalla asked.

“When you’re on the street and very sick, everyone leaves you alone. When nobody comes near you, you’re immune,” the policeman said.

“And then you could find her,” Farrokh remarked.

“Then we might find her,” Patel corrected him. “But by then it would hardly be necessary for you to tell her what to expect.”

“So you’re saying, ‘Forget her.’ Is that it?” the doctor asked.

“In your profession, you treat crippled children—isn’t that right?” the deputy commissioner inquired.

“That’s right,” Dr. Daruwalla replied.

“Well, I don’t know anything about your field,” said Detective Patel, “but I would guess that your odds of success are slightly higher than in the red-light district.”

“I get your point,” Farrokh said. “And what are the odds that Rahul will hang?”

For a while, the policeman was silent. Only the typewriters, responded to the question; they were the constant, occasionally interrupted by the revving motorcycle or the cacophony of Dobermans. “Do you hear the typewriters?” the deputy commissioner finally asked.

“Of course,” Dr. Daruwalla answered.

“The report on Rahul will be very lengthy,” Patel promised him. “But not even the sensational number of murders will impress the judge. I mean, just look at who most of the victims were—they weren’t important.”

“You mean they were prostitutes,” said Dr. Daruwalla.

“Precisely,” Patel replied. “We will need to develop another argument—namely, that Rahul must be confined with other women. Anatomically, she is a woman …”

“So the operation was complete,” the doctor interrupted.

“So I’m told. Naturally, I didn’t examine her myself,” the deputy commissioner added.

“No, of course not …” Dr. Daruwalla said.

“What I mean is, Rahul cannot be imprisoned with men—Rahul is a woman,” the detective said. “And solitary confinement is too expensive—impossible in cases of life imprisonment. And yet, if Rahul is confined with women prisoners, there’s a problem. She’s as strong as a man, and she has a history of killing women—you see my point?”

“So you’re saying that she might receive the death penalty only because of how awkward it will be to imprison her with other women?” Farrokh asked.

“Precisely,” Patel said. “That’s our best argument. But I still don’t believe she’ll be hanged.”

“Why not?” the doctor asked.

“Almost no one is hanged,” the deputy commissioner replied. “With Rahul, they’ll probably try hard labor and life imprisonment; then something will happen. Maybe she’ll kill another prisoner.”

“Or bite her,” Dr. Daruwalla said.

“They won’t hang her for biting,” the policeman said. “But something will happen. Then they’ll have to hang her.”

“Naturally, this will take a long time,” Farrokh guessed.

“Precisely,” Patel said. “And it won’t be very satisfying,” the detective added.

That was a theme with the deputy commissioner, Dr. Daruwalla knew. It led the doctor to ask a different sort of question. “And what will you do—you and your wife?” Farrokh inquired.

“What do you mean?” said Detective Patel; for the first time, he sounded surprised.

“I mean, will you stay here—in Bombay, in India?” the doctor asked.

“Are you offering me a job?” the policeman replied.

Farrokh laughed. “Well, no,” he admitted. “I was just curious if you were staying.”

“But this is my country,” the deputy commissioner told him. “You’re the one who’s not at home here.”

This was awkward; first from Vinod and now from Detective Patel, the doctor had learned something. In both cases, the subject of the lesson was the acceptance of something unsatisfying.

“If you ever come to Canada,” Farrokh blurted out, “I would be happy to be your host—to show you around.”

It was the deputy commissioner’s turn to laugh. “It’s much more likely that I’ll see you when you’re back in Bombay,” Patel said.

“I’m not coming back to Bombay,” Dr. Daruwalla insisted. It wasn’t the first time he’d spoken his thoughts so unequivocally on this subject.

Although Detective Patel politely accepted the statement, Dr. Daruwalla could tell that the deputy commissioner didn’t believe him. “Well, then,” Patel said. It was all there was to say. Not “Good-bye”; just “Well, then.”

Not a Word

Martin Mills again confessed to Father Cecil, who this time managed to stay awake. The scholastic was guilty of jumping to conclusions; Martin interpreted Danny’s death and his mother’s request that he come to her assistance in New York as a sign. After all, Jesuits are relentless in seeking God’s will, and Martin was an especially zealous example; the scholastic not only sought God’s will, but he too often believed that he’d spontaneously intuited what it was. In this case, Martin confessed, his mother was still capable of making him feel guilty, for he was inclined to go to New York at her bidding; Martin also confessed that he didn’t want to go. The conclusion Martin then jumped to was that this weakness—his inability to stand up to Vera—was an indication that he lacked the faith to become ordained. Worse, the child prostitute had not only forsaken the circus and returned to her life of sin, but she would almost certainly die of AIDS; what had befallen Madhu was an even darker sign, which Martin interpreted as a warning that he would be ineffectual as a priest.

“This is clearly meant to show me that I shall be unable to renew the grace received from God in ordination,” Martin confessed to old Father Cecil, who wished that the Father Rector were hearing this; Father Julian would have put the presumptuous fool in his place. How impertinent—how utterly immodest—to be analyzing every moment of self-doubt as a sign from God! Whatever God’s will was, Father Cecil was sure that Martin Mills had not been singled out to receive as much of it as he’d imagined.

Since he’d always been Martin’s defender, Father Cecil surprised himself by saying, “If you doubt yourself so much, Martin, maybe you shouldn’t be a priest.”

“Oh, thank you, Father!” Martin said. It astonished Father Cecil to hear the now-former scholastic sound so relieved.

At the news of Martin’s shocking decision—to leave the “Life,” as it is called; not to be “One of Ours,” as the Jesuits call themselves—the Father Rector was nonplussed but philosophic.

“India isn’t for everybody,” Father Julian remarked, preferring to give Martin’s abrupt choice a secular interpretation. Blame it on Bombay, so to speak. Father Julian, after all, was English, and he credited himself with doubting the fitness of American missionaries; even on the slim evidence of Martin Mills’s dossier, the Father Rector had expressed his reservations. Father Cecil, who was Indian, said he’d be sorry to see young Martin leave; the scholastic’s energy as a teacher had been a welcome addition to St. Ignatius School.

Brother Gabriel, who quite liked and admired Martin, nevertheless remembered the bloody socks that the scholastic had been wringing in his hands—not to mention the “I’ll take the turkey” prayer. The elderly Spaniard retreated, as he often did, to his icon-collection room; these countless images of suffering, which the Russian and Byzantine icons afforded Brother Gabriel, were at least traditional—thus reassuring. The Decapitation of John the Baptist, the Last Supper, the Deposition, which was the taking of Christ’s body from the cross—even these terrible moments were preferable to that image of Martin Mills which poor old Brother Gabriel was doomed to remember: the crazed Californian with his bloody bandages awry, looking like the composite image of many murdered missionaries past. Perhaps it was God’s will that Martin Mills should be summoned to New York.

“You’re going to do what?” Dr. Daruwalla cried, for in the time it had taken the doctor to talk to Vinod and Detective Patel, Martin had not only given the St. Ignatius upper-school boys a Catholic interpretation of The Heart of the Matter; he had also “interpreted” God’s will. According to Martin, God didn’t want him to be a priest—God wanted him to go to New York!

“Let me see if I follow you,” Farrokh said. “You’ve decided that Madhu’s tragedy is your own personal failure. I know the feeling—we’re both fools. And, in addition, you doubt the strength of your conviction to be ordained because you can still be manipulated by your mother, who’s made a career out of manipulating everybody. So you’re going to New York—just to prove her power over you—and also for Danny’s sake, although Danny won’t know if you go to New York or not. Or do you believe Danny will know?”

“That’s a simplistic way to put it,” Martin said. “I may lack the necessary will to be a priest, but I haven’t entirely lost my faith.”

“Your mother’s a bitch,” Dr. Daruwalla told him.

“That’s a simplistic way to put it,” Martin repeated. “Besides, I already know what she is.”

How the doctor was tempted. Tell him—tell him now! Dr. Daruwalla thought.

“Naturally, I’ll pay you back—I won’t take the plane ticket as a gift,” Martin Mills explained. “After all, my vow of poverty no longer applies. I do have the academic credentials to teach. I won’t make a lot of money teaching, but certainly enough to pay you back—if you’ll just give me a little time.”

“It’s not the money! I can afford to buy you a plane ticket—I can afford to buy you twenty plane tickets!” Farrokh cried. “But you’re giving up your goal—that’s what’s so crazy about you. You’re giving up, and for such stupid reasons!”

“It’s not the reasons—it’s my doubt,” Martin said. “Just look at me. I’m thirty-nine. If I were going to be a priest, I should have already become one. No one who’s still trying to ‘find himself’ at thirty-nine is very reliable.”

You took the words right out of my mouth! Dr. Daruwalla thought, but all the doctor said was, “Don’t worry about the ticket—I’ll get you a ticket.” He hated to see the fool look so defeated; Martin was a fool, but he was an idealistic fool. The idiot’s idealism had grown on Dr. Daruwalla. And Martin was candid—unlike his twin! Ironically, the doctor felt he’d learned more about John D. from Martin Mills—in less than a week—than he’d learned from John D. in 39 years.

Dr. Daruwalla wondered if John D.’s remoteness, his not-thereness—his iconlike and opaque character—wasn’t that part of him which was created not upon his birth but upon his becoming Inspector Dhar. Then the doctor reminded himself that John D. had been an actor before he became Inspector Dhar. If the identical twin of a gay male had a 52 percent chance of being gay, in what other ways did John D. and Martin Mills have a 52 percent chance of being alike? It occurred to Dr. Daruwalla that the twins had a 48 percent chance of being unalike, too; nevertheless, the doctor doubted that Danny Mills could be the twins’ father. Moreover, Farrokh had grown too fond of Martin to continue to deceive him.

Tell him—tell him now! Farrokh told himself, but the words wouldn’t come. Dr. Daruwalla could say only to himself what he wanted to say to Martin.

You don’t have to deal with Danny’s remains. Probably Neville Eden is your father, and Neville’s remains were settled many years ago. You don’t have to assist your mother, who’s worse than a bitch. You don’t know what she is, or all that she is. And there’s someone you might like to know; you might even be of mutual assistance to each other. He could teach you how to relax—maybe even how to have some fun. You might teach him a little candor—maybe even how not to be an actor, at least not all the time.

But the doctor didn’t say it. Not a word.

Dr. Daruwalla Decides

“So… he’s a quitter,” said Inspector Dhar, of his twin.

“He’s confused, anyway,” Dr. Daruwalla replied.

“A thirty-nine-year-old man shouldn’t still be finding himself,” John D. declared. The actor delivered the line with almost perfect indignation, never hinting that the matter of “finding himself” was at all familiar to him.

“I think you’d like him,” Farrokh said cautiously.

“Well, you’re the writer,” Dhar remarked with almost perfect ambiguity. Dr. Daruwalla wondered: Does he mean that the matter of whether or not they meet is in my hands? Or does he mean that only a writer would waste his time fantasizing that the twins should meet?

They were standing on the Daruwallas’ balcony at sunset. The Arabian Sea was the faded purple of John D.’s slowly healing lower lip. The splint on his broken pinky finger provided the actor with an instrument for pointing; Dhar liked to point.

“Remember how Nancy responded to this view?” the actor asked, pointing west.

“All the way to Iowa,” the doctor remarked.

“If you’re never coming back to Bombay, Farrokh, you might give the deputy commissioner and Mrs. Patel this apartment.” The line was delivered with almost perfect indifference. The screenwriter had to marvel at the hidden character he’d created; Dhar was almost perfectly mysterious. “I don’t mean actually give it to them—the good detective would doubtless construe that as a bribe,” Dhar went on. “But perhaps you could sell it to them for a ridiculous sum—a hundred rupees, for example. Of course you could stipulate that the Patels would have to maintain the servants—for as long as Nalin and Roopa are alive. I know you wouldn’t want to turn them out on the street. As for the Residents’ Society, I’m sure they wouldn’t object to the Patels—every apartment dweller wants to have a policeman in the building.” Dhar pointed his splint west again. “I believe this view would do Nancy some good,” the actor added.

“I can see you’ve been thinking about this,” Farrokh said.

“It’s just an idea—if you’re never coming back to Bombay,” John D. replied. “I mean really never.”

“Are you ever coming back?” Dr. Daruwalla asked him.

“Not in a million years,” said Inspector Dhar.

“That old line!” Farrokh said fondly.

“You wrote it,” John D. reminded him.

“You keep reminding me,” the doctor said.

They stayed on the balcony until the Arabian Sea was the color of an overripe cherry, almost black. Julia had to clear the contents of John D.’s pockets off the glass-topped table in order for them to have their dinner. It was a habit that John D. had maintained from childhood. He would come into the house or the apartment, take off his coat and his shoes or sandals, and empty the contents of his pockets on the nearest table; this was more than a gesture to make himself feel at home, for the source lay with the Daruwallas’ daughters. When they’d lived at home, they liked nothing better than wrestling with John D. He would lie on his back on the rug or the floor, or sometimes on the couch, and the younger girls would pounce on him; he never hurt them, just fended them off. And so Farrokh and Julia never chastised him for the contents of his pockets, which were messily in evidence on the tabletop of every house or apartment they’d ever lived in, although there were no children for John D. to wrestle with anymore. Keys, a wallet, sometimes a passport… and this evening, on the glass-topped table of the Daruwallas’ Marine Drive apartment, a plane ticket.

“You’re leaving Thursday?” Julia asked him.

“Thursday!” Dr. Daruwalla exclaimed. “That’s the day after tomorrow!”

“Actually, I have to go to the airport Wednesday night—it’s such an early-morning flight, you know,” John D. said.

“That’s tomorrow night!” Farrokh cried. The doctor took Dhar’s wallet, keys and plane ticket from Julia and put them on the sideboard.

“Not there,” Julia told him; she was serving one of their dinner dishes from the sideboard. Therefore, Dr. Daruwalla carried the contents of John D.’s pockets into the foyer and placed them on a low table by the door—that way, the doctor thought, John D. would be sure to see his things and not forget them when he left.

“Why should I stay longer?” John D. was asking Julia. “You’re not staying much longer, are you?”

But Dr. Daruwalla lingered in the foyer; he had a look at Dhar’s plane ticket. Swissair, nonstop to Zürich. Flight 197, departing Thursday at 1:45 A.M. It was first class, seat 4B. Dhar always chose an aisle seat. This was because he was a beer drinker; on a nine-hour flight, he got up to pee a lot—he didn’t want to keep climbing over someone else.

That quickly—by the time Dr. Daruwalla had rejoined John D. and Julia, and even before he sat down to dinner—the doctor had made his decision; after all, as Dhar had told him, he was the writer. A writer could make things happen. They were twins; they didn’t have to like each other, but they didn’t have to be lonely.

Farrokh sat happily at his supper (as he insisted on calling it), smiling lovingly at John D. I’ll teach you to be ambiguous with me! the doctor thought, but what Dr. Daruwalla said was, “Why should you stay any longer, indeed! Now’s as good a time to go as any.”

Both Julia and John D. looked at him as if he were having a seizure. “Well, I mean I’ll miss you, of course—but I’ll see you soon, one place or another. Canada or Switzerland… I’m looking forward to spending more time in the mountains.”

“You are?” Julia asked him. Farrokh hated mountains. Inspector Dhar just stared.

“Yes, it’s very healthy,” the doctor replied. “All that Swiss… air,” he remarked absently; he was thinking of the airline of that name, and how he would buy a first-class ticket to Zürich for Martin Mills on Swissair 197, departing early Thursday morning. Seat 4A. Farrokh hoped that the ex-missionary would appreciate the window seat, and his interesting traveling companion.

They had a wonderful dinner, a lively time. Normally, when Dr. Daruwalla knew he was parting from John D., he was morose. But tonight the doctor felt euphoric.

“John D. has a terrific idea—about this apartment,” Farrokh told his wife. Julia liked the idea very much; the three of them talked about it at length. Detective Patel was proud; so was Nancy. They would be sensitive if they felt the apartment was offered to them as charity; the trick would be to make them think they were doing the Daruwallas a favor by looking after and “maintaining” the old servants. The diners spoke admiringly of the deputy commissioner; they could have talked for hours about Nancy—she was certainly complex.

It was always easier, with John D., when the subject of conversation was someone else; it was himself, as a subject, that the actor avoided. And the diners were animated in their discussion of what the deputy commissioner had confided to the doctor about Rahul… the unlikelihood of her hanging.

Julia and John D. had rarely seen Farrokh so relaxed. The doctor spoke of his great desire to see more of his daughters and grandchildren, and he kept repeating that he wanted to see more of John D.—“in your Swiss life.” The two men drank a lot of beer and sat up late on the balcony; they outlasted the traffic on Marine Drive. Julia sat up with them.

“You know, Farrokh, I do appreciate everything you’ve done for me,” the actor said.

“It’s been fun,” the screenwriter replied. Farrokh fought back his tears—he was a sentimental man. He managed to feel quite happy, sitting there in the darkness. The smell of the Arabian Sea, the fumes of the city—even the constantly clogged drains and the persistence of human shit—rose almost comfortingly around them. Dr. Daruwalla insisted on drinking a toast to Danny Mills; Dhar politely drank to Danny’s memory.

“He wasn’t your father—I’m quite sure of that,” Farrokh told John D.

“I’m quite sure of that, too,” the actor replied.

“Why are you so happy, Liebchen?” Julia asked Farrokh.

“He’s happy because he’s leaving India and he’s never coming back,” Inspector Dhar answered; the line was delivered with almost perfect authority. This was mildly irritating to Farrokh, who suspected that leaving India and never coming back was an act of cowardice on his part. John D. was thinking of him, as he thought of his twin, as a quitter—if John D. truly believed that the doctor was never coming back.

“You’ll see why I’m happy,” Dr. Daruwalla told them. When he fell asleep on the balcony, John D. carried him to his bed.

“Look at him,” Julia said. “He’s smiling in his sleep.”

There would be time to mourn Madhu another day. There would be time to worry about Ganesh, the elephant boy, too. And on his next birthday, the doctor would be 60. But right now Dr. Daruwalla was imagining the twins together on Swissair 197. Nine hours in the air should be sufficient for starting a relationship, the doctor thought.

Julia tried to read in bed, but Farrokh distracted her; he laughed out loud in his sleep. He must be drunk, she thought. Then she saw a frown cross his face. What a shame it was, Dr. Daruwalla was thinking; he wanted to be on the same plane with them—just to watch them, and to listen. Which seat is across the aisle from 4B? the doctor wondered. Seat 4J? Farrokh had taken that flight to Zürich many times. It was a 747; the seat across the aisle from 4B was 4J, he hoped.

“Four J,” he told the flight attendant. Julia put down her book and stared at him.

“Liebchen,” she whispered, “either wake up or go to sleep.” But her husband was once again smiling serenely. Dr. Daruwalla was where he wanted to be. It was early Thursday morning—1:45 A.M., to be exact—and Swissair 197 was taking off from Sanar. Across the aisle, the twins were staring at each other; neither of them could talk. It would take a little time for one of them to break the ice, but the doctor felt confident that they couldn’t maintain their silence for the full nine hours. Although the actor had more interesting information, Farrokh bet that the ex-missionary would be the one to start blabbing. Martin Mills would blab all night, if John D. didn’t start talking in self-defense.

Julia watched her sleeping husband touch his belly with his hands. Dr. Daruwalla was checking to be sure that his seat belt was correctly fastened; then he settled back, ready to enjoy the long flight.

Just Close Your Eyes

The next day was Wednesday. Dr. Daruwalla was watching the sunset from his balcony, this time with Dhar’s twin. Martin was full of questions about his plane tickets. The screenwriter evaded these questions with the skill of someone who’d already imagined the possible dialogue.

“I fly to Zürich? That’s strange—that’s not the way I came,” the ex-missionary remarked.

“I have connections with Swissair,” Farrokh told him. “I’m a frequent flyer, so I get a special deal.”

“Oh, I see. Well, I’m very grateful. I hear it’s a marvelous airline,” the former scholastic said. “These are first-class tickets!” Martin suddenly cried. “I can’t repay you for first class!”

“I won’t allow you to repay me,” the doctor said. “I said I have connections—I get a special deal for first class. I won’t let you repay me because the plane tickets cost me practically nothing.”

“Oh, I see. I’ve never flown first class,” the recent zealot said. Farrokh could tell that Martin was puzzling over the ticket for the connecting flight, from Zürich to New York. He would arrive in Zürich at 6:00 in the morning; his plane to New York didn’t leave Zürich until 1:00 in the afternoon—a long layover, the onetime Jesuit was thinking… and there was something different about the New York ticket.

“That’s an open ticket to New York,” Farrokh said in an offhand manner. “It’s a daily nonstop flight. You don’t have to fly to New York on the day you arrive in Switzerland. You have a valid ticket for any day when there’s an available seat in first class. I thought you might like to spend a day or two in Zürich—maybe the weekend. You’d be better rested when you got to New York.”

“Well, that’s awfully kind of you. But I’m not sure what I’d do in Zürich …” Martin was saying. Then he found the hotel voucher; it was with his plane tickets.

“Three nights at the Hotel zum Storchen—a decent hotel,” Farrokh explained. “Your room overlooks the Limmat. You can walk in the old town, or to the lake. Have you ever been in Europe?”

“No, I haven’t,” said Martin Mills. He kept staring at the hotel voucher; it included his meals.

“Well, then,” Dr. Daruwalla replied. Since the deputy commissioner had found this phrase so meaningful, the doctor thought he’d give it a try; it appeared to work on Martin Mills. Throughout dinner, the reformed Jesuit wasn’t at all argumentative; he seemed subdued. Julia worried that it might have been the food, or that Dhar’s unfortunate twin was ill, but Dr. Daruwalla had experienced failure before; the doctor knew what was bothering the ex-missionary.

John D. was wrong; his twin wasn’t a quitter. Martin Mills had abandoned a quest, but he’d given up the priesthood when the priesthood was in sight—when it was easily obtainable. He’d not failed to be ordained; he’d been afraid of the kind of priest he might become. His decision to retreat, which had appeared to be so whimsical and sudden, had not come out of the blue; to Martin, his retreat must have seemed lifelong.

Because the security checks were so extensive, Martin Mills was required to be at Sanar two or three hours before his scheduled departure. Farrokh felt it would be unsafe to let him take a taxi with anyone but Vinod, and Vinod was unavailable; the dwarf was driving Dhar to the airport. Dr. Daruwalla hired an alleged luxury taxi from the fleet of Vinod’s Blue Nile, Ltd. They were en route to Sanar when the doctor first realized how much he would miss the ex-missionary.

“I’m getting used to this,” Martin said. They were passing a dead dog in the road, and Farrokh thought that Martin was commenting on his growing familiarity with slain animals. Martin explained that he meant he was getting used to leaving places in mild disgrace. “Oh, there’s never anything scandalous—I’m never run out of town on a rail,” he went on. “It’s a sort of slinking away. I don’t suppose I’m anything more than a passing embarrassment to those people who put their faith in me. I feel the same way about myself, really. There’s never a crushing sense of disappointment, or of loss—it’s more like a fleeting dishonor.”

I’m going to miss this moron, Dr. Daruwalla thought, but what the doctor said was, “Do me a favor—just close your eyes.”

“Is there something dead in the road?” Martin asked.

“Probably,” the doctor replied. “But that’s not the reason. Just close your eyes. Are they closed?”

“Yes, my eyes are closed,” the former scholastic said. “What are you going to do?” he asked nervously.

“Just relax,” Farrokh told him. “We’re going to play a game.”

“I don’t like games!” Martin cried. He opened his eyes and looked wildly around.

“Close your eyes!” Dr. Daruwalla shouted. Although his vow of obedience was behind him, Martin obeyed. “I want you to imagine that parking lot with the Jesus statue,” the doctor told him. “Can you see it?”

“Yes, of course,” Martin Mills replied.

“Is Christ still there, in the parking lot?” Farrokh asked him. The fool opened his eyes.

“Well, I don’t know about that—they were always expanding the capacity of the parking lot,” Martin said. “There was always a lot of construction equipment around. They may have torn up that section of the lot—they might have had to move the statue …”

“That’s not what I mean! Close your eyes!” Dr. Daruwalla cried. “What I mean is, in your mind, can you still see the damn statue? Jesus Christ in the dark parking lot—can you still see him?”

“Well, naturally—yes,” Martin Mills admitted. He kept his eyes tightly closed, as if in pain; his mouth was shut, too, and his nose was wrinkled. They were passing a slum encampment lit only by rubbish fires, but the stench of human feces overpowered what they could smell of the burning trash. “Is that all?” Martin asked, eyes closed.

“Isn’t that enough?” the doctor asked him. “For God’s sake, open your eyes!”

Martin opened them. “Was that the game—the whole game?” he inquired.

“You saw Jesus Christ, didn’t you? What more do you want?” Farrokh asked. “You must realize that it’s possible to be a good Christian, as Christians are always saying, and at the same time not be a Catholic priest.”

“Oh, is that what you mean?” said Martin Mills. “Well, certainly—I realize that!”

“I can’t believe I’m going to miss you, but I really am,” Dr. Daruwalla told him.

“I shall miss you, too, of course,” Dhar’s twin replied. “In particular, our little talks.”

At the airport, there was the usual lineup for the security checks. After they’d said their good-byes (they actually embraced), Dr. Daruwalla continued to observe Martin from a distance. The doctor crossed a police barrier in order to keep watching him. It was hard to tell if his bandages drew everyone’s attention or if it was his resemblance to Dhar, which leaped out at some observers and was utterly missed by others. The doctor had once again changed Martin’s bandages; the neck wound was minimally covered with a gauze patch, and the mangled earlobe was left uncovered—it was ugly but largely healed. The hand was still mittened in gauze. To everyone who gawked at him, the chimpanzee’s victim winked and smiled; it was a genuine smile, not Dhar’s sneer, yet Farrokh felt that the ex-missionary had never looked like such a dead ringer for Dhar. At the end of every Inspector Dhar movie, Dhar is walking away from the camera; in this case, Dr. Daruwalla was the camera. Farrokh felt greatly moved; he wondered if it was because Martin more and more reminded him of John D., or if it was because Martin himself had touched him.

John D. was nowhere to be seen. Dr. Daruwalla knew that the actor was always the first to board a plane—any plane—but the doctor kept looking for him. Aesthetically, Farrokh would have been disappointed if Inspector Dhar and Martin Mills met in the security lineup; the screenwriter wanted the twins to meet on the plane. Ideally, they should be sitting down, Dr. Daruwalla thought.

As he waited in line and then shuffled forward, and then waited again, Martin looked almost normal. There was something pathetic about his wearing the tropical-weight black suit over the Hawaiian shirt; he’d surely have to buy something warmer in Zürich, the expense of which had prompted Dr. Daruwalla to hand him several hundred Swiss francs—at the last minute, so that Martin had no time to refuse the money. And there was something barely noticeable but odd about his habit of closing his eyes while he waited in line. When the line stopped moving, Martin closed his eyes and smiled; then the line would inch forward, Martin with it, looking like a man refreshed. Farrokh knew what the fool was doing. Martin Mills was making sure that Jesus Christ was still in the parking lot.

Not even a mob of Indian workers returning from the Gulf could distract the former Jesuit from the lastest of his spiritual exercises. The workers were what Farrokh’s mother, Meher, used to call the Persia-returned crowd, but these workers weren’t coming from Iran; they were returning from Kuwait—their two-in-ones or their three-in-ones were blasting. In addition to their boom boxes, they carried their foam mattresses; their plastic shoulder bags were bursting with whiskey bottles and wristwatches and assorted aftershaves and pocket calculators—some had even stolen the cutlery from the plane. Sometimes the workers went to Oman—or Qatar or Dubai. In Meher’s day, the so-called Persia-returned crowd had brought back gold ingots in their hands—at least a sovereign or two. Nowadays, Farrokh guessed, they weren’t bringing home much gold. Nevertheless, they got drunk on the plane. But even as he was jostled by the most unruly of these Persia-returned people, Martin Mills kept closing his eyes and smiling; as long as Jesus was still in that parking lot, all was right with Martin’s world.

For his remaining days in Bombay, Dr. Daruwalla would regret that, when he closed his eyes, he saw no such reassuring vision; no Christ—not even a parking lot. He told Julia that he was suffering the sort of recurring dream that he hadn’t had since he’d first left India for Austria; it was a common dream among adolescents, old Lowji had told him—for one reason or another, you find yourself naked in a public place. Long ago, Farrokh’s opinionated father had offered an unlikely interpretation. “It’s a new immigrant’s dream,” Lowji had declared. Maybe it was, Farrokh now believed. He’d left India many times before, but this was the first time he would leave his birthplace with the certain knowledge that he wasn’t coming back; he’d never felt so sure.

For most of his adult life, he’d lived with the discomfort (especially in India) of feeling that he wasn’t really Indian. Now how would he feel, living in Toronto with the discomfort of knowing that he’d never truly been assimilated there? Although he was a citizen of Canada, Dr. Daruwalla knew he was no Canadian; he would never feel “assimilated.” Old Lowji’s nasty remark would haunt Farrokh forever: “Immigrants are immigrants all their lives!” Once someone makes such a negative pronouncement, you might refute it but you never forget it; some ideas are so vividly planted, they become visible objects, actual things.

For example, a racial insult—not forgetting the accompanying loss of self-esteem. Or one of those more subtle Anglo-Saxon nuances, which frequently assailed Farrokh in Canada and made him feel that he was always standing at the periphery; this could be simply a sour glance—that familiar dour expression which attended the most commonplace exchange. The way they examined the signature on your credit card, as if it couldn’t possibly comply with your signature; or when they gave you back your change, how their looks always lingered on the color of your upturned palm—it was a different color from the back of your hand. The difference was somehow greater than that difference which they took for granted—namely, between their palms and the backs of their hands. (“Immigrants are immigrants all their lives!”)

The first time he saw Suman perform the Skywalk at the Great Royal Circus, Farrokh didn’t believe she could fall; she looked perfect—she was so beautiful and her steps were so precise. Then, one time, he saw her standing in the wing of the main tent before her performance. He was surprised that she wasn’t stretching her muscles. She wasn’t even moving her feet; she stood completely still. Maybe she was concentrating, Dr. Daruwalla thought; he didn’t want her to notice him looking at her—he didn’t want to distract her.

When Suman turned to him, Farrokh realized that she really must have been concentrating because she didn’t acknowledge him and she was always very polite; she looked right past him, or through him. The fresh puja mark on her forehead was smudged. It was the slightest flaw, but when Dr. Daruwalla saw the smudge, he instantly knew that Suman was mortal. From that moment, Farrokh believed she could fall. After that, he could never relax when he saw her skywalking—she seemed unbearably vulnerable. If someone ever were to tell him that Suman had fallen and died, Dr. Daruwalla would see her lying in the dirt with her puja mark smeared. (“Immigrants are immigrants all their lives” was this kind of smudge.)

It might have helped Dr. Daruwalla if he could have left Bombay as quickly as the twins had left. But retiring movie stars and ex-missionaries can leave town faster than doctors; surgeons have their operating schedules and their recovering patients. As for screenwriters, like other writers, they have their messy little details to attend to, too.

Farrokh knew he would never talk to Madhu; at best, he might communicate with her, or learn of her condition, through Vinod or Deepa. The doctor wished the child might have had the good luck to die in the circus; the death he’d created for his Pinky character—killed by a lion who mistakes her for a peacock—was a lot quicker than the one he imagined for Madhu.

Similarly, the screenwriter entertained little hope that the real Ganesh would succeed at the circus, at least not to the degree that the fictional Ganesh succeeds. There would be no skywalking for the elephant boy, which was a pity—it was such a perfect ending. If the real cripple became a successful cook’s helper, that would be ample satisfaction for Farrokh. To this end, he wrote a friendly letter to Mr. and Mrs. Das at the Great Blue Nile; although the elephant-footed boy could never be trained as an acrobat, the doctor wanted the ringmaster and his wife to encourage Ganesh to be a good cook’s helper. Dr. Daruwalla also wrote to Mr. and Mrs. Bhagwan—the knife thrower and his wife-assistant, the skywalker. Perhaps the skywalker would be so kind as to gently disabuse the elephant boy of his silly idea that he could perform the Skywalk. Possibly Mrs. Bhagwan could show Ganesh how hard it was to skywalk. She might let the cripple try it, using the model of that ladderlike device which hung from the roof of her own troupe tent; that would show him how impossible skywalking was—it would also be a safe exercise.

As for his screenplay, Farrokh had again titled it Limo Roulette; he came back to this title because Escaping Maharashtra struck him as overoptimistic, if not wholly improbable. The screenplay had suffered from even the briefest passage of time. The horror of Acid Man, the sensationalism of the lion striking down the star of the circus (that innocent little girl)… Farrokh feared that these elements echoed a Grand Guignol drama, which he recognized as the essence of an Inspector Dhar story. Maybe the screenwriter hadn’t ventured as far from his old genre as he’d first imagined.

Yet Farrokh disputed that opinion of himself which he’d read in so many reviews—namely, that he was a deus-ex-machina writer, always calling on the available gods (and other artificial devices) to bail himself out of his plot. Real life itself was a deus-ex-machina mess! Dr. Daruwalla thought. Look at how he’d put Dhar and his twin together—somebody had to do it! And hadn’t he remembered that shiny something which the shitting crow had held in its beak and then lost? It was a deus-ex-machina world!

Still, the screenwriter was insecure. Before he left Bombay, Farrokh thought he’d like to talk to Balraj Gupta, the director. Limo Roulette might be only a small departure for the screenwriter, but Dr. Daruwalla wanted Gupta’s advice. Although Farrokh was certain that this wasn’t a Hindi cinema sort of film—a small circus was definitely not a likely venue for Balraj Gupta—Gupta was the only director the screenwriter knew.

Dr. Daruwalla should have known better than to talk to Balraj Gupta about art—even flawed art. It didn’t take long for Gupta to smell out the “art” in the story; Farrokh never finished with his synopsis. “Did you say a child dies?” Gupta interrupted him. “Do you bring it back to life?”

“No,” Farrokh admitted.

“Can’t a god save the child, or something?” Balraj Gupta asked.

“It’s not that kind of film—that’s what I’m trying to tell you,” Farrokh explained.

“Better give it to the Bengalis,” Gupta advised. “If it’s arty realism that you’re up to, better make it in Calcutta.” When the screenwriter didn’t respond, Balraj Gupta said, “Maybe it’s a foreign film. Limo Roulette—it sounds French!”

Farrokh thought of saying that the part of the missionary would be a wonderful role for John D. And the screenwriter might have added that Inspector Dhar, the actual star of the Hindi cinema, could have a dual role; the mistaken-identity theme could be amusing. John D. could play the missionary and he could make a cameo appearance as Dhar! But Dr. Daruwalla knew what Balraj Gupta would say to that idea: “Let the critics mock him—he’s a movie star. But movie stars shouldn’t mock themselves.” Farrokh had heard the director say it. Besides, if the Europeans or the Americans made Limo Roulette, they would never cast John D. as the missionary. Inspector Dhar meant nothing to Europeans or Americans; they would insist on casting one of their movie stars in that role.

Dr. Daruwalla was silent. He presumed that Balraj Gupta was angry with him for putting an end to the Inspector Dhar series; he already knew Gupta was angry with John D. because John D. had left town without doing much to promote Inspector Dhar and the Towers of Silence.

“I think you’re angry with me,” Farrokh began cautiously.

“Oh, no—not for a minute!” Gupta cried. “I never get angry with people who decide they’re tired of making money. Such people are veritable emblems of humanity—don’t you agree?”

“I knew you were angry with me,” Dr. Daruwalla replied.

“Tell me about the love interest in your art film,” Gupta demanded. “That will make you or break you, despite all this other foolishness. Dead children… why not show it to the South Indian socialists? They might like it!”

Dr. Daruwalla tried to talk about the love interest in the screenplay as if he believed in it. There was the American missionary, the would-be priest who falls in love with a beautiful circus acrobat; Suman was an actual acrobat, not an actress, the screenwriter explained.

“An acrobat!” cried Balraj Gupta; “Are you crazy? Have you seen their thighs? Women acrobats have terrifying thighs! And their thighs are magnified on film.”

“I’m talking to the wrong person—I must be crazy,” Farrokh replied. “Anyone who’d discuss a serious film with you is truly certifiable.”

“The telltale word is ‘serious,’” Balraj Gupta said. “I can see you’ve learned nothing from your success. Have 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 Langläufer, 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.

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’ apartment building on Marine Drive. No one saw him slip into the building, but the dwarf roamed around the lobby, breathing heavily, until he had all the first-floor dogs barking. Then Vinod swaggered back to his taxi; he felt only mildly uplifted by the insults of the screaming residents, who’d earlier been disturbed by the report that their all-important elevator sign had been stolen.

Wherever the sad dwarf drove, the life of the city seemed to be eluding him; still, he wouldn’t go home. In the predawn light, Vinod stopped the Ambassador to joke with a traffic policeman in Mazagaon.

“Where is the traffic being?” Vinod asked the constable. The policeman had his baton out, as if there were a crowd or a riot to direct. No one was anywhere around: not another car, not a single bicycle, not one pedestrian. Of the sidewalk sleepers, the few who were awake hadn’t risen beyond a sitting position or from their knees. The constable recognized Dhar’s thug driver—every policeman knew Vinod. The constable said there’d been a disturbance—a religious procession streaming out of Sophia Zuber Road—but Vinod had missed it. The abandoned traffic policeman said he’d be obliged to the dwarf if Vinod would drive him the length of Sophia Zuber Road, just to prove that there was no more trouble. And so, with the lonely constable in the car, Vinod cautiously proceeded through one of Bombay’s better slums.

There wasn’t much to see; more sidewalk sleepers were waking up, but the slum dwellers were still sleeping. At that part of Sophia Zuber Road where Martin Mills, almost a month ago, had encountered the mortally wounded cow, Vinod and the traffic policeman saw the tail end of a procession—a few sadhus chanting, the usual flower flingers. There was a huge clotted bloodstain in the gutter of the road, where the cow had finally died; the earlier disturbance, the religious procession, had been merely the removal of the dead cow’s body. Some zealots had managed to keep the cow alive all this time.

This zeal was also not God’s will, Dr. Daruwalla would have said; this doomed effort was also “just India,” which was more than enough.