A Son of the Circus

The Volunteer

On a Friday in May, more than two years after the Daruwallas had returned to Toronto from Bombay, Farrokh felt an urge to show Little India to his friend Macfarlane. They took Mac’s car. It was their lunch hour, but the traffic on Gerrard was so congested, they soon realized they wouldn’t have much time for lunch; they might barely have time to get to Little India and back to the hospital.

They’d been spending their lunch hour together for the past 18 months, ever since Macfarlane had tested HIV-positive; Mac’s boyfriend—Dr. Duncan Frasier, the gay geneticist—had died of AIDS over a year ago. As for debating the merits of his dwarf-blood project, Farrokh had found no one to replace Frasier, and Mac hadn’t found a new boyfriend.

The shorthand nature of the conversation between Dr. Daruwalla and Dr. Macfarlane, in regard to Mac’s living with the AIDS virus, was a model of emotional restraint.

“How have you been doing?” Dr. Daruwalla would ask.

“Good,” Dr. Macfarlane would reply. “I’m off AZT—switched to DDI. Didn’t I tell you?”

“No—but why? Were your T cells dropping?”

“Kind of,” Mac would say. “They dropped below two hundred. I was feeling like shit on AZT, so Schwartz decided to switch me to DDI. I feel better—I’m more energetic now. And I’m taking Bactrim prophylactically… to prevent PCP pneumonia.”

“Oh,” Farrokh would say.

“It isn’t as bad as it sounds. I feel great,” Mac would say. “If the DDI stops working, there’s DDC and many more—I hope.”

“I’m glad you feel that way,” Farrokh would find himself saying.

“Meanwhile,” Macfarlane would say, “I’ve got this little game going. I sit and visualize my healthy T cells—I picture them resisting the virus. I see my T cells shooting bullets at the virus, and the virus being cut down in a hail of gunfire—that’s the idea, anyway.”

“Is that Schwartz’s idea?” Dr. Daruwalla would ask.

“No, it’s my idea!”

“It sounds like Schwartz.”

“And I go to my support group,” Mac would add. “Support groups seem to be one of the things that correlate with long-term survival.”

“Really,” Farrokh would say.

“Really,” Macfarlane would repeat. “And of course what they call taking charge of your illness—not being passive, and not necessarily accepting everything your doctor tells you.”

“Poor Schwartz,” Dr. Daruwalla would reply. “I’m glad I’m not your doctor.”

“That makes two of us,” Mac would say.

This was their two-minute drill; usually, they could cover the subject that quickly—at least they tried to. They liked to let their lunch hour be about other things: for example, Dr. Daruwalla’s sudden desire to take Dr. Macfarlane to Little India.

It had been in May when the racist goons had driven Farrokh to Little India against his will; that had also been a Friday, a day when much of Little India had appeared to be closed—or were only the butcher shops closed? Dr. Daruwalla wondered if this was because the Friday prayers were faithfully attended by the local Muslims; it was one of those things he didn’t know. Farrokh knew only that he wanted Macfarlane to see Little India, and he had this sudden feeling that he wanted all the conditions to be the same—the same weather, the same shops, the same mannequins (if not the same saris).

Doubtless, Dr. Daruwalla had been inspired by something he’d read in the newspapers, probably something about the Heritage Front. It greatly upset him to read about the Heritage Front—those neo-Nazi louts, that white supremacist scum. Since there were antihate laws in Canada, Dr. Daruwalla wondered why groups like the Heritage Front were allowed to foment so much racist hatred.

Macfarlane had no difficulty finding a place to park; as before, Little India was fairly deserted—in this respect, it wasn’t like India at all. Farrokh stopped walking in front of the Ahmad Grocers on Gerrard, at Coxwell; he pointed diagonally across the street to the boarded-up offices of the Canadian Ethnic Immigration Services—it looked closed for good, not just because it was Friday.

“This is where I was dragged out of the car,” Dr. Daruwalla explained. They continued walking on Gerrard. Pindi Embroidery was gone, but a clothes rack of kaftans stood lifelessly on the sidewalk. “There was more wind the day I was here,” Farrokh told Mac. “The kaftans were dancing in the wind.”

At the corner of Rhodes and Gerrard, Nirma Fashions was still in business. They noted the Singh Farm, advertising fresh fruits and vegetables. They viewed the façade of the United Church, which also served as the Shri Ram Hindu Temple; the Reverend Lawrence Pushee, minister of the former, had chosen an interesting theme for the coming Sunday service. A Gandhi quotation forewarned the congregation: “There is enough for everyone’s need but not enough for everyone’s greed.”

Not only the Canadian Ethnic Immigration Services, but also the Chinese were experiencing hard times; the Luck City Poultry Company was closed down. At the corner of Craven and Gerrard, the “Indian Cuisine Specialists,” formerly the Nirala restaurant, were now calling themselves Hira Moti, and the familiar advertisement for Kingfisher lager promised that the beer was (as always) INSTILLED WITH INNER STRENGTH. A MEGASTARS poster advertised the arrival of Jeetendra and Bali of Patel Rap; Sapna Mukerjee was also performing.

“I walked along here, bleeding,” Farrokh said to Mac. In the window of either Kala Kendar or Sonali’s, the same blond mannequin was wearing a sari; she still looked out of place among the other mannequins. Dr. Daruwalla thought of Nancy.

They passed Satyam, “the store for the whole family”; they read an old announcement for the Miss Diwali competition. They walked up and down and across Gerrard, with no purpose. Farrokh kept repeating the names of the places. The Kohinoor supermarket, the Madras Durbar, the Apollo Video (promising ASIAN MOVIES), the India Theater—NOW PLAYING, TAMIL MOVIES! At the Chaat Hut, Farrokh explained to Mac what was meant by “all kinds of chaats.” At the Bombay Bhel, they barely had time to eat their aloo tikki and drink their Thunderbolt beer.

Before they went back to the hospital, the doctors stopped at J. S. Addison Plumbing, at the corner of Woodfield. Dr. Daruwalla was looking for that splendid copper bathtub with the ornate faucets; the handles were tiger heads, the tigers roaring—it was exactly like the tub he’d bathed in as a boy on old Ridge Road, Malabar Hill. He’d had that bathtub on his mind ever since his last, unplanned visit to Little India. But the tub had been sold. What Farrokh found, instead, was another marvel of Victorian ornamentation. It was that same sink spout, with tusks for faucets, which had captured Rahul’s imagination in the ladies’ room of the Duckworth Club; it was that elephant-headed spigot, with the water spraying from the elephant’s trunk. Farrokh touched the two tusks, one for hot water and the other for cold. Macfarlane thought it was ghastly, but Dr. Daruwalla didn’t hesitate to buy it; it was the product of a recognizably British imagination, but it was made in India.

“Does it have a sentimental value?” Mac asked.

“Not exactly,” Farrokh replied. Dr. Daruwalla wondered what he’d do with the ugly thing; he knew Julia would absolutely hate it.

“Those men who drove you here, and left you …” Mac suddenly said.

“What about them?”

“Do you imagine that they bring other people here—like they brought you?”

“All the time,” Farrokh said. “I imagine that they’re bringing people here all the time.”

Mac thought Farrokh looked mortally depressed and told him so.

How can I ever feel assimiliated? Dr. Daruwalla wondered. “How am I supposed to feel like a Canadian?” Farrokh asked Mac.

Indeed, if one could believe the newspapers, there was a growing resistance to immigration; demographers were predicting a “racist backlash.” The resistance to immigration was racist, Dr. Daruwalla believed; the doctor had become very sensitive to the phrase “visible minorities.” He knew this didn’t mean the Italians or the Germans or the Portuguese; they’d come to Canada in the 1950s. Until the last decade, by far the greatest proportion of immigrants came from Britain.

But not now; the new immigrants came from Hong Kong and China and India—half the immigrants who’d come to Canada in this decade were Asians. In Toronto, almost 40 percent of the population was immigrant—more than a million people.

Macfarlane suffered to see Farrokh so despondent. “Believe me, Farrokh,” Mac said. “I know it’s no circus to be an immigrant in this country, and although I trust that those thugs who dumped you in Little India have assaulted other immigrants in the city, I don’t believe that they’re transporting people all over town ‘all the time,’ as you say.”

“Don’t you mean it’s no picnic? You said ‘no circus,’” Farrokh told Mac.

“It’s the same expression,” Macfarlane replied.

“Do you know what my father said to me?” Dr. Daruwalla asked.

“Could it be, ‘Immigrants are immigrants all their lives’?” Macfarlane inquired.

“Oh—I’ve already told you,” Farrokh said.

“Too many times to count,” Mac replied. “But I suppose you go around thinking of it all the time.”

“All the time,” Farrokh repeated. He felt grateful for what a good friend Mac was.

It had been Dr. Macfarlane who’d persuaded Dr. Daruwalla to volunteer his time at the AIDS hospice in Toronto; Duncan Frasier had died there. Farrokh had worked at the hospice for over a year. At first, he suspected his own motives, which he’d confessed to Mac; on Mac’s advice, Farrokh had also discussed his special interest in the hospice with the director of nursing.

It had been awkward for Farrokh to tell a stranger the story of his relationship with John D.—how this young man, who was like an adopted son to Dr. Daruwalla, had always been a homosexual, but the doctor hadn’t known it until John D. was almost 40; how, even now, when John D.’s sexual orientation was plainly clear, Farrokh and the not-so-young “young” man still didn’t speak of the matter (at least not in depth). Dr. Daruwalla told Dr. Macfarlane and the hospice’s director of nursing that he wanted to be involved with AIDS patients because he wanted to know more about the elusive John D. Farrokh admitted that he was terrified for John D.; that his beloved almost-like-a-son might die of AIDS was Farrokh’s greatest fear. (Yes, he was afraid for Martin, too.)

Emotional restraint, which was repeatedly demonstrated in Dr. Daruwalla’s friendship with Dr. Macfarlane—their understated conversation regarding the status of Macfarlane’s HIV-positive condition was but one example—prevented Farrokh from admitting to his friend that he was also afraid of watching Mac die of AIDS. But it was perfectly well understood, by both doctors and by the hospice’s director of nursing, that this was another motive underlying Farrokh’s desire to familiarize himself with the functions of an AIDS hospice.

Dr. Daruwalla believed that the more naturally he could learn to behave in the presence of AIDS patients, not to mention gay men, the closer his relationship with John D. might become. They’d already grown closer together, ever since John D. had told Farrokh that he’d always been gay. Doubtless, Dr. Daruwalla’s friendship with Dr. Macfarlane had helped. But what “father” can ever feel close enough to his “son”—that was the issue, wasn’t it? Farrokh had asked Mac.

“Don’t try to get too close to John D.,” Macfarlane had advised. “Remember, you’re not his father—and you’re not gay.”

It had been awkward—how Dr. Daruwalla had first tried to fit in at the hospice. As Mac had warned him, he had to learn that he wasn’t their doctor—he was just a volunteer. He asked lots of doctor-type questions and generally drove the nurses crazy; taking orders from nurses was something Dr. Daruwalla had to get used to. It was an effort for him to limit his expertise to the issue of bedsores; he still couldn’t be stopped from prescribing little exercises to combat the muscular wasting of the patients. He so freely dispensed tennis balls for squeezing that one of the nurses nicknamed him “Dr. Balls.” After a while, the name pleased him.

He was good at taking care of the catheters, and he was capable of giving morphine injections when one of the hospice doctors or nurses asked him to. He grew familiar with the feeding tubes; he hated seeing the seizures. He hoped that he would never watch John D. die with fulminant diarrhea… with an uncontrolled infection… with a spiking fever.

“I hope not, too,” Mac told him. “But if you’re not prepared to watch me die, you’ll be worthless to me when the time comes.”

Dr. Daruwalla wanted to be prepared. Usually, his voluntary time was spent in ordinary chores. One night, he did the laundry, just as Macfarlane had proudly bragged about doing it years earlier—all the bed linens and the towels. He also read aloud to patients who couldn’t read. He wrote letters for them, too.

One night, when Farrokh was working the switchboard, an angry woman called; she was indignant because she’d just learned that her only son was dying in the hospice and no one had officially informed her—not even her son. She was outraged, she said. She wanted to speak to someone in charge; she didn’t ask to speak to her son.

Dr. Daruwalla supposed that, although he wasn’t “in charge,” the woman might as well speak to him; he knew the hospice and its rules well enough to advise her how to visit—when to come, how to show respect for privacy and so forth. But the woman wouldn’t hear of it.

“You’re not in charge!” she kept shouting. “I want to speak to a doctor!” she cried. “I want to talk to the head of the place!”

Dr. Daruwalla was about to tell her his full name, his profession, his age—even the number of his children and his grandchildren, if she liked. But before he could speak, she screamed at him. “Who are you, anyway? What are you?”

Dr. Daruwalla answered her with such conviction and pride that he surprised himself. “I’m a volunteer,” the doctor said. The concept pleased him. Farrokh wondered if it felt as good to be assimilated as it did to be a volunteer.

The Bottommost Drawer

After Dr. Daruwalla left Bombay, there were other departures; in one case, there was a departure and a return. Suman, the skywalker par excellence, left the Great Royal Circus. She married a man in the milk business. Then, after various discussions with Pratap Walawalkar, the owner, Suman came back to the Great Royal, bringing her milk-business husband with her. Only recently, the doctor had heard that Suman’s husband had become one of the managers of the Great Royal Circus, and that Suman was once again walking on the sky; she was still very much the star.

Farrokh also learned that Pratap Singh had quit the Great Royal; the ringmaster and wild-animal trainer had left with his wife, Sumi, and their troupe of child acrobats—the real Pinky among them—to join the New Grand Circus. Unlike the Pinky character in Limo Roulette, the real Pinky wasn’t killed by a lion who mistook her for a peacock; the real Pinky was still performing, in one town after another. She would be 11 or 12, Farrokh guessed.

Dr. Daruwalla had heard that a girl named Ratna was performing the Skywalk at the New Grand; remarkably, Ratna could skywalk backward! The doctor was further informed that, by the time the New Grand Circus performed in Changanacheri, Pinky’s name had been changed to Choti Rani, which means Little Queen. Possibly Pratap had chosen the new name not only because Choti Rani was suitably theatrical, but also because Pinky was so special to him; Pratap always said she was absolutely the best. Just plain Pinky was a little queen now.

As for Deepa and Shivaji, the dwarf’s dwarf son, they had escaped the Great Blue Nile. Shivaji was very much Vinod’s son, in respect to the dwarf’s determination; as for Shivaji’s talent, the young man was a better acrobat than his father—and, at worst, Vinod’s equal as a clown. On the strength of Shivaji’s abilities, he and his mother had moved to the Great Royal Circus, which was unquestionably a move up from the Great Blue Nile—and one that Deepa never could have made on the strength of her own or Vinod’s talents. Farrokh had heard that the subtleties of Shivaji’s Farting Clown act—not to mention the dwarf’s signature item, which was called Elephant Dodging—put India’s other farting clowns to shame.

The fate of those lesser performers who toiled for the Great Blue Nile was altogether less kind; there would be no escape for them. The elephant-footed boy had never been content to be a cook’s helper; a higher aspiration afflicted him. The knife thrower’s wife, Mrs. Bhagwan—the most mechanical of skywalkers—had failed to dissuade Ganesh from his delusions of athleticism. Despite falling many times from that model of the ladderlike device which hung from the roof of the Bhagwans’ troupe tent, the cripple would never let go of the idea that he could learn to skywalk.

The perfect ending to Farrokh’s screenplay is that the cripple learns to walk without a limp by walking on the sky; such an ending would not conclude the real Ganesh’s story. The real Ganesh wouldn’t rest until he’d tried the real thing. It was almost as Dr. Daruwalla had imagined it, almost as it was written. But it’s unlikely that the real Ganesh was as eloquent; there would have been no voice-over. The elephant boy must have looked down at least once—enough to know that he shouldn’t look down again. From the apex of the main tent, the ground was 80 feet below him. With his feet in the loops, it’s doubtful that he even thought as poetically as Farrokh’s fictional character.

(“There is a moment when you must let go with your hands. At that moment, you are in no one’s hands. At that moment, everyone walks on the sky.”) Not likely—not a sentiment that would spontaneously leap to the mind of a cook’s helper. The elephant-footed boy would probably have made the mistake of counting the loops, too. Whether counting or not counting, it’s far-fetched to imagine him coaching himself across the ladder.

(“What I tell myself is, I am walking without a limp.”) That would be the day! Dr. Daruwalla thought. Judging from where they found the cripple’s body, the real Ganesh fell when he was less than halfway across the top of the tent. There were 18 loops in the ladder; the Skywalk was 16 steps. It was Mrs. Bhagwan’s expert opinion that the elephant boy had fallen after only four or five steps; he’d never managed more than four or five steps across the roof of her tent, the skywalker said.

This news came slowly to Toronto. Mr. and Mrs. Das conveyed their regrets, by letter, to Dr. Daruwalla; the letter was late—it was misaddressed. The ringmaster and his wife added that Mrs. Bhagwan blamed herself for the accident, but she also felt certain that the cripple could never have been taught to skywalk. Doubtless her distress distracted her. The next news from Mr. and Mrs. Das was that Mrs. Bhagwan had been cut by her knife-throwing husband as she lay spread-eagled on the revolving bull’s-eye; it wasn’t a serious wound, but she gave herself no time to heal. The following night, she fell from the Skywalk. She was only as far across the top of the tent as Ganesh had been, and she fell without a cry. Her husband said that she’d been having trouble with the fourth and fifth steps ever since the elephant boy had fallen.

Mr. Bhagwan wouldn’t throw another knife, not even when they offered him a choice of targets, all of whom were small girls. The widower went into semiretirement, performing only the Elephant Passing item. There seemed to be some self-punishment about this elephant act—or so the ringmaster confided to Dr. Daruwalla. Mr. Bhagwan would lie down under the elephant—at first with fewer and fewer mattresses between his body and the elephant-walking plank, and between his body and the ground. Then he did it with no mattresses at all. There were internal injuries, the ringmaster and his wife implied. Mr. Bhagwan became ill; he was sent home. Later, Mr. and Mrs. Das heard that Mr. Bhagwan had died.

Then Dr. Daruwalla heard that they’d all become ill. There were no more letters from Mr. and Mrs. Das. The Great Blue Nile Circus had vanished. Their last place of performance was Poona, where the prevailing story about the Blue Nile was that they were brought down by a flood; it was a small flood, not a major disaster, except that the hygiene at the circus became lax. An unidentified disease killed several of the big cats, and bouts of diarrhea and gastroenteritis were rampant among the acrobats. Just that quickly, the Great Blue Nile was gone.

Had Gautam’s death been a harbinger? The old chimpanzee had died of rabies not two weeks after he’d bitten Martin Mills; Kunal’s efforts to discipline the ape by beating him had been wasted. But, among them all, Dr. Daruwalla mainly remembered Mrs. Bhagwan—her tough feet and her long black shiny hair.

The death of the elephant boy (a cripple no more) destroyed a small but important part of Farrokh. What happened to the real Ganesh had an immediate and diminishing effect on the screenwriter’s already waning confidence in his powers of creation. The screenplay of Limo Roulette had suffered from comparisons to real life. In the end, the real Ganesh’s remark rang truest. “You can’t fix what elephants do,” the cripple had said.

Like Mr. Bhagwan, who had retreated into Elephant Passing, which led to his death, the screenplay of Limo Roulette went into radical retirement. It occupied the bottommost drawer in Dr. Daruwalla’s desk at home; he wouldn’t keep a copy in his office at the hospital. If he were to die suddenly, he wouldn’t have wanted anyone but Julia to discover the unproduced screenplay. The single copy was in a folder marked

for it was Farrokh’s conviction that only John D. would one day know what to do with it.

Doubtless there would be compromises required in order for Limo Roulette to be produced; there were always compromises in the movie business. Someone would say that the voice-over was “emotionally distancing”—that was the fashionable opinion of voice-over. Someone would complain about the little girl being killed by the lion. (Couldn’t Pinky be confined to a wheelchair, but happy, for the rest of the movie?) And despite what had happened to the real Ganesh, the screenwriter loved the ending as it was written; someone would want to tamper with that ending, which Dr. Daruwalla could never allow. The doctor knew that Limo Roulette would never be as perfect as it was in those days when he was writing it and he imagined that he was a better writer than he was.

It was a deep drawer for a mere 118 pages. As if to keep the abandoned screenplay company, Farrokh filled the drawer with photographs of chromosomes; ever since Duncan Frasier had died, Dr. Daruwalla’s dwarf-blood project had passed beyond languishing—the doctor’s enthusiasm for drawing blood from dwarfs was as dead as the gay geneticist. If anything or anyone were to tempt Dr. Daruwalla to return to India, this time the doctor couldn’t claim that the dwarfs were bringing him back.

From time to time, Dr. Daruwalla would read that perfect ending to Limo Roulette—when the cripple walks on the sky—for only by this artificial means could the doctor keep the real Ganesh alive. The screenwriter loved that moment after the Skywalk when the boy is descending on the dental trapeze, spinning in the spotlight as the gleaming sequins on his singlet throw back the light. Farrokh loved how the cripple never touches the ground; how he descends into Pratap’s waiting arms, and how Pratap holds the boy up to the cheering crowd. Then Pratap runs out of the ring with Ganesh in his arms, because after a cripple has walked on the sky, no one should see him limp. It could have worked, the screenwriter thought; it should have worked.

Dr. Daruwalla was 62; he was reasonably healthy. His weight was a small problem and he’d done little to rid his diet of admitted excesses, but the doctor nevertheless expected to live for another decade or two. John D. might well be in his sixties by the time Limo Roulette was put into the actor’s hands. The former Inspector Dhar would know for whom the part of the missionary had been intended; the actor would also be relatively free of any personal attachments to the story or its characters. If certain compromises were necessary in order to produce Limo Roulette, John D. would be able to look at the screenplay objectively. Dr. Daruwalla had no doubt that the ex-Inspector Dhar would know what to do with the material.

But for now—for the rest of his life, Farrokh knew—the story belonged in the bottommost drawer.

Sort of Fading Now

Almost three years after he left Bombay, the retired screenwriter read about the destruction of the Mosque of Babar; the unending hostilities he’d once mocked in Inspector Dhar and the Hanging Mali had turned uglier still. Fanatical Hindus had destroyed the 16th-century Babri mosque; rioting had left more than 400 dead—Prime Minister Rao called for shooting rioters on sight, both in Bhopal and in Bombay. Hindu fundamentalists weren’t pleased by Mr. Rao’s promise to rebuild the mosque; these fanatics continued to claim that the mosque had been built on the birthplace of the Hindu god Rama—they’d already begun building a temple to Rama at the site of the destroyed mosque. The hostilities would go on and on, Dr. Daruwalla knew. The violence would endure; it was always what lasted longest.

And although Madhu would never be found, Detective Patel would keep inquiring for the girl; the child prostitute would be a woman now—if she was still managing to live with the AIDS virus, which was unlikely.

“If we crash, do we burn or fly apart in little pieces?” Madhu had asked Dr. Daruwalla. “Something will get me,” she’d told the doctor. Farrokh couldn’t stop imagining her. He was always envisioning Madhu with Mr. Garg; they were traveling together from Junagadh to Bombay, escaping the Great Blue Nile. Although it would have been considered highly disgraceful, they would probably have been touching each other, not even secretly—secure in the misinformation that all that was wrong with them was a case of chlamydia.

And almost as the deputy commissioner had predicted, the second Mrs. Dogar would be unable to resist the terrible temptations that presented themselves to her in her confinement with women. She bit off a fellow prisoner’s nose. In the course of the subsequent and extremely hard labor to which Rahul was then subjected, she would rebel; it would be unnecessary to hang her, for she was beaten to death by her guards.

In another of life’s little passages, Ranjit would both retire and remarry. Dr. Daruwalla had never met the woman whose matrimonial advertisement in The Times of India finally snared his faithful medical secretary; however, the doctor had read the ad—Ranjit sent it to him. “An attractive woman of indeterminate age—innocently divorced, without issue—seeks a mature man, preferably a widower. Neatness and civility still count.” Indeed, they do, the doctor thought. Julia joked that Ranjit had probably been attracted to the woman’s punctuation.

Other couples came and went, but the nature of couples, like violence, would endure. Even little Amy Sorabjee had married. (God help her husband.) And although Mrs. Bannerjee had died, Mr. Bannerjee wasn’t a widower for long; he married the widow Lal. Of these unsavory couplings, of course, the unchanging Mr. Sethna steadfastly disapproved.

However set in his ways, the old steward still ruled the Duckworth Club dining room and the Ladies’ Garden with a possessiveness that was said to be enhanced by his newly acquired sense of himself as a promising actor. Dr. Sorabjee wrote to Dr. Daruwalla that Mr. Sethna had been seen addressing himself in the men’s-room mirror—long monologues of a thespian nature. And the old steward was observed to be slavishly devoted to Deputy Commissioner Patel, if not to the big blond wife who went everywhere with the esteemed detective. Apparently, the famous tea-pouring Parsi also fancied himself a promising policeman. Crime-branch investigation was no doubt perceived by Mr. Sethna as a heightened form of eavesdropping.

Astonishingly, the old steward appeared to approve of something! The unorthodoxy of the deputy commissioner and his American wife becoming members of the Duckworth Club didn’t bother Mr. Sethna; it bothered many an orthodox Duckworthian. Clearly, the deputy commissioner hadn’t waited 22 years for his membership; although Detective Patel satisfied the requirement for “community leadership,” his instant acceptance at the club suggested that someone had bent the rules—someone had been looking for (and had found) a loophole. To many Duckworthians, the policeman’s membership amounted to a miracle; it was also considered a scandal.

It was a minor miracle, in Detective Patel’s opinion, that no one was ever bitten by the escaped cobras in Mahalaxmi, for (according to the deputy commissioner) those cobras had been “assimilated” into the life of Bombay without a single reported bite.

It wasn’t even a minor miracle that the phone calls from the woman who tried to sound like a man continued—not only after Rahul’s imprisonment, but also after her death. It strangely comforted Dr. Daruwalla to know that the caller had never been Rahul. Every time, as if reading from a script, the caller would leave nothing out. “Your father’s head was off, completely off! I saw it sitting on the passenger seat before flames engulfed the car.”

Farrokh had learned how to interrupt the unslackening voice. “I know—I know already,” Dr. Daruwalla would say. “And his hands couldn’t let go of the steering wheel, even though his fingers were on fire—is that what you’re going to tell me? I’ve already heard it.”

But the voice never relented. “I did it. I blew his head off. I watched him burn,” said the woman who tried to sound like a man. “And I’m telling you, he deserved it. Your whole family deserves it.”

“Oh, fuck you,” Farrokh had learned to say, although he generally disliked such language.

Sometimes he would watch the video of Inspector Dhar and the Cage-Girl Killer (that was Farrokh’s favorite) or Inspector Dhar and the Towers of Silence, which the former screenwriter believed was the most underrated of the Dhar films. But to his best friend, Mac, Farrokh would never confide that he’d written anything—not a word. Inspector Dhar was part of the doctor’s past. John D. had almost completely let Dhar go. Dr. Daruwalla had to keep trying.

For three years, the twins had teased him; neither John D. nor Martin Mills would tell Dr. Daruwalla what had passed between them on their flight to Switzerland. While the doctor sought clarification, the twins deliberately confused him; they must have done it to exasperate him—Farrokh was such a lot of fun when he was exasperated. The former Inspector Dhar’s most irritating (and least believable) response was, “I don’t remember.” Martin Mills claimed to remember everything. But Martin never told the same story twice, and when John D. did admit to remembering something, the actor’s version unfailingly contradicted the ex-missionary’s.

“Let’s try to begin at the beginning,” Dr. Daruwalla would say. “I’m interested in that moment of recognition, the realization that you were face-to-face with your second self—so to speak.”

“I boarded the plane first,” both twins would tell him.

“I always do the same thing whenever I leave India,” the retired Inspector Dhar insisted. “I find my seat and get my little complimentary toilet kit from the flight attendant. Then I go to the lavatory and shave off my mustache, while they’re still boarding the plane.”

This much was true. It was what John D. did to un-Dhar himself. This was an established fact, one of the few that Farrokh could cling to: both twins were mustacheless when they met.

“I was sitting in my seat when this man came out of the lavatory, and I thought I recognized him,” Martin said.

“You were looking out the window,” John D. declared. “You didn’t turn to look at me until I’d sat down beside you and had spoken your name.”

“You spoke his name?” Dr. Daruwalla always asked.

“Of course. I knew who he was instantly,” the ex-Inspector Dhar would reply. “I thought to myself: Farrokh must imagine he’s awfully clever—writing a script for everyone.”

“He never spoke my name,” Martin told the doctor. “I remember thinking that he was Satan, and that Satan had chosen to look like me, to take my own form—what a horror! I thought you were my dark side, my evil half.”

“Your smarter half, you mean,” John D. would invariably reply.

“He was just like the Devil. He was frighteningly arrogant,” Martin told Farrokh.

“I simply told him that I knew who he was,” John D. argued.

“You said nothing of the kind,” Martin interjected. “You said, ‘Fasten your fucking seat belt, pal, because are you ever in for a surprise!’”

“That sounds like what you’d say,” Farrokh told the former Dhar.

“I couldn’t get a word in edgewise,” John D. complained. “Here I knew all about him, but he was the one who wouldn’t stop talking. All the way to Zürich, he never shut up.”

Dr. Daruwalla had to admit that this sounded like what Martin Mills would do.

“I kept thinking: This is Satan. I give up the idea of the priesthood and I meet the Devil—in first class! He had this constant sneer,” Martin said. “It was a Satanic sneer—or so I thought.”

“He started right out about Vera, our sainted mother,” John D. related. “We were still crossing the Arabian Sea—utter darkness above and below us—when he got to the part about the roommate’s suicide. I hadn’t said a word!”

“That’s not true—he kept interrupting me,” Martin told Farrokh. “He kept asking me, ‘Are you gay, or do you just not know it yet?’ Honestly, I thought he was the rudest man I’d ever met!”

“Listen to me,” the actor said. “You meet your twin brother on an airplane and you start right out with a list of everyone your mother’s slept with. And you think I’m rude.”

“You called me a ‘quitter’ before we’d even reached our cruising altitude,” Martin said.

“But you must have started by telling him that you were his twin,” Farrokh said to John D.

“He did nothing of the kind,” said Martin Mills. “He said, ‘You already know the bad news: your father died. Now here’s the good news: he wasn’t your father.’”

“You didn’t!” Dr. Daruwalla said to John D.

“I can’t remember,” the actor would say.

“The word ‘twin’—just tell me, who said it first?” the doctor asked.

“I asked the flight attendant if she saw any resemblance between us—she was the first to say the word ‘twin,’” John D. replied.

“That’s not exactly how it happened,” Martin argued. “What he said to the flight attendant was, ‘We were separated at birth. Try to guess which one of us has had the better time.’”

“He simply exhibited all the common symptoms of denial,” John D. would respond. “He kept asking me if I had proof that we were related.”

“He was utterly shameless,” Martin told Farrokh. “He said, ‘You can’t deny that you’ve had at least one homosexual infatuation—there’s your proof.’”

“That was bold of you,” the doctor told John D. “Actually, there’s only a fifty-two percent chance …”

“I knew he was gay the second I saw him,” the retired movie star said.

“But when did you realize how much… else you had in common?” Dr. Daruwalla asked. “When did you begin to recognize the traits you shared? When did your obvious similarities emerge?”

“Oh, long before we got to Zürich,” Martin answered quickly.

“What similarities?” John D. asked.

“That’s what I mean by arrogant—he’s arrogant and rude,” Martin told Farrokh.

“And when did you decide not to go to New York?” the doctor asked the ex-missionary. Dr. Daruwalla was especially interested in the part of the story where the twins told Vera off.

“We were working on our telegram to the bitch before we landed,” John D. replied.

“But what did the telegram say?” Farrokh asked.

“I don’t remember,” John D. would always answer.

“Of course you remember!” cried Martin Mills. “You wrote it! He wouldn’t let me write a word of the telegram,” Martin told Dr. Daruwalla. “He said he was in the business of one-liners—he insisted on doing it himself.”

“What you wanted to say to her wouldn’t have fit in a telegram,” John D. reminded his twin.

“What he said to her was unspeakably cruel. I couldn’t believe how cruel he could be. And he didn’t even know her!” Martin Mills told the doctor.

“He asked me to send the telegram. He had no second thoughts,” John D. told Farrokh.

“But what was it that you said? What did the damn telegram say?” Dr. Daruwalla cried.

“It was unspeakably cruel,” Martin repeated.

“She had it coming, and you know it,” said the ex-Inspector Dhar.

Whatever the telegram said, Dr. Daruwalla knew that Vera didn’t live very long after she received it. There was only her hysterical phone call to Farrokh, who was still in Bombay; Vera called the doctor’s office and left a message with Ranjit.

“This is Veronica Rose—the actress,” she told Dr. Daruwalla’s secretary. Ranjit knew who she was; he would never forget typing the report on the problem Vera had with her knees, which turned out to be gynecological—“vaginal itching,” Dr. Lowji Daruwalla had said.

“Tell the fucking doctor I know that he betrayed me!” Vera said to Ranjit.

“Is it your… knees again?” the old secretary had asked her.

Dr. Daruwalla never returned her call. Vera never made it back to California before she died; her death was related to the sleeping pills she regularly took, which she’d irregularly mixed with vodka.

Martin would stay in Europe. Switzerland suited him, he said. And the outings in the Alps—although the former scholastic had never been athletically inclined, these outings with John D. were wonderful for Martin Mills. He couldn’t be taught to downhill-ski (he was too uncoordinated), but he liked cross-country skiing and hiking; he loved being with his brother. Even John D. admitted, albeit belatedly, that they loved being with each other.

The ex-missionary kept himself busy; he taught at City University (in the general-studies program) and at the American International School of Zürich—he was active at the Swiss Jesuit Centre, too. Occasionally, he would travel to other Jesuit institutions; there were youth centers and students’ homes in Basel and Bern, and adult-education centers in Fribourg and Bad Schönbrunn—Martin Mills was doubtless effective as an inspirational speaker. Farrokh could only imagine that this meant more Christ-in-the-parking-lot sermonizing; the former zealot hadn’t lost his energy for improving the attitudes of others.

As for John D., he continued in his craft; the journeyman actor was content with his roles at the Schauspielhaus Zürich. His friends were in the theater, or affiliated with the university, or with a publishing firm of excellent reputation—and of course he saw a great deal of Farrokh’s brother, Jamshed, and Jamshed’s wife (and Julia’s sister), Josefine.

It was to this social circle that John D. would introduce his twin. An oddity at first—everyone is interested in a twins-separated-at-birth story—Martin made many friends in this community; in three years, the ex-missionary probably had more friends than the actor. In fact, Martin’s first lover was an ex-boyfriend of John D.’s, which Dr. Daruwalla found strange; the twins made a joke of it—probably to exasperate him, the doctor thought.

As for lovers, Matthias Frei died; the onetime terror of the Zürich avant-garde had been John D.’s longstanding partner. It was Julia who informed Farrokh of this; she’d known for quite some time that John D. and Frei were a couple. “Frei didn’t die of AIDS, did he?” the doctor asked his wife. She gave him the same sort of look that John D. would have given him; it was that smile from movie posters of faded memory, recalling the cutting sneer of Inspector Dhar.

“No, Frei didn’t die of AIDS—he had a heart attack,” Julia told her husband.

No one ever tells me anything! the doctor thought. It was just like that twinly conversation on Swissair 197, Bombay to Zürich, which would occupy a sizable part of Farrokh’s imagination, largely because John D. and Martin Mills were so secretive about it.

“Now, listen to me, both of you,” Dr. Daruwalla would tell the twins. “I’m not prying, I do respect your privacy—it’s just that you know how much dialogue interests me. This feeling of closeness between you, for it’s obvious to me that the two of you are close… did it come from your very first meeting? It must have happened on the plane! There’s surely something more between you than your mutual hatred of your late mother—or did the telegram to Vera really bring you together?”

“The telegram wasn’t dialogue—I thought you were interested only in our dialogue,” John D. replied.

“Such a telegram would never have occurred to me!” said Martin Mills.

“I couldn’t get a word in edgewise,” John D. repeated. “We didn’t have any dialogue. Martin had one monologue after another.”

“He’s an actor, all right,” Martin told Farrokh. “I know he can create a character, as they say, but I’m telling you I was convinced he was Satan—I mean the real thing.”

“Nine hours is a long time to talk with anyone,” John D. was fond of saying.

“The flight was nearly nine hours and fifteen minutes, to be more exact,” Martin corrected him.

“The point is, I was dying to get off the plane,” John D. told Dr. Daruwalla. “He kept telling me it was God’s will that we met. I thought I was going to go mad. The only time I could get away from him was when I went to the lavatory.”

“You practically lived in the lavatory! You drank so much beer. And it was God’s will—you see that now, don’t you?” Martin asked John D.

“It was Farrokh’s will,” John D. replied.

“You really are the Devil!” Martin told his twin.

“No, both of you are the Devil!” Dr. Daruwalla told them, although he would discover that he loved them—if never quite equally. He looked forward to seeing them, and to their letters or their calls. Martin wrote lengthy letters; John D. seldom wrote letters, but he called frequently. Sometimes, when he called, it was hard to know what he wanted. Occasionally, not often, it was hard to know who was calling—John D. or the old Inspector Dhar.

“Hi, it’s me,” he said to Farrokh one morning; he sounded smashed. It would have been early afternoon in Zürich. John D. said he’d just had a foolish lunch; when the actor called his lunch or dinner “foolish,” it usually meant that he’d had something stronger to drink than beer. Only two glasses of wine made him drunk.

“I hope you’re not performing tonight!” Dr. Daruwalla said, regretting that he sounded like an overcritical father.

“It’s my understudy’s night to perform,” the actor told him. Farrokh knew very little about the theater; he hadn’t known that there were understudies at the Schauspielhaus—also, he was sure that John D. was currently playing a small supporting role.

“It’s impressive that you have an understudy for such a little part,” the doctor said cautiously.

“My ‘understudy’ is Martin,” the twin confessed. “We thought we’d try it—just to see if anyone noticed.”

Once again Farrokh sounded like an overcritical father. “You should be more protective of your career than that,” Dr. Daruwalla chided John D. “Martin can be a clod! What if he can’t act at all? He could completely embarrass you!”

“We’ve been practicing,” said the old Inspector Dhar.

“And I suppose you’ve been posing as him,” Farrokh remarked. “Lectures on Graham Greene, no doubt—Martin’s favorite ‘Catholic interpretation.’ And a few inspirational speeches at those Jesuit centers—a Jesus in every parking lot, more than enough Christs to go around… that kind of thing.”

“Yes,” John D. admitted. “It’s been fun.”

“You should be ashamed—both of you!” Dr. Daruwalla cried.

“You put us together,” John D. replied.

Nowadays, Farrokh knew, the twins were much more alike in their appearance. John D. had lost a little weight; Martin had put the pounds on—incredibly, the former Jesuit was going to a gym. They also cut their hair the same way. Having been separated for 39 years, the twins took being identical somewhat seriously.

Then there was that particularly transatlantic silence, with a rhythmic bleeping—a sound that seemed to count the time. And John D. remarked, “So… it’s probably sunset there.” When John D. said “there,” he meant Bombay. Counting 10½ hours, Dr. Daruwalla figured that it would be more or less sunset. “I’ll bet she’s on the balcony, just watching,” John D. went on. “What do you bet?” Dr. Daruwalla knew that the ex-Inspector Dhar was thinking of Nancy and her view to the west.

“I guess it’s about that time,” the doctor answered carefully.

“It’s probably too early for the good policeman to be home,” John D. continued. “She’s all alone, but I’ll bet she’s on the balcony—just watching.”

“Yes—probably,” Dr. Daruwalla said.

“Want to bet?” John D. asked. “Why don’t you call her and see if she’s there? You can tell by how long it takes her to get to the phone.”

“Why don’t you call her?” Farrokh asked.

“I never call Nancy,” John D. told him.

“She’d probably enjoy hearing from you,” Farrokh lied.

“No, she wouldn’t,” John D. said. “But I’ll bet you anything she’s on the balcony. Go on and call her.”

“I don’t want to call her!” Dr. Daruwalla cried. “But I agree with you—she’s probably on the balcony. So… you win the bet, or there’s no bet. She’s on the balcony. Just leave it at that.” Where else would Nancy be? the doctor wondered; he was quite sure John D. was drunk.

“Please call her. Please do it for me, Farrokh,” John D. said to him.

There wasn’t much to it. Dr. Daruwalla called his former Marine Drive apartment. The phone rang and rang; it rang so long, the doctor almost hung up. Then Nancy picked up the phone. There was her defeated voice, expecting nothing. The doctor chatted aimlessly for a while; he pretended that the call was of no importance—just a whim. Vijay wasn’t yet back from Crime Branch Headquarters, Nancy informed him. They would have dinner at the Duckworth Club, but a bit later than usual. She knew there’d been another bombing, but she didn’t know the details.

“Is there a nice sunset?” Farrokh asked.

“Oh, yes… sort of fading now,” Nancy told him.

“Well, I’ll let you get back to it!” he told her a little too heartily. Then he called John D. and told him that she’d definitely been on the balcony; Farrokh repeated Nancy’s remark about the sunset—“sort of fading now.” The retired Inspector Dhar kept saying the line; he wouldn’t stop practicing the phrase until Dr. Daruwalla assured him that he had it right—that he was saying it precisely as Nancy had said it. He really is a good actor, the former screenwriter thought; it was impressive how closely John D. could imitate the exact degree of deadness in Nancy’s voice.

“Sort of fading now,” John D. kept saying. “How’s that?”

“That’s it—you’ve got it,” Farrokh told him.

“Sort of fading now,” John D. repeated. “Is that better?”

“Yes, that’s perfect,” Dr. Daruwalla said.

“Sort of fading now,” said the actor.

“Stop it,” the ex-screenwriter said.

Allowed to Use the Lift at Last

As a former guest chairman of the Membership Committee, Dr. Daruwalla knew the rules of the Duckworth Club; the 22-year waiting list for applicants was inviolable. The death of a Duckworthian—for example, Mr. Dogar’s fatal stroke, which followed fast upon the news that the second Mrs. Dogar had been beaten to death by her guards—did not necessarily speed up the process of membership. The Membership Committee never crassly viewed a fellow Duckworthian’s death as a matter of making room. Not even the death of Mr. Dua would “make room” for a new member. And Mr. Dua was sorely missed; his deafness in one ear was legendary—the never-to-be-forgotten tennis injury, the senseless blow from the flung racket of his doubles partner (who’d double-faulted). Dead at last, poor Mr. Dua was deaf in both ears now; yet not one new membership came of it.

However, Farrokh knew that not even the rules of the Duckworth Club were safe from a single most interesting loophole. It was stated that upon the formal resignation of a Duckworthian, as distinct from a Duckworthian’s demise, a new member could be spontaneously appointed to take the resigning member’s place; such an appointment circumvented the normal process of nomination and election and the 22-year waiting list. Had this exception to the rules been overused, it doubtless would have been criticized and eliminated, but Duckworthians didn’t resign. Even when they moved away from Bombay, they paid their dues and retained their membership; Duckworthians were Duckworthians forever.

Three years after he left India—“for good,” or so he’d said—Dr. Daruwalla still faithfully paid his dues to the Duckworth Club; even in Toronto, the doctor read the club’s monthly newsletter. But John D. did the unexpected, unheard-of, un-Duckworthian thing: he resigned his membership. Deputy Commissioner Patel was “spontaneously appointed” in the retired Inspector Dhar’s stead. The former movie star was replaced by the real policeman, who (all agreed) had distinguished himself in “community leadership.” If there were objections to the big blond wife who went everywhere with the esteemed detective, these objections were never too openly expressed, although Mr. Sethna was committed to remembering Nancy’s furry navel and the day she’d stood on a chair and reached into the mechanism of the ceiling fan—not to mention the night she’d danced with Dhar and left the club in tears, or the day after, when she’d left the club in anger (with Dhar’s dwarf).

Dr. Daruwalla would learn that Detective Patel and Nancy were controversial additions to the Duckworth Club. But the old club, the doctor knew, was just one more oasis—a place where Nancy might hope to contain herself, and where the deputy commissioner could indulge in a brief respite from the labors of his profession. This was how Farrokh preferred to think of the Patels—relaxing in the Ladies’ Garden, watching a slower life go by than the life they’d lived. They deserved a break, didn’t they? And although it had taken three years, the swimming pool was finally finished; in the hottest months, before the monsoon, the pool would be nice for Nancy.

It was never acknowledged that John D. had played the role of the Patels’ benefactor or the part of Nancy’s guardian angel. But not only had John D.’s resignation from the Duckworth Club provided a membership for the Patels; it had been John D.’s idea that the view from the Daruwallas’ balcony would do Nancy some good. Without questioning the doctor’s motives, the Patels had moved into the Marine Drive apartment—ostensibly to look after the aged servants.

In one of several flawlessly typed letters, Deputy Commissioner Patel wrote to Dr. Daruwalla that although the offensive elevator sign had not been replaced—that is, after it was stolen a second time—the Daruwallas’ ancient servants nevertheless continued to struggle up and down the stairs. The old rules had penetrated Nalin and Roopa; the rules were permanently in place—they would outlive any sign. The servants themselves refused to ride in the lift; their tragic preconditioning couldn’t be helped. The policeman expressed a deeper sympathy for the thief. The Residents’ Society had assigned the task of catching the culprit to Detective Patel. The deputy commissioner confided to Dr. Daruwalla that he wasn’t making much progress in solving the case, but that he suspected the second thief was Nancy—not Vinod.

As for the continued disruption to the building that was caused by the first-floor dogs, this always happened at an ungodly hour of the early morning. The first-floor residents claimed that the dogs were deliberately incited to bark by a familiar, violent-looking dwarf taxi driver—formerly a “chauffeur” for Dr. Daruwalla and the retired Inspector Dhar—but Detective Patel was inclined to lay the blame on various stray beggars off Chowpatty Beach. Even after a lock was fashioned for the lobby door, the dogs were occasionally driven insane, and the first-floor residents insisted that the dwarf had managed to gain unlawful entrance to the lobby; several of them said they’d seen an off-white Ambassador driving away. But these allegations were discounted by the deputy commissioner, for the first-floor dogs were barking in May of 1993—more than a month after those Bombay bombings that killed more than 200 people, Vinod among them.

The dogs were still barking, Detective Patel wrote to Dr. Daruwalla. It was Vinod’s ghost who was disturbing them, Farrokh felt certain.

On the door of the downstairs bathroom in the Daruwallas’ house on Russell Hill Road, there hung the sign that the dwarf had stolen for them. It was a big hit with their friends in Toronto.

In retrospect, it seemed cruel that the ex-clown had survived the terrible teeterboard accident at the Great Blue Nile. It appeared that the gods had toyed with Vinod’s fate—that he’d been launched by an elephant into the bleachers and had risen to a kind of local stardom in the private-taxi business seemed trivial. And that the dwarf had come to the rescue of Martin Mills, who’d fallen among those unusually violent prostitutes, seemed merely mock-heroic now. It struck Dr. Daruwalla as completely unfair that Vinod had been blown up in the bombing of the Air India building.

On the afternoon of March 12, 1993, a car bomb exploded on the exit ramp of the driveway, not far from the offices of the Bank of Oman. People were killed on the street; others were killed in the bank, which occupied that part of the Air India building nearest the site of the explosion. The Bank of Oman was demolished. Probably Vinod was waiting for a passenger who was doing business in the bank. The dwarf had been sitting at the wheel of his taxi, which was unfortunately parked next to the vehicle containing the car bomb. Only Deputy Commissioner Patel was capable of explaining why so many squash-racquet handles and old tennis balls were scattered all over the street.

There was a clock on the Air India hoarding, the billboard above the building; for two or three days after the bombing, the time was stuck at 2:48—strangely, Dr. Daruwalla would wonder if Vinod had noticed the time. The deputy commissioner implied that the dwarf had died instantly.

Patel reported that the pitiful assets of Vinod’s Blue Nile, Ltd., would scarcely provide for the dwarf’s wife and son; but Shivaji’s success at the Great Royal Circus would take care of the young dwarf and his mother, and Deepa had earlier been left a sizable inheritance. To her surprise, she’d been more than mentioned in Mr. Garg’s will. (Acid Man had died of AIDS within a year of the Daruwallas’ departure from Bombay.) The holdings of the Wetness Cabaret had been huge in comparison to those of Vinod’s Blue Nile, Ltd. The size of Deepa’s share of the strip joint had been sufficient to close the cabaret down.

Exotic dancing had never meant actual stripping—real strip joints weren’t allowed in Bombay. What passed for exotic dancing at the Wetness Cabaret had never amounted to more than stripteasing. The clientele, as Muriel had once observed, was truly vile, but the reason someone had thrown an orange at her was that the exotic dancer wouldn’t take off her clothes. Muriel was a stripper who wouldn’t strip, just as Garg had been a Good Samaritan who wasn’t a Good Samaritan—or so Dr. Daruwalla supposed.

There was a photograph of Vinod that John D. had framed; the actor kept it on his desk in his Zürich apartment. It wasn’t a picture of the dwarf in his car-driving days, when the former Inspector Dhar had known Vinod best; it was an old circus photo. It had always been John D.’s favorite photograph of Vinod. In the picture, the dwarf is wearing his clown costume; the baggy polka-dotted pants are so short, Vinod appears to be standing on his knees. He’s wearing a tank top, a muscle shirt—with spiraling stripes, like the stripes on a barber’s pole—and he’s grinning at the camera, his smile enhanced by the larger smile that’s painted on his face; the edges of his painted smile extend to the corners of the dwarf’s bright eyes.

Standing directly beside Vinod, in profile to the camera, is an open-mouthed hippopotamus. What’s shocking about the photograph is that the whole dwarf, standing up straight, would easily fit in the hippo’s yawning mouth. The oddly opposed lower teeth are within Vinod’s reach; the hippo’s teeth are as long as the dwarf’s arms. At the time, the little clown must have felt the heat from the hippo’s mouth—the breath of rotting vegetables, the result of the lettuce that Vinod recalled feeding to the hippo, who swallowed the heads whole. “Like grapes,” the dwarf had said.

Not even Deepa could remember how long ago the Great Blue Nile had had a hippo; by the time the dwarf’s wife joined the circus, the hippopotamus had died. After the dwarf’s death, John D. typed an epitaph for Vinod on the bottom of the hippo picture. Clearly, the epitaph was composed in memory of the forbidden elevator—that elite lift which the dwarf had never officially been allowed to use. Presently accompanied by children, the commemoration read.

It wasn’t a bad epitaph, the retired screenwriter thought. Farrokh had acquired quite a collection of photographs of Vinod, most of which the dwarf had given him over the years. When Dr. Daruwalla wrote his condolences to Deepa, the doctor wanted to include a photo that he hoped the dwarf’s wife and son would like. It was hard to select only one; the doctor had so many pictures of Vinod—many more were in his mind, of course.

While Farrokh was trying to find the perfect picture of Vinod to send to Deepa, the dwarf’s wife wrote to him. It was just a postcard from Ahmedabad, where the Great Royal was performing, but the thought was what mattered to Dr. Daruwalla. Deepa had wanted the doctor to know that she and Shivaji were all right. “Still falling in the net,” the dwarf’s wife wrote.

That helped Farrokh find the photo he was looking for; it was a picture of Vinod in the dwarf’s ward at the Hospital for Crippled Children. The dwarf is recovering from surgery, following the results of the Elephant on a Teeterboard item. This time, there’s no clownish smile painted over Vinod’s grin; the dwarf’s natural smile is sufficient. In his stubby-fingered, trident hand, Vinod is clutching that list of his talents which featured car driving; the dwarf is holding his future in one hand. Dr. Daruwalla only vaguely remembered taking the picture.

Under the circumstances, Farrokh felt it was necessary for him to inscribe some endearment on the back of the photograph; Deepa wouldn’t need to be reminded of the occasion of the photo—at the time, she’d been occupying a bed in the women’s ward of the same hospital, recovering from the doctor’s surgery on her hip. Inspired by John D.’s epitaph for Vinod, the doctor continued with the forbidden-elevator theme. Allowed to use the lift at last, the former screenwriter wrote, for although Vinod had missed the net, the dwarf had finally escaped the rules of the Residents’ Society.

Not the Dwarfs

One day, how would Dr. Daruwalla be remembered? As a good doctor, of course; as a good husband, a good father—a good man, by all counts, though not a great writer. But whether he was walking on Bloor Street or stepping into a taxi on Avenue Road, almost no one seeing him would have thought twice about him; he was so seemingly assimilated. A well-dressed immigrant, perhaps; a nice, naturalized Canadian—maybe a well-to-do tourist. Although he was small, one could quibble about his weight; for a man in the late afternoon of his life, he would be wise to be thinner. Nevertheless, he was distinguished-looking.

Sometimes he seemed a little tired—chiefly in the area of his eyes—or else there was something faraway about his thoughts, which, for the most part, he kept to himself. No one could have fathomed what a life he’d led, for it was chiefly a life lived in his mind. Possibly what passed for his tiredness was nothing more than the cost of his considerable imagination, which had never found the outlet that it sought.

At the AIDS hospice, Farrokh would forever be remembered as Dr. Balls, but this was largely out of fondness. The one patient who’d bounced his tennis ball instead of squeezing it hadn’t irritated the nurses or the other staff for very long. When a patient died, that patient’s tennis ball would be returned to Dr. Daruwalla. The doctor had been only briefly bitten by religion; he wasn’t religious anymore. Yet these tennis balls of former patients were almost holy objects to Farrokh.

At first, he would be at a loss with what to do with the old balls; he could never bring himself to throw them away, nor did he approve of giving them to new patients. Eventually, he disposed of them—but in an oddly ritualistic fashion. He buried them in Julia’s herb garden, where dogs would occasionally dig them up. Dr. Daruwalla didn’t mind that the dogs got to play with the tennis balls; the doctor found this a suitable conclusion to the life of these old balls—a pleasing cycle.

As for the damage to the herb garden, Julia put up with it; after all, it wasn’t her husband’s only eccentricity. She respected his rich and hidden interior life, which she thoroughly expected to yield a puzzling exterior; she knew Farrokh was an interior man. He had always been a daydreamer; now that he didn’t write, he seemed to daydream a little more.

Once, Farrokh told Julia that he wondered if he was an avatar. In Hindu mythology, an avatar is a deity, descended to earth in an incarnate form or some manifest shape. Did Dr. Daruwalla really believe he was the incarnation of a god?

“Which god?” Julia asked him.

“I don’t know,” Farrokh humbly told her. Certainly he was no Lord Krishna, “the dark one”—an avatar of Vishnu. Just whom did he imagine he was an avatar of? The doctor was no more the incarnation of a god than he was a writer; he was, like most men, principally a dreamer.

It’s best to picture him on a snowy evening, when darkness has fallen early in Toronto. Snow always made him melancholic, for it snowed all night the night his mother died. On snowy mornings, Farrokh would go sit in the guest bedroom where Meher had drifted away; some of her clothes were in the closet—something of her scent, which was the scent of a foreign country and its cooking, still lingered in her hanging saris.

But picture Dr. Daruwalla in the streetlight, standing directly under a lamppost in the falling snow. Picture him at the northeast corner of Lonsdale and Russell Hill Road; this Forest Hill intersection was familiar and comforting to Farrokh, not only because it was within a block of where he lived, but because, from this junction, he could view the route he’d taken those many days when he’d walked his children to school. In the opposite direction, there was Grace Church on-the-Hill… where he’d passed a few reflective hours in the safety of his former faith. From this street corner, Dr. Daruwalla could also see the chapel and the Bishop Strachan School, where the doctor’s daughters had ably demonstrated their intelligence; and Farrokh wasn’t far from Upper Canada College, where his sons might have gone to school—if he’d had sons. But, the doctor reconsidered, he’d had two sons—counting John D. and the retired Inspector Dhar.

Farrokh tipped his face up to the falling snow; he felt the snow wet his eyelashes. Although Christmas was long past, Dr. Daruwalla was pleased to see that some of his neighbors’ houses still displayed their yuletide ornamentation, which gave them unusual color and cheer. The snow falling in the streetlight gave the doctor such a pure-white, lonely feeling, Farrokh almost forgot why he was standing on this street corner on a winter evening. But he was waiting for his wife; the former Julia Zilk was due to pick him up. Julia was driving from one of her women’s groups; she’d phoned and told Farrokh to wait at the corner. The Daruwallas were dining at a new restaurant not far from Harbourfront; Farrokh and Julia were a faithful audience for the authors’ readings at Harbourfront.

As for the restaurant, Dr. Daruwalla would find it ordinary; also, they were eating too early for the doctor’s taste. As for the authors’ readings, Farrokh detested readings; so few writers knew how to read aloud. When you were reading a book to yourself, you could close the cover without shame and try something else, or watch a video, which the ex-screenwriter was more and more apt to do. His usual beer—and he often had wine with his dinner—made him too sleepy to read. At Harbourfront, he feared he’d start snoring in the audience and embarrass Julia; she loved the readings, which the doctor increasingly viewed as an endurance sport. Often, too many writers read in a single night, as if to make a public demonstration of Canada’s esteemed subsidy of the arts; usually, there was an intermission, which was Dr. Daruwalla’s principal reason for loathing the theater. And at the Harbourfront intermission, they’d be surrounded by Julia’s well-read friends; her friends were more literary than Farrokh, and they knew it.

On this particular evening (Julia had warned him), there was an Indian author reading from his or her work; that always presented problems for Dr. Daruwalla. There was the palpable expectation that the doctor should “relate” to this author in some meaningful way, as if there were that recognizable “it” which the author would either get right or get wrong. In the case of an Indian writer, even Julia and her literary friends would defer to Farrokh’s opinion; therefore, he would be pressed to have an opinion, and to state his views. Often, he had no views and would hide during the intermission; on occasion, to his shame, the retired screenwriter had hidden in the men’s room.

Recently, quite a celebrated Parsi writer had read at Harbourfront; Dr. Daruwalla had the feeling that Julia and her friends expected the doctor to be aggressive enough to speak to the author, for Farrokh had read the justly acclaimed novel–he’d much admired it. The story concerned a small but sturdy pillar of a Parsi community in Bombay—a-decent, compassionate family man was severely tested by the political corruption and deceit of that time when India and Pakistan were at war.

How could Julia and her friends imagine that Farrokh could talk with this author? What did Dr. Daruwalla know of a real Parsi community—either in Bombay or in Toronto? What “community” could the doctor presume to talk about?

Farrokh could only tell tales of the Duckworth Club—Lady Duckworth exposing herself, flashing her famous breasts. One didn’t have to be a Duckworthian to have already heard that story, but what other stories did Dr. Daruwalla know? Only the doctor’s own story, which was decidedly unsuitable for first acquaintances. Sex change and serial slaying; a conversion by love bite; the lost children who were not saved by the circus; Farrokh’s father, blown to smithereens… and how could he talk about the twins to a total stranger?

It seemed to Dr. Daruwalla that his story was the opposite of universal; his story was simply strange—the doctor himself was singularly foreign. What Farrokh came in contact with, everywhere he went, was a perpetual foreignness—a reflection of that foreignness he carried with him, in the peculiarities of his heart. And so, in the falling snow, in Forest Hill, a Bombayite stood waiting for his Viennese wife to take him into downtown Toronto, where they would listen to an unknown Indian reader—perhaps a Sikh, possibly a Hindu, maybe a Muslim, or even another Parsi. It was likely that there would be other readers, too.

Across Russell Hill Road, the wet snow clung to the shoulders and hair of a mother and her small son; like Dr. Daruwalla, they stood under a lamppost, where the radiant streetlight brightened the snow and sharpened the features of their watchful faces—they appeared to be waiting for someone, too. The young boy seemed far less impatient than his mother. The child had his head tilted back, with his tongue stuck out to catch the falling snow, and he swung himself dreamily from his mother’s arm—whereas she kept clutching at his hand, as if he were slipping from her grasp. She would occasionally jerk his arm to make him stop swinging, but this never worked for long, and nothing could compel the boy to withdraw his tongue; it remained sticking out, catching the snow.

As an orthopedist, Dr. Daruwalla disapproved of the way the mother jerked on her son’s arm, which was totally relaxed—the boy was almost limp. The doctor feared for the child’s elbow or his shoulder. But the mother had no intention of hurting her son; she was just impatient, and it was tedious for her—how the boy hung on her arm.

For a moment, Dr. Daruwalla smiled openly at this Madonna and Child; they were so clearly illuminated under their lamppost, the doctor should have known that they could see him standing under his lamppost—just as clearly. But Farrokh had forgotten where he was—not in India—and he’d overlooked the racial wariness he might provoke in the woman, who now regarded his unfamiliar face in the streetlight (and in the whiteness of the falling snow) as she might have regarded the sudden appearance of a large, unleashed dog. Why was this foreigner smiling at her?

The woman’s obvious fear both offended and shamed Dr. Daruwalla; he quickly stopped smiling and looked away. Then the doctor realized that he was standing on the wrong corner of the intersection. Julia had plainly instructed him to stand on the northwest corner of Lonsdale and Russell Hill Road, which was exactly where the mother and her son were standing. Farrokh knew that by crossing the street and standing beside them, he would probably create mayhem in the woman’s mind—at best, extreme apprehension. At worst, she might scream for help; there would be accusations that could rouse the neighbors—conceivably, summon the police!

Therefore, Dr. Daruwalla crossed Russell Hill Road awkwardly, sidling head-down and furtively, which doubtless gave the woman all the more cause to suspect him of criminal behavior. Slinking across the street, Farrokh looked full of felonious intentions. He passed the woman and child quickly, scuttling by without a greeting—for a greeting, the doctor was sure, would startle the woman to such a degree that she might bolt into the traffic. (There was no traffic.) Dr. Daruwalla took up a position that was 10 yards away from where Julia was expecting to spot him. There the doctor stood, like a pervert getting up his nerve for a cowardly assault; he was aware that the streetlight barely reached to the curb where he waited.

The mother, who was of medium height and figure—and now thoroughly frightened—began to pace, dragging her small son with her. She was a well-dressed young woman in her twenties, but neither her attire nor her youth could conceal her struggle to combat her rising terror. From her expression, it was clear to Dr. Daruwalla that she believed she understood his heinous intentions. Under his seemingly tasteful topcoat, which was black wool with a black velvet collar and black velvet lapels, there surely lurked a naked man who was dying to expose himself to her and her child. The mother turned her trembling back on the doctor’s reprehensible figure, but her small son had also noticed the stranger. The boy was unafraid—just curious. He kept tugging on his distraught mother’s arm; with his little tongue still sticking straight out into the snow, the child couldn’t take his eyes off the exotic foreigner.

Dr. Daruwalla tried to concentrate on the snow. Impulsively, the doctor stuck out his tongue; it was a reflex imitation of what he’d seen the small boy do—it hadn’t occurred to Dr. Daruwalla to stick out his tongue for years. But now, in the falling snow, the young mother could see that the foreigner was radically deranged; his mouth lolled open, with his tongue sticking out, and his eyes blinked as the snowflakes fell on his lashes.

As for his eyelids, Farrokh felt they were heavy; to the casual observer, his eyelids were puffy—his age, his tiredness, the years of beer and wine. But to this young mother, in her growing panic, they must have struck her as the eyelids of the demonic East; slightly beyond illumination in the streetlight, Dr. Daruwalla’s eyes appeared to be hooded—like a serpent’s.

However, her son had no fear of the foreigner; their tongues in the snow seemed to connect them. The kinship of their extended tongues took immediate effect on the small boy. Farrokh’s childish, unconscious gesture must have overridden the boy’s natural reluctance to speak to strangers, for he suddenly broke free of his mother’s grasp and ran with outstretched arms toward the astonished Indian.

The mother was too terrified to give clear utterance to her son’s name. She managed only a gargling sound, a strangled gasp. She hesitated before stumbling after her son, as if her legs had turned to ice or stone. She was resigned to her fate; how well she knew what would happen next! The black topcoat would open as she approached the stranger, and she would be confronted with the male genitalia of the truly inscrutable East.

In order not to frighten her further, Dr. Daruwalla pretended not to notice that the child was running to him. He could imagine the mother thinking, Oh—these perverts are sly! Particularly those of us who are “of color,” the doctor thought bitterly. This was precisely the situation that foreigners (especially those “of color”) are taught to dread. Absolutely nothing was happening; yet the young woman was sure that she and her son teetered on the brink of a shocking, possibly even a scarring, episode.

Farrokh nearly cried out: Excuse me, pretty lady, but there is no episode here! He would have run away from the child, except that he suspected the boy could run faster; also, Julia was coming to pick him up, and there he would be—running away from a mother and her small son. That would be too absurd.

That was when the small boy touched him; it was a firm but gentle tug on his sleeve—then the miniature mittened hand grasped the doctor’s gloved index finger and pulled. Dr. Daruwalla had no choice but to look down into the wide-eyed face that was peering up at him; the whiteness of the boy’s cheeks was rose-tinted against the purer whiteness of the snow.

“Excuse me,” the little gentleman said. “Where are you from?”

Well, that’s the question, isn’t it? thought Dr. Daruwalla. It was always the question. For his whole adult life, it was the question he usually answered with the literal truth, which in his heart felt like a lie.

“I’m from India,” the doctor would say, but he didn’t feel it; it didn’t ring true. “I’m from Toronto,” he sometimes said, but with more mischief than authority. Or else he would be clever. “I’m from Toronto, via Bombay,” he would say. If he really wanted to be cute, he would answer, “I’m from Toronto, via Vienna and Bombay.” He could go on, elaborating the lie—namely, that he was from anywhere.

He could always enhance the European qualities of his education, if he chose; he could create a spicy masala mixture for his childhood in Bombay, giving his accent that Hindi flavor; he could also kill the conversation with his merciless, deadpan Torontonian reserve. (“As you may know, there are many Indians in Toronto,” he could say, when he felt like it.) Dr. Daruwalla could seem as comfortable with the places he’d lived as he was, truly, uncomfortable.

But suddenly the boy’s innocence demanded of the doctor a different kind of truth; in the child’s face, Dr. Daruwalla could discern only frank curiosity—only the most genuine desire to know. It also moved the doctor that the boy had not let go of his index finger. Farrokh was aware that he had no time in which to formulate a witty answer or an ambiguous remark; the terrified mother would any second interrupt the moment, which would never return.

“Where are you from?” the child had asked him.

Dr. Daruwalla wished he knew; never had he so much wanted to tell the truth, and (more important) to feel that his response was as pure and natural as the currently falling snow. Bending close to the boy, so that the child could not mistake a word of his answer, and giving the boy’s trusting hand a reflexive squeeze, the doctor spoke clearly in the sharp winter air.

“I’m from the circus,” Farrokh said, without thinking—it was utterly spontaneous—but by the instant delight that was apparent in the child’s broad smile and in his bright, admiring eyes, Dr. Daruwalla could tell that he’d answered the question correctly. What he saw in the boy’s happy face was something he’d never felt before in his cold, adopted country. Such uncritical acceptance was the most satisfying pleasure that Dr. Daruwalla (or any immigrant of color) would ever know.

Then a car horn was blowing and the woman pulled her son away; the boy’s father, the woman’s husband—whoever he was—was helping them into his car. If Farrokh heard nothing of what the mother said, he would remember what the child told the man. “The circus is in town!” the boy said. Then they drove away, leaving Dr. Daruwalla there; the doctor had the street corner to himself.

Julia was late. Farrokh fretted that they wouldn’t have time to eat before the interminable Harbourfront readings. Then he needn’t worry that he’d fall asleep and snore; instead, the audience and the unfortunate authors would be treated to his growling stomach.

The snow kept falling. No cars passed. In a distant window, the lights on a Christmas tree were blinking; Dr. Daruwalla tried to count the colors. The colored lights through the window glass were reminiscent of that light which is reflected in sequins—that glitter which is sewn into the singlets of the circus acrobats. Was there anything as wonderful as that reflected light? Farrokh wondered.

A car was passing; it threatened to break the spell that the doctor was under, for Dr. Daruwalla was halfway around the world from the corner of Lonsdale and Russell Hill Road. “Go home!” someone shouted to him from the window of the passing car.

It was an irony that the doctor didn’t hear this, for he was in a position to inform the person that going home was easier said than done. More sounds, torn from the window of the moving car, were muffled by the snow—receding laughter, possibly a racial slur. But Dr. Daruwalla heard none of it. His eyes had risen from the Christmas tree in the window; at first he’d blinked at the falling snow, but then he allowed his eyes to close—the snow coolly covered his eyelids.

Farrokh saw the elephant-footed boy in his singlet with the blue-green sequins—as the little beggar was never dressed in real life. Farrokh saw Ganesh descending in the spotlight, twirling down—the cripple’s teeth clamped tightly on the dental trapeze. This was the completion of another successful Skywalk, which in reality had never happened and never would. The real cripple was dead; it was only in the retired screenwriter’s mind that Ganesh was a skywalker. Probably the movie would never be made. Yet, in his mind’s eye, Farrokh saw the elephant boy walk without a limp across the sky. To Dr. Daruwalla, this existed; it was as real as the India the doctor thought he’d left behind. Now he saw that he was destined to see Bombay again. Farrokh knew there was no escaping Maharashtra, which was no circus.

That was when he knew he was going back—again and again, he would keep returning. It was India that kept bringing him back; this time, the dwarfs would have nothing to do with it. Farrokh knew this as distinctly as he could hear the applause for the skywalker. Dr. Daruwalla heard them clapping as the elephant boy descended on the dental trapeze; the doctor could hear them cheering for the cripple.

Julia, who’d stopped the car and was waiting for her distracted husband, honked the horn. But Dr. Daruwalla didn’t hear her. Farrokh was listening to the applause—he was still at the circus.