A Son Of The Circus (41 page)

Nancy knew her fever had finally gone because she was smart enough to take Dieter’s and Beth’s passports; she also reminded herself that their bodies would be found soon. Whoever rented the cottage to Dieter had known there were three of them. She suspected that the police would assume she’d leave by bus from Calangute or by ferry from Panjim. Nancy’s plan was remarkably clear-headed: she would place Dieter’s and Beth’s passports in a conspicuous place at the bus stand in Calangute, but she would take the ferry from Panjim to Bombay. That way, with any luck – and while she was on the ferry – the police would be looking for her in bus stations.

But Nancy would be the beneficiary of better luck than this. When the bodies were discovered, the landlord who rented the cottage to Dieter admitted that he’d seen Beth and Nancy only at a distance. Since Dieter was German, the landlord assumed the other two were Germans; also, he mistook Nancy for a man. After all, she was so big — especially beside Beth. The landlord would tell the police that they were looking for a German hippie male. When the passports were found in Calangute, the police realized that Beth had been an American; yet they persisted in their belief that the murderer was a German man, traveling by bus.

The grave wouldn’t be discovered right away; the tide eroded the sand near the inlet only a little bit at a time. It would be unclear whether the carrion birds or the pye-dogs were the first to catch wind of something; by then, Nancy was gone.

She waited only for the sun to top the palm trees and flood the beach in white light; it took just a few minutes for the sun to dry the wet sand of the grave. With a palm frond, Nancy wiped smooth the stretch of beach leading to the jungle and the cottage; then she limped on her way. It was still early morning when she left Anjuna. She deemed she’d discovered an isolated pocket of eccentrics when she saw the nude sunbathers and swimmers who were almost a tradition in the area. She’d been sick — she didn’t know,

The first day, her foot wasn’t too bad, but she had to walk all over Calangute after she placed the passports. There was no doctor staying at Meena’s or Varma’s. Someone told her that an English-speaking doctor was staying at the Concha Hotel; when she got there, the doctor had checked out. At the Concha, they told her there was an English-speaking doctor in Baga at the Hotel Bardez. The next day, when she went mere, they turned her away; by then, her foot was infected.

As she emerged from her endless baths in Dr Daruwalla’s tub, Nancy couldn’t remember if the murders were two or three days old. She did, however, remember a glaring error in her judgment. She’d already told Dr Daruwalla that she was taking the ferry to Bombay; that was decidedly unwise. When the doctor and his wife helped her onto the table on the balcony, they mistook her silence for anxiety regarding the small surgery, but Nancy was thinking of how to rectify her mistake. She hardly flinched at the anesthetic, and while Dr Daruwalla probed for the broken glass, Nancy calmly said, ‘You know, I’ve changed my mind about Bombay. I’m going south instead. I’ll take the bus from Calangute to Panjim, then I’ll take the bus to Margao. I want to go to Mysore, where they make the incense — you know? Then I want to go to Kerala. What do you think of that?’ she asked the doctor. She wanted him to remember her false itinerary.

‘I think you must be a very ambitious traveler!’ said Dr Daruwalla. He extracted a surprisingly big, half-moon-shaped piece of glass from her foot; it was probably a piece from the thick heel of a Coke bottle, the doctor told her. He disinfected the smaller cuts once they were free of glass fragments. He packed the larger wound with iodophor gauze. Dr Daruwalla also gave Nancy an antibiotic that he’d brought with him to Goa for his children. She’d have to see a doctor in a few days – sooner, if there was any redness around the wound or if she had a fever.

Nancy wasn’t listening; she was worrying how she would pay him. She didn’t think it would be proper to ask the doctor to unscrew the dildo; she also didn’t think he looked strong enough. Farrokh, in his own way, was also distracted by his thoughts about the dildo.

‘I can’t pay you very much,’ Nancy told the doctor.

‘I don’t want you to pay me at all!’ Dr Daruwalla said. He gave her his card; it was just his habit.

Nancy read the card and said, ‘But I told you – I’m not going to Bombay.’

‘I know, but if you feel feverish or the infection worsens, you should call me – from wherever you are. Or if you see a doctor who can’t understand you, have the doctor call me,’ Farrokh said.

Thank you,’ Nancy told him.

‘And don’t walk on it any more than you have to,’ the doctor told her.

‘I’ll be on the
bus
,’ Nancy insisted.

As she was limping to the stairs, the doctor introduced her to John D. She was in no mood to meet such a handsome young man, and although he was very polite to her — he even offered to help her down the stairs – Nancy felt extremely vulnerable to his kind of European superiority. He showed not the slightest spark of sexual interest in her, and this hurt her more than her foot did. But she said good-bye to Dr Daruwalla and allowed John D. to carry her downstairs; she knew she was heavy, but he looked strong. The desire to shock him grew overwhelming. Besides, she knew he was strong enough to unscrew the dildo.

‘If it’s not too much trouble,’ she said to him in the lobby of the hotel, ‘you could do me a big favor.’ She showed him the dildo without removing it from her rucksack. ‘The tip unscrews,’ she told him, watching his eyes. ‘But I’m just not strong enough.’ She continued to regard his face while he gripped the big cock in both hands; she would remember him because of how poised he was.

As soon as he loosened the tip, she stopped him.

That’s enough,’ she told him; she didn’t want him to see the money. It disappointed her that he seemed unshockable, but she kept trying. She resolved she would look into his eyes until he had to look away. ‘I’m going to spare you,’ she said softly. ‘You don’t want to know what’s inside the thing.’

She would remember him for his instinctive sneer, for John D. was an actor long before he was Inspector Dhar. She would remember that sneer, the same sneer with which Inspector Dhar would later incense all of Bombay. It was Nancy who had to look away from him; she would remember that, too.

She avoided the bus stand in Calangute; she would try to hitchhike to Panjim, even if it meant she had to walk – or defend herself with the entrenching tool. She hoped she still had a day or two before the bodies were found. But before she located the road to Panjim, she remembered the big piece of glass the doctor had removed from her foot. After showing it to her, he’d put it in an ashtray on a small table near the hammock; probably he would throw it away, she thought. But what if he heard about the broken glass in the hippie grave — it would soon be called the ‘hippie grave’ – and what if he wondered if the piece of glass from her foot would match?

It was late at night when Nancy returned to the Hotel Bardez. The door to the lobby was locked, and the boy who slept on a rush mat in the lobby all night was still engaged in talking to the dog that spent every night with him; that was why the dog never heard Nancy when she climbed the vine to the Daruwallas’ second-floor balcony. Her procaine injection had worn off and her foot throbbed; but Nancy could have screamed in pain and knocked over the furniture and still she would never have awakened Dr Daruwalla.

The doctor’s lunch has been described. It would be superfluous to provide similar detail regarding the doctor’s dinner; suffice it to say that he substituted the vindaloo-style pork for the fish, and he further indulged in a pork stew called sorpotel, which features pig’s liver and is abundantly flavored with vinegar. Yet it was the dried duckling with tamarind that dominated the aroma of his heavy breathing, and his snores were scented with sharp blasts of a raw red wine, which he would deeply regret in the morning. He should have stuck to the beer. Julia was grateful that Dr Daruwalla had elected to sleep in the hammock on the balcony, where only the Arabian Sea – and the lizards and insects that in the night were legion – would be disturbed by the doctor’s windy noises. Julia also desired a rest from the passions inspired by Mr James Salter’s artistry. For the moment, her private speculations concerning the departed hippie’s dildo had cooled Julia’s sexual ardor.

As for the insect and lizard life that clung to the mosquito net enclosing the cherubic doctor in his hammock, the gecko and mosquito world appeared to be charmed by both the doctor’s music and his vapors. The doctor had bathed just before retiring, and his plump pale-brown body was everywhere dusted with Cuticura powder – from his neck to between his toes. His closely shaven throat and cheeks were refreshed with a powerful astringent redolent of lemons. He’d even shaved his mustache off, leaving only a little clump of a beard on his chin; he was almost as smoothfaced as a baby. Dr Daruwalla was so clean and he smelled so wonderful that Nancy had the impression that only the mosquito net prevented the geckos and mosquitoes from devouring him.

At a level of sleep so deep it seemed to Farrokh that he had died and lay buried somewhere in China, the doctor dreamed that his most ardent admirers were digging up his body – to prove a point. The doctor wished they would leave him undisturbed, for he felt he was at peace; in truth, he’d passed out in the hammock in a stupor of overeating – not to mention the effect of the wine. To dream that he was prey to gravediggers was surely an indication of his overindulgence.

So what if my body is a miracle, he was dreaming –please just leave it alone!

Meanwhile, Nancy found what she was looking for; in the ashtray, where it had left only a spot of dried blood, lay the half-moon-shaped piece of glass. As she took it, she heard Dr Daruwalla cry out, ‘Leave me in China!’ The doctor thrashed his legs, and Nancy saw that one of his beautiful eggshell-brown feet had escaped the mosquito net and was protruding from the hammock – exposed to the terrors of the night. The disturbance sent the geckos darting in all directions and caused the mosquitoes to swarm.

Well, Nancy thought, the doctor had done her a favor, hadn’t he? She stood stock-still until she was sure Dr Daruwalla was sound asleep; she didn’t want to wake him up, but it was hard for her to leave him when his gorgeous foot was prey to the elements. Nancy contemplated how she might safely return Farrokh’s foot to the mosquito net, but her newfound good sense persuaded her not to risk it. She descended the vine from the balcony to the patio; this required the use of both her hands, and so she delicately held the piece of broken glass in her teeth – careful that it not cut her tongue or her lips. She was limping along the dark road to Calangute when she threw the glass away. It was lost in a dense grove of palms, where it disappeared without a sound – as unseen by any living human eye as Nancy’s lost innocence.

Nancy had been fortunate to
leave
the Hotel Bardez when she had. She never knew that Rahul was a guest there, nor did Rahul know that Nancy had been Dr Daruwalla’s patient. This was
extremely
lucky, because Rahul also climbed the vine to the Daruwallas’ second-floor balcony – on that very same night. Nancy had come and gone; but when Rahul arrived on the balcony, Dr Daruwalla’s poor foot was still vulnerable to the nighttime predators.

Rahul himself had come as a predator. He’d learned from Dr Daruwalla’s innocent daughters that John D. usually slept in the hammock on the balcony. Rahul had come to the balcony to seduce John D. The sexually curious may find it interesting to speculate whether or not Rahul would have met with success in his attempted seduction of the beautiful young man, but John D. was spared this test because Dr Daruwalla was sleeping in the hammock on this busy night.

In the darkness – not to mention that he was blinded by his overeagerness – Rahul was confused. The body asleep under the mosquito net was certainly of a desirable fragrance. Maybe it was the moonlight that played tricks with skin color. Possibly it was only the moonlight which gave Rahul the impression that John D. had grown a little clump of a beard. As for the toes of the doctor’s exposed foot, they were tiny and hairless, and the foot itself was as small as a young girl’s. Rahul found that the ball of the foot was endearingly fleshy and soft, and he thought that the sole of Dr Daruwalla’s foot was almost indecently pink — in contrast to the doctor’s sleek, brown ankle.

Rahul knelt by the doctor’s small foot; he stroked it with his large hand; he brushed his cheek against the doctor’s freshly scented toes. Naturally, it would have startled him if Dr Daruwalla had cried out, ‘But I don’t
want
to be a miracle!’

The doctor was dreaming that he was Francis Xavier, dug up from his grave and taken against his will to the Basilica de Bom Jesus in Goa. More accurately, he was dreaming that he was Francis Xavier’s miraculously preserved
body
, and things were about to be done to his body – also against his will. But despite the terror of what was happening to him, in his dream Farrokh couldn’t give utterance to his fears; he was so heavily sedated with food and wine that he was forced to suffer in silence – even though he anticipated that a crazed pilgrim was about to eat his toe. After all, he knew the story.

Rahul ran his tongue along the sole of the doctor’s fragrant foot, which tasted strongly of Cuticura powder and vaguely of garlic. Because Dr Daruwalla’s foot was the single part of him that was unprotected by the mosquito net, Rahul could manifest his powerful attraction to the delicious John D. only by enclosing what he presumed to be the big toe of John D.’s right foot in his warm mouth. Rahul then sucked on this toe with such force that Dr Daruwalla moaned. Rahul at first fought against the desire to bite him, but he gave in to this urge and slowly sank his teeth into the squirming toe; then he once more resisted the compelling impulse to bite – then he weakened and bit down harder. It was torture for Rahul to stop himself from going too far – from swallowing Dr Daruwalla, either whole or in pieces. When he at last released the doctor’s foot, both Rahul and Dr Daruwalla were gasping. In his dream, the doctor was certain that the obsessed woman had already done her damage; she’d bitten off the sacred relic of his toe, and now there was tragically less of his miraculous body than they had buried.