A Son Of The Circus (43 page)

Promila held it in her veinous hand. ‘Why so it is, dear,’ she remarked. She read aloud the one word, in script, that was engraved on the top half of the pen: ‘
India —
isn’t
that
quaint?’

‘I certainly thought so,’ Rahul remarked, returning the eccentric item to his purse.

Meanwhile, as Dr Daruwalla grew hungrier, he also grew more relaxed about his praying; he cautiously rekindled his sense of humor. After he’d eaten, Farrokh could almost joke about his conversion. ‘I wonder what next the Almighty will ask of me!’ he said to Julia, who once more cautioned her husband about blasphemy.

What was next in store for Dr Daruwalla would test his newfound faith in ways the doctor would find most disturbing. By the same means that Nancy had discovered the doctor’s whereabouts, the police also discovered him. They’d found what everyone now called the ‘hippie grave’ and they needed a doctor to hazard a guess concerning the cause of death of the grave’s ghastly occupants. They’d gone looking for a doctor on holiday. A
local
doctor would talk too much about the crime; at least this was what the local police told Dr Daruwalla.

‘But I don’t do autopsies!’ Dr Daruwalla protested; yet he went to Anjuna to view the remains.

It was generally supposed that the blue crabs were the reason the bodies were spoiled for viewing; and if the salt water proved itself to be a modest preservative, it did little to veil the stench. Farrokh easily concluded that several blows to the head had done them both in, but the female’s body was messier. Her forearms and the backs of her hands were battered, which suggested that she’d tried to defend herself; the male, clearly, had never known what hit him.

It was the elephant drawing that Farrokh would remember. The murdered girl’s navel had been transformed to a winking eye; the opposing tusk had been flippantly raised, like the tipping of an imaginary hat. Short, childish lines indicated that the elephant’s trunk was spraying – the ‘water’ fanning over the dead girl’s pubic hair. Such intended mockery would remain with Dr Daruwalla for 20 years; the doctor would remember the little drawing too well.

When Farrokh saw the broken glass, he suffered only the slightest discomfort, and the feeling quickly passed. Back at the Hotel Bardez, he was unable to find the piece of glass he’d removed from the young woman’s foot. And so what if the glass from the grave had matched? he thought. There were soda bottles everywhere. Besides, the police had already told him that the suspected murderer was a German male.

Farrokh thought that this theory suited the prejudices of the local police – namely, that only a hippie from Europe or North America could possibly perform a double slaying and then trivialize the murders with a cartoonish drawing. Ironically, these killings and that drawing stimulated Dr Daruwalla’s need to be more creative. He found himself fantasizing that
he
was a detective.

The doctor’s success in the orthopedic field had given him certain commercial expectations; these considerations doubtless returned the doctor’s imagination to that notion of himself as a screenwriter. No one movie could have satisfied Farrokh’s suddenly insatiable creativity; nothing less than a series of movies, featuring the same detective, would do. Finally, that was how it happened. At the end of his holiday, on the ferry back to Bombay, Dr Daruwalla invented Inspector Dhar.

Farrokh was watching how the young women on board the ferry couldn’t take their eyes off the beautiful John D. Suddenly, the doctor could envision the hero that these young women imagined when they looked at a young man like that. The excitement that Mr James Salter’s example had inspired was already becoming a moment of the sexual past; it was becoming a part of the second honeymoon that Dr Daruwalla was leaving behind. To the doctor, murder and corruption spoke louder than art. And besides, what a career John D. might have!

It would never have occurred to Farrokh that the young woman with the big dildo had seen the same murder victims he had seen. But 20 years later, even the movie version of that drawing on Beth’s belly would ring a bell with Nancy. How could it be a coincidence that the victim’s naval was the elephant’s winking eye, or that the opposing tusk was raised? In the movie, no pubic hair was shown, but those childish lines indicated to Nancy that the elephant’s trunk was still spraying — like a showerhead, or like the nozzle of a hose.

Nancy would also remember the beautiful, unshockable young man she’d been introduced to by Dr Daruwalla. When she saw her first Inspector Dhar movie, Nancy would recall the first time she’d seen that knowing sneer. The future actor had been strong enough to carry her downstairs without apparent effort; the future movie star had been poised enough to unscrew the troublesome dildo without appearing to be appalled.

And all of this was what she meant when she left her uncompromising message on Dr Daruwalla’s answering machine. ‘I know who you really are, I know what you really do,’ Nancy had informed the doctor. Tell the deputy commissioner – the
real
policeman. Tell him who you are. Tell him what you do,’ Nancy had instructed the secret screenwriter, for she’d figured out who Inspector Dhar’s creator was.

Nancy knew that no one could have imagined the movie version of that drawing on Beth’s belly; Inspector Dhar’s creator had to have seen what
she
had seen. And the handsome John D., who now passed himself off as Inspector Dhar – that young man would never have been invited to view the murder victims. That would have been the doctor’s job. Therefore, Nancy knew that Dhar hadn’t created himself; Inspector Dhar had also been the doctor’s job.

Dr Daruwalla was confused. He remembered introducing Nancy to John D., and how gallantly John D. had carried the heavy young woman downstairs. Had Nancy seen an Inspector Dhar movie, or all of them? Had she recognized the more mature John D.? Fine; but
how
had she made the imaginative leap that the doctor was Dhar’s creator? And how could she know ‘the
real
policeman,’ as she called him? Dr Daruwalla could only assume that she meant Deputy Commissioner Patel. Of course, the doctor didn’t realize that Nancy had known Detective Patel for 20 years –not to mention that she was married to him.

One might recall that Dr Daruwalla had all this time been sitting in his bedroom in Bombay, where the doctor was alone again. Julia had at last left him sitting there; she’d gone to apologize to John D. – and to be sure that their supper was still warm enough to eat. Dr Daruwalla knew it was an unprecedented rudeness to have kept his favorite young man waiting, but in the light of Nancy’s phone message, the doctor felt compelled to speak to D.C.P. Patel. The subject that the deputy commissioner wished to discuss in private with Dr Daruwalla was only a part of what prompted the doctor to make the call; of more interest to Farrokh was where Nancy was now and why she knew ‘the
real
policeman.’

Given the hour, Dr Daruwalla phoned Detective Patel at home. Farrokh was thinking that there were Patels all over Gujarat; there were many Patels in Africa, too. He knew both a hotel-chain Patel and a department-store Patel in Nairobi. He was thinking he knew only one Patel who was a policeman, when – as luck would have it – Nancy answered the phone. All she said was, ‘Hello,’ but the one word was sufficient for Farrokh to recognize her voice. Dr Daruwalla was too confused to speak, but his silence was all the identification that Nancy needed.

‘Is that the doctor?’ she asked in her familiar fashion.

Dr Daruwalla supposed it would be stupid of him to hang up, but for a moment he couldn’t imagine what else to do. He knew from the surprising experience of his long and happy marriage to Julia that there was no understanding what drew or held people together. If the doctor had known that the relationship between Nancy and Detective Patel was deeply connected to the dildo, he would have admitted that his understanding of sexual attraction and compatibility was even less than he supposed. The doctor suspected some elements of interracial interest on the part of both parties – Farrokh and Julia had surely felt this. And in the curious case of Nancy and Deputy Commissioner Patel, Dr Daruwalla also guessed that Nancy’s bad-girl appearance possibly concealed a good-girl heart; the doctor could easily imagine that Nancy had
wanted
a cop. As for what had attracted the deputy commissioner to Nancy, Farrokh tended to overestimate the value of a light complexion; after all, he adored the fairness of Julia’s skin, and Julia wasn’t even a blonde. What the doctor’s research for the Inspector Dhar movies had failed to uncover was a characteristic common to many policemen – a love of confession. Poor Vijay Patel was prone to enjoy the confessing of crimes, and Nancy had held nothing back. She’d begun by handing him the dildo.

‘You were right,’ she’d told him. ‘It unscrews. Only it was sealed with wax. I didn’t know it came apart. I didn’t know what was in it. But look what I brought into the country,’ she said. As Inspector Patel counted the Deutsche marks, Nancy kept talking. ‘There was more,’ she said, ‘but Dieter spent some, and some of it was stolen.’ After a short pause, she added, ‘There were two murders, but just one drawing.’ Then she told him absolutely everything, beginning with the football players. People have fallen in love for stranger reasons.

Meanwhile, still waiting for the doctor’s answer on the telephone, Nancy grew impatient. ‘Hello?’ she said. ‘Is anyone there?
Is that the doctor
?’ she repeated.

A born procrastinator, Dr Daruwalla nevertheless knew that Nancy wouldn’t be denied; still, he didn’t like to be bullied. Countless stupid remarks came to the closet screenwriter’s mind; they were smart-ass, tough-guy wisecracks – the usual voice-over from old Inspector Dhar movies. (‘Bad things had happened –worse things were happening. The woman was worth it — after all, she might know something. It was time to put all the cards on the table.’) After a career of such glibness, it was hard for Dr Daruwalla to know what to say to Nancy. After 20 years, it was difficult to sound casual, but the doctor lamely tried.

‘So-it’s you!’ he said.

On her end of the phone, Nancy just waited. It was as if she expected nothing less than a full confession. Farrokh felt he was being treated unfairly. Why should Nancy want to make him feel guilty? He should have known that Nancy’s sense of humor wasn’t easy to locate, but Dr Daruwalla foolishly kept trying to find it.

‘So – how’s the foot?’ he asked her. ‘All better?’

The hollowness of the doctor’s dumb joke contributed to an empty sound that the receiver made against his ear, for Nancy wasn’t talking; her silence echoed, as if the phone call were transnational. Then Dr Daruwalla heard Nancy say to someone else, ‘It’s him.’ Her voice was indistinct, although her effort to cover the mouthpiece with her hand had been halfhearted. Farrokh couldn’t have known how 20 years had stolen the enthusiasm from many of Nancy’s efforts.

And yet, 20 years ago, she’d reintroduced herself to young Inspector Patel with admirable resolve, not only presenting the policeman with the dildo and the sordid particulars of Dieter’s crimes, but strengthening her confession with her intention to change. Nancy said she sought a life of righting wrongs, and she declared the extent of her attraction to young Patel in such graphic terms that she gave the proper policeman pause. Also, as Nancy had anticipated, she managed to give the inspector pangs of the severest desire, which he wouldn’t act upon, for he was both a highly professional detective and a gentleman — neither an oafish football player nor a jaded European. If the physical attraction that drew Nancy and Inspector Patel together was ever to be acted upon, Nancy knew that she would need to initiate the contact.

Although she trusted that, in the end, she would marry the idealistic detective, certain conditions beyond her control contributed to Nancy’s delay of the matter. For example, there was the distress caused by the disappearance of Rahul. As a most recent and eager convert to the pursuit of justice, Nancy was deeply disappointed that Rahul could not be found. The allegedly murderous zenana, who’d only briefly achieved a legendary status in the brothel area of Bombay, had vanished from Falkland Road and Grand Road and Kamathipura. Also, Inspector Patel discovered that the transvestite known as Pretty had always been an outsider; the hijras hated him – the few who knew him –and his fellow zenanas hated him, too.

Rahul had sold his services for an uncommonly high price, but what he sold was merely his appearance; his good looks, which were the result of his outstanding femininity in juxtaposition to his dominating physical size and strength, made him an attractive showpiece for any transvestite brothel. Once a customer was lured into the brothel by Rahul’s presence, the other zenanas – or the hijras – were the only transvestites who made themselves available for sexual contact. Hence there was to his nickname, Pretty, both an honest appraisal of his powers to attract and a disparagement of his character; for, by his refusal to do more than display himself, Rahul brandished a high-mindedness that insulted the transvestite prostitutes.

They could see he was indifferent to the offense he caused; he was also too big and strong and confident for them to threaten. The hijras hated him because he was a zenana; his fellow zenanas hated him because he’d told them he intended to make himself ‘complete.’ But
all
the transvestite prostitutes hated Rahul because he wasn’t a prostitute.

There prevailed some nasty rumors about Rahul, although any evidence of these allegations eluded Inspector Patel. Some transvestite prostitutes claimed that Rahul frequented a female brothel in Karnathipura; it further outraged the transvestites to imagine that, when Rahul chose to advertise himself in
their
brothels on Falkland Road and Grant Road, he was in reality merely slumming. Also, there were ugly stories concerning how Rahul made use of the female prostitutes in Kamathipura; it was claimed that he never had sex with the girls but that he beat them. There was mention of a flexible rubber billy stick. If these rumors were true, the beaten girls would have nothing but raised red welts to show for their pain; such marks faded quickly and were thought to be insubstantial in comparison to broken bones or the deeper, darker discolorations of those bruises inflicted by a harder weapon. There was no legal recourse for the girls who might have suffered such beatings; whoever Rahul was, he was smart. Shortly after murdering Dieter and Beth, he was also out of the country.