A Son Of The Circus (73 page)

‘If I knew of there being someone like that, I’d probably kill her,’ the hijra said good-naturedly. Tor her
parts
,’ he added with a smile; he was just kidding, of course. Detective Patel knew more about Rahul than this hijra did; in the last 24 hours, the detective had learned more about Rahul than he’d known for 20 years.

‘You may go now,’ said the deputy commissioner. ‘But leave the shirt. By your own admission, you stole it.’

‘But I have nothing else to wear!’ the hijra cried.

‘We’ll find you something you can wear,’ the policeman said. ‘It just may not match your miniskirt.’

When Detective Patel left Crime Branch Headquarters for his lunch at the Duckworth Club, he took a paper bag with him; in it was the Hawaiian shirt that had belonged to Dhar’s imposter. The deputy commissioner knew that not every question would or could be answered over one lunch, but the question posed by the Hawaiian shirt seemed a relatively simple one.

‘No,’ said Inspector Dhar. ‘I would never wear a shirt like that.’ He’d glanced quickly and indifferently into the bag, not bothering to draw out the shirt — not even touching the material.

‘It has
a
California label,’ Detective Patel informed the actor.

‘I’ve never been to California,’ Dhar replied.

The deputy commissioner put the paper bag under his chair; he seemed disappointed that the Hawaiian shirt had not served as an icebreaker to their conversation, which had halted once again. Poor Nancy hadn’t spoken at all. Worse, she’d chosen to wear a sari, wound up in the navel-revealing fashion; the golden hairs that curled upward in a sleek line to her belly button were as worrisome to Mr Sethna as the unsightly paper bag the policeman had placed under his chair. It was the kind of bag that a bomb would be in, the old steward thought. And how he disapproved of Western women in Indian attire! Furthermore, the fair skin of this particular woman’s midriff clashed with her sunburned face. She must have been lying in the sun with tea saucers over her eyes, Mr Sethna thought; any evidence of women lying on their backs disturbed him.

As for the ever-voyeuristic Dr Daruwalla, his eyes were repeatedly drawn to Nancy’s furry navel; since she’d pulled her chair snugly to their table in the Ladies’ Garden, the doctor was restless because he could no longer see this marvel. Farrokh found himself glancing sideways at Nancy’s raccoon eyes instead. The doctor made Nancy so nervous that she took her sunglasses out of her purse and put them on. She had the look of someone who was trying to gather herself together for a performance.

Inspector Dhar knew how to handle sunglasses. He simply stared into them with a satisfied expression on his face, which implied to Nancy that her sunglasses were no impediment to
his
vision – that he could see her clearly nonetheless. Dhar knew this would soon cause her to take the sunglasses off.

Oh, great – they’re
both
acting! Dr Daruwalla thought.

Mr Sethna was disgusted with all of them. They were as socially graceless as teenagers. Not one of them had glanced at a menu; none of them had so much as raised an eyebrow to a waiter to suggest an aperitif, and they couldn’t even talk to one another! Mr Sethna was also full of indignation at the explanation that was now before him of why Detective Patel spoke such good English: the policeman’s wife was a slatternly American! Needless to say, Mr Sethna considered this a ‘mixed marriage,’ of which he strongly disapproved. And the old steward was no less outraged that Inspector Dhar should have brashly presented himself at the Duckworth Club so soon after the warning in the late Mr Lai’s mouth; the actor was recklessly endangering other Duckworthians! That Mr Sethna had come by this information through the relentlessness and the practiced stealth of his eavesdropping didn’t cause the old steward to consider that he might not know the whole story. To a man with Mr Sethna’s readiness to disapprove, a mere shred of information was sufficient to form a full opinion.

But of course Mr Sethna had another reason to be outraged with Inspector Dhar. As a Parsi and a practicing Zoroastrian, the old steward had reacted predictably to the posters for the newest Inspector Dhar absurdity. Not since his days at the Ripon Club, and his famous decision to pour hot tea on the head of the man wearing the wig, had Mr Sethna felt so aroused to righteous anger. He’d seen the work of the poster-wallas on his way home from the Duckworth Club, and he blamed
Inspector Dhar and the Towers of Silence
for giving him uncharacteristically lurid dreams.

He’d suffered a vision of a ghostly-white statue of Queen Victoria that resembled the one they took away from Victoria Terminus, but in his dream the statue was levitating; Queen Victoria was hovering about a foot off the floor of Mr Sethna’s beloved fire-temple, and all the Parsi faithful were bolting for the doorway. Were it not for the blasphemous cinema poster, Mr Sethna believed he would never have had such a blasphemous dream. He’d promptly woken up and donned his prayer cap, but the prayer cap fell off when he suffered another dream. He was riding in the Parsi Panchayat Hearse to the Towers of Silence; although he was already a dead body, he could smell the rites attendant to his own death – the scent of burning sandalwood. Suddenly the stink of putrefaction, which clung to the vultures’ beaks and talons, was choking him; he woke again. His prayer cap was on the floor, where he mistook it for a waiting hunchbacked crow; pathetically, he’d tried to shoo the imagined crow away.

Dr Daruwalla glanced only once at Mr Sethna. From the steward’s withering stare, the doctor wondered if another hot-tea incident was brewing. Mr Sethna interpreted the doctor’s glance as a summons.

‘An aperitif before lunch, perhaps?’ the steward asked the awkward foursome. Since ‘aperitif wasn’t a word much used in Iowa – nor had Nancy heard it from Dieter, nor was it ever spoken in her life with Vijay Patel – she made no response to Mr Sethna, who was looking directly at her. (If anywhere, Nancy might have encountered the word in one or another of the remaindered American novels she’d read, but she wouldn’t have known how to pronounce ‘aperitif and she would have assumed that the word was inessential to understanding the plot.)

‘Would the lady enjoy something to drink before her lunch?’ Mr Sethna asked, still looking at Nancy. No one at the table could hear what she said, but the old steward understood that she’d whispered for a Thums Up cola. The deputy commissioner ordered a Gold Spot orange soda, Dr Daruwalla asked for a London Diet beer and Dhar wanted a Kingfisher.

‘Well, this should be lively,’ Dr Daruwalla joked. Two teetotalers and two beer drinkers!’ This lead balloon lay on the table, which inspired the doctor to discourse, at length, on the history of the lunch menu.

It was Chinese Day at the Duckworth Club, the culinary low point of the week. In the old days, there’d been a Chinese chef among the kitchen staff, and Chinese Day had been an epicure’s delight. But the Chinese chef had left the club to open his own restaurant, and the present-day collection of cooks could not concoct Chinese; yet, one day a week, they tried.

‘It’s probably safest to stick with something vegetarian,’ Farrokh recommended.

‘By the time you saw the bodies,’ Nancy suddenly began, ‘I suppose they were pretty bad.’

‘Yes – I’m afraid the crabs had found them,’ Dr Daruwalla replied.

‘But I guess the drawing was still clear, or you wouldn’t have remembered it,’ Nancy said.

‘Yes – indelible ink, I’m sure,’ said Dr Daruwalla.

‘It was a laundry-marking pen – a dhobi pen,’ Nancy told him, although she appeared to be looking at Dhar. With her sunglasses on, who knew where she was looking? ‘I buried them, you know,’ Nancy went on. ‘I didn’t see them die, but I heard them. The sound of the spade,’ she added.

Dhar continued to stare at her, his lip not quite sneering. Nancy took her sunglasses off and returned them to her purse. Something she saw in her purse made her pause; she held her lower lip in her teeth for three or four seconds. Then she reached in her purse and brought out the bottom half of the silver ballpoint pen, which she’d carried with her, everywhere she’d gone, for 20 years.

‘He stole the other half of this – he or she,’ Nancy said. She handed the half-pen to Dhar, who read the interrupted inscription.

‘ “Made in”
where
?’ Dhar asked her.

‘India,’ said Nancy. ‘Rahul must have stolen it.’

‘Who would want the top half of a pen?’ Farrokh asked Detective Patel.

‘Not a writer,’ Dhar replied; he passed the half-pen to Dr Daruwalla.

‘It’s real silver,’ the doctor observed.

‘It needs to be polished,’ Nancy said. The deputy commissioner looked away; he knew his wife had polished the thing only last week. Dr Daruwalla couldn’t see any indication that the silver was dull or blackened; everything was shiny, even the inscription. When he handed the half-pen to Nancy, she didn’t put it back in her purse; instead, she placed it alongside her knife and spoon – it was brighter than both. ‘I use an old toothbrush to polish the lettering,’ she said. Even Dhar looked away from her; that he couldn’t meet her eyes gave her confidence. ‘In real life,’ Nancy said to the actor, ‘have you ever taken a bribe?’ She saw the sneer she’d been looking for; she’d been expecting it.

‘No, never,’ Dhar told her. Now Nancy had to look away from him; she looked straight at Dr Daruwalla.

‘How come you keep it a secret… that you write all his movies?’ Nancy asked the doctor.

‘I already have a career,’ Dr Daruwalla replied. The idea was to create a career for
him
.’

‘Well, you sure did it,’ Nancy told Farrokh. Detective Patel reached for her left hand, which was on the table by her fork, but Nancy put her hand in her lap. Then she faced Dhar.

‘And how do you like it? Your
career
…’ Nancy asked the actor. He responded with his patterned shrug, which enhanced his sneer. Something both cruel and merry entered his eyes.

‘I have a day job … another life,’ Dhar replied.

‘Lucky you,’ Nancy told him.

‘Sweetie,’ said the deputy commissioner; he reached into his wife’s lap and took her hand. She seemed to go a little limp in the rattan chair. Even Mr Sethna could hear her exhale; the old steward had heard almost everything else, too, and what he hadn’t actually heard he’d fairly accurately surmised from reading their lips. Mr Sethna was good lip-reader, and for an elderly man he could move spryly around a conversation; a table for four posed few problems for him. It was easier to pick up conversation in the Ladies’ Garden than in the main dining room, because only the bower of flowers was overhead; there were no ceiling fans.

From Mr Sethna’s point of view, it was already a much more interesting lunch than he’d anticipated. Dead bodies! A stolen part of a pen? And the most startling revelation — that Dr Daruwalla was the actual author of that trash which had elevated Inspector Dhar to stardom! In a way, Mr Sethna believed that he’d known it all along; the old steward had always sensed that Farrokh wasn’t the man his father was.

Mr Sethna glided in with the drinks; then he glided away. The venomous feelings that the old steward had felt for Dhar were now what Mr Sethna was feeling for Dr Daruwalla. A Parsi writing for the Hindi cinema! And making fun of other Parsis! How dare he? Mr Sethna could barely restrain himself. In his mind, he could hear the sound that his silver serving tray would make off the crown of Dr Daruwalla’s head; it sounded like a gong. The steward had needed all his strength to resist the temptation to cover that appalling woman’s fuzzy navel with her napkin, which was carelessly lumped in her lap. A belly button like hers should be clothed – if not banned! But Mr Sethna quickly calmed himself, for he didn’t want to miss what the real policeman was saying.

‘I should like to hear the three of you describe what Rahul would look like today, assuming that Rahul is now a woman,’ said the deputy commissioner. ‘You first,’ Patel said to Dhar.

‘Vanity and an overall sense of physical superiority would keep her looking younger than she is,’ Dhar began.

‘But –she would be fifty-three or fifty-four,’ Dr Daruwalla interjected.

‘You’re next. Please let him finish,’ said Detective Patel.

‘She wouldn’t
look
fifty-three or fifty-four, except maybe very early in the morning,’ Dhar continued. ‘And she would be very fit. She has a predatory aura. She’s a stalker –I mean sexually.’

‘I think she was quite hot for him when he was a boy!’ Dr Daruwalla remarked.

‘
Who wasn’t?
Nancy asked bitterly. Only her husband looked at her.

‘Please let him finish,’ Patel said patiently.

‘She’s also the sort of woman who enjoys making you want her, even if she intends to reject you,’ Dhar said. He made a point of looking at Nancy. ‘And I would assume that, like her late aunt, she has a caustic manner. She would always be ready to ridicule someone, or some idea – anything.’

‘Yes, yes,’ said Dr Daruwalla impatiently, ‘but don’t forget, she is also a
starer
.’

‘Excuse me – a
what?’
asked Detective Patel.

‘A family trait – she stares at everyone. Rahul is a compulsive starer!’ Farrokh replied. ‘She does it because she’s deliberately rude but also because she has a kind of uninhibited curiosity. That was her aunt, in spades! Rahul was brought up that way. No modesty whatsoever. Now she would be very feminine, I suppose, but not with her eyes. She is a man with her eyes – she’s always looking you over and staring you down.’

‘Were you finished?’ the deputy commissioner asked Dhar.

‘I think so,’ the actor replied.

‘I never saw her clearly,’ Nancy said suddenly. ‘There was no light, or the light was bad – only an oil lamp. I got just a peek at her, and I was sick – I had a fever.’ She toyed with the bottom half of the ballpoint pen on the table, turning it at a right angle to her knife and spoon, then lining it up again. ‘She smelled good, and she felt very silky – but strong,’ Nancy added.

‘Talk about her now, not then,’ Patel said. ‘What would she be like now?’