A Son Of The Circus (85 page)

‘Are you going to be a doctor, too?’ Farrokh asked him.

The other two got up; they pulled the third boy along with them.

Tuck you,’ the first boy said to Farrokh, but the doctor knew this was a harmless bomb – already defused.

He never took the subway again. But after his worst episode, the subway incident seemed mild. After his worst episode, Farrokh was so upset, he couldn’t remember whether the taxi driver had pulled over before or after the intersection of University and Gerrard; either way, he’d just left the hospital and he was daydreaming. What was odd, he remembered, was that the driver already had a passenger, and that the passenger was riding in the front seat. The driver said, ‘Don’t mind him. He’s just a friend with nothing to do.’

‘I’m not a fare,’ the driver’s friend said.

Later, Farrokh remembered only that it wasn’t one of Metro’s taxis or one of Beck’s – the two companies he most often called. It was probably what they call a gypsy cab.

‘I said where are you going?’ the driver asked Dr Daruwalla.

‘Home,’ Farrokh replied. (It struck him as pointless to add that he’d intended to walk for a while. Here was a taxi. Why not take it?)

‘Where’s “home”?’ the friend in the front seat asked.

‘Russell Hill Road, north of St Glair – just north of Lonsdale,’ the doctor answered; he’d stopped walking – the taxi had stopped, too. ‘Actually, I was going to stop at the beer store – and then go home,’ Farrokh added.

‘Get in, if you want,’ the driver said.

Dr Daruwalla didn’t feel anxious until he was settled in the back seat and the taxi began to move. The friend in the front seat belched once, sharply, and the driver laughed. The windshield visor in front of the driver’s friend
was
pushed flat against the windshield, and the glove-compartment door was missing. Farrokh couldn’t remember if these were the places where the driver’s certification was posted – or was it usually on the Plexiglas divider between the front and back seats? (The Plexiglas divider itself was unusual; in Toronto, most taxis didn’t have these dividers.) Anyway, there was no visible driver’s certification inside the cab, and the taxi was already moving too fast for Dr Daruwalla to get out – maybe at a red light, the doctor thought. But there were no red lights for a while and the taxi ran the first red light it came to; that was when the driver’s friend in the front seat turned around and faced Farrokh.

‘So where’s your
real
home?’ the friend asked.

‘Russell Hill Road,’ Dr Daruwalla repeated.

‘Before that, asshole,’ the driver said.

‘I was born in Bombay, but I left India when I was a teenager. I’m a. Canadian citizen,’ Farrokh said.

‘Didn’t I tell you?’ the driver said to his friend.

‘Let’s take him home,’ the friend said.

The driver glanced in the rearview mirror and made a sudden U-turn. Farrokh was thrown against the door.

‘We’ll show you where your home is, babu,’ the driver said.

At no time could Dr Daruwalla have escaped. When they crawled slowly ahead in the traffic, or when they were stopped at a red light, the doctor was too afraid to attempt it. They were moving fairly fast when the driver slammed on the brakes. The doctor’s head bounced off the Plexiglas shield. Dr Daruwalla was pressed back into the seat when the driver accelerated. Farrokh felt the tightness of the instant swelling; by the time he gently touched his puffy eyebrow, blood was already running into his eye. Four stitches, maybe six, the doctor’s fingers told him.

The area of Little India is not extensive; it stretches along Gerrard from Coxwell to Hiawatha – some would say as far as Woodfield. Everyone would agree that by the time you get to Greenwood, Little India is over; and even in Little India, the Chinese community is interspersed. The taxi stopped in front of the Ahmad Grocers on Gerrard, at Coxwell; it was probably no coincidence that the grocer was diagonally across the street from the offices of the Canadian Ethnic Immigration Services – this was where the driver’s friend dragged Farrokh out of the back seat. ‘You’re home now – better stay here,’ the friend told Dr Daruwalla.

‘Better yet, babu – go back to Bombay,’ the driver added.

As the taxi pulled away, the doctor could see it clearly out of only one eye; he was so relieved to be free of the thugs that he paid scant attention to the identifying marks of the car. It was red – maybe red and white. If Farrokh saw any printed names or numbers, he wouldn’t remember them.

Little India appeared to be mostly closed on Friday. Apparently, no one had seen the doctor roughly pulled out of the taxi; no one approached him, although he was dazed and bleeding – clearly disoriented. A small, pot-bellied man in a dark suit – his white shirt was ruined from the blood that flowed from his split eyebrow – he clutched his doctor’s bag in one hand. He began to walk. On the sidewalk, dancing in the spring air, kaftans were hanging on a clothes rack. Later, Farrokh struggled to remember the names of the places. Pindi Embroidery? Nirma Fashions? There was another grocery with fresh fruits and vegetables –maybe the Singh Farm? At the United Church, there was a sign saying that the church also served as the Shri Ram Hindu Temple on Sunday evenings. At the corner of Craven and Gerrard, a restaurant claimed to be ‘Indian Cuisine Specialists.’ There was also the familiar advertisement for Kingfisher lager –
INSTILLED
WITH
INNER
STRENGTH
. A poster, promising an
ASIA
SUPERSTARS
NITE
, displayed the usual faces: Dimple Kapadia, Sunny Deol, Jaya Prada – with music by Bappi Lahiri.

Dr Daruwalla never came to Little India. In the storefront windows, the mannequins in their saris seemed to rebuke him. Farrokh saw few Indians in Toronto; he had no close Indian friends there. Parsi parents would bring him their sick children – on the evidence of his name in the telephone directory, Dr Daruwalla supposed. Among the mannequins, a blonde in her sari struck Farrokh as sharing his own disorientation.

At Raja Jewellers, someone was staring out the window at him, probably noticing that the doctor was bleeding. There was a South Indian ‘Pure Vegetarian Restaurant’ near Ashdale and Gerrard. At the Chaat Hut, they advertised ‘all kinds of kulfi, faluda and paan.’ At the Bombay Bhel, the sign said
FOR
TRUE
AUTHENTIC
GOL
GUPPA
…
ALOO
TIKKI
…
ETC
. They served Thunderbolt beer,
SUPER
STRONG
LAGER
…
THE
SPIRIT
OF
EXCITEMENT
. More saris were in a window at Hiawatha and Gerrard. And at the Shree Groceries, a pile of ginger root overflowed the store, extending onto the sidewalk. The doctor gazed at the India Theater … at the Silk Den.

At J. S. Addison Plumbing, at the corner of Woodfield and Gerrard, Farrokh saw a fabulous copper bathtub with ornate faucets; the handles
were
tiger heads, the tigers roaring – it was like the tub he’d bathed in as a boy on old Ridge Road, Malabar Hill. Dr Daruwalla began to cry. Staring at the display of copper sinks and drains and other bathroom Victoriana, he was suddenly aware of a man’s concerned face staring back at him. The man came out on the sidewalk.

‘You’ve been hurt – may I help you?’ the man asked; he wasn’t an Indian.

‘I’m a doctor,’ said Dr Daruwalla. ‘Please just call me a taxi – I know where to go.’ He had the taxi take him back to the Hospital for Sick Children.

‘You sure you want Sick Kids, mon?’ the driver asked; he was a West Indian, a black man – very black. ‘You don’t look like a sick kid to me.’

‘I’m a doctor,’ Farrokh said. ‘I work there.’

‘Who done that to you, mon?’ the driver asked.

‘Two guys who don’t like people like me — or like you,’ the doctor told him.

‘I know them – they everywhere, mon,’ the driver said.

Dr Daruwalla was relieved that his secretary and his nurse had gone home. He kept a change of clothes in his office; after he was stitched up, he would throw the shirt away … he’d ask his secretary to have the suit dry-cleaned.

He examined the split wound on his eyebrow; using the mirror, he shaved around the gash. This was easy, but he was used to shaving in a mirror; then he contemplated the procaine injection and the sutures –to do these properly in the mirror was baffling to him, especially the sewing. Farrokh called Dr Macfarlane’s office and asked the secretary to have Mac stop by when he was ready to go home.

Farrokh first tried to tell Macfarlane that he’d hit his head in a taxi because of a reckless driver, the brakes throwing him forward into the Plexiglas divider. Although it was the truth, or only a lie of omission, his voice trailed off; his fear, the insult, his anger – these things were still reflected in his eyes.

‘Who did this to you, Farrokh?’ Mac asked.

Dr Daruwalla told Dr Macfarlane the whole story –beginning with the three teenagers on the subway and including the shouts from the passing cars. By the time Mac had stitched him up – it required five sutures to close the wound – Farrokh had used the expression ‘an immigrant of color’ more times than he’d ever uttered it aloud before, even to Julia. He would never tell Julia about Little India, either; that Mac knew was comfort enough.

Dr Macfarlane had his own stories. He’d never been beaten up, but he’d been threatened and intimidated. There were phone calls late at night; he’d changed his number three times. There were also phone calls to his office; two of his former secretaries had resigned, and one of his former nurses. Sometimes letters or notes were shoved under his office door; perhaps these were from the parents of former patients, or from his fellow doctors, or from other people who worked at Sick Kids.

Mac helped Farrokh rehearse how he would describe his ‘accident’ to Julia. It sounded more plausible if it wasn’t the taxi driver’s fault. They decided that an idiot woman had pulled out from the curb without looking; the driver had had no choice but to hit the brakes. (A blameless woman driver had been blamed again.) As soon as he realized he was cut and bleeding, Farrokh had asked the driver to take him back to the hospital; fortunately, Macfarlane was still there and had stitched him up. Just five sutures. His white shirt was a total loss, and he wouldn’t know about the suit until it came back from the cleaner’s.

‘Why not just tell Julia what happened?’ Mac asked.

‘She’ll be disappointed in me – because I didn’t do anything,’ Farrokh told him.

‘I doubt that,’ Macfarlane said.

‘
I’m
disappointed that I didn’t do anything,’ Dr Daruwalla admitted.

That can’t be helped,’ Mac said.

On the way home to Russell Hill Road, Farrokh asked Mac about his work at the
AIDS
hospice – there was a good one in Toronto.

‘I’m just a volunteer,’ Macfarlane explained.

‘But you’re a
doctor
,’ Dr Daruwalla said. ‘I mean, it must be interesting there. But exactly what can an orthopedist do?’

‘Nothing,’ Mac said. ‘I’m not a doctor there.’

‘But of course you’re a doctor – you’re a doctor anywhere!’ Farrokh cried. ‘There must be patients with bed sores. We know what to do with bed sores. And what about pain control?’ Dr Daruwalla was thinking of morphine, a wonderful drug; it disconnects the lungs from the brain. Wouldn’t many of the deaths in an
AIDS
hospice be respiratory deaths? Wouldn’t morphine be especially useful there? The respiratory distress is unchanged, but the patient is unaware of it. ‘And what about muscular wasting, from being bedridden?’ Farrokh added. ‘Surely you could instruct families in passive range-of-motion exercises, or dispense tennis balls for the patients to squeeze …’

Dr Macfarlane laughed. The hospice has its own doctors. They’re
AIDS
doctors,’ Macfarlane said. ‘I’m absolutely not a doctor there. That’s something I like about it – I’m just a volunteer.’

‘What about the catheters?’ Farrokh asked. They must get blocked, the skin tunnels get inflamed…’ His voice fell away; he was wondering if you could unplug them by flushing them with an anticoagulant, but Macfarlane wouldn’t let him finish the thought.

‘I don’t do anything medical there,’ Mac told him.

‘Then what do you do?’ Dr Daruwalla asked.

‘One night I did all the laundry,’ Macfarlane replied. ‘Another night I answered the phone.’

‘But anyone could do that!’ Farrokh cried.

‘Yes – any volunteer,’ Mac agreed.

‘Listen. There’s a seizure, a patient seizes from uncontrolled infection,’ Dr Daruwalla began. ‘What do you do? Do you give intravenous Valium?’

‘I call the doctor,’ Dr Macfarlane said.

‘You’re kidding me!’ said Dr Daruwalla. ‘And what about the feeding tubes? They slip out. Then what? Do you have your own X ray facilities or do you have to take them to a hospital?’

‘I call the doctor,’ Macfarlane repeated. ‘It’s a hospice – they’re not there to get well. One night I read aloud to someone who couldn’t sleep. Lately, I’ve been writing letters for a man who wants to contact his family and his friends – he wants to say good-bye, but he never learned how to write.’

‘Incredible!’ Dr Daruwalla said.

‘They come there to die, Farrokh. We try to help them control it. We can’t help them like we’re used to helping most of our patients,’ Macfarlane explained.

‘So you just go there, you show up,’ Farrokh began. ‘You check in … tell someone you’ve arrived. Then what?’

‘Usually a nurse tells me what to do,’ Mac said.

‘A nurse tells the doctor what to do!’ cried Dr Daruwalla.

‘Now you’re getting it,’ Dr Macfarlane told him.

There was his home on Russell Hill Road. It was a long way from Bombay; it was a long way from Little India, too.

‘Honestly, if you want to know what
I
think,’ said Martin Mills, who’d interrupted Farrokh’s story only a half-dozen times. ‘
I
think you must drive your poor friend Macfarlane crazy. Obviously, you like him, but on whose terms? On your terms – on your heterosexual doctor terms.’