A Son Of The Circus (99 page)

When the Daruwallas arrived at the airport, Vinod weepingly handed the doctor a present. ‘Maybe you are never seeing me again,’ the dwarf said. As for the present, it was heavy and hard and rectangular; Vinod had wrapped it in newspapers. Through his sniffles, the dwarf managed to say that Farrokh was not to open the present until he was on the plane.

Later, the doctor would think that this was probably what terrorists said to unsuspecting passengers to whom they’d handed a bomb; just then the metal detector sounded, and Dr Daruwalla was quickly surrounded by frightened men with guns. They asked him what was wrapped up in the newspapers. What could he tell them? A present from a dwarf? They made the doctor unwrap the newspapers while they stood at some distance; they looked less ready to shoot than to flee – to ‘abscond,’ as
The Times of India
would report the incident. But there was no incident.

Inside the newspapers was a brass plaque, a big brass sign; Dr Daruwalla recognized it immediately. Vinod had removed the offensive message from the elevator of Farrokh’s apartment building on Marine Drive.

SERVANTS
ARE
NOT
ALLOWED

TO
USE
THE
LIFT
UNLESS
ACCOMPANIED
BY
CHILDREN

Julia told Farrokh that Vinod’s gift was ‘touching,’ but although the security officers were relieved, they questioned the doctor about the source of the sign. They wanted to be sure that it hadn’t been stolen from an historically protected building – that it was stolen from somewhere else didn’t trouble them. Perhaps they didn’t like the message any better than Farrokh and Vinod had liked it.

‘A souvenir,’ Dr Daruwalla assured them. To the doctor’s surprise, the security officers let him keep the sign. It was cumbersome to carry it on board the plane, and even in first class the flight attendants were bitchy about stowing it out of everyone’s way. First they made him unwrap it (again); then he was left with; the unwanted newspapers.

‘Remind me never to fly Air India,’ the doctor complained to his wife; he announced this loudly enough for the nearest flight attendant to hear him.

‘I remind you every time,’ Julia replied, also loudly enough. To any fellow first-class passenger overhearing them, they might have seemed the epitome of a wealthy couple who commonly abuse those lesser people whose chore it is to wait on them. But this impression of the Daruwallas would be false; they were simply of a generation that reacted strongly to rudeness from anyone – they were well enough educated and old enough to be intolerant of intolerance. But what hadn’t occurred to Farrokh or Julia was that perhaps the flight attendants were ill mannered about stowing the elevator sign
not
because of the inconvenience but because of the message; possibly the flight attendants were also incensed that servants weren’t allowed to use the lift unless accompanied
by
children.

It was one of those little misunderstandings that no one would ever solve; it was a suitably sour note on which to leave one’s country for the last time, Farrokh thought. Nor was he pleased by The Times
of India
, with which Vinod had wrapped the stolen sign. Of great prominence in the news lately was the report of food poisoning in East Delhi. Two children had died and eight others were hospitalized after they’d consumed some ‘stale’ food from a garbage dump in the Shakurpur area. Dr Daruwalla had been following this report with the keenest attention; he knew that the children hadn’t died from eating ‘stale’ food – the stupid newspaper meant ‘rotten’ or ‘contaminated.’

As far as Farrokh was concerned, the airplane couldn’t take off fast enough. Like Dhar, the doctor preferred the aisle seat because he planned to drink beer and he would need to pee; Julia would sit by the window. It would be almost 10:00 in the morning, London time, before they landed in England. It would be dark all the way to Delhi. Literally, before he even left, the doctor thought he’d already seen the last of India.

Although Martin Mills might be tempted to say that it was God’s will (that Dr Daruwalla was saying goodbye to Bombay), the doctor wouldn’t have agreed. It wasn’t God’s will; it was India, which wasn’t for everybody – as Father Julian, unbeknownst to Dr Daruwalla, had said. It was not God’s will, Farrokh felt certain; it was just India, which was more than enough.

When Air India 185 lifted off the runway in Sahar, Dhar’s thug taxi driver was again cruising the streets of Bombay; the dwarf was still crying – he was too upset to sleep. Vinod had returned to town too late to catch the last show at the Wetness Cabaret, where he’d been hoping to get a glimpse of Madhu; he’d have to look for her another night. It depressed the dwarf to keep cruising the red-light district, although it was a night like any night — Vinod might have found and saved a stray. At 3:00 A.M., the dwarf felt that the brothels resembled a failed circus. The ex-clown imagined the cages of lifeless animals – the rows of tents, full of exhausted and injured acrobats. He drove on.

It was almost 4:00 in the morning when Vinod parked the Ambassador in the alley alongside the Daruwallas’ apartment building on Marine Drive. No one saw him slip into the building, but the dwarf roamed around the lobby, breathing heavily, until he had all the first-floor dogs barking. Then Vinod swaggered back to his taxi; he felt only mildly uplifted by the insults of the screaming residents, who’d earlier been disturbed by the report that their all-important elevator sign had been stolen.

Wherever the sad dwarf drove, the life of the city seemed to be eluding him; still, he wouldn’t go home. In the predawn light, Vinod stopped the Ambassador to joke with a traffic policeman in Mazagoan.

‘Where is the traffic being?’ Vinod asked the constable. The policeman had his baton out, as if there were a crowd or a riot to direct. No one was anywhere around: not another car, not a single bicycle, not one pedestrian. Of the sidewalk sleepers, the few who were awake hadn’t risen beyond a sitting position or from their knees. The constable recognized Dhar’s thug driver – every policeman knew Vinod. The constable said there’d been a disturbance – a religious procession streaming out of Sophia Zuber Road – but Vinod had missed it. The abandoned traffic policeman said he’d be obliged to the dwarf if Vinod would drive him the length of Sophia Zuber Road, just to prove that there was no more trouble. And so, with the lonely constable in the car, Vinod cautiously proceeded through one of Bombay’s better slums.

There wasn’t much to see; more sidewalk sleepers were waking up, but the slum dwellers were still sleeping. At that part of Sophia Zuber Road where Martin Mills, almost a month ago, had encountered the mortally wounded cow, Vinod and the traffic policeman saw the tail end of a procession – a few sadhus chanting, the usual flower flingers. There was a huge clotted bloodstain in the gutter of the road, where the cow had finally died; the earlier disturbance, the religious procession, had been merely the removal of the dead cow’s body. Some zealots had managed to keep the cow alive all this time.

This zeal was also not God’s will, Dr Daruwalla would have said; this doomed effort was also ‘just India,’ which was more than enough.

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
DDL
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
DDL
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 facade 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.