A Son Of The Circus by John Irving Read Free Book Online Page B

back and forth across the ninth green and the bougainvillea, where Dhar – a mere movie-star detective — knelt beside poor Mr Lai.
    ‘Don’t touch the body!’ Dr Daruwalla said.
    ‘I know,’ the veteran actor replied coldly.
    Oh, he’s not in a good mood, Farrokh thought; it would be unwise to tell him the upsetting news now. The doctor doubted that Dhar’s mood would
ever
be good enough to make him magnanimous upon receiving such news – and who could blame him? An overwhelming sense of unfairness lay at the heart of it, for Dhar was an identical twin who’d been separated from his brother at birth. Although Dhar had been told the story of his birth, Dhar’s twin knew nothing of the story; Dhar’s twin didn’t even know he was a twin. And now Dhar’s twin was coming to Bombay.
    Dr Daruwalla had always believed that nothing good could come from such deception. Although Dhar had accepted the willful arbitrariness of the situation, a certain aloofness had been the cost; he was a man who, as far as Farrokh knew, withheld affection and resolutely withstood any display of affection from others. Who could blame him? the doctor thought. Dhar had accepted the existence of a mother and father and identical twin brother he’d never seen; Dhar had abided by that tiresome adage, which is still popularly evoked – to let sleeping dogs lie. But now: this most upsetting news was surely in that category of another tiresome adage which is still popularly evoked – this was the last straw.
    In Dr Daruwalla’s opinion, Dhar’s mother had always been too selfish for motherhood; and 40 years after the accident of conception, the woman was demonstrating her selfishness again. That she’d arbitrarily decided to take one twin and abandon the other was sufficient selfishness for a normal lifetime; that she’d chosen to protect herself from her husband’s potentially harsh opinion of her by keeping from him the fact that there’d
ever been
a twin was selfishness of a heightened, even of a monstrous, kind; and that she’d so sheltered the twin whom she’d kept from any knowledge of his identical brother was yet again as selfish as it was deeply insensitive to the feelings of the twin she’d left behind … the twin who knew everything.
    Well, the doctor thought, Dhar knew everything except that his twin was coming to Bombay and that his mother had begged Dr Daruwalla to be sure that the twins didn’t meet!
    In such circumstances Dr Daruwalla felt briefly grateful for the distraction of old Mr Lai’s apparent heart attack. Except when eating, Farrokh embraced procrastination as one greets an unexpected virtue. The belch of exhaust from the head gardener’s truck blew a wave of flower petals from the wrecked bougainvillea over Dr Daruwalla’s feet; he stared in surprise at his light-brown toes in his dark-brown sandals, which were almost buried in the vivid pink petals.
    That was when the head mali, who’d left the truck running, sidled over to the ninth green and stood smirking beside Dr Daruwalla. The mali was clearly more excited by the sight of Inspector Dhar in action than he appeared to be disturbed by the death of poor Mr Lai. With a nod toward the scene unfolding in the bougainvillea, the gardener whispered to Farrokh, ‘It looks like a movie!’ This observation quickly returned Dr Daruwalla to the crisis at hand, namely the impossibility of shielding Dhar’s twin from the existence of his famous brother, who, even in a city of movie stars, was indubitably the most recognizable star in Bombay.
    Even if the famous actor agreed to keep himself in hiding, his identical twin brother would constantly be mistaken for Inspector Dhar. Dr Daruwalla admired the mental toughness of the Jesuits, but the twin — who was what the Jesuits call a scholastic (in training to be a priest) — would have to be more than mentally tough in order to endure a recurring mistaken identity of this magnitude. And from what Farrokh had