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From his hammock, where he received his tea, Farrokh faced the Arabian Sea. Inland, at his back, the morning sun was a hazy glare above the village; from that direction, wafting over the beach, there emanated an aroma of fermented coconuts. Looking into the cloudy eyes of Ali Ahmed, Farrokh asked with feigned innocence, “What’s that smell, Ali, and where’s it coming from?” To be sure he’d be heard, Farrokh had to raise his voice.
The tea-server was at the time focused on handing the doctor a glass of tea; his pupils were constricted to accommodate the object nearby—namely, the tea glass. But when the doctor asked him from whence the powerful odor came, Ali Ahmed looked in the direction of the village; his pupils dilated (to accommodate the distant tops of the coconut and areca palms), but even as his face was lifted to the harsh sunlight his pupils did not constrict in reaction to the glare. It was the classic Argyll Robertson pupil, Dr. Daruwalla decided.
Farrokh recalled his favorite professor of infectious diseases, Herr Doktor Fritz Meitner; Dr. Meitner was fond of telling his medical students that the best way to remember the behavior of the Argyll Robertson pupil was to think of a prostitute: she accommodates, but doesn’t react. It was an all-male class; they all had laughed, but Farrokh had felt uncertain of his laughter. He’d never been with a prostitute, although they were popular in both Vienna and Bombay.
“Feni,” the tea-server said, to explain the smell. But Dr. Daruwalla already knew the answer, just as he knew that the pupils of some syphilitics don’t respond to light.
A Literary Seduction Scene
In the village—or perhaps the source of the smell was as far away as Panjim—they were distilling coconuts for the local brew called feni; the heavy, sickly-sweet fumes of the liquor drifted over the few tourists and families on holiday at Baga Beach.
Dr. Daruwalla and his family were already favorites with the staff of the small hotel, and they were passionately welcomed in the little lean- to restaurant and taverna that the Daruwallas frequented on the beachfront. The doctor was a big tipper, his wife was a classical beauty of a European tradition (as opposed to the seedy, hippie trash), his daughters were vibrantly bright and pretty—they were still of the innocent school—and the striking John D. was mesmerizing to Indians and fo
reigners alike. It was only to those rare families as likable as the Daruwallas that the staff of the Hotel Bardez apologized for the smell of the feni.
In those days, in the premonsoon months of May and June, both knowledgeable foreigners and Indians avoided the Goa beaches; it was too hot. It was, however, when the Goans who lived away from Goa came home to visit their families and friends. The children were through with school. The shrimp and lobster and fish were plentiful, and the mangoes were at their peak. (Dr. Daruwalla was enamored of mangoes.) In keeping with the holiday spirit and in order to placate all the Christians, the Catholic Church provided an abundance of feast days; although he wasn’t yet religious, the doctor had nothing against a banquet or two.
The Catholics were no longer the majority in Goa—the migrant iron miners who’d arrived early in this century were Hindus—but Farrokh, like his father, persisted in the belief that “the Romans” still overran the place. The Portuguese influence endured in the monumental architecture that Dr. Daruwalla adored; it could distinctly be tasted in the cuisine that the doctor relished. And among the names of the boats of the Christian fisherman, “Christ the King” was quite common. Bumper stickers, of both the comic and proselytizing variety, were a new if not widespread fad in Bombay; the doctor joked that the names of the boats of the Christian fishermen were Goan bumper stickers. Julia was no more amused by this than by Farrokh’s constant ridicule of St. Francis’s violated remains.
“I don’t know how anyone can justify canonization,” Dr. Daruwalla reflected to John D., largely because Julia wouldn’t listen to her husband but also because the young man had studied some theology in university. In Zürich, it would have been Protestant theology, Farrokh assumed. “Just imagine it!” Farrokh lectured to the young man. “A violent woman swallows Xavier’s toe, and they cut off his arm and send it to Rome!”
John D. smiled silently over his breakfast. The Daruwalla daughters smiled helplessly at John D. When he looked at his wife, Farrokh was surprised that she was looking straight back at him—she was smiling, too. Clearly, she’d not been listening to a word he was saying. The doctor blushed. Julia’s smile wasn’t in the least cynical; on the contrary, his wife’s expression was so sincerely amorous, Farrokh felt certain that she was determined to remind him of their pleasure the night before—even in front of John D. and the children! And judging from their night together, and the visible randiness of his wife’s thoughts on the morning after, their holiday had become a second honeymoon after all.
Reading in bed would never seem innocent again, the doctor thought, although everything had begun quite innocently. His wife had been reading the Trollope, and Farrokh hadn’t been reading at all; he’d been trying to get up the nerve to read A Sport and a Pastime in front of Julia. Instead, he lay on his back with his fingers intertwined upon his rumbling belly—an excess of pork, or else the dinner conversation had upset him. Over dinner, he’d tried to explain to his family his need to be more creative, his desire to write something, but his daughters had paid no attention to him and Julia had misunderstood him; she’d suggested a medical-advice column—if not for The Times of India, then for The Globe and Mail. John D. had advised Farrokh to keep a diary; the young man said he’d kept one once, and he’d enjoyed it—then a girlfriend had stolen it and he’d gotten out of the habit. At that point, the conversation entirely deteriorated because the Daruwalla daughters had pestered John D. about the number of girlfriends the young man had had.
After all, it was the tail end of the ’60s; even innocent young girls talked as if they were sexually knowledgeable. It disturbed Farrokh that his daughters were clearly asking John D. to tell them the number of young women he’d slept with. Typical of John D., and to Dr. Daruwalla’s great relief, the young man had skillfully and charmingly ducked the question. But the matter of the doctor’s unfulfilled creativity had been dismissed or ignored.
The subject, however, hadn’t eluded Julia. In bed after dinner, propped up with a stack of pillows—while Farrokh lay flat upon his back—his wife had assaulted him with the Trollope.
“Listen to this, Liebchen,” Julia said. “ ‘Early in life, at the age of fifteen, I commenced the dangerous habit of keeping a journal, and this I maintained for ten years. The volumes remained in my possession, unregarded—never looked at—till 1870, when I examined them, and, with many blushes, destroyed them. They convicted me of folly, ignorance, indiscretion, idleness, extravagance, and conceit. But they had habituated me to the rapid use of pen and ink, and taught me how to express myself with facility.’ ”
“I don’t want or need to keep a journal,” Farrokh said abruptly. “And. I already know how to express myself with facility.”
“There’s no need to be defensive,” Julia told him. “I just thought you’d be interested in the subject.”
“I want to create something,” Dr. Daruwalla announced. “I’m not interested in recording the mundane details of my life.”
“I wasn’t aware that our life was altogether mundane,” Julia said.
The doctor, realizing his error, said, “Certainly it’s not. I meant only that I prefer to try my hand at something imaginative—I want to imagine something.”
“Do you mean fiction?” his wife asked.
“Yes,” Farrokh said. “Ideally, I should like to write a novel, but I don’t suppose I could write a very good one.”
“Well, there are all kinds of novels,” Julia said helpfully.
Thus emboldened, Dr. Daruwalla withdrew James Salter’s A Sport and a Pastime from its hiding place, which was under the newspaper on the floor beside the bed. He brought forth the novel carefully, as if it were a potentially dangerous weapon, which it was.
“For example,” Farrokh said, “I don’t suppose I could ever write a novel as good as this one.”
Julia glanced at the Salter quickly before returning her eyes to the Trollope. “No, I wouldn’t think so,” she said.
Aha! the doctor thought. So she has read it! But he asked with forced indifference, “Have you read the Salter?”
“Oh, yes,” his wife said, not taking her eyes off the Trollope. “I brought it along to reread it, actually.”
It was hard for Farrokh to remain casual, but he tried. “So you liked it, I presume?” he inquired.
