A Son Of The Circus (70 page)

‘Is that you, Martin?’ Vera asked. ‘Come kiss me good-morning.’

Dutifully, although he was loath to see his mother in the strongly scented disarray of her boudoir, Martin went to her. To his surprise, both Vera and her bed were unrumpled; he had the impression that his mother had already bathed and brushed her teeth and combed her hair. The sheets weren’t in their usual knot of apparent bad dreams. Also, Vera’s nightgown was a pretty, almost girlish thing; it was revealing of her dramatic bosom but not sluttishly revealing, as was often the case. Martin cautiously kissed her cheek.

‘Off to church?’ his mother asked him.

‘To Mass – yes,’ Martin told her.

‘Is Arif still sleeping?’ Vera inquired.

‘Yes, I think so,’ Martin replied. Arif s name on his mother’s lips reminded Martin of the painful embarrassment of the night before. ‘I don’t think you should ask Arif about such … personal things,’ Martin said suddenly.

‘Personal? Do you mean
sexual
?’ Vera asked her son. ‘Honestly, Martin, the poor boy has probably been
dying
to talk to someone about his terrible circumcision. Don’t be such a prude!’

‘I think Arif is a very private person,’ Martin said. ‘Also,’ he added stubbornly, ‘I think he might be a bit … disturbed.’

Vera sat up in her bed with new interest. ‘
Sexually
disturbed?’ she asked her son. ‘What gives you that idea?’

It didn’t seem a betrayal, not at the time; Martin thought he was speaking to his mother in order to protect Arif. ‘He masturbates,’ Martin said quietly.

‘Goodness, I should
hope
so!’ Vera exclaimed. ‘I certainly hope that you do!’

Martin wouldn’t take this bait, but he replied, ‘I mean that he masturbates a [_lot – _]almost every night.’

The poor boy!’ Vera remarked. ‘But you sound so disapproving, Martin.’

‘I think it’s … excessive,’ her son told her.

‘I think masturbation is quite healthy for boys your age. Have you discussed masturbation with your father?’ Vera asked him.

‘Discussed’ wasn’t the right word. Martin had listened to Danny go on and on in reassuring tones in regard to all the desires Danny presumed that Martin was experiencing – how such desires were perfectly natural… that was Danny’s theme.

‘Yes,’ Martin told his mother. ‘Dad thinks masturbation is … normal.’

‘Well, there – you see?’ Vera said sarcastically. ‘If your sainted father says it’s normal, I suppose we should
all
be trying it!’

‘I’ll be late for Mass,’ Martin said.

‘Run along, then,’ his mother replied. Martin was about to close the door to her bedroom behind him when his mother gave him a parting shot. ‘Personally, dear, I think masturbation would be better for you than Mass. And please leave the door open — I like it that way.’ Martin remembered to take the room key in case Arif was still sleeping when he came back from Mass — in case his mother was in the bathroom or talking on the telephone.

When Mass was over, he looked briefly at a window display of men’s suits in a Brooks Brothers store; the mannequins wore Christmas-tree neckties, but Martin was struck by the smoothness of the mannequins’ skin – it reminded him of Arif s perfect complexion. Except for his pausing at this window, Martin came straight back to the suite at the Ritz. When he unlocked the door, he was happy he’d brought the room key because he thought his mother was talking on the phone; it was a one-sided conversation — all Vera. But then the awful words themselves were clear to him.

‘I’m going to make you squirt again,’ his mother was saying. ‘I absolutely know you can squirt again — I can feel you. You’re going to squirt again soon – aren’t you? Aren’t you?’ The door to his mother’s bedroom was still open – a little wider open than the way she liked it – and Martin Mills could see her naked back, her naked hips and the crack in her shapely ass. She was riding Arif Koma, who lay wordlessly under her; Martin was grateful that he couldn’t see his roommate’s face.

He quietly let himself out of the suite as his mother continued to urge Arif to squirt. On the short walk back to Isabella Street, Martin wondered if it had been his own revelation of Arif s penchant for masturbation that had given Vera the idea; probably his mother had already had the seduction in mind, but the masturbation story must have provided her with greater incentive.

Martin Mills had sat as stupefied in Our Lady of Victories Church as he’d sat waiting for the Mass at St Ignatius. Brother Gabriel was worried about him. First the late-night prayers – ‘I’ll take the turkey, I’ll take the turkey’ – and then, even after Mass was over, the missionary knelt on the kneeling pad as if he were waiting for the
next
Mass. That was exactly what he’d done in Our Lady of Victories on Isabella Street; he’d waited for the next Mass, as if one Mass hadn’t been enough.

What also troubled Brother Gabriel were the bloodstains on the missionary’s balled-up fists. Brother Gabriel couldn’t have known about Martin’s nose, for the wound had stopped bleeding and was almost entirely concealed by a small scab on one nostril; but Brother Gabriel wondered about the bloody socks that Martin Mills clutched in his hands. The blood had dried between his knuckles and under his nails, and Brother Gabriel feared that the source of the bleeding might have been the missionary’s palms. That’s all we need to make our jubilee year a success, Brother Gabriel thought – an outbreak of stigmata!

But later, when Martin attended the morning classes, he seemed back on track, so to speak; he was lively with the students, humble with the other teachers –although, as a teacher, he’d had more experience than many of the staff at St Ignatius School. Watching the new scholastic interact with both the pupils and the staff, the Father Rector suspended his earlier anxieties that the American might be a crazed zealot. And Father Cecil found Martin Mills to be every bit as charming and dedicated as he’d hoped.

Brother Gabriel kept silent about the turkey prayer and the bloody socks; but he noted the haunted, faraway smile that occasionally stole over the scholastic’s repertoire of otherwise earnest expressions. Martin seemed to be struck by some remembrance, possibly inspired by a face among the upper-school boys, as if the smooth, dark skin of one of the 15-year-olds had called to mind someone he’d once known … or so Brother Gabriel guessed. It was an innocent, friendly smile – almost too friendly, Brother Gabriel thought.

But Martin Mills was just remembering, Back in school, at Fessenden, after the long Thanksgiving weekend, he’d waited until the lights were out before saying what he wanted to say.

‘Fucker,’ Martin quietly said.

‘What’s that?’ Arif asked him.

‘I said “fucker,” as in motherfucker,’ Martin said.

‘Is this a game?’ Arif inquired after too long a pause.

‘You know what I mean, you
motherfucker
,’ said Martin Mills.

After another long pause, Arif said, ‘She made me do it-sort of.’

‘You’ll probably get a disease,’ Martin told his roommate. Martin didn’t really mean it, nor would he have said it had it occurred to him that Arif might have fallen in love with Vera. He was surprised when Arif pounced on him in the dark and began to hit his face.

‘Don’t ever say that… about your mother!’ the Turk cried. ‘Not about your mother! She’s
beautiful
.’

Mr Weems, the dorm master, broke up the fight; neither of the boys was hurt – neither of them knew how to fight. Mr Weems was kindly; with rougher boys, he was entirely ineffectual. He was a music teacher, and – with hindsight, that is easy to say – most likely a homosexual, but no one thought of him that way (except a few of the brassier faculty wives, women of the type who thought that
any
unmarried man over 30 was a queer). Mr Weems was well liked by the boys, despite his taking no part in the school’s prevailing athleticism. In his report to the Discipline Committee, the dorm master would dismiss the altercation between Martin and Arif as a ‘spat.’ This unfortunate choice of a word would have grave consequences.

Later, when Arif Koma was diagnosed as suffering from gonorrhea — and when he wouldn’t tell the school doctor where he might have acquired it — the suspicion fell on Martin Mills. That word ‘spat’ connoted a lover’s quarrel – at least to the more manly members of the Discipline Committee. Mr Weems was instructed to ask the boys if they were homosexuals, if they’d been doing it. The dorm master was more sympathetic to the notion that Arif and Martin might be ‘doing it’ than any of the faculty jocks would have been.

‘If you boys are lovers, then you should see the doctor, too, Martin,’ Mr Weems explained.

Tell him!’ Martin said to Arif.

‘We’re not lovers,’ Arif said.

That’s right – we’re not lovers,’ Martin repeated. ‘But go on – tell him. I dare you,’ Martin said to Arif.

Tell me what?’ the dorm master asked.

‘He hates his mother,’ Arif explained to Mr Weems. Mr Weems had met Vera; he could understand. ‘He’s going to tell you that I got the disease from his mother – that’s how much he hates her.’

‘He fucked my mother – or, rather, she fucked him,’ Martin told Mr Weems.

‘You see what I mean?’ Arif Koma said.

At most private schools, the faculty is composed of truly saintly people and incompetent ogres. Martin and Arif were fortunate that their dorm master was a teacher of the saintly category; yet Mr Weems was so well-meaning, he was perhaps more blind to depravity than a normal person.

‘Please, Martin,’ the dorm master said. ‘A sexually transmitted disease, especially at an all-boys’ school, is not something to lie about. Whatever your feelings are for your mother, what we hope to learn here is the truth — not to punish anyone, but only so that we may advise you. How can we instruct you, how can we tell you what we think you should do, if you won’t tell us the truth?’

‘My mother fucked him when she thought I was at Mass,’ Martin told Mr Weems. Mr Weems shut his eyes and smiled; he did this when he was counting, which he did to summon patience.

‘I was trying to protect you, Martin,’ Arif Koma said, ‘but I can see it’s no use.’

‘Boys, please … one of you is lying,’ the dorm master said.

‘Okay – so we tell him,’ Arif said to Martin. ‘What do you say?’

‘Okay,’ Martin replied. He knew that he liked Arif; for three years Arif had been his only friend. If Arif wanted to say they’d been lovers, why not go along with it? There was no one else Martin Mills wanted to please as much as he wanted to please Arif. ‘Okay,’ Martin repeated.

‘Okay
what?’
Mr Weems asked.

‘Okay, we’re lovers,’ said Martin Mills.

‘I don’t know why he doesn’t have the disease,’ Arif explained. ‘He
should
have it. Maybe he’s immune.’

‘Are we going to get thrown out of school?’ Martin asked the dorm master. He hoped so. It might teach his mother something, Martin thought; at 15, he still thought Vera was educable.

‘All we did was fry it,’ Arif said. ‘We didn’t
like
it.’

‘We don’t do it anymore,’ Martin added. This was the first and last time that he’d lied; it made him feel giddy – it was almost as if he were drunk.

‘But one of you must have caught this disease from someone else,’ Mr Weems reasoned. ‘I mean, it couldn’t have
originated
here, with you … not if each of you has had no other sexual contact.’

Martin Mills knew that Arif Koma had been phoning Vera and that she wouldn’t talk to the Turk; Martin knew that Arif had written to Vera, too – and mat she’d not written the boy back. But it was only now that Martin realized how far his friend would go to protect Vera. He must have been absolutely gaga about her.

‘I paid a prostitute. I caught this disease from a whore,’ Arif told Mr Weems.

‘Where would you ever see a whore, Arif?’ the dorm master asked.

‘You don’t know Boston?’ Arif Koma asked him. ‘I stayed with Martin and his mother at the Ritz. When they were asleep, I left the hotel. I asked the doorman to get me a taxi. T asked the taxi driver to find me a hooker. That’s the way you do it in New York, too,’ Arif explained. ‘Or at least that’s the only way
I
know how to do it.’

And so Arif Koma was booted from the Fessenden School for catching a venereal disease from a whore. There was a statute in the school’s book of rules, something pertaining to morally reprehensible behavior with women or girls being punishable by dismissal; under this rubric, the Discipline Committee (despite Mr Weems’s protestations) expelled Arif. It was judged that having sex with a prostitute was not a gray area when it came to ‘morally reprehensible behavior with women or girls.’

As for Martin, Mr Weems also pleaded on his behalf. His homosexual encounter was a single episode of sexual experimentation; the incident should be forgotten. But the Discipline Committee insisted that Vera and Danny should know. Vera’s first response was to reiterate that masturbation was preferable for boys Martin’s age. All Martin said to his mother – naturally,
not
in Danny’s hearing – was, ‘Arif Koma has gonorrhea and so do you.’

There was barely time to talk to Arif before he was sent home. The last thing Martin said to the Turk was, ‘Don’t hurt yourself trying to protect my mother.’

‘But I also like your father,’ Arif explained. Once again, Vera had gotten away with murder because no one wanted to hurt Danny.

Arif s suicide was the bigger shock. The note to Martin didn’t arrive in his Fessenden mailbox until two days after Arif had jumped out of the lOth-floor window of his parents’ apartment on Park Avenue.
Dishonored my family —
that was all the note said. Martin recalled that it was for the purpose of
not
dishonoring his parents, or reflecting ill on his family’s reputation, that Arif hadn’t shed a tear at his own circumcision.

There was no blaming Vera for it. The first time she is alone with Martin, Vera said, ‘Don’t try to tell me that it’s
my
fault, dear. You told me he was disturbed –sexually disturbed. You said so yourself. Besides, you don’t want to do anything that would hurt your father, do you?’