Herman Wouk - Don't Stop The Carnival

by Don't Stop The Carnival(Lit)

  "Do we pay him for this water?" Paperman said.

  "Oh, no. Dis government vater."

  "Then we pay the government?"

  "No. Notting to pay." Thor ran fingers through his thick blond hair. "I tink maybe I go out to de bar. It get busy now-"

  "One moment, Thor. How is it we get free barged water from Guadeloupe? That's damned strange."

  "Veil you see, Mr. Paperman-" Thor dropped his voice. "Lorna, she Senator Pullman's gorl friend."

  "What? Who's Senator Pullman? What's he senator of? Who's Lorna?"

  Senator Evan Pullman, Thor said, was one of the seven members of the legislature; a party leader, and chairman of the public utilities subcommittee. When not serving as a lawmaker, he kept a bar. Lorna was the girl who tended the registration desk and the switchboard of the Gull Reef Club. (Norman had noticed this ravishing black girl at the desk, of course, and had wondered about her.) Thor explained, with a faint leer, that the hotel paid her a lot more than the going rate for female help, but very much less than some half a million gallons of barged water per year would cost. This was an arrangement dating back several years. Everybody was happy about it, and there was no chance of any trouble.

  "Dey joost vun ting you got to be sure, Mr. Paperman," said Thor. "You got to catch dat barge coming in. Going out she's empty, and you stuck till next time."

  "Well, then you'll see to that tomorrow, won't you, Thor?" Norman was both dizzied and amused by these revelations. Oh sure, sure. I joost vant you to know about it."

  The door of the office opened, and Senator Pullman's loved one looked in with a lascivious little smile, evidently the cast of her face in repose. Lorna always dressed in crisp lacy white. She had perfect features, a skin like black velvet, and large wide gray eyes. "Mister Papermon, you want your New York call? It's ready now."

  "Good. Thor, don't go. I still want to talk to you about your raise."

  "Ho! Plenty time for dat." The bartender went out.

  After some ear-splitting clicks, Henny came on the line, sounding dispirited. The pain was gone at the moment, she said, but the doctors now suspected that she might have-of all things-a gallstone. They wanted to keep her under observation for two or three weeks.

  "Why three weeks'? What's to observe1?" said Paperman. "If you've got one, an X ray will show it."

  "Well, the X ray is clear, but they say there's a kind of stone that's transparent to X rays. Doesn't that sound ridiculous? It seems I may be secreting square-cut diamonds."

  "That would solve our problems," Norman said. "You're a woman of great resource."

  "Don't let's talk about it. I'm fit to be tied, and if I'm all right for a couple of days I'll come down and to hell with them and their transparent stones. Tell me about the hotel. Is everything set?"

  Norman recounted the deal, not without indignation. She objected when he called Lester a lying old son of a bitch. "How did he lie? He said he'd take care of the money end. He did, didn't he? You've got the hotel, and you didn't put up five cents in cash."

  "What? I put up five thousand dollars."

  "But you got that back."

  "Sure, to spend on the new rooms."

  "Well, don't you need the new rooms?"

  "Look, my point is that Lester didn't put up five cents in cash."

  "Naturally. He's the world's master at that. What's the difference, so long as he got you the place?"

  "He also got me a fifty-five-thousand-dollar debt to pay off in six years. That's the difference."

  "Honey, that was the price. Did you expect Lester to give you the Gull Reef Club for Hanukka?"

  "I thought we'd be partners or something. I thought he'd put up the money at first and I'd put up-well, I'd put up-" Norman paused.

  "Your hotel experience," Henny suggested.

  "All right, all right," Norman said.

  "Have you seen that Cohn fellow? Hazel keeps mentioning the crazy frogman," Henny said. "And she's starting to talk about spending Christmas in Amerigo."

  "Really? Maybe I'd better find out if he's got a wife."

  "Well, I don't know. She's going to Asbury Park for the weekend with the Sending. Folk musical festival, she says."

  "Asbury Park? Ye gods, why are you allowing that?"

  "Well, they went and made the reservations. At the Pine Grove Hotel, funnily enough. You remember, the one we used to sneak off to. Imagine, it still exists."

  "Tell Hazel I forbid her to go," Norman stormed.

  "I will," Henny said. "She's sort of blue, like me, and it'll give her a laugh. I'll call you if there's anything urgent, otherwise let's just write. This is no way to start paying off fifty-five thousand dollars."

  As he came out of the office Lorna gave him a feline glance. "Seventeen minutes," she said. "Fifty-nine dollars plus tax."

  The flower-scented cool air in the lobby was a relief after the stifling, stale, dusty atmosphere of the office under the stairs. Paperman wondered whether to include a large modern office in the reconstruction, and at once decided against it. New money-making space would be the one aim of that job.

  Strolling into the bar in the hope of encountering Iris, whom he hadn't yet seen, he noticed Collins and Tex Akers at a small table with the banker Llewellyn. All three men wore ties and dark business suits. Akers looked entirely different out of his work clothes, washed, and shaved. He had a distinguished air. No time like the present, Paperman thought, and he took his martini to their table. They were in a solemn discussion over untasted beers.

  "May I intrude for just a little while?"

  "Please!" The banker motioned to a chair.

  "Mr. Akers, how about changing your mind and building those new rooms for me?" Paperman said. "It may be some time before my wife can come down here. I'd like to have these rooms ready by Christmas. She approved of your sketches, so why not get going right away? It's not a big job, and I'm sure you can work it in."

  Akers glanced at the banker and the lawyer, and scratched his scanty hair, smiling. "It's funny you should come along like this. I've got a short holdup on the Crab Cove job," he said in his warm, relaxed voice. "That's what we've just been talking about. Actually I guess I could bring my Cove crew around tomorrow and just get rolling. In a way, it would fit in real good."

  Collins said to Paperman, "That would be a break. His crew could do your new rooms in a week, probably."

  "Easy," Akers said.

  "You estimated about thirty-five hundred dollars," Paperman said.

  "Well, to protect myself I'd call it four thousand on paper. I'd just charge you for labor and materials. If it comes to less, that suits me. Just so the crew keeps going." He laughed and shrugged. "This is too small a job to figure profit. If it works out under thirty-five hundred, maybe you can give me a case of scotch."

  "Well, that's cordial of you, but I think you ought to have a profit. And I'd want a written estimate for the record."

  "No problem."

  "Will you want a construction loan?" the banker said to Paperman. "We'll be glad to extend one to you-and to Mr. Ot-loss, of course."

  "It's a minor job," said Paperman with a touch of grandeur. "I'll handle it with cash."

  Akers held out his hand. "I'll be here at noon with my crew."

  Norman went to bed early, exhausted but encouraged. The night's dinner business had been capacity. The bar cash register was jingling as couples filled the moonlit dance terrace; and Thor had already given him one small canvas bag of money to be locked away in the old office safe, for deposit in the bank in the morning. This most eventful day in his life, which had begun so badly, was ending well enough. He didn't like sleeping alone in the White Cottage, and his last drowsy thoughts were of poor Henny and her transparent stone. He also wondered where Iris could be. Just as he was dozing off he heard the door of the Pink Cottage open and close, and Meadows yipping joyously. He was too tired to move.

  3

  Pounding at the door: bang, bang, crash. "Inside! Mistuh Papermon! Inside! Y
ou in dah?" BANG!!

  Paperman forced his eyes open, sat up, and blinked at the sun glare off the water. Seconds passed before he understood where he was, and what he was doing there. He had been in a deep sleep, dreaming of New York. "Yes? Who is it?"

  "Sheila. I sorry to hoross you, suh."

  "Oh. One minute, Sheila."

  Sheila was the cook of the Club. Norman had met her in his first tour of the premises, weeks ago: a mountainous irascible black woman with dark eyes and thick satanic eyebrows, rolling sweat in a tiny malodorous kitchen, and snapping peevish orders at two sulky, terrorized, darting girls. Paperman did not understand how such excellent meals issued in quantity from that fiery, squalid hole of a kitchen, but he knew they did, and he proposed never to venture near Sheila's domain. Now here she was.

  "Sheila, what time is it?" he called, as he tumbled out of bed and reached for a dressing gown.

  "Quarter past."

  "Quarter past what?"

  "Ten."

  As he opened the door she held out a scrawled, bloodstained paper. Sheila wore a large apron and a chefs hat, and she was perspiring heavily.

  "What's that?"

  "Mario's Market. Mario don' give no credit. He up de main house wid de meat but we got to pay."

  "Well, tell Thor to pay."

  "Thor ain't dah. Got to have meat fo' lunch, suh."

  "How much is it?"

  "Hunna fifteen dolla'."

  Paperman wearily took the bill, and wrote a check. Sheila departed fanning the check, and shouting angrily at herself.

  He dressed and plodded across the lawn toward the main house; hut halfway a startling sight arrested him. A large red sailing yacht, aswarm with white people having a party, was tied to the pier. A merry roar, and snatches of bawled song, rose from the deck. Norman approached this boat, puzzled. It was a beautiful new vessel; the scarlet of its hull looked like Japanese lacquer, its towering masts were yellow-varnished, its brasswork glistened in the sun.

  "Norman Paperman! Dah-ling! Here he comes! My hero, my love! Come aboard, sweetheart, and have a glass of champagne! Hurry!" He heard Mrs. Ball's voice, and saw a muscular brown arm waving above the clustered heads.

  He crossed the little rubber-matted gangway, and the Englishwoman thrust out of the mob, stately in a white pleated dress, painted like a doll, and holding a champagne glass. She threw a brawny arm around him. "Welcome aboard Moonglow, you dah-ling! You're just in time, love, we cast off in fifteen minutes. Come along and have a drink. Isn't this boat a love? It was Tom Tilson's and now it's mine. There isn't a schooner to touch it in all the West Indies, and I've been aboard them all."

  Paperman observed that she was towing him through the "hill crowd." There was no mistaking it: self-assured, sunburned people, middle-aged or older, dressed with informal clean elegance, Gentile to the last man and woman, serenely superior in their bearing, in their smiles, in their intimate laughing ease with each other; most of them with the glittery eyes of steady drinkers, some with the poached eyes of excess; here and there a chic pair of homosexuals, brilliantly dressed and with close-cropped gray heads. "Champagne, love? -Oh, dear, are we out of champagne? Well, more's coming. Do have some caviar." Open cans of gray caviar labeled in Russian stood on the small wheeled bar, with trays of crackers and a hacked-up blue cheese.

  "I don't know, Amy, it's kind of early in the morning-"

  "Ah, here we are! Quick, Captain, champagne for my dear friend."

  Out of a hatchway climbed a very big red-faced man in a yachting cap, a tailored white long-sleeved shirt, white duck trousers, and canvas shoes. "Hey, Mr. Paperman!" The man threw his arms wide and brandished two frosty bottles of champagne like Indian clubs. "I got it! Vat you tink? I got my boad!"

  His costume was such a change that Norman did not recognize Thor until he spoke.

  "My boat, lambie, my boat," cried Mrs. Ball, snuggling up to the bartender, putting an arm around him, and looking dewily into his face.

  "I'm de captain, by God!" roared Thor, pulling the cork out of a bottle with a gunshot sound and a spill of foam, "Captain of Moon-glow, finest tarn boad in de islands! And today ve sail for Panama! Panama, by God! Dat vas my port before I got wrecked, and dat's my port now! Mr. Paperman, I owe it to you! Here, champagne!"

  Stunned, Paperman took the glass, raised it, and managed a smile. "Lycka till, Thor," he said. "Is that right?"

  "Hey, Amy, you hear dat! Lycka till, you betcha, dat's right, Mr. Paperman. By God, I drink vit you, you're a man."

  The three of them drank. Mrs. Ball then glued a kiss on Thor's lips, cleaving to him like a bride, an impatient amorous bride, unsteady after a long wet wedding breakfast. Thor submitted to the kiss, glancing slantwise at Paperman. "Amy, I tink I see de governor come aboard," he said, as soon as he could disengage his mouth.

  "The governor! Come, bring a bottle and a glass, lamb." Mrs. Ball made off through the crowd like a quarterback. Thor followed in her wake, giving Norman a sardonic man-to-man grin.

  "Paperman, you look kind of put out." Tom Tilson was at his elbow, scooping up caviar with a cracker. His red freckled face, all cords and bones, was wrinkled at Norman in crafty appraisal.

  "I'm surprised."

  "You had no warning?"

  "Not a word."

  Tilson gulped the caviar, and shook his knobby stick at Paperman. "I tried to tip you off, you know, about Thor. At Hogan's Fancy. I couldn't say much more than I did, with Collins sitting right there. I knew about it. Moonglow's my boat. Amy's been blowing hot and cold about buying it for a year. I thought it was just talk to keep Thor happy, but by Jesus yesterday afternoon she did it. Damn fool, if you ask me. As long as she didn't buy it, she had him. Now he's got her."

  "I gather they're very good friends-as one might say."

  Tilson uttered a lecherous hoarse giggle. "Them? Mister, since the day he piled up on Cockroach Rock a year and a half ago. If you ask me, all he's been doing since then is working up to this moment. Amy doesn't know boat people. I do. She'll find out."

  "Well," said Norman with a heavy sigh, "it seems that I don't have a manager."

  "You sure do," said Tilson. "Name of Paperman."

  The deck rocked and vibrated. "What the devil!" Norman exclaimed. 'We're moving." The boat was, in fact, powering away from the pier. "How crazy is he? Are we all off to Panama?"

  Tilson laughed. "Just to the waterfront. That gondola is a hell of a bore. As you'll soon discover." The old man squinted at him. "I'm afraid you're in for a rough time."

  He swallowed another immense gob of caviar and stumped away.

  Thor came shouldering along the deck, bawling orders at a black boy in the cockpit. Seeing Paperman he stopped, looked abashed, threw his head back in a savage laugh, and wrapped an arm around his shoulders. "I tell you, Mr. Paperman, 1 feel kind of bad, you know?"

  "Why? You said you'd stay till you got a boat. You've got a boat."

  "De books are hunnert per cent, right up to last night, joost like I showed you. It's a easy system, you catch on fast. Don't hoross yourself, like dey say. Gilbert can run de bar. I been breaking him in. He mixes good drinks. I showed Gilbert de main water valves, and de fuse boxes, and all dose tings. You be okay."

  "Who's Gilbert?"

  "De boat boy. He honest and he not so tarn stupid, only you better watch him till he get used to de job, you know? All you got to do is keep de books and handle de reservations. Dere be no problem. Sheila run de kitchen fine, she de best tarn cook in Kinja."

  "Thor, I don't know much about keeping books."

  "Ha! I know less dan you ven I come. You pick it up fast. You call Neville Wills, tell him come in every day for a veek or so, check tings over. He de only good accountant on dis island. -Hey, Artur! Slow down, you vant to run dis tarn boad up on de beach?" Thor held out his hand. "No hard feelings? I like you, Mr. Paperman, honest. De only ting is, I'm a sailing man."

  Paperman accepted the powerful handshake. Thor hustled forward. "Stand by! C
lear de starboard rail!"

  The hill crowd disembarked on the waterfront, Norman among them, and stood in a huddle, shouting farewells, many still holding highballs in paper cups. A strong breeze was blowing across the harbor, and Thor at once hoisted sail, disdaining to clear the channel under power. Moonglow looked brave and lovely, falling away from the bulkhead, slowly gathering way and dipping her scarlet hull as one and then another white sail ran up flapping and caught the wind. The hill crowd began to sing Auld Lang Syne. Amy Ball stood in the stern with her arm around a shroud, swaying and waving, and laughing through streams of tears. Moonglow had to maneuver to avoid an ugly vessel that was bearing down on her, an enormous flat chugging thing, solid rust from its square bow to the small iron deckhouse at the stern. Thor cleared this ungainly scow by a foot or two, and the onlookers cheered.