Herman Wouk - Don't Stop The Carnival

by Don't Stop The Carnival(Lit)

  "Are you serious, Gilbert? How is it everybody who comes here doesn't die of typhoid or cholera?"

  "De water does filter troo charcoal."

  "Isn't the cistern ever cleaned of that-that stuff?"

  "Yazuh."

  "When was the last time?"

  "When de earthquake done crack it and all de water gone out."

  "When was that?"

  "Dunno. Hippolyte clean it."

  "Who is Hippolyte?"

  "He de fella don' work here no mo'."

  Gilbert led his queasy employer through a back door into sweet fresh air, down a sandy slope, and through a vine-covered trellis masking the iron support beams beneath the bar. Underfoot was beach sand, and one could look out through the trellis at the sparkling sea and the guests at play. Gilbert crouched and vanished through a crawl hole in the foundation, and Norman followed him.

  "Don' stan up straight," said Gilbert, as Norman did so, fetching his head a crack against metal in the gloom. The flashlight beam showed that he had struck the handle of a valve, painted red, projecting downward from a maze of interlocking and crisscrossing pipes. Close to it was a valve painted green. This low airless crawl-space smelled of decay, mildew, drains, and machine grease. It was full of the detritus of hotel-keeping: broken chairs, odd lumber, cans of dry paint, rusty screens, stacks of basins, bales of roped paper. Dominating all was a large machine clanking, wheezing, and chugging on a concrete platform. Pipes radiated from it like the tentacles of an octopus, and it was lumpy with odd knobs, gauges, and chambers. Paperman had a slight fear of all machinery. This thing looked very diseased, and evil.

  "De pump," said Gilbert.

  "How does it work? Gasoline?"

  "'Lectric." He pointed to the two painted valve handles, and a dozen others, gray or rusty, projecting everywhere. "Don' mind dem other valves. Dey goes to de cottages. De red one de main. De green one de 'mergency. Well, I guess I go back to de boat." Gilbert started out.

  "One minute." Uncomfortable though he was, Norman felt that it was now or never for learning the mysteries of the water system. Hunched like a miner, there in that foul-smelling damp dark place, he asked question after question, hammered away at the boy's taciturnity, turned the pump on and off himself, and worked the two colored valves. The emergency tank, he found out, held about a day's supply, so that if the main cistern water did run out, he had an extra day for procuring more. Paperman thought this nugget of fact was enough reward for all the dreary and uncomfortable investigation. The nightmare of forty unflushed toilets dissolved. There was a margin for error.

  "All right, Gilbert. You can go back to the boat. Thank you."

  "Yazuh."

  Paperman now returned to the lobby. Lorna was busy at the switchboard, deftly plugging and ringing and answering. He waited for a lull.

  "Lorna, Senator Pullman tells me that you know how we can get emergency water, if we happen to run dry."

  "Senator Pull-mon?" Lorna's eyes rounded in blank innocence; her mouth curved and her tongue flickered in a smile that might have shocked a Parisian whore. "Senator Pull-mon say dat?"

  With some coaxing, he got the story out of her. Lorna had a brother named Anatone, who owned a tank truck, and he made his living hauling water up to the homes of the wasteful hill crowd. Anatone procured his water from the municipal reservoir. He could bring water to the Club, but it would be expensive. No hose in Amerigo was long enough to stretch from the waterfront to the Reef. There was an old World War II landing craft in the harbor, used for hauling municipal garbage out to sea and dumping it. Anatone could hire this craft; he could drive his truck aboard, and so get the water to the Club. Paperman would have to pay for the water, the landing-craft hire, and Anatone's extra time. "I tell you what, Mr. Paperman," she said. "You better hope it rains."

  "Your brother's name is what-Anatole?"

  "Anatone," she giggled. "Everybody make dat mistake. Anatone."

  Anatone sounded like a desperate remedy to Norman, but decidedly better than none at all. This had been an hour well spent, he thought. On the water problem, he now knew what there was to know.

  Iris was still in the office, putting away ledgers and checks. "Hi," she said, "did you get any rest? You still look rocky."

  "Do I?"

  Paperman, feeling pleased with himself, embraced her and gave her a kiss, which she apparently enjoyed. "Ye gods, does a nap do that for you? Lucky Henny. These books are simple, Norm. Posting once a day is all that's necessary. We'll do it together tomorrow."

  Norman said, "Splendid. I now propose a long swim, and a few martinis, say six or seven, served to us by Church Wagner in the privacy of the White Cottage veranda, and then dinner."

  Iris's eyes sparkled at him. "It's all lovely, except dinner, Norm. I can't have dinner with you. Let's go."

  6

  The thunderclouds were drawing near from the east, dumping gray streams of rain in the sea, when she joined him on the veranda after their swim.

  "Look," he said jovially, pointing. "Bye-bye water shortage."

  "Isn't it wonderful?" Iris said. "You bear a charm. Sheila said it wouldn't break until Christmas. Where are the martinis?" She sat on the wicker couch, swinging up her bare legs, and perched them on the black cushions, tucking her pink linen skirt close under her thighs.

  'Church is on his way down with them."

  She was smoking and looking thoughtfully out at the rain, now less than a mile off shore. "About Church," she said.

  "Yes?"

  "Norm, your bartender's your key person here. All your money comes in through that register at the bar. Even check-outs. It makes the record-keeping a cinch, and it worked fine with Thor. But-"

  "I think this lad's as bright as Thor. Anyway, I'll be watching him/' Paperman said airily. He wanted a less business-like tone to this cocktail hour, with gold rays of the low sun shafting around the rain clouds, and Iris looking so provokingly pretty, curled up pink and white on the black cushions.

  She said, 'Well, dear. I thought I'd better check. I called the high school-"

  There came a knock and Church, still in bathing suit and sweatshirt, brought in a jug of martinis in an ice bucket with two glasses thrust among the ice shavings. He gave Iris a shy little smile. "Evening, Mrs. Tramm. Sir, we're real busy at the bar. They're all over the beach too, and it's starting to sprinkle. The girls are pulling the rain awnings on the terraces. They asked me and I said sure."

  "Church, is it throwing you? The handling of the money?"

  "Oh, no, sir. There's a cash journal at the bar, you know. I'm sort of keeping track as I go. We sold sixteen outsiders' chits for dinner. We'll be crowded." Church left with quick light barefoot step.

  "Why, he's the salt of the earth," Paperman said, pouring the drinks, and tasting one. "He's a find and a jewel, and how's that for a martini?"

  "He left the employ of the Amerigo Central High School," said Iris, "because he got the principal pregnant."

  Paperman's eyes lit with amused surprise. "The principal! That lad?"

  "Miss Lydia Pullman, a cousin of the senator, a spinster of forty-three, with nineteen years of seniority."

  "Ye gods," Norman said.

  "I talked to some teachers up there, Norm. There was hell to pay. Any unmarried teacher who shows up pregnant loses her job and her seniority. It happens all the time, but it's never happened to a principal before. They kicked Church out like that."

  "What's become of her?"

  "She's already left for the States. She was awarded a year's in-service fellowship in school administration. A rather hastily voted fellowship."

  "I see it all," said Norman, "the Board of Education meeting in the dead of night, behind locked doors. The academic merits of the applicant presented by the local gynecologist. I'm falling in love with Kinja all over again. How's about a refill?"

  She shook her head, laughing. "The question is, do we want this ravisher of respectable educators handling the Club's money?"

&n
bsp; "Why not? If older women are his vice, he won't need money to stay happy. That stuff is plentiful and free."

  "I wonder. Tastes differ and all that. But I could no more mess around with a fuzzy, peaches-and-cream tidbit like Church-"

  A wisp of wind-driven rain struck Norman's face. The waving rain-curtain pouring into the sea from the oncoming thunderhead sounded like a distant waterfall. The sting of the cold drops elated him. He said, "How would you feel about messing around with a dehydrated tidbit like me?"

  "Ah, Norm. Norm Paperman. What a name. Paperman." She regarded him with a sadly comic shake of her head. "You know, you did something damned stupid or damned smart, I'm not sure which. But anyway, you did it. You brought Henny down here. And she'll be down again."

  Norman ran a thumb nervously along his lower lip. "She's far away now."

  "I'm not what I was," said Iris, "but I'm not reduced to owing my pleasure to another woman's gallstones."

  "It's got nothing to do with Henny's gallstones," Norman said irritably, "and she doesn't have any, anyhow. It's just that you're beautiful and I like you."

  "Really, Henny is so nice," Iris said. "Why, she's got me looking for chairs and fabrics for the lobby. We hit it off like long-lost cousins. And anyway-" Iris breathed a heavy sigh and drank off her martini with a single motion of a crooked elbow. "You know all about me. I'm nobody to mess with, obviously. You're just talking. Mustn't drink another drop, and I must leave." She stood, shaking her skirt straight. "Why, what's the matter, Norm? What in God's name are you staring at? Aren't you well?"

  'It isn't happening," Norman said. "Such a thing can't happen. Can it?"

  He made an uncertain gesture at the sea. The squall was moving past Gull Reef. The White Cottage stood on the point that thrust farthest out into the sea, and it had scarcely been wetted. Behind the retreating black cloud and its gray fall of rain, a red-and-gold sunset was opening across a clear blue sky.

  "Ah, too bad. That one seems to have missed us," said Iris. "Well, another one will come along."

  "But Iris, look at all that water, falling into the sea. Thousands of gallons a minute into the sea! Why? The sea doesn't need water. I need it."

  "Go ahead, Norman. Finish the martinis."

  "If I had longer arms," said Paperman, "I could have held out a bucket and caught God knows how many gallons. It was that close. Now it's going away. To Cuba or somewhere."

  "For all we know it's raining at the main house," Iris said. "That's what the weather's like in this silly place."

  "Let's look!" Norman exclaimed. They went through the cottage and out on the lawn. The main house was glowing rosily and drily in the sunset. Beyond it, the island of Amerigo was almost invisible in a heavy downpour.

  "Iris," said Norman, "it's raining to the west of us, and it's raining to the east of us. I don't think there's more than a mile between these two cloudbursts. We're sitting here beneath a blue sky, as dry as though we were under a tent. This is just not possible. I'm having a nightmare."

  "Look, Norman, darling, come inside and sit down."

  She took his arm, firmly walked him inside, pushed him down in a chair, and handed him another martini. "I may as well tell you that this happens here all the time."

  "It does?" Paperman cocked his head at her like a sad inquisitive dog. "It really does?"

  "It's a freak of the wind patterns. The mountains cause it. Amy Ball used to go out of her mind. The thunderheads either get sucked up against the ridge, or they bounce loose and drift out to sea. I've sat here and watched them go by on either side of this hotel like soldiers marching around a dead body."

  "I'll be damned," said Paperman. "That's very interesting, and it might even be amusing, except I think it's going to give me a fatal heart attack."

  "Oh, don't go on like that. The thing is, sweetie, sooner or later one of these three-day rainstorms comes along and the whole island gets blanketed and drenched. You've got such a huge roof area here that the cistern can overflow before the end of such a storm. I've seen it happen."

  "Meantime," Paperman said, "I'll have to hunt up Anatone tomorrow and buy water. That's obvious."

  "Anatone? Who on earth is that?"

  Paperman repeated to her the story that Lorna had given him.

  "Gosh, the names on this island," said Iris. "Anatone. Sounds like a headache remedy."

  "I thought of an off-brand Japanese radio," said Paperman.

  She said, chuckling, "I must go. If you write Henny, tell her Hassim's bringing in the black-and-gold grass cloth from Hong Kong that she wanted for the lobby. It ought to be here next week." Iris leaned over and gave him a brief kiss. "If you ever talk sweet to me again I'll set Meadows on you. All that is out, do you understand? I'm going to be a sister to you."

  He groaned and cringed. "Iris, you embarrass me."

  He followed her out to the lawn and watched her walk off, a swaying lovely pink figure, toward the dock. All the rain clouds had passed on, north, south, east, and west. A sapphire sky, with two planets shining in the west, bent its dry dome over the Gull Reef Club.

  7

  He came awake with a bodily jerk. The knocking went on, and still the voice cried, "Inside! Mistuh Papuh! You dah?" It was a woman's voice, and not Sheila's: thin, high. The seaward window was black dark; no moonlight, no stars. His phosphorescent watch dial showed quarter-past eleven.

  "Inside! Inside! -Well, I guess he ain' dah."

  Another girlish voice: "He dah."

  Hammering of several fists, and yells of two women: "Inside! Mistuh Papuh!"

  "All right, all right, one moment."

  The girls-they were the waitresses in the har-told him that the hotel water had just run out. Church had noticed it, while washing glasses, and had immediately sent them to him.

  "Okay," said Paperman, with some elation. For once he was on top of a Gull Reef crisis. "Tell Church he'll have water in two minutes."

  The two girls ran back to the main house and he followed in robe and flapping straw slippers. In the lobby half a dozen guests in night clothes clamored at him. He raised both hands. "Folks, it's a question of shifting from one cistern to another. I regret the inconvenience, but by the time you get back to your rooms you'll have water."

  Many people were drinking and laughing in the bar, all oblivious to the water crisis, and more were on the terrace, dancing to the steel band.

  "Church, get the big flashlight in the kitchen and come with me. You might as well learn how to do this."

  "Yes, sir."

  He led Church to the malodorous hole under the hotel. The pump was running with a queer dry rattle. Paperman flashed the light beam along an electric cable, coiling in the darkness to a wall socket. He pulled out the plug. A fat blue spark leaped after the prongs; the pump choked, rattled, shuddered all over, gave a screech and one loud clank, and fell silent.

  Paperman did not remember, at this point, whether the red valve or the green valve led to the emergency tank. It didn't matter, he thought. All he had to do was close the open one and open the closed one.

  He did this.

  "Now," he said, and he plunged the plug back into the socket.

  The pump reacted like a living thing, like a bull stabbed with a sword, like a woman grasped in the dark by a strange hand. It screamed, and writhed, and seemed to rise bodily off its concrete block, and shook at every point, its gauge needles dancing. Then it settled down to running noisily again.

  "There we are," said Paperman, trying to appear unconcerned, though dry-mouthed at the pump's convulsion. "Run up and make sure we've got water. Just yell down to me, I'll be out on the beach."

  "Yes, sir."

  "No water," Church called down from the rail of the bar, about half a minute later. "No water, Mr. Paperman. And the lobby's full of people complaining."

  "Get back down here," roared Paperman.

  "Coming, sir."

  "Now what the hell, Church?" Paperman said, playing the flashlight on the thumping machin
e. "It's running, it's drawing on a full emergency tank. I checked that tank today."

  Church put his hand on the pipes. "There's no water going through, sir. There'd be a vibration and the pipes would feel cool. Do you suppose the pump has to be primed? Most pumps do, once they've run dry.

  "You seem very knowledgeable. Go ahead and prime it, Church."

  Church scratched his beard, and looked at his employer with a weak one-sided smile. "Sir, that's one thing I'm no good for. Machinery gives me the creeps. I have a long bad history of wrecking boat engines, sir. I really would rather not touch this pump."