Herman Wouk - Don't Stop The Carnival

by Don't Stop The Carnival(Lit)

  The large room had thick-walled brick windows opening on Prince of Wales Street, and a rickety floor of wide, splintered old boards. Steel files lined the four walls. Near the windows, at a small steel desk, a girl was typing, and Miss Buckley sat writing at a large desk of mahogany, dressed in a dark gray suit that magnified her capacious bosom. It was some time before she showed awareness, with a heavy-lidded glance, that Paperman was standing at the door. She pointed the end of her pen at a chair beside her desk, and resumed writing. Paperman walked to the chair, the boards yielding and squeaking under his feet, and sat. The Deputy Chief of Immigration-so her desk sign identified her-wrote. Paperman opened the book in his lap and began to read.

  "Mistuh Papuhmon, dis office does not be de public liberry." The Deputy Chief was glaring at him, her magenta mouth pursed in an offended pout. "You here on official business."

  "Of course," said Paperman, "but if you're occupied I don't want you to feel pressed. I'm quite happy with my book."

  "What dat book?"

  "Moby Dick."

  "Let's see dat book!"

  She inspected it, riffling the pages as though looking for packets of heroin. "Dat be a long book. You like long books?"

  "Well, I like that one. I've read it before."

  "Oh yes? Den what for you read it now?" said Miss Buckley, pouncing on this obvious self-betrayal.

  "Just to be doing something. Did you want to see me about Esm‚, Miss Buckley?"

  With an exasperated sigh, and an irritated thrust of her pen into its holder, Miss Buckley rose, marched to one steel file and another, opening and shutting drawers, and returned to the desk with several folders. Stacking these before her she informed Paperman that the bonds for his alien help would come up for renewal within a week. They had to be renewed each December and June. These renewals were granted only when the employer was law-abiding and responsible. It wasn't a law-abiding or responsible act, she said, to help alien women get their children born on United States soil.

  Norman offered to get a doctor to certify that Esm‚ was many weeks away from delivery. Miss Buckley sneered at this notion. Doctors couldn't understand the tricks of Nevis girls. They used belly bands and other queer things, and were built funny anyway. Esm‚ was about to pop. Immigration knew that, and if she didn't go within forty-eight hours the Gull Reef Club's application for renewing its bonds-here she rattled the sheaf of folders-might well be forwarded to Washington for review. This process took six months, and meantime no aliens could work at the hotel. Did Mr. Paperman know, she inquired, about the shortage of Kinjan labor?

  "Look, may I speak freely and off the record?" Norman said.

  "It don't make no difference. Go ahead," sighed Miss Buckley.

  "When I bought the Reef, you know, a couple of weeks ago, Lorna was already there. From everything I hear, Senator Easter is a great statesman who will do a magnificent job of leadership, and-"

  Miss Buckley's eyes opened wide and snapped fire. "Evan Pullman goin' be put behind bars in Florida fo' ten years. Dat Lorna never come back. If she do come back, she soon see who de boss now on dis island."

  "No doubt. What I'm saying is, I feel that the Gull Reef Club has inadvertently been caught in some sort of cross-fire of politics, and if there's anything I can do-"

  "Politics? What politics?" Miss Buckley hit the buzzer with a thick thumb. "We all federal appointees in dis office. Politics! Come in, come in," she said to a melancholy young girl who sidled through the door with hanging head. "Sit down, sit down. Politics!" She pointed in the direction of Paperman's lap, and resumed her scrawling and groaning.

  Norman took all this as a hint that he had permission to withdraw, and he got out of there.

  3

  Church Wagner's poster dominated the lobby on the center wall: red cardboard five feet high and a yard wide, lettered in elegant black brush work:

  Gull Reef Club Regrets

  Water Difficulties. Bear With Us.

  Everything Will Be Fixed Tomorrow.

  (We Think!)

  Meantime There's Tonight. Let's Live.

  Champagne Party On the House. All You Can Drink, Freel

  If the Water Can't Flow, the Wine Can.

  Music! Laughter! Hubbub! Wassail!

  How's That? We're Trying! See You after Dinner at the Party! Gull Reef Club. Norman Paperman, your host.

  Ornamenting the words was a fantasy in gold ink of bubbles, bottles, flying corks; also pails, basins, toilets, and a large faucet yielding one meager drop. Norman was amazed at Church's facility. Obviously, whatever this young man did, he did fast. It was his idiosyncrasy.

  Guests crowding around the poster greeted Paperman with great good humor. In the bar he found that the champagne party was the talk of the hotel. The guests were a motley lot, old and young, from the East and from the Chicago area, mostly Gentile, with a sprinkling of young adventurous New York Jews bored with Miami. The grumpy, easily dissatisfied ones had already departed. The party announcement had welded the rest into one gay and stimulated company. Church Wagner avowed that the party was the best idea he had ever seen created on the spur of the moment; that Mr. Paperman had a genius for running a tropic hotel. "Why, you've turned a disaster into a fun thing, sir. It's just wonderful."

  "Fine. Now Church, where's Esm‚"? I still don't see her at the switchboard."

  The bartender's glowing face turned sober and a little sneaky. "Sir, I couldn't find her. The girls say she went home. She wasn't feeling good. But I've got the board fixed so the calls are coming in here, sir. It's no problem."

  "The hell it isn't. I must find Esm‚, Church, and right away. It's imperative. You know where she lives, I daresay?"

  "Why, a place called the Thousand Steps, I believe, sir."

  "Oh, Lord, her too? Okay. I'll tend bar for an hour. Go and fetch her."

  "Mr. Paperman, that really wouldn't be advisable." Church looked appalled. "She lives there with the fellow who-with the father, as you might say. He's six foot two and he's very jealous."

  "Is he from Nevis?"

  "No, no. He's a Kinjan. He has a job in public works."

  "He does?" Paperman laughed out loud with relief. "Well, for Christ's sake, let her marry him then! God, what a simple solution. How marvelous! I'll pay for the license. I'll give her a dowry."

  Church shook his head. "Sir, he's been trying to marry her for months. She won't do it. She can't stand him. He's a religious fanatic, she says, he reads the Bible all the time out loud, and mostly he eats mangoes and carrots."

  "Why the devil is she living with him, then?"

  "Sir, rents are high in Georgetown. Esm‚ has to economize."

  Paperman clutched his head, feeling the old Kinjan vertigo coming on him again. "All right. All right. I'll get Esm‚. I'll go there right after dinner. I'll go up and around the Jewish cemetery."

  "Sir?"

  "Sorry. I'm talking to myself. What about the water arrangements? What if people use up their pails?"

  "Millard is staying on till midnight. He'll keep drawing water and delivering it to the rooms. Sheila arranged that."

  A ragged fork of lightning, at this moment, plunged down the eastern horizon, which was a solid bank of low dirty clouds. Norman had noticed weather building up in the east ever since Lionel's departure. This was no straggle of thunderheads; it was a wide storm. But it was far away. The thunder did not come for perhaps fifteen seconds, and it Was a mere rumble.

  "Look at that, sir," Church said.

  "I know. Just when we have a third of a cistern and can't use it."

  "Millard says we can use some. His bucket is starting to hit bottom."

  "In that case, there's no problem. It'll pass us by. Give me a scotch on the rocks, Church. I'm going to take my rest before dinner."

  The rain began just as Norman was getting into bed. Seldom in his life had he heard a sweeter sound than the sudden thick drumming on the galvanized-iron roof of the main house. He now lived in Amy Ball's apartment
on the second floor. The White Cottage was far too good an income producer to house him; at the moment a family of six occupied it, at fifteen dollars a day per head. Amy's apartment was small and dingy, and he expected Henny to complain, but he thought a look at the ledgers would end her protests. She could redecorate and brighten it. He lay back on the bed in his silk Chinese robe, smoking a cigarette, sipping at his scotch, and listening to the heavy rattle overhead. This was no teasing sprinkle, good only to wash spiders and bird droppings into the cistern. This was rain, real rain. It was deeply reassuring; it seemed an augury of better things. He put out the cigarette and allowed himself to be lulled into a delicious drowse. He lay in a sagging wrought-iron bed caked with cracking white paint, under a slanted wallpapered ceiling, a riot of sun-faded roses big as basketballs.

  Chapter Ten

  Champagne, Si-Agua, No

  1

  Governor Sanders was in the bar when Norman came down, and with him was his wife. Norman had not heard that the governor's lady was back in Amerigo. He lingered near the doorway, watching them talk over their drinks. Reena Sanders, though black as she could be, was unmistakably not a Kinjan. Her pseudo-Egyptian coiffure, her elegantly tailored black suit with large white buttons, were only part of her difference. The rest lay in the way she held herself, the assurance in the tilt of her head, the straight glance of her eyes, the controlled, sharp moves of her hands. She was all Washington-New York sheen. Norman approached them with a word of welcome, and they invited him to join them.

  "No, no. I'm sure you two have a million things to talk about."

  The governor's long hollow face creased in a bitter little grin. "Reena's just telling me the same old thing-that she can't stand Kinja. At this point you're probably on her side."

  "Not yet."

  Mrs. Sanders was on her way to Caracas for a United Nations conference on housing. She had routed her trip to include an overnight stay in Amerigo, she said; one or two days on the island was about all she could stand. The place gave her the creeps. She wanted to know what Norman's troubles had been. Having already broken in this monologue on Lionel and Iris, Norman rather eagerly began to perform. He loved nothing more than making people laugh at a table, over drinks or coffee. It had been his life's work, pretty much. Reena Sanders was soon uproariously amused, because he was tickling her own prejudices against Kinja. After a while even the governor began to laugh in a strange high neighing way, as though laughter came hard to him. People in the bar turned to look and to whisper.

  During the tale of the Akers wall, Mrs. Sanders held up both hands. "Oh, dear, Norman, stop. I'm hungry as a wolf, I want to eat right now, but I absolutely must hear the rest of this. Join us for dinner. Please!"

  The rain was thrumming on the awnings of the crowded dining terrace; but the kerosene flares, and the orange-flaming oil lamps of the tables, hardly flickered. The wind blew from the other side of the hotel, and the terrace was in the lee. Slanting rain hissed into the floodlit green shallows. "If there's anything I like on this island," said the governor's wife, looking out at the hazy waterfront lights and the dim sparks of homes on the hills, "it's this terrace and this view. I've never seen anything more beguiling."

  Norman went to the kitchen for a moment and talked to Sheila about the governor's dinner. The menu at the hotel was strictly table d'hote, and Sheila rotated her menu day by day in a pattern she had not varied in seven years. Still, for a special guest, or for the proprietor, the cook was reasonable about making exceptions. Millard, the gardener, sat sweltering in a corner on an inverted pail, in his ragged dungarees and brown paper hat, gnawing on a pork chop.

  "You're putting in long hours, Millard. I'm sorry. You'll get paid overtime."

  "I does praise de Lord, please," said Millard, with a sweet and happy smile, "dat I does be helpful to you, and to all dese nice people."

  Returning through the lobby, Paperman saw the tarpaulin bellying taut in the wind, making a singing noise and flapping at an upper corner. He had not realized how much slack there was; the dirty brown canvas swelled halfway across the lobby. Evidently the wind tonight was blowing straight into the hole made by Akers. He called Church out of the bar to show him this unsightly thing, and they heard tumbling sounds behind the ballooning tarpaulin.

  "I don't want to look," Norman said. He had had three drinks and was feeling good, and was determined to go on feeling good. "There's nothing we can do back there anyway, right now."

  "The wind can't hurt any of that stuff, sir," Church said. "Just shuffle it around a bit, maybe."

  "But our party's going to be ruined," Norman said, "with this gruesome thing bulging half across the room like an elephant's backside."

  Church pulled at this and that rope of the tarpaulin. "It just needs to be secured, sir. Please don't worry about it. One thing I can do is handle canvas." He hauled on a rope, and the flapping stopped. "I'll fix this up right now."

  "Good lad."

  Sheila sent out excellent steaks to the governor's table. Paperman ordered one bottle and then another of Beaune, the best wine he had, and resumed his tale. He was in good form; the governor and his wife were entranced. Sanders even remarked once, between high-pitched guffaws, that Paperman ought to keep notes, and one day write a book.

  At what seemed to be the right moment-just after signing the check for the dinners with a flourish, over Sanders' protest, and ordering brandy and coffee-Norman told them about Miss Buckley and Esm‚. He was hoping, of course, that the governor would offer to intervene. This had been the point of his whole effort to charm. His picture of Miss Buckley's habit of ignoring him, while writing and groaning for minutes on end, convulsed the governor's wife. "Oh, mercy, a puffed-up little bureaucrat and a Kinjan, rolled into one," she said. "What a combination! Sheer Frankenstein."

  "You'd be amazed," said Sanders, "how nice Christophine Buckley can be. Just laughing, pleasant, and obliging all the time. A real sweetheart, whenever I've had anything to do with her."

  Reena Sanders put a cigarette in a long ivory holder and Paperman swooped a flaming lighter to it. "Thank you, dear. -Of course she's nice to you, Alton."

  Norman said that once dinner was over and the champagne party had started, he was going to borrow a raincoat and spend the night hunting down the pregnant fugitive in the jungle of the Thousand Steps.

  "In this?" Mrs. Sanders made an abrupt gesture at the lashing rain. "On the Thousand Steps? With your heart condition? You'll drop dead and nobody will ever take notice. The dogs and the rats will eat you."

  "I don't know what my alternative is. If I lose my chambermaids and gardeners, I fold and go back to New York. It's the end."

  "Alton, surely you can do something. I mean, to me this is ridiculous, I mean, even for the Caribbean! Mercy! Make Buckley take a literacy test, and get rid of her. Just threaten it and she'll cave in."

  "She's federal," the governor said with a shrug. "Nothing to do with the local government."

  "Oh please. I mean. Who're you kidding?" Mrs. Sanders blinked at her husband with a dangerous, exasperated look in her wine-brightened eyes, "This is what I hate about Kinja, Norman. It's all low-grade vaudeville and burlesque, it sickens me, and in other words I'm afraid Alton is going to become just like them if he stays here much longer, and to me I'm being a good wife by staying in Washington and keeping the children out of this" She flung a hand at the island of Amerigo, and Norman noticed that the charm dangling from her gold bracelet was a Phi Beta Kappa key.

  The governor was slouching more and more, glancing about and dragging continually and deeply at a cigarette, drumming fingers of one thin hand on the table. "Ordinarily I'd be glad to put in a word to Buckley," he said in a low voice. "This is a sticky time, that's all. I'm trying to get along with Orrin Easter, and Buckley is his pet. That's why my predecessor got her a federal appointment, out of the way, out of the local civil service. Reena, maybe we'd better go back to Government House."

  Mrs. Sanders gave a short barking laug
h. "Hah! Civil service! Alton, it doesn't take the guts of a rabbit to slap down such types, and I think you should do something."

  Paperman quickly stood. "I have to see to my water-shortage party, please stay and have a glass of champagne or two with us."

  "I will if he won't," said Reena Sanders. "To me that should be fun. Thank you for a splendid dinner."

  The governor said, "Yes, thank you very much," smiled mechanically, and lapsed into slouching silence. As Norman walked away, the governor's wife started to talk again in cutting tones.

  2

  Champagne, Si-Agua, No.

  Church had somehow found the time to cut out this motto in red cardboard letters a foot high, and to string it across the straining tarpaulin. The canvas hardly bulged any more. It hummed powerfully, like a close-hauled mainsail, but Paperman could see that it was secure. The party was already under way; the lobby furniture had been pushed to the walls and the straw rugs rolled back, leaving a broad bare red-tiled floor for the dancing couples. The steel-drum music, which outdoors had a mournful thin quality, thundered and reverberated in the lobby like musical tom-toms, with doubled excitement. Church and two waitresses, standing between a pair of tables lined with wineglasses in the center of the lobby, were dispensing pink champagne punch from huge bowls, and the dancers swirled around these tables, many of them drinking as they danced. Because of the rain, not many outsiders had come to the Reef tonight. There was the usual sprinkling of young Kinjans who liked to dance to the Gull Reef music, and a small, self-conscious knot of sailors in whites from a submarine staying overnight in Amerigo. Norman had ordered Church to give the free champagne to everybody present, hotel guests or not. If noise, movement, and laughter all through the lobby, and crowds around the champagne tables, were an indication, the party was off to a good start. Norman took a glass of punch from each of the two bowls, in the line of duty, and found the drink sweet but passable. It was being drunk in large quantities, and that was what mattered. Again in the line of duty, he picked out the least attractive guest he could see, a fat, young schoolteacher from Yonkers with a terrible double chin, and asked her to dance. He was determined to make this party a success.