Herman Wouk - Don't Stop The Carnival

by Don't Stop The Carnival(Lit)

  "Not too long."

  Then and there Paperman had to make a key decision; either to trust this sullen, squinting, impenetrable, unhealthy-looking djinn, or throw him off the grounds. It was clear that Hippolyte did things on his own terms. He gave him the two hundred dollars. The Frenchman grunted and went out, putting on the hat with a flourish. Next day the construction job was under way; and, so far as Paperman could see, going well. Meantime the cistern was finished; another good rain fell, and the water problem was, to all appearances, over.

  As for the chambermaids, they appeared, the day after Hippolyte did, at work at eight as always. Esm‚ took up her post at the switchboard, avoided Paperman's eyes, and said nothing about her disappearance. Norman tried to find out how Hippolyte had achieved this wonder, but Sheila would talk even less about it than about the other deeds of the Frenchman. "Hippolyte he does find people," was her surly explanation.

  The cessation of Christophine Buckley's persecutions was a mystery. Paperman did not know whether Mrs. Sanders had finally persuaded the governor to intervene, or whether Hippolyte's occult efficiency extended even into the Immigration Office. Norman made the firm decision to ask no questions, to let well enough alone.

  2

  About a week after Hippolyte's coming, when Norman was still wavering between delight at his change in luck, and incredulous uneasiness over it, he at last learned some hard facts about the Frenchman. Church telephoned the office to say that Tom Tilson was looking for him in the bar. He found the old man and his wife sitting in deep armchairs by the frangipani tree, drinking their unvarying morning refreshment of double white rum and tonic water.

  "Hello there! Come join us for elevenses!" Tilson rasped.

  "Certainly. -Beer, Church."

  He sat in an armchair facing Tilson, who leaned forward, gnarled freckled hands clutching his protruding kneecaps, and studied Norman's face. "Paperman, you look a bit the worse for wear."

  "I'm fine. All I need is a couple of carefree weeks on a tropical island."

  Tilson winked at his wife, a little woman with gray, beautifully groomed, upswept hair, a very red face, and several petrified dimples 'What about my party? Is it still on?"

  "On? Of course it's on. I've ordered everything from New York."

  "I just wondered." Tilson spoke in his usual abrupt loud way. "I didn't hear from you. Where are you getting the steaks? How about the oysters?"

  He nodded and nodded at Paperman's description of the party plans. "Well, it all sounds pretty good, if it comes off that way. Have you laid out a lot of money? Do you want an advance?"

  "Money? Ah, I don't know. I guess I can manage." Norman didn't want to disclose how nearly broke he was, but he regretted the answer as soon as he said the words.

  "Well, all right. I'm not going to force money on you. I was just figuring that you're probably in for a couple of thousand or more at this point, and-"

  Mrs. Tilson jumped half out of her chair, exactly as though a gun had gone off behind her, and clutched her husband's arm. "Lovey- lovey, look there. By the bar." She spoke in a low, shaky voice. "It's him, isn't it? It can't be anyone else."

  Paperman and Tilson both looked in the direction of her glance. "My God!" Tilson wrinkled up his face so that he looked like a mummy. "Now when in the Christ did this happen?"

  "When did what happen?" said Paperman.

  "When did you hire Crazy Hippolyte?"

  Mrs. Tilson said, "I didn't even know he was out of the madhouse."

  "Neither did I." Tilson turned and shook his stick at Norman. "What the hell, Paperman? Do you have to recruit your staff out of lunatic asylums? Don't you even know better than that? -Hippolyte! Hey, there, Hippolyte!" The Frenchman, with his back to them, was working at the fuse box on the wall behind the bar. He squinted over his shoulder, then came, removing the straw hat, and running his fingers through his thick hair. "Well, Hippolyte, how goes it?"

  The man put a finger to his forehead, and fumbled with his hat. "How do, Mist' Tilson. How do, Mistress."

  Mrs. Tilson said, looking straight at him, "So, Hippolyte. Back on the old job."

  "Old job. Yah." Hippolyte shuffled his feet.

  "How are you these days?" Tilson said.

  "Not too bad."

  "We heard you weren't well there, for a while."

  "Not too good."

  "You're all better now?"

  "Yah."

  "Well, do a good job for Mr. Paperman, you hear! He's a friend of mine," Tilson shouted in a severe tone, as though addressing a deaf child.

  Hippolyte smiled. It was the first time that Norman had seen the Frenchman's face perform this particular evolution. All the features seemed to fall away, into the crinkly, sweet vacuous grin of a baby six months old, with a mouthful of large bad teeth. "Good job. Yah."

  Tilson uttered some disjointed noise, to which Hippolyte responded with a silly heaving laugh and similar noise. This time Paperman discerned fragments of French in the sounds. Hippolyte put on his big hat and went back to the fuse box.

  "How did you get hold of him?" Tilson said. "Did he come around looking for work?"

  "No, Sheila fetched him."

  Mrs. Tilson giggled and a number of transient dimples appeared around her permanent ones. "Sheila! Didn't she tell you about him?"

  "Not much. Just that he was 'fonny.'"

  This tickled the Tilsons exceedingly; they laughed and laughed, looking at each other and throwing back their heads. The old man began to cough, and his eyes watered.

  "Fonny, hey? Well, so long as you get him off the Reef on the night of my party, I don't care. But be sure you do."

  Paperman told them how Hippolyte was mending the Club's troubles. Tilson pounded the floor with his stick to attract Church's attention and pointed to the empty glass. "Oh, sure. Hippolyte's a great worker when he's right in the head, and he knows more about the Reef than anybody. He dates back to Tony and Larry, in fact he brought Sheila here. He was living with her then. Two of her kids are his. -Or is it three?" he said to his wife.

  "I don't think Sheila really knows, lovey."

  "Is that usual?" Paperman said. "I mean Frenchmen mixing with colored?"

  "Nothing is too unusual in the Caribbean," Tilson said. "Mostly the island French interbreed, that's how come they all look like each other. But you get one like Hippolyte, and he'll do any old thing that occurs to him. That's why I had to get rid of him. It was too bad, he's a good gardener and handy man. But he tried to rape our maid, and he chased her up a tree."

  "He did what?"

  "It was awful," Mrs. Tilson said, smoothing her back hair, "that poor girl shrieking up in this lovely mango tree, and Hippolyte chopping away at the trunk with his cutlash. Luckily I was right there in the kitchen. I got out there in time to save the tree."

  Not knowing whether to believe any of this, Paperman said, half jocularly, "Weren't you afraid of him? That machete's like a razor."

  "My dear, scared stiff. But that was my best mango tree. Anyway, these island French aren't too different from the ones that worked for us in Noumea. We had our house way back in the hills near the mines. You learn how to talk to them. You've got no choice, you know. There you are, and there they are."

  "Is that why he got committed? For molesting your maid?"

  Tilson grunted. "In Kinja? If that were grounds, you couldn't build enough asylums. I couldn't have even gotten a policeman to caution him for that. No, Letty telephoned me, and I came home fast. I paid him off, told him he'd been a bad boy and not to come back. He didn't. I've got a shotgun and he knows I'd use it." Tilson turned to his wife. "Why did they put him away?"

  She frowned thoughtfully. "Not on account of the policeman?"

  "The one whose throat he cut? No, he came to us after that, didn't he? I seem to remember-"

  Paperman, more and more appalled, burst out, "What is this? Are you pulling my leg? He cut a policeman's throat, and nobody arrested him? And then you hired him? You expect me to bel
ieve that?"

  "Well, nobody ever proved he cut the cop's throat," Tilson said, rather patiently for him. "This cop was out around Frenchman's Point a lot, either after some fellow's wife, or trying to catch the fishermen smuggling. The story was never clear. He got into a fist fight with Hippolyte in a bar, and arrested him. Hippolyte spent a week in the jug. Then two weeks later this cop didn't report for duty. After a few days, the other cops went poking around in the brush in Hastings Estate and they found him, sort of minus an Adam's apple. In fact, his head generally was kind of loose. They pulled in Hippolyte, but they never could hang it on him, and they let him go. I needed a gardener, and one's as crazy as the next on this island, so I took a chance."

  Mrs. Tilson swallowed a deep drink. "I had a fit when Tom hired him. But he was just a lamb for months and months, until the tree thing happened. Best gardener we ever had. The only one who ever did grow decent lettuce for me in that miserable soil up on the hill."

  "And now you've got him, Paperman," chuckled Tilson. "Crazy Hippolyte! Well, good luck. Just pick out your tree now, in case he ever blows a fuse. Haw haw."

  Norman said bitterly, "I might have known. Anything good that happens on this island has to have a big fat catch to it."

  "Oh, he's probably okay now," said Tilson. "That's a pretty good madhouse they have in Guadeloupe. I don't think they'd have let him go if he weren't all right. Of course," the old man added with a one-sided leer that showed a gap in his worn-down teeth, "he might have escaped."

  "Why did he go to a Guadeloupe asylum? Isn't he a Kinja citizen?"

  "Oh, sure. The thing is they've never built an insane asylum here." Tilson poured the rest of his rum and tonic down his throat in one gesture. "I guess they didn't want to get into the ticklish question of who goes into the nut house. That would be a hell of a hot potato on this island."

  "Why? Nothing to it," said Mrs. Tilson sweetly, with a grand display of dimples. "When the Eagles are in power the Elephants go behind the fence. When the Elephants get voted in, everybody changes places. That way everybody's always either on government salary or on government support."

  "Jesus Christ," Tom Tilson said, "why haven't they thought of it? It's the solution to Caribbean politics."

  They heard snarling, yapping, the jangling of a chain, and a woman's shrill angry voice. Iris Tramm came into the bar, dragging Meadows on his chain leash. Rearing and plunging every inch of the way, the dog was straining toward the lobby. "Stop it, you son of a bitch!" Iris shouted, slapping the dog so hard that dust rose from its black coat "Stop it this minute, I say! Oh, god damn you!"

  "My goodness, how the dust accumulates in the tropics," Mrs. Tilson said. "Iris, you want to vacuum that creature."

  "I'll vacuum the son of a bitch," said Iris, flailing away. "I'll kill him! Down, I say! Down!" The dog was beginning to subside, but it still growled and pulled toward the lobby door.

  Tom Tilson said, "My dear, it's no insult to call Meadows a son of a bitch. That's what he is."

  "What's the matter, Iris?" Norman said.

  "Oh, he's got this silly hate on for Hippolyte. He was that way about poor Millard, too, for months. He hates new men. He's going to get himself hacked in half, and it'll serve him right. Lie down, damn you. That's right. Lie down and stay down. Whew." Iris dropped into a chair. "He's so strong! He's got me sweating like a mule-skinner."

  "Hippolyte won't hurt him," Mrs. Tilson said. "One thing about Kinjans, they're all scared to death of dogs. We keep four Great Danes, and to hell with the police force."

  Tilson said, "Blazes, yes, I wouldn't have a Kinja cop on my land. They've got these damned six-shooters, and there isn't one of them can hit a cow standing sideways right in front of him. You're not safe within a mile of a Kinja cop."

  "Have a drink, Iris," Paperman said.

  "I don't want a drink, thanks. Look at you, though! Elevenses for mine host! Things have by God changed around here."

  Paperman gave her a halfhearted smile. He was still digesting the news that the wonderful Hippolyte had been a mental case, probably a homicidal one; and that there was no assurance he was cured, except for the dubious fact that he was at large.

  Iris looked out at the beach, yawning. "What a sublime day! All blue and gold again. If only there were something amusing to do-I'm supposed to get my hair done, and it seems such a crime on a day like this. However-"

  Tilson deliberately put on his sunglasses, pushed himself erect with both hands on his stick, and looked out to sea. "I don't know, Iris. Is it too late to crank up the old stinkpot, Letty, and have lunch out at Big Dog? All four of us? Is there anything in the galley?"

  "There's always sardines and crackers and things. Nobody'd starve." Mrs. Tilson looked at her watch. "Can you come, Mr. Paperman? Just a short boat ride, for a change?"

  "I'll go if you will, Norm," Iris said. "Come on, it'll do you good."

  There was a little pause.

  "Well, I'll tell you what," Paperman said. "I can't think of a single reason why I shouldn't go. I've been to the bank. I've talked to the accountant. I'm even caught up on my reservation letters. How about that? You're on."

  3

  An hour later, Tilson's boat was rounding the eastern end of Amerigo. It was a sixty-foot white cabin cruiser named Rainbow II, built in Hong Kong; Tilson had hired it for the season upon selling Moonglow. It had two baths, a bedroom with full-sized beds and an electric fireplace, two other cabins, a large bar, and appointments of leather, brass, and teak. At twenty knots, it murmured along on high swells with scarcely a vibration or a roll. Norman, in swim trunks, lolled in a red leather fighting chair at the stern, taking in the scenery like a tourist. He had not seen this wild, craggy, roadless part of Kinja except in glimpses from a wheeling airplane. It was surpassingly beautiful: red broken cliffs rising out of clear turquoise water, green valleys tufted with palms; and here and there the white smooth scallop of a deserted beach shaded by palms and sea grapes. A strong scent of flowers mingled with the salt wind. He gave a tremendous, luxurious yawn. Iris, sitting in the other leather chair in her fetching black jersey swimsuit, yawned at the same instant, stretching out her legs. They looked deep in each others eyes and laughed. A black-skinned hand took away Paperman's empty glass, and placed in his grasp a full cold one. He drank. This was his third or fourth. He didn't know which, and didn't care.

  "I have an announcement to make," said Norman. "It's not earth-shaking. Maybe you'll all think it's of no consequence. But I mean to make it."

  Iris put both fists to her mouth and did a fair imitation of a sounding trumpet.

  "Thank you," said Paperman. "Ladies and gentlemen, I am the happiest man in the world."

  "Jesus, you're easily pleased," said Tilson. "Just a little ride on a stinkpot. I wish it did that for me." The Tilsons lounged between Norman and Iris on a couch of bamboo and red leather.

  "This thing you call a stinkpot, which as you know is a snazzy yacht, is all very well," Norman said. "But it's the least part of my happiness. For the first time since I came to the accursed rock called Kinja, I see the Caribbean really looking like the Caribbean, and its beauty moves me to tears. Opposite me is a lovely, famous, witty, and sweet woman. We sit in warm sunshine on the gently rolling deck of a private yacht, with a perfumed sea breeze cooling us. Our hosts are clever, unusual, interesting people, who've been everywhere and done everything, and that, too, is what I always expected of the tropics, and never found until today. A Frenchman who is a genius or a maniac or both is solving all the problems of the Gull Reef Club, so that I can go for a spin in the Tilson's palatial stinkpot if asked. Last, this is the best rum punch I have ever drunk. I'm the happiest man in the world."

  "He's very nice," Mrs. Tilson said to her husband.

  "He's plastered," said Tilson. "What's unusual or interesting about me? I'm just a retired mining engineer who hasn't enough sense to get his arse out of the tropics."

  "You are unusual. You're distinguished. You've lived in
Noumea, wherever that is, you've been to Africa and I don't know where else-"

  "A Japanese prison camp. Which is one reason I can stand Kinja," said Tilson. "I've really seen a place to which this island compares favorably. Not many people can make that statement. -Lucien! Let Francis take the wheel for a moment and come here."

  The captain, a Frenchman who looked like Hippolyte, with a pleasanter and brighter face, came aft, pushing his yachting cap back on his brown forehead. He wore hacked-off tan shorts and a long-sleeved white shirt, and like all the island Frenchmen he had sideburns down almost to his mouth.

  "Lucien, you know Hippolyte, don't you? Hippolyte Lamartine?"

  "Hippolyte? Yah, I know Hippolyte." Lucien smiled and scratched his thick hair with a hand holding the hat.

  "Why did the doctors send him over to Guadeloupe? What happened? Do you know the story?"