Herman Wouk - Don't Stop The Carnival

by Don't Stop The Carnival(Lit)

  "The way I had it figured, you were probably the lucky man," Paperman said.

  Cohn laughed out loud. "I'm the guy Iris tells her troubles to. Back in October the governor asked my CO. to check her out in an aqualung, because she was wild to try it. I drew the assignment and so we got friendly. The lung gave her claustrophobia, and she made only two dives. She's a good swimmer, though, and a game woman."

  "You never even made a pass at her? She's smart, and she's very pretty."

  Cohn shrugged. "Iris has always treated me like an eighteen-year-old, Norm. -Well? Did you mind?"

  "Mind what?"

  "Finding that out," Cohn said, looking him in the eye, and Paper-man felt that the frogman understood what had happened the night before, in all its main points.

  He hesitated, then spoke stoutly for the record. "Not in the least. But she didn't believe me."

  Cohn nodded slowly, and thought for a few moments, head down, juggling pebbles in one hand; and then began to talk about Sanders. He was a California Republican, a minor professional politician whose chief asset-so Cohn said-was that he was a Negro. Aside from that, Alton Sanders was a typical career bureaucrat, perhaps brighter than most, hard-working, knowledgeable, alert, and bound to end as a congressman, or an undersecretary in the Cabinet, unless he made a bad mistake; such as, for instance, marrying a white woman who was a former film star notorious for drunken collapses, and an ex-communist to the bargain. Iris's real problem wasn't loving a Negro, Cohn said, it was the more common one of loving a married man, who wouldn't break up his marriage and career for an unsuitable woman he'd fallen in love with.

  "You came along about the time she was facing up to that," Cohn said. "Reena was down here, you remember. For a showdown, supposedly, but nothing was happening. When you came into the bar that night for the first time, with all your jokes and Broadway talk, you were a lifesaver. I'd never seen Iris spark the way she did to you. I thought she was working up to try to drown herself, and maybe she was, but you diverted her. She's been worrying over you and your hotel ever since. Iris likes you."

  Paperman said, not too steadily, "I liked her. I mean, I still do."

  Cohn nodded. "This needed no force reconnaissance to find out. But Norman, why were you so shocked? If you stopped to think about it, what could a smart, beautiful woman like her be doing all alone on a West Indian island? It could only be that her life was such a lousy mess, she'd be strictly nobody to get involved with."

  The entrance shutters began to rattle and screech upward. Paperman said as he stood, "You're wise beyond your years."

  He had forgotten how small and slight Henny was. She was the first white person out of the plane, after several natives descended the little ladder. She eagerly waved at him, with the smile that he loved, and came toward the gate in a fast walk just short of a scamper. She wore a small beige hat, a tailored black suit, she carried a fur on her arm, and she proclaimed New York as a tiger proclaims jungle. Atlas emerged from the plane right behind her, in a blue brass-buttoned jacket and white flannel pants, hoarsely bawling over his shoulder. He carried a small canvas bag with a bottle sticking out. So much Paperman saw, and here was Henny, running the last few steps and embracing him, with the desperate hug of a lost child that has been found. The smell of her perfume was as welcome and as novel as her kiss.

  "My God, you look marvelous," she said.

  "Where's Hazel?"

  "Oh, still pulling herself together. She's been doing a heavy make-up job for the last half-hour on that bumpy rattletrap. Hi there, Bob! Jesus, the men look good down here. What a ride! Murder! We've been dodging through thunderstorms. It's so clear here!"

  "HEY, NORM! HAVE THEY GOT A BAR YET IN THIS SHITTY AIRPORT?" roared Atlas, halfway to the gate. "I'm shaking like a leaf. I need a drink!" He grasped Norman's hand in a damp huge paw. Atlas was pale, and unshaven, and the dark bags under his red eyes were appalling, but otherwise he was the same, complete to the bourbon reek.

  "Welcome back, Lester. I'm sorry there's no bar. We'll rush you back to the Reef and you can tank up."

  "Doesn't the son of a bitch look healthy and happy?" Atlas said to Henny. Even when he wasn't shouting, he had the voice projection of a hog-caller, and after his first remark, everybody in the airport was staring at him. "Look at that relaxed face. Why, he's dropped ten years. This can only come from laying all the women who register at the Gull Reef Club. It tones up the system."

  "Oh, shut up, Lester," said Henny.

  "Why? Listen, if Norman's giving that extra service it ought to be advertised. I might pitch in to help him handle the Christmas rush. HAW HAW HAW!"

  "What the devil, where's Hazel?" Paperman said. "They're starting to unload the luggage."

  A motor-driven wagon was beside the plane, and men in overalls were slinging suitcases and parcels out of a hole in the plane's side. Cohn said, as two frosty oblong paperboard boxes were handed out smoking, "There comes your meat, Norm."

  "What meat?" Henny said.

  "And there's Hazel," said Cohn. "We're all set."

  The girl stood on the top step, one white-gloved hand resting in the doorway, posing for invisible news photographers. Her light clinging pink silk suit displayed a voluptuous figure; she wore no hat, her dark hair fell to her shoulders in an old-fashioned charming way, and at this distance she looked fresh and dewy as a primrose. With a queenly little wave that might have been for Norman, for Cohn, or for everybody in the airport, she came down the stairs, and behind her the Sending emerged from the doorway, carrying Hazel's fur-collared coat, and her hatbox, and her make-up bag, and a typewriter, and a tennis racket, and his own coat, and two cameras.

  Hazel gave her father a brief hug and an offhand kiss, looking over his shoulder at Bob Cohn with immense startled eyes. "My goodness! It's you!"

  "Sure."

  "What on earth are you doing here? Why aren't you off somewhere a couple of hundred feet underwater, strangling an octopus?"

  "The navy's discharged me for arteriosclerosis, Hazel."

  "Oh yes, no doubt."

  The Sending came to the gate, panting, perspiring, and tourist-white. "Hazel, I looked under every seat," he said. "That eyebrow pencil is gone."

  "Oh, well, I'll buy another one. You remember Bob Cohn."

  Klug looked Cohn up and down and said, "Oh, yes. The frogman. Are you meeting somebody?"

  Atlas was herding together the six passengers who were guests of the Club. "Here's our gang, Norm! They had first preference on my booze while it lasted, by God. Gull Reef hospitality this time began right in San Juan, didn't it, folks?"

  "In Idlewild Airport for me," giggled a gray-headed woman, whose feathered hat was askew over one ear. "My, there's always a first time for everything, isn't there? I think I like straight bourbon out of paper cups."

  "You're a swinger, Millicent," said Atlas, throwing his arm around her waist. "Us two are going to make beautiful music together. Let's go, sexpot. We're in the tropics now." He chanted unmusically,

  "Down de way Where de nights are gay And de sun shines gaily on de mountain top-"while he waggled the woman around in a revolting parody of a Calypso dance.

  "That's right. Keep everybody amused, Lester, for one minute," Paperman said. "I've got to check on the meat."

  "What meat?" said Henny. "Where are you running off to?"

  The air-cargo manager, a plump Kinjan in a business suit-named Elias Thacker, according to the plate on his desk-waved a wad of papers as Norman entered the office. "All fix. You got you meat. It all pile in de shade by de cargo depot. You drives you car right on de field troo de next gate and picks it up." With great relief, Norman paid the charges and signed the papers. He found Cohn waiting outside the office. Norman asked him to load the meat in the station wagon, and take it back to town.

  "Sure thing," Cohn said. "Say, your Hazel looks pretty good."

  Norman shrugged. "She always does. Her boy friend seems a bit haggard."

  "Why, no. He's full of t
he old fight. He wants to go down in an aqualung right away. Today. Says he swam for Chicago University."

  "Can you find him a lung with a slow leak?" said Paperman.

  Cohn laughed and went off. Norman returned to the Gull Reef party, which sat now on benches in a huddle, the only people left in the terminal. Atlas, hunched and sagging, glowered at Norman as he came. "Norm, what's the holdup? You got a bunch of hot and tired people here, including me."

  "What's this meat that's causing all the trouble?" Henny said.

  "No trouble. Everything's fine."

  Norman started to tell them about the Tilson party and the chateau-briands.

  "Hey, Norm!" Cohn was calling to him from the field, on the other side of the locked plane gate about twenty feet away. "You did say steaks, didn't you?"

  "Of course. Chateaubriand steaks. Why?"

  "Come and take a look. Better hurry."

  Norman ran to the gate, clambered up the hinges, and vaulted the high wire fence.

  "Norman!" shouted Henny. "Who do you think you are, Tarzan? Stop that."

  "What now, for Jesus' sake?" bellowed Atlas. "We're dying here!"

  Norman followed Cohn at a trot to the cargo depot, where eight frosty wire-fastened paper cartons were stacked on the porch, oozing blood. Large green labels on each package read San Juan Wholesale Meat Supply. Highest Grade Chicken Necks and Wings.

  "Look here." Cohn squatted, pointing to shipping labels pasted to the side of each carton, with typed addresses:

  Grosvenor House Barbados, B.W.L Rush-Perishable.

  "I would guess there's been some mistake, Norm," he said. "They probably took off the wrong shipment."

  "It's a nightmare," said Paperman, clutching his head. "What gibbering lunatic in Barbados wanted eight cartons of chicken necks and wings air freight, for Christ's sake?"

  A loud growl of revving motors startled him.

  "That plane! Bob, my steaks have to be on that plane. The cargo office has the airway bill!"

  The airplane was swinging around for take-off, far down the runway. Paperman ran out into the knee-deep grass of the field, thrashing his arms in the air. The plane roared past him, lifting off the ground, and dwindled away into the sky. He came back to Cohn, and said with a deathly grin, "Maybe there's another pile of cartons somewhere. My pile. Let's go to the freight office."

  There were no other cartons. Mr. Thacker blamed the pilot. He had been in a hurry to take off again, and had rushed the cargo boys. This was always happening, he said. That particular pilot was a very unpleasant man. Probably the steaks had been under the pile of luggage bound for Barbados, Trinidad, and Caracas, and the pilot certainly should have given Mr. Thacker's boys a chance to have a good look. But no, hurry, hurry, hurry, and naturally the boys, seeing packages of frozen meat, had assumed that this was the Gull Reef shipment.

  "Yes, yes, but what's going to happen to my steaks?" exclaimed Norman. "They're off to Venezuela, defrosting as they go."

  "God knows," said Mr. Thacker. "It is an unfortunate confusion."

  Lester Atlas barged into the office. "Norman, what the hell? They're closing the goddamn doors of this terminal."

  Norman told him in great agitation what had happened. Atlas gave the cargo manager a grossly charming smile. "Where's the next stop for that plane, Mr. Thacker?"

  "Barbados," said the manager.

  "Barbados," Atlas purred. "Now how about telephoning Barbados, Mr. Thacker, and telling them to take off those steaks, see, and put them in a freezer, and send them back on the next plane. Don't you think that would be a nice idea?"

  The cargo manager said cordially that this was irregular procedure, and out of the question. There would be the matter of the freezer charges; the Barbados people needed the airway bill before they could take the meat off the plane; he had no authority to make overseas calls; it was all the fault of Windward-Leeward Airways, but unfortunately their agent was gone for the day by now; and he himself was late for lunch. As he said this he started to walk away from his desk.

  Atlas charged and blocked him, his smile turning to a horrid glare. "Listen, mister! This airport operates on a federal subsidy and I just happen to have a few connections in Washington," he thundered. "I swear to Christ that Federal Aviation Agency men will be down here next week checking into the competence of a certain ELIAS THACKER" -he spat out the name like a curse-"if anything happens to those steaks. You hear me?" He ripped the telephone off its cradle. "Now, who do I talk to in Barbados? I'll handle this, and then I'm calling my

  Washington attorney, right from this telephone, mister."

  Thacker rolled white-rimmed eyes at Paperman. "Dis de porson what on de cover of Time?"

  "That's the person," Norman said.

  The cargo manager sadly took the telephone. "I see what we can do. -Ovaseas?"

  Atlas stood over the cargo manager as he put the call through. Norman meantime found Cohn, and asked him to take the guests to the Reef in the Land Rover; he would drive back the navy truck, he said, as soon as this business was wound up. "Okay," Cohn said, "I guess we can get everybody into the Rover, all right, except maybe Hazel's friend. There's quite a mess of luggage, and all."

  "Splendid. I'll bring him," Norman said.

  The Barbados call took a half hour to get through, and somehow Thacker arranged the return of the steaks, or said he did. Norman drove Atlas and Klug to Georgetown along the back road down the coast, which usually elicited raptures from newcomers to Amerigo; but Klug was not impressed. "The filth of this place," he observed several times, mopping his face. He also said things like, "Don't they have trash collection on this island?" and, "What's the incidence of diseases like cholera and leprosy? I should think every other native would have something."

  It struck Paperman that, in truth, Amerigo was a damned dirty place. He had long ago stopped seeing the empty beer cans, sodden cartons and newspapers, and broken boxes that lined the roads, but now he saw them again. The Kinjan drivers habitually drank beer or fruit nectar as they went, and disposed of the cans with a cheerful toss through the window. Every half mile or so there was a large iron trash bin, heaped to overflowing or wholly invisible under a garbage mound. Rusting wrecks of cars dotted the wayside. When a Kinja automobile expired, its corpse was dragged off the road and in a day or two was picked clean to the chassis; there it lay where it had fallen, oxidizing fast in the sun and sea air, but still requiring a few years to rot to earth. Cars in all stages of decomposition were part of the island scenery.

  In his first days of enchantment, Norman had seen only the lovely views of hills and sea. In time he had noticed, and been repelled by, the refuse and the wrecks; then these had become a vague annoyance, just one more of the tropical irritations like the sand flies and the power failures. On balance he still thought Amerigo was a pretty place, if not exactly Eden. Klug obviously didn't, but Norman had a feeling that Klug would never like the tropics. He was a perspirer. He was perspiring in streams, his shirt was streaked black, and his handkerchief was wet and gray.

  2

  Norman found Henny in his apartment, freshly combed and made up, wearing a brand-new, sheer creamy lace negligee, and nothing else. She had lost a. bit of weight. "Oh, hi there," she said, casually tightening a blue silk sash around her slim waist. "Is the meat crisis solved? I thought I'd go on ahead and get a shower before lunch. This is a nice little apartment. Airy, anyway."

  Norman took her in his arms.

  "Really, Norm, what's this bottle of champagne on ice here for? And all these gardenias and red lilies? I mean, brother, how corny can you get?" He was kissing her, and these sentences emerged between kisses. She went on, "Aren't you hungry? I'm famished. Let's have lunch. Norm, really, if I go drinking champagne before I have something to eat I'll never make it down the stairs. Norman, for pete's sake, it's been all of three weeks. Don't overdo it or I'll get suspicious."

  "How's your pain?" he mumbled into her hair.

  "Pain? What pain? Oh, the p
ain. Funny, I had it like mad all the way down on the jet, but then it went away in that bouncy ride. The doctor says-Norman. Ye gods. Mr. Hot Hands."

  "I'm glad to see you, Henny."

  "That's good," Henny said, and she sighed deeply. "Oh, well, go ahead. Open the champagne."

  Cohn, Hazel, and Klug were finishing lunch at a large round table when Norman and Henny came out on the dining terrace considerably later, looking gay and somewhat silly. Hazel sat with her chin on her fist, yawning. The two men appeared to be arguing volubly. "What happened to you? Sit down," Hazel said to her parents. "These fellows started on courage, and got on to bullfights, and I'm about to pass out."