Herman Wouk - Don't Stop The Carnival

by Don't Stop The Carnival(Lit)

  Klug gave an ironic little smile to the Papermans. "Grace under pressure is the topic. It all began with aqualtmging, and branched out-"

  "Let me finish and then I'll shut up on this, Hazel," Cohn said. "Sure I admit that I'd be too scared to try to stab a wounded bull to death with a sword. I said that ten minutes ago. But I just don't know if the act is courageous. Isn't it just a cruel, dangerous form of commercial entertainment? I guess those fellows show grace under pressure, whatever that is, doing all the stylish dancing close to the horns. But I think the only courageous thing to do in a bull ring would be to try to stop the bullfight."

  'That's not bad, actually," Klug said, with a small reluctant smile, and an instructor's approving nod. "You insist on a moral content to courage, then. You're not content with an abstract, lovely arabesque of death and risk. I think you might develop that point of view in an article. It would have thrust, coming from a man in a hazardous occupation."

  "Me? I can barely sign my name," Cohn said.

  "Oh, come, come," said Klug. "In any case, to get back to the point, will you, or can you, take me out for a dive in an aqualung? Or is it against regulations, and will I have to rent a lung somewhere? Because dive I will."

  "I guess you can make a dive with us if you want to," Cohn said. "We're going lobstering tomorrow morning on Cockroach Rock, and my commanding officer is pretty non-regulation."

  "Perfect," said the Sending.

  "Gosh, can I come?" said Hazel.

  Cohn said to her with an affectionate light in his eye, "Want to make a dive, Hazel?"

  "Horrors, no. I just want to see Shel go down and come up."

  Henny said, "Well, you'll certainly see him go down."

  "The rest," Norman said, "is a question of grace under pressure."

  Klug stood. "Do you have any idea where I can lay my head tonight? I want to get unpacked and into some cool clothes."

  "The island's pretty tight," said Norman. "Why don't you telephone Casa Encantada? They might squeeze you in."

  "Casa Encantada-Enchanted House," said Klug. "Sounds delightful. Bye, Hazel. I'll be back here for dinner." He leaned down and gave her a proprietary kiss, which she seemed to relish, her immense slanted eyes sparkling on the frogman.

  "Casa Encantada?" Cohn wrinkled his forehead at Paperman, as Klug walked off. "I really think you're guessing wrong, Norm."

  "What's the matter with that place?" Hazel said suspiciously to her father. "You're so mean. I know you. Has it got rats?"

  "Birds," Norman said. He glanced at his watch. "Do you know where Atlas is? He and I have an appointment at the bank soon."

  "He went swimming," Hazel said. "What a horrid man! All night long I kept pretending I didn't know him. Then he'd come and paw me and kiss me and call me his niece. His niece! 'Haw, haw, Hazel, give Unkie a hiss! Con permissol' And him smelling like an old highball with a wet cigar in it."

  "You have to understand Lester/' Henny said. "Lester is very lonesome."

  "I'll bet. The lonesomest man in town."

  Cohn took Hazel off for a ride in a navy boat-an LCP, he called it- to see the harbor and the submarine base. Henny declared she was too excited to eat; and while Norman devoured a hot roast-beef sandwich with great appetite, she went roaming around the hotel. She returned full of enthusiasm for the new rooms. "Why, they're all but done, and they're fine! You won't know those rooms when they're decorated. But golly, Norm, who's that menacing creep with the tiny squinty red eyes? The one that keeps sharpening a big machete? He gave me one look and I got the chills. You ought to get rid of him."

  "I'll get rid of you first," Norman said. "That's Hippolyte. You be nice to him. He's a little eccentric, but he's a genius. He's our handy man. He built those rooms. He can fix anything. He can do anything. He's a savior. He's irreplaceable."

  "I'll take your word for it," said Henny. "Where's Janet West? Is she still in that same cottage?"

  "Who? Iris? Well, yes, I suppose she is. I mean of course she is. I only mean I don't know whether she's there just now."

  "I want to ask her if Hassim got all the stuff I asked for," Henny said, looking at Norman-so he thought-a shade appraisingly. "How is she? Has she been on any benders?"

  "Janet? No, no, she's really very sedate, at least around here she is. She keeps very much to herself, you know."

  "What do you call her? Janet or Iris?"

  "Well, Henny, here on this island everyone calls her Iris. It's just that you said Janet."

  Atlas appeared, looking unusually dignified in a gray featherweight suit and a dark tie. "Get a move on, Norm. We're due at the bank."

  "Coming." Norman drank up his coffee.

  Henny said, "Can I phone Janet at her cottage?"

  "Well, I guess so," Norman said with elaborate lightness. "You might disturb her if she's napping, that's all. She generally shows up at the bar around five or six."

  "Oh, I'll just give her a ring," Henny said.

  3

  In the banker's small, chilled office, increasingly choked with cigar smoke, Atlas and Llewellyn pored over large real estate maps and blue-bound accounting statements, and talked financial cabal isms, while Norman worried about a meeting between Iris and Henny. Iris would be discreet, if she were sober, but he didn't think she was sober; and he feared Henny's anger. It was not beyond her to get on an airplane and go straight home. She had given him notice after his coronary that she would endure no more of that nonsense. The warning had rung like iron.

  Atlas rapped fat knuckles on a large blue-inked map. "Can I take this along for now, Llewellyn? Norman and I want to drive out and look at the property."

  "Naturally, Mr. Ot-loss."

  "Are there going to be any other bidders?" Atlas said, rolling up the map.

  "I know of two others."

  Atlas looked down at the small banker sitting primly at his desk. "The property's going to go for three," he said jovially. "Maybe three and a quarter."

  The banker smiled. "I'm afraid it will not go then. The bank advanced three hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Of course we must recover our principal, at least."

  "How in the Christ could you lend so much money to a goofball with a balance sheet like that?"

  Llewellyn danced his fingers together over his little potbelly. "He had syndicate financing of a quarter of a million from Florida, after all, which was all spent here."

  Atlas said, "Yes, and which those misguided Florida clucks will never see again."

  "I fear not. But you see, meantime Crab Cove is almost built, isn't it? And somebody is bound to finish it. Then it will be an asset to our island."

  Lester grunted. "Jesus Christ, of course. What a setup! You're sitting here like a croupier, aren't you? Bring the suckers in, clean them out, and play the game again tomorrow. The house never loses."

  The banker spread his hands upward. "We exist to serve our expanding little community."

  "You're all right, Llewellyn. We're going to get along," Atlas said. "Let's roll, Norm."

  Crab Cove looked terrible to Paperman when they went walking on the property. Seen from the road, the rows of pagoda-like homes had quaint charm. Up close, the houses were visibly incomplete, abandoned in mid-construction as though the workers had fallen in a plague. Dirt-streaked toilets and bathtubs stood in the middle of living rooms; entrails of wire burst from walls; rubble of wood and plaster was everywhere, and the muddy paths between the houses were aswarm with mosquitoes and flies. Atlas squished from house to house, exclaiming with delight, sinking to his ankles in mud, leaving filthy tracks on the tile floors. A silent black caretaker trudged behind them, with a silly short-haired Kinjan dog, all bones, sores, and fleas; the animal never stopped leaping and barking.

  "Norman, this thing is a gold mine," Lester said, inserting his usual obscenities of enthusiasm in suitable places, "Three-fifty! Why, there's twenty-five houses here. They're finished. A hundred thousand cleans this place up and makes a park of it. All right, say a hundred fifty
thousand. Can't go higher. For half a million you've got yourself twenty-five Caribbean houses to sell, and these houses have got to go for forty each.

  Why, there's three big bedrooms and two baths in them, patios, barbecues, and they've got beach rights. What am I talking about, forty? You know the thing to do, Norm? Furnish half of them. Get some smart faggot down from New York, you know, to fill them with that stylish crap from Japan and Denmark that comes in here duty-free. Then you got class. Norm, think! We're talking about a profit of half a million dollars here, I swear. All we need is a selling job. Find families in the States who want to own a home in the Caribbean. There's millions of them. Florida's all finished. It's cold and rainy, and full of those goddamn jellyfish."

  Paperman was unimpressed. Atlas didn't know Kinja; he couldn't picture the horrible possibilities, nobody could without having lived on the island. The unfinished plastery-smelling houses of Crab Cove seemed to Norman full of the vengeful West Indian jumbies that had nearly ruined him at Gull Reef, and that had bankrupted Akers. He started to say that he was too busy to handle real estate, but Atlas cut him off. "Norman, will you wait till I buy the thing before you start arguing? If I bid it in, you've got yourself a finder's fee of five thousand dollars. Is that bad for a start?" He looked at his watch. "Holy mackerel! Can you get me back to the Club in ten minutes? I've got a red-hot call coming in from New York."

  He told Paperman as they went jouncing back to town along a broken tar road heavily lined with rotting autos, that his Montana deal was coming to a head. It was the biggest thing he had ever touched. But as usual, he was in for a fight. Other operators had gotten wind of the situation, and had also started buying stock and lining up proxies. He was going to win out, but it would be a close thing. His real problem had been to find out who his opponents were. They were acting through a dummy, an obscure St. Louis lawyer, and it had taken Lester several weeks to figure out that a syndicate of rivals of his from Phoenix were the competition. He knew their money resources. They would back down before he did, so the temporary run-up of stock prices didn't bother him, though he was rather extended now. "You can't lose your nerve in this business, Norm," he said jovially. "I've been in situations when I was hanging on by my teeth, and I was once damn near busted. This one isn't half bad."

  Norman left him at the telephone in the office, and went to his apartment. The afternoon sun had heated it up as usual, despite the open windows. Henny was sprawled on the bed in her slip, fast asleep. A note was propped against the vase of flowers on the bed table:

  Had some drinks and am passing out. Wake me up. I want to talk to you'll

  This was an innocuous note, except to a guilty man. Norman thought it was charged with rage and menace, and he considered sneaking off. But that was pointless; he took heart, and shook her. Henny moaned, rolled on her back, and opened her eyes; and by the look in them Paper-man knew that for the moment he was safe. She held out her arms sleepily.

  "What's all this?" he said, waving the note.

  "Oh, yes." Henny sat up and yawned. "Listen, Norm, did you say she wasn't drinking? That woman's going to be in bad shape if we don't get her out of her cottage. She's on a real toot. Empty bottles are all over the place. She drinks bourbon and water, then switches to a beer, and then has more bourbon and water, and I mean not that much water, you know? So far she's all right, just a bit fuzzy in her talk maybe, but her mind is clear. She says this is how she loses weight, isn't that ridiculous? She just drinks and takes it easy and reads for a week or so, she says, and never eats, and ten pounds melt off. She's got dusty yellow Marxist books piled around her bed, Strachey and Mike Gold and all that, and a stack of old seventy-eight records on her phonograph. It's sort of eerie, Norm. She just talked on and on about her first husband, and Hollywood and the Party. She's completely back in the thirties. It was all kind of wild, but fascinating. I asked her to have dinner with us but she said she didn't want to intrude, and anyway she's not eating. How about you calling and urging her? She likes you, though she thinks you're sort of ridiculous, the way I do. I died laughing when she told me about the ants. Why didn't you write me about the ants?"

  "Did she-why is she on the booze? Did she say?"

  "No. Has she got a boy friend here? She must have. I'll bet she had a fight with him. That's how she's acting."

  "I'll try to get her to come to dinner."

  Atlas was smoking a cigar in a lobby armchair, leaning forward with one elbow on his knee. His face was sagging and gray. His eyes looked straight ahead, unseeing, as two pretty girls went laughing by in bikinis, their billowy white flesh aquiver.

  "Everything all right, Lester?" Norman ventured to ask. "Did you get your call?"

  "Eh? What? Oh, sure, Norm. I got it. Everything's going to be fine. It's one of those things. Come on and I'll buy you a drink. I need a drink or four."

  "Sure. I'll be with you in a few minutes."

  Norman went to the Pink Cottage, and halted outside. On the phonograph Ethel Merman and Bert Lahr were blasting out Friendship. Meadows began to bark, and after a moment Iris opened the door.

  "Well, bless my soul if it isn't Joe Hill," she said, "alive as you or me."

  Paperman was relieved to see that she looked all right. He had feared to find an unkempt stumbling wreck, but Iris was well-groomed and erect in a charming flowered housecoat he hadn't seen before. Her eyes were too bright, her speech was too emphatic, and she was holding a drink that was too dark.

  "Hello, Iris."

  "Come in, come in. What are you drinking? You're smack in time for the cocktail hour. Where's Henny? She's looking yummy, isn't she? Thin as a rail. That's for me, boy. I'm not eating again until my scale's down ten pounds. What did you say you were drinking? Shove a couple of those books aside and sit down. I've been looking up a few things."

  "Iris, all I wanted to say-do you mind if I turn that phonograph down?"

  "I'll do it, honey. I'm a nut, I like it to shake the walls." She jabbed a button. The sudden silence in the cottage was more oppressive than the loud music. "Yes, Norm? What can I do for you?"

  It seemed absolutely incredible to Norman Paperman that last night he had made love to this woman. She was a sad, worn stranger.

  "Iris, that's nonsense about not eating for a week. You'll get sick as a dog, you know that, and you'll end up in a hospital."

  "So will you, Norm, whether you eat or not. As a matter of fact you're just out on a short parole, aren't you, dear? But don't worry, Meadows needs looking after, and I'm not going to the hospital on this bloody rock. I can take very good care of myself, Norm. I'm an old hand at that, and if I get to feeling at all bad my doggie and I will head right out on a plane back to San Diego, where my folks will take care of us. All right?"

  "Henny is worried about you, and so am I, that's all."

  "Henny's a good scout. Do you want me to get out of the cottage? Do you think I'll embarrass you? I really won't, but I don't want to add to your problems, Norm. I'll get out if you'll feel easier that way. I can find another place."

  "Good God, Iris, are you trying to make me feel like a bastard? You needn't work at it." He put his hand to his brow. She was standing near him, and she caught the hand.

  "Darling, no! No! Of all things! Why, you fool, what have you got to feel bad about?"

  "Iris, come to dinner with us. Really, on all counts, it's the best thing for you to do."

  She let his hand drop, and smiled, and looked drunk. 'Take my word for it, Norman, I can't eat."

  He got up and went to the door.

  "Norman," she said in a different, bashful tone.

  He turned. "Yes, Iris?"

  "Well, it's just- Oh, hell, look here, I sort of thought you didn't know. I was almost sure anyway. After all, I was playing it that way right along. I was putting you on the defensive last night, dear, women do that, but it was lousy. I'm sorry."

  Paperman was unable to answer, because his throat swelled shut. He went out.

  Chapte
r Fourteen

  The Sending Goes Down

  1

  Next morning the reunited Paperman family was breakfasting on the sunny terrace of the Gull Reef Club, when Sheldon Klug appeared in very short, conspicuously virile white bathing trunks, a gray sweatshirt, new water-buffalo sandals, and a perky little straw hat. He looked lumpy under his new sunburn, and he diffused a strong pungent smell yards ahead of him.

  "Hi, sorry I stink. Insect repellent. Have you ever heard of creatures called sand flies?" he asked Paperman, after kissing Hazel's cheek and dropping in a chair. "You can't even see them, and they give the most ferocious sting!"

  I've heard of them," Norman said.

  "Oh, you have. I hadn't. I thought I was breaking out with the smallpox. It seemed quite logical on this pestilential island."