Herman Wouk - Don't Stop The Carnival

by Don't Stop The Carnival(Lit)

  "How bad?"

  "She went troo de win'shield. She hit a cab dat stop in de middle of de street. Dat same old ting."

  2

  The Amerigo Carnival was a torrent of merry Kinjans, parading down Prince of Wales Street to a steady blare of clashing music from many bands. Thick ranks of applauding tourists and natives lined the sidewalks, drinking pop and beer out of cans, and cheap wine out of bottles strung around their neck. Floats jutted up along the line of march, and banners of schools, clubs, and churches swayed over the marchers' heads.

  The ideas in the parade were the usual thing; but the troupes were remarkable for energy, elaborateness, and sheer size. Norman saw a Wild West show with cowboys and live horses on the float, and dozens of Indians in war paint and feathers prancing in the street; a company of perhaps fifty red satin devils, and another of as many gauzily clad harem girls; an enormous Chinese display, including a gold-and-red pagoda with a real waterfall, and a horde of black Chinese marchers pounding gongs; tumbling white-masked clowns doing a springing dance with sharp-cracking whips; space men in bubble helmets and silver suits pulling a papier-mache rocket topped by a five-year-old Negro space child waving an American flag; Gay Nineties and Roaring Twenties dancers; also, at intervals, men on high stilts in women's dresses gyrating in burlesque obscenity fifteen feet in the air, while people in the upper stories of the houses shouted encouraging jokes at them.

  Norman Paperman was in no mood to enjoy this bright, huge, noisy pageant; he was trying to get to the hospital. But perforce he had to elbow his way upstream under the arcades, against the drift of spectators toward the waterfront grandstand; and so, whether he wanted to or not, he saw a lot of the parade, because the hospital was three blocks up from the harbor. He was impressed, despite himself, by the outpouring of decorative labor and skill, and by the tide of jubilant high spirits. At noon the temperature in Prince of Wales Street, where a breeze seldom penetrated, was perhaps a hundred and ten degrees. On an ordinary day this avenue, at this hour, was deserted. But today, here were the Kinjans cavorting and tramping in force under the high fierce sun, perspiring in streams in their gaudy costumes; the musicians dripping sweat as they marched along blowing on glinting tubas and trumpets or hammering and clanking at their steel drums; the onlookers cheering and fanning themselves; the dancers pausing every hundred feet or so along the line of march to repeat the entire antic they had learned. It seemed to Norman that the Kinjans, marchers and onlookers alike, were exulting in the terrible heat, in the color, in the sweat, in the bray of many discordant melodies, in the crush of costumed leaping dancing hot bodies; they were tireless, they loved it, they were capable of going on forever, their indolence had vanished, they had come wholly to life.

  The parade had no meaning. That was another peculiarity. Lent, the actual occasion of Carnival, was months away. Ten years ago the legislators had instituted this parade for the last Friday of the year (so Tilson had told Norman), to please the tourists and incidentally to make the Christmas week an almost continuously workless one. For want of a better name they had called it Carnival. The custom had caught on, and now Carnival was as hallowed as Christmas itself; perhaps slightly more so. But Norman Paperman, seeing the Carnival Parade at close range, thought that there was a meaning to it which the islanders did not put into words, yet which made it the authentic supreme day in the Kinjan calendar. Africa was marching down the main street of this little harbor town today; Africa in undimmed black vitality, surging up out of centuries of island displacement, island slavery, island isolation, island ignorance; Africa, unquenchable in its burning love of life. Carnival was Africa Day in Amerigo.

  "Carnival is very sweet Please

  Don't stop de carnival-Carnival is very sweet Please Don't stop de carnival-"

  Band after band after band played this refrain, a lively Calypso melody endlessly repeating the one couplet, the traditional song of the parade; and whenever musicians went by performing it, the spectators and marchers took up the words:

  "Car-nee-val is very sweet Please Don't stop de car-nee-val."

  Paperman reached a point on the sidewalk opposite the hospital, but he had to wait for the passing of a troupe in Shakespearian costumes with Macbeth's witches on the float, stirring a steaming caldron over a real fire, then a brass band led by a gigantically fat black tuba player in a battered straw hat, smiling and sweating and shuffling, and blasting out earth-shaking oompl'toomph-oomphs. Norman scuttled across the street ahead of oncoming Roman slave girls and into the hospital.

  The branching corridors were gloomy, cool, and almost empty; the smell was the universal hospital smell. He saw a door labeled Emergency Ward, and at a venture he went in. A very young oriental-looking doctor-Philippine or Korean, Norman judged-was tying a splint to the finger of an unhappy-looking Kinjan in an orange sport shirt and black slacks, whose face was patched with bandages stained bright red.

  "Yes, I took care of Mrs. Tramm a little while ago," said the doctor, with a marked accent blurring the Vs and r's. "She's resting in Room A-42, and I'm going to get some X rays as soon as the technician comes back from the parade. This h the cab driver she ran into."

  "How is she?"

  "Well, she's had a shock, no doubt of that, and she's had a head injury and some bad cuts. I'd like Dr. Pullman to look at her. I think she'll do fine."

  Paperman said to the cab driver, "It's really a bad idea to stop your car in the street to talk, you know? I hope you believe that now, and you'll pass the word around."

  "I on'y stop for a minute," said the driver. "She goin' too fast, she breakin' de speed limit. Dey give me a ticket and it all her fault. But she de governor's friend. Dey ain' no justice arong heah, it all depen' who you knows."

  Room A-42 was on the ground floor. Norman had to find it himself, and it took a while, because there was nobody at the main admittance desk. When he came on the room he thought at first that the doctor had mistaken the number. A stout Frenchwoman lay in a bed near the door, and two men and three children, all with faces that were minor variations of Hippolyte's, sat on the bed, talking loudly in their occult jargon. Then Norman saw the two other beds. The one in the middle was occupied by a shrunken white crone, sleeping on her back with her toothless mouth open. In the bed near the window Iris lay. The room was clean, large, and airy; only crowded. Sunlight blazed on Iris's heavily bandaged face and head. Her eyes were closed. One bandaged arm lay outside the blanket, badly swollen.

  "Iris?" Norman said gently, approaching her bedside.

  She opened her eyes and smiled, a weary vague smile. The skin around her eyes was puffed and discolored. "Oh, Norm, hi. Sorry about the Rover."

  "How are you, Iris?"

  "Pretty fair, considering. Those silly cabs again. be out of here soon enough. Doctor even said none of the scars would be permanent -maybe a little mark on the bridge of my nose-" Iris's speech was thick and drowsy.

  "Can I do something for you, Iris?"

  "Well-I don't want to bother Alton, he's judging the parade-maybe afterward-"

  "I think I should tell him right away, if nobody else has. For one thing you should have your own room, until you feel a little better."

  Iris glanced at the other occupants of the room, nodded, and yawned. The lively chatter of the French people was going on as before.

  "Norm, I'm awfully full of dope, I may pass out on you. Thanks for coming."

  "Gar-nee-vc is very sweet Please Don't stop de car-nee-val," came a crowd chant through the open window, to the tuneful rattling of a steel band, boum-di-boum-boum.

  "Listen," Iris said. "Sounds like fun, at that."

  He took her hand and kissed it. It was all wet. "I'll be back very soon, Iris."

  She blinked at him. "You're a sweetheart. You always have been."

  Norman hurried to the emergency ward, and told the doctor he would pay any charge to have Iris moved at once to a room by herself. "I think she's in bad shape. She needs quiet."

  "It wo
uld certainly be preferable, but I don't have that authorization. Dr. Pullman has to approve it."

  "Where's Dr. Pullman?"

  "He's one of the judges of the Carnival."

  "Mrs. Tramm is a very close friend of the governor, Doctor."

  "Oh, is that so? Well, that will expedite the authorization, I'm sure. I'm sorry I can't take the action myself."

  Norman found he could walk much faster in the direction the parade was moving. He went out into the street with the small boys, hastening alongside the marchers, and in this way he reached the waterfront in a few minutes. Getting to the grandstand was harder, because the troupes were piled up at the plaza, waiting to perform in the cleared space before the flag-bedecked grandstand. At the moment the Chinese troupe was doing a song, and a mincing dance with fans. Norman began working his way through hilarious devils, angels, Indians, and clowns, who were mostly drinking beer, Coke, or whiskey, or eating ice cream. Though he wore only a cotton shirt, shorts, and open sandals, he was as wet from the heat as if he had fallen in the harbor. The policeman guarding the narrow wooden steps into the grandstand was flirting with a harem girl, and Norman slipped past him and ran up through the full benches to the top row where the three judges sat alone: Sanders, Dr. Pullman, and Senator Easter. He slipped along the back of this top bench and in a minute, baldly, he told the governor and the doctor about Iris.

  "How bad is it? You say she was talking to you," Sanders said in a low voice. "I mean I'll go now if I should, but if it can wait another hour -it would be very awkward for me to leave just now, you can see that."

  Pullman said, "Did Dr. Salas ask for the governor to come? Or me?"

  "No, he didn't."

  "Well, he's a very competent young fellow." Pullman turned to the governor. "I'm sure you can wait until after the parade, sir."

  Sanders stood. "Well, I don't like this, Tracy, but I'd better go. I'll see to the separate room, anyway, and I'll probably be back in ten or fifteen minutes." He had been holding the coat of his Palm Beach suit on his lap; now he put it on and headed for the stairs.

  The troupe of harem girls in blue sequined bodices and pink gauze trousers were moving into the performing space, bells jingling on their ankles, dark arms undulating, hips gyrating.

  "Car-nee-val is very sweet Please Don't stop de car-nee-val," they sang as they came, flashing white charming smiles.

  "Too bad we have to miss this," said Sanders, and he went plunging ahead of Norman through the throng of performers, and up Prince of Wales Street. People made way for the governor, when they recognized him, and the two men reached the hospital in a short time.

  Far down the hospital corridor, Norman saw three nurses clustered at the door of A-42. He was finding it hard to keep up with Sanders' long strides, and he was gasping from the heat and the fast pace. "Well, how is she?" Sanders called as he drew near the nurses. He was walking so fast that he was entering the door when one nurse, a stout Negress with a kindly face and gray hair, put her hand out and stopped him. "Governor, I sorry, de lady she die."

  "Died?" Sanders stopped short and swayed, staring at the nurses. "Died, you said?"

  "She go into a coma and die fast."

  Sanders shook his head and pushed into the room, and Norman followed him. Dr. Salas bent over Iris's bed. "Oh, hello," he said, desultorily pulling a sheet over Iris's bared pink nipple. "I've been trying heart massage, governor, and I gave her adrenalin, but she's dead, sir. I'm sure an autopsy will show a massive brain hemorrhage. The clinical picture of shock was mild and not clear at all. It had to be a hemorrhage. There's a probable skull fracture, and-"

  The French people were all still in the room, talking, and the occupant of the middle bed was still asleep with her mouth open.

  "Isn't there anything to do?" Sanders interrupted in a rasp. "Shall I get Dr. Pullman? He can be here in no time with a motorcycle escort."

  "Sir, she's been dead several minutes. She's gone, sir."

  Iris's sweat-beaded, bandaged face did not look alive: greenish-blue, sad, sunk on her chest. She looked as dead as Hassim had; indeed it crossed Norman's mind that she resembled the shot storekeeper now, in the family look of the dead.

  Governor Sanders fell on his knees beside the bed, clutching Iris's hand and kissing it. Norman put his hand on the governor's shoulder. Sanders glanced up at him, with an expression in his large brown eyes of a boy badly hurt. "She the only woman I loved," he said in a choked voice. "And she dead." There was no trace of the speech class in his words.

  Another brass band was going by outside, and the crowd was taking up the chant:

  "Car-nee-val is very sweet Please Don't stop de car-nee-val!"

  3

  Henny was worried about Norman. More than an hour had passed. She sat at a beach table with Cohn, Hazel, and Lionel, having a lunch of hamburgers and beer. Lester Atlas was in the water not far from them, disporting with Hatsy and Patsy in great showers of spray and bursts of guffaws, giggles, and shrieks. The beach was unusually crowded. All the guests seemed to be wanting a waterside snack today, instead of a full lunch. Lionel was volubly reassuring Henny that the

  Hassim death would do the Gull Reef Club no harm. By now the handful of guests who had seen the killing had told the story over and over, and everybody had it fairly straight, except for the point of Hassim's innocence. The impression was that the Turk had been carrying on lewdly in broad daylight with the sailor, that the policeman had tried to stop it, and that in the ensuing fracas Hassim had accidentally been shot dead. People thought that this was a bit hard on Hassim, but that the cop after all had only been doing his duty, and that one queer the less in the world was no grievous loss.

  "As a matter of fact, Henny, I feel sorry for the poor bugger," Lionel said, munching on his thick-piled hamburger. "I've known thousands of those guys, and there's no harm in ninety-nine out of a hundred of them. It's just a sickness and it's their own business. Though gosh knows, when I was a kid working backstage, I sure got some surprises. Yes ma'am, it was darn near worth my life to bend over and tie my shoelace, I tell you." He laughed salaciously. His once green face was burning to an odd bronze color like an American Indian's, and he looked very relaxed and happy. "Actually, Henny, I almost hate to say this, but I think this thing's going to prove a break for the Club. I bet the nances stop coming to Gull Reef after this."

  "There's Norman," Henny said. She had never stopped watching the beach stairs. He stood at the top now, looking around at the merry beach scene, his hair disordered, his face drawn. "Norman!" she called. "Here we are!"

  He turned his gaze to her, waved tiredly, and came down the stairs. "Hi, Bob," he said, dropping in a chair. "Hello, Lionel. I'm glad you're here, I wanted to talk to you."

  Hazel said, "Shall I get you a hamburger?"

  "I'm not hungry. Maybe a beer, Hazel, thanks."

  He sat slouched, looking around at the others with haggard, shocked eyes.

  "Norman, what is it?" Henny said.

  "I've been running around a lot, Henny, and it's hot in town, you know."

  "What did the chief of police want?"

  Norman stared at her, and then his gaze wandered to the wallowing, frolicking Atlas. "Lionel, you're still bogged down on your deal with Chunky Collins, aren't you?"

  "Yes. He's getting a little too cute on small things, furnishings and such. Our deal was for twenty-five thousand, and he's inched it up to almost twenty-seven. I can't say I appreciate that."

  "How would you like to buy the Gull Reef Club?"

  Lionel laughed. "If I could afford it, and if you were crazy enough to sell it, why-"

  "Can you afford thirty thousand dollars? I'd rather not lose money, and I'll let you have it for that. That's what it cost me." Norman said this in such a colorless offhand way that neither Henny nor the others knew what to make of it. Hazel now brought him a bottle of beer and a glass. "Thanks, Hazel. What do you say, Lionel, is it a deal? I'm ready to shake on it, right now." And he stretched forth a
hand.

  Lionel scratched his long chin and looked at the others. "Well, golly, Norman, this is certainly from left field. Are you serious? What's the matter, are you upset because that poor fag got shot? I was just telling Henny that's not going to hurt you. I mean this is something you better think about. You've got it made here."

  Norman put down his hand, and turned to Cohn. "Iris Tramm is dead, Bob." Amazement and horror showed on all their faces. "She was going to get the dog in my Land Rover, you know? And she ran into one of those stopped cabs on Back Street, and she fractured her skull. She's lying in the hospital, dead. I've just come from there."

  "Good God," Cohn said slowly. "She's dead? Iris? Dead, Norman?"

  Norman nodded. "I guess Sanders will take care of sending her body home. I left him there with her. He's very broken up."

  Henny said, holding her hand to her chest, "Jesus Christ, Norm! The poor woman. Was she drunk?"