The door to the bar was open and guests were streaming in. Where Hassim's body had lain there was only the red tile floor. Norman saw the two undertaker's men moving clumsily off down the dance terrace with the shut brown basket. The policemen were following the basket, and Hennessy was going with them; only the chief remained at a table, writing. Norman had to sign a green form and a white form, and the chief told him that later a policeman would return and the witnesses would be asked to sign typed transcripts of their stories.
"What's going to happen to Parris?" Norman said. "Was this murder, or manslaughter, Chief, or what?"
The chief shrugged, putting his papers into a briefcase. "Dat be for de judge, and maybe for a jury, to say. Parris a good officer, and Mr. Hassim a fine gentleman, but"-the chief rolled knowing eyes at Norman-"his unfortunate peculiarity cause de trouble, you know! Mrs. Tramm find her dog all right?"
"Yes, that's taken care of."
The chief closed his briefcase and stood. "Well, I'm sorry dis disagreeable incident mar your holiday sea-son."
"Excuse me, Chief." The new bartender was hovering nearby. He pointed to the table where Hennessy and Hassim had sat. "Is it all right -can I move dose now? Parris say not to touch dem."
On the table stood Hennessy's empty beer glass, and the whiskey sour that Hassim had not managed to drink.
"Oh yes. Dat be all finish."
The bartender took up the glasses and swept a rag over the table. Four guests immediately fell into the chairs, clamoring for drinks.
The chief shook hands with Norman, in an embarrassed way. "Could you stop by de fort some time today and give us a statement on Hippolyte Lamartine?"
"Yes, of course. How's Hippolyte?"
"Oh, not too bad. He got plenty friends in de jail."
Norman's fear that the death would cast a pall over the hotel was groundless, he soon saw. The bar became as crowded as ever, and unusually animated. The shooting was a topic for talk, and since almost nobody knew just what had happened, there was much room for jovial improvising. Hassim had in fact, with his absurd demise, provided the needed antidote for the general hangover after the Lovers' Beach party. The questions thrown at Norman grew tiresome, and he went down to the beach, where he found Henny and Hazel in bikinis in the sun, both looking tense and worried. He started to tell them what had happened, but he had not gotten far when the bartender called to him again from the head of the stairs. "Mistuh Papuhman, telephone for you in de office."
"Oh, no!" he groaned. "Not now, Cecil. Get the name and I'll call them back."
"It be de chief of police callin', suh."
Norman gave his wife and daughter a weary look. "I suppose this thing will haunt me for days. Be right back."
He dragged himself to the office, closed the door, switched on the wheezing air-conditioner, and picked up the telephone, seating himself on the disorderly desk.
"Yes, Chief?"
"Sorry to boddah you again, Mr. Papuhmon. We givin' you kind of a bad time today, I guess."
"Quite all right. What is it?"
"Mr. Papuhmon, dat green Land Rover, license 1674, dat belong de Gull Reef Club, don't it?"
"Yes," Norman said. "Yes, it does."
The chief's heavy sigh rattled in the telephone. "Well, it bust up pretty bad on Back Street, near Pomegranate Alley. Just around de turn by de Big Bamboo Bar. -You still dere, suh?"
"I'm still here. Was Mrs. Tramm hurt? She was driving it."
"She a little hurt."
"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 would 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.
