Carnival (13 page)

WHEN OTTO HAD
finished talking, I dug my hand into my pocket and pulled out the money I had made that day. I ignored the change and gave him all the bills. He hesitated, looked me in the eye, took it, and said, Brother Fly. He hugged me and he left.

MANUSCRIPT

THIS TIME, IT
wasn’t too long before Otto got back in touch. He called me at home. It was early in the morning and he knew that I had just finished my shift. He said he wanted to meet in the afternoon when I woke up.

Around four o’clock, I changed my clothes and brushed my teeth and went to meet Otto. He looked even older now. His cheeks, which had once squeezed his eyes and given him a look of cleverness and experience, had fallen in wrinkles and defeat. His hair had turned white at the sides and he looked even heavier than he had the last time.

It’s the effect of those asylum drugs, he said. They make you put on weight.

I turned off my lantern to indicate to the passengers of the city that I was off-duty and I drove with Otto to the shore. The rain had ceased, but the water from the river still reached the pathway under the viaduct and kept the ground moist. I parked but left the headlights on, and the light skimmed the surface of the river. Through and beneath the car’s rays, gentle waves took on the arched shapes of dolphins inhaling the wet air that crossed between the two shores of the American north.

Here, Otto said, and pulled a bottle from inside his coat.

We stood for a while in silence, drinking and smoking and staring at the water and the sky.

They tried to kill my spirit in that place, Otto said. If you resist and get vocal they try to pacify you. They do it to the masses through all those corrupt, complacent journalists, but people like us, who see through power and greed and protest its savagery, we risk being crushed. It is still a fight. It is still a fight for me, Fly. It will always be, Otto said, and then took a long puff from his cigarette.

I watched a small boat pass under the bridge. It had a torn flag hanging from the back of its deck. The flag, with its fading colours, had turned into a neglected cloth. With my eyes I followed the boat and its white trail of parted water that eventually merged and collapsed onto itself to become waves and a river again. Smoke rose from Otto’s mouth as he spoke.

I say they should feel fear, he said. That is the only way for them to realize what the dispossessed go through. I say we need to show them a different face. They are no longer afraid or embarrassed by the faces of the disfranchised. So we need to show them a mask: a mask of horror . . . I say they should tremble and be forced to stand at the cliff of death and hunger.

They are everywhere, Fly.

Who is everywhere? I asked.

Otto threw his cigarette on the ground, stepped on it, extinguished it, and said, Listen, Fly, I’ve been collecting notes and gathering data on some more people.

What for?

Just notes, observations, records. Fly, man, I called you because I need a favour from you. You have to help me here. The pyschiatrist, the one who so-called treated me, Dr. Wu, hails a taxi from his private clinic every Tuesday and Thursday around eight in the evening. I’ve been watching him. He is at the hospital most of the week and those are the only two nights he can be counted on to be there. I have a list of people, Fly. I document their lives and their habits. The hours they leave, the places they eat, their licence plate numbers . . . documentation, Fly. We have to gather information, that is how power rules. Knowledge, Fly. Knowledge and organization.

You just park in front of his clinic and bring that monster to me, Otto said, and I will only ask him to read. That is all I want him to do.

Reading is good, I said, but no one should be led to reading by force.

They should be forced to know the other side of the story, Fly.

They do know it, but they don’t . . .

Yes, Otto said. But even if they don’t care, they should read back to us, out loud, what we’ve written. And when they do, we should be right there beside them. Maybe their voices will tremble, maybe they will express fear. And that should be enough for us to start fighting back. You and I go back a long way, Fly. And I know that you will help me in this.

What would Aisha think?

Aisha would have asked you to. She loved you and she loved me and she never backed down from a fight. She fought to the last drop of her life . . . she belonged to both of us. I shared and I never judged because I loved you both.

ACT THREE

CLOWN

ON MONDAY EVENING,
I took my car and drove through the downtown, where the Carnival and its people filled the streets with songs and beer mugs and decorations and costumes. I picked up half-naked men and women in masks. I had dressed up as a magician that night to amuse myself.

I drove around the periphery of the grand square where most people gather. I laughed when a woman in fishnet stockings ripped them and asked me if I liked them better that way or before . . . Before, I said, and pulled some flowers out of my sleeve for her. A cat-girl asked me if she could rest her paw on my shoulder while I drove her to the big outdoor theatre, and when she paid me in bills, I asked her to open her paw and help herself to the change I owed her. A man who tried to practise a few magic tricks on me lost a ten-dollar bet when I turned his pigeon into a book and his hat into a box of Kleenex.

But the next evening, I left my gas tank almost empty. I combed my hair back and put on fake glasses, a wig, and a top hat in the manner of those Irish elves. The wig reached my shoulders and some of its hair covered the side of my face. I removed my taxi permit, which had my photo and my name on it, and I stuck it in the glove compartment.

I waited in front of the psychiatrist’s clinic. Otto had mentioned that he was short and wore black glasses and that he walked with his eyes towards the ground. He was easy to recognize. At ten past eight, he came towards my car, got in, and gave me an address. I nodded and started to drive. I looked at him in the mirror but he was busy examining a folder, and before he had a chance to look up at the road and protest, I took the ramp that led below the bridge. And I stopped the car.

Finally, he looked up. What is going on? he said calmly.

It is an emergency, I said. I must be out of gas.

Where are we? he said, looking out the side and rear windows.

My apologies for the inconvenience. I’ll be right back, sir. There is a pay phone right here. I’ll be right back, I repeated, not to worry, be right back, and I affected a heavy foreign accent to throw him off.

I saw Otto. He had a purple clown’s wig on his head and a red plastic ball on his nose. A sloppy lipstick job was broadly pasted around his lips and white paint covered his face and neck all the way to his ears. He wore his old leather jacket over his clown suit and he looked cold.

I walked towards the river. I glanced behind me and saw Otto getting into the back seat of the car. And then, after the elephant had balanced on its hind legs and lifted the dog with the curve of its trunk and all the animals had waited through the applause, the clown pulled out a gun, stuck it against the psychiatrist’s ribs, and said: Give me your wallet. Listen, fucker, no one will hurt you here. I just want you to sit still and concentrate. He pulled some pages from his leather jacket, poked the man with his gun, and said, Read from the top down. And the psychiatrist started to read. But the clown interrupted: Read from the
top.
State the name of the poet and the title. From the top, and he poked Dr. Wu once more.

And so the doctor read:

A Poem Some People Will Have to Understand

by Amiri Baraka,

formerly known as LeRoi Jones.

Dull unwashed windows of eyes . . .

I went down to the river’s edge. I threw a few rocks at the devils in the water and I smoked and looked at the bridge going across, then I lit a second cigarette into the fog. In cities it is useless to look at the stars or to describe them, worship them, or seek direction from them. When lost, one should follow the tracks of the camels. I watched the car lights passing and vanishing overhead, and I imagined my mother swinging off the bridge and my father, the camel lover, going in circles, throwing rocks, and reciting prayers beneath the fullness of the moon.

I walked back. I didn’t see the psychiatrist, but Otto was leaning against the door smoking.

Where is he? I asked.

He’s gone, Otto said. He took a walk. Here, I got you the fare, I made him pay. And don’t worry, I stood in front of the licence plate when he got out and he didn’t see a thing.

We drove towards the city. Otto pulled out a bottle of bourbon and drank from it. He offered it to me and I took a short sip.

Fly, my man, Otto said, as he smoked and drank, let’s call this night “The Revenge of the Fool.” He trembled, Doctor Evil trembled . . . I made him read and he was stuttering, there was fear in his eyes. I made him repeat it all about six times . . . I made him read about the lives of prostitutes, the religious right’s policies and their effects on poor neighbourhoods . . . the guy started to beg me not to kill him . . . shoved the gun in his mouth and I thought, Now, Doctor, how does it feel? For months you shoved all kinds of pills into me . . . When I pulled the gun out of his mouth, he asked me if he should say his prayers . . . I said no, not yet; read . . . He was uncomfortable reading about prostitutes . . . There is a war out there, and believe me, Fly, it was never really between Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Crusaders, and Confucius. The final battle is between those who love, respect, and liberate the body and those who hate it, Fly. Pull up here. I am due for a drink. Do you want to come and check out the Carnival crowd? I say let’s celebrate a small victory for the oppressed, the clown said, and looked euphoric and already drunk.

Not tonight, I said. I need to cover the day’s rental and fill up the car. It is the season to make good in this town.

Sure, Fly, making a living is all right, Otto said, as he slowly got out of the car.

Otto, I called to him, it might be a good idea to rest for a while. You always have a place. Just come by, or stay.

It is a fight, Fly, it will always be, but remember that you are my brother and I love you.

MIME

AFTER MY SHIFT
I waited for Zainab, but she didn’t come down. I hadn’t seen her for a few days. I knocked at her door. She opened it halfway and said, Not now, Fly. I have somebody here. Just go. Go drive or something.

But wait, Zainab said. A woman knocked on your door last night. She was crying and she looked pretty upset. She mentioned something about a delivery or a necklace.

Mary, I said. It must have been Mary.

Okay, so go to Mary, said Zainab, and she shut the door in my face.

I drove to Mary’s new place; she had moved into an apartment next to the market. She wasn’t home. I waited for a few hours but she still didn’t arrive.

In front of her place was a bar with its door open. I sat in my car and watched the back of a man hunched towards a poker machine. He smoked against a screen of vanishing hearts, passing spades, rolling fruit. The neighbourhood was infested with gambling dens, pawnshops, rundown laundromats, and vicious dogs. But the Carnival also reaches that dodgy side of the downtown, and in the afternoons, the neighbourhood people start to play music on the street, and they come out to drink and dance. Carnivals also belong to the marketplaces and the poor.

After a while I went to a pay phone and called Otto, but no one answered.

I went back to my car and waited for Mary. Two customers asked to hire my services. The first was a mime who pointed at the passenger seat next to me. I shook my head and, with my hands, I signalled to him that I was off-duty. When he still insisted, I locked the passenger door and frowned at him. He gave me the finger. I was speechless.

But the second customer got right into the back seat. I told him that I was not in service. Your top light is on, he said, so that means you must be working. I hit the button and turned off my lantern and said, Okay, not anymore. But the law dictates that you should take me, the man said. You can’t refuse a customer once he is inside your car.

Well, yes, I can refuse a customer. As a matter of fact, I do it all the time.

I’ll take down your licence number, he said.

Fine. Do whatever you like, but leave my car.

Sure enough, a few days later the taxi inspector came looking for me. She found me at Café Bolero: she had spotted my cab in the parking lot. Some of the drivers covered their thighs with their napkins and plates when she came in. There was an atmosphere of embarrassment and panic. She asked for me by name and then walked towards me.

Do you have your licence on you? she asked.

Can’t this pleasurable encounter wait? I said. I am eating.

There is a complaint against you.

What is it about?

Refusal to take a customer while your dome light was on. The man you refused to take the other day was an employee of the transit authority, and he filed a complaint against you at the taxi commission.

Okay, so now I have to spread my thighs and let him molest me?

Everyone in the café started to laugh in disbelief. All those numbers went under the table, spitting food and hiding their faces. Some ran to the bathroom and some closed their eyes and shook their heads.

I can revoke your licence right now.

Without a hearing? I said.

Yes.

Based on what, sweetheart?

Don’t call me sweetheart.

Officer?

Let’s go to your car.

What a femme fatale, I whispered to myself.

You said something.

No, I was just remembering the time when I was a child in the circus and the lady with the whip told the monkey man to jump but then . . .

She made me open the trunk and the glove compartment. Checked the lights and did the rest of her little routine.

Now drive.

Where to?

Drive. I just want to see if your car is making any noises.

I drove straight to a back alley and parked there and opened my thighs wide and leaned my head back and closed my eyes in submission. Here, I thought, I am being a good citizen and participating in the government census. Indeed, information and the gathering of information are essential to every state before they fuck over another nation or drive their own citizens into poverty and despair. The measure and length and diameter of every organism should be assessed before one exercises indulgence, war, or occupation.

She molested me, touching my thighs, and then she called me a faggot for no reason, or for a reason, and told me to drive her back to her car.

She left and I entered the restaurant, walking with the bowed legs of a cowboy just off his horse. The piano started to play, the chariot drivers started shooting their guns into the air, and all the dancers danced and the crowd laughed and the cowboy bought drinks for everyone and shot more bullets into the sky in celebration of the loss of his virginity to an officer of the state.

HUSBAND

A FEW DAYS
later I went back to Mary’s new neighbourhood and I saw her just as she was about to enter her building. I ran across the street. I grabbed her hand and she embraced me and started to laugh. She seemed unusually euphoric and talkative. And then her mood changed and she said, I keep crying all night. And the books you gave me were all so harsh and sad. I called my husband. Then I told him that I slept with you. He called me a slut. I am not going back, Fly. I asked him to pack some of my books and leave them at the door. I need you to pick them up from the house. He’ll be there. Could you do that for me? I can’t go there . . . I haven’t stopped crying. Do you remember where the house is? It’s a bit far. I’m sorry but I think of you as a friend . . . I tried to go for a walk today but all those Carnival people in their masks and disguises made me scared. I had to run home. I locked the door. I keep imagining them here in my room. Could you please do me this favour? Please. And I promised to give him back a necklace. It was his grandmother’s. He wants it back. Could you take it to him? Here. I trust you with it. Sorry, I’m crying . . . I can’t stop crying . . . He would have brought the books himself, but his car is in the shop, he said. I think he’s lying. He is leaving the country, he said. He quit his job, he’s selling the house . . . I urge you to do this for me, Fly . . . I am not well. And she started to cry again.

I took the necklace and put it in the glove compartment of my taxi, and then I drove to Mary’s husband’s place. It took me about half an hour to get there. I drove through the suburbs, where all the houses looked identical, one variation or another of the same thing. I said to myself, I’d rather fire myself from a cannon, pick up the shit of elephants and eat it, suffocate inside Houdini’s water tank, lie beneath the running horses, or sodomize a big cat in a cage and pay the consequences than get trapped in these suburbs of cardboard, gossip, and conformity.

I parked at a gas station and called Otto. This time he was home. Otto, my man, I said. Could a harmless, farcical clown be ready in about forty-five minutes?

Who is the guest reader this time? he asked.

A hater of books, I said.

I’ll make him excel in his recitals, he answered.

Gently, I said. Very gently.

Can do. What do you suggest for reading material?

How about
The Clown
, by Böll? I said. That would be an appropriate joke of a title . . .

Yes, but Fly, man, I don’t have that book. Where am I supposed to get it?

Just go to my place, I said. You still have the keys. By the way, the extra key to the taxi is on the same ring. Don’t lose it. People are more interested in stealing cars than books. Choose a passage from any novel you find.

Fiction is overrated, Fly. We’ve discussed this. In the time it takes those novelist fuckers to contemplate a few poetic passages, a thousand kids die from malnutrition. Immediacy, man, that’s what counts. What do you say, Fly?

Fiction would still be my first choice. Let’s not underestimate the power of imagination.

Suit yourself. I’ll see what I can find.

Meet me at the bar, in the back alley. Be there in an hour, I said.

I arrived at the house and knocked on the husband’s door. The man answered and he looked me up and down, frowning, and before I could say that I was there to pick up things for Mary, he pointed at some boxes in the corner.

Could you take off your shoes? he said.