Carnival (3 page)

Who, I asked.

The angels, he said, the angels. And he started to talk, and his lips flapped against each other like featherless wings, describing angels that land on a strip beside the river. His big black garbage bags rattled with empty cans, as if they were full of trapped devils and snakes. I dropped him under the bridge. He got out and immediately started to run, shouting, I will pray for you, I will pray for you, and his bags bounced off his rushing heels.

Minutes later, when I was making change for a client, I found that the man who had promised me prayers must have slipped his hand out from under his bags and stolen my cash. And the client, who had been telling me all about his kid’s school and his wife, and who had been complaining about the high crime rate in this city, now started to go on about taxi drivers and how they never have change. I think you do it on purpose, the man said, you get a bigger tip that way.

Suspicious, I thought, people are suspicious, inconsiderate citizens.

They all come with large bills. They press them over our shoulders and wave them with a rich man’s pride. They get all our change and we get tired of aligning our windows with those of our fellow drivers, flashing fifties at red lights, calling, Brother, do you have change, and we resent stopping at gas stations and buying candy bars to break bills and gain the right to wash our faces in dim, filthy bathrooms with curled toilet paper carpeting the wet floors like morning confetti in the aftermath of carnivals and fairs.

Another time, I picked up a skinny lad who wanted to go to the Garage nightclub. I knew that club. I’d been there once, but that is another story. He shivered and talked and shivered and sniffed. And when I looked in my rearview mirror again, I couldn’t see him: I thought he had disappeared right in front of my eyes. And then I checked the bottom of my boat, because I knew that he was the lightweight type who would sink in turbulent waters, and I saw a needle in his hand ready to go.

He waited for the red light before he dove.

I stopped the car and watched over him, small and curled, his hand extending over the back of the seat. The car behind me honked and cursed, but a green light should be neglected at times. I dropped my anchor and my boat sat still, and the horns got louder behind me. But I waited until the needle penetrated his vein. I wanted this floating corpse to have his needle land with precision and not be wasted on muscle or bone, and I wanted him to finish and to leave my car and fly, dance, live, and escape for a short while. I don’t judge those who can’t dream, those who need to pierce their arms to create different worlds under their skin, because I am fortunate in the tools of my escapes. I could, at any minute, dock my car under a bridge and, like a comic book hero, have my freedom fighter suit slapped on me in no time, fly above the ruins of men, and let my happiness come right into my hand.

Pick it up, I said to him. Do not leave that junk in my car. Show it to me, I said.

He did, and then he opened the door, got out, and walked to the closest wall to embrace it.

GUNS

THERE ARE CERTAIN
kinds of men that a driver has to watch out for: Quiet men whose paths have narrowed. Those who have been taken for long rides and sickening turns. Those who bring vomit, misery, lice, and stupor from the stained mattresses of crack houses and jails.

Last night, I picked up a couple.

The man looked like a mean motherfucker. His girlfriend had bags, many shopping bags. She talked and he kept quiet, barely nodding, looking at me in the mirror, then looking outside, closing his eyes, hanging his head under the weight of his girlfriend’s babbles and complaints.

A full moon, she said. Tonight, baby, let’s go on the roof and look at it.

And then some trivialities about girlfriends and dresses and so forth. The man asked her to shut the fuck up, but that made her shout and shake her index finger in his face. When we arrived, he paid me; he told me to keep the change and I thanked him. He barely acknowledged my thanks. Too cool, too generous, too wealthy, too above women’s bitching and the fare’s leftovers.

I drove away, arranging the cash inside my pockets, splitting off the large bills and sticking them inside the glove compartment, positioning the coins at my side. I hate it when my pockets jingle with money. Its heaviness reminds me that my thighs will be ground into the seat for many hours to come.

A few blocks later, I glanced in the mirror and saw the tip of a handle on the back seat. The lady had left her bags. I pulled over and searched through them. Everything was too shiny or too wide. If my mother were still alive I would have offered her the glittering outfits to wear on the ropes. If Pinky the clown were still around I would have given him the baggy pants, the baggy shirt, and the colourful hats. It is admirable how humans think of friends and family first in times of looting and quick grabs.

So I retraced my steps and I parked in the middle of the street, not quite remembering which house was theirs. It was late but I honked loudly at all the buildings, hoping that a head or a hand would appear, wave to me, ask me to wait, and rush down the stairs with joy and a reward or even some applause.

The woman came out with her blond, exuberant hair and high heels, and she rushed towards my car shouting, You good man! She opened the back door and grabbed the bags. He’ll take care of you, driver. He will. Be generous to the man, Zee, she said to her boyfriend as he came out. Be generous now.

Sure enough, the man walked slowly towards the car and handed me a large bill. But before I could roll up the window, he tapped me on the shoulder and said, Why don’t you work with a generous man like myself?

Where and what, I asked.

Right here. You stay in your car, your office, man, and you drive me around. I sit in the back like before and tell you where to go. A few hours a day and I will take care of you big.

Anything illegal, I asked.

Anything illegal, he repeated. What is legal, my man. What is? Is history legal, was Vietnam legal. What the fuck is legal in this universe? Stars eat each other, wolves eat the pigs, and Grandma fucks over Little Red Riding Hood.

Nothing is legal, I agreed.

No doubt, nothing.

I am in, I said.

Be here Monday night. Right here. At eight. And he surprised me with a big smile followed by a fist pound to his heart.

I left and drove for a while. The streets were wet and the water expanded under the pedestrians’ stomps. Rain swirled like the halos of pebbles on the face of a pond. I drove in circles as the universe spun and exploded and filled itself with dust and liquid, oblivious to whether I turned left or right or whether I gazed at its prehistoric twinkles and its giant stars. I drove but I scooped up no customers in this flooded city of the north. I consoled myself thinking that at this hour, sailors and men must be drinking inside bars, eating chips off counters while clouds of flies, giddy on the scent of roasting animals, swirled above the bald-headed, rug-like dizzy oval heads. Then I felt hunger and I stopped.

I entered a fast food joint and went straight to the bathroom. A policeman was taking a leak into the white fountain on the wall. I washed my hands and sensed him weighing me. So I entered the booth and locked the door, fearing that the state would slap me with a ticket for not washing my face, failing to move out of authority’s way, or using too much soap that foams and grows bubbles that might pop like gunshots and cause panic and alarm.

I waited until he was gone. And then I left the stall with my belt still undone, looking for the hole in the leather. Finally I buckled up and washed my hands again, killing most of the germs. Some must have escaped, no doubt. I went to the counter and ordered a sandwich and a coffee, and then I decided to drive up the mountain and see if the moon was full or empty.

FATHER

THERE IS NO
void, said the bearded lady who raised me after my father’s departure and my mother’s death. There is only motion, she added, and she asked me to fill a bucket and clean the caravan’s wheels.

Your father, she said, led a camel when he first appeared from beyond the dunes, and carried a stack of rugs and blue stones to chase away the evil eye. He was a merchant and a lover of flight. As soon as your mother laid eyes on him, she was swept away by his life-saving oasis of a smile. His long eyelashes tickled the backs of her ears; his thick, curved eyebrows sliced through her chest like Indian blades. Your father’s carpets were always floating above the ground, he never laid his head on the floor, and his eyes were always on the stars. He shifted the wind with his turban and steered his flying rug with his whiskers, she said. He flew around the tent poles above the audiences’ exclamation marks and dashes of applause.

My parents met high up on the trapeze, in a joint act that turned into a great success. My mother would fling her rope at his carpet and my father would catch it and shout, Hold on tight, Mariam! (He insisted on changing Mary to the original biblical version of that name.) And she would fly behind him as if gliding on water in space.

But one day, my father met another man with a beard and a long robe. The man, like my father, came from the east. They talked about life, death, and the danger of flight. And then, on a moon-shiny night, my father said that he had become a believer, and that carpets should be pinned to the ground. Carpets are for prayer and not for cunning artists and flying buffoons, the man had said to my father. Carpets are the sacred thin crust that stands between the earth and the heavens. My father put on his old clothing, saddled his camel, rolled up one of his non-flying carpets, and left us. After his departure, none of his carpets would stay on the ground. They swirled around the tents like little hummingbirds, they flew around and sideways and upward in the angles of angels and birds. The only photo of my father was a poster of him sitting on a suspended carpet, legs folded, his moustache curled against a background of clapping monkeys, smiling cats, and painted clowns.

After my father’s departure, my mother took to the ropes, and for days she swung, cried, and wailed at the top of the tent. She wove a large web in the sky and trapped clowns and lion tamers, sword swallowers, and the one and only Alligator Man, and dragged them to our little trailer behind the main circus tent.

She would lock me up in a bed of cobwebs and try to hypnotize me to sleep so she could play, but I would wake in a daze, guessing at the arrival of the Wolf Boy or the Skeleton Man. And I would climb onto one of my father’s carpets, fly below the ceiling and watch, with a bird’s-eye view, my mother tangled in ropes with a fellow trapeze artist, chained beneath the magician’s saw, or roaring like a lion under the long leather boots of the animal keeper. And I, who was flattered that the ringmaster was coming to our house, happy to be in the presence of this carnival of flesh, gasps, and pleasurable groans, would lie still on the carpet and watch my mother’s acts and, imagining my father on his camel crossing the world, I would happily masturbate.

We always wondered whether he had survived his journey back. After all, the bearded lady said, a camel is a highly visible animal. Camels can’t hide, camels are too sluggish to fly, and too patient, too curious, too opinionated, and too stubborn a creature to kneel for robbers, fall to dictators, or flee the cold.

Now when I remember my mother and her collection of bare-assed companions, when I lie back on one of my father’s carpets and float above the world, I journey through those ancient lands of guns, trenches, and blood, the troubled lands of Slavs, Germans, Latins, Assyrians, Arabs, Turks, Kurds, and Greeks. In those nations where young men were drafted and women wept and populations were transferred and people starved and burned by the millions, I landed my carpet, I witnessed, I rectified, and I flew again.

BOOKS

HOW ARE YOU,
Zainab asked as she appeared, with her books and her combed wet hair, from behind the entrance door.

Long night, I said. The world is a circus and it will always be. By the way, I have a book to show you.

Do you have it on you?

No, it is in my apartment, I said. Why don’t you come up and I’ll make you a cup of coffee before you leave. A coffee will keep you awake and attentive, because listening to God’s words can be confusing, all those contradictions. Personally, I would be afraid to fall into an eternal boredom. Besides, I said, your hair is wet. Maybe you should cover it, or you could wait a bit, have a cup of coffee until it dries, and that way you won’t catch a cold.

So considerate and sweet, she said, but I don’t have time to come in and I am not done with the stack of books you left at my door last week. I am not sure why you think I would be interested in
The History of Court Jesters
or
The History of the Comic Grotesque.
Are you trying to tell me something, Fly? My dissertation, may I remind you, is on religion.

But, yes indeed, I think clowns could be an essential addition to your thesis. Is there anything on earth or in heaven more potent than a good dose of mockery and laughter?

Oh, Fly, you take life too seriously, she said, and giggled at her own joke. And don’t worry too much about my hair. It should be okay.

Have you or any members of your family been to the black stone for the pilgrimage? I asked her.

What an odd question for an early morning.

I was thinking of my father, who went in the stone’s direction
.

Is that what you call it now? Zainab asked. A stone?

Well, that is what it is.

What about what it represents?

To whom? I asked.

To some of us humans, she replied. Not all, but a substantial number. But who knows, maybe one day it will be all of us.

Submission?

Conversions, she said, frowning at me.

By love or by might?

Love would be nice.

But before I could bite she followed with, How was your night?

I told her about the man’s proposition. She listened and then she asked, But why did you accept?