Lawrence Block - Tanner’s Tiger

“It’s cool here,” I said.

“It is getting warm in the sun, Evan.”

“It’s cooler than New York.”

“Yes, it is.”

“That’s something.”

“Is it not beautiful, Evan?”

“I suppose so.”

She stood up, waving her arms ecstatically. “I am so glad we are finally here,” she said. “What shall we do first? Do you want to ride on the Minirail? What pavilions shall we go to? Can I have something to drink?”

We went everywhere, we did everything. We rode on the Minirail and took a ride on the boat, which was called the Hovercraft. We went to more pavilions than either of us could keep track of, passing up the ones with lines in front of them – probably the best ones, naturally – and wandering through endless exhibits, most of which concentrated on depicting the economic progress and industrial potential of the country whose pavilion it was. A little of this goes rather a long way. I saw at least twenty different jars of coffee beans, each with a little signboard explaining that the coffee of this particular country was the best in the world, and, while it may be a flaw in my character, coffee beans tend to look alike to me. So do chunks of polished wood – each African nation displayed at least twenty different specimens of polished wood, for example, testing even Minna’s capacity for boundless enthusiasm.

By noon it was as hot as New York. We had lunch at the Algerian Pavilion, a particularly lovely building with a magnificent tiled floor and native tapestries on the walls. The restaurant was on a glassed-in patio. We had couscous with minced lamb, and it was good but very expensive.

At the Jamaican Pavilion we had banana chips, which look like potato chips and taste like buffalo chips. At the Uganda Pavilion I had a cup of Ugandan coffee (“The best in all the world!”), which tasted like any other cup of coffee. Across the road from the Mauritian Pavilion we saw a young boy fall out of the Hovercraft and into the water. Someone jumped in and dragged him out.

Around three in the afternoon, finally, we stumbled upon the Cuban Pavilion.

I think we must have already passed it several times without noticing it. There was a line in front of it but a short one. We queued up and waited while the uniformed attendant admitted groups of twenty-odd people at a time. Eventually it got to be our turn.

It was different, anyway. You had to say that for it. While all of the other nations were boasting about their progress in catching up with Western civilization, the Cubans bragged of having ripped out the existing social order by the roots. The walls were covered with blown-up photographs of Cuban revolutionary activity, firing squads and submachine guns and sugarcane workers on parade, and everywhere the stern visage of Fidel himself, looking like an unlikely cross between Christ and a bird of prey. An electrified map on one wall provided a year-by-year account of revolutionary activity around the world from the close of World War II to the present day. Slogans and Fidelista oratory covered the walls. It was, all in all, an incredible display.

But what really endowed the entire affair with an aura of surrealistic lunacy was the crowd that walked through those rude hallways. Here marched the American bourgeoisie in full flower, wearing their bermuda shorts and toting their inevitable cameras, walking and pointing and nodding and smiling, taking pictures, chatting, reacting to the Cuban incendiary barrage much as they had reacted in turn to Ugandan coffee beans and Jamaican banana chips and Greek statues, swallowing and digesting and moving ever onward, quite unaffected by what they saw.

I had the sudden certain feeling that each batch of twenty tourists would emerge from the building into an interior court, where a group of bearded men in fatigues would stand men and women and children against the wall. And the women would say that their feet hurt, and the children would ask for hot dogs, and the men would point cameras and click shutters while the bearded khaki-clad heroes of the revolution set up a machine gun and mowed them all down. Then the next group would come in, and the next-

I shook my head to banish madness. The Chief, I decided, had sent me on the trail of the wildest goose in history. The Cuban Pavilion was subversive, to be sure. Whoever planned it would have been insulted if one said otherwise. It was preaching revolution, but for all the effect it seemed to be having upon its audience, it might as well have been preaching flight to ostriches.

According to the rumors the Chief had heard, the pavilion was being used as a front for some unspecified operation. I couldn’t imagine how; it would have made no more sense than using a whorehouse as a front for the sale of dirty pictures. The place was constantly crowded with tourists and very sparsely supplied with attendants. It couldn’t have been less suited to clandestine subversive activity had the walls been made of glass.

I went on walking. Minna’s hand had come loose from mine somewhere in the course of things. I glanced around and couldn’t see her in the crowd. I let a few people push past me and still didn’t see her, then decided she must have gone on ahead while I stopped to read some of the more colorful bits of propaganda. I didn’t blame her. I followed the crowd to the door and out into the sunshine.

And I didn’t see her anywhere.

I called her name a few times and wandered around looking for her. She didn’t seem to be anywhere. I bucked the tide of tourists and worked my way back into the building and still couldn’t find her. It took me five minutes to locate an attendant and ask him about a little lost blonde girl.

“No hablo inglés,” he said.

I did not believe this at all. I repeated the question in Spanish and he shrugged limply and walked away. I went outside again. I investigated a row of hot dog stands and souvenir booths over to the right of the pavilion. Minna wasn’t there. I doubled back to the Cuban Pavilion restaurant and bar, thinking she might have followed part of the crowd there. The headwaiter wouldn’t let me in, insisting he didn’t have a table for me. I told him my problem and he smiled blandly and assured me that no little girl had come in all afternoon. I shoved him out of the way and looked for myself and couldn’t find her.

I went back to the line in front of the pavilion. I waited for fifteen minutes until the attendant let me into the building. I walked all the way through, looking for her everywhere. There was no false route she could have taken, no place she could have hidden herself. I left the pavilion again and walked around it three times, looking everywhere for her. No luck.

Minna was lost.

I think the helicopterpilot was drunk. His eyes wandered in and out of focus, and he had a disconcerting habit of looking over his shoulder instead of paying much mind to where we were going. The network of capillaries around his nose further suggested a fondness for alcohol, as did the aroma of good Canadian whiskey that issued from him. All of this might have bothered me a good deal more if I hadn’t already been too bothered about Minna to pay much attention to him.

“Usually give people a full tour,” he was saying. “All the pavilions, the rides, give you the whole feel of the fair.”

“Just keep going around in circles.”

“Makes a person dizzy.”

“Ever-increasing concentric circles,” I said. “She went into the damned building and she isn’t in it now. Must have come out of it. Keep circling, she has to be here somewhere.”

“Dizzy,” he said, turning to me and gesturing with one hand. “Dizzy as a dean.”

I tried to ignore him. I wished he hadn’t kept mentioning dizziness; a helicopter is sufficiently disorienting when it moves in a straight line, and I was beginning to feel overcome by a well-nigh irresistible desire to vomit. I kept my eyes on the ground, amazed that there could be so many people down there without any of them being Minna.