Rawi Hage - Carnival

One day, the princess sent him a letter telling him that she had decided to leave everything and run away, if only he would meet her at the same hotel where they had first met. He never answered her letter. She sent a second letter and he still didn’t answer her. In her third letter, she threatened to kill him by sending one of her royal bodyguards to cut off his balls. He called home to Lagos and instructed his cousin to send the princess a letter stating that, finally, Number 79 had been deported back to his country, in spite of the lawyers’ efforts. He had been drafted into the army and killed in the line of duty. His dying wish was to tell the princess that he was sorry and that they would meet in paradise.

SOME MEMORIES MAKE me want to drink even more, so out of sadness or joy I knocked at Zainab’s door. She opened and said, Fly, my dear, it is late, and I have a friend with me. I apologized and asked her if I could borrow some whisky or a cognac. I explained that I’d had a long, hard day and that I needed a drink. Just a shot before bed, it will help me fall asleep, I said.

Okay, Fly, come in. I’ll introduce you to my friend Gina here, and since we are also having a drink. . just come in.

There was a woman there. She stood up and kissed me on each cheek. You must be the man Zainab has been telling me about, who once brought the forest of flowers, she said.

Yes indeed, I am the flower carrier and the people mover.

You do have great taste, the flowers were magnificent. I’ve heard so much about you, Fly. All good things.

I am honoured, I said. What a relief and a compliment. People live their lives thinking that they are forgotten, and that is why we do the most outrageous things, so as not to have gone unnoticed.

I agree, said Gina, laughing. Our need for acknowledgement is certainly underrated.

People want to be remembered; the burden of impermanence hovers like a sword above our necks, I said, as I showed off my eloquent thoughts and gallant manners. Speaking of death and flowers, what is with the flowers of death outside?

Oh yes, the landlady died, Zainab said.

I’ll pass by tomorrow and pay my respects to her son. Or better yet, I will write him a letter of condolence. May I have that promised drink now, please? I asked. Some days can only be concluded with a certain amount of intoxication.

Here you go, Fly, Zainab said, and poured me a glass of whisky.

And so we all drank and continued our conversation about death, histories, and other inevitable matters.

May I use your bathroom? I asked, with a certain urgency. Though I could always return to my apartment and use mine, if you promise to let me in again.

No, we don’t want to lose you now that the conversation has gotten interesting. You can go here, Zainab said. We will wait for you.

I want to hear more about the cannon man and his companion, Gina said.

I walked down the long hallway to the bathroom with my whisky glass still in my hand. But then I thought that it might be dangerous to take it with me into the bathroom (drops of the same yellow hue could accidentally mix and be drunk in a moment of confusion or excitement), so I went back to the kitchen to deposit my drink on the counter, and what did I see but Zainab and the woman in each other’s arms, kissing and embracing tightly among the garden of dried flowers.

I gulped my drink in one shot and I tiptoed back to relieve myself.

Back in the kitchen, I helped myself to another drink and called it a night, telling Zainab that I would leave the empty glass at her door.

Zainab smiled at me and said, No problem, Fly. Here, keep the little that is left in the bottle. I think Gina and I are done drinking for the night.

I SAT AT my desk, alone, and drank some more. I flooded the walls with light and shone the lamp on the spider web. The light shall bring the looting of blood from the flying cadavers of the night, I recited. The end, contrary to all popular beliefs, never comes to us, I proclaimed. It is we transient creatures who happily, clumsily, philosophically, drunk with the hardness of denial and the cloudiness of faith, walk towards it with open wings. Death is the inevitable net that shall scoop up the last swing, last sigh, and last blink before the last play, the last note in this symphony of chords in the web of nature that shall inevitably wrap us and bite us to an eternal sleep, I concluded.

I woke up the next day and realized that I had fallen asleep on the carpet, in yet another failed attempt to change history and prevent the splattering of blood.

MIMI

THE NEXT EVENING, I went down to my car, and in the thin light of the garage, I saw a shape that looked like a quilt resting on the back seat. I opened the door and picked it up. It was indeed a quilt. I took it and opened my trunk and laid it inside. I didn’t remember seeing any quilt the previous night, either before or after Zee’s death. There was also a faint smell of alcohol and tiredness and even fear.

I worked steadily for the rest of that night, and towards morning I drove back home. The streets were empty but for the hundreds of plastic cups and beer bottles that littered the ground. From behind the haze of the windshield, the streets looked like an ocean filled with bottles carrying messages. I remembered the letters the bearded lady had received from the dispersed people of the circus. Once in a while she would get a colourful letter from a magician in Germany or a lion tamer in Africa, or photos from the Siamese twins who had married two women and had, between them, four kids. The circus people all kept in touch and, through this network of letters, we learned that it was the animal keeper who was having the worst time making a living. He had tried all the zoos and all the circuses, but nothing had come of his efforts. In one of his letters, he told the bearded lady that he was working in the furnace room of a cement factory, and he eloquently described to her the fires and the baking of the earth. All starts here, he wrote. All these new nations bake the earth to build and make stones. But the weight of progress and the benefits of contractors and the wealth of nations began to take a toll on the man. His skin itched and his lungs were clogged with dust and chemicals, and then, one day, he died from the smoke and the toxic powders and asbestos that make cities and pave their stretches of sidewalks.

Another tragedy was the magician, who had left Germany and retreated to a small village in the Balkans. He lived in a modest house and ate what the villagers sold to him for a good price. Life was good until he made the wife of the baker disappear at night and reappear in the morning naked from behind the bushes, and until he transformed the daughter of the mayor into an adorable rabbit, hopping through the window every evening and into the meadow. After that, he packed his top hat, escaped, and flew with the help of his cape back to the city.

And then there was Mimi the dwarf, who got involved in an international diamond-trafficking ring. Mimi was provided with a fake passport stating a fake age and a fake name. She dressed up as a little girl and carried a doll in her hands. She was accompanied by another lady who pretended to be her mother. And then they crossed the ocean in fancy cruise ships, smuggling stolen diamonds inside Mimi’s doll. The so-called mother pretended to be a White Russian countess from the Cossack region. She was known as the Contessa Tambbar Koussa. She snubbed everyone as expected and spoke French in the tradition of nineteenth-century Russian writers such as Turgenev and Pushkin. She had schooled Mimi in manners and le savoir-vivre , and Mimi was always on her best behaviour in her bell-shaped dress and curly hair.

Mimi would curtsy to society ladies and men and she even played the piano and occasionally tap danced, but when the conversation became unbearably pompous, conservative, and dull, Mimi would throw a tantrum and kick the women in the ankles and punch the men in their groins. On deck, the Contessa Tambbar Koussa, whose main conversational tack was to reminisce about her two dogs and the cruelty of not allowing animals in the dining hall, would call out to Mimi, Precious, don’t get yourself wet! A coded phrase meaning: Don’t get too excited about the muscular sailors on board, about whom Mimi fantasized every night, masturbating under the sheets of the top bunk of their cabin.