The Last Carousel

by Nelson Algren

  “I know, I know,” I interrupted him, “a cat, a lion and a camel.”

  The rain that was not rain touched the windshield; a wind that was not wind touched the dust. I was half asleep when, bright in the headlights’ glow, came a camel that was not a camel.

  It was pulling a cart. The driver was walking alongside.

  Hassine watched the camel and cart go by: I watched Hassine.

  I kept my silence long after we had passed the group. It was growing light before Hassine spoke.

  “That was not a camel”—he gave me his forgiving smile—“it was a dromedary. A beast that will do anything.”

  Madame murmured something; then laughed, very lightly; more in sleep than in waking.

  The day we returned to the Hotel Tunisia Palace I took a dozen rolls of film to a shop for developing. Later, when I called for them, the owner shook his head sadly and showed me a dozen rolls of blackened film.

  “Camera malade, ” he explained politely, and declined payment.

  An old saying of the desert: Three things cannot be made to pull a cart: a sick camera; a fat Arab; and a humorless woman.

  I KNOW THEY’LL LIKE ME IN SAIGON

  San Francisco

  1 Nov. 1968

  Mr. Joel Wells

  The Critic

  180 N. Wabash Ave.

  Chicago, I11.

  Dear Joel Wells,

  I’m here in San Francisco waiting to board the Oriental Jade, a Republic of China cargoliner bound for Southeast Asia, because I always go where I’m needed most.

  I know they’ll like me in Saigon: Emmett Dedmon has just told me so in the Chicago Sunday Sun-Times. Emmett discovered, during his recent tour of Southeast Asia, that the South Vietnamese have added gratitude to their natural affection for Americans, because we are helping them to preserve their democracy. In the Mekong Delta Emmett had to talk a village chief out of forming an Emmett Dedmon Fan Club. And he was only able to tear himself away by promising the people solemnly that, if they’d let him go, he’d send them more Americans just like himself. I can hardly wait to get there. I’d board the Oriental Jade today if I had my passport.

  I sent it to the Embassy of the Republic of Vietnam in September, along with an application for a visa to that country and a five-dollar check. The application was received there but the passport and the check disappeared themselves.

  I obtained another passport, sent it by registered mail, received a receipt and a telephone assurance that everything was now in order, and the visaed passport was being sent to my Chicago address by airmail special delivery—with profuse apologies.

  That was eleven days ago and it hasn’t arrived yet. Slow as the U.S. mails may be, they aren’t that slow. I have now just a little over twenty-four hours to get yet another passport. Needless to say, I won’t entrust this one to the Embassy of the Republic of Vietnam. I asked Kay Boyle her opinion of L’affaire du Passeport. “American shenanigans,” was her comment.

  My father was bom in this city a hundred years ago. I think it would have been bright of him to have stayed right here. I don’t know whether that would have made me better looking; but I’m sure I would have had more fun.

  The Chicagoan bom in Chicago becomes an expatriate without moving off his own street. The San Franciscan becomes a tourist without leaving town. This is because Chicago streets are laid out simply to provide a means of getting to the nearest bank without using a machete. But San Francisco’s streets were laid out to provide comers for San Franciscans to stand on while watching other San Franciscans passing by.

  And they pass by all the time, mostly going up and down on cable-cars; and looking out to see who’s standing on the comers to watch them going up and down. The ride up and down hill on the Grant Street cable car is only fifteen cents and has more gaiety than the ferris wheel at Riverview Park ever had because everybody is heaped into the same basket; with the happiest cats those hanging on for dear life on the outside.

  Saturday afternoon there was a mob—enough to fill four cars —waiting to board at the Grant Street dock. One block north they can take the bus; but the women shoppers prefer the cable car because the chances of getting jostled are better.

  After those cold blank faces of the Saturday buses in Chicago, what a happy change! It takes two big men to run this thing: one to control that big iron machine—a very strong man’s job—and the other to collect fares and cheer up his colleague who does the heavy work. “Ring that thing!” he commands the driver, “Santa Claus is in the next car.”

  I thought he was making it up about Santa Claus; but he wasn’t. The driver began banging on his bell like mad, trying to get Jingle Bells out of it and coming pretty close; because here come Santa Claus!

  That’s right. About twenty of the prettiest chicks you ever saw, dressed in red and white miniskirts, were stopping traffic by sending up huge green, yellow and orange balloons and carrying signs, “Santa is coming!” Then, right behind them, an old-fashioned fire engine, also full of chicks with balloons, and its driver banging crazily on a steam calliope playing “Dreaming of a White Christmas”—this is on a hot, white, summery sunny day—and all directed by a clown-cop. Maybe he was a cop, I don’t know; but he was wearing shades, had a beard, and was sporting some kind of zebra-striped hippie cloak. I never saw anything like it—no chance of anyone getting through that traffic; and nobody seeming to mind in the least.

  Sitting on one of those dirt-filled boxes out of which a tree is trying to grow, a teen-age girl with a face like an unfed Pekingese catches my eye and asks me something. She says it so low I can’t hear her—but I’ve already made up my mind I’m not buying The Berkeley Barb. She’s not selling: “Can you spare some change?”

  “Change? How much? What for?” I was startled.

  “To eat, of course.”

  To eat? I’d already had breakfast! Then I realized she wanted breakfast, too! I gave her a quarter and waited for my change.

  The little devil dashed into a restaurant with the whole quarter—and there wasn’t a cop in sight! God, what I would have given in that moment for four of Daley’s Boys in Blue to give her a faceful of mace, eighteen stitches in her skull and a couple of teeth knocked out so they’d know her the next time they saw her. “WANTED: May be armed; white, female, seventeen, solicits funds on the open street and keeps the change; attended classes in Berkeley and is suspected of being a flower-child and illegal sexual activity.” These are things that make a man homesick for his home town.

  Another transportation curiosity here: the drivers on the buses don’t carry change. You have exact fare or you lose, that’s all. How I found out was that I put a quarter in the slot (the fare is fifteen cents) and the driver just laughed—“the dime is for charity.” Again there wasn’t a cop in sight.

  Bay Meadows has the best paddock I’ve ever seen at a racetrack. It’s under the clubhouse and is circular, like a circus ring. The whole atmosphere of the track, like the city, is circus-like.

  Had a good day: four straight winners, then a miss, then another winner. Then I skipped a race, threw away The Form and asked the girl I was with, who’d never been at a track before nor seen a Form, to tell me what her ESP was whispering. She felt it was Abighai’s Nugget, in the eleventh post position and off at 45-1. I put fifty dollars of their money on Abighai to win and twenty more—also theirs—to place. The horse broke second and held it, continued to hold it, and before my mind’s eye, as they came into the turn for home, a line of figures began crossing like a line of Rock Island box-car numbers—2,440.80/668.20. The rider lost ground on the turn. The horse came in fourth.

  I leaned my head on the rail until the box-car figures disappeared themselves. When I recovered a bit of self-control I looked up at the girl. She was studying me apprehensively, like a child who thinks she’s done something wrong but doesn’t know what.

  “I’m sorry,” she apologized, “I was only guessing.”

  “You guessed just right,” I had to reassu
re her—“the rider let the horse out too soon. If he’d held him until the turn—let’s forget it and have a drink. ’ ’

  The moral being that when in San Francisco, throw away your Form. This has something to do with the climate, because the city don’t work by the rules. Not only do people operate more on ESP than on logic here, but so do the horses.

  Columnists whose impact goes beyond their city limits are rare as albino rhinos. After Finley Peter Dunne’s Mr. Dooley passed in Chicago, it was fifty years before Mike Royko showed up there. New York hasn’t had anyone like Hey wood Broun since Hey wood Broun. Ralph Gleason, operating out of San Francisco, struck a national chord with youth from coast to coast, through literature and jazz, in the fifties. He revealed the humbuggery of describing performers like Al Jolson as “Jazzmen.” His discernment, always based on feeling instead of tradition, caught suburban as well as slum kids. After twenty years he still has the touch.

  He bears a physical resemblance to Jimmy Gleason. If you don’t know who Jimmy Gleason was, forget it. If you don’t know who Kid Gleason was, forget that, too. If you know who Jackie Gleason is, it doesn’t matter; because Ralph doesn’t resemble him either.

  Meanwhile back at the Embassy of the Republic of Vietnam, I am reassured by phone, that my passport and visa have been sent by registered airmail, special delivery to my Chicago address.

  But when I phoned a friendly neighbor, who has been on the hawks for it, she assured me that it hasn’t arrived. There’s no use applying for another passport because they simply wouldn’t believe that I’m not selling them as fast as they can issue them.

  I want to go to Japan because I know they belong to us. I have 48 rolls of film but I have no intention of wasting as much as a single roll on countries that don’t belong to us.

  Or even on countries that do, but don’t want to. There are three or four of those. Emmett didn’t name them but he implied that there are countries that aren’t as sound as South Vietnam. Thailand is okay but there’s something funny going on in Cambodia, which doesn’t seem to want to belong to anybody!

  If they don’t want to belong to anybody, they won’t get pictures taken of them, that’s all. And that goes for North Vietnam; because it belongs to them.

  My camera is made in Japan and is described, in the directions for its use, as foolproof. With forty-eight rolls of film I should be able to get snapshots of half the fools in Asia.

  I can’t help feeling pleased with myself for getting away from Chicago’s dangerous streets and finding myself a peaceful sanctuary in a small Asian city where a long tradition of nonviolence has been elevated by a hundred years of French culture. There is a Chinese suburb —Cholon—in which I plan to find a quiet set of rooms at a fantastically low rental; including maid service.

  I know they’ll like me in Cholon.

  How I figure it is that since Chicago Caucasians, by and large, love me so little, Chinese Buddhists must love me a lot. Don’t you think so? Especially if I give autographs, free, to their little ones? I think I’ll begin by winning the hearts and minds of the children and then work up to the adults.

  Yet something tells me I’m not going in the right direction. It’s getting harder to tell where one’s responsibility lies. If I had it to do all over again I’d settle for reporting the border crisis between Liechtenstein and Switzerland, which is going imperialistic; as is plain to see. On the other hand, countries that don’t belong to us have a tendency to practice genocide—and that goes for those rotten Liechtensteiners, too! Isn’t it interesting that the genocide-practicers—like Liechtenstein, Biafra, Guatemala, Iceland, Laos and Tanzania—belong to them? While the non-violent regimes—Salazar’s, Franco’s, Vorster’s, Duvalier’s and the Greek Junta’s—belong to us?

  I’ll make the Oriental Jade. Less than eight hours before sailing-time, the passport arrived, special delivery, in the hotel lobby.

  The Embassy of the Republic of South Vietnam had sent it airmail special delivery, just as I’d been assured. But had mailed it to Ames, Iowa.

  Ames? Iowa?

  I’ve never been in Ames, know nobody there, have no relatives or friends who ever went there.

  How the passport found its way into the hotel lobby here I’ll never know. I think I have my friendly neighbor to thank.

  Certainly not the Embassy of the Republic of Vietnam.

  If the South Vietnamese are running a war the way they’re handling their mail, Uncle Ho don’t need to send soldiers: the Saigon Government will collapse of its own incompetence.

  I keep thinking of that San Francisco cop directing impossible traffic in an impossible getup—a clownified yippie purporting to represent law and order. Could it be that the accusation that the U.S.A. is trying to be the policeman of the world would be more accurate if the accusation was that he’s a clown armed to the teeth? I don’t know. I’m only asking.

  AIRY PERSIFLAGE ON THE

  HEAVING DEEP

  or

  Sam, you made the ship too short

  THIS is a Chiang-Kai-shekified cargo-tub whose crew is largely out of Taiwan; ferrying sixty-odd Caucasoids largely out of Lingering Death, Nevada. We share a saltwater swimming pool five feet deep and just wide enough to accommodate four Nevadans or seven Asians. When all eleven make it together you can fancy the jostling for position. Particularly since the pool is bone dry.

  Well, so is Nevada.

  We sailed out of San Francisco in a pelting rain and, two days out, it’s pelting yet. “We guess weatha will cwear wain,” the purser, Mr. Ho, announced on the PA system this morning. She tilts, then she plunges and albatrosses follow in the rain.

  The bullies draped us in orange life preservers (stenciled S.S. Moon of the Orient) this morning. Then brought us out on deck sick or well. Where we had to watch them drag a length of leaky hose down the deck merely to exhibit Mysterious Oriental Skill. If the captain’s hose don’t hold water how am I to depend upon his life preserver? Even a Caucasoid can have enemies.

  When they began sprinkling water into the sea, we all cheered dutifully. I hadn’t realized we were passing a shallow place in the Pacific: We owe our lives to these brave fellows.

  She pitches as she sways as she rolls. Is the captain doing it on purpose? A man who’ll provide leaky life preservers is capable of anything. Even a paranoid Caucasoid can have enemies.

  “We guess the wain cwears the weatha.” Mr. Ho keeps working at it.

  As she tilts as she lurches and buckles in every beam. There’ll be faces missing at breakfast. If some are still missing at lunch it’s all right with me.

  If the captain isn’t doing this on purpose, then they made the ship too short. That, or they made the waves too long.

  “Now guess choppy weatha.” I’ll say this much for Mr. Ho: He admits he’s guessing. That’s more than can be said of the captain. That one goes around the deck telling tax-paying Americans, “That bird are arbatross.” More guesswork: If all they are are albatrosses, why do they keep swinging down over the deck looking for seasick passengers? I don’t mind his guesswork on seagoing buzzards; but, with our destination in his hands, I want him to start using instruments. Even a seasick paranoid Caucasoid can have enemies.

  After the heady excitements of fire drill and the tour of the engine room, I doubt my nerves will be up to tonight’s showing of Kim Novak at the Tokyo Olympics. I’ve worked too long to gain the upper hand of my emotions to have them set ablaze, at this late hour, by The Passion-flower of Albany Park.

  As she glides as she slides as she rides. For the sun is out, Mr. Ho is being feted at the bar for his wonderful guesswork, the shuffleboard players totter and tilt; there is merriment in the Mandarin Lounge and the pool is asplash. I swam strongly the full eleven-foot length of the pool and then swam back again. Although breathing heavily, I was not exhausted. But I had to get out because someone else was waiting to get in.

  The albatrosses drift and wheel and the blue waters roll.

  In the deck chai
r next to mine, a woman studying a paperback on astrology removed her shades. In a sun too bright, in a face too white, green eye-shadow made her face look both young and ravaged. A lot of mileage for a run so brief.

  “Are you making the round trip?” she asked.

  “No. I’m getting off in Yokohama.”

  “Are you going to live in Japan?”

  “No. I’m going to Saigon.”

  “Will you feel safe there?”

  “Safe as where I’m coming from. At least I’ll be able to walk around the parks. I’m from Chicago.”

  “Are your parks so dangerous?”

  “It’s not too bad in the daytime, provided you stay inside the lion-and-leopard building. We can even sit on the grass. But we have to get out after dark. Chicago parks are privately owned.”

  Her eyes were a fading hazel and her voice kept dying off. Her bikini,once scarlet, was washed to a sickly rose. She was pregnant yet she seemed to be traveling alone.

  “What day were you born?” she asked.

  “March 28th.”

  “You’ll be all right,” she decided, “that’s Aries.”

  “Where are you from?” I only thought I’d ask.

  “Pisces.”

  I hadn’t known the sun was that strong.

  I’m flanked, in the dining room, by a wisp of a blue-eyed Lancashire woman of seventy named Kathryn; and by the astrology bug from Pisces. Behind the centerpiece is a Mr. Earl D’Xavier, a gardenia gone bamboo. He was bom in East St. Louis, Illinois, and now makes his home in Hong Kong.

  “I adore the Taiwanese,” Earl assured the breakfast board, “I adore the Thais too. I adore the Chinese because they make Silver-Fungus soup.”

  “I like Water-Dyaks best of any,” I tried my best to be agreeable. “They eat mushed fish with a double-pronged spoon.” And reached for the maple syrup.

  “I adore maple syrup,” he purred in his tenderest key, peeking around the centerpiece at me.

  I couldn’t see whether his ears were pierced but I let the griddle cake lay.

  As his adorations are infinite and tastes exquisite, his years are indefinite and his manners execrable.