Still, something was holding her back. Months of living in the bush with Abitefa had made her sensitive to the slightest sounds. Too much noise in a town. Underneath all the shouting and the pan playing there was a sursurus: maybe a tiny cross-breeze, a little warmer than the rest of the air, skittering past her shins; there was a low thrumming that didn’t seem to be coming from the steel band. There was a barely audible staccato tattoo that wasn’t noisemakers. What was wrong?
Truth to tell though, nothing could be completely right about Carnival in this shadow land of New Half-Way Tree. Everyone here was an exile; this could only be a phantom of the celebration they would have had on Toussaint.
Cho! She couldn’t hang back like this all day. Time for fête, yes!
Tan-Tan took a deep breath and stepped round the corner of the new Palaver House, into Carnival in Sweet Pone.
Mama, if you see Masque!
The steel pan band was on a stage in the middle of the square, a whole side of about thirty pan men and women, beating the tune out of the steel drums with sticks wrapped in rubber. And dancing! The pan people-self couldn’t help stamping their feet to the music they were making. The whole stage was only jerking up and down to the beat.
Tout monde in Sweet Pone and the surrounding settlements must have been in the town square jumping-up to the music. Carnival was bringing people together on New Half-Way Tree. Tan-Tan revelled in the finery of the Bats and Jab-Jabs and Fancy Indians. It even had a few small bands, oui? A Pissenlit band inna Old Masque stylee: one set of hard-back men dressed off in women’s white petticoats, twisting and jutting their hips to show off the red stains painted on their panties; a Sailor band, every man and woman wearing navy and white naval uniforms with bell-bottom pants, and swaying from side to side like drunken sailors; a tiny Burroquite band, just two people—the King in satin and rhinestones, wearing a papier-mâché horse round his waist to look like he was riding it. Beside him came the Queen in her sari, passing round the brass plate to collect money. To the tune of the steel band the two of them were chanting:
Midnight Robbers were holding up people to make their speeches. People were laughing at the verbal garbiage and handing over booty: calabashes of liquor; silver jewelry; taking off their good leather shoes even and giving them to the robbers.
The people who didn’t have on costumes had dressed for show anyway: their tightest bodices, their brightest bandanas. And plenty of people were beating bottle and spoon in time to the music.
“Oi-yo-yoi! Oi-yo-yoi!” chorussed two men in front of Tan-Tan, winding down each other, belly to behind. The man in front had on the tiniest pair of shorts Tan-Tan had ever seen. His brown skin was glistening from sweat and the gold glitter he had dusted all over his body. The cords in his thighs were like steel cable winching him low. He gyrated his hips against his dance partner’s crotch. The man in back was wearing a loincloth and nothing else but a pair of alpagat slippers. His hair was chopped off at the sides. He waved round a wooden tomahawk as he danced. His round belly rolled and jumped in time. Tan-Tan smiled to see the two of them.
“Lower! Match me, come on!” Clustered in a circle, four people were having a contest to see who could wind down nearest to the ground without falling over. They spread their knees wide apart, worked their twisting hips lower. Squealing and giggling, three of them toppled into the dust. The one left on her feet was a woman wearing a halter top with an eye painted on over each bubby. She stood from her crouch, did a little victory dance, hands sketching curlicues in the air. The three rivals laughed, got up, brushed themselves off. One of them squirted a drink into the winner’s mouth from a leather bottle. Arm in arm, the four of them danced off to the middle of the square. Mama, this is Masque! Today, tout monde forget all their troubles. Music too sweet, oui!
Tan-Tan cocked her hips to one side, then the other. They felt rusty. How could she have forgotten how to dance?
The rhythm soon caught her up in it, though. Swaying to the music, she worked her way past the two men, right into the comess of Carnival. She swung her sack over her shoulder and just lost herself in the music for a while. Was that Melonhead over there? No. She’d probably buck him up soon.
Time to try to earn her coppers this Carnival day. She moved to the outskirts of the square, chipped along until she spied a likely target for her first speech; an old man dancing at the edge of the crowd. She unholstered her cap gun, presented herself in front of him, and shot off plai! plai! into the air.
“Papa-oi! Stand and hear my tribulation.”
The old man grinned and folded his arms, waiting to judge if her speech would be good enough for him to drop some coppers into her sack.
“Stand and deliver up your tears and your pounds,” said the Robber Queen, “else your tears and your life for my grievous and sad accounting!”
Her voice swelled with power as the Robber Queen persona came upon her. She spun him the tale, about being born a princess among men. “My father, Lord Raja, was the King of Kings, nemesis of the mighty. He command the engines of the earth, and they obey him. My mother, Queen Niobe, cause the stars to fall out the sky at her beauty and the wind to sigh at she nimble body as she dance. How I could not be joyful? How I could not be blissful?” She wove her deft weave about being kidnapped and stolen away. About fleeing her captors, stealing to survive, helping those worse off than herself. “A mere snap of my fingers jook terror into the hearts of the dastardly!”
A small crowd of people had gathered to hear the speech. A few of them flipped coins of copper and brass into her sack. Finally the old man tossed her two coppers too. A good first take. They honoured her as they should. The Midnight Robber bowed graciously, accepting their beneficence. Her small audience clapped, dispersed. Tan-Tan blinked to find herself just a woman in a costume once more.
She went on a little farther, performed her piece a few more times, gathered more coin and gifts. Was going to be hard taking all this back to Abitefa, and her back was hurting her today. Maybe Melonhead would help. She danced some more, but the underlying hum it seemed only she could hear was throwing her off. She wasn’t going to let it get in the way of her first fête in years. She worked her way to the front, right up close to where the band was playing. Music so loud it danced in her blood like her very own heartbeat. Yes, like so. She put her hands on the stage, her behind in the air, and gyrated to the rhythm. “Put your hand in the air!” she shouted with the chorus. Yes, allyou; watch the Robber Queen dance.
A loud tone blatted out over the square. The tenor pans stopped first. People in the crowd started to complain. Then the bass pans fell quiet. The trumpet cut out with a rude noise. What wrong with them? Tan-Tan looked up at the stage. All the musicians were staring open-mouthed behind her. The crowd was silent. There was a controlled purring noise coming from behind her back, a slight hiss. Tan-Tan turned round.
The bullet-shaped tank was sleek as a cat. Its metal body had been buffed to a reflective shine. Rivets made a stylish punctuation along its sides. Nothing on all of New Half-Way Tree looked like it. It advanced slowly on her, thrumming low in its belly, oiled treads whispering over the dust of the town square. Sunlight bounced needles of light off its mirrored hide. Its headlights tracked back and forth as they searched, searched for her. Its horn brayed again. Her fate had found her. Petrified, Tan-Tan could only watch it come.