Carnival Read Online Free PDF

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?
    He said that nothing is legal in this universe and I agreed with him, so I said yes.
    There need to be some laws, said Zainab, or everything will go to chaos.
    God’s laws?
    Man’s laws, she said, or God’s laws, nature’s laws, some guidance by something bigger.
    Man’s laws are self-serving, nature’s laws are arbitrary, and God’s laws, I proclaimed, are in need of some serious updates.
    Such as?
    The forbidding of wine, for instance. Granted, I also hate those pretentious “sophisticated” people and their swirling and sniffing and spitting of wine. Shouldn’t there be an amendment of some sort by these deities, an appendix, a second or third edition with an introduction by the translator, explaining the harm, or indeed the benefit, of wine? And how about an apologetic statement in defence of the text’s irrelevance in this age of great scientific discoveries. Or a treatise on the importance of free love! Definitely, this archaic lot of religious elders needs to take another look at love . . . What’s with your ever-absent patriarchal gods? Their laws are becoming as old as dog’s tricks.
    But maybe they are absent only to you.
    Heureusement , I said, and acted like a Frenchman with champagne and flowers in hand. It would certainly be traumatizing to meet any of them. Just the sight of the blood on their hands would make me want to cuff them to my bed and slap the shit out of them . . .
    She smiled and almost laughed.
    You are a joker, she said. I have to go.
    BRAZIL
    THE NEXT NIGHT I picked up four drunk numbskulls. They were all wearing white suits for some inexplicable reason, and they were rowdy. When they had finished barraging each other with fucks and oh yeah, oh yeahs , one of them, maybe to defuse the inner violence of the group, turned to me, the scapegoat, and asked me where I came from.
    I knew perfectly well where that question would lead. I said Brazil, because that would turn the conversation to beaches and thongs and, if I was lucky, football and carnivals. They would find something to agree upon, women on beaches, bikini dances and surfing, and oh yeah would become words of agreement and fuck would regain its literary sense.
    But then one of those smartasses looked at my name on the dashboard and started to shout, What kind of Brazilian name is that? You are a fucking towelhead or one of those things there, from the desert and shit, Brazilian my ass, fuck. You are a camel jockey, liar, and I bet you are taking us the long way.
    Yeah, one of them shouted, I don’t see our hotel yet, buddy. Are you taking us tourists for a ride? We may be from out of town but we’re still in our own country! You can’t fool us.
    I kept quiet while they shouted at me and jeered and became rowdy again.
    And one of them, as I pulled up to the hotel, said, Liar, maybe you should go back to BRAZIL, liar. And they all shouted, Brazil my ass! and slammed the door. They didn’t want to pay me. Their alcohol breath said to me: We don’t pay liars and cheats.
    I followed them into the hotel, my Philips hiding in my sleeve, because I had once promised myself that everyone pays. I told them that I would get paid or I would turn their white suits into splashes of red, I would hunt them in bars and wait for them all night if I had to. I am capable of swiftly pulling the bedsheets out from under their sleeping heads without waking them up, I could make their prostitutes appear in their girlfriends’ closets, I could