Animal fete

THANK GOD IT’S FRIDAY

BC PIRES

The plot, characters and many words in this column were lifted, mutatis mutandis, from George Orwell’s Animal Farm

JONES DE VERTEUIL, of the Great House, meant to lock the animals in their pens one Carnival Sunday night, but was too drunk. So, when he drove his old Bentley to the Country Club fete, the animals walked to the Savannah, to listen to Old Major Eric Williams, already ensconced in the bleachers the French Creole men had built for the costumed band parade.

First came the three dogs, Sparrow, Kitchener and the pup, Shadow. Then came the pigs, all of them black, except for one pinkish one called Colm Humphrey. The two cart-horses, African Boxer and Injun Clover, came in, carefully setting down their great hooves lest there be some small animal concealed in the grass. Then came Muriel, leading a brigade of fat as---. Last came the donkey, Benjamin Commentator, who seldom talked, except to make cynical remarks in his newspaper column.

“Comrade Sufferers,” bellowed Old Major Williams, “Carnival is an aristocratic French Creole Catholic festival. No part comes from the animal-roots, except the songs we sing to help us bear our burden, which they corrupt into their Road March, making merry while we suffer. They actually jump up on us on their high truck, elevating themselves and reducing us to mere admirers of their masquerade. They research their costumes and portrayals carefully, to parade their superiority over us. And what do we get from the Carnival? The chance to stand at the side of the road and sell cold beers to them? Comrade Sufferers, we must make the Carnival better for all animals!”

Old McWilliams died peacefully in a deep sleep, induced by speeches of Trinidadian nation-building politicians, without himself seeing an animal fete. But, one year – 1970, at Carnival, after a particularly vicious whipping – the animals broke from their stalls and when the French Creoles saw these creatures running wild, they fled their trucks, abandoning the Carnival to the animals.

The first animal Carnivals were glorious. Led by a piglet called Snow-Minsh-ball, the animals presented masquerades uplifting the white French Creole idea with a love of colour. Paradise had not been lost. Animals could cleanse themselves of the rat race in the river of possibility. The music, lifted to new heights by the pup, Shadow, was given the Rudder it desperately needed, and the animal fete blew love everywhere.

The animals set out seven animal fete commandments: 1. Whatever includes all o’ we is good. 2. Whatever keeps out any o’ we is bad. 3. No animal shall copy Carnival costumes. 4. No animal shall repeat the same mas under a different name next Carnival. 5. All costumes must be made by hand in Trinidad. 6. Every animal Carnival band must have a steelband in it. 7. All animals are equal.

And then the pigs started to play themselves.

Overheating in jackets, choking on ties, they began protecting pig interests. They drove Snow-Minsh-ball out of the Carnival and, when they found the mas boring, made it “better“ by offering what pigs wanted: larger and larger cash prizes for bands growing thinner and thinner in concept.

Until there was nothing left to animal Carnival costumes but bathing suits covered in glitter, beads and feathers.

With the sheep bleating, “Four chords good, 250 beats-per-minute better,” the pigs kept the first “all-inclusive” fete, which excluded everyone who couldn’t pay $1,000 for doubles and a glass of Cristal. No design whatever went into costumes. The animal Carnival began to be made entirely in China and shipped to Trinidad in cardboard boxes.

The more ridiculous the animal Carnival became, and the more inane the soca grew, the more determined African Boxer and Injun Clover were to keep the animal fete going. “I will jump higher,” said Boxer, and he began going to three all-inclusive fetes he couldn’t afford instead of two; African Boxer and Injun Clover got on wilder and wilder, waving their forelegs in the air and jumping up like they just didn’t care if their hooves crushed smaller animals.

And the pigs in their jackets and ties (and, occasionally, US$1,000 gym boots) threw money about more wildly, and everyone stopped drinking rum and started calling for champagne.

And the animal-sufferers looked from the French Creole Carnival to the animal fete, and it would have been impossible to say which was which; except that, in the animal fete, they could no longer stand at the side of the road and sell cold beers to masqueraders.

BC Pires is not jumping and waving but waving and drowning. E-mail your Chinese steelpans to him at bc@BCPires.com. A version of this column appeared in February 2013