The Box (8 page)

“Yes what?” said Quinn.

“Yes, Yes?”

It’s the only English he knows, thought Quinn, and he is a beggar.

“Yes?” said the man again and this time he laughed. He swayed the fence a little and laughed.

“I don’t know what you want,” said Quinn and turned away.

He looked through the fence and wished that the man, who might also be an idiot, would stop swaying the wire mesh. The mesh swayed more and suddenly gave a wild jerk, hitting Quinn in the face.

“Yes? Yes?”

The man laughed again even though Quinn turned with a sharp motion, full of anger.

“Yes!”

What to say. How talk to an idiot who knows one word and laughs all the time. And then Quinn saw that there was another man.

Then he realized why he had not heard either of them. One of them was barefooted and the other, the grinning one by the fence, had rags wound around his feet, giving them the shape of soft loaves.

The barefooted one came from the water side and the grinning one also came closer. Then the barefooted one leaped.

Quinn smelled a terrible stink from the man, and for that first moment Quinn struggled only because of that. But then the grinning one hurt him. He had his arms around Quinn’s middle and his hands dug Quinn in the spine. For some strange reason, Quinn could suddenly hear nothing. The man let go, stepped back, hit Quinn in the face. Quinn felt confused and therefore weak. Even the slap in the face did not arouse him. He found no anger, no strength, no clear-cut emotion. He wanted to say “Why?”, and he wanted to ask this for most of the time that he was still conscious.

It was a strange fight and it did not last very long. Quinn hit back and saw the man laugh. He could hear again in a moment and heard the dry skin sound of bare feet, the lick sound of the water, cough sound of the idiot laugh, twang sound of the fence, which gave like a net when the three men rolled against it. Quinn did not hurt much while they fought nor did he enjoy much what he was doing. Then he tasted blood and then his head jarred and he went out.

When he woke up he thought that he was on the junk with the light inside. He saw the light swaying and felt his insides turn over with nausea and thought, I’m seasick. But then he felt the stone floor under his hands and the hard weave of the fence pressing into his back. I’ve been out less than a minute, he thought. He knew this for certain because there was still the hard muscle pain in his stomach where he had been hit and the blood was fresh and warm on his lip. Also, his breathing was still going deep and heavy.

The other thing he knew for certain was why he had been jumped. He put one hand on his thigh, feeling the money wad still in his pocket. They hadn’t been beggars and they hadn’t been robbers, but Whitfield was in on this thing and the strong-arm business told him, Keep away from the pier. Here in Okar. Not back home, but here in Okar.

He looked at the lamp and saw how close it was and then he looked up and saw who was holding it.

“Are you all right, Mister Quinn?” said Remal.

Quinn set his teeth and did not answer. He heard footsteps running and saw Whitfield come around the side of the building. He was carrying a wet rag. He ran over to Quinn and crouched next to him and offered the rag to him. He tried to say something or other but nothing came out. He was also trying to smile and frown at the same time but was too upset for either.

“Put it on the back of your neck,” said Remal. “It will clear you.”

Clear enough, thought Quinn. Everything is very clear, except that the instinct has gone out of me and I sit here and feel so clear that I’m empty.

“Quinn? Uh, Quinn, I’m most terribly sorry…”

“Let Mister Quinn get up, if he wishes,” said Remal.

Quinn got up. He did this carefully, hooking his fingers into the fence and working up that way like a slow-moving monkey. When he stood he took a deep breath and looked at the other two men. Whitfield looked nervous and even embarrassed. Remal smiled. Quinn felt that he did not know about Remal yet.

“Can you walk?” said Whitfield. “If you can’t, just sit down again. Or come sit in my office.”

“Why sit in your office?” said Quinn, and, “Why are you here?”

“Remal wanted to talk to you,” said Whitfield. “You remember I told…”

“You had left when I came,” said Remal, “so we went out to look for you.”

“Here?” said Quinn.

Remal lifted the lantern he had in one hand and held it so the light shone on Quinn’s face. Remal looked closely at him and squinted a little.

“Bad cut,” he said. “Does not look very good,” and he put his free hand out and poked at the cut with two fingers, causing a sharp pain. “Yes, yes,” he said.

Quinn jerked his head back because of the pain and then wiped one eye, which had started to water. He felt confused again, and therefore weak. The instinct’s gone out of me, he thought. Damn all of them, but I’ll get it back—

Then they went around the long warehouse and into Whitfield’s office. The walking was not so bad.

Remal held the lamp and Whitfield found the switch on the wall for the light. Remal put the lamp on the floor but did not blow it out.

The office was a place with chairs, files and a desk, but it was not an Okar place, thought Quinn. This is a lot like a picture I’ve seen, illustrating something by Dickens. The desk had a pigeonhole back and there were ledgers with red leather spines. The swivel chair, Quinn thought, will probably creak.

Remal sat down in the chair and made it creak. The big man flounced his long shirt, crossed his legs, and touched the stitched skullcap on his head. This spoiled the illustration of something by Dickens. The Arab did not belong in such an office, the office did not belong in Okar, and Quinn, inconsequentially, thought of the upside-down street which had followed him overhead on his way down. His left eye still watered. That’s why I can’t find a focus, he thought.

“Yes, well,” said Remal, and looked at his hands. Then he folded them and looked at Quinn. “So it seems,” he said, “that your own consul has, one might say, committed you to my care. Does it hurt?”

Quinn took his hand away from his face and looked at his fingers. There was a small stain of blood there and he felt it by rubbing his fingertips together.

“I didn’t like it when you hurt me like that,” he said. “It felt like on purpose.”

“I apologize. Really, Mister Quinn.”

“Was it on purpose?”

Whitfield felt as if the air was suddenly getting terribly heavy. Quinn hasn’t moved and Remal hasn’t moved, he thought, but something has. A mood in Quinn. Everything he hasn’t done while he was getting his beating is now starting to move in him. Like a very slow waking up—

“Of course not,” said Remal. He even smiled, but without looking at Quinn. Then he said, “What needs to happen now, Mister Quinn, is to take better care of you while you are still here.”

“I don’t need any…”

“Please. You just got beaten up. I also apologize for that.”

“You didn’t do it.”

“I am the mayor. I do feel responsible.”

Whitfield sighed and sat down on a chair. Remal was acting official, which somehow took the black mood out of the room. Or perhaps now the mood could be ignored, the way Remal seemed to be ignoring Quinn. He talked to Quinn as if about routine business.

“And feeling responsible, Mister Quinn, here is how we shall handle this.”

Quinn leaned back in his chair, very slowly and cautiously it seemed to Whitfield. Then he saw Quinn stick out his tongue and touch the tip of it to the cut which ran down to his lip. Quinn did that very slowly too.

“As long as you have no papers,” said Remal, “you must stay here in town. This you know. And as long as you stay in this town, Mister Quinn, you must observe a few rules of safety.”

“Like don’t go out after dark?” said Quinn.

“Why, yes,” said Remal and smiled. Then the smile went again and he cleared his throat. “That is point number one. Point number two, please do not go into the Arab quarter. You are unfamiliar here, unfamiliar with ways and with people. They will find you strange and you will feel the same about them, which is always dangerous. It is best you have nothing to do with them.”

There was a small silence and then Quinn said, “Was there a third point?”

A silence again and Whitfield fingered his chin. He wished he were some place else.

“Yes. Point number three: Do not go near the waterfront after dark. I don’t think I need to explain why.”

“No. That you don’t.”

“After all, you are still suffering the consequences.”

Quinn got up from his chair and stretched himself carefully. He did this mostly to learn where he was hurting. Then he walked to the window which looked from the office into the warehouse, but it was dark on the other side and he saw only his own head reflected.

I don’t know, I don’t know, he thought. I give up Ryder and now I get this. Like a clear jinx riding me. Jinx in the box.

“And now that we understand each other…” Remal was saying, when Quinn turned around from the window.

“Have you got any idea why you don’t like me?” he said to Remal.

When Quinn heard himself say this he was as startled as the other two men. He turned back to the window. Got to get out, out of here. Go see Turk, he thought. See what there’s to see. I need more than my guesswork about cans smelling like booze—

“I really don’t know what you mean, Mister Quinn, seeing that you and I hardly know each other.”

We don’t, we don’t for a fact, but still I have this feeling—

“I have no feelings about you, Mister Quinn. Perhaps it is that which offends you.”

And he may be right. He’s the one who makes this vacuum around me, with no feelings one way or the other. I lost the instinct—Get a beating, get the runaround, get the law laid down to me. And nothing happens inside. I’ve lost the instinct—

“However,” said Remal, “I have not finished. There is this fourth point. If you do not obey…”

“Obey?” said Quinn.

“Perhaps my English is inadequate.” Remal shrugged.

“I think it is good,” said Quinn. “I don’t know what else to think of it but I think it is good.”

Remal looked at Whitfield and frowned. Quinn’s talk was confusing him. Perhaps, this Quinn person himself was confused, he thought, and he’d best put a halt to this quickly now.

“To finish,” he said and got up, “as I gather from the police officials and by inference, you are familiar with the rules of disobedience. I have talked to you, Mister Quinn, and I wish you no harm. But I have talked to you about rules and I am now finished talking. Whitfield, take him home.” Remal turned and walked out the door.

He left Quinn speechless and Whitfield worried. Whitfield did not think Quinn would stay speechless or dumfounded like this for very long.

Chapter 9

After the sirocco comes through and then disappears over the water, there is often a motion of slow, heavy air. Nobody feels it move in, but it is there, like a standing cloud, a mass of heat. This phenomenon, in a Western climate, might mean a thunderstorm and release. But not in Okar.

Quinn walked out into the street and felt it. He felt the still heat inside and out and how nothing moved. Something’s got to happen, he felt, something—

He walked next to Whitfield, ignoring him, aware only of the heat which did not move.

“Quinn, not so fast. Please,” said Whitfield. “The steps, you know,” and Whitfield puffed a little, which he blamed on breaking training with the two bottles in the back of the car.

Quinn stopped a few steps ahead of him, where the street leveled out again, and touched the side of his face.

“Uh. Quinn.”

“Yes.”

“I wanted to tell you I am most awfully sorry about what happened to you tonight. Please believe me.”

Nothing’s happened yet, thought Quinn. He felt himself breathe and how hard it was. He almost began to count. Like a count-down, he thought, except I don’t know how many numbers to go—

“Believe me, Quinn, I had no idea. What I mean is, I was most terribly shocked coming upon that scene there by the fence. Really, Quinn.”

“I believe you,” said Quinn. He was suddenly bored with Whitfield. “I really do, Whitfield,” he said in order to make his point and stop talking. He wanted to get away. Whitfield would soon start meandering again and that had a dulling effect. Like getting drunk on Whitfield, Quinn thought. Got to get away now. Nothing holds as still as I’ve been holding still and I don’t know how but it can’t be much longer.

They crossed the main street and Quinn stopped under a light. “Whitfield, listen. I’m not going home yet. I’m nervous.”

“Fine. We can go to the hotel, where they serve…”

“Not that kind of nervous. When you get home, leave the light on for me.”

“What’s that you said?”

The question was stupid because Whitfield had understood well enough. He stopped and watched Quinn walk off. Sighing, he watched Quinn’s back lit by a lamp, then dark in shadow, then lit by a lamp, the footsteps getting fainter.

He’s batty, thought Whitfield. Now he’s going to the Arab quarter. But I’m going home. The last time I told Remal where Quinn might be, Remal had the poor thing beaten up. I feel shaken about it even now. I must plan something soothing at home—

The Arab quarter, Quinn discovered, was not very large. He walked the narrow streets slowly and twice ended up in open country where he could see no roads. The quarter was not large but it was complicated, and Quinn knew he was lost almost immediately But that did not bother him. He knew with an uncomplicated certainty he would find his man. Or Turk would find him. It was also very simple in his mind why he had to see Turk. There is a rat here whom I can understand. And maybe I can use what he knows. Quinn had no clear notion what this last thought really meant, but he did not question it. Remal, of course, had pushed him around, but the fact was, he had not yet reacted to it.

Maybe it never rains here, he thought, and the heat just hangs, just stays this way—He broke out in a sudden sweat, as if frightened. The noise got to him just as suddenly as if there had been silence before, which was not true. Some Arabs were arguing, or perhaps they were just talking, but they yelled, and children yelled, and a dog howled. Even the light makes a noise, thought Quinn. The yellow light in the doorway wasn’t still but jumped and gutted.