The Box

Chapter 8

A late half light was over the town and in a very short time the sudden dusk would fall and then night. Quinn stretched when he got out of the car, slammed the door. He watched a dog run away Run, he thought, or you’ll get eaten Whitfield still sat in his seat. When Quinn bent down to look into the window, Whitfield had the wine jug on his lap where it was making a stain.

“Dear Quinn,” said Whitfield, “this may surprise you, but in addition to everything else I am extremely hungry. Eat your headaches away, is what my sainted aunt used to say. You should have seen her. Which is to say, Quinn, can’t this entire maddening transaction with the goddamn cans wait till morning?”

“We’re here now.”

“I’m just afraid you might haggle with me.”

“Look,” said Quinn. “None of this means a damn to you. To me it does. Suddenly, to me there is nothing as important as getting what is mine. Those cans are mine. And any more…”

“Please, please. You’re quite right. None of this means anything to me,” and Whitfield got out of the car.

It was still fairly light over the water, the sea black and yellow, zebra striped. Inside the warehouse the bulbs had been turned on, six hard lights in clear glass, like hard, shiny drops on black strings hanging from the high ceiling.

“Ah!” Whitfield said, and his sigh was strong and genuine with the relief he felt. “Here is your treasure.”

The canisters, ten of then, lay in a corner. Whitfield sat down on one of them. Quinn stood and counted them, as he had often done before, though he couldn’t remember this. Now they were completely his and worth money, and even if it was pennies only, the difference was big. He had back one of his habits, namely, to let nobody think they could take advantage of him.

“Well, now,” said Whitfield, “I’ve heard about cases of this sort, of course, being a fascinated student of your country’s folklore.” He waved his arm and looked bright. “Here lies the start of it. The bent, bumped and humble beginnings of a great fortune, no less. And there you are, born in a box, raised in a gutter. Next he owns the gutter, next he owns everything that floats, crawls or swims in that gutter-Stop me, Quinn, something is making me feel ill.”

Surprisingly, Quinn smiled. He had no quarrel with Whitfield. Most of all, he did not take him seriously. He looked at his canisters which were lying around in a puddle of water. How considerate that they should have washed the cans.

“Let’s say a buck apiece,” said Quinn.

He didn’t look at Whitfield when he said this, but picked up a canister and turned it over. A little water ran out.

“My dear Quinn. A buck is a dollar. I understand, and in view of that fantastic price let me ask you what in the hell you think I’m going to do with all these cans.”

“I don’t know,” said Quinn, “but I need the money.”

He does sound simple again, thought Whitfield, but I no longer believe it. He watched Quinn pick up another can, lift it and hold it for a while with a look on his face which Whitfield thought was almost dreamy.

“Let’s say I give you five dollars for the lot,” said Whitfield, “which is a veritable fortune in Okar. And all because you were, so to speak, shipped to me and I feel responsible in a way, though don’t ask me why. It would sound too sentimental. I do, however, feel responsible, as I might, for example, were a little bird to land on my window sill, exhausted from travel.”

He liked that image and thought about it with his eyes closed. Then he heard Quinn laugh. But when he opened his eyes and looked at Quinn, he did not see a simple laugh, simple enjoyment of a tender comparison to a tired bird; in fact, the smile and the face were complicated. By God, thought Whitfield, if this simpleton isn’t getting amazingly versatile with his features. He watched the smile fade off and Quinn put the can back down.

“Price just went up, I think,” said Quinn.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Let me check first,” said Quinn, and he picked up three more canisters at random, one after the other, and seemed to hook into the open tops. “Yes, yes,” he said, “price went up.”

Whitfield waited, being sure that there was an explanation for all this somewhere.

“You drink, don’t you, Whitfield?” said Quinn and straightened up.

“Now Quinn, are you trying to reprimand me?”

Quinn smiled at Whitfield as if with affection. “I’m eight feet away from you, Whitfield, and you stink like a distillery.”

“I beg your pardon.”

“Of course. I take it back because I was mistaken and you don’t smell like a distillery. Here, catch.” He reached for the can at his feet and made it sail in a slow arc toward Whitfield.

Whitfield caught the can because he did not want to get hit. He held the can in both hands and caught the damp wave of alcohol odor which came out of the hole in top. Goddamn those sloppy Arabs, he thought.

Quinn held out another can but Whitfield shook his head. Goddamn their disregard for the most elementary rules of cleanliness, such as to smell clean after cleaning.

“Explain this to me,” said Quinn and leaned against the wall.

“Very well. As you know, Quinn, I am a drinker. As a matter of fact, I have been a trained drinker…”

“Not from five-gallon cans, Whitfield. Your supply comes in a bottle, capped and sealed, like the one you brought from the office. Besides,” and Quinn nudged a can with his foot, “this smell here is alcohol, pure and simple, not gin.”

“I mix my own. I am a trained…”

“Not trained well enough,” said Quinn, “not enough to cover the racket I smell here.”

“Your instinct for the illegal is uncanny,” said Whitfield. “You must have been an excellent lawyer.”

Quinn smiled again and enjoyed it.

“Small port on the North African coast,” he said, looking up at the ceiling. “Dock clerk and Big Brother Remal are natural friends. Ten useless cans lie around and get filled with raw alcohol. I want my cans back, so they quick get washed out-almost washed out-so they’re just cans again and not contraband carriers.” Quinn looked down at Whitfield and said, “Right?”

A lot, Quinn thought, depends on Whitfield’s answer. I have only conjectures, and they have holes. But Whitfield has a habit of not caring much “Uncanny,” said Whitfield, and he hurried to his office.

He was sipping a little bit of straight gin from a teacup when Quinn found him. And now he’ll crucify me with further questions, propositions and reprimands, Whitfield thought, making me feel like a schoolboy caught smoking for which I thank him not, the bully. Bottoms up.

Quinn watched Whitfield upend the cup and waited for him to catch his breath after the maneuver. He, by all accounts, is probably the weakest link in the chain, Quinn was thinking, and the nicest. I could like Whitfield a lot and don’t care to know why. But I won’t badger him any more. Besides, I might look elsewhere.

Old habits were stirring in him, rising like snakes uncoiling. Quinn felt relaxed, confident and no longer pressed. And if feeling friendly was not one of his old habits, it had always been an old wish. He let it show, not feeling worried about Whitfield.

God help me, thought Whitfield, he has either gone simple again or that smile is genuine.

“Back to business,” said Whitfield, as if he were somebody else.

“Okay.”

“You can sell me the bleedin’ cans for eight dollars the lot, an outrageous price as I told you, a love price, Quinn. But then I don’t love anyone anyway and so can afford it. Deal?”

“Deal.”

“Preserve me. Let’s go home.” Whitfield turned on his heel and walked to the door.

First they drove to the garden wall of Beatrice’s house, where the servant stood by the gate, waiting for the car. No, he told them, Missus Rutledge wasn’t in, and Whitfield said they could say goodbye to chances for a normal dinner. Home then.

They walked away from Beatrice’s house and smelled the night smell coming out of the garden. Between two houses, they took stone steps which went up to another street, and on that street they came to a corner where a strong odor of roasted coffee hung in the dark air, a warm smell lying there like a pool.

“It’s always here,” said Whitfield, “because of that roasting house at the corner.”

Quinn saw no roasting house-only dark walls and the sky overhead, like a gray upside-down street.

“Which means,” said Whitfield, “day or night, drunk or sober, I can always find my way home by the odor cloud at this corner. Doesn’t that make you feel weird? Makes me feel like a dog, Quinn, going home by scent, and that does make me feel weird.”

“I don’t like to feel like a dog. They get eaten around here, you said.”

“Well,” said Whitfield. “Well! I thought I was being weird.”

At Whitfield’s apartment Quinn saw the two rooms, the two ceiling fans paddling around and around with an oily motion, and the tub in the room where the bed stood. There was water in the tub and in the water swam a label which said GIN. While Whitfield changed his shirt Quinn looked at the balcony through the French doors. Then he opened the doors and looked at all the cartons out there. He saw all the regulation gin bottles there, not cans, not odd bottles, and each of them the same brand. True, the labels of some were missing, but Quinn knew how that had come about. He closed the balcony doors again and thought, if there is no sweet racket here, smuggling this and that, then there sure as hell ought to be.

He sat down on top of the books on the couch and watched Whitfield come back with a handful of bills.

“I’ll have to give you your money,” said Whitfield, “in local currency. It’s a pile, like I told you,” and he put it on the table. “Now, watch this. Bottle of wine? A dollar to you, I should think. Here, fifteen cents. A meal. Dollar-fifty or more? Here, ten cents and up, to maybe fifty cents, figuring your kind of money You follow?”

“Yes. Cheap spot here.”

“There is an additional point: carry no more than one of these bills on you, which is about fifty cents. You don’t need more to get through a day or so. This way it won’t be too likely that you’ll get robbed.”

“All right,” said Quinn and got up. He absently stuffed all the bills in his pocket and then he hitched his pants.

“You can sleep here tonight,” said Whitfield. “I forgot to mention it.”

“All right,” said Quinn and walked to the door.

“I say, you do sound absent-minded, Quinn.”

Quinn stopped at the door and opened it. He hadn’t been listening.

“And I say, are you going out?”

“Yes. I’ll be back in a while. Got to go out and think.”

“But you mustn’t!” and Whitfield ran to the door. He touched the door and then he took his hand away. He blinked at Quinn but did not quite understand the expression he saw on his face.

“And of course Remal will be over shortly. To find out how it went with the consul, to arrange for your accommodations…”

“And to tell me I’m confined to quarters after dark?”

Whitfield raised his hand once more to touch the door, but then he just dropped it. He said, “Oh, hell,” and stepped back. What’s happened to my baby from the box, he thought, and why the hell should I try to handle it Quinn walked out and down the stairs. He stood in the hall downstairs for a moment and wondered why he hadn’t heard Whitfield close the door all this time, but he didn’t dwell on it. He walked out, found the roasting odor, made his turn in the dark. He walked in the dark, except when crossing the main street. In the darkness again he occasionally watched the sky street overhead, and sometimes the blind walls of the houses. He felt alone and liked it. He felt he was growing up again, old habits, new habits, no matter what, and this feeling was like a tonic, the way recklessness can be.

At the end of a street was the long quay with the sky now very big overhead. The Mediterranean was black. It was here only a licking sound and a wet smell, but not an ocean.

The warehouse was dark and Quinn went there. At both ends of the building a fence closed off the company dock, a wire mesh fence, where Quinn hooked his fingers into the loops and stood looking. He saw a junk with a light swinging somewhere inside and he saw a motor yacht tied to the pier. Then the wire mesh moved under his hands, a give and a sway, making Quinn think of a net.

“Yes?” said the man.

Quinn saw that the man stood by the fence the same way he himself was doing it, hanging his hands there from hooked fingers. Big, white teeth showed in the man’s very dark face and Quinn wondered if this was a smile.

“Yes? Yes?” said the man, always showing the smile.

“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.