The box, p.2
The Box, page 2
“Who, the mayor?”
“No, Remal will come. He said so in the hospital.”
“I don’t understand why he wanted to see you and me.”
“That’s because he didn’t say.”
The clerk kept walking all this time and dropping his clothes. When he got to the second room he was quite naked.
There was a brass bed in this room, a dresser, and a tin tub with handles.
“I’ll just have to use the same water again,” said the clerk, and stepped into his tub.
“Did you say you had gin, Whitfield?”
The clerk sighed when he sat down in the water, reached down to the bottom of the tub, and brought up a bottle. The label was floating off.
“This way it keeps a degree of coolness,” he said. “There is ice only at the hotel. You see the glasses?”
The captain saw the glasses on the dresser and then was told to fetch also the clay jug from the window sill. The gray earthenware was sweating small, shiny water pearls which trembled, rolled over the belly of the jug and became stains shaped like amoebae.
“It’s a sour wine,” said the clerk. “Very safe,” and he uncorked the gin bottle.
They mixed gin and sour wine and the glasses felt fairly cool in their hands.
“ Min skoal din skoal,” said the clerk for politeness.
The captain didn’t recognize the pronunciation and said nothing. He made himself another glass while the clerk watched from the bathtub. There was a deep cushiony valley where the captain sat on the bed and the clerk thought, He looks like an egg sitting up, beard notwithstanding. I am drinking too fast “What a sight,” said the captain. “That creature we found there.”
The clerk stretched one leg out and put it on the rim of the tub. He looked at his toe, at the big one in particular, and thought how anonymous the toe looks. No face at all.
“I can’t remember what he looked like, do you know that?” said the captain. “All that hair and filth.”
“When he came to,” said the clerk, “the way he kept curling up.” He said it low, and to nobody, and when he thought of the man on the hospital bed he did with his toes what he had seen on the hospital bed. “God,” he mumbled, “the way he kept curling up-”
They said little else until the mayor came and they did not hear him because of the soft, native shoes he was wearing. Or because of the way he walked. Remal came straight into the bedroom, a very big man but walking as if he were small and light. Small steps which did not make him bounce or dip, but they gave an impression as if Remal could float.
“Good afternoon, gentlemen,” he said in English, and this also confused the impression he made. Remal looked as native as a tourist might wish. He had an immobile terra cotta face, with black female eyes and a thin male mouth. He wore a stitched skullcap which the clerk had once called a yamulke, to which Remal had answered, “Please don’t use the Jewish name for it again. Or I’ll kill you.” This politely, with a smile, but the clerk had felt sure that Remal meant it.
“I’ll fix you one of these,” said the captain, and looked around for another glass.
“Don’t,” said the clerk. He put his leg back into the tub and curled up in the water. “He’s Mohammedan, you know, but he won’t kill you because he’s also polite.”
“Please,” said Remal. He made a very French gesture of self-deprecation and smiled. “I’ll have something else. Where is your man?”
“Couldn’t find him. Disappeared. Captain, you might fix me a Christian-type cocktail.”
Remal left the room and went out to the landing and then the two men in the bedroom could hear him roar. “What was that?” and the captain stopped mixing.
“It’s a kind of Arabic which a European can never learn,” said the clerk.
When Remal came back he brought a chair along from the other room, flounced the long skirt of the shirt-like thing he was wearing, doing this in the only way a long, shirt-like thing can be handled, and sat down.
“Ah, Whitfield,” he said. “How relaxing to see you.”
“Stop flattering me. I will not give you the bathtub.”
An irreverent way, thought the captain, for a thin, naked man to talk to a big one like this mayor, but the light talk went on for a while longer while the captain sat in the valley of the bed and wondered what Remal wanted. Perhaps five minutes after the roar on the landing the clerk’s Arab came running into the room with a tray. It held a pot and a cup and the tea smelled like flowers. After everything had been put on the dresser, the clerk’s Arab ran out again very quickly because Remal had waved at him. Then Remal poured and everyone waited.
“That was a remarkable coffin,” he said when he was ready. “I looked the entire thing over with interest.”
“Custom-made,” said the clerk.
“It would have to be,” said Remal. “Few people would want such a thing.”
“About the man,” said the captain. “You wanted us to discuss…”
“Dear captain,” said the clerk. “Our mayor is being polite by not coming to the point. You were saying, Remal?”
“Yes, yes. This coffin had everything.”
“I don’t think so,” said the captain. “Not by the smell of it.”
“Perhaps,” said Remal, and drank tea. “But I was thinking, to lie in your own offal does have a Biblical significance, doesn’t it?”
“And the box man is a Christian fanatic,” said the clerk. “You better watch out, Remal.”
“I am.”
“This is ridiculous,” said the captain. “I want…”
“You are interrupting Remal,” said the clerk. “You were interrupting one of his silences.”
In a way, thought the captain, this Arab is taking a lot from the clerk.
“There were remarkable arrangements for a long journey,” said Remal. “A great number of water canisters strapped to the side of the coffin…”
“Can’t you say box?”
“Of course, Whitfield. And a double wall filled with small packets of this food, this compressed food the American soldiers used to carry.”
“You think he’s an American?” asked the captain.
“Of course. Didn’t you load him in New York?”
The captain put his glass down on the floor and when he sat up again he looked angry.
“I got papers which say so and I got a box which looks like it. That’s all I know. The way it turns out, the damnable thing did not go through customs, my crew didn’t see the damnable thing coming on…”
“Didn’t they load it?”
“Crew doesn’t load. Longshoremen do the loading.”
“Ah. And port of origin and destination, I’m told, they are both the same. Americans do things like that, don’t they, Whitfield?” asked the mayor. “Perhaps a stunt.”
“A Christian-fanatic stunt,” said the clerk. He took water into his hands and dribbled it over his head. “I name thee Whitfield,” he murmured.
“As fanatics,” said Remal, “we would be more consequential.”
“Bathe in the blood of the lamb, not water.”
“I beg your pardon?”
I’ll get drunk too, thought the captain. That might be the best thing. But his glass was empty and he did not want to get up and squeak the bed.
“Yes,” Remal continued. “In the coffin, there were also those pills, to make the fanaticism more bearable.”
“The doctor analyzed them?”
“That will be a while,” said Remal. “I gave one or two, I forget how many, to my servant, and he became extremely sleepy.”
“Your scientific curiosity is almost Western,” said the clerk. He waited for something polite from the mayor, something polite with bite in it, but the mayor ignored the remark and quite unexpectedly came to the point. It was so unexpected that the captain did not catch on for a while.
“This person,” said the mayor and smoothed his shirt, “is your passenger, captain. I don’t quite see the situation.”
“Eh?” said the captain.
“I hardly see how he can stay.”
“You don’t see?” said the captain. He himself saw nothing at all. “Well, right now he’s in the hospital,” he said. It sounded like the first simple, sane thing to him in a long time.
“Yes. You put him there, captain.”
“I know. Just exactly…”
“Why don’t you take him out?”
“Take him out? But I’m leaving this evening.”
“Take him with you.”
“But he’s sick!”
“He’s alive. And your passenger.”
The captain made an exasperated swing with both arms, which caused the bed to creak and the glass to fall over.
“Whitfield,” he said, “what in hell-what-”
“He wants you to take the man from the box along with you,” said the clerk. Then he took water into his mouth and made a stream come out, like a fountain.
“I will not! ”
“Your passenger…”
“And stop calling him my passenger!” yelled the captain. “He’s a stowaway and there’s no law on land or sea which tells me, the captain, that I must transport a stowaway!”
Next came a silence, which was bad enough, but then the mayor put his teacup down and shrugged slightly. This made the captain feel gross and useless.
“Dear captain,” said Remal and looked at his fingernails, “you are leaving tonight, you say?” Then he looked up. “I could hold your ship here for any number of reasons. Mayor in Okar, I think, means more than mayor in Oslo, for instance. You may find I combine several functions and powers under this one simple title.”
“Just a minute!” His own voice shocked the captain, but then he didn’t care any more. “I’m not taking him. I’m not even taking the time to show you the regulations. I’m not even taking the time to ask why in the damn hell you’re so interested in getting the man out of here.”
“My interest is very simple,” said Remal. “I would like to avoid the official complications of having a man land in my town, a man without known origin, without papers, arriving here in an insane way.”
“You are worried about something?” said the captain with venom.
Remal began a smile, a comer of his mouth curving. Then suddenly he turned to the clerk. “He landed on your company’s pier, Whitfield. The responsibility…”
“It-is-not!”
“You interrupt, Whitfield.”
“I know what comes next. I should persuade the captain to get the paperless lunatic out of the country.”
Remal waited but this turned out to be of no help.
“Head office of my shipping firm is in London. I can’t telegraph for instructions and get an answer before the captain leaves. I can’t ask him to stay-his ship isn’t a company vessel. My company leases both pier and depot from your state; it’s a small shipping point only, which is why I am executive clerk on this station.” The clerk sat up, feeling ridiculous with the pomp of his speech. He therefore put his arms on the rim of the tub, sat straight, and imagined he was sitting like this on a throne.
“Whitfield,” said the mayor, “how can you refuse all responsibility for a sick man who lands on your pier?”
“Oh, that,” and the clerk let himself slide back into the water. He looked up at the ceiling and said, “Of course I will visit him in the hospital.”
There was more talk, polite talk guided by Remal, but it was clearly tapering-off talk. It showed how flexible Remal was. It showed, perhaps, that the mayor was thinking of another way.
“Perhaps it will all be very simple,” he said and got up.
“Perhaps the man will die?”
“Of course not, Whitfield.” Remal smoothed his tunic and took a deep breath. This showed how large his chest was. “He will wake up, talk, and explain everything.” And Remal walked out.
The man from the box did not talk for several days.
Chapter 3
At first they thought that he was in a coma. He was extremely unresponsive, and of course there had been the blows on the head with the axe handle.
They washed him and shaved his face and put him to bed.
Then they thought of it as a deep sleep, due to extreme exhaustion. But for that diagnosis he slept too long. Catatonic stupor was suggested, but that did not fit either. When they sat him up he collapsed again.
They let him lie in bed and attached various tubes.
“Same?”
“Same.”
They were French nurses and the older one was in his room because she had to switch glucose bottles. The younger one always came in a few times each day to see how the man was doing.
“Look at him,” said the younger one. “How he looks.”
“You look at him, Marie. I know how he looks.”
“A baby-”
“Marie,” said the older one, “he does not look like a baby. With that face.”
“He’s just thin.”
“You talk about babies a great deal, Marie.”
“Don’t you think he looks gentle?”
“Well, he’s asleep.”
“I think he looks gentle. I think that he probably is.”
They watched how he tried to turn in his sleep…
He tried to turn in his chair but the man behind him cut the heel of his hand into the side of Quinn’s face, not hard, but mean nonetheless, and effective. I’m not going to make more of this than it is, Quinn thought, this is just meant to be one more of his talks. With trimming this time, but just a talk.
Quinn kept his head straight, as he was supposed to do, and looked at Ryder behind the leather-inlaid desk. How a fat bastard with a sloppy mouth can be so hard, thought Quinn. How? I’ve got to find out. I must find this out.
Ryder sat still in his chair on the other side of the desk and the window behind him showed a very well defined stretch of electrified skyline. That’s why he looks so impressive, thought Quinn. That and the red silk bathrobe. And the desk, and the tough guy behind me.
“You got maybe a lot of education,” said Ryder, “but you ain’t smart, Quinn.”
“Can’t get over it, can you, that you never got past reform school?”
Ryder shook his head at the man behind Quinn’s chair and said, “Don’t hit him again. That’s just smart-aleck talk.”
“Smart-aleck lawyer talk,” said the man behind Quinn. “They’re all alike.”
“No, they’re not,” said Ryder. He coughed with a wet sound in his throat. Then he lowered his head, which added another chin. And suddenly he yelled, with a high. fat man’s voice. “This one ain’t smart enough! You, Quinn! You were hired to be smart in this organization, not stupid, you shyster, not stupid enough to try and slice yourself in!”
Ryder closed his eyes and sat back in his chair. He wheezed a little, which was the only sound in the room.
Quinn said very quietly, “I’m not slicing myself in. I’m improving the organization.”
“Hit him!” said Ryder without opening his eyes.
Quinn got a jolt on the side of the head, and when he tried to get up the man behind him cut the edge of his palm down on Quinn’s shoulder.
Quinn exhaled with a sudden sound, like a cough almost, and bent over in the chair. He bent and stayed there. Of all the things he wanted to do-mostly violent and some quite insane-he did none of them. He held still with the pain in him and felt he could actually see it. A red wave with blue edges. Don’t move, don’t move, because that way, Ryder, that way I’ll get you later for this.
“Those unions are mine,” Ryder was saying, “and that sews up the waterfront. I think you’re trying to undo that for me, Quinn.”
“All I really did…”
“You’re lying, Quinn. You reshuffled the North end docks so that I got less say-so and you got more. And clever too.”
“Shyster clever,” said the man behind the chair.
“No. Not crooked at all. That’s where he got me. Never occurred to me to look for a straight way I could get robbed.”
“Okay, Ryder,” and Quinn sat up. “The set-up is still yours and the fact that you’re making less money has to do with the racket squeeze and nothing with me.”
“Then how come you’re making more money, Quinn?”
“I’m not.”
“You’re lying.”
“Should I hit him?” said the man behind the chair.
“Shut up. Quinn, you listen to me. You been working good the two years you’ve been over to my side, good like a real hustler. But do it for me, not for you.”
Nothing else came and there was just the wheezing from Ryder, and then a clink. When Quinn looked up, he saw that Ryder had put his false uppers into the water glass. He was going to bed.
“You mean you’re done?” said the man behind Quinn’s chair. “He’s walking out?”
“Sure,” said Ryder. All the words made a flabby sound. “He’s smarter now than he was.” Ryder bunched his empty mouth, then let it hang again. “And he knows we got methods-”
My God, what a face, thought Quinn. And I wish I had hit him and his face looked like that because I had done it to him.
“Out,” said the man behind the chair. “You got the message.”
After that, on the street, Quinn just walked. But it wasn’t enough moving for all the holding still he had done. He concentrated on a dream that came out ugly and strong, red, with blue edges-and then I go over, cool as cool, I don’t listen any more. I am cool as cool, fire inside though, fire in fist now, and suddenly ram that into the executive pouch-poof! plate jumps out, face collapses, fat lips hanging down, and I step on the plate, a crunch of pure pleasure “No, Ryder, you shut up and you listen because I pulled your teeth. No, Ryder, why hustle for you? And why is it I can make more than you but hustle for you? And why is it I’m smarter than you but it makes no difference? Why try being like you and get pushed for it, not being like you? Answer me, Ryder. Don’t flinch when I’m screaming. Just answer me. What’s the big answer-Ah, forgot, you haven’t got any teeth.” And then cool with my rage inside me, I hand him his plate, pink and white stuff that’s left of it, something like splintery gravel, and let it dribble into his water glass. And I leave and laugh. I want to laugh very hard, this is funny, I laugh harder, this could be so funny, why in hell can’t this be funny…
