The box, p.3
The Box, page 3
“Same?”
“I don’t know, Marie. Would you close the windows for me?”
“Look. He’s sweating.”
“I know. The first time. Close the windows for me, Marie, while I strap this.”
“But the heat…”
“Sirocco coming. Doctor Mattieux put a note on the board.”
“Ah. I hope this one is short.”
“They are sometimes the strongest.”
“How the last one screamed, you remember? How that sand can scream.”
“You have pinched the curtain in the window.”
“Oh. Why are you strapping him?”
“Mattieuxs order. He has been too restless.”
“Perhaps he wants to wake up?”
“In the meantime the straps, so he cannot cut himself on the needle.”
“Why doesn’t Mattieux wake him up? Perhaps just a little ammonia, perhaps no more and he would wake up.”
“Doctor Mattieux said, perhaps he is in this coma because he needs to be.”
“You know, Renee, he doesn’t look gentle today. He looks very much as if he were suffering.”
They watched how he tried to turn in his sleep…
He did not dream of the good times, the times when he had reached out and touched success; only the failures became important. He didn’t dream how he had gone ahead and split the organization right down the middle, the sweet sight of the power running right out of Ryder’s hands, the sweet sight of Ryder himself full of threatening talk, sweet silence from Ryder while he, Quinn, felt the better man, because he was worse than Ryder.
He dreamt how he tried to turn in his bed and couldn’t.
“Who in hell…”
“Lie still.”
“That’s all right,” said another voice from across the dark room. “Let him get up. So he’ll know.”
Quinn knew who it was even before he was out of the bed and before he could see well enough. He said, “Ryder, you son of a bitch! Ah, there’s two more? The strong arm? You don’t think…”
“I don’t have to, Quinn, and as for you, it won’t do you any good.”
“You have those goons lay a hand on me, Ryder, and you think I don’t have the set-up to make you float down the river by six in the morning?”
“Tut, tut, such violence. Show him, Jimmy.”
There were, after all, two of them and they hadn’t just woken up. They got him without a punch. A silent, panting affair. A wrestler. Not one punch but all wrestler, and the other one could murder me any place, any way, with his buddy’s grip crippling me out of shape. And he’s just standing there, doing what “Ryder, listen to me. I’ve got a call coming in, five in the morning, and if I don’t answer…”
“I’m not interested, Quinn. Whyn’t you watch what he’s doing?”
What is he doing? — Ryder wiping his sloppy mouth, the gorilla behind me not moving a muscle and neither can I, and the other-knife? No. Fountain pen? I should sign them a document?
“I left standing orders, Ryder, I told you once, that should I get roughed up…”
“No violence, Quinn. Look.”
Damn, this grip on my back, my arms like worms, and the waiting, the waiting, and why don’t you hit-ah, the other one heard me think, coming over “Ryder, for God’s sake-”
“Doesn’t hurt, Quinn. Just a little sting.”
And the man comes over and carries the syringe and a needle. A small, cold-looking thing like that and I’ve never been so scared in my life.
“Ryder, what in hell- ”
“No violence, Quinn, nothing like it. But you’ll end up a changed man.”
“Where’ll I put it?” said the one with the needle.
“Any place. What’s the difference?”
“Come on already,” said the one holding Quinn doubled over. “He’s trying to struggle or something.”
“Ryder! What is it? ”
“Trip around the world for you, Quinn. In a coffin. Ever hear of the method?”
“My God, Ryder-”
“You’ll be a changed man, Quinn. Maybe a better one. Give it to him, Jimmy.”
Ryder, for heaven’s sake-and I didn’t even feel it, didn’t feel anything at the start of such an important-Letting go of me now? You let go too soon. Watch what I mean by you let go too soon-too thick this air, too thick in the brain, but you, Ryder, I get you, don’t float away, Ryder, oh my God please don’t leave…
“How he sweats.”
“But he’s lying still now. Put the fan in the door, Marie.”
“Mercy, how that sirocco screams.”
“Not yet, really. It will get worse…”
Dead. Dead? Nonsense. I wouldn’t ask if I were. But this nonsense of not knowing what’s up or down. Drug in the head explains it, explains everything. Yes. Feeling fine. Feel fine with gray cotton inside of me and black cotton outside of me. Ah, not cotton at all but space to move. Black space to move. Closet? Of course, of course. Everything else is pure nonsense. For the moment I can only remember sheer nonsense. Everything will be all right- all right! There must be a door, must- I must stop screaming Fine now. At the bottom of panic it is very quiet. No, no. There is no need to move. Careful now, leisurely so as not to frighten. I am not frightened. I can say it. Say box. You see? Since box, by any other name, still makes no sense-Easy, please, please And I remember as a matter of fact that a Seventeenth-Century nobleman who had displeased his king was made to spend nine, was it nine? Was made to spend all those years in a cage, having fewer conveniences, fewer water cans. I am sure, no little cabinets full of provisions, no little pills. And for example once a child was found in a closet without light, the child moon-white and lemur-eyed, but it got out! Got Out! Got to get out!
— How dull inside my head. But better this way, much better and thank you, little pill. And though dull, I will check again, check the entire universe, all the cans, all the boxes in boxes what blessed certainty One, two, three, five… Watch it.
One two, two, three… No! I insist on the right count, left count, right, twoop, threep, foa, one twoop, rip, rip to pieces, I am ripping apart!
— And cannot stand the screaming any more, I can’t any more, can’t, though wish I were more tired. Dead tired. No! Don’t go out! Please, little flame, don’t go out! And please stay little inside your egg and then sometime when it cracks, little flame, you can leap more-Crack? Wait! Don’t go out, little flame, jump a little Jump, little one, JUMP!
“Call Doctor Mattieux! Quick!”
“What is it?”
“He’s violent! Call Mattieux!”
And then Renee, the older nurse, waited for the doctor. She had prepared the morphine injection, but when Doctor Mattieux finally arrived, he decided, no, I think this time we shall let him be awake.
Chapter 4
Three days after Quinn woke up, Whitfield came to see him in the hospital. Things had been a little unusual-the sirocco, for instance, and a great deal of dull time with no dock work possible-and therefore Whitfield walked carefully with a three-day hangover. He felt that he carried it very well and only hoped that Quinn would not be difficult.
“Is he ready?” he asked the nurse in the corridor.
She said he was ready and that his clothes would be brought into his room. Then Whitfield went to see Quinn.
Whitfield, of course, did not recognize him. Only Quinn’s hair, which was thick and black, seemed familiar.
Quinn sat in his bed, doing nothing. He wore a night shirt which was split down the back and his hands looked bony and his arms were thin. Not really thin, thought Whitfield, but rather lean, because there are all those muscles.
Quinn crossed his legs and leaned on his knees. He watched Whitfield come in and said nothing.
Empty eyes, thought Whitfield, but then he changed his mind. I’ll be damned if they don’t look innocent.
“Eh, how do you do?” said Whitfield.
Quinn nodded.
“I’m Whitfield. We met, you know. You don’t remember? We met at your-uh-resurrection.”
“I couldn’t see too well.”
“Yes. A blinding day.”
“You the one that hit me?”
“Oh no. I’m the one whom you choked.”
“Oh.”
When Quinn did not say anything else Whitfield, unexpectedly, felt embarrassed. He took care of that by thinking of Quinn as an idiot. The way he stares, he thought, and then of course that thick hair. All the idiots I’ve known have invariably had this very thick hair. All this while Whitfield smiled, but when Quinn did not smile back or say anything else, Whitfield went to the window as if to look out. He could not look out because of the sun shutters, so he looked at the window sill. There was some sand lying along the edge of the frame.
“Some blow we had there, wasn’t it?” and he turned back to the bed.
As expected, Quinn was looking at him. Talk of the weather, thought Whitfield, and now I feel like an idiot.
“Are you from the police?” Quinn asked.
“Police? Oh no, nothing of the sort. They have been here, haven’t they?”
They had been by Quinn’s bed several times, and only afterwards had it struck Quinn how docile he had felt towards them and that somehow cop hadn’t meant cop to him, the way he had been used to it in the past. I’m still a little bit weak, he had explained to himself, not quite myself. And he had started to answer everything: name, James Quinn; occupation, lawyer; residence, New York.
Then, the matter with the box. At that point, Quinn had slowed down. His hands under the sheet had started to tremble a little, but it had not been the thought of the box so much as the thought of Ryder. So he had left Ryder out, and told them the box thing had been an act of revenge, something cruel dreamt up by a man who, however, was dead now. Quinn had wished this were true.
“How do you know this, Mister Quinn?”
“He was dead before, before I left.”
“Who was he?”
“You wouldn’t know him. Besides, there were several.”
“Are you trying to confuse us, Mister Quinn?”
“I’m confused.”
“Of course. Understandable. Tell us, Mister Quinn, is this type of-uh-punishment usual in your circles?”
“What circles?”
“You are a criminal, aren’t you, Mister Quinn?”
“I have no record.”
“Hm. A very good criminal then, eh?”
Quinn thought that with no record he was either a very good criminal or no criminal at all, and perhaps it came to the same thing. He had not been very much interested in deciding on this because other things meant more to him. Whether he had been smart or stupid, for example, and here the decision was simple. He had been very stupid with Ryder, but that, too, was a little bit dim, since he, Quinn, was here and Ryder was not. Maybe later, more on this later, but now first things first.
He sat up in bed and said, “I’m here without papers. Illegal entry and no identification, you told me. And that is all the business you have with me, isn’t it?”
He wondered what had made them ask if he was a criminal.
“Did I talk in my sleep?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“And?”
“We understood very little, except perhaps the word racket. We understood that.”
“I told you I’m a lawyer.”
They had just smiled and then one of them had said, “We’ve asked around, of course, and have learned about this box method. It even has a name, doesn’t it, among criminals?”
Quinn had not answered, and not all the vagueness on his face had been faked. Only the simplest things did not make him feel vague.
“You must get papers, and then you must get out.”
“Yes. And I need clothes.”
They were pleased he was tractable, and then they had left.
Now Quinn looked up from his hands at Whitfield, who was the first stranger since the police had been there. I think he smells of gin, Quinn thought.
“Feel up to a little trip?” asked Whitfield.
Quinn thought for a moment and then he said, “I don’t have any papers.”
True enough, thought Whitfield, and for that matter you don’t have any pants either, and so forth. And not much brains left, is my feeling, and I must say a sad shock you are to me and my cinema knowledge of an American gangster.
“You don’t have any papers,” he said, “which is why I am here. Ah, the clothes.”
The nurse Marie brought a suit, shirt, and the other things and put them on the bed. She smiled at Quinn and held it a while, wishing that he would smile back. She has a sweet girlish face, thought Quinn, and a lot of old-fashioned hair. How does her little cap stay on? But he did not smile back at her.
“These are not the clothes in which you came,” she said. “These are not cut like your own, but I hope you won’t mind.”
“I don’t mind.”
He was easier to look at when he was asleep, thought Marie, and when she left the room she wished he might stay a while longer and sleep here again.
Quinn got out of bed, took his nightshirt off, and started to dress. Whitfield said nothing. He is definitely not an official, thought Quinn, and he looks a little bit dreamy.
“Did you want something from me?” Quinn asked suddenly.
“Uh-want? Oh, no. Quite the opposite,” and Whitfield giggled.
Quinn buttoned his pants which took him some time. He was used to a zipper.
“And you’ll get me papers?”
“Well, it’s like this. I’m going to drive you to the American consul so that you can start getting your papers. We’ll drive to Tripoli.”
“Why Tripoli?”
“Because Okar is too small for a consul.”
“And you are with the consulate?”
At last, thought Whitfield. I myself would have asked that question first.
“No,” he said. “It’s like this. I run the pier-I’m with the company at whose pier-how to put this? — where you were unloaded.” Whitfield smiled again, but Quinn was looking down. “This circumstance,” said Whitfield who suddenly felt he could not stop talking, “this event, you see, gives me a sort of proprietary feeling about you, don’t you know? I mean, if you’ll picture the circumstance, you being delivered to me.” Whitfield had to giggle again.
I have rarely felt so uncomfortable in my life, thought Whitfield with distraction, natural of course, with a man who has no sense of humor. Apt to happen, of course, when boxed. I will cultivate a note of compassion. But then this thought was startled right out of Whitfield when Quinn said the next thing. Quinn did not look up from buttoning his shirt when he talked and perhaps this helped startle Whitfield. For the first time it struck Whitfield that Quinn was talking to him without looking him straight in the face.
“Something stinks here,” said Quinn.
“Uh-I beg your pardon?”
Quinn reached under the bed for his shoes, and when he straightened up again he sighed. Then he put his shoes on.
“Look,” he said. “You run this boatyard, you are not a cop, you take me traveling from one town to another, and all this traveling with me having no papers. That stinks.” Quinn straightened up and looked past Whitfield at the window. “I don’t care,” he said, “but I’m not stupid.”
That you aren’t, that you aren’t, thought Whitfield, but how confusing. How can anyone with eyes open like that have a cunning brain? How confusing. And yet how uncunning to be so confusing. At which point Whitfield gave up, feeling that the thread of his thoughts was escaping him. He shrugged, because he, like Quinn, did not care too much either. What he explained next therefore turned out to be the truth.
“The mayor,” he said, “is anxious to clear all this up. Let me say, he wants to expedite all this, so that you can get out. You do want to leave, don’t you?”
“Oh yes,” said Quinn, because everything that had been said to him since waking up had been about leaving.
“Now, the mayor, being also chief constable and a friend of mine, has asked me to take you, being his charge, on police business to Tripoli. And then I bring you back. Simple?”
“It sounds very simple,” said Quinn.
But you don’t sound simple, oh no you don’t, thought Whitfield. He said, “Button up and off we go.”
“I did already.”
“You missed one.”
Quinn buttoned up and then stood there, looking at Whitfield. He did that like a child, thought Whitfield. What to think of him? Whitfield smiled at Quinn but then looked away, so as not to see in case Quinn did not smile back.
“You know, Quinn-uh, how to put this?”
“How to put what?”
“Of course. That’s the problem. What I mean, coming out of this thing-”
“Box?”
“Yes, that’ll do it. Coming out, it’s sort of like starting at the bottom. New chance and all that. You know, all new, everything. I mean, you look like that sometimes.”
“Do I?” and Quinn did not know what else to say.
The two men walked out and Quinn remembered that Ryder had said it would make a new man out of him.
Chapter 5
The narrow main street looked pink and blue to Quinn, pink on the side where the sun hit and blue on the shadow side. There were not many people. There was an old woman who scraped camel dung into a basket. When Quinn passed he saw that the woman was a man. Three children looked at Quinn, because he was so pale, but one child looked with one eye only, because the other was covered with flies. And a man stared down from a balcony, watching the stranger walk. The balcony was birdcage thin and a little water dribbled down to the street. The man was holding a wet rag to the back of his head, and when Quinn passed the man closed his eyes again.
“Peaceful town, eh?” said Whitfield.
“I don’t know. Just lying still doesn’t mean peaceful.”
Whitfield looked at Quinn for a moment but said nothing. Before driving out of here I’ll have a gin fizz. With ice this time.
