The Box (2 page)

Up on the bridge the men leaned but said nothing. Perhaps they could not see well enough or perhaps they could not understand.

“All right,” said the captain and he and the clerk walked to the box.

I am probably, thought the clerk, the least interested of all. Why am I walking to somebody else’s box? I am less interested than the Arabs, even, because they get paid for this. I get no more whether I look or don’t look, which is the source of all disinterest, he considered, because nothing comes of it.

He and the captain looked into the box at the same time, seeing well enough, saying nothing, because they did not understand anything there.

“Shoes?” said the clerk after a moment. “You see the shoes?” as if nothing on earth could be more puzzling.

“Why shoes on?” said the captain, sounding stupid. What was spoiling there spoiled for one moment more, shrunk together in all that rottenness, and then must have hit bottom.

The box shook with the scramble inside, with the cramp muscled pain, with the white sun like steel hitting into the eyes there so they screwed up like sphincters, and then the man inside screamed himself out of his box.

He leaped up blind, hands out or claws out, he leaped up in a foam of stink and screams, no matter what next but up—

It happened he touched the clerk first. The clerk was slow with disinterest. And when the man touched he found a great deal of final strength and with his hands clamped around the clerk’s neck got dragged out of the box because the clerk was dragging and the captain tried to help drag the clerk free. Before this man from the box let go they had to hit him twice on the back of the head with the wooden axe handle.

“I need a bath,” said the clerk.

“Do you have any gin at home?” asked the captain. “I thought perhaps if you had any gin at home…”

“Yes, yes,” said the clerk, “come along. You have the gin while I have the bath.” They walked down the main street of Okar which was simply called
la rue
, because the official Arab name was impossible for most of the Europeans and the European names of the street had changed much too often.

“That isn’t much of a hospital you have there,” said the captain.

“The Italians built it. For the ministry of colonial archives.”

“They were hardly here long enough.”

“Look at the hotel,” said the clerk.

They looked at the hotel while they kept walking along the middle of the main street. They could not use the sidewalk which was sometimes no more than a curb. When it was not just a curb there would be chairs and tables which belonged to a coffee house, or stalls with fly-black meat where the butcher was, or perhaps lumber because a carpenter worked on the ground floor. It was that kind of a main street, not very long, and the hotel was the biggest building and even had thin little trees in front.

“It reminds me of Greece,” said the captain. “I don’t mean really Greek, but I can’t think of anything closer.”

“The Germans built it, and they were here less time than the Italians.”

“In America,” said the captain, “it would be a bank.”

“It was
a Kaserne
. You know, garrison quarters, or something like that.”

They talked like that until they came to Whitfield’s house, because they did not quite know what to say about the other matter. The clerk showed the way up a side street, through an arch in a house where a breeze was blowing, across the courtyard in back, and to the house behind that.

“The French built it,” he said. “They were here the longest.”

“The Arabs didn’t build anything?”

“There are native quarters,” said Whitfield, with his tone just a little bit as if these were still Empire days.

His two rooms were on the second floor and there was even a balcony. The captain looked at the balcony while the clerk yelled down the stairs for his Arab to bring two buckets of water and some lemon juice. There was no view, the captain saw, just rooftops and heat waves above that. And the balcony was not usable because it was full of cartons.

“You do have gin,” said the captain.

“Those are empty.”

The clerk turned the ceiling fans on, one in each room, and then went to the landing again to yell for the Arab. He came back, taking off his clothes.

“I don’t think he’ll come,” he said and threw his jacket on a horsehair couch. The couch was not usable because it was full of books.

“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.