My father. What about him?
Your father, hissed Geraty, who’s your father? Who are you?
His fist struck the counter. He waved his arms in the air, fighting off imaginary bats and spiders and falcons. All at once he was on his feet moving away from the pushcart, roaring and shouting curses, shaking his fists at the sky.
Slander, do you hear? They call him a drunkard and a pederast and that’s how they’ve always treated him, with lies and ridicule. Do they know a man of God when they see one? Do they? Just point him out to them, point him out now, point him out where he stands. Point out that Emperor so they can slander him and malign him and drive him where? Where?
Geraty crashed into the vacant lot and fell on his back, his greatcoat settling around him. Quin propped the black bowler hat under his head. He felt his pulse and listened to the painful rasp of his snoring. There was no way to move him. He would have to lie there until he awoke.
Quin picked up a handful of sand and nodded to himself. He thought of leaving some money in Geraty’s pocket, but then he realized there were already too many scavengers there waiting like Geraty for the night to grow old, some not yet too drunk to go through his pockets before they fell asleep, before they in turn were robbed of all they had.
Another time, thought Quin, not knowing he would meet Geraty only once again in his life, three months from then when he was about to leave Japan on a clear autumn day that happened to be the feast day of the saint Geraty revered above all others, Edward the Confessor, three months that he would spend tracking down the lives of the men and women whose secrets lay encrypted in the code name Gobi, perhaps because not until then would Quin be ready to witness the final performance of this raving giant who had spent a lifetime posing as a clown.
• • •
The year Big Gobi went to sea he heard innumerable accounts of the nights the sailors spent on the beach. There were stories about tattoo parlors and whores, cops and whores, pawnshops and whores, camera stores and whores, whores and bars and whores and special shows and whores jiggling their things in front of jukeboxes that had colored lights. Big Gobi had never left the ship as it went around the world, and that was the reason he was excited the day Quin took him to the beach.
On the train Big Gobi took out his small gold cross and rubbed it against the side of his nose. Polishing the cross helped him when he felt dizzy, he had discovered that as soon as they arrived in Japan. It kept him from being confused, it kept his hands from wandering. Big Gobi continued polishing the cross all the way to Kamakura.
They left the station and began to walk. Quin said they should have looked for a bus but Big Gobi didn’t hear him, he was dreaming. After an hour or thirty years, a mile or two or ten thousand miles, they reached the end of the continent, the eastern shore of Asia. Quin was walking across the sand but Big Gobi didn’t move. He was staring into the distance.
Hey, he whispered. Hey where are we?
The sand was hot on his feet, his mind was a jumble. Below him there was a nearly deserted cove, ahead only the endless stretch of the sea.
Hey, he whispered. Where is everybody?
• • •
Big Gobi sifted sand through his fingers. He turned away so that Quin couldn’t see his face.
Where are the parlors? he whispered softly.
Quin rubbed himself with a towel.
Which ones, Gobes?
The ones for tattooing, the ones they have on the beach. They were always talking about them when I worked on the freighter.
Liberty port. Yokohama.
I don’t know the name of the place, but it’s where they have the jukeboxes. You know, the jukeboxes with colored lights where the girls stand around and jiggle their things.
Yokohama.
Well where is this?
Kamakura.
Well what’s it for?
How do you mean?
I mean is this a beach or is the other one a beach?
Both of them. One’s for swimming and one’s for whores and tattoos. Aren’t you going to take a swim?
Big Gobi shuffled down to the edge of the water and put his big toe in. Cold water made him feel lonely. He dragged himself along the shore kicking sand, wondering why things never happened the way he wanted them to, never, no matter how long he waited and waited.
His foot touched an oyster. He pried it open, gazed at the pale, swelling meat.
There was a reason why those things never happened, and he knew exactly what it was. He was afraid. That was why he hadn’t gone ashore with the other sailors from the freighter, and it would have been the same today if they had gone to the other beach, the one not for swimming. He would have been afraid, too afraid to do anything.
Yokohama. Quin had been there in the navy. Probably he’d been there a hundred times and knew all about it.
Big Gobi sipped the juice from the oyster, poked the soft meat with his nose, sucked, swallowed it. All at once he jumped in the air.
He was running back up the beach, running as fast as he could, running so hard his legs ached. He fell down on his knees near Quin and scooped up a fistful of sand, threw it down, scooped up another. He pawed with both hands, pushing the sand behind him through his legs. He knew Quin was watching him but he was going to say it anyway.
Hey, he shouted. Hey this is a nice place for swimming.
He stopped digging. Why was he yelling like that when Quin was only a few feet away? Quin would think something was wrong. He leaned forward and rested his elbows at the bottom of the hole he had dug. He tried to grin.
I like it, Quin. I like it a lot.
He was whispering now, but Quin smiled and nodded, a warm smile that made him feel better.
Glad you do, Gobes. I was wondering what you were thinking while you were walking down there.
Were you, Quin? That’s funny, because I had an idea just then, just now I mean. I was walking along thinking how much I like this beach and that got me thinking about the other beach you were talking about, and then I remembered you’d been there and knew all about it, I mean you know, you’re a friend so why shouldn’t I ask you?
Big Gobi hung his head.
That was my idea, he whispered.
Right, Gobes. Sure. Let’s hear about it.
Well you have to understand it’s not much of anything, I mean I even feel kind of silly bringing it up but it’s just that I’ve never done it before, I mean gone right up and said it, said what you have to say, and if there were any misunderstanding I’d feel terrible.
About what?
Me, Quin. Me. I mean just suppose she didn’t know what I was talking about, suppose she got frightened or something and started backing away.
Who started backing away?
The girl jiggling her things in the colored lights. I mean what do you say to a girl at a time like that? Let’s fuck? Something like that?
Just a minute, Gobes, let me get it straight. Where are we, Yokohama?
That’s the place.
All right. We’re in Yokohama and we pass a tattoo parlor and come to a bar where there are a lot of whores standing around. One in particular is over by the jukebox keeping time to the music. I mean she’s bouncing and they’re big ones and you know she’s ready the second you walk in. Is that it? Something like that?
Big Gobi whistled.
That’s it. That’s the place all right, and she’s the one I’m talking about.
Quin nodded. His face was serious. Big Gobi leaned on his elbows, his chin on the sand, and waited. When Quin didn’t say anything he was afraid he had upset him.
Thinking about Yokohama, Quin? Thinking about the other times you went there?
No, Gobes, but listen. Have you ever had a girl before?
No.
Never?
Well I mean I never left the ship the year I worked on it, you know that. And where else would I have found a girl?
I don’t know. On the bus trip maybe.
Well maybe, I mean I suppose I could
have if I’d ever left the bus but I didn’t. I mean I got off lots of buses lots of times, but I always got right back on another one again. And before that I was in bed with my shoulder and after that I worked on the farm at the orphanage. The only girl I’ve ever really talked to, I mean the only girl who’s ever talked to me, was the nurse who gave me the water injections in the army.
All right, Gobes, that’s settled. Done. Finished. Tonight we’re going to Yokohama and have a session.
What?
It’s on the way home, more or less. We might as well drop in and see what’s doing.
Tonight?
Sure.
One of those places?
Sure.
The one jiggling in the colored lights?
Sure.
And maybe you’ll help me speak to her?
Sure.
Just like that?
Just like that.
Big Gobi jumped into the air. He yelled, he danced, he spun up and down the beach collecting driftwood from Chinese rivers and Manchurian forests, dancing down a beach on the edge of Asia finding wood for a bonfire in the sun.
Hey, he shouted. Hey hey hey.
Women hey.
Oysters hey.
Hey hey hey.
• • •
Late that night, his lips torn and his neck scratched, his back bearing scars, Big Gobi staggered into a train bound for Tokyo, a veteran of the campaigns on the Yokohama waterfront, that narrow strip of land where hordes of invading sailors streamed ashore every night to do battle with a handful of brave whores.
The ferocious adventurers came from every corner of the world. There were Burmans and Chadians and Quechuas and Lapps and Georgians swearing in a hundred tongues and brandishing a thousand varied weapons, every conceivable kind of knife and pick and sword and bludgeon and pike. Between them they were missing every part of the human body. They had warts in every combination supplemented by a multitude of tattoos and moles, birthmarks, miscellaneous discolorings, and wounds both old and new, generally treated but often only recently scabbed. They were a desperate army with only one goal, a night of unlimited plunder after weeks at sea.
Darkness fell, the late sunset of a summer night. Children waved good-bye to the pretty ships in the harbor, crowds moved from the department stores to the movie theaters. Strollers ate cold noodles. It was a peaceful evening in downtown Yokohama with a cooling breeze off the bay.
And yet no more than two miles away the battle was ready to begin. Some fifty or sixty Japanese heroines were preparing to defend the homeland against the combined navies of the world.
The gangplanks came down, the launches sped back and forth. The first wave of barbarians swarmed into pawnshops snatching up cameras and silk jackets, raced down the streets through the whining music, climbed over the crashing chairs, and hurtled the bottles shattering in the alleys. The massed squadrons pushed forward, regrouped, mounted another assault. Heads cracked on the pavement, bellies spilled out in doorways. The sailors fought on their backs and rolled over to strike again from the side, from above, from below, in between, in back, knee level, naval level, chest level, eye level, from the rooftops and the tops of chairs and toilet bowls.
But gradually their ranks thinned, their bodies piled up on the docks and jetties. A few snipers still carried on in upstairs windows, but long before sunrise the outcome of the battle was decided.
Here and there a whore lay temporarily unconscious, but most were walking home on their own sturdy legs, limping perhaps, certainly exhausted, but with their sea chests bulging with money from around the world. Behind them they left carnage and ruin, snoring carcasses from a hundred distant ports, the broken lust of foreigners. Once again a handful of heroines had won total victory in the nightly Yokohama battle, and all over Japan innocent women and children were able to sleep safely because of it.
Big Gobi sat in the train with his eyes closed. When he had first left the princess in the palace, he had felt as if he had no bones, then for a while he had lost his legs and been an amputee. Now the numbness was gone and he was suffering the torture of a thousand cuts. Oriental torture. Time.
He smiled.
Did you see how she walked right up to me, Quin? She never backed away at all. On the freighter they used to say I smelled of seagull droppings, but she didn’t say anything like that. She just took me by the hand and then when we were in the room she let me turn on the television set so we could watch it from the bed. Imagine just doing it and watching television at the same time. You know tomorrow I think I’ll just stay home and relax and watch television. She said she watches all the time, so I think I’ll just sit around tomorrow and think about it. She must have been about sixteen and that was the first night she’d worked there and I was the first one, you know, she’d ever done anything with. Her parents are poor and she doesn’t want her little brother to go to an orphanage and that’s why she’s there. She said I understood a lot about people considering I don’t even speak Japanese, the people we were watching I mean, the people on television. She said I could come again and watch television, or watch her while she was watching television, or watch them while they were watching us. Just us, the two of us I mean, and all the others. I mean I’ve never been with a person like that where there were just the two of us, two of us alone but me not alone at all because she was there. Never. Not since I was born.
Big Gobi smiled as he fell asleep.
Quin looked out the window at the lights flashing by. He was thinking of Geraty then, wondering as always how much of the giant’s tale he could believe, not realizing that at that very moment he was returning from the site of the famous picnic on the beach south of Tokyo where Maeve Quin had long ago laid out a blanket for three men in gas masks, her husband and Father Lamereaux and the elderly Adzhar, the wandering Russian linguist whose cross Big Gobi now wore, thereby setting in motion an espionage game that was to last eight years, culminating in Big Gobi’s conception in a warehouse on the outskirts of Shanghai on the eve of a doomed circus performance.
Father Lamereaux
I had to sneak back and forth through the city, evaporate and materialize, die in doorways and resurrect myself in the moonlight of the cemetery.
There seemed to be only one thing to do, so I did it. I became a ghost.
• • •
Father Lamereaux peered down the corridor. The kitchen door was closed, a mop slapped the floor. He tiptoed out of his study. Just before he reached the garden door the mop stopped.
Master?
He held his breath. The voice spoke again from the blank wood of the kitchen door.
It’s raining, master. Use the toilet.
Father Lamereaux sighed. A little summer drizzle never hurt anyone. Besides, he had intended to go only as far as his favorite patch of moss beside the garden wall.
He left the toilet and sank into the chair behind his desk. Japanese urinals were the worst-smelling in the world, everyone knew that. They were so bad Japanese men never used them, which was a sound custom, practical as well as wise. It kept little boys from associating their tassels with dark, smelly places. In the West a boy had to hide in a closet, lock himself in. No wonder he grew up thinking his body and the demands of his body were impure.
Yet at the same time the little Western boy was enjoying himself, he had no choice. Eliminating waste was always enjoyable.
Guilt.
While in Japan, on the other hand, a boy was encouraged from the beginning to do his business out-of-doors. In public. His mother spread him over the gutter when he was a baby. Later, on the train, his older sister urged him to use an empty bottle rather than bother people by pushing up the aisle. Or if there wasn’t an empty bottle, she showed him how to stand on the seat and direct his aim downwind.
Women admired him. A natural act naturally performed. A world of sun and rain and men and flowers living together in harmony.
After fifty years in Japan a man couldn’t piss in his own garden?
<
br /> Fifty years, half a century. A life that spanned three-quarters of a century. Nearly one-quarter of a century without a drink.
Father Lamereaux liked to think in terms of centuries, epochs, dynasties. When he first came to Japan it had helped him understand these people. Now it helped him understand himself.
He stirred. Someone was watching him.
He saw his housekeeper standing beside his desk, a tiny woman with a flat face, tangled hair, legs thinner than a man’s wrist. She wore yellow cotton trousers rolled up to her knees, a faded yellow blouse that hung open. But there was no sign of a woman there, only a pole of ancient polished wood. The womanly parts had dried up long ago.
Go away, he said. Don’t you know I lived half a century without you?
She stood with her arms hanging down to her sides, her eyes fixed on the middle of his forehead. Did she see anything when she stared at him like that? Or had she died at the end of the war as he often suspected, died in a fire bomb raid. So many had died then, almost everyone he knew. When the Americans arrived, there were only two million people living in the charcoal, two million from a city of five million.
He fumbled with the book in his lap, dropped it. A page ripped.
Now look what you’ve done, Miya. Go away and leave me alone.
You were going to the garden without your hat, she whispered. Without your rubbers.
Father Lamereaux crossed himself. How could he argue with a dead woman? She saw through doors, she saw in the dark. She heard the smallest sound no matter where he was in the house. She had the eyes and ears of a cat and she was always watching him. Listening. Watching. A dead cat.
Miya, leave me at once.
There are visitors.
What? Where?
Here. In the parlor.
Who are they?
Two men. Foreigners.
What do they look like?
Who knows? They all look alike.
But what do they want? Why are they here?
The housekeeper held out a letter. It was written by himself, signed with his name. The letter was addressed to someone named Quin and suggested an hour and a day when this Quin could come to call. The date, in his own hand, showed that he had written the letter several weeks ago.
Quin’s Shanghai Circus Page 7