Quin?s Shanghai Circus (24 page)

Hey, said Big Gobi. Hey what's the name of this palace?

The Living Room.

It was silly. Nothing made any sense anymore. Palaces didn't have living rooms. Palaces were supposed to be up in the sky.

He was even more disappointed when they went into a small, dark room, smaller than the one in Yokohama, lacking a jukebox. They sat down in an alcove hidden behind palm trees. A bucket of ice was brought with a bottle in it. Big Gobi tasted the bubbly ginger ale and found it bitter. The tall, flat glasses held only a mouthful.

He was lonely. An old woman with a silly green jewel in the middle of her forehead came and sat down beside Quin. Was that Quin's idea of a princess? While they talked he peeked between the palm trees. It was dark out there. Where was everyone?

The old woman left and Quin went with her, saying he would be back in a few minutes. Big Gobi shrugged. He didn't care.

He finished the bottle of ginger ale thinking about the girl in Yokohama who had jewels on her slippers, not on her forehead. He tried washing and drying his hands, but that didn't help either. Another bottle came. He drank some more.

All at once a beautiful girl was sitting down beside him, a young girl with black hair to her waist, a princess. She was wearing an evening dress and stroking his arm. The only girl who had ever done that before was the nurse in the army when she gave him water injections. Instinctively he jerked his arm away.

Her hand fell on his knee. She giggled and went on stroking him.

Whatever you want, said her lovely eyes. I love your knee. I love all of you.

Big Gobi suddenly laughed. He was happy. This princess was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen and she was smiling at him, admiring him, loving him.

He began to talk, he couldn't help it. He told her about the orphanage and oysters and the army and the bus trip and the seagull soup on the freighter and running away from the seagulls through a blizzard. He confessed his secrets, all but one of them, and still she smiled at him, loved him, urged him to go on.

Her hand slipped up to his thigh.

Big Gobi was smiling too, giggling, pouring himself more ginger ale. The princess was beautiful, life in the palace was beautiful. She loved him, why not tell her everything? She would understand about the accident in the freezer locker.

She blew in his ear. Her hand moved over and touched him right there, stroked him right there. Big Gobi took the eye out of his pocket so that he wouldn't lose control.

It all happened quickly. She pulled her hand away, her smile was gone, her face a mixture of wonder and doubt. She was staring at his hand on the table, at the eye buried in his palm. The eye was staring back at her, reflecting the dim light in the alcove. Big Gobi didn't want her to take her hand away and he didn't want to stop talking. He wanted to tell her about the tuna fish and the accident with the foreman before it was too late.

He pulled her toward him, she pulled away. She said something he didn't understand and her dress ripped. She screamed.

The jukebox in Yokohama, the jewels, the beach, oysters. Colored lights went off in Big Gobi's head. What was that eye doing in his hand? Was it really an eye or was it an oyster?

He pushed it into his mouth. Swallowed it.

The girl shrieked. He pulled her again and her dress tore, the jigglies were right in front of him. He squeezed the jigglies, squeezed himself, got his trousers down as the two of them crashed backward through the palm trees into the middle of the room. Waiters tried to hold his arms and legs, the
sumo
wrestler's mallet landed on his head but Big Gobi went on pumping. The mallet rose in the air a second time.

There was no way of knowing whether the second blow from that heavy weapon, by itself, would have stopped him. In any case his orgasm had already begun before the mallet fell. By the time it struck him he was spent, limp, relaxed. The mallet grazed his ear and he rolled over on his back, snoring, a smile on his face, one arm tucked underneath the naked girl.

He awoke on a landing near the street, his ear bandaged, Quin standing over him. He wanted to tell Quin that it had been nobody's fault. Not hers for touching him right there where a princess touches you when she loves you. Not his for taking out the eye because he loved her and didn't want an accident to happen at the table. No one was to blame. Everything had happened out of love.

Big Gobi thought of all the things he wanted to say, but only the same silly words kept coming out.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry, Quin.

Sorry.

Terribly sorry.

He tried to say more and couldn't, stammered, repeated himself. And then Quin turned on him.

Hold your tongue,
he said.

Big Gobi closed his eyes. He didn't say anything after that because he had heard that voice before. It was the kind of voice a cook on a freighter used, or a nurse in the army, or a bus driver when he took your ticket and tore it up.

Just destroyed it, just like that, and threw it away not caring that you were all alone and had nowhere to go without a ticket.

It was wrong, Big Gobi knew it was wrong. Quin was like a brother to him, but even Quin got angry because he could never say what he wanted to say, could never open his heart and love people the way he wanted to love them, touch them the way he wanted to touch them without some terrible accident happening. Perhaps if he'd told Quin long ago about the mistake with the foreman and the tuna fish, he might have understood this time. But he hadn't told him then and now it was too late. It was all wrong and no one was to blame, but it was too late.

Hold your tongue.

Big Gobi closed his eyes. Those were the last words that would ever cause him pain for when they sank into him a gate clanged shut behind them, a palace gate that would never open again. He tried to live in a world that was strange and frightening, tried to call it silly, tried to pretend he could live the way other people lived. But the gestures had always been clumsy, the acting artless, a jester with a serious face, a buffoon without a smile. Although he was as kind and lonely as a clown, in the end no one laughed.

Thereafter he might walk after Quin, the brother, down this street or that from the past, through the mythical lost cities of Shanghai and Tokyo and there find his mother or father without knowing it, answering questions that went unheard because the dream was gone, because the child within him had fled to the safety of that changeless inner kingdom where neither pain nor insult could be found, nothing in fact but the silent palace where the prince who might have been sat alone in his cell, beyond hope or sadness, patiently waiting for death.

Each morning they had the same conversation when Big Gobi came into the living room and sat down with his hands in his lap, there to remain for the rest of the day.

How's the ear, Gobes?

The ear's fine.

Bandage too tight?

The bandage's fine.

Look, I'm sorry I spoke to you that way, I didn't mean it. I just got angry that something like that had to happen in Mama's place.

Anger's fine. That Mama's fine. What happened's fine.

Quin nodded to himself and went into the kitchen, or outside to walk, or back into the bedroom to stare at the floor. Somehow he knew he had to get through to Big Gobi, he had to break his trance. In the end, not knowing how it might help, he decided to take him along to the meeting with the gangster Kikuchi-Lotmann.

Later that evening on the houseboat with Kikuchi-Lotmann would remind him of another meeting on a houseboat, the one Mama had failed to mention in her first conversation with him, the episode that had taken place in Shanghai eight years before she arrived there, the evening when Baron Kikuchi had embraced his convictions and agreed to supply the plans of the General Staff of the Imperial Army to the engaging husband of his former mistress, a man named Quin.

One recollection, a small one.

Soon there would be many more since Quin was unknowingly nearing the center of the espionage ring that had received its code name from an event in the life of the mysterious Adzhar, a clandestine network that had connected his father and the General and Father Lamereaux, and Maeve and Miya and Mama, and through them others as well, in a performance of love and desperation so powerful it could reach out thirty years later to claim both murders and suicides, create a new Kannon Buddha, and bring on the most magnificent funeral in Asia since the death of Kublai Khan.

And all because Quin wanted to help Big Gobi, and in so doing introduced him to his murderer.

Just before midnight they were walking down the canal behind the
sushi
restaurant when a young Japanese stepped out of the shadows with a submachine gun. He was wearing a dark business suit and his hair was cut short, but Quin wouldn't have recognized him anyway without his false moustache and false sideburns. The young Japanese pointed the submachine gun at an alley and moved behind them. There was nothing to do but march ahead.

They came to a blank wall at the end of the alley. A buzzer sounded. The wall rolled away to reveal an enormous hall, a brightly lit area where hundreds of young women in white overalls and white surgical masks sat at benches studying banks of miniature television sets. Behind the sets were computers. The television screens showed scenes from all over the world, shipyards and oil refineries, camera factories, massage parlors, motorcycle assembly lines, bars and restaurants, transistor radio plants, every manner of enterprise and industry.

The guard waved them through a door into another large hall, less well lit, where young men in white overalls and white surgical masks supervised machines that stacked and packaged currencies.

The next door led into darkness. They were outside again facing the canal. A narrow gangplank ran down to a small houseboat.

When they stepped on the gangplank a light went on. A speaker began to play circus music. They passed through a tiny room with a bare canvas cot and one empty coat hanger on the wall beside a whip and megaphone. They walked through another door onto the deck.

The water was black and still. On the far side of the canal the windowless wall of a warehouse stretched for hundreds of yards. A charcoal brazier burned near the edge of the deck, which was covered with sawdust. Folding canvas chairs were scattered here and there. From one of them rose a short, rotund man who wore steel-rimmed glasses and a lavender frock coat. He smiled as he put out his hand.

Just in time, he said. I'm serving Mongolian mixed grill tonight. Your name please?

Quin.

The short, rotund man shook his hand warmly.

Kikuchi-Lotmann, Mr. Quin, a pleasure. I was beginning to wonder what had happened to you. I expected to see you soon after you made your inquiries. Were you delayed?

Quin pointed at the bandage over Big Gobi's ear. Kikuchi-Lotmann shook his head with concern.

An accident? How unfortunate. But in any case you're here and now we can have our chat. Who was it that sent you to me?

Father Lamereaux.

Ah, such a good man, so gentle and so kind. I haven't seen him since I was a child. Excuse me, please.

The young man with the submachine gun clicked his heels and handed a report to Kikuchi-Lotmann, who glanced through it with no expression on his face. The guard stood at order arms. Kikuchi-Lotmann lit a long cigar and puffed briefly.

That settles it, he said. Sell our Korean textiles, our Kuwait crude, and our Kabul goats. Buy Surabaja brothels and bring down the government in Syria. I'll see the delegation from Bolivia next week. Tell the families in Belgium and Bali to stop feuding or I'll put out contracts. Corner the unrefined sugar market in Burma, via Beirut. Put a hold on South African diamonds until the Venezuelans agree to our pineapple terms. Bring gin, ice, and bitters.

The guard clicked his heels and left. Kikuchi-Lotmann removed a necktie from his pocket and tied it in the place of the one he was wearing.

Not since I was a child, he repeated, in Kamakura before the war. He often used to visit the man who took me in when I was a nameless orphan, Rabbi Lotmann, the former Baron Kikuchi. Lotmann always admired Lamereaux's knowledge of the
No
theater. Are you also interested in
No?

Quin shook his head.

Nor am I. Performances yes, but of a different kind.

He paused, smiling, as if Quin were supposed to understand something by that. But when Quin said nothing he nodded quickly.

I see, he told you nothing about me. Well what might the name of your friend be?

Gobi.

Gobi? The desert in China? A curious name. In Chinese he would be called Shamo. That's their word for it, it means sandy wastes. Men known as dune-dwellers lived there in prehistoric times. Artifacts have been found along with dinosaur eggs. Would you like a drink before dinner?

They sat down at a folding camp table and Kikuchi-Lotmann mixed pink gins. A servant, a short man with gray hair, appeared with a platter of kidneys and liver, heart, spleen, a section of the large intestine, tongue and hocks and throat. Something about the man reminded Quin of Mama, perhaps his height or the resignation in his eyes. But the servant was thickset whereas Mama was frail, and the compassion in her face was replaced by hardness in his.

Kikuchi-Lotmann inspected the platter and gave instructions for cooking the meat. At the same time he chopped up leeks and watercress and made a salad dressing.

I wonder if I haven't seen him before, said Quin, nodding in the direction of the servant who was now bent over the charcoal brazier.

Unlikely, answered Kikuchi-Lotmann. He's one of my two personal bodyguards and is always with me. The other is the young man who escorted you in. The young one I call the student and the old one the policeman, because that's what they were when I hired them. The student is good at remembering things and the policeman is good at grilling meat. And now, Mr. Quin, let's have our chat. Why are you here?