The Box

The Box

BY PETER RABE

a division of F+W Crime

Chapter 1

This is a pink and gray town which sits very small on the North edge of Africa. The coast is bone white and the sirocco comes through any time it wants to blow through. The town is dry with heat and sand.

The sirocco changes its character later, once it has crossed the Mediterranean, so that in Sicily, for example, the wind is much slower, much more moist and depressing. But over Okar it is still a very sharp wind. It does not blow all the time but it is always expected, fierce with heat and very gritty. The sand bites and the heat bites, and on one side the desert stops the town and on the other the sea shines like metal.

None of this harshness has made the inhabitants fierce. Some things you don’t fight. There are the Arabs there and there are the French. Once, briefly, there were the Germans, the Italians and the English, and a few of these remained. The people move slowly or quietly, sometimes moving only their eyes. This looks like a cautious, subdued way of living, and it is. Anything else would be waste.

There were not so long ago five in Okar who moved differently, perhaps because they forgot where they were, or maybe they could not help what happened; none of them is there any more. They were Remal, the mayor, who also did other things, and Bea, who did nothing much because she was waiting, and Whitfield, who was done waiting for anything, and Turk, who was so greedy he couldn’t possibly have made it. And Quinn, of course. Put simply, he came and went. But that’s leaving out almost everything….

“You got me out of my bath, you know,” said the clerk.

“Mister Whitfield,” said the captain, “this is your pier.”

“Because of this bleedin’ box you got me out of my bath.”

“Mister Whitfield. I’m tied up at your company’s pier, and in order to lower the box I need your permission.”

“If Okar isn’t the destination, why lower your box? And during siesta,” the clerk sighed.

“I’m sorry I interrupted your sleep.”

“I take a bath during siesta,” said the clerk. He did not seem angry or irritated, but he was interested in making his point. It reminded him of the bath and he smiled at the captain, or rather, he smiled just past his left ear.

The captain thought that the clerk did look very clean—Englishman-clean—and he thought that he smelled of gin. Take an Englishman and give him a job where the sun is very hot and he soon begins to smell of gin. Perhaps this one, for siesta, bathes in gin.

The captain squinted up at his ship which showed big and black against the sun, much bigger than the tramper actually was, because the pier was so low.

“The winch man dropped a crate on the box down in the hold,” said the captain, “and something cracked.”

“I can understand that,” said the clerk because he felt he should say something.

He looked at the captain and how the man sweated. How he sweats. Why doesn’t he shave off that beard? Siesta time and I must worry about his cracked box. Such a beard in this heat. Perhaps a Viking complex or something.

“So the crew in the hold,” said the captain, “two of the crew down there, they went and took a look and next they came out running and screaming. Uh—about something bad,” said the captain and looked the length of the empty pier.

The empty pier was white in the sun and much easier to look at for the moment than anything else, such as the clerk, for example, and his patient face. And why doesn’t he sweat—?

“Eh?” said the clerk.

“And they described a smell. A bad smell.”

The captain looked back at the clerk and went rasp, rasp in his throat, a sound to go with the beard.

“Now, you understand, don’t you, Whitfield, I can’t have something like that down there in my hold.”

“You’re Swedish,” said the clerk.

This sounds like nonsense, thought the captain, all of this, including Whitfield’s unconnected remark, because of the heat. Otherwise, everything would make sense. He made his throat rumble again, out through the beard, and thought a Swedish curse.

“Is your crew Swedish, too?” asked the clerk.

“Those two from the hold, they are Congolese.”

“And they described a strange smell. And perhaps a strange glow? You know, something wavering with a glow in the dark, eh?”

“Goddamn this heat,” said the captain. “Don’t talk nonsense, Whitfield.”

“I?”

“Whitfield…”

“Captain. You know how ghost-ridden they are, those Congolese. Very superstitious, actually.”

“Whitfield,” said the captain. “I understand you want to get back to sleep. I understand…”

“I take a bath during siesta.”

“I also understand about that, Whitfield, and that this is an annoyance to you, to come out here and sweat on the pier.”

“I’m not sweating,” said the clerk. His blond hair was dry, his light skin was dry, and the gin smile on his face made him look like an elderly boy. “However,” he said, “I wish you would take your box to destination. It would save us so much paperwork.” Then he thought of something else. “And I’m sure the smell doesn’t reach topside and nobody lives in the hold anyway.”

The captain looked way up at the sky, though the brightness up there hurt his eyes. Then he jerked his face at the clerk and started yelling with both eyes closed.

“I must look at the box and repair the box! I can’t repair on deck because of the freight lashed down there! All I request…”

“Heavens,” said the clerk, “how big is this box?”

“Like a telephone booth. No. Bigger. Like two.”

“Jet engine,” said the clerk. “I’ve seen those crates when the company had me in Egypt.”

“They—don’t—stink!” yelled the captain.

“Of course. Or glow in the dark.”

But the clerk saw now how the siesta was being wasted. With the gin wearing off on him under the heavy sun he got a feeling of waste and uselessness, always there when the gin wore off; when this happened he would take the other way he knew for combating these feelings, these really cosmic ones, in his experience, and he became indifferent.

“Very well,” he said. “Lower away, if you wish. Gently,” and with the last word he again and for a moment found his own dreaminess back. He smiled at nothing past the captain’s left ear, and then up at the ship where a box would soon be swinging over. For a moment, inconsequentially, he thought of a childhood time in a London mews; it was so clear and still, and he saw himself walking there, eyes up and watching his green balloon. How it floated.

All this went by when the captain roared suddenly, giving the clerk a start of fright and alertness. Someone roared back from the high deck of the tramper and then the winch started screeching.

“What was it this time?” said the clerk.

“The papers,” said the captain. “We need a bill of lading and so forth. Someone will bring them.”

“Ah,” said the clerk. “I should think so.”

The winch started up again but because of the strain on it the sound was now different. It mostly hummed. From the pier they could see the black line of the gunwale above, and the boom over the hold, the boom holding very still while the humming went on. The clerk, for no reason at all, felt suddenly hot.

“I’ll be glad,” said the captain, “to weigh anchor tonight.”

“Of course.”

“Load, unload, go. Nothing else here.”

“In Okar?” said the clerk, feeling absent-minded.

“What else is here?”

“I don’t know,” said the clerk. “I don’t even know what is here.”

It’s the heat, thought the captain, which makes everything sound like nonsense, and when a seaman came off the ship, bringing a clipboard with papers, the captain grabbed for it as he might for the coattails of fleeing sanity.

“Where did you load this thing?” asked the clerk.

“New York.” The captain kept flipping papers. “And your route?”

“Tel Aviv, Alexandria, Madagascar, New York.”

“Find the destination of your thing yet?” The clerk looked up at the sky where the boom was, swaying a little now and all stiff and black against the white sky. Then the box showed.

“Just a minute,” said the captain and licked his finger. The box also looked black, because of the white sky. It was very large, and swayed.

“Where to?” the clerk asked again.

“New York. Un—”

The boom swung around now and the black load hung over the pier.

“New York is port of origin,” said the clerk. “You mentioned that earlier.”

“Just a minute—”

When the box was lowered the winch made a different sound once again, a give and then hold sound, a give then hold, a sagging feeling inside the intestines, thought the clerk as he watched the box come down. It grew bigger.

“New York,” said the captain.

“My dear captain. All I’ve asked…”

“Destination New York!” said the captain. “Here. Look at it!”

The clerk looked and said, “Queer, isn’t it. Port of origin, New York. Destination, New York.”

They both looked up at the box which swung very slowly.

“What’s in it?” asked the clerk.

“What’s in it. One moment now. Ah: PERISHABLES. NOTE: IMPERATIVE, KEEP VENTILATED.”

The clerk made a sound in his throat, somewhat like the captain’s rumble, though it did not rumble when the clerk made the sound but was more like a polite knock on a private door.

“That’s a very queer entry, captain. They do have regulations over there, you know, about proper entries.”

The captain did not answer and kept riffling the papers. The box was low now and really big. It no longer looked black, being away from the sky, but quite stained.

“And you know something else?” said the captain and suddenly slapped his hand on the clipboard. “There’s no customs notation here anywhere!”

Now the winchman above kept watching the seaman who stood on the pier. The seaman made slow signals with wrists and hands to show when the box would set down. He is an artist, thought the clerk, watching the seaman. Sometimes he only uses his fingers.

There were also two dark-looking Arabs who stood on the pier and waited. One held a crowbar, resting the thing like a lance. The other one had an axe.

The box touched, not too gently, but well enough. It just creaked once. A pine box, large and sturdy, with legends on the outside to show which side should be up. The side panels, close to the top, had slits. The top panel was crashed down at one end.

“It does smell, doesn’t it?” said the clerk.

“Christus—” said the captain.

The seaman by the box undid the hook from the lashing, fumbling with haste because he was holding his breath. When the hook swung free the seaman ran away from the box.

“Look at those Arabs,” said the clerk. “Standing there and not moving a muscle.”

“And in the lee of that thing yet,” said the captain.

Then the hook went up and the winch made its high sound. No one really wanted to move. The clerk felt the heat very much and the bareness of everything; he thought that the box looked very ugly. Siesta gone for that ugly box. It doesn’t even belong here. That thing belongs nowhere. Like the winch sound, the screech of it, which doesn’t belong in siesta silence.

Both Arabs, at that moment, gave a start.

“What?” said the captain.

The winch stopped because the hook was all the way up. The boom swung back but that made no sound.

“What?” said the captain again. He sounded angry. “What was that?”

But the Arabs did not answer. They looked at each other and then they shrugged. One of them grinned and rubbed his hand up and down on the crowbar.

“Goddamn this heat,” said the captain.

“Sirocco coming,” said the clerk.

They stood a moment longer while the captain said again that he had to be out of here by this night, but mostly there was the silence of heat everywhere on the pier. And whatever spoiled in the box there, spoiled a little bit more.

“Open it!” said the captain.

Chapter 2

Some of the crew did not care one way or the other, but a lot of them were on the bridge of the tramper, because from the port end of the bridge they had the best view of the pier. They could almost look straight down into the box, once it would be open.

The captain stayed where he
was
and the clerk stayed with him, away from the box. Just the two Arabs went near it now because they were to open it and did not seem to mind anything. The seaman who had thrown the lashings off the hook was now back by the warehouse wall where he smoked a cigarette with sharp little drags.

“They’re ruining it, including the good parts of the box,” said the captain.

“You wanted it open,” said the clerk.

The Arabs had to cut the bands first, which they did with the axe. Then they used the axe and the crowbar to pry up the top, which took time.

“Well—” said the captain.

“Let it air out a moment,” said the clerk.

They waited and watched the two Arabs drop the lid to the ground and then watched them looking into the box. They just looked and when they straightened up they looked at each other. One of them shrugged and the other one giggled.