Quin?s Shanghai Circus (10 page)

Quin held them out, the forged Canadian passport and the two forged Belgian passports. As Geraty secreted them in his greatcoat the black bowler hat crept back on his head, his mouth opened, a wheezing cough struck Quin in the face. The fat man was laughing.

That? Just that? But you should have said so before, nephew. Right this way for the illusive dream often sought and seldom found, or to be exact, often found but seldom recognized.

Abruptly Geraty turned away and lurched into an alley, his immense shadow moving surprisingly fast down the narrow passage. As much as it bothered him, Quin had no choice but to trot along behind recalling a scene only recently described to him, Geraty leading one of his customers off at midnight to some interminable obscene performance that existed only in his own mind, if it existed at all.

They sat on stools at a pushcart beside a vacant lot where a few vagrants were already asleep on the sand. The pushcart served boiled vegetables and cheap liquor. Geraty ignored the owner and fished in the pan of steaming water with his hands. He threw a bamboo shoot over his shoulder, grunted a few words, wiped his hands on his sweaters.

A bowl of horseradish appeared followed by two glasses of raw sake and a plate of turnips. Geraty dipped a slice of turnip into the horseradish and chewed.

The priest, buffalo.

Geraty swallowed and threw off one of the glasses. His eyes bulged.

Could it be that we are both referring to the hero who shortened the Second World War and thereby saved millions of lives? A man whose vocation is the alleviation of suffering? An elderly drunkard and pederast, now reformed and retired, who once sent reams and reams of valuable secret information to the West? Is this the heroic figure before us at tonight's turnip bar of history? Look now behind you at those wandering Japanese poets curled up on the sand in the spacious urinal they have found for themselves in a slum of the world's largest city. Note that they sleep soundly because of what a frail, gentle man once did for them three decades ago. The sacrifices were his. The courage was his. Save for him they might never have returned from China. Their bones might be bleaching at this very moment on a Pacific atoll. But do they know it? Have they heard his name even once in the waves and the desert and the wind?

The priest, buffalo.

Geraty stuffed horseradish into his nose. He sneezed, coughed once.

An anonymous Jesuit once known for his Friday night performances? Precisely that frail, gentle man who wears the buttons on his coat in a totally personal configuration? Yes, I thought so, I was sure that's who we were talking about. A genuine article and rare. Rare? Rare by God, you never met such a man in the Bronx. When you see him you'll find out for yourself, but I suggest you not expect too much at first. His memory was phenomenal once but now, as I say, he's reformed and retired. To have some idea of what he's done for people in the past, savor the name of St. Brigid. Recall her sanctity and her miraculous powers, above all her hospitality to the poor and the suffering, her charity to slaves. Most of us are slaves of one kind or another, to one thing or another, and the alleviation of suffering, nephew, is the path this Jesuit has followed. But also remember that path has been in Japan for fifty years, fifty years of speaking nothing but Japanese. You'll have to adopt their manner of circumlocution with this rare man, you'll have to talk about nothing at first and sniff the air for clues. Clues? Sniff the air and chat about this and that, whatever comes up, slip from one unrelated and unresolved topic to another, and all the while circle your man the way a puppy circles a wise old hound, waiting for a whiff of his hindquarters, waiting to find out who he is in fact. Backward it may seem to you, coming up from behind it might appear to be, but that's the way it's done over here. Why? For He hath exalted the humble and put down the mighty from their seat. The sergeant who wore this overcoat the day they took Nanking could tell you what that means, could tell you just as he told me years later on a beach south of Tokyo, a beach in Kamakura, the same beach where they put on gas masks and had the picnic that saved Moscow from the Germans.

Lamereaux, buffalo.

That's right, that's our man and none other. Why else would I be talking about the picnic? They were there to recruit Lamereaux of course. That was the whole point.

Who was there?

Adzhar for one. Adzhar the incredible linguist. How did he ever survive the roads where life took him? No matter, he did, and someday I thought those roads would lead me to the pine grove I've always wanted to find, a quiet grove on a hill above the sea, no more than a soul deserves after lurking forty years in the locked, shuttered rooms of Asia. But no. Adzhar in his simplicity was too complex for them, his simple faith in love was beyond their comprehension. The fools were delirious on dragon piss and confiscated everything.

Who was Adzhar?

You're right there, who was Adzhar and who was Lamereaux? And who was Baron Kikuchi for that matter? The picnic was held near his estate after all, saints preserve us. They say he was the most feared man in the Kempeitai and I've no reason not to believe them, but who was I? Who was I then and who am I now? And who was Edward the Confessor? Go ahead, tell me that.

Adzhar, buffalo. Who was he?

A reindeer from Lapland, a dragon from every country in the world. I didn't know him, I only knew him through his work, his legacy to me. Other people knew him that way too. He and Lamereaux were good friends then. Why? Who can say. Who can fathom why people watched those worthless films I bought in Mukden? Who can say why those films led to a cemetery in Tokyo, why the cemetery led to two bottles of Irish whiskey in Lamereaux's Victorian parlor, why two bottles of Irish whiskey led to a picnic on a beach south of Tokyo. A beach? Kamakura of course.

You said there were four people at the picnic.

Exactly four, definitely four. The trinity plus one? Three men and a woman? The trinity in gas masks so the secret conversation could not be overheard? The fourth presence not bothering with a gas mask, instead concerning herself with the blanket and the food and the comfort of the other three? Yes, that's what Lamereaux told me the night we made our suffering journey through two bottles of Irish whiskey.

Adzhar and Lamereaux. Who were the other two?

Ask your man, he would know because he was there. Fools say he became a drunkard when he was interned in the mountains, but that's because they can't sniff a change in the wind, they can't feel it coming, they like to think it happens quickly. An hour ago? Yesterday at the latest? Eight years ago is more like it and fifty years ago is even more like it. And as for those little boys he knew, he loved them like a father. Why not? He was and is so ordained by the Almighty.

Buffalo, when was the picnic?

At the onset of an era given to murders and assassinations, a time when a hunger for human flesh rumbled in men's bowels. Look what happened in Nanking where a sergeant strangled his own commanding general. When he told me that on the beach, I knew I was hearing a voice direct from the rectum of lunacy. No one but me would probably ever believe such a voice, but that doesn't matter now. A long time ago I destroyed the evidence, destroyed the only report the Kempeitai had on it.

On what?

The spy ring. The report was short, no more than a paragraph or two. That sergeant had gone mucking around in the rectum of his lunacy and killed the courier they caught, beat him to death, murdered the only source of information they had before there was time to get anything worthwhile out of him.

Spy ring. What spy ring?

My God, nephew, isn't that what we're talking about? The spy ring run by Lamereaux? The man who saved Moscow from the Germans? The hero who shortened the war in China and saved millions of lives? Worthless films, a cemetery, two bottles of Irish whiskey, a picnic for the trinity plus one? That's the path Lamereaux and I were on thirty years ago. What path? The path at our feet, nephew, the path that runs from a whiskey bar in the Bronx to a turnip bar in Tokyo, that begins right here beside a vacant lot where dreaming poets pass themselves off as sleeping scavengers. My doctors have warned me to be careful of the night air, my condition is delicate at best. Another glass of dragon piss is what we need now, then perhaps we'll be able to find a barge and float our souls down the river to the sea, through the mist and vapors we see rising from our vessel, not really a pushcart. Steam, you call it? The breath of boiled turnips? Saints preserve us, nephew, you better examine more closely the shores where we pass.

Geraty emptied one glass after another. Quin forced him to eat, forced him to answer questions, forced him to sit up when his head sank toward the counter. The fat man muttered and swore, laughed, lied when there seemed no reason to lie, and then corrected himself before wandering off on some byway of his four decades of travel through Asia.

He recited Manchurian telephone numbers and Chinese addresses, changed costumes, sang circus songs, beat a drum and played a flute, consumed bowls of horseradish and mounds of turnips, sneaked through the black-market district of Mukden late in 1934 and again in 1935, noting discrepancies, brought out all the peeling props and threadbare disguises of an aging clown working his way around the ring. Grinning, weeping, he eventually revealed how he had discovered thirty years ago that Lamereaux was the head of an espionage network in Japan, a network with such an ingenious communication system it was the most successful spy ring in Asia in the years leading up to the Second World War.

The information had come to Geraty by chance because he happened to fall asleep in a Tokyo cemetery.

At the time he-was planning a trip to the mainland, ostensibly to sell patent drugs. His real interest, however, was in acquiring pornographic movies that could be sold at a large profit in Shanghai. Since the military had come to power in Japan these movies could be found nowhere in the country, but there were rumors that when the Japanese army had seized Manchuria a few years before, they had confiscated a large supply of them, probably from a White Russian entrepreneur.

Geraty made inquiries and was finally introduced to a young Japanese army corporal, on leave in Tokyo, who worked as a film projectionist in a unit stationed near Mukden. The corporal, little more than a boy, said the films could be provided for the right sum of money. The amount named was far more than Geraty had.

At this point Geraty's story became confused. Although he would not admit it outright, it appeared he had stolen the money.

Worse, he was particularly ashamed of the source of the stolen money. He cried uncontrollably in front of Quin and insisted on whispering in a voice so low Quin couldn't hear him. He was talking to his saints, he said. At least half an hour went by before Quin could get him to resume his account.

A meeting between the corporal and Geraty had been arranged for a Tokyo cemetery, one of the few places where a Japanese and a foreigner could still safely transact illegal business. Geraty was to bring the money, and the corporal in turn would tell him where the films would be cached for him in Mukden.

Geraty took a circuitous route through the cemetery and met the corporal behind a mausoleum. The deal was settled and the corporal left. Geraty had gotten very drunk before coming to the cemetery, obviously because of the stolen money he had just given away. It was a warm evening. After the corporal left, Geraty leaned against the mausoleum and wept. A minute later he was asleep on his feet.

Some time passed. He awoke in a heavy sweat, unable to remember where he was or how he had gotten there. He stumbled between the gravestones until he heard a man's voice, whereupon he dropped behind a stone to hide. He was lying on his stomach and it was impossible to make out anything in the darkness.

The clouds suddenly parted. Geraty was astonished to see the young boy he had just met, the corporal from the unit near Mukden. In the corporal's hand was the packet of money Geraty had paid over for the films. The boy was holding out the packet as if to give it to someone. The packet disappeared, the corporal turned and dropped his trousers. He bent over a tombstone, baring a slender bottom to the moon and whoever else was there.

A tall, gaunt figure stepped forward from the shadows, his eyes raised to heaven. He had the features of a Westerner and the clothes of a cleric. A specific deed was about to be performed.

Geraty stared. Only one man in Asia answered to that description.

Lamereaux piously crossed himself, but his next action wasn't at all what Geraty had expected. The priest's hand shot out and made a flickering motion, a deft and practiced movement much like Geraty's own when he was inserting a ball of horseradish in his nose. The hand withdrew, the corporal retrieved his trousers and fled.

Geraty watched Lamereaux drop to his knees. The Jesuit took hold of his rosary and recited the fifty-three Hail Marys, curiously omitting both the Credo and the Our Fathers. The clouds closed as suddenly as they had opened. In the darkness Geraty heard the priest begin to sing the Litany of the Saints.

Once more Geraty's narrative broke down. He became incoherent, he sobbed, he hid his face and whispered. He admitted the scene infuriated him, but he wouldn't say why.

Quin had no way of knowing what it meant. Was it because the money Geraty had stolen was now being given to someone else? To someone he knew? Because that person was Father Lamereaux?

Who or what enraged him? The corporal? Lamereaux? A gesture by the priest that mimicked his own?

Or simply himself.

Geraty whispered over his bowl of turnips. He cried. He buried his scarred face in the folds of his greatcoat. Again it took some time before Quin could coax him back to the story.

Fury, hissed Geraty. Overweening wrath was upon me.

His first impulse had been to rush over and give Lamereaux a beating, beat him mercilessly over the head and shoulders as he knelt there in the darkness. But fortunately it had been many years since he'd heard the Litany from beginning to end. The sound of Latin was a nostalgic memory to him, a monotonous chant from his childhood. He knew the chant would last a good thirty minutes, so there seemed no reason to hurry the beating.