Quin?s Shanghai Circus (11 page)

He was lying on his stomach. The buzz of Latin was comforting. Long before the Litany ended he had fallen asleep for the second time that night.

The next day he went to see Father Lamereaux, who it turned out had a hangover every bit as bad as his own. The two men drank green tea and swallowed fistfuls of aspirins, but that was no help to either of them. Before long Lamereaux suggested something stronger and broke out a bottle of Irish whiskey.

An hour later they were both feeling better. They got into a discussion on
No
plays and proceeded to lecture each other. Finding words inadequate, Lamereaux got to his feet to illustrate a point by acting out a scene. Geraty watched him, then in answer acted out a scene of his own. They tried a second sequence and discovered they both knew all the movements, all the poses.

When they were drunk Geraty mentioned what he had seen in the cemetery and how Lamereaux's choice of the Litany had probably saved him from a beating. The two exiles laughed so hard they were in tears. Lamereaux broke out a second bottle of Irish whiskey and they began drinking in earnest.

The afternoon turned into the evening. Much of the truth Geraty had already guessed. Father Lamereaux told him the rest.

The Jesuit had always been opposed to Japanese militarism, he wanted to help China and the West if he could. After his friend Adzhar had arranged the meeting on the beach, he had known what to do. The Japanese acolytes who had served him over the years were still loyal to him. By then many of them had good positions in the army, the ministries, the occupied areas of China. Some traveled back and forth throughout the Empire on one mission or another. Their bits and pieces of information could be compiled to form a complete intelligence picture.

The problem was getting the information out of Japan. Some of the ex-acolytes traveled to areas where contact could be made with Allied agents, but how were they to smuggle the reports out of Tokyo? The information was too bulky to be memorized. Everyone was searched both going and coming by the secret police. Father Lamereaux analyzed the problem and found a solution.

The Kempeitai considered itself the defender of the samurai tradition. Its officers and agents prided themselves on their fierceness, their warlike masculinity. Therefore when they searched a young man they only went so far. Their searches were thorough with one exception. As a result, Lamereaux's couriers could always get through with the microfilm they carried in his small bamboo device.

Device? Nothing more than a hollow piece of bamboo sealed at both ends. Among the couriers it was called
Lamereaux's Lumbago
because of the severe backaches it caused when the courier run was a long one, deep into China, say.

Thus had Lamereaux been responsible for the most successful invention in the history of espionage, the living dead drop, revolutionary because it moved where the master spy wanted it to go, because it recognized for the first time the very simple concept that espionage, the collection and storage of information, was based on the principle of man's anus.

Lamereaux asked Geraty to keep the story of his incredible intelligence pipeline a secret, and of course Geraty agreed. He even went so far as to destroy the one vague report on the ring that appeared in the files of the Kempeitai after the war.

And the fire he had started, claimed Geraty, the fire that had burned down an entire wing of the Kempeitai warehouse and lost him his job in the Occupation, the beginning of his downfall and degradation, that fire had been set for no other reason than to conceal the destruction of that one vague report.

True, shouted Geraty. All true. That's how it ended and that's how it began. Awake setting a fire one night after the war, asleep in a cemetery one night a decade earlier. Ended and began it did, and not even Edward the Confessor can tell you more.

Geraty hung his head. He peeked over his shoulder at the bodies lying in the vacant lot. With a shudder he lowered his face into the steam rising from the vegetables boiling on the pushcart. He teetered on his stool. He was whispering.

Asleep and awake, you say? Awake? The time came that night when Lamereaux and I had finished that second bottle of Irish whiskey. Done we were, saints preserve us, and we knew it. The old days were gone and we knew it. We were two drunk butterflies circling a candle, two motionless
No
actors stuck in a pose, two exiles in the secret bag the Almighty was carrying across Asia. War. The Orient thirty years ago.

Geraty's head hung over a bowl of turnips. He stared at the turnips, the steam creeping up along the layers of sweaters, the red flannel tied with string, the black bowler hat pulled down to his bulging eyes. His dark, gloomy face was cut with scars, running with tears.

Quin waited. After five or ten minutes of silence he tapped Geraty on the shoulder.

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.