Peter Rabe - The Box

“My dear Quinn! But forgive me, and while I don’t wish to impose on your own good judgment-eh, where did you pick that up?”

“In the quarter.”

“Now, Quinn, please, let me try and be friendly. We have, you don’t seem to know, a terrible disease problem here, and unless you are very sure…”

“Forget it, it doesn’t matter.”

“Doesn’t matter? Please. Quinn, send her away and in no more than half an hour I will send you this one. I’m quite certain of this one and I’m really trying to be friendly.”

“I can hardly think of anything friendlier,” said Quinn. “But I’m not sleeping with the one on the couch.”

“Oh? Tell me about it. What do you do?” Whitfield showed polite interest.

“Look. Friendliest thing you can do for me right now is yell across to her to stay put here till I get back. I won’t be long.”

“Well,” and Whitfield shrugged, “not that I understand it.” Then he yelled across at the girl to stay put. He spoke in Arabic, but the girl didn’t answer or even open her mouth. She only nodded. Quinn started to close the door.

“No, leave it open,” said Whitfield from the tub. “I don’t want her to steal anything.”

Quinn stopped, then smiled at the picture. He went downstairs. In the dark yard Turk stepped up to him.

“Done?”

“No,” said Quinn. “Just starting.” And then he told Turk to stay in the yard and see that the girl did not leave.

“She won’t,” said Turk, “not if you told her to stay. Besides, I feel you may need the eyes in the back of your head tonight.”

“I doubt it. Yet.”

“Mister Quinn,” said Turk, “I won’t tell you how to think, but please do not tell me what I feel in the air. What I feel is getting darker and thicker. So I will watch out.”

“I’m only going to…”

“I know where you are going. Since you did not sleep with the girl, it stands to reason.”

“Maybe you also know why I brought her up there.”

“No,” said Turk. “In some ways you do not think as clearly as I do. This makes it hard to understand your reasons. But you go,” said Turk, “and I will watch out.” He disappeared in the shadows again.

Quinn wasn’t sure what Turk intended. Walking in the darkness, he felt a strange sense of safety which he knew was connected with nothing real.

Bea’s house sat in a dark garden and no light showed anywhere. Like a midnight visit which once happened to me, it struck him, but then he rattled the gate to make a noise because he could not find a bell. Nothing happened for perhaps a minute, but when Quinn got ready to call out a servant came running up to the gate. He spoke no English but understood that Quinn wanted in. He opened the gate because there had been no orders to keep it closed.

He took Quinn to a downstairs room where he lit a lamp. After that, nobody showed for about fifteen minutes.

The room looked dull, drapes too dark and heavy, furniture dark and heavy. There was also a vase of large flowers, but they did not make the room gay. He saw a box of cigarettes on a round table and without thinking about it took one, lit up and smoked. He watched his hand, how it held the cigarette, flipped ash. The damnedest thing, he thought. It’s really the damnedest thing to forget that I used to smoke. And what else did I forget-When he was done with the cigarette he felt tense and hostile. He could recall nothing else which he might have forgotten, but it had suddenly struck him that he had no clear idea of what he wanted with Remal. Then he heard the footsteps coming down a hall. I’ll let it go till I see him, he thought. That should help But when the door opened it wasn’t Remal who came in. Beatrice smiled at Quinn as if she was really pleased to see him. She brushed her hair back with one hand. She wore no make-up and looked as if she had been asleep.

“What exciting hours you keep,” she said.

And you too, he thought. And she’s not wearing a thing under that dress, which is why she looks this soft and slow. Or the no-lipstick face does it. A real face in bed on a big, deep pillow “I didn’t come to see you,” he said without any transition.

She sat down on a couch and didn’t know what to say. But then she laughed. She took a cigarette from the boy and kept eyeing him.

“It was about the last thing I expected you to say, Mister Quinn,” and she gave a low laugh again. “Not the way you were looking at me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“So am I. Do you have a light?”

He lit her cigarette for her, watching the end of the match and nothing else.

“If Remal is here, I’d like to see him for a minute.”

She leaned back and blew smoke.

“You must have been talking to one or the other of everybody, seeing that you know exactly what goes on in my house.” She made a small pause and then, “He won’t like it.”

“I know he won’t,” and Quinn smiled.

She had not seen him smile before and had wondered, after the one time she had seen him in the hotel, how he might smile. She had speculated what a smile might do to his face which she remembered as looking still or indifferent, the eyes in particular. That’s the difference, she thought. The eyes changed. They had not been looking for anything, but now they were. And the smile? It smiles at something I know nothing about, and that’s why it bothers me She got up and said, “I’ll get him for you.” When she was by the door, she added, “I thought you were on a curfew?”

“You must have been talking to one or the other of almost everybody, too,” said Quinn.

“No. Just Remal.” She came back into the room and stubbed her cigarette out in a tray. “Quinn?”

I wish she’d go, he thought. I don’t know what to think of her. She’s less simple than anyone here “You know, it would be easier if you had come to see me. I’m much easier to see.”

“I wouldn’t come because you’re easy.”

He had said it without thinking. She started to smile but then didn’t because he was not smiling. They looked at each other with an unexpected quiet between them. Then she took a quick breath and turned away. Of course, he wants to see Remal. And I want anything I don’t know. So, of course She walked out and Quinn did not watch her. He did not have to watch her to know what she looked like, how she walked, how she felt. She feels like me, he thought. Or the way I did those first few days here-And Quinn almost felt as if he had lost something.

When she got to the bedroom she saw Remal standing on the other side of the open French doors. He stood on the dark balcony and was stretching, and at the end of the stretch he made a sound which was a lot like a purr. He is a big cat and needs a jungle. No, he is too sly and too educated but he is a big cat in bed. I like him there but nowhere else. A big cat in bed. What a way to think of a man: a cat.

“ Cheri,” she said, “it’s for you.”

He turned and when he saw her he smiled and came into the room. “For me? What is it?”

“Quinn is downstairs.”

She thought she could hear something snap when his face changed. The smile was gone, as if his thin mouth had bit into the smile and made it break into pieces, and his black female eyes became black the way Chinese lacquer is black and cold. He said nothing and walked past her, out the door.

Remal’s face had not changed at all when he walked up to Quinn, and Quinn saw the same thing there which Beatrice had seen. But he reacted differently than she had-not with a fright which was kept still with silence, but clear dislike. Remal kept standing.

“Since you left your quarters after dark, I will place you under house arrest, Mister Quinn.”

I don’t exist for him. Except as a violation of law “Sit down, won’t you,” Quinn said. He was surprised at his own calm.