Edward Whittemore - Quin’s Shanghai Circus

Oysters. Television. The army. Seagull droppings soup.

While crossing the Pacific Big Gobi had told Quin all his secrets but one. That last one he had put off and put off until all at once it was their last day at sea and he had no choice. The next morning they were due to dock in Yokohama, and if he were ever going to confess his final secret he had to do it while they were still out of sight of land.

He didn’t know why that was so but all the same he knew it. He knew he was so ashamed of that secret the truth of it could only be spoken where flux was all around him, where space turned without boundaries upon itself, where time and reach and movement were endless and indistinguishable. That is, in a desert or at sea.

It was toward the end of the afternoon. Quin sat in his chair, Big Gobi beside him on the deck. Big Gobi kept his head down so that Quin wouldn’t be able to see his face. He was pretending to study the small gold cross.

Hey, Quin, sometimes things happen by accident, don’t they? I mean even bad things can be mistakes, can’t they?

Right, Gobes, that’s the way it is.

Even the worst things? Between people I mean.

Well maybe, but maybe not. The worst things may not be accidents.

You really think so?

Yes, I guess I do.

Big Gobi turned away. He had always wanted to think the tuna fish was an accident, a mistake. He had been only eighteen then, it was the first time he had left the orphanage. They wanted to see if he could do regular work, so they found him a job in Boston unloading fish. He moved to a foundling home near the harbor and went to work every morning at six. In the evenings he watched television. On Saturday night he went to the movies.

One Saturday he stayed late to help the foreman. They worked alone, only the foreman knew he was there and not at the movies. Big Gobi was moving crates of fish in the freezer locker, stacking the crates along one wall. He had to walk around a frozen tuna that was lying in the middle of the floor, a fish about six feet long. All at once he realized the eye of the fish was staring at him. He swung his foot and the foreman yelled.

What the hell?

For a moment Big Gobi didn’t know where he was. He looked down and saw that he had kicked a hole in the fish. A large chunk of flesh had fallen out of its belly.

I’m sorry, he said, I must have slipped.

He got down on his knees and stuffed the chunk of flesh back into the hole in the belly, but when he removed his hand the chunk fell out on the floor.

What the hell, yelled the foreman, what are you doing now?

Don’t worry, whispered Big Gobi, I can fix it.

He ran out the door and came back with a bucket of wet fish slops and a piece of rope. The foreman watched him plaster the hole with fish paste, refit the chunk, and tie the rope around the fish.

You’ll see, said Big Gobi, we did it all the time at the farm. You cement around the stone and then the cement hardens and the wall’s perfect. This slop will freeze in no time, you’ll see.

Freak, shouted the foreman.

Like new, whispered Big Gobi. I promise.

Promise your fucking ass off. That’s fish, not stone.

I tripped, whispered Big Gobi.

Tripped my ass. You kicked that fish and you’re going to pay for it. Don’t you know you can’t go around destroying things?

The bucket of fish slops was still in Big Gobi’s hand. He groaned and his hands came together. The metal snapped, crumpled, fell in a ball at his feet.

A mistake, he whispered.

You idiot freak, yelled the foreman.

Big Gobi remembered telling himself he didn’t destroy things. He whispered it and shouted it as loud as he could, shouted so loud his ears were still ringing when he opened his eyes and saw the foreman’s head in his hands, blood on the man’s mouth, the broken neck twisted away from the body.

Big Gobi dropped the body and ran out of the freezer, ran until he was exhausted, hid in his bed in the foundling home.

The foreman was found in the locker on Monday morning. His neck was broken and the upper part of his body was crushed. Apparently he had returned to the freezer sometime during the weekend and slipped and struck his head, losing consciousness. He had left the door open, which caused the temperature to rise inside the freezer. During the thaw a stack of heavy crates had become dislodged and come crashing down on him.

Shortly after that it was decided at the foundling home that the experiment with Big Gobi had failed. Working with other men seemed to depress him, the traffic in the city frightened him, the noise kept him awake at night. He was better suited to the solitude of the farm where he had grown up. The fathers at the orphanage agreed with the fathers in Boston, and he was sent back to the Berkshires.

The deck beneath his eyes had blurred. Big Gobi had kept his head down so that Quin couldn’t see his tears.

You really think so, Quin?

Yes, I guess I do. It just seems that’s the way it has to be.

Sure, Big Gobi had whispered. Sure, of course it does. It just has to be, that’s all.

He had squeezed his eyes closed then, felt the tears burn, been furious with himself for being too afraid to tell Quin his last secret before they landed in Japan, a mythical land of princesses and palaces and dragons that had been tenderly described to him one winter afternoon and evening by a hulking giant, the ragged clown and impostor who had been his father’s closest childhood friend.

Angry with himself and yet sad as well. For if he couldn’t tell Quin it meant he could never tell anyone.

No one. Ever. He would have to bear one secret on his own, carry alone and forever one terrible inexplicable mystery.

Big Gobi had said nothing about the Japanese crew during the Pacific crossing because he knew all freighter crewmen were ugly regardless of nationality. But the morning the ship docked in Yokohama he clutched Quin by the hand.

What is it, Gobes?

Big Gobi pointed at the official who was stamping his passport, a short, stunted man with narrow, puffy eyes and skin that was sickly and discolored. The official had looked with apparent interest at the glass paperweight Big Gobi claimed was jade, and he had even listened politely while Big Gobi described Geraty’s famous emerald palace beneath the sea and asked where it might be found. But when the official opened his mouth he didn’t say anything. He only made odd squeaking noises.

What’s the matter? said Quin.

Big Gobi gripped his hand and peeked at the other people who were standing around on the pier. They were all making the same queer sounds and they all had the same disease, the same sickly skin, the same half-closed puffy eyes.

Big Gobi was terrified.

Hey, Quin, don’t you see what Geraty did? He lied to us. This isn’t the emerald kingdom, it’s a leper colony.

Quin didn’t know why Geraty had sought him out that late winter night in the Bronx. He didn’t understand how the old buffalo had known which bar to go to, only one of many in the neighborhood but the one where Quin and his friends always happened to do their drinking. Nor even how he had known it was Quin’s neighborhood in the first place. And above all, why the fat, muttering giant had lied so outrageously about Father Lamereaux, himself, Quin’s parents, everyone and everything.

Quin completely distrusted the old buffoon, but there was nothing to be done now but to find him and to try to get him to reveal some small part of the truth, or some clue that would lead to the truth.

Geraty hadn’t been seen in the Tokyo bar he normally frequented for six months, but Quin was told there was one place he might look, an abandoned empty warehouse in a slum on the outskirts of the city. In the past Geraty had been known to disappear in the vicinity of the warehouse for certain periods of time, a few days or weeks, perhaps even a month, never longer than that. He claimed these disappearances had to do with religious meditation, but of course no one believed that. Obviously Geraty’s retreats from society were caused by his basic condition, that is, advancing age, advanced alcoholism, general disability, and total poverty.