Edward Whittemore - Quin’s Shanghai Circus

Hesitantly Geraty introduced his subject. He talked about girls from poor families who had to prostitute themselves for money during the first half of the evening and then spend the rest of the night lying beside a snoring man whom they had never seen before and would probably never see again. They were defiled and they knew it. They wanted to be cleansed, but they didn’t know how to go about it.

Father Lamereaux listened, fairly certain what would follow. Yet he said nothing. He smiled gently and made no effort to interrupt.

The confession was a long time in coming out. From midnight until three in the morning Geraty preached to the prostitutes from the street, but as soon as the hour of three was sounded he sneaked around to the back entrances to the brothels, let himself in, and knocked on one door after another, desperately searching for a prostitute whose affections or sympathies he might have aroused with his oratory.

His aims were limited and abject. He wanted to perform cunnilingus on a prostitute, free of charge, at the foot of the bed where her paid customer for the night lay asleep. Geraty could probably have performed this service, without paying, on almost any prostitute in the brothel who was unengaged. Conversely, if he had paid, he could probably have performed it with most of those prostitutes who where engaged but whose partners were already asleep. But Geraty had to have it his own way. The girl’s immediate sin had to be evident, and he had to earn her redemption with his eloquence and his apparent conviction.

In the alleys behind the brothels Geraty shuffled his feet, stated his case, and begged for forgiveness. He had spoken forcefully during his three hours in the street, and more than once he was accepted.

When a prostitute agreed he locked the door behind him, got down on all fours and listened to her customer snoring only a few feet away, then insisted she stand over him and quietly insult him while he was at work.

When he had finished he carried her to the large Japanese bath on the premises, locked the door once more, and elaborately washed the girl, using an excessive amount of soap. He dried her and washed her again, using an even larger amount of soap, washed her tenderly a third time, and dried her tenderly a third time. After the third drying he was careful not to touch her with his bare hands. He put on gloves that he had brought with him in his valise and sprayed her with perfume that he had also brought with him in his valise.

Finally he carried her back to her bed and tucked her in beside her snoring, unsuspecting customer. He thanked her with tears and smiles and several quotations from the first chapter of St. Luke before proceeding down the corridor to knock on the next door.

Geraty continued in this manner as long as no hint of light showed through the rice paper sliding doors that served as windows. A peculiarity of this rite carried out under cover of darkness was that he remained fully dressed in his stylish suits and flamboyant neckties, never removing anything even while splashing water and soap over himself and the prostitutes in the bath. The result was that he was thoroughly soaked by the time dawn came.

He always walked home from the brothels as the sun came up, and this meant a perpetual cold in the winter, often amounting to mild pneumonia, and at the very least an annoying catarrhal condition throughout the rest of the year.

Geraty finished the description of his Friday nights in Yoshiwara with a grimace. He was even more agitated than when he had stepped into the Victorian parlor. Father Lamereaux was gently whispering a few consoling words about favors freely given and freely received when Geraty suddenly leapt to his feet. He snatched up his valise, couldn’t work the fasteners, sobbed compulsively, and ripped apart the sturdy metal locks with his hands.

The priest knew they were now getting down to the real purpose of Geraty’s visit.

The valise contained a map of Mukden, a thick wad of colorful neckties, and two unopened bottles of Irish whiskey. Without a word Geraty swung one of the bottles against the table, breaking off its neck. His hands were shaking so badly there was no other way he could have opened the bottle. He took a long drink and passed the bottle to Father Lamereaux.

For an hour or two they drank in silence. Geraty was apparently transfixed by what he had to say. He was paralyzed, an animal facing a torch in the dark.

As for Lamereaux, there was nothing he could be told that would surprise him. He had known suffering himself, but he also knew it wouldn’t make any difference for him to say this. He was there to listen, to try to help his friend to speak. Eventually he thought of a way to relieve the tension that was growing more profound between them as time went on.

The priest got to his feet and assumed a pose from a No play. He moved from that pose into another, a complex transition that required complete concentration. Geraty studied the movement, he considered it as Lamereaux held the pose, stiff and rigid, not one muscle contracting or expanding.

To anyone who understood No such finality and decision could not go unanswered. To his surprise Lamereaux saw Geraty getting to his feet and working himself into a pose from a different No play. It was the first time he had known that Geraty was also a devotee of No , an expert fully as skilled as he was. This information amazed and delighted him, for he knew there was now a way for him to help his tormented friend. So powerful was the discipline of No that it could contain any emotion no matter how painful, no matter how seemingly unbearable.

Lamereaux watched Geraty shift his pose. The giant sat down and the priest stood. The afternoon wore on. At some point they drained the first bottle of Irish whiskey and started on the second.

Night fell. The silent scenes from hundreds of No plays followed one upon another.

Late that evening the two actors broke into tears over the unparalleled performance they had staged together that day. Since early morning neither of them had spoken a word. Instead they had communicated through the abrupt, austere attitudes of their arms, their hands, their bodies. Even without masks they had completely understood each other.

Geraty had confessed utterly to stealing all the funds from the secret-bag of the Tokyo presidium of the Legion of Mary.

Lamereaux had reassured him by noting that St. Brigid in her charity had worked a miracle for him, had showed her love for him by already redressing his wrong, for just that previous night a young legionary, wishing to make a last significant contribution before going abroad with the army, had unexpectedly provided a large donation to the secret-bag that easily made up for the missing sum.

And so they embraced and wept and prepared to part. As drunk, as Geraty murmured, as two butterflies circling a candle. For they were exiles far from home and war was coming.

At the end, at the door, they were crying in each other’s arms. It was then that the Jesuit whispered into his friend’s ear the opening line of the prayer that had sealed the meetings of the Legion and sealed as well Geraty’s stolen secret-bag.

Magnificat anima mea Dominum.

Remember it, whispered Father Lamereaux, for in those words you will find an end to your suffering. In them you will find what you seek within yourself just as the Savior was found within the womb of mankind. Go now and remember.

Geraty lurched away from the door knowing that he would remember, knowing also that he would never dare face Lamereaux again because the lesson he had learned that day was to be the travail of his life.

Thus he remembered the words when he escaped to Mukden to acquire a cache of worthless films and again when he escaped to Shanghai, there to undress nightly in a locked, shuttered room while projecting his worthless films on the wall, rendering himself naked night after night as he silently repeated the phrase he had learned at Lamereaux’s table, on Lamereaux’s motionless No stage, the words that were aged in two bottles of Irish whiskey and spun through the magic lamp of a battered Shanghai movie machine thirty years before they led him to his vocation, my soul doth magnify the Lord .