Edward Whittemore - Quin’s Shanghai Circus

Again it’s raining, whispered Father Lamereaux. Until you came no one had visited this house since the war, and now you’ve come many times. My housekeeper goes out to do the shopping but I never leave, I stay here and work on my memoirs. Occasionally I sit in the garden, but only when it’s warm and only when it’s not raining. Are you familiar with the Peram?

No, said Quin.

They’re a tribe in central Borneo that has a necrohym system. When a man’s grandfather dies, for example, the man takes the name Grandfather Dead . He keeps that name until another male relative dies, a cousin say, and then he becomes Cousin Dead . This continues until he has a son, then his name changes to Father of So-and-so . But naturally the son’s name will be Uncle Dead or some such thing. Thus we find that the brother of the dead man is called Father of Uncle Dead . It’s an odd way for a man to remember his brother. At first it seems unduly complicated and roundabout for such simple tribesmen. It suggests, in fact, that relationships between people are more complex than we often suspect. It leads one to the conclusion that simple acts may not be simple. That where God’s children are concerned, that can never be.

Father Lamereaux rubbed the horsehair arm of the chair. Quin nodded to himself and finally asked the question he had waited so long to ask.

Father, what does the name Quin mean to you?

The old Jesuit sighed.

Yes, I see. I’ve been thinking about it myself and it seems I’m not quite sure. It seems I’ve been alone in this house a very long time. This morning, or perhaps it was yesterday or several weeks ago, I looked through the index to my memoirs to see if I could find the name, and it wasn’t there. Is that possible? I’m afraid it is, and now I don’t know what to tell you.

The priest unbuttoned his coat the wrong way. He stirred. Some image had passed before his eyes.

The first time you came here, he whispered slowly, you had a friend with you who was wearing a small gold cross similar to the one that belonged to Adzhar. He was a most unusual man, Adzhar, he was a man of many surprises. What was the name of your friend? Ordos? Tarim?

No. Gobi.

Yes I see, the desert Adzhar crossed on his way here. Well there’s no mistaking it then. Forty years later we have the same three names again, we have Adzhar and we have Gobi and we have Quin. Was he a relative of yours, that other Quin?

He was my father.

I see. I never knew about you, but then I knew very little about his personal life.

Where did you meet him?

Someplace. I can’t really recall.

Could it have been at a picnic?

It certainly might have been at a picnic. Adzhar and Lotmann and I used to enjoy having picnics at Kamakura. The pine groves in the hills above the sea are beautiful there.

Father, could this picnic have been by the sea? On a beach near the estate of Baron Kikuchi?

Baron Kikuchi? Which Baron Kikuchi? The first or the second?

The one who was important in the secret police. The Kempeitai, was it called?

It was, whispered Father Lamereaux. Indeed it was.

And could there have been four of you at the picnic? You and Adzhar and my father and one other? Three of you wearing gas masks?

Father Lamereaux sighed.

Gas masks, he repeated gently. The Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost in gas masks. What a curious scene to remember after all these years.

A clear autumn day. The year was 1929. Father Lamereaux had completed his Buddhist studies in Kamakura and was preparing to move back to Tokyo. Adzhar suggested a picnic and they walked together to the beach. Lamereaux expected to find Lotmann waiting for them there, but instead they were greeted by a couple, a young man and woman, Americans.

Adzhar introduced the couple. The man’s name was Quin. His wife was called Maeve.

Actually Father Lamereaux had met the woman once before under quite different circumstances. But either he had forgotten what those circumstances were or else he chose not to discuss them now, with her son, after all these years.

It was apparent to Quin that the priest hadn’t liked Maeve. It seemed their previous encounter had left him with the impression that she was hard and unsympathetic, excessive in some unexplained way, too willful perhaps.

In any case, when they were introduced that day on the beach the priest pretended it was the first time they had met. She did the same. Neither Adzhar nor her husband said anything, so it was unlikely that either one of them was aware that they already knew each other.

The gas masks were Adzhar’s idea. There was no one within a thousand yards of them, but Adzhar said that didn’t matter. The secret police might be using deaf people to read lips through binoculars. He had known that to happen elsewhere, he said, and they couldn’t afford to have anyone overhear the conversation they were to have that afternoon.

Quin agreed and the three men put on the gas masks Adzhar had seen fit to bring with him in his picnic basket. Maeve laid out the food but took no part in the discussion.

Adzhar began by saying he wanted to help but he knew he was too old for this kind of work. He had come only to make the introductions and offer advice, should any be needed. He then turned to Quin and asked Quin to explain.

Quin talked about Japan and Japanese politics, about the way the military was beginning to take over the country. In a very few years they would be ready to move into Manchuria, and after that they would attack the rest of China. War was inevitable, there was no escaping it, but a great many lives could be saved if the war were shortened. That could be done by sending information to China. Quin had sources who could provide the information. What he needed was a courier system that could secretly transport microfilm to the mainland.

Father Lamereaux was known to have many young Japanese friends who trusted him and would do what he asked. For the good of both the Japanese and the Chinese people would he take on the task of establishing a courier system?

The alleviation of suffering was Lamereaux’s vocation. He agreed at once to do what he could. Quin spent the rest of the afternoon explaining the methods they would use.

The information would be turned over to Lamereaux coded, on microfilm, along with instructions on where it was to be delivered in either Mukden or Shanghai. For safety Lamereaux would deal only with Quin, the couriers only with Lamereaux. Quin wouldn’t know who the couriers were, Lamereaux wouldn’t know the sources from whom Quin obtained his information.

The couriers would deliver the microfilm to places, not people, also for safety. At a certain hour on a certain day the capsule would be wedged behind the mirror in the toilet of a restaurant in Mukden. Or it would be taped under the lid of the water cabinet in the toilet of a bar in Shanghai. There would also be capsules that had to be retrieved in either Mukden or Shanghai and brought back to Tokyo.

The afternoon came to an end. The picnic was over. Young Quin said the only thing left to do was to give their network a code name.

Adzhar spoke up with a smile.

I’ve done nothing at all here today, he said. At least let me offer a suggestion for that. Don’t you think Gobi would do nicely?

The three men shook hands and took off their gas masks.

Toilets, whispered Father Lamereaux, always toilets. The result of the device I developed for the couriers. All systems have definitions, even the vegetarian system, honey and eggs excepted.

Quin nodded.

Father, did you know that Geraty claims he found a report on the network in the Kempeitai files after the war?