Edward Whittemore: Quin’s Shanghai Circus

But now a third possibility crossed his mind. Instead of just making a nostalgic visit to his family’s old neighborhood in the Bronx, he would honor his mother by invoking her memory on the feast day of the saint for whom she had been named.

Geraty crossed himself, the first time he had done so in thirty years. From St. Edward the Confessor he begged forgiveness for what he was about to do, for what it might lead to, for the lost paths that might be opened and the forgotten lives that might be discovered. Then he crossed himself once more and kicked aside the door of the bar, shuffled to the counter, clamped a paw on the bartender.

Dragon piss, nephew.

How’s that?

Double gin.

He rested both arms on the counter listening to the noisy conversations around him. Twenty minutes later he was on his way to the toilet at the back, bumping into drinkers as he passed. When he returned he bumped into them again, this time choosing a stool toward one end of the counter next to a younger man whose name was Quin.

Geraty had heard the name soon after coming into the bar. There were two drinkers there with that name, one closer to the right age than the other, but before he approached his man he wanted to be sure the name was spelled correctly. So he had waited until both men were near the counter and picked their pockets as he went to the toilet, replacing their wallets on the way back.

In the years he had spent wandering around Asia he had known only one other man named Quin, a lecherous and violent drunkard who had last been seen in Shanghai before the war, supposedly in a warehouse on the outskirts of the city. There were rumors of a terrible night in that warehouse, but Geraty never knew whether they were true or not. By the time he got to the warehouse the next morning, it was deserted. The only sign that anyone had been there was a discarded hat on a mound of sawdust, the black bowler he himself was now wearing.

Geraty spread his greatcoat over the stool and lowered himself into place.

Quin was then about thirty. He had grown up in the Bronx, played stickball and fought in the streets as a boy, spent two years in the navy and one in prison as a man. A short time ago his only relative had died, the woman who had raised him, his father’s older sister. The aunt had left him a small amount of money, and he was trying to decide what to do with it the night a fat staggering giant, old and drunk and ragged, wheezing and muttering, lurched into his stool and nearly knocked him to the floor.

A dozen years ago, perhaps even two or three, Quin might have broken a bottle over the old man’s head. But at the moment he was paralyzed. A hideous stench had enveloped him, a mixture of rotting wool and rotting cheese, sour wax and decaying skin, all of it overwhelmed and held together by a pervasive smell of mustard.

The fat giant had breathed on him as he settled down on the next stool.

Blow it the ether way, said Quin.

Double gin, nephew, the fat man called down the bar. Quin swung his elbow and the fat man hiccuped.

You stink, buffalo.

How’s that?

You bumped into me just now.

Not me, nephew.

You. Twice.

The fat man rubbed the red flannel around his neck while sneaking a hand under his greatcoat. Quin saw him unscrew the top of a jar. A finger came out with a dab of green paste, the cap was rescrewed, the finger flickered under his nose. It was all done in one quick movement, but Quin recognized the smell.

Hooked on horseradish, buffalo?

A Japanese blend. By far the most effective.

For what?

For the thirty years I’ve used it which is little enough in the game the Almighty plays. He looks for longer scores and every point is as hard as a dragon’s hemorrhoids. I know what I’m talking about, nephew, I’ve spent most of my life there.

Where?

The other side, the dark side, our own foreign shore. A place so different, saints preserve us, it’s whatever you want it to be. Where are the dice? It’s time to drink to what we were and are becoming.

Money?

The fat man grumbled and put his eight single dollar bills on the bar. Quin nodded. No one in Geraty’s had ever been able to beat him at liar’s dice. The fat man rolled and passed the cup. On Quin’s second roll the fat man called him.

You win, buffalo. Where did you say that place was?

Where? The old Tokyo and the old Shanghai, cities that don’t exist anymore. Cities where people went around in disguises passing themselves off as emperors and Buddhas and dwarfs and precision masturbators. So afraid, some of them, they hid in unlocked cages waiting for the hinges to rust. The Orient, that’s where. This is the first time I’ve been back here in forty years. I’ve been to Massachusetts and I’ve seen the Bronx and now I’m leaving.

I spent a year in Massachusetts, said Quin.

Doing what?

Time.

What kind of time?

Mailboxes.

An unworthy cause, nephew. Your mother wouldn’t have liked that.

Never knew her.

Your father wouldn’t have liked it either.

Never knew him.

I know, muttered the fat man.

What do you know?

The fat man’s face suddenly darkened. The scars and pits opened as he fumbled for his gin glass. He emptied the glass and his eyes receded, the hat settled back on his head. He pointed at the cup of dice.

Roll. We need a drink.

Quin lost. The fat man massaged his enormous belly and licked the new glass of gin with a long yellow tongue. Quin’s question had turned him into a huge jungle beast crouching beside a path.

What I know is that over there, before the war, everybody was plotting. One day a hundred conspiracies, the next day a hundred new ones. Agents everywhere and all of them changing sides yesterday or tomorrow. From what to what? Why? International networks spent millions of dollars while others were so clandestine they consisted of only one individual, existed in only one man’s head. His private fantasy? No. The Almighty had dumped His creatures in a secret bag and put the bag on His back and was dancing over the earth. The thirties, nephew, the Orient. This overcoat I’m wearing belonged to a sergeant who murdered the general responsible for the rape of Nanking. An overcoat? For He hath put down the mighty from their seat. Or the beach just south of Tokyo where four people once sat down to a picnic that only one of them ate. Why? Because the other three were wearing gas masks. The beach was near the estate owned by Baron Kikuchi, the most feared man in the Japanese secret police, and at the end of the afternoon those picnickers had arrived at a decision that kept the Germans from capturing Moscow ten years later. A picnic? Impossible? For He that is mighty hath done great things to me. Let’s have another game.

The fat man scratched his gallbladder with the dice. Once more Quin lost and had to pay for the drinks.

I knew them, the fat man announced abruptly.

Who?

Your parents. Over there of course, before you were born. Your father had a limp, shrapnel in his leg, some kind of hero in the First World War. Left New York in the early 1920s, worked his way to Paris, ended up in Asia. Where? Shanghai? Tokyo? A postcard to your aunt once in a while, the last news from south China in the late 1920s. Canton? In any case nothing after that for eight years. Eight years? Not until 1935 when a missionary couple brought a baby to your aunt. War was coming, China was unsafe. The Quins were to follow in a few months but of course they never did, of course they were never heard from again. Eight years without any news? In those days, out there, a long time.

Quin’s glass was in the air. He stared at the fat man.

Or rather I should say I knew of them. About them. We were in the same places but at different times. A friend mentioned that to me. He knew them.