Edward Whittemore - Quin’s Shanghai Circus

Careful, he whispered. We must act naturally.

They stood on the sidewalk facing the door. The interpreter rolled his eyes to heaven meaningfully, hiccuped, unzipped his trousers. Quin went over to wait by the curb as a stream of urine splashed between the interpreter’s legs and slithered across the crowded sidewalk. The elderly man wiped his hands with a newspaper before joining Quin at the curb.

First piece of information, he whispered. There appears to be a houseboat in the neighborhood that everyone is afraid to talk about.

How do you know? said Quin.

The man at the cash register. We had a short discussion about the stores and shops and houses and inns and shacks and restaurants and hotels in Tsukiji, about the storerooms and warehouses and garages and so forth, and he never hesitated. He chatted right along with me. So that leaves only a houseboat, don’t you think? I’m quite sure that’s what we’re looking for. Shall we?

Quin followed the interpreter into a coffee shop, dark and restful after the hot sun in the street. The interpreter asked for the score to the music, a Mozart symphony, and read the score while they were waiting for their coffee to be brought. The beer and the summer heat had made Quin sleepy. Soon he dozed off. His untouched cup of coffee was sitting in front of him when the interpreter tugged his sleeve and woke him up.

The sun’s just going down, he whispered, always a good time to gather information. Besides, that’s Haydn and they don’t have the score. Shall we?

Shall we what? growled Quin.

The interpreter laughed lightly.

Very good, we shall. This is the moment we’ve been waiting for.

Quin expected the taxi to take them along a canal where a houseboat would be moored, but instead they drove across a wide stretch of reclaimed land to a breakwater. The interpreter strolled leisurely out toward the end of the breakwater while the taxi waited. Quin ran after him. The man stood at the end gazing across Tokyo Bay.

What the hell, said Quin.

I know, mused the interpreter, there’s nothing like it at sunset. The bay and the outline of the city and above it all in the distance our noble Fuji-san. I’ve always been able to think more clearly here. In fact, I have a feeling the next piece of information is almost within our grasp.

The interpreter rolled his eyes toward Mt. Fuji, toward heaven. The wind was behind him so the stream of urine arched a full thirty feet out over the bay.

Lovely, mused the elderly man.

What is?

All of it. Just lovely and here we are.

Where?

Just here, repeated the interpreter, his gaze fixed on either the sacred mountain or some cloud in the sky. But we mustn’t tarry now, the moment has come. Shall we?

The taxi returned them to Tsukiji, to another sushi restaurant, this one large and noisy. The interpreter elbowed his way through the drunken, shouting men to the counter and used some of Quin’s money to bribe a waiter into giving them seats.

Act naturally, whispered the interpreter as they sat down. This is the place, all right. Pretend we just dropped in to have a bite. No one must think we’re really looking for information.

Mounds of raw fish piled up in front of them, the interpreter eating ravenously as if he had not seen food in weeks. He drank heavily and hummed his way through the entire Mozart symphony that had been played in the coffee shop earlier in the afternoon. He laughed, he picked his teeth noisily, he shouted, he sang war songs, ordered more and more sushi and more and more sake to go with it.

Hours went by. Quin was furious, drunk, dazed from the heat. Some time after midnight he was presented with an enormous bill. He intended to pay it and leave and never see the interpreter again, but as he got up from the counter the elderly man tugged his sleeve and whispered urgently.

That’s right, just act naturally. But give me your money roll to pay the bill with, now is absolutely the moment.

Beside the cash register was a set of scales used for weighing fish. The interpreter dropped some money into one side of the scales, the bill into the other. He belched loudly.

A feast, he shouted.

Miserable fare, shouted the elderly man who served as cashier.

The finest restaurant in Japan, shouted the interpreter.

Impossible, shouted the cashier.

I insist upon it, yelled the interpreter.

The grace of Buddha descends upon me, yelled the cashier.

The houseboat, whispered the interpreter.

There is none, whispered the cashier.

The interpreter eased a handful of coins into the scales. He stroked a fistful of notes and let them flutter down one by one on top of the coins.

Snow, he whispered. Gently falling snow that covers the path to the castle.

Much snow must fall, whispered the cashier, to obscure the footprints of the stranger who attempts to sneak up on the castle under cover of darkness.

The interpreter pulled more notes from Quin’s money roll and let them fall into the scales.

Might it be, he whispered, that one must be careful because the lord of this castle is so powerful?

He has power beyond power. No one equals him in power.

No one? That is a difficult claim to make. We have our Emperor, after all.

The Emperor has been powerless since the thirteenth century.

True enough. He has been only a figurehead, a god. Real power has long been in the hands of the warlords. Is it not so?

The cashier shrugged. Of remote eras, he whispered, I know nothing.

But do you mean to say then, whispered the interpreter, that the power of this lord in the castle compares to that of the warlords of more recent eras? That it compares to those warriors who a few short decades ago were our leaders in the conquest of China and the Pacific? Could his empire really compare to their Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere?

Greater Asia what? whispered the cashier. China, you say? The Pacific? East Asia? Spheres of spheres and prosperity? No, this empire does not compare to that one because it is much larger. And it is real, unlike that other one that was only a dream, so flimsy it collapsed in a day or two under the weight of one bomb. No, this empire exists, I tell you.

Then the man who rules it must be a mighty emperor indeed. When does he hold court in his castle, this emperor of emperors?

The cashier scooped up the money in the scales and rang up a small sum on the cash register. He stopped whispering and spoke in a normal voice.

Fifty grams, he said. That would be a very good white-fish, short and round, but also too powerful a swimmer for any fisherman to catch. I’m afraid we don’t have what you’re looking for.

The interpreter hiccuped. The cashier sucked air through his teeth. They staggered out of the restaurant and down the street through crowds of men lurching back and forth, spraying each other. At last the interpreter found an unoccupied telephone pole, where he unzipped his trousers in the glare of a streetlight.

That’s it, he whispered, we have it all now. First, he said fifty grams and that’s half a hundred or half the night. Midnight. That’s when this emperor among gangsters shows up at his houseboat. Second, he’s a short rotund man. Third, the rackets he controls make up an empire larger than the Japanese empire during the Second World War. Fourth, the rackets aren’t confined to the Orient but operate all over the world. Fifth, he is more powerful than General Tojo was twenty years ago. Sixth, I don’t know what the cashier meant by calling him white. The Japanese language is very imprecise. Is it possible this gangster is a Westerner? Partly Western?

I suppose so, said Quin. But anyway, where is this houseboat?

Right behind the restaurant we were just in, that’s why we went there of course. Most of the canals in Tokyo are sewers today, one of the few that isn’t is behind that restaurant. Clean water. Just what you’d want if you lived on a houseboat. I thought of sewers while we were in the coffee shop, which is why we went there of course, then I thought of clean water while we were looking at the clean lines of Fuji-san at sunset, which is why we went down to the bay of course. But it has been a long day and now I think we must be going. Shall we?