Edward Whittemore - Quin’s Shanghai Circus

Quin took out his money.

Impossible, said the interpreter. I wouldn’t think of it. After all, I’ve done practically nothing for you. And let me thank you for the sushi and the sake and the Mozart. It was a very relaxing day.

He waved through the back window of the taxi as he drove away, leaving Quin astonished at the ease with which he had uncovered the information. But of course Quin had no way of knowing that he had just spent the day with a former corporal who had once been the chauffeur of a man who was a great master spy and double agent at the time of that other empire, who had observed ten thousand clandestine techniques as he drove the most feared man in the Kempeitai, the little Baron with the glass eye that never closed, through the dangerous streets of Mukden and the intricate alleys of Shanghai, the bewildering plots and deceptions of a Tokyo that had disappeared with the war.

Generally Big Gobi moved around and around the apartment while he was watching television. If he saw a clogged sink on the screen he went out to the kitchen to examine their sink. If he saw a clogged stomach he went into the bathroom to see if he could move his bowels.

Late one afternoon Quin went over to the set and turned it off. A minute or two later Big Gobi moaned.

Hey Quin. Hey what’s that all about? I was right in the middle of something.

What?

I don’t know. Something.

You haven’t moved in days.

Haven’t I?

Now listen, Gobes, the tube’s been out of focus since yesterday. You lost the picture and you didn’t even know it. There’s been nothing but a hum coming out.

Well hey, maybe I was in the middle of that.

No good, Gobes. Tell me what’s bothering you.

Nothing.

Come on.

Do I have to?

Yes.

Big Gobi twisted his hands. He wrung them, pretended to wash them, pretended to dry them.

It’s just this. I can’t think straight anymore.

What’s the matter?

Everything’s upside down, that’s what’s the matter.

Why?

Because everything’s changed. I mean all my life there’s always been one thing I could trust. I didn’t have much else and it was terribly important, but now it’s just gone, I mean just like that. How can you lose something that used to be the whole world to you?

Maybe you don’t, Gobes, maybe you don’t really lose it. What was it?

Big Gobi went through the ritual of washing his hands again. He rubbed the dent in his shoulder.

What do you want to know for?

Because I care about you.

I know, I know you do, I know that’s why you want to know, but what difference does it make when nothing can be done about it anyway? I mean some things are hard to talk about.

What, Gobes?

Well you know what I mean, don’t you, I mean you know me, I don’t have to come right out and say it.

All right. It’s television, isn’t it?

Sure.

It doesn’t mean as much to you as it used to.

As much? Doesn’t mean as much? It means nothing at all, that’s what it means. After all these years it’s just gone, just as if it had never been there. And it was my family, Quin, it was my home and my friends and you know, everything. It was just plain me and now it’s nothing at all.

Maybe not.

But it is, I mean I know it is. I look at the set now and I don’t feel a thing. I mean I remember how I used to feel, but that’s all. I used to feel I couldn’t live without it and now I don’t even care. It frightens me. How can things just be gone? How can you just lose them?

I don’t know that you can. New things happen though. Something else comes along. What’s the new thing, Gobes?

You know. You must know.

Tell me.

All right I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you tomorrow.

No, now.

Right now?

Yes.

Like that?

Like that.

All right, Quin, I will. I’ll tell you just like that.

Well?

Jigglies.

What?

Jigglies. I can’t think about anything but Jigglies. I look at the set and I see Jigglies. The picture goes off and I still see Jigglies. When I try to go to sleep I’m thinking of Jigglies and that keeps me awake. I think about Jigglies when I’m trying to eat and the silly food won’t go down. I mean I know that night wasn’t anything special to you, I know that, but it was to me and I feel just awful now. It’s driving me crazy.

Big Gobi washed and dried his hands. He buried himself in his chair. Quin was thinking of the bar in Yokohama, of Big Gobi marching away from the colored lights of the jukebox behind an aging, shapeless whore, a scarred admiral of a whore who had commanded fleets of Japanese battleships during the war, who had captained half the freighters in the world since then.

Listen, said Quin. I know a place that’s supposed to be the best in Asia for girls. How about it?

Where?

Right here.

Tokyo?

Right.

A kind of palace?

Exactly.

With a princess?

She’ll be a princess. We’ll make sure of it.

When?

Tonight. Right now.

Really?

Sure. You change and we’ll be on our way.

Change?

Big Gobi looked down at himself. He was wearing bathing trunks.

Why was he wearing bathing trunks? He tried to remember. It was because he had had them on that night. He had been in a hurry to leave the beach, the dull one for swimming, to get to the other beach where there were tattoo parlors and jukeboxes and jigglies. He had been in such a hurry he hadn’t changed, so that was the way he walked into the bar in Yokohama.

Bare feet. No shirt. Bathing trunks.

A life preserver over his shoulder.

But the aging, shapeless admiral standing in the colored lights of the jukebox hadn’t laughed at him. In her long career she had scuttled too many battleships and seen too many shipwrecked sailors to be surprised when a man staggered through the door stripped nearly naked, grinning, gripping his life preserver.

Big Gobi smiled shyly.

Sorry, Quin, I’ll change right now. As I told you, I’ve had this one thing on my mind.

They passed a sandlot where barefoot boys in white pajamas were beating their hands against trees.

Why, Quin?

Karate. Smash your hand against a tree for three or four years and you have calluses an inch thick. Smash it into a keg of sand for another three or four years and all the fingers are the same length.

Why?

So your hand’s shaped like a hoe.

Big Gobi looked at his hands. He saw a woman carrying pieces of chicken wrapped in broad wood shavings. Why didn’t they use paper? Girls in short skirts were going to work, and men with towels around their necks were coming from work after stopping at the public bath. Why didn’t they bathe at home? Why didn’t the girls go to work in the morning?

It was silly. The whole country was silly. He didn’t want his hand to look like a hoe.

He felt for the eye in his pocket, the eye he had bought after the accident with the tuna fish in Boston, the weekend the foreman slipped in the freezer locker and was crushed under a load of thawing fish. The whole episode had started with an eye, Big Gobi knew that and he didn’t want it to happen again. So a few days later when he had chanced to pass a store that sold surgical supplies and had seen a glass eye in the window he had gone in and bought it. Now he kept it with him always, never playing with it or taking it out except when he had to, saving it for emergencies. Even Quin didn’t know about the glass eye. No one knew about it because it had to do with the tuna fish and the foreman’s accident.

They went down a long spiral staircase, passed a huge man with a mallet, kept on descending.

Hey, said Big Gobi. Hey what’s the name of this palace?