In more agony than you’ll ever see. We watched her. The old man insisted she be sterilized and took her to a quack doctor. He and the quack had some drinks and by the time the quack opened her up he was drunk. Instead of tying the fallopian tubes he tied a part of the intestines. She lasted three days.
How old was Maeve?
Eight. Only eight, saints preserve us. There were just the two of us, and I was old enough to take it but she wasn’t.
What happened to her?
A couple of years later the old man was locking up the bar one night. Drunk? Stinking as usual. He saw a light in the pool hall across the street and let himself in the back door to see what was going on. What was going on was three of his customers fucking Maeve on a pool table. He laid them out and then beat her until she was unconscious. The next day, when he saw what her face looked like, he locked himself in the cellar with a case of gin and swallowed the key. Planned to starve himself to death but it was winter, too cold for him down there. He died in that cellar all right, but not the way he expected. He ruptured his bowels digging for the key.
Then what? The war?
The war, the Great War. Eddy Quin signs up to be a hero and comes home with his leg full of shrapnel. I didn’t see much of him then, I was traveling for a drug company.
How did Maeve get to Shanghai?
Delicate fingers. Somehow she got mixed up with an Indian after the war who had delicate fingers. He was passing himself off as a Hindu prince fighting for the motherland. He talked her into joining the cause and coming back to India with him, but when they got there it turned out the prince’s father was a half-caste, mostly white, a butcher who made his living slaughtering sacred cows and selling the beef to the English. Maeve got back on the freighter and ran out of money in Shanghai.
Where she met Adzhar?
Where she met Adzhar. She was hysterical and conceited but she appealed to men, some men, young ones who liked her looks or older ones who liked the way she believed in things, tried to believe in things. Adzhar took care of her and got her going, even bought her a bookstore so she could make a living. If he hadn’t been so kind, maybe she would have grown up and stopped talking about causes and heroes with delicate fingers. Adzhar’s friends used to come to the bookstore, revolutionary exiles most of them. One of them was a young man he’d recruited back in Paris when he was still working for Trotsky, the hero with the shrapnel in his leg who used to play stickball with me as a kid. Maeve hadn’t known him before really, she was too young, but she got to know him then.
Did he tell you what he was doing?
No, she did. She told me all about it and how she was helping him, she was proud of that. A year or two after she went to Shanghai, there were some investigations in the drug business in the States and I had to get out of the country. I went to Canada, and the only job I could find was with a company that had just decided there was a fortune to be made peddling leprosy drugs in Asia. Leprosy drugs? For some reason they thought Asia was full of lepers waiting to buy an American cure. But I needed credentials, so I took the job and got sent to Tokyo. A little later Maeve showed up with the baby she’d had by Kikuchi. She told me all the wonderful things she was doing for the world and then she mentioned the baby. She wanted to get rid of it and asked me to help. I went to Lamereaux.
Did he know who the father was?
Of course. I told him.
Well, when he took the child to Lotmann to raise, did he tell Lotmann who the father was?
No. Buddhist custom doesn’t work that way. You’re not supposed to know who the child belongs to. You take it as an act of charity.
One of them was a Catholic priest and one of them was a Jewish rabbi. What’s Buddhist custom got to do with it?
Japan. They were both living in Japan.
I got it, buffalo. Charity. That’s the word, isn’t it? Well, that brings us up to the Gobi network and the end of the Gobi network. You weren’t working then, were you? During the eight years the net was running?
No, I had money saved from the States.
Sure you did. Sure.
Quin sat a minute or two in silence. When he got to his feet he moved slowly. It was something he hadn’t done in a long time, measuring that kind of distance. He pushed his left shoulder out and swung from far back, putting all his weight behind the fist.
He caught Geraty full in the face. Geraty went over, toppled backward, sprawled on his back across the terrace. Blood ran from his nose and mouth. Quin took a handkerchief out of his pocket and wrapped it around his hand. He was shaking.
Like it, buffalo? Feel right? That was for a guy with a gimp leg who tried to make it and went crazy and a woman who tried to make it and took a high dive. And a broken-down Jesuit and a girl who was working as a whore as a kid and your fucking Marco Polo and your fucking Elijah and all those other poor fucking ticket-buyers who were trying to do something, anything, what does it matter, while you were loping around the edges of the circus whacked out on booze and horseradish, doing your jackal number on booze and horseradish, sneezing and scratching and whacked out in your damn fake costumes playing the impostor. But most of all, buffalo, it’s for Little Gobi, let’s call him that, not Big but Little, a guy who never tried to do anything at all and never hurt anyone. Those are people you’re talking about, don’t you know that? So she was conceited and hysterical and he thought he was going to be a hero, so fucking what? What the hell do you think you’ve done with your life? The gimp finds out he’s not a hero and his woman finds out she’s made a mess of it, the General tries and gets strung out and Lamereaux tries and gets strung out, and Little Gobi does nothing at all and gets his head knocked in and what the hell are you doing all that time? You didn’t do what Lamereaux did or what the General did or the gimp and his woman, you just sat on your ass doing nothing, not trying, doing nothing at all. You make me sick, buffalo. You and your shit. You and your liar’s dice. You and your arrogance and your stench and your fat ass and your speeches and your saints and your lies. You talk about other people after the way you’ve lived? Sitting on top of that kind of garbage? Just where do you get off thinking you can do something like that? Who the fuck do you think you are, going around faking everything in sight? A clown playing God?
Geraty, flat on his back, hiccuped. He licked his lips and rubbed the blood off his nose. He tried to raise himself on an elbow.
Quin spat on him.
Say it, you slobbering fat man. Say it.
No.
No what?
Nothing.
What do you mean, nothing?
I’m sorry, nephew. I’m sorry about that.
You’re damn right you’re sorry. You’re the sorriest bag of secret shit I’ve ever seen.
No, that’s not it, nephew. You don’t understand. I’m not sorry that way, I’m sorry you can’t have an answer. I’m sorry your questions don’t make any sense.
What the hell, you must have something to say for yourself.
No.
Nothing?
Nothing.
What do you mean, nothing? Nothing at all? Just nothing? You live sixty-five years and you’re noplace? You’ve got nothing to say? Not a damn thing?
No.
Why the fuck not?
Because a toad and a uterus have the same shape. It’s too early now, but when you’re a little older take a look at the skin on the back of your hands. Take a look at the pan of gray water after you wash your hair.
What are you trying to say, buffalo?
I’ll tell you. First I have something to give you.
Geraty groaned. He pulled in his arms and legs, struggled to get to his feet. A moment later he was lumbering into the house and returning with a black bowler hat. He handed it to Quin, who spun around and scaled it out over the sea. The hat rose on a gust of wind, stopped, slipped down the cliff to the waves with a swarm of seagulls chasing it. Quin rocked back and forth nodding to himself.