Peter Rabe
The Box
Chapter 1
This is a pink and gray town which sits very small on the North edge of Africa. The coast is bone white and the sirocco comes through any time it wants to blow through. The town is dry with heat and sand.
The sirocco changes its character later, once it has crossed the Mediterranean, so that in Sicily, for example, the wind is much slower, much more moist and depressing. But over Okar it is still a very sharp wind. It does not blow all the time but it is always expected, fierce with heat and very gritty. The sand bites and the heat bites, and on one side the desert stops the town and on the other the sea shines like metal.
None of this harshness has made the inhabitants fierce. Some things you don’t fight. There are the Arabs there and there are the French. Once, briefly, there were the Germans, the Italians and the English, and a few of these remained. The people move slowly or quietly, sometimes moving only their eyes. This looks like a cautious, subdued way of living, and it is. Anything else would be waste.
There were not so long ago five in Okar who moved differently, perhaps because they forgot where they were, or maybe they could not help what happened; none of them is there any more. They were Remal, the mayor, who also did other things, and Bea, who did nothing much because she was waiting, and Whitfield, who was done waiting for anything, and Turk, who was so greedy he couldn’t possibly have made it. And Quinn, of course. Put simply, he came and went. But that’s leaving out almost everything…
“You got me out of my bath, you know,” said the clerk.
“Mister Whitfield,” said the captain, “this is your pier.”
“Because of this bleedin’ box you got me out of my bath.”
“Mister Whitfield. I’m tied up at your company’s pier, and in order to lower the box I need your permission.”
“If Okar isn’t the destination, why lower your box? And during siesta,” the clerk sighed.
“I’m sorry I interrupted your sleep.”
“I take a bath during siesta,” said the clerk. He did not seem angry or irritated, but he was interested in making his point. It reminded him of the bath and he smiled at the captain, or rather, he smiled just past his left ear.
The captain thought that the clerk did look very clean-Englishman-clean-and he thought that he smelled of gin. Take an Englishman and give him a job where the sun is very hot and he soon begins to smell of gin. Perhaps this one, for siesta, bathes in gin.
The captain squinted up at his ship which showed big and black against the sun, much bigger than the tramper actually was, because the pier was so low.
“The winch man dropped a crate on the box down in the hold,” said the captain, “and something cracked.”
“I can understand that,” said the clerk because he felt he should say something.
He looked at the captain and how the man sweated. How he sweats. Why doesn’t he shave off that beard? Siesta time and I must worry about his cracked box. Such a beard in this heat. Perhaps a Viking complex or something.
“So the crew in the hold,” said the captain, “two of the crew down there, they went and took a look and next they came out running and screaming. Uh-about something bad,” said the captain and looked the length of the empty pier.
The empty pier was white in the sun and much easier to look at for the moment than anything else, such as the clerk, for example, and his patient face. And why doesn’t he sweat-?
“Eh?” said the clerk.
“And they described a smell. A bad smell.”
The captain looked back at the clerk and went rasp, rasp in his throat, a sound to go with the beard.
“Now, you understand, don’t you, Whitfield, I can’t have something like that down there in my hold.”
“You’re Swedish,” said the clerk.
This sounds like nonsense, thought the captain, all of this, including Whitfield’s unconnected remark, because of the heat. Otherwise, everything would make sense. He made his throat rumble again, out through the beard, and thought a Swedish curse.
“Is your crew Swedish, too?” asked the clerk.
“Those two from the hold, they are Congolese.”
“And they described a strange smell. And perhaps a strange glow? You know, something wavering with a glow in the dark, eh?”
“Goddamn this heat,” said the captain. “Don’t talk nonsense, Whitfield.”
“I?”
“Whitfield…”
“Captain. You know how ghost-ridden they are, those Congolese. Very superstitious, actually.”
“Whitfield,” said the captain. “I understand you want to get back to sleep. I understand…”
“I take a bath during siesta.”
“I also understand about that, Whitfield, and that this is an annoyance to you, to come out here and sweat on the pier.”
“I’m not sweating,” said the clerk. His blond hair was dry, his light skin was dry, and the gin smile on his face made him look like an elderly boy. “However,” he said, “I wish you would take your box to destination. It would save us so much paperwork.” Then he thought of something else. “And I’m sure the smell doesn’t reach topside and nobody lives in the hold anyway.”
The captain looked way up at the sky, though the brightness up there hurt his eyes. Then he jerked his face at the clerk and started yelling with both eyes closed.
“I must look at the box and repair the box! I can’t repair on deck because of the freight lashed down there! All I request…”
“Heavens,” said the clerk, “how big is this box?”
“Like a telephone booth. No. Bigger. Like two.”
“Jet engine,” said the clerk. “I’ve seen those crates when the company had me in Egypt.”
“They-don’t-stink!” yelled the captain.
“Of course. Or glow in the dark.”
But the clerk saw now how the siesta was being wasted. With the gin wearing off on him under the heavy sun he got a feeling of waste and uselessness, always there when the gin wore off; when this happened he would take the other way he knew for combating these feelings, these really cosmic ones, in his experience, and he became indifferent.
“Very well,” he said. “Lower away, if you wish. Gently,” and with the last word he again and for a moment found his own dreaminess back. He smiled at nothing past the captain’s left ear, and then up at the ship where a box would soon be swinging over. For a moment, inconsequentially, he thought of a childhood time in a London mews; it was so clear and still, and he saw himself walking there, eyes up and watching his green balloon. How it floated.
All this went by when the captain roared suddenly, giving the clerk a start of fright and alertness. Someone roared back from the high deck of the tramper and then the winch started screeching.
“What was it this time?” said the clerk.
“The papers,” said the captain. “We need a bill of lading and so forth. Someone will bring them.”
“Ah,” said the clerk. “I should think so.”
The winch started up again but because of the strain on it the sound was now different. It mostly hummed. From the pier they could see the black line of the gunwale above, and the boom over the hold, the boom holding very still while the humming went on. The clerk, for no reason at all, felt suddenly hot.
“I’ll be glad,” said the captain, “to weigh anchor tonight.”
“Of course.”
“Load, unload, go. Nothing else here.”
“In Okar?” said the clerk, feeling absent-minded.
“What else is here?”
“I don’t know,” said the clerk. “I don’t even know what is here.”
It’s the heat, thought the captain, which makes everything sound like nonsense, and when a seaman came off the ship, bringing a clipboard with papers, the captain grabbed for it as he might for the coattails of fleeing sanity.
“Where did you load this thing?” asked the clerk.
“New York.” The captain kept flipping papers. “And your route?”
“Tel Aviv, Alexandria, Madagascar, New York.”