“Stop talking a minute, will you?”
Whitfield had a headache. When it came to drinking, he felt a great deal like an athlete in training, and a headache to him was tantamount to a disqualification. And now Quinn, on top of all this, acting churlish and sullen. He watched Quinn start the car and felt ignored.
“You’re unhappy, I’m unhappy, and perhaps your friend the consul wasn’t happy either. That’s all I meant to say.”
“One month,” said Quinn. “He says it’ll take one month for investigation and papers.”
“I’d like to have a month of absolutely nothing,” said Whitfield. He had an impulse to reach back for one of his bottles, but turning his head he felt a sickening sting go through his brain. He felt out of training.
“You’ve got a month of nothing every siesta time,” said Quinn, but the joke did not interest him. The month ahead seemed like a vacuum to him, or like a view without focus.
Goat-eyes looking, thought Whitfield, and he turned his head straight, to look out through the windshield.
And all Quinn could think of, at first, was what he had been told, that he must get his papers and must get back to the States immediately.
The consul had said nothing about leaving. He had only said to comply with the local rules while awaiting his papers.
And why go back? Because the police had said so while he, Quinn, sat half dumb in the hospital bed?
There was a bend in the bare road and behind that bend came a small village. Quinn knew this but did not slow down. He leaned the car through the bend and pushed through the short village, leaving a big ball of yellow dust in the air.
Go back there for Ryder? The question seemed almost meaningless. As if long ago he had screamed all the rancor out of himself, struggled it out of himself, and had been left blank.
But what to do, what to do, staying a month in a truly foreign place, where no one meant anything to him, or everyone was somehow beyond him? How did I do it before, what did I do, filling the time and finding some tickle in it? A month of nothing-Quinn wiped his face.
“Listen, Whitfield, the boat that brought me, where is it now?”
“Oho!” and Whitfield folded his arms, closed his eyes. “That does worry you, then.”
“How come you never answer the first time you’re asked a question?”
“Because I’m a conversationalist, Quinn. Are you concerned, then, that whoever shipped you will want to finish the job once they find out where you are?”
It was put so crudely that it hardly fit, though Quinn himself could not have been more specific. But he knew he was sweating for more than the remote possibility that Ryder would send down a goon to pack him in a box again. He felt a bigger anxiety, which waved and wove about, obscuring the feeling of his helplessness, his worry that he had somewhere been wrong but did not know why. At the bottom, from somewhere, came the notion that he must always defend himself or he would sink away, and that would be fine with everybody.
He felt his back again, as once before, and how stiff his wrists were now.
“Quinn, you have a positively boxed-in look. Stop thinking. You don’t seem to be used to it. Weren’t you going to ask me something else?”
“You still haven’t answered the first thing I asked.”
“Yes. Where’s the boat? I don’t know. Ask someone else.”
“Is it back in New York?”
“Out of the question. With the run she had, I’d say she’ll be two months out yet.”
“Two months,” said Quinn.
“I follow you,” said Whitfield, and then he felt he might say something witty to make this more like conversation, but Quinn didn’t let him.
“Maybe you know about procedure in a case like this. What happens when a captain finds something irregular with his, let’s say, with his cargo, and he’s away from home port when he discovers the irregularity?”
“He dumps the mess as best he can, as he did you.”
“I don’t mean that. Does he report it to somebody?”
“Yes,” said Whitfield, “he reports it.”
Quinn said something which Whitfield did not catch, but it sounded vulgar.
“I want to know what he reports,” said Quinn.
“In this case that’s up to the captain. He’s an independent. Otherwise there’d be a company policy, such as ours, where a stowaway matter, for instance, goes out by short wave to the closest office, and the office handles the red tape from there.”
“You mean this captain who brought me has nobody to report to on this?”
“Yes, he does. Immigration, customs, that sort of thing.”
“He didn’t, by any chance, ask you to send out a report for him back to New York?”
“No. And he left the same day he came, you know.”
“And for two months he won’t be back in New York.”
“He might report by letter,” said Whitfield, “from his next port of call. Tel Aviv, I think he said.”
Quinn asked no more questions. A report on him from the consulate would get to the States long before the captain would check in, but it wasn’t at all likely that Ryder had an ear in the State Department. Only the captain, reporting to harbor authorities right in New York-He hung onto that thought for a moment but then shook his head, almost as if snapping a whip.
Farfetched, all of it. The captain was gone, glad to be rid of his troubles, New York four thousand miles away, and the Ryder thing was really over.
But why would Remal forbid me the streets? And who’s trying to steal my cans? And why does everyone think that for one month I’ll dry out in the sun in Okar, goat-eyed, watching myself turn dry and blue?
Must learn to think clearly again. He felt sly and secretive.
Until they slowed down in the square by the warehouse Whitfield did not look over at Quinn. Whitfield had a headache and felt he should leave well enough alone. They slowed in the square and rolled to a stop by the warehouse, and Whitfield looked at Quinn sitting still for a moment, holding the wheel.
He used to look like something dumped out of a box, thought Whitfield, but no more. Something wide-eyed, maybe a little surprised, but not any more.
Because this was the first time that Quinn no longer felt entirely new but had the help of some of his of habits.
Chapter 8
A late half light was over the town and in a very short time the sudden dusk would fall and then night. Quinn stretched when he got out of the car, slammed the door. He watched a dog run away Run, he thought, or you’ll get eaten Whitfield still sat in his seat. When Quinn bent down to look into the window, Whitfield had the wine jug on his lap where it was making a stain.
“Dear Quinn,” said Whitfield, “this may surprise you, but in addition to everything else I am extremely hungry. Eat your headaches away, is what my sainted aunt used to say. You should have seen her. Which is to say, Quinn, can’t this entire maddening transaction with the goddamn cans wait till morning?”
“We’re here now.”
“I’m just afraid you might haggle with me.”
“Look,” said Quinn. “None of this means a damn to you. To me it does. Suddenly, to me there is nothing as important as getting what is mine. Those cans are mine. And any more…”
“Please, please. You’re quite right. None of this means anything to me,” and Whitfield got out of the car.
It was still fairly light over the water, the sea black and yellow, zebra striped. Inside the warehouse the bulbs had been turned on, six hard lights in clear glass, like hard, shiny drops on black strings hanging from the high ceiling.
“Ah!” Whitfield said, and his sigh was strong and genuine with the relief he felt. “Here is your treasure.”
The canisters, ten of then, lay in a corner. Whitfield sat down on one of them. Quinn stood and counted them, as he had often done before, though he couldn’t remember this. Now they were completely his and worth money, and even if it was pennies only, the difference was big. He had back one of his habits, namely, to let nobody think they could take advantage of him.