“Yes. Cheap spot here.”
“There is an additional point: carry no more than one of these bills on you, which is about fifty cents. You don’t need more to get through a day or so. This way it won’t be too likely that you’ll get robbed.”
“All right,” said Quinn and got up. He absently stuffed all the bills in his pocket and then he hitched his pants.
“You can sleep here tonight,” said Whitfield. “I forgot to mention it.”
“All right,” said Quinn and walked to the door.
“I say, you do sound absent-minded, Quinn.”
Quinn stopped at the door and opened it. He hadn’t been listening.
“And I say, are you going out?”
“Yes. I’ll be back in a while. Got to go out and think.”
“But you mustn’t!” and Whitfield ran to the door. He touched the door and then he took his hand away. He blinked at Quinn but did not quite understand the expression he saw on his face.
“And of course Remal will be over shortly. To find out how it went with the consul, to arrange for your accommodations…”
“And to tell me I’m confined to quarters after dark?”
Whitfield raised his hand once more to touch the door, but then he just dropped it. He said, “Oh, hell,” and stepped back. What’s happened to my baby from the box, he thought, and why the hell should I try to handle it Quinn walked out and down the stairs. He stood in the hall downstairs for a moment and wondered why he hadn’t heard Whitfield close the door all this time, but he didn’t dwell on it. He walked out, found the roasting odor, made his turn in the dark. He walked in the dark, except when crossing the main street. In the darkness again he occasionally watched the sky street overhead, and sometimes the blind walls of the houses. He felt alone and liked it. He felt he was growing up again, old habits, new habits, no matter what, and this feeling was like a tonic, the way recklessness can be.
At the end of a street was the long quay with the sky now very big overhead. The Mediterranean was black. It was here only a licking sound and a wet smell, but not an ocean.
The warehouse was dark and Quinn went there. At both ends of the building a fence closed off the company dock, a wire mesh fence, where Quinn hooked his fingers into the loops and stood looking. He saw a junk with a light swinging somewhere inside and he saw a motor yacht tied to the pier. Then the wire mesh moved under his hands, a give and a sway, making Quinn think of a net.
“Yes?” said the man.
Quinn saw that the man stood by the fence the same way he himself was doing it, hanging his hands there from hooked fingers. Big, white teeth showed in the man’s very dark face and Quinn wondered if this was a smile.
“Yes? Yes?” said the man, always showing the smile.
“Yes what?” said Quinn.
“Yes, Yes?”
It’s the only English he knows, thought Quinn, and he is a beggar.
“Yes?” said the man again and this time he laughed. He swayed the fence a little and laughed.
“I don’t know what you want,” said Quinn and turned away.
He looked through the fence and wished that the man, who might also be an idiot, would stop swaying the wire mesh. The mesh swayed more and suddenly gave a wild jerk, hitting Quinn in the face.
“Yes? Yes?”
The man laughed again even though Quinn turned with a sharp motion, full of anger.
“Yes!”
What to say. How talk to an idiot who knows one word and laughs all the time. And then Quinn saw that there was another man.
Then he realized why he had not heard either of them. One of them was barefooted and the other, the grinning one by the fence, had rags wound around his feet, giving them the shape of soft loaves.
The barefooted one came from the water side and the grinning one also came closer. Then the barefooted one leaped.
Quinn smelled a terrible stink from the man, and for that first moment Quinn struggled only because of that. But then the grinning one hurt him. He had his arms around Quinn’s middle and his hands dug Quinn in the spine. For some strange reason, Quinn could suddenly hear nothing. The man let go, stepped back, hit Quinn in the face. Quinn felt confused and therefore weak. Even the slap in the face did not arouse him. He found no anger, no strength, no clear-cut emotion. He wanted to say “Why?”, and he wanted to ask this for most of the time that he was still conscious.
It was a strange fight and it did not last very long. Quinn hit back and saw the man laugh. He could hear again in a moment and heard the dry skin sound of bare feet, the lick sound of the water, cough sound of the idiot laugh, twang sound of the fence, which gave like a net when the three men rolled against it. Quinn did not hurt much while they fought nor did he enjoy much what he was doing. Then he tasted blood and then his head jarred and he went out.
When he woke up he thought that he was on the junk with the light inside. He saw the light swaying and felt his insides turn over with nausea and thought, I’m seasick. But then he felt the stone floor under his hands and the hard weave of the fence pressing into his back. I’ve been out less than a minute, he thought. He knew this for certain because there was still the hard muscle pain in his stomach where he had been hit and the blood was fresh and warm on his lip. Also, his breathing was still going deep and heavy.
The other thing he knew for certain was why he had been jumped. He put one hand on his thigh, feeling the money wad still in his pocket. They hadn’t been beggars and they hadn’t been robbers, but Whitfield was in on this thing and the strong-arm business told him, Keep away from the pier. Here in Okar. Not back home, but here in Okar.
He looked at the lamp and saw how close it was and then he looked up and saw who was holding it.
“Are you all right, Mister Quinn?” said Remal.
Quinn set his teeth and did not answer. He heard footsteps running and saw Whitfield come around the side of the building. He was carrying a wet rag. He ran over to Quinn and crouched next to him and offered the rag to him. He tried to say something or other but nothing came out. He was also trying to smile and frown at the same time but was too upset for either.
“Put it on the back of your neck,” said Remal. “It will clear you.”
Clear enough, thought Quinn. Everything is very clear, except that the instinct has gone out of me and I sit here and feel so clear that I’m empty.
“Quinn? Uh, Quinn, I’m most terribly sorry…”
“Let Mister Quinn get up, if he wishes,” said Remal.
Quinn got up. He did this carefully, hooking his fingers into the fence and working up that way like a slow-moving monkey. When he stood he took a deep breath and looked at the other two men. Whitfield looked nervous and even embarrassed. Remal smiled. Quinn felt that he did not know about Remal yet.
“Can you walk?” said Whitfield. “If you can’t, just sit down again. Or come sit in my office.”
“Why sit in your office?” said Quinn, and, “Why are you here?”
“Remal wanted to talk to you,” said Whitfield. “You remember I told…”
“You had left when I came,” said Remal, “so we went out to look for you.”
“Here?” said Quinn.
Remal lifted the lantern he had in one hand and held it so the light shone on Quinn’s face. Remal looked closely at him and squinted a little.
“Bad cut,” he said. “Does not look very good,” and he put his free hand out and poked at the cut with two fingers, causing a sharp pain. “Yes, yes,” he said.
Quinn jerked his head back because of the pain and then wiped one eye, which had started to water. He felt confused again, and therefore weak. The instinct’s gone out of me, he thought. Damn all of them, but I’ll get it back Then they went around the long warehouse and into Whitfield’s office. The walking was not so bad.