Remal held the lamp and Whitfield found the switch on the wall for the light. Remal put the lamp on the floor but did not blow it out.
The office was a place with chairs, files and a desk, but it was not an Okar place, thought Quinn. This is a lot like a picture I’ve seen, illustrating something by Dickens. The desk had a pigeonhole back and there were ledgers with red leather spines. The swivel chair, Quinn thought, will probably creak.
Remal sat down in the chair and made it creak. The big man flounced his long shirt, crossed his legs, and touched the stitched skullcap on his head. This spoiled the illustration of something by Dickens. The Arab did not belong in such an office, the office did not belong in Okar, and Quinn, inconsequentially, thought of the upside-down street which had followed him overhead on his way down. His left eye still watered. That’s why I can’t find a focus, he thought.
“Yes, well,” said Remal, and looked at his hands. Then he folded them and looked at Quinn. “So it seems,” he said, “that your own consul has, one might say, committed you to my care. Does it hurt?”
Quinn took his hand away from his face and looked at his fingers. There was a small stain of blood there and he felt it by rubbing his fingertips together.
“I didn’t like it when you hurt me like that,” he said. “It felt like on purpose.”
“I apologize. Really, Mister Quinn.”
“Was it on purpose?”
Whitfield felt as if the air was suddenly getting terribly heavy. Quinn hasn’t moved and Remal hasn’t moved, he thought, but something has. A mood in Quinn. Everything he hasn’t done while he was getting his beating is now starting to move in him. Like a very slow waking up “Of course not,” said Remal. He even smiled, but without looking at Quinn. Then he said, “What needs to happen now, Mister Quinn, is to take better care of you while you are still here.”
“I don’t need any…”
“Please. You just got beaten up. I also apologize for that.”
“You didn’t do it.”
“I am the mayor. I do feel responsible.”
Whitfield sighed and sat down on a chair. Remal was acting official, which somehow took the black mood out of the room. Or perhaps now the mood could be ignored, the way Remal seemed to be ignoring Quinn. He talked to Quinn as if about routine business.
“And feeling responsible, Mister Quinn, here is how we shall handle this.”
Quinn leaned back in his chair, very slowly and cautiously it seemed to Whitfield. Then he saw Quinn stick out his tongue and touch the tip of it to the cut which ran down to his lip. Quinn did that very slowly too.
“As long as you have no papers,” said Remal, “you must stay here in town. This you know. And as long as you stay in this town, Mister Quinn, you must observe a few rules of safety.”
“Like don’t go out after dark?” said Quinn.
“Why, yes,” said Remal and smiled. Then the smile went again and he cleared his throat. “That is point number one. Point number two, please do not go into the Arab quarter. You are unfamiliar here, unfamiliar with ways and with people. They will find you strange and you will feel the same about them, which is always dangerous. It is best you have nothing to do with them.”
There was a small silence and then Quinn said, “Was there a third point?”
A silence again and Whitfield fingered his chin. He wished he were some place else.
“Yes. Point number three: Do not go near the waterfront after dark. I don’t think I need to explain why.”
“No. That you don’t.”
“After all, you are still suffering the consequences.”
Quinn got up from his chair and stretched himself carefully. He did this mostly to learn where he was hurting. Then he walked to the window which looked from the office into the warehouse, but it was dark on the other side and he saw only his own head reflected.
I don’t know, I don’t know, he thought. I give up Ryder and now I get this. Like a clear jinx riding me. Jinx in the box.
“And now that we understand each other…” Remal was saying, when Quinn turned around from the window.
“Have you got any idea why you don’t like me?” he said to Remal.
When Quinn heard himself say this he was as startled as the other two men. He turned back to the window. Got to get out, out of here. Go see Turk, he thought. See what there’s to see. I need more than my guesswork about cans smelling like booze “I really don’t know what you mean, Mister Quinn, seeing that you and I hardly know each other.”
We don’t, we don’t for a fact, but still I have this feeling “I have no feelings about you, Mister Quinn. Perhaps it is that which offends you.”
And he may be right. He’s the one who makes this vacuum around me, with no feelings one way or the other. I lost the instinct-Get a beating, get the runaround, get the law laid down to me. And nothing happens inside. I’ve lost the instinct “However,” said Remal, “I have not finished. There is this fourth point. If you do not obey…”
“Obey?” said Quinn.
“Perhaps my English is inadequate.” Remal shrugged.
“I think it is good,” said Quinn. “I don’t know what else to think of it but I think it is good.”
Remal looked at Whitfield and frowned. Quinn’s talk was confusing him. Perhaps, this Quinn person himself was confused, he thought, and he’d best put a halt to this quickly now.
“To finish,” he said and got up, “as I gather from the police officials and by inference, you are familiar with the rules of disobedience. I have talked to you, Mister Quinn, and I wish you no harm. But I have talked to you about rules and I am now finished talking. Whitfield, take him home.” Remal turned and walked out the door.
He left Quinn speechless and Whitfield worried. Whitfield did not think Quinn would stay speechless or dumfounded like this for very long.
Chapter 9
After the sirocco comes through and then disappears over the water, there is often a motion of slow, heavy air. Nobody feels it move in, but it is there, like a standing cloud, a mass of heat. This phenomenon, in a Western climate, might mean a thunderstorm and release. But not in Okar.
Quinn walked out into the street and felt it. He felt the still heat inside and out and how nothing moved. Something’s got to happen, he felt, something He walked next to Whitfield, ignoring him, aware only of the heat which did not move.
“Quinn, not so fast. Please,” said Whitfield. “The steps, you know,” and Whitfield puffed a little, which he blamed on breaking training with the two bottles in the back of the car.
Quinn stopped a few steps ahead of him, where the street leveled out again, and touched the side of his face.
“Uh. Quinn.”
“Yes.”
“I wanted to tell you I am most awfully sorry about what happened to you tonight. Please believe me.”
Nothing’s happened yet, thought Quinn. He felt himself breathe and how hard it was. He almost began to count. Like a count-down, he thought, except I don’t know how many numbers to go “Believe me, Quinn, I had no idea. What I mean is, I was most terribly shocked coming upon that scene there by the fence. Really, Quinn.”
“I believe you,” said Quinn. He was suddenly bored with Whitfield. “I really do, Whitfield,” he said in order to make his point and stop talking. He wanted to get away. Whitfield would soon start meandering again and that had a dulling effect. Like getting drunk on Whitfield, Quinn thought. Got to get away now. Nothing holds as still as I’ve been holding still and I don’t know how but it can’t be much longer.
They crossed the main street and Quinn stopped under a light. “Whitfield, listen. I’m not going home yet. I’m nervous.”
“Fine. We can go to the hotel, where they serve…”
“Not that kind of nervous. When you get home, leave the light on for me.”
“What’s that you said?”
The question was stupid because Whitfield had understood well enough. He stopped and watched Quinn walk off. Sighing, he watched Quinn’s back lit by a lamp, then dark in shadow, then lit by a lamp, the footsteps getting fainter.