“Find the destination of your thing yet?” The clerk looked up at the sky where the boom was, swaying a little now and all stiff and black against the white sky. Then the box showed.
“Just a minute,” said the captain and licked his finger. The box also looked black, because of the white sky. It was very large, and swayed.
“Where to?” the clerk asked again.
“New York. Un-”
The boom swung around now and the black load hung over the pier.
“New York is port of origin,” said the clerk. “You mentioned that earlier.”
“Just a minute-”
When the box was lowered the winch made a different sound once again, a give and then hold sound, a give then hold, a sagging feeling inside the intestines, thought the clerk as he watched the box come down. It grew bigger.
“New York,” said the captain.
“My dear captain. All I’ve asked…”
“Destination New York!” said the captain. “Here. Look at it!”
The clerk looked and said, “Queer, isn’t it. Port of origin, New York. Destination, New York.”
They both looked up at the box which swung very slowly.
“What’s in it?” asked the clerk.
“What’s in it. One moment now. Ah: PERISHABLES. NOTE: IMPERATIVE, KEEP VENTILATED.”
The clerk made a sound in his throat, somewhat like the captain’s rumble, though it did not rumble when the clerk made the sound but was more like a polite knock on a private door.
“That’s a very queer entry, captain. They do have regulations over there, you know, about proper entries.”
The captain did not answer and kept riffling the papers. The box was low now and really big. It no longer looked black, being away from the sky, but quite stained.
“And you know something else?” said the captain and suddenly slapped his hand on the clipboard. “There’s no customs notation here anywhere!”
Now the winchman above kept watching the seaman who stood on the pier. The seaman made slow signals with wrists and hands to show when the box would set down. He is an artist, thought the clerk, watching the seaman. Sometimes he only uses his fingers.
There were also two dark-looking Arabs who stood on the pier and waited. One held a crowbar, resting the thing like a lance. The other one had an axe.
The box touched, not too gently, but well enough. It just creaked once. A pine box, large and sturdy, with legends on the outside to show which side should be up. The side panels, close to the top, had slits. The top panel was crashed down at one end.
“It does smell, doesn’t it?” said the clerk.
“Christus-” said the captain.
The seaman by the box undid the hook from the lashing, fumbling with haste because he was holding his breath. When the hook swung free the seaman ran away from the box.
“Look at those Arabs,” said the clerk. “Standing there and not moving a muscle.”
“And in the lee of that thing yet,” said the captain.
Then the hook went up and the winch made its high sound. No one really wanted to move. The clerk felt the heat very much and the bareness of everything; he thought that the box looked very ugly. Siesta gone for that ugly box. It doesn’t even belong here. That thing belongs nowhere. Like the winch sound, the screech of it, which doesn’t belong in siesta silence.
Both Arabs, at that moment, gave a start.
“What?” said the captain.
The winch stopped because the hook was all the way up. The boom swung back but that made no sound.
“What?” said the captain again. He sounded angry. “What was that?”
But the Arabs did not answer. They looked at each other and then they shrugged. One of them grinned and rubbed his hand up and down on the crowbar.
“Goddamn this heat,” said the captain.
“Sirocco coming,” said the clerk.
They stood a moment longer while the captain said again that he had to be out of here by this night, but mostly there was the silence of heat everywhere on the pier. And whatever spoiled in the box there, spoiled a little bit more.
“Open it!” said the captain.
Chapter 2
Some of the crew did not care one way or the other, but a lot of them were on the bridge of the tramper, because from the port end of the bridge they had the best view of the pier. They could almost look straight down into the box, once it would be open.
The captain stayed where he was and the clerk stayed with him, away from the box. Just the two Arabs went near it now because they were to open it and did not seem to mind anything. The seaman who had thrown the lashings off the hook was now back by the warehouse wall where he smoked a cigarette with sharp little drags.
“They’re ruining it, including the good parts of the box,” said the captain.
“You wanted it open,” said the clerk.
The Arabs had to cut the bands first, which they did with the axe. Then they used the axe and the crowbar to pry up the top, which took time.
“Well-” said the captain.
“Let it air out a moment,” said the clerk.
They waited and watched the two Arabs drop the lid to the ground and then watched them looking into the box. They just looked and when they straightened up they looked at each other. One of them shrugged and the other one giggled.
Up on the bridge the men leaned but said nothing. Perhaps they could not see well enough or perhaps they could not understand.
“All right,” said the captain and he and the clerk walked to the box.
I am probably, thought the clerk, the least interested of all. Why am I walking to somebody else’s box? I am less interested than the Arabs, even, because they get paid for this. I get no more whether I look or don’t look, which is the source of all disinterest, he considered, because nothing comes of it.
He and the captain looked into the box at the same time, seeing well enough, saying nothing, because they did not understand anything there.
“Shoes?” said the clerk after a moment. “You see the shoes?” as if nothing on earth could be more puzzling.
“Why shoes on?” said the captain, sounding stupid. What was spoiling there spoiled for one moment more, shrunk together in all that rottenness, and then must have hit bottom.
The box shook with the scramble inside, with the cramp muscled pain, with the white sun like steel hitting into the eyes there so they screwed up like sphincters, and then the man inside screamed himself out of his box.
He leaped up blind, hands out or claws out, he leaped up in a foam of stink and screams, no matter what next but up It happened he touched the clerk first. The clerk was slow with disinterest. And when the man touched he found a great deal of final strength and with his hands clamped around the clerk’s neck got dragged out of the box because the clerk was dragging and the captain tried to help drag the clerk free. Before this man from the box let go they had to hit him twice on the back of the head with the wooden axe handle.
“I need a bath,” said the clerk.
“Do you have any gin at home?” asked the captain. “I thought perhaps if you had any gin at home…”
“Yes, yes,” said the clerk, “come along. You have the gin while I have the bath.” They walked down the main street of Okar which was simply called la rue, because the official Arab name was impossible for most of the Europeans and the European names of the street had changed much too often.
“That isn’t much of a hospital you have there,” said the captain.
“The Italians built it. For the ministry of colonial archives.”
“They were hardly here long enough.”
“Look at the hotel,” said the clerk.
They looked at the hotel while they kept walking along the middle of the main street. They could not use the sidewalk which was sometimes no more than a curb. When it was not just a curb there would be chairs and tables which belonged to a coffee house, or stalls with fly-black meat where the butcher was, or perhaps lumber because a carpenter worked on the ground floor. It was that kind of a main street, not very long, and the hotel was the biggest building and even had thin little trees in front.