Quin’s Shanghai Circus

by Edward Whittemore

  Mama had listened to the former corporal’s report without surprise. The surprises that men might work were far behind her. In the brothel in Kobe she had known ten thousand men with their ten thousand tricks and fantasies.

  But as the sage had said, although there may be ten thousand creatures, every one of them cannot turn its back to the shade without having the sun on its belly.

  Mama closed her eyes and thought of the tongue the boy held in his hands, the meat filled with white worms the shape of fingernail parings.

  That meat was the same kind of flesh horsemen in the Gobi Desert had been carrying under their saddles for thousands of years. These horsemen, who must be the boy’s spiritual ancestors, had once been the terror of the world. From their desert they had galloped across the earth conquering the palaces of many civilizations. But then the sandstorms had come and the rivers had gone, the caravans had lost their way and a single horseman was left to ride on alone into the wastes of the desert clutching his meat.

  He holds his tongue in his hand, thought Mama, because he knows the destiny of his Mongol tribe and dares not relate it. He knows it is too fearful for others to hear and he knows that a tongue can never fail to speak of the past. It is the umbilical cord of the past and yet it is the strangest of all umbilical cords for it does not nourish, for those who speak do not know and those who know do not speak.

  The sage tells us that the soul of man is like a grandee on his travels. When a place is not to his liking he moves on. He consults the time piece of his eye and enters a realm from another era.

  And thus, thought Mama, this child we know as Big Gobi is ageless. He is the oldest child in the world, the child who was born a million years ago when the desert was not even a desert. And now he has removed his tongue so that he will not be tempted to walk on the sands of other eras, to recall those sands and converse upon them and reveal thereby secrets unknown to us, secrets he alone can envision with his timeless eye.

  The emerald in the middle of Mama’s forehead glistened. An insight had come to her from the cross the boy wore, a cross given to her by the General, whose subsequent death brought her to despair and made of the cross, his gift, an unbearable burden. A cross taken from her then in the locked, shuttered room where she had gone to confess her misery, slipped off her neck by an immobile fat man who had listened to her tale for her sake, a nameless naked giant in the shadows who thereupon silently lifted the intolerable weight from her shoulders and in so doing bestowed upon her the most precious of gifts, the blessing of hope.

  A small gold cross. A crossing of two people in the shadow of a battered projector that later led to another in the Shanghai warehouse where she gave her love in return to the nameless circus master of the acts, for his sake, in the last hours of his torment.

  Mama opened her eyes. She began to breathe again.

  The ivory elephant bearing the lotus had been moved to the far side of the room, to the window facing west. She climbed up the side of the elephant now and arranged herself on the lotus. It was late afternoon, the time to consider the end of the day. She faced the setting sun.

  Long ago she had accepted the loss of the General, her first son, the circus master, her second son. But now as the light fell and the darkness closed around her, as she recalled the distant blessing from the naked giant that had once given her new life, she prayed that it might not yet be too dark for the child known as Big Gobi to see the smile of the Kannon Buddha, to feel the mercy and compassion in her face, to find somewhere in those worn, wrinkled lines a measure of the love that had conceived him in a Shanghai ring soon to be extravagantly crowded with animals and acts, before his circus came to an end and the lone Mongol was left to wander the barren wastes westward, into the desert of sandstorms and mirages where the secret agents of lost caravans conversed in unknowable tongues.

  • • •

  The grayness buzzed and Big Gobi watched, unable to align the ten thousand lines in his head with the ten thousand lines in front of him.

  Ghosts smiled from the grayness.

  He saw the dancing, solemn ghost of a boy on a beach, a boy in an army hospital, a boy on a bus, a boy looking at a frozen tuna fish and a powdery bowl of seagull soup.

  In a few weeks the first typhoons of early autumn would come to Japan. Even now violent winds circled each other in the South China Sea waiting to break out of their ring into the Pacific. But for Big Gobi that dangerous season had already passed. The winds that blew over him came from the north, from the Manchurian plains and the Siberian tundra. Where he lived it was winter, a blizzard was forming in his brain.

  He sat with a blanket around his shoulders. Quin had gone to find a doctor.

  He was shivering, his bad shoulder ached, his legs were numb. He slumped sideways, no longer able to keep himself upright against the wind. The caravan wound toward the horizon and he knew he was lost, losing touch with the world.

  He was sorry he had to disappoint Quin and Geraty and the gentle Father and the wise Mama by falling behind. He wanted to stay with them but he was exhausted, the blizzard raged and he could no longer keep up.

  Alone and delirious in the desert of his Mongol ancestors, in the solitude of wind and snow, he raised his hand to wave farewell.

  • • •

  Hato stuttered that he wanted to leave. The policeman hit him in the stomach and went on working on the window, working slowly because he didn’t want the small half-moon of glass above the lock to fall and make a noise. It was hot, they were both sweating. The cutter slid, the suction cup held. The policeman turned the lock and raised the window.

  They were in a bedroom at the back of the house. A light showed under the door. Hato was whispering again, stuttering. The policeman hit him across the mouth and forced him up through the window. He followed and stopped to listen at the door. A humming sound. He brought his knee up into Hato’s groin, opened the door, pushed him through.

  Hato stumbled into the living room where the big foreigner was sitting with a blanket wrapped around him, shaking, sweating. A television set hummed on the far side of the room. Hato smiled weakly and tried to think of the crippled girl in New York, his shoeboxes of airplane disasters, the chow mein whore, movies.

  Nothing happened. He had forgotten all his English.

  He grinned and then he frowned. He was wetting his pants. He saw the big foreigner wave, and in desperation he waved back.

  Hurry, whispered the foreigner. The blizzard’s here, we can’t wait any longer, we have to begin the ceremony.

  He pulled a small table over and wedged it between his legs. He pushed another small table toward Hato.

  Beat the drum, he whispered. Hurry, call the tribe.

  Hato squatted on the floor watching the big foreigner with the dark face and the slanting eyes and the high cheekbones drum on the table. He drummed for several minutes and then raised his arms to the sky. There were tears in his eyes as he chanted.

  Women hey.

  Oysters hey.

  Hey hey hey.

  I’ve seen it, whispered the big foreigner. I’ve been to the top of the mountain and seen the palace. I’ve looked down into the valley.

  While the fool and the giant beat their drums the policeman was working his way around the room. He crouched, he loped, he crept on all fours. He prowled the corners and sniffed the air for the stars he had seen in a Siberian pine grove. He came across a translucent green paperweight stolen from the desk of a customs official in New York.

  The paperweight reminded him of urinal candy, urinal candy reminded him of Baron Kikuchi and his father’s eaten face. He bit into the paperweight and snapped his front teeth, the pain bringing with it a jumble of memories.

  A huge overcoat.

  Frozen rice paddies.

  Mulberry trees.

  Landlords and taxes.

  Peace.

  Riots.

  Shredded testicles.

  War.

  Hair.

  A special sound.r />
  Latrines.

  Mushrooms.

  Icy cellars, scalped heads, razors, a blackjack.

  His head was humming, he had to have the silence of that other night under the stars. He picked up the heavy television set and brought it down with all his strength.

  Glass broke, metal cracked, wires spun. The foreigner’s huge body toppled backward, the box driven down to his shoulders. His eyes were still open but his skull was crushed, his mouth jammed shut. The policeman saw the face in the hole where the screen had been.

  Hato was down on his knees, his chin covered with saliva. The policeman kicked him and watched him fall over. He was moaning, twitching, gripped by a seizure he had last experienced as a child on a bed of movie magazines. His hand reached out for the familiar objects, the gloves and hairpieces and empty lipstick tubes, but there was nothing there but the table drum. He bit his lip. Swallowed. Blood frothed over his mouth.

  He was strangling on his own tongue.

  The policeman undid the cross the foreigner was wearing and tied it around his own neck. He took the piece of meat out of the foreigner’s pocket and squeezed it. White worms dribbled through his fingers. He dropped the meat and licked his fingers.

  In the kitchen he found some cans of beer and a package of cigarettes. He smoked and drank until the cans were all empty, then he urinated in one of them and put it back in the refrigerator. He shredded the cigarettes that were left and scattered the tobacco around the kitchen.

  Hato was no longer twitching. The policeman dropped his trousers to make a pile between the two boys and smell the familiar smell.

  At the subway station he bought a newspaper and stood patiently in line waiting to buy his ticket. All the other passengers in the subway were using their newspapers to fan themselves, but he held his in front of him pretending to read. From Tsukiji he walked to Tokyo Bay, to the end of the concrete breakwater where Quin had recently been with Baron Kikuchi’s former chauffeur.

  Steps led down to the water. The lights of the city hid most of the stairs. The water was very black as he approached the giant steps of the Tohoku and descended them for the last time.

  Around his neck hung the small gold cross that had been revered for thirteen centuries by traders crossing central Asia, a cross that had once been given to Adzhar by his wife and subsequently worn by Maeve and the General and Mama before a naked giant stole it in Shanghai, stole it for safekeeping, and kept it for thirty years until he could return it to the doomed son of the Shanghai circus, a lonely Mongol horseman from whom it might have been taken in order to bring to an end the last invisible caravans hidden in the code name Gobi, carried at last to a dark resting place in the waters where its glittering lines could no longer cross and recross the lives of those who had worn it over the years in honor of love and the memory of love.

  Himself, Herself

  Move. March.

  Where?

  What does it matter? All good roads are within. Mine has been a long one and perhaps your march must be long as well.

  —Adzhar to a leader of the 1927 Communist uprising in Shanghai

  • • •

  One September morning shortly before dawn a procession of black limousines was seen approaching Tokyo from some point to the south, perhaps Kamakura, where they had apparently gathered during the hours of darkness. The limousines entered the city and moved slowly down a main thoroughfare keeping themselves bumper to bumper, all of them empty save for a driver.

  The funeral procession crept around the streets in a wide curve until by mid-morning the entire center of the city was blocked off in a gigantic circle of mourning. By then the first limousine had come up behind the last to form an unbroken chain, making it impossible to estimate how many thousands of vehicles there might be in the solemn parade.

  Since neither traffic nor pedestrians could pass through the mysterious black ring, the stores and offices of Tokyo eventually closed and the government declared an unofficial holiday. Twelve million people came out to watch the unannounced and nameless event while around the world many millions more pondered the total inscrutability of the Orient, bewildered that the death of one unknown person could cause a funeral of such magnitude. In fact it was the most magnificent funeral celebrated in Asia since the death of Kublai Khan, but only one man understood this completely, that other wanderer from the thirteenth century who called himself Father Lamereaux.

  From the lawn of an elegant inn, amid stone lanterns and stone paths, twisted pines and miniature bridges, the two surviving half-brothers watched the procession. Kikuchi-Lotmann knew now that the woman he had described on the highbar in the abandoned warehouse was indeed his mother, but that his father had not been the circus master of that story but of another, one that began on a houseboat in Shanghai when his father and Quin’s father had been introduced to each other by the woman they both loved eight years before their deaths, eight years before the circus and Nanking, eight years before the conception of the third half-brother, whose funeral was now being celebrated in the world’s largest city, the cause of the black ring around Tokyo twenty years after the end of the war known only to them and the Kannon Buddha and the aging Emperor who had long ago found homes for the sons of Maeve and Mama.

  Quin nodded to himself, Kikuchi-Lotmann changed his necktie. They watched the procession until sunset, when a servant appeared with a picnic basket and spread a tablecloth on the grass with lox and winter sable, white-fish, pickled herring and herring in cream, rollmops, pickled tomatoes, cream cheese and chives, olives, chopped liver, a tray of bagels.

  In front of the array of food two small figures in ice were set up, the one a man in frock coat with whip and megaphone, the other a boy with a dented shoulder.

  At the foot of the hill the procession of limousines was at last coming to an end, and although it was cold for September the two ice figures were already beginning to melt. Kikuchi-Lotmann gazed at the sun sinking out of sight.

  A little of this, he said, and a little of that. Or put another way, we sit in the East and watch the sun go down in the West. But if we were to reverse ourselves?

  The ice figures were pools of water. Kikuchi-Lotmann’s head wagged. He blew the water and sprayed it over the grass, fogging his glasses. A sad smile came to his face as he spread a slice of fish on a bagel.

  Mixed buffet, he said in the half-light. Help yourself.

  • • •

  The elderly Emperor sat thin and erect in his ornate Victorian parlor, one hand gripping each horsehair arm of his throne. His black habit hung loosely around him, the cloth worn, the celluloid collar unstudded and awry. On the table in front of him stood a bottle of Irish whiskey.

  Uncertain weather, he whispered. I’ve always enjoyed the latter part of September here. The air is uneasy as if hiding some secret, yet we all know typhoons are in the natural order of things. Is that bottle what it appears to be?

  Yes, said Quin.

  Father Lamereaux sighed.

  It’s been a long time since I’ve tasted that, nearly a quarter of a century. When I first came to Japan I had my cats and the Legion and the flowers of Tokyo, and there were the temples in the lovely hills above Kamakura with their gongs and rituals and the periods set aside for contemplation. The Legion met at that long table behind you and we had discussions on No plays after the closing prayer and the passing of the secret-bag. But then in the 1930s they took those ugly cannons they captured from the Russians in 1905 and placed them around the shrines. How did that bottle get there?

  It’s a present for you, said Quin. I’ll be leaving soon and we might not meet again. I thought we might have a drink together.

  No, we probably won’t meet again.

  I remembered that Geraty said you and he had a glass of Irish whiskey together the last time he saw you, when he left for China before the war.

  Did he say that? Perhaps we did, I’ve forgotten. After that I lost the cats and the legionaries. The flowers of Tokyo weren’t so beauti
ful during the war when the whole city was burning down. Since then I’ve been a strict vegetarian, honey and eggs excepted. Rice has a peculiar effect on the bowels of the Japanese, which is one reason they prefer the out-of-doors. I prefer it myself, especially my own garden, but I can’t do it when it’s raining.

  Can I pour you a drink?

  I think so. I think I just might have one today because there’s going to be a typhoon and because I lost everything a quarter of a century ago, too long a time to have nothing. I believe we should emulate the Virgin, a human soul must not resign itself to imperfection. The Emperors of Japan were great men until military dictators forced them into retirement in the thirteenth century. The Emperor was simply thrown out in the streets and told to barter pickles and bugger his autograph for rice. Then in the 1920s I went to study in Kamakura. Once on a spring afternoon there I heard the music that had tempted the sun goddess from her cave, exquisite music played on a koto a thousand years old. Elijah and the sun goddess played it for me as I nodded with the flowers, as the shoemaker’s son sat at his shoemaker’s bench and sang a dragon’s epic so strange and sanctifying it surely must have been a gift from the distant Lapps. Did you know Elijah or the shoemaker’s son? Did you know Henry Pu Yi? He was a very naughty man and his mythical country never really existed. But for all that, he was still the last emperor I had an opportunity to talk to. I suppose I’ve already mentioned the Peram and their necronym system, Father of Uncle Dead and the rest. Even among simple tribesmen relationships can be quite complex. Quite complex when we look into it.