“It reminds me of Greece,” said the captain. “I don’t mean really Greek, but I can’t think of anything closer.”
“The Germans built it, and they were here less time than the Italians.”
“In America,” said the captain, “it would be a bank.”
“It was a Kaserne. You know, garrison quarters, or something like that.”
They talked like that until they came to Whitfield’s house, because they did not quite know what to say about the other matter. The clerk showed the way up a side street, through an arch in a house where a breeze was blowing, across the courtyard in back, and to the house behind that.
“The French built it,” he said. “They were here the longest.”
“The Arabs didn’t build anything?”
“There are native quarters,” said Whitfield, with his tone just a little bit as if these were still Empire days.
His two rooms were on the second floor and there was even a balcony. The captain looked at the balcony while the clerk yelled down the stairs for his Arab to bring two buckets of water and some lemon juice. There was no view, the captain saw, just rooftops and heat waves above that. And the balcony was not usable because it was full of cartons.
“You do have gin,” said the captain.
“Those are empty.”
The clerk turned the ceiling fans on, one in each room, and then went to the landing again to yell for the Arab. He came back, taking off his clothes.
“I don’t think he’ll come,” he said and threw his jacket on a horsehair couch. The couch was not usable because it was full of books.
“Who, the mayor?”
“No, Remal will come. He said so in the hospital.”
“I don’t understand why he wanted to see you and me.”
“That’s because he didn’t say.”
The clerk kept walking all this time and dropping his clothes. When he got to the second room he was quite naked.
There was a brass bed in this room, a dresser, and a tin tub with handles.
“I’ll just have to use the same water again,” said the clerk, and stepped into his tub.
“Did you say you had gin, Whitfield?”
The clerk sighed when he sat down in the water, reached down to the bottom of the tub, and brought up a bottle. The label was floating off.
“This way it keeps a degree of coolness,” he said. “There is ice only at the hotel. You see the glasses?”
The captain saw the glasses on the dresser and then was told to fetch also the clay jug from the window sill. The gray earthenware was sweating small, shiny water pearls which trembled, rolled over the belly of the jug and became stains shaped like amoebae.
“It’s a sour wine,” said the clerk. “Very safe,” and he uncorked the gin bottle.
They mixed gin and sour wine and the glasses felt fairly cool in their hands.
“ Min skoal din skoal,” said the clerk for politeness.
The captain didn’t recognize the pronunciation and said nothing. He made himself another glass while the clerk watched from the bathtub. There was a deep cushiony valley where the captain sat on the bed and the clerk thought, He looks like an egg sitting up, beard notwithstanding. I am drinking too fast “What a sight,” said the captain. “That creature we found there.”
The clerk stretched one leg out and put it on the rim of the tub. He looked at his toe, at the big one in particular, and thought how anonymous the toe looks. No face at all.
“I can’t remember what he looked like, do you know that?” said the captain. “All that hair and filth.”
“When he came to,” said the clerk, “the way he kept curling up.” He said it low, and to nobody, and when he thought of the man on the hospital bed he did with his toes what he had seen on the hospital bed. “God,” he mumbled, “the way he kept curling up-”
They said little else until the mayor came and they did not hear him because of the soft, native shoes he was wearing. Or because of the way he walked. Remal came straight into the bedroom, a very big man but walking as if he were small and light. Small steps which did not make him bounce or dip, but they gave an impression as if Remal could float.
“Good afternoon, gentlemen,” he said in English, and this also confused the impression he made. Remal looked as native as a tourist might wish. He had an immobile terra cotta face, with black female eyes and a thin male mouth. He wore a stitched skullcap which the clerk had once called a yamulke, to which Remal had answered, “Please don’t use the Jewish name for it again. Or I’ll kill you.” This politely, with a smile, but the clerk had felt sure that Remal meant it.
“I’ll fix you one of these,” said the captain, and looked around for another glass.
“Don’t,” said the clerk. He put his leg back into the tub and curled up in the water. “He’s Mohammedan, you know, but he won’t kill you because he’s also polite.”
“Please,” said Remal. He made a very French gesture of self-deprecation and smiled. “I’ll have something else. Where is your man?”
“Couldn’t find him. Disappeared. Captain, you might fix me a Christian-type cocktail.”
Remal left the room and went out to the landing and then the two men in the bedroom could hear him roar. “What was that?” and the captain stopped mixing.
“It’s a kind of Arabic which a European can never learn,” said the clerk.
When Remal came back he brought a chair along from the other room, flounced the long skirt of the shirt-like thing he was wearing, doing this in the only way a long, shirt-like thing can be handled, and sat down.
“Ah, Whitfield,” he said. “How relaxing to see you.”
“Stop flattering me. I will not give you the bathtub.”
An irreverent way, thought the captain, for a thin, naked man to talk to a big one like this mayor, but the light talk went on for a while longer while the captain sat in the valley of the bed and wondered what Remal wanted. Perhaps five minutes after the roar on the landing the clerk’s Arab came running into the room with a tray. It held a pot and a cup and the tea smelled like flowers. After everything had been put on the dresser, the clerk’s Arab ran out again very quickly because Remal had waved at him. Then Remal poured and everyone waited.
“That was a remarkable coffin,” he said when he was ready. “I looked the entire thing over with interest.”
“Custom-made,” said the clerk.
“It would have to be,” said Remal. “Few people would want such a thing.”
“About the man,” said the captain. “You wanted us to discuss…”
“Dear captain,” said the clerk. “Our mayor is being polite by not coming to the point. You were saying, Remal?”
“Yes, yes. This coffin had everything.”
“I don’t think so,” said the captain. “Not by the smell of it.”
“Perhaps,” said Remal, and drank tea. “But I was thinking, to lie in your own offal does have a Biblical significance, doesn’t it?”
“And the box man is a Christian fanatic,” said the clerk. “You better watch out, Remal.”
“I am.”
“This is ridiculous,” said the captain. “I want…”
“You are interrupting Remal,” said the clerk. “You were interrupting one of his silences.”
In a way, thought the captain, this Arab is taking a lot from the clerk.
“There were remarkable arrangements for a long journey,” said Remal. “A great number of water canisters strapped to the side of the coffin…”
“Can’t you say box?”
“Of course, Whitfield. And a double wall filled with small packets of this food, this compressed food the American soldiers used to carry.”
“You think he’s an American?” asked the captain.
“Of course. Didn’t you load him in New York?”
The captain put his glass down on the floor and when he sat up again he looked angry.
“I got papers which say so and I got a box which looks like it. That’s all I know. The way it turns out, the damnable thing did not go through customs, my crew didn’t see the damnable thing coming on…”