Free The Box by Peter Rabe Page A

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.
    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