Fierce and intense - German American author Peter Rabe's 1962 crime thriller, The Box.
We're in the sweltering town of Okar along the North African coast, forty miles from Tripoli. The Englishman in charge of the pier where a freighter is currently unloading its cargo is roused from siesta to oversee the operation.
Whitfield the Englishman demands to know the nature of the emergency. The captain tells Whitfield his crew in the hold reported something very strange: a bad smell coming from a box twice the size of a telephone booth, a box, the captain insists, that must be unloaded here in Okar.
Whitfield fumes, calls for port of origin and destination. The Captain looks at his papers and says, "Queer, isn't it. Port origin, New York. Destination: New York." For Whitfield, this whole mess with the box stinks like a heap of camel shite both literally and figuratively. But something must be done since the captain leaves the port within hours. Finally, the captain gives the order - Open it!
And open it they do. The shock - the box contains a man, a still very much alive man. He's taken to the local hospital and does not talk for several days.
Turns out, the man in the box is an American lawyer by the name of Quinn. We quickly learn Quinn's backstory: at some point in his career back in New York, Quinn switched from law to outlaw. But Quinn wound up in a fix. As one mob boss tells Quinn: "You were hired to be smart in the organization, not stupid, you shyster, not stupid enough to try and slice yourself in!"
The punishment dished out for Quinn to learn his lesson: a trip around the world by sea on a freighter in his own special compartment: a box. The boss tells Quinn not to worry, the box is stocked with food and water. If you make it back to New York, one thing's for sure: you'll be a changed man. If you don't, well, that's the way it goes.
Following his release from the hospital, the four main players in Quinn's life: Whitfield, the man legally responsible for Quinn (actually, Quinn stays in the Englishman's apartment), Remal, town mayor and head of the local smuggling operation, Turk the Arab who looks to Quinn as a source of power and Bea, a beautiful, wealthy European lady who takes a special liking to Quinn.
It shouldn't come as a surprise the presence of Bea, short for Beatrice, adds huge helpings of zeal and ardor to the developing drama. Quinn meets Bea for the first time in the town's main dining room:
"She did not answer anything but closed her eyes for a moment and kept smiling. She sat still like that as if feeling her own skin all over. Now she also had a face like a cat, thought Quinn. I can see her lie in the sun like a cat, the way they lie and you want to touch them. And the cat face, very quiet and content, with cat distance.
"You know," she said, and opened her eyes. "I like to be looked at."
Quinn finished his Scotch, put the glass down, and felt light-headed.
"In that case," he said, "you, looking the way you do, should have a good time of it all day long."
Worth repeating: The Box packs a wallop, a tale of ferocious intensity and economy since each scene and every bit of dialogue is cut down to the literary bone as Peter Rabe explores themes of love and hate, life and death, loyalty and betrayal under the African sun. And also African nights where acts of violence such as beatings, stabbings, kidnappings, rape are more readily concealed.
Quinn and Whitfield drive to the consul in Tripoli where Quinn is told it will take a month to process the needed papers. Meanwhile, he must remain in Okar. Quinn reflects, "But what to do, what to do, staying a month in a truly foreign place, where no one meant anything to him, or everyone was somehow beyond him? How did I do it before, what did I do, filling the time and finding some tickle in it? A month of nothing."
Nothing, you say? Quinn's month in Okar is anything but nothing. After all, Peter Rabe is known for crime stories that are tough, bitter, real, powerful and compelling. According to lifelong Rabe fan and author Ed Gorman, "He told the truest gangster stories, no doubt about that. He knew how the mob worked and how mob people thought." Since the mob put Quinn in the box in New York, you can bet the mob doesn't go away just because Quinn happens to be in some small town in North Africa.
Quinn's tale takes tumbles that are both bitter and powerful. "First Quinn sat, and it was as if he were blind with confusion. But this did not last. He sat and was blind to everything except his hate for the laugh, and for his own stupidity. Because, for a fact, Quinn was not new to this. Neither to the contest with the man, Remal in this case, nor to the simple, sharp rules of the game: that you don't go off half-cocked, that you don't threaten unless you can hit." Will Quinn work himself up to the point where he's capable of hitting, of striking back? For each reader to discover.
Eros and Thanatos, love and death, perform a furious dance in The Box right up till the final page. The Box, an existential novel, a thrilling novel, a novel that, as the saying goes, blew me away. The Box is my first Peter Rabe and, I can assure you, I'll be reading and reviewing more Peter Rabe.
Peter Rabe, 1921 - 1990
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