In San Francisco one saw everything but old people; the population was young, strong, noisy, and brimming with health. Gold had attracted a legion of twenty-year-old adventurers but the fever had passed. However, as Paulina had predicted, the city did not turn back into a wide spot in the road; on the contrary, it kept growing, with aspirations to refinement and culture. Paulina was in her element in that ambience; she liked the openness, the freedom, and the ostentation of that young society, exactly the opposite of the hypocrisy of Chile. She gloried in the thought of how her father would rage if he had to sit down at the table with a corrupt upstart become a judge, or a Frenchwoman of dubious past decked out like an empress. She had grown up within the thick stucco walls and grillwork windows of her paternal home, looking toward the past, dependent on divine punishment and the opinion of others. In California neither past nor scruples counted; eccentricity was welcomed and guilt did not exist as long as the offense remained hidden. Paulina wrote her sisters, with little hope that her letters would get past her father’s censorship, to tell them about this extraordinary country where it was possible to invent a new life and become a millionaire or a beggar in the wink of an eye. It was the land of opportunity, open and generous. Through the Golden Gate came masses of beings escaping poverty or violence, hoping to find work and erase the past. It wasn’t easy, but their descendants would be Americans. The marvel of this country was that everyone believed their children would have a better life than theirs. “Agriculture is the true gold of California. Farther than you can see are vast, sown fields; everything grows luxuriantly in this blessed soil. San Francisco has become a great city but it has not lost the character of a frontier outpost, and that enchants me. It is still the cradle of freethinkers, visionaries, heroes, and ruffians. People come from the most remote shores; you hear a hundred languages in the street, smell the food of five continents, see every race,” she wrote. No longer a camp of solitary men, women had arrived, and with them society changed. They were as indomitable as the adventurers who came looking for gold; crossing the continent in oxcarts required a robust spirit, and these pioneer women had it. No namby-pambies like her mother and sisters; here Amazons like herself reigned. Day by day they proved their mettle, competing tirelessly and tenaciously with the hardiest men; no one called them the weaker sex, men respected them as equals. They worked in jobs forbidden to them elsewhere: they prospected for gold, worked as cowgirls, drove mules, tracked outlaws for bounty, managed gambling halls, restaurants, laundries, and hotels. “Here women can own land, buy and sell property, get divorced if they feel like it. Feliciano has to walk a fine line because the first thing he tries to get away with, I will leave him, all alone and poor,” Paulina joked in her letters. And she added that California had the best of the worst: rats, fleas, weapons, and vices.
“People come west to escape the past and begin anew, but our obsessions pursue us, like the wind,” Jacob Freemont wrote in a newspaper article. He himself was a good example, because changing his name, becoming a reporter, and dressing like an American had had little effect; he was the same man. The fraud of the missions in Valparaíso was behind him but now he was devising another, and he felt, as before, that his creation was taking over and he was irrevocably sinking into his own weaknesses. His articles on Joaquín Murieta had become the hottest item in the press. Every day came new testimonials confirming what he had written; dozens of individuals swore they had seen Murieta and described him exactly as the character Freemont had invented. He wasn’t sure of anything anymore. He wished he had never written those stories, and at moments was tempted to retract them publicly, confess his lies, and disappear before the whole affair exploded and blew him to hell, as had happened in Chile, but he didn’t have the courage to follow through. His prestige had gone to his head and he was dizzied by fame.
The story Jacob Freemont had been spinning had the earmarks of a dime novel. He wrote that Joaquín Murieta had been an upright, noble young man working honorably in the placers in Stanislaus, accompanied by the girl he was going to marry. When they learned of his prosperity, some Americans had attacked him, stolen his gold, beat him, and then raped his sweetheart before his eyes. There was nothing left for the unfortunate pair but to flee, and they set out for the north, far from the gold fields. They settled down as farmers, and cultivated an idyllic bit of land surrounded by forests and fed by a limpid stream, Freemont wrote, but they were not to find peace there, either, because once again Yanquis came and took what was his; the couple would have to find another way to survive. Shortly afterward Murieta showed up in Calaveras, dealing at monte while his bride prepared their wedding party in the home of her parents in Sonora. It was in the stars, however, that this man would never find tranquility anywhere. He was accused of stealing a horse, and without further ado a group of Yanquis tied him to a tree and savagely lashed him in the town square. That public humiliation was more than a proud young Latino could bear, and his heart turned cold. It wasn’t long before the body of a white man was found cut up in pieces like a hen for a stew, and once his parts were put back together they recognized one of the men who had shamed Murieta with the horsewhipping. In the following weeks all the other participants fell one by one, each tortured and killed in some novel way. Just as Jacob Freemont wrote in his articles: never had such cruelty been seen in a land of cruel men. In the next two years the name of the outlaw cropped up everywhere. His gang stole cattle and horses, ambushed stagecoaches, attacked miners in the placers and travelers on the road, defied the constables, killed any careless American they came upon, and openly mocked the law. Every unpunished crime and excess in California was attributed to Murieta. The terrain lent itself to disappearing; there were plenty of fish and game to be had in its hills and valleys and rivers and woods; a horseman could ride for hours through the high grass without leaving a trail, and it had deep caves to take shelter in, secret mountain passes where a man could throw off pursuers. The posses that rode out to capture the wrongdoers returned empty-handed, or died in their attempt. All this Jacob Freemont described with florid rhetoric, and no one thought to ask for names, dates, or places.
Eliza Sommers worked for two years in San Francisco at Tao Chi’en’s side. During that time, she left twice, during the summers, to search for Joaquín Andieta, following the same procedure she had used before: joining other travelers. The first time she went with the idea of looking until she found Andieta or until winter began, but after four months she returned, exhausted and ill. In the summer of 1852 she started out again, but after retracing the route she had followed previously, and later visiting Joe Bonecrusher, now thoroughly immersed in her role as Tom No-Tribe’s grandmother, and James and Esther, who were expecting their second child, she had returned home after five weeks because she couldn’t stand the anguish of being away from Tao Chi’en. They were so comfortable in their routines, paired in their work and as close in spirit as an old married couple. She collected everything published about Joaquín Murieta and memorized it, as she had Miss Rose’s poems when a little girl, although she tried to ignore the references to the outlaw’s sweetheart. “They invented that girl to sell newspapers; you know how the public is fascinated by romance,” she argued to Tao Chi’en. On a brittle map she tracked Murieta’s steps with the determination of a navigator, but the available information was vague and contradictory: routes crisscrossed like the web of a demented spider, leading nowhere. Although at first she had rejected the possibility that her Joaquín was the one responsible for the bloodcurdling attacks, she soon was convinced that that person jibed perfectly with the young man she remembered. He, too, had rebelled against abuses and was obsessed with helping the downtrodden. Maybe it wasn’t Joaquín Murieta who tortured his victims but his gang, someone like that Three-Finger Jack, whom she believed capable of any atrocity.
She kept wearing men’s clothing because it contributed to the invisibility so necessary in the quixotic mission Tao Chi’en had enrolled her in. It had been three and a ha
lf years since she had worn a dress, and she’d had no news of Miss Rose, Mama Fresia, or her uncle John; it seemed a thousand years that she had been chasing an increasingly improbable chimera. The days of the furtive embraces with her lover were long behind her; she wasn’t sure of her feelings and she didn’t know whether it was love or pride that was driving her to wait for him. She was so caught up in her work that sometimes whole weeks went by without her remembering him, but suddenly a memory would lunge out at her and leave her trembling. Then she would look around her, confused, unable to identify the world in which she found herself. What was she doing wearing trousers and surrounded by Chinese? She had to make an effort to shake off the confusion and remember that she was there because of the intransigence of love. Her mission was not to be helping Tao Chi’en, she would think, but to search for Joaquín; that was why she had come so far, and look for him she would, even if it was just to tell him face-to-face that he was a damned deserter and he had ruined her youth. That was her reason for having set out three times before; she lacked the will, however, to start again. She had gone to Tao Chi’en to announce her determination to take up her pilgrimage but the words stuck like sand in her throat. She could not abandon this strange companion fate had sent her way.
“What will you do if you find him?” Tao Chi’en had asked her once.
“When I see him I will know whether I still love him.”
“And if you never find him?”
“I will live with that doubt, I suppose.”
Eliza had noticed a few premature gray hairs at her friend’s temples. At times the temptation to bury her fingers in that thick black hair, or her nose in his neck to get the full effect of his ocean scent, was unbearable, but now she did not have the excuse of sleeping on the ground rolled up in a blanket, and opportunities to touch one another were nonexistent. Tao was working and studying too hard; she could tell how tired he must be although he was always impeccably groomed, and kept his calm in even the most trying moments. He faltered only when he came back from a sale leading a terrified girl by the arm. He would examine her to see what condition she was in and hand her over to Eliza with necessary instructions, then lock himself in his room for hours. “He is with Lin,” Eliza would conclude, and an inexplicable pain would imbed itself deep in a hidden corner of her heart. In truth, he was. In the silence of his meditation, Tao Chi’en would try to recover his lost aplomb and rid himself of the temptation of hatred and anger. Gradually, memories, desires, and thoughts would slip away, until he felt his body dissolving into nothingness. For a time, he ceased to exist, until he reemerged transformed into an eagle, soaring effortlessly, borne by cold, limpid air that lifted him above the highest mountains. From there he could look down on vast prairies, endless forests, and rivers of pure silver. Then he knew perfect harmony, like a fine instrument resonating with the heavens and the earth. Floating among milky clouds, superb wings outstretched, he suddenly would feel Lin with him. She materialized at his side, another splendid eagle suspended in the infinite heavens.
“Where is your joy, Tao?” she asked.
“The world is filled with suffering, Lin.”
“Suffering fulfills a spiritual purpose.”
“This is merely useless sorrow.”
“Remember that the sage is always joyful because he accepts reality.”
“And evil, must he accept that, too?”
“The only antidote is love. And, incidentally . . . when will you marry again?”
“I am married to you.”
“I am a ghost. I cannot visit you your whole lifetime, Tao. It is very difficult to come when you call me; I do not belong in your world any longer. Marry, or you will be an old man before your time. Besides, if you do not practice the two hundred twenty-two positions of love, you will forget them,” she teased with her unforgettable crystalline laugh.
The auctions were much worse that his visits to the “hospital.” There was very little hope of helping the dying girls, and if that happened it was a miraculous gift; on the other hand, he knew that for every girl he bought, dozens were condemned to infamy. He would torture himself imagining how many he could rescue if he were wealthy, until Eliza reminded him of the ones he had saved. The two of them were joined by a delicate web of affinities and shared secrets, but also separated by mutual obsessions. The ghost of Joaquín Andieta was fading; in contrast, Lin’s spirit was as detectable as the breeze or the sound of waves on the shore. All Tao Chi’en had to do was summon her and she came, always smiling, as she had been in her lifetime. Far from being Eliza’s rival, however, she had become her ally, although Eliza never knew that. Lin was the first to realize that Eliza and Tao’s friendship was closer to love, and when her husband rebutted that there was no place in China or in Chile for a couple like them, she always laughed.
“Do not say foolish things; the world is large and life is long. It is all a question of taking a chance.”
“You cannot imagine what racism is like, Lin; you always lived among your own kind. Here no one cares what I do or what I know; to white people I am just a revolting Chinese pagan, and Eliza is a greaser. In Chinatown I am a renegade without a queue who dresses like an American. I don’t belong anywhere.”
“Racism is nothing new. In China you and I believed that the fan wey were all savages.”
“Here the only thing they respect is money, and apparently I will never have enough.”
“You are mistaken. They also respect the person who commands respect. Look in their eyes.”
“If I follow your advice, I’ll be shot at the first street corner.”
“It’s worth the chance to try. You complain too much, Tao, I cannot recognize you. Where is the courageous man I love?”
Tao Chi’en had to admit that he felt bound to Eliza by countless fine threads, each easily cut but when twisted together forming strands like steel. They had known each other only a few years but they could look to the past and see the obstacle-filled road they had traveled together. Their similarities had erased differences of race. “You look like a pretty Chinese girl,” Tao had said in an unguarded moment. “You have the face of a handsome Chilean,” she had immediately answered. They were a strange pair in the quarter: a tall, elegant Chinese man with an insignificant Spanish boy. Outside Chinatown, however, they were nearly invisible in the multifaceted throngs of San Francisco.
“You cannot wait for that man forever, Eliza. It is a form of madness, like gold fever. You must set a deadline,” Tao said one day.
“And what do I do with my life when the time is up?”
“You can go back to your country.”
“In Chile a woman like me is worse off than one of your singsong girls. Would you go back to China?”
“That was my intention, but I am beginning to like America. There I would be Fourth Son again. I’m better off here.”
“So am I. If I don’t find Joaquín, I’ll stay here and open a restaurant. I have everything I need: a good memory for recipes, love of the ingredients, a good sense of taste and touch, an instinct for seasonings . . .”
“And modesty, too.” Tao Chi’en laughed.
“Why should I be modest about my talent? Besides, I have a nose like a hound. A good nose should be worth something; all I have to do is smell a dish to know what’s in it, and how to make it better.”
“You can’t do that with Chinese cooking.”
“You eat such strange things, Tao! Mine would be a French restaurant, the best in the city.”
“I will make you a deal, Eliza. If within one year you do not find this Joaquín, marry me,” said Tao Chi’en, and both burst out laughing.
After that conversation, something changed between them. They felt uncomfortable when they were alone, and although alone was what they wanted to be, they began to avoid it. The longing to follow Eliza when she went to her room often tortured Tao Chi’en, but he was stopped short by a blend of shyness and respect. He felt that as long as Eliza was clinging to the memory
of her former lover he should not go near her, but neither could he continue to walk a tightrope indefinitely. He imagined her in her bed, counting the hours in the expectant silence of the night, she, too, sleepless with love, but for another, not him. He knew her body so well that he could sketch it in detail, down to the most secret mole, even though he had not seen her naked since the days he had looked after her on the ship. He daydreamed that if she fell ill he would have an excuse to touch her, but then he was ashamed at the thought. The spontaneous laughter and quiet tenderness that had used to bubble up between them was now replaced with oppressive tension. If they brushed against each other by accident they pulled back, embarrassed; each was aware of the other’s presence or absence, the air seemed laden with presages and anticipation. Instead of sitting down to read or write in quiet companionship, they parted ways as soon as work in the consulting room was finished. Tao Chi’en would visit bedfast patients, meet other zhong yi to discuss diagnoses and treatments, or go to his room to study Western medical texts. He hoped to earn a permit to practice medicine legally in California, a project he had confided to no one but Eliza and the spirits of Lin and his acupuncture master. In China a zhong yi began as an apprentice and then worked on his own, which was why medicine hadn’t changed for centuries but had preserved the same methods and remedies. The difference between a good practitioner and one who was mediocre was that the former had a talent for diagnosing and the gift of using his hands to heal. Western doctors, however, followed a demanding program of study, kept in contact with one another, and were up-to-date on new discoveries; they had laboratories and morgues for experimentation and exposed themselves to the challenge of competition. Science fascinated Tao, but his enthusiasm was not seconded in a community faithful to tradition. He followed all the latest advances and bought every book and magazine he could find on those subjects. His curiosity for modern ways was so great that he had to write his venerable master’s adage on the wall: “Knowledge is of little use without wisdom, and there is no wisdom without spirituality.” Science isn’t everything, Tao repeated to himself, in order not to forget. In any case, he needed American citizenship—very difficult to obtain because of his race, but that was the only way he could remain in that country without being a permanent outsider. And he needed a title; with a title he could earn a lot more. The fan wey knew nothing about acupuncture or the herbs used in Asia for centuries; they considered him a kind of witch doctor, and their scorn for other races was so profound that slave owners on southern plantations sent for a veterinarian when a Negro fell ill. They held the same opinion of the Chinese, but there were a few visionary doctors who had traveled, or had read about other cultures, and were interested in Eastern techniques and the thousand drugs in the Oriental pharmacopoeia. Tao kept in touch with Ebanizer Hobbs in England, and both lamented in their letters the great distance that separated them. “Come to London, Dr. Chi’en, and give an acupuncture demonstration to the Royal Medical Society. You will leave them openmouthed, I promise you,” Hobbs wrote. He had always said that if they combined their knowledge they would be able to raise the dead.
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