An Unusual Pair
Several singsong girls died of pneumonia from the winter cold, and Tao Chi’en couldn’t save them. Twice he was called while the girls were still alive; he managed to get them home but they died in his arms a few hours later, delirious with fever. By then, the quiet tentacles of his compassion had spread across North America, from San Francisco to New York, from the Río Grande to Canada, but that extraordinary effort was only a grain of salt in an ocean of misery. Things were going well in his practice, and everything he was able to save, or obtained through the charity of a few wealthy patients, went toward buying the youngest girls in the auctions. He was recognized now in that subculture, and had the reputation of being a degenerate. No one had ever seen alive any of the adolescents Tao acquired “for his experiments,” as he called them, but no one really cared what happened behind his closed doors. As a zhong yi he was the best; as long as he did not create a scandal, and limited himself to the little whores, who were no more than animals, anyway, they left him in peace. In answer to curious questions, Tao Chi’en’s loyal assistant, the only person qualified to give information, said only that his employer’s mysterious experiments resulted in the exceptional knowledge that was so beneficial for his patients. By that time Tao Chi’en had moved to a fine house on the edge of Chinatown a few blocks from Union Square, where he held his clinic, sold his remedies, and hid the girls until they were able to travel. Eliza had learned the rudiments of Chinese necessary for communicating on an elementary level; the rest she improvised with pantomime, drawings, and a few words of English. The effort was rewarding; it was much better than posing as the doctor’s deaf-mute brother. She could not write or read Chinese but she recognized the medicines by their smell, and as a safeguard she marked the bottles with a code of her own invention. There were always patients waiting for the gold needles, the miraculous herbs, and the comfort of Tao Chi’en’s voice. More than one asked himself how that man who was so wise and affable could be the person who collected corpses and child concubines, but as they were not absolutely sure what his vices consisted of, the community respected him. He had no friends, it was true, but neither did he have enemies. His good name spread beyond the confines of Chinatown and some American doctors consulted him when their knowledge was insufficient—always very quietly, for it would have been embarrassing to admit that a “celestial” had anything to teach them. That was how Tao had occasion to treat certain important figures in the city, and to meet the celebrated Ah Toy.
The madam had summoned Tao Chi’en when she heard that he had helped the wife of a judge. She was suffering a rattle like castanets in her lungs, so bad that at times it threatened to choke her. Tao Chi’en’s first impulse was to refuse, but principle was overshadowed by his curiosity to see at close hand the legend and her surroundings. In his eyes, she was a viper, his personal enemy. Knowing what Ah Toy represented for Tao, Eliza put enough arsenic in his bag to dispatch a team of oxen.
“Just in case,” she explained.
“Just in case what?”
“She may be very sick. You wouldn’t want her to suffer, would you? Sometimes you have to help someone die.”
Tao Chi’en laughed heartily but did not remove the bottle from his satchel. Ah Toy received him in one of the deluxe “retreats” where the client paid a thousand dollars a session but always left satisfied. Besides, she maintained, “If you need to ask the price, this is not the place for you.” A Negress in a starched uniform opened the door to Tao and took him through several drawing rooms where beautiful girls in silk robes were lounging. Compared with their less fortunate sisters they lived like princesses; they ate three times a day and had daily baths. The house, a true museum of Oriental antiques and American conveniences, reeked of tobacco, stale perfumes, and dust. It was three in the afternoon but the heavy drapes were drawn; no breeze ever freshened those rooms. Ah Toy was sitting in a small study crammed with furniture and birdcages. She was much smaller, younger, and more beautiful than Tao had imagined. She was carefully made-up but she wore no jewels, was simply dressed, and eschewed the long fingernails that indicated wealth and leisure. His eyes were drawn to her miniscule, sandal-shod feet. Her gaze was penetrating and hard, but she spoke in a caressing tone that reminded Tao of Lin. Damn her, Tao Chi’en sighed, defeated with her first word. He was impassive as he examined her, cloaking his repugnance and agitation, not knowing what to say to her because to lecture her for trafficking was not only futile, it was dangerous and would call attention to his own activities. He prescribed mahuang for her asthma and other remedies for cooling her liver, curtly warning her that as long as she lived closed up behind those drapes, smoking tobacco and opium, her lungs would continue to wheeze. The temptation to leave the poison with instructions to take one pinch daily flitted past like a nocturnal butterfly and he shivered, shocked by that instant of doubt, because until then he had believed he would never be angry enough to kill anyone. He left hurriedly, certain that in view of his rudeness, the woman would never call him again.
“Well?” asked Eliza on his return.
“Nothing.”
“What do you mean, nothing! Not even a little tuberculosis? She won’t die?”
“We are all going to die. That snake will die an old woman. She is as strong as a buffalo.”
“Most evil people are.”
As for Eliza, she knew that she was at a definitive fork in her road and that the direction she chose would determine the rest of her life. Tao Chi’en was right: she had to set a deadline. She couldn’t ignore any longer the suspicion that she had fallen in love with love and was trapped in the morass of a legendary passion with no link to reality. She tried to remember the feelings that had driven her to embark on this consuming adventure but she couldn’t. The woman she had become had little in common with the moonstruck girl of the past. Valparaíso and the room of the armoires belonged to a different time, to a world that was disappearing in the mist. She asked herself a thousand times why she had hungered so desperately to belong body and soul to Joaquín Andieta when in truth she had never been totally happy in his arms, and could explain it only in terms of first love. She had been ready to fall in love when he came to the house to unload some cargo; the rest was instinct. She had merely obeyed the most powerful and ancient of calls, but it had happened an eternity ago and seven thousand miles away. Who she was then and what she had seen in him she could not say, only that now her heart was far away from there. Not only was she tired of looking for him, but deep down she did not want to find him; at the same time, though, she could not go on riddled with doubts. She needed an ending for that phase in order to begin a new love with a clean slate.
By the end of November her anxiety was too great, and without a word to Tao Chi’en she visited the newspaper office to speak with the famous Jacob Freemont. She was taken to the editorial room where several journalists were working at their desks, surrounded by appalling disorder. They pointed to a small office behind a glass-paned door and she went in. She stood before the desk, waiting for the Yanqui with red sideburns to look up from his papers. He seemed to be about medium height, with freckled skin, and had a faint aroma of candles. He was writing with his left hand and his head was propped on his right; she could not see his face, but then, beneath the scent of beeswax, she perceived a familiar odor that carried a vague, distant, childhood memory. She bent slightly toward him, discreetly sniffing, at the very instant the newspaperman looked up. Surprised, they stared at each other from uncomfortably close quarters, then simultaneously drew back. Eliza recognized him from his scent, despite the years, the eyeglasses, the sideburns, and the American garb. Miss Rose’s perennial suitor! The same Englishman who had faithfully attended the Wednesday musicals in Valparaíso. Paralyzed, she could not escape.
“What can I do for you, young fellow?” asked Jacob Todd, removing his eyeglasses to clean them with his handkerchief.
The speech Eliza had prepared was wiped from her brain. She stood with h
er mouth open, hat in hand, sure that since she had recognized him he would know her; but he carefully fitted his glasses back on and repeated the question without looking at her.
“It’s about Joaquín Murieta,” she stammered, her voice squeaking higher than usual.
“You have information about that outlaw?” The newspaperman was immediately interested.
“No, no. . . . Just the opposite, I came to ask you about him. I need to see him.”
“You remind me of someone, kid. Haven’t we met somewhere?”
“I don’t think so, señor.”
“Are you Chilean?”
“Yes.”
“I lived in Chile some years ago. Beautiful country. Why do you want to see Murieta?”
“It’s very important.”
“I’m afraid I can’t help you. No one knows his whereabouts.”
“But you have talked with him!”
“Only when Murieta summons me. He gets in touch with me when he wants some episode of his published. Nothing modest about the man, he likes his fame.”
“What language do you use when you talk?”
“My Spanish is better than his English.”
“Tell me, señor. Is his accent Chilean or Mexican?”
“I couldn’t say. I repeat, kid, I can’t help you,” the journalist replied, standing to indicate the end of the conversation, which was beginning to annoy him.
Eliza quickly said good-bye, and Freemont stood with a quizzical look, watching as she picked her way through the uproar of the editorial room. That boy looked familiar, but he couldn’t place him. Several minutes later, after his visitor had vanished, Freemont remembered Captain John Sommers’ request and the image of young Eliza flashed through his memory. Then he connected the name of the outlaw with that of Joaquín Andieta and understood why she was asking. He choked back a groan and ran outside, but Eliza had disappeared.
Tao Chi’en and Eliza Sommers did their most important work at night. In the darkness they disposed of the corpses of the poor creatures they couldn’t save and took the survivors across the city to their Quaker friends. One by one, girls emerged from hell to leap blindly into an adventure with no return. They lost all hope of returning to China or of seeing their families again; some would never again speak their language or see anyone of their race. They would have to learn a skill and work hard the rest of their lives, but anything was paradise compared to the life they had been living. The girls Tao was able to buy adapted better. They had been caged in large crates and subjected to the lust and brutality of the sailors but they were not completely broken in spirit and had kept some potential for recovery. The less fortunate, who were freed at almost their last breaths from the “hospital,” never lost the fear that like a disease in the blood would consume them for the rest of their days. Tao Chi’en hoped that with time they would at least learn to smile occasionally. As soon as they regained strength, and understood that they would never again be forced to submit to a man but would always be refugees, their rescuers took them to the home of abolitionist friends, a station in the underground railroad, the group the blacksmith James Morton and his brothers belonged to. Ordinarily these Quakers took in fugitives from slave states and helped them get established in California, but in this instance they had to operate in the opposite direction, sending Chinese girls from California far away from traffickers and criminal gangs, finding homes for them, and some way to earn a living. The Quakers assumed the risks with religious fervor; for them their charges were innocents soiled by the human baseness placed in their path as a test. They welcomed those waifs so wholeheartedly that they often reacted with violence or terror; they did not know how to accept affection, but the patience of those good people slowly won them over. The girls were taught a few indispensable phrases in English, given an idea of American customs, shown a map to at least give them an idea of where they were, and an effort was made to introduce them to some form of work while they waited for Babalú the Bad to come for them.
That behemoth had at last found a good way to use his talents: he was an indefatigable traveler who loved to stay up all night, and he craved adventure. When they first saw him, the singsong girls would run and hide in terror, and it would take a great deal of persuasion on the part of their protectors to calm them. Babalú had learned a song in Chinese and three magic tricks that he used to bedazzle and to blunt the fright of that first encounter but he had refused to give up his wolf skins, his shaved head, his pirate earrings, or his formidable array of weapons. This kind giant always stayed a couple of days, until he convinced his lambs that he was not a devil and had no intent of eating them, then set off with them by night. Distances were carefully calculated in order to reach the next refuge by dawn, where they would rest during the day. They traveled by horseback; a carriage was useless because a major part of the journey was through open country, avoiding the main roads. They had discovered that it was much safer to travel in darkness, as long as they knew where they were, because bears, snakes, highwaymen, and Indians slept like everyone else. Babalú would leave the girls safe in the hands of other members of the vast network of freedom. They ended up on farms in Oregon, laundries in Canada, and craft studios in Mexico; some were hired as family servants and some were even wed. Tao Chi’en and Eliza often received news through James Morton, who kept track of every fugitive rescued by his organization. From time to time they would receive an envelope from some distant spot and when they opened it find a paper with a poorly written name, a few dried flowers or a drawing, and then congratulate themselves on having saved another of the singsong girls.
Occasionally Eliza shared her room for a few days with a newly rescued girl but she never revealed that she was a woman, something only Tao knew. She had a spacious room behind her friend’s consulting office, the best in the house. Its two windows looked out on a small inner patio where medicinal plants for Tao’s practice and aromatic herbs for the kitchen were grown. They often fantasized about moving to a larger house where they would have a proper garden, not merely for practical purposes but also for pleasuring their eyes and memories, a place where they would cultivate the most beautiful plants from China and Chile and construct a pergola where they would sit and drink tea in the evening and in the early morning admire the sunrise over the bay. Tao Chi’en had noticed Eliza’s diligence in beautifying the house, the care with which she cleaned and organized, how she always kept small bouquets of fresh flowers in every room. He had never enjoyed such refinements; he had grown up in total poverty, and the acupuncture master’s mansion had lacked a woman’s hand to make it homelike. Lin had been too fragile to have strength for domestic tasks. Eliza, on the other hand, like a bird, had the instinct to nest. She invested in the house part of what she earned by playing the piano a couple of nights a week in a saloon, and by selling meat pies and tarts in the Chilean barrio. She had contributed curtains, a damask tablecloth, kitchen utensils, and a set of fine china. For Eliza, the good manners she had learned as a child were essential; she made a ceremony of the one meal she and Tao shared each day; she set a beautiful table and blushed with satisfaction when Tao applauded her efforts. The everyday chores seemed to do themselves, as if by night generous spirits cleaned the doctor’s office, brought the records up to date, tiptoed into Tao Chi’en’s room to gather his dirty clothes, sew on his buttons, brush his suits, and change the water in the roses on his desk.
“Don’t drown me with attentions, Eliza.”
“You said that Chinese men expect women to serve them.”
Daughter of Fortune Page 36
