City of God

by Swerling, Beverly

  “I think maybe. Little bud must go and talk, find out. Keep legs crossed and skirt down around ankles and find out.”

  Mei Lin had every intention of keeping her skirt down around her ankles, but sitting at the table across from Mr. Kurt Chambers she had no need to cross her legs, which would anyway be a terrible breach of deportment of which Mother Stevenson would not approve. Mr. Chambers was a perfect gentleman. “Have your French nuns made you familiar with French food?” he asked when a waiter presented the carte.

  “Oh yes, Mr. Chambers. In the afternoon we have what is called goûter, a snack, and Sister Catherine often makes us little cakes that she says are from Burgundy, where she grew up.”

  “This is not that kind of French food.”

  “Oh, I’m sure it isn’t. But at the Convent of the Sacred Heart we are all taught French from our first year at school. I can read the menu.”

  Mr. Chambers reached over and took the large and elaborate carte out of her hands. “Yes, I’ve no doubt you can. But on this occasion you must allow me the pleasure of ordering for us both.” He nodded to the waiter hovering in the corner. The young man stepped forward.

  “Escargots,” Mr. Chambers said. “And consomme à la tortue. Then sole normande and after that boeuf bordelaise. And we will drink sherry with the snails and the turtle soup, then the Sancerre ’49 with the fish, and finally the St. Emilion ’44 with the beef.” Reciting the wines was a mere formality. He had chosen them earlier and the bottles were lined up on a nearby sideboard. “You may serve the amontillado immediately,” he said.

  Mei Lin ignored the small crystal glass the waiter was filling with pale gold sherry. “Mr. Chambers, you must tell me why you asked me—”

  He held up a forestalling hand. “Later. After we have dined. Now taste your wine.”

  Mei Lin took a sip. “It is delicious.”

  “I presume you have tasted plum wine.” These days bottles of the potent Chinese wine were for sale in a couple of tiny shops on Cherry and Market streets. “But have you had sherry before?”

  “Yes,” she said. “But only a taste at the convent before Christmas. And not so good as this. Sister Catherine says—”

  “I thought the Sacred Heart nuns were all called Mother.”

  “The choir nuns, the teachers, are called Mother. The ones who cook and clean are called Sister. Are you a Catholic, Mr. Chambers?” He shook his head, and she suppressed a small pang of disappointment. It had occurred to her that Mr. Kurt Chambers might be a gift from the Blessed Mother of God, an answer to the many prayers Mei Lin—who had taken the name Linda Marie when she was an eight-year-old child and the nuns had her baptized in a quiet and private ceremony—uttered with total confidence and pure love. Requisites, the nuns assured her, for prayers being answered. He was, perhaps, her future. She knew that was what Mamee and Ah Chee were thinking. But if Kurt Chambers was not a Catholic, that wasn’t possible.

  “I am a seeker of truth,” he added, as if he knew that his not being a Catholic would be a cause of regret for her.

  “Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life,” Mei Lin said.

  “For some,” he agreed.

  She did not feel prepared to argue theology with Mr. Chambers. “Please, you must tell me. That day at the hospital, how did you know I would be there?”

  “I had absolutely no idea you would be there.”

  “But you knew to speak to me in Chinese.”

  “I didn’t say I did not know who you were, only that meeting you that afternoon was an accident, and I decided to take advantage of it.” And before she could press him with more questions, “Ah, the escargots. Have you tasted snails, Miss Di?”

  She knew he expected her to be shocked. Mei Lin lifted her chin. “No, Mr. Chambers, I have not. But I know they are considered a great delicacy in Burgundy.”

  “Indeed. See,” he said, demonstrating as he spoke, “you use these tongs to hold the shell and take out the meat with the little fork.” He watched while without a trace of hesitation she copied his actions. “Now eat and tell me what you think.”

  “Delicious,” Mei Lin pronounced. They were a bit too chewy for her liking and tasted only of the garlic and butter surrounding them, but she would not say that.

  Two hours later, when Kurt Chambers had in front of him a large snifter of cognac and Mei Lin had been served a tiny glass of something he called eau-de-vie de Mirabelle, which was the color of pale straw and tasted like sweet fire, Mei Lin no longer felt such a sense of urgency about her many questions. The food and drink and Mr. Chamber’s amusing stories (of which she could not now remember a single word) had combined to make her feel mellow and quite relaxed.

  The cut-glass decanters containing the two digestifs were on a small table next to Chambers. He sent the waiter from the room. “Now,” he said, “I will tell you why I brought you here and how things are to be arranged.”

  “Arranged? I don’t believe I have given you permission to arrange anything, Mr. Chambers.”

  “Guai,” he said sharply, using the single word with which a Chinese parent reminded a child of the obligation to obedience and correct behavior. “You are too young to be in a position to give permission for anything. When I am ready, I will ask the tai-tai for permission. I expect by then it will be entirely up to her, because any day now Samuel Devrey will go to be with his ancestors.”

  “That is a cruel thing to say!”

  “No, it is a true thing, which you know quite well. There are, however, other things you do not know, and I have brought you here to tell you about them. Not because I must, but because your happiness is important to me. So be quiet and listen.”

  Mei Lin folded her hands on the table and looked down, not letting any part of seething emotions show. The way she did when one of the Mothers reprimanded her.

  “Better,” Kurt Chambers said. “First let us establish the elements of the situation. Do you know that in the rest of New York the yang gwei zih are starting to call the street where you live and a small section around it China Village?”

  Mei Lin shook her head.

  “I thought you might not. But they do. There are now precisely one hundred and seventy-two civilized people living in the city, all within the three-block area of this so-called China Village. Before he became an opium addict your father had considerable control over many of them. Now he has none. The ostensible leader of the China Village is Lee Big Belly, but since I came to New York he has been working for me. I am the Kiu Ling. Do you know what that means?” Mei Lin again shook her head. “It is a Cantonese term. It means economic ruler. Remember it. Also understand why we are speaking in English tonight and not Mandarin.”

  Mei Lin said nothing, kept her head down, and waited for the explanation.

  “In the world which you and I will share,” Mr. Chambers said, “that we both speak perfect English will afford us the maximum advantage. It allows us to fit in when we must, and to communicate without other civilized people understanding. Both are sometimes expedient. So we will speak English together almost always. Note that I said almost. I will explain the exception at the proper time. Here and now I have determined that we should begin as we mean to go on.”

  “Begin? Mr. Chambers, what makes you think we are to go on in any way at all? You are presuming a great deal about my feelings, sir.” The girls at school had been passing around a book and reading it secretly when none of the nuns were watching. The heroine said exactly that.

  “I am not very much interested in your feelings.”

  Mei Lin brought her head up sharply and stared straight at him.

  Chambers chuckled. “I mean the feelings you have now, while you are still a girl. Later I will teach you what feelings to have. As for presuming, I am merely stating the obvious. You are exquisitely beautiful, Mei Lin.” It was the first time he had used her proper name in that way. It had a startling intimacy that made her feel as if she stood naked before him. “Particularly dressed as you are tonight,”
he added. “The dress is called a cheongsam, by the way. It is a daring new fashion from Hong Kong. Next time you must wear it without a corset. And I would venture a guess that this is the first time you have been permitted to wear your hair up.”

  That was true. Mei-hua had herself pulled the dark hair to the top of her daughter’s head and twisted it into a great bun woven with silver and blue ribbons, and she had put silver earrings in the girl’s ears, which Ah Chee had pierced with a sewing needle when Mei Lin was two. But she was not allowed to wear earrings at the Convent of the Sacred Heart. The earrings too were a first-time event marking the special character of the evening.

  “I am content that you do not have golden lilies,” Mr. Chambers said. “In our situation it is better so. But lovely as you are Mei Lin, to the yang gwei zih you are a mongrel. The men of the Middle Kingdom, even if there were here any of such a class as to deserve you, would think the same. So you are a thing to be scorned by civilized men and yang gwei zih alike. But you are perfect for me. That is why—”

  “How can you—”

  “Guai,” he repeated in the same stern manner as before. “You are perfect for me because you too have a foot in both the Chinese world and the white. China Village, which New York still largely ignores, is going to be much more important in the near future. There will be more civilized men coming to live here and do the bitter labor, the ku li, the whites do not choose to do for themselves. That is the source of our word coolie,” he added. “Did you know that?”

  Mei Lin shook her head.

  “Now you do. You should also know that China Village will remain the source of opium, to which I believe many more of the yang gwei zih will soon enough be addicted. As the Kiu Ling I control all that. It might have been your father, if he had not become an addict himself. In which case I might have had to kill him. As it is, I need only wait for him to die.”

  Mei Lin jumped up. “You are a wicked man. I will listen to no more of this.”

  “Sit down. I have not yet explained about your mother.”

  She did not sit down.

  “When I tell you to sit, I mean for you to do exactly that. Sit down!”

  She was long trained in obedience to authority. Mei Lin resumed her place at the table.

  “That’s better. As I was saying, the supreme first lady is still young and still beautiful, and her golden lilies are a thing of wonder. She is, moreover, the only civilized woman in all of New York. When your father dies, the richer among the civilized men intend to play Ya Pei for the tai-tai. The winner of the game will take her as his concubine for as long as he remains in this country. But given that she is such a precious and unique commodity, the others are to have access to her one night every month. I presume you know for what purpose. When the man who has won her is ready to leave this place to return home to China, he will pass her to the next in line.”

  Mei Lin could not breathe. Her heart was pounding and her palms were wet with sweat. “No,” she whispered. “No, no, no. They would not. Leper Face and Taste Bad and Fat Cheeks, they would not permit it.”

  “There is absolutely nothing they will be able to do to prevent it. The others are far too powerful. In fact, if they wished, they could come and take the tai-tai tomorrow or the next day. They have chosen not to do so because it is better for all if there is no fuss in China Village, nothing that will attract the attention of the coppers or any of the other powerful yang gwei zih.”

  Chambers paused to pour a bit more cognac into his snifter. Mei Lin’s eau-de-vie remained untouched. “Have a sip of the Mirabelle,” he said. “It will help to calm you. And do not look so frightened. What I have described to you is the plan of Big Belly and a few of the others. It is not going to happen.”

  “Why not? How can it be prevented?”

  “I am taking the tai-tai under my protection. I have already bought a house for her uptown, but I believe she will be happier about moving after your father dies. So we will wait until then.”

  “Even then she will not wish to go. It will be very difficult to convince her—”

  “It will not be difficult at all. I shall, after all, be her future son-inlaw.”

  Mei Lin opened her mouth but no words came out.

  Chambers chuckled. “What else did you think I intended? You are to be my wife, beautiful Mei Lin. You will be Woman Chambers, my supreme lady. Our house is ready and waiting. It is right next door to the one where your mother and Ah Chee will live. It is far enough uptown so there will be no near neighbors, no yang gwei zih, to make the tai-tai—I suppose we must call her first tai-tai once we are married—to make first tai-tai uncomfortable.”

  “You keep saying yang gwei zih, but you are one of them. You are white.”

  Chambers did not smile. “Only on the outside,” he said.

  When Mei Lin got home, dazed as much by what she’d heard as the wines and the Mirabelle, her mother had fallen asleep in the throne chair. It was Ah Chee who undressed Mei Lin and put her to bed, taking careful note of her privates while she did so. She nodded in satisfaction when she saw no sign of bruising or disturbance. Later the old woman made a careful examination of the blue silk dress. She could discover not a speck of blood.

  She would light five joss sticks to each of the gods in the house. Very big dangerous all cash gamble to allow the little bud to go alone to meet the yang gwei zih. Big gamble. But Ah Chee was convinced she had won.

  Chapter Thirty-one

  “HERE,” NICK JABBED at the magazine on his desk with a decisive finger. “I found the article I was telling you about.”

  “I don’t yet have my hat off”—Ben removed it while closing the office door behind him—“and already you are shouting at me.”

  “I’m not shouting.”

  “Sorry. Talking in a loud voice. What article?”

  “The one by Ignaz Semmelweis in Vienna. Discussing how many fewer women die from childbed fever when the doctors wash their hands between patients.”

  “Germs,” Ben said.

  “Yes, germs. You never doubted before. Why now, Ben? Why can’t we publish?”

  “It’s a theory only. Why should we put our names to a theory? What have we got to offer that’s new? Tell me that.” He leaned over the desk and swung the magazine around so he could see it. “They’ve got the name wrong. It should be ‘Ignac.’ With a c.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because in Germany his name is spelled always with a c. And I read Semmelweis’s article in the original.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “You don’t need more convincing about germs.”

  “Ben, what’s going on?”

  “Nothing is going on. Semmelweis says that in the midwife wards the women don’t die from childbed fever. Only where the doctors are delivering the babies.”

  “Yes,” Nick agreed, “but when he has all the young doctors wash their hands with chlorinated lime, then the incidence of death from childbed fever goes from forty percent to one percent. For years I’ve been thinking ordinary soap isn’t enough. What more proof do you need? I’ve ordered a supply of chlorinated lime for the office.”

  “Good.”

  “Good? But if you don’t believe—”

  “I said only that it wasn’t proven. In the midwife wards the women don’t die without the chlorinated lime hand-washing. How do you explain that?”

  Nick had no explanation. It was the piece of the puzzle he’d been trying to find for years, the one that would be definitive and end the argument. “I don’t know,” he said.

  “That’s why we don’t publish anything,” Ben said. “You don’t know. And you know a great deal more about this and everything else than I do, so it follows that neither do I know. And we can’t publish.”

  “The germs don’t appear spontaneously,” Nick said stubbornly. “Nothing in science is without cause or a reason.”

  “You already said you don’t know.”

  “That’s one of those
arguments. About angels dancing on the head of a pin. Unprovable.”

  “We Jews would call it a Talmudic argument, though I think the angels were discussed by a Catholic saint. And I’m sorry I ever mentioned it. But you can’t explain the midwives.”

  Nick sat back and clasped his hands behind his head. “My young colleague, I am the senior physician, am I not? Your guide and mentor in all things medical?”

  “Most things.”

  “All right, most things. But I believe there is something you are not telling me. How can I guide if I do not have the facts?” He saw Ben grimace as if he were suddenly gripped by a gastric cramp. “There! I knew it. Your guilty expression betrays you.” And a few seconds later, more seriously, “If you don’t want to tell me, we’ll drop it. But I think we should definitely start using chlorinated lime.”

  “I already agreed to that. Look, Dr. Turner, there is something.”

  They had been in practice together for sixteen years. At least once a month Nick said that Ben should call him by his given name and Ben always said he would. But he never did. Nick accepted that, just as he accepted that the other man had to tell a story in his own way. It was, he thought, a barrier Ben Klein had to cross each time: the Jew trusting the gentile was how Carolina put it.

  “Mr. Simson was against it,” Ben said now. “He said it was a disgrace considering. But the others wouldn’t listen.”

  Nick wanted to ask what others and what was a disgrace, but he didn’t. He waited.

  Ben took a deep breath.

  Nick prepared himself, the dam was about to burst.

  “They’re opening a hospital,” Ben said. “Samson Simson donated the land. On Twenty-eighth between Seventh and Eighth avenues it will be. The trustees are Mr. Hart, Mr. Isaacs, Mr. Nathan, Mr. Davies, and Mr. Hendricks.”

  Nick knew every one of them and had treated a few. “That’s excellent. The town needs more hospitals.”

  “They’re all Jews,” Ben said.

  “Yes, I know.”

  “It’s to be called Jews’ Hospital. They don’t want to let you see patients there.”