The most important events of his odyssey occurred at the beginning and towards the end.
Before he crossed the border of his home province of Kuangtung, Cheng Yu acquired a strong young peasant girl. She cost only a few coins because her feet had never been bound. For him that was her appeal; the swaying walk of a women with golden lilies would be of no use to him. This one could keep up and carry his pack, as well as provide him relief during the night. Her name was Kai-kai and she was fourteen when she became Woman Cheng.
Fifty-six months later, while they were waiting for a man with whom Cheng Yu had arranged a rendezvous in the Black Forest of Bavaria, they encountered a blizzard that forced them to take shelter in an empty woodsman’s hut.
The blizzard got worse, and the man Cheng Yu expected did not arrive. Kai-kai, pregnant for the third time, went into labor and gave birth to a dead girl-child, also for the third time. They had food for only one more day.
Cheng Yu considered these disasters and did not know whether to go on, perhaps leaving Kai-kai behind, or remain where he was. Such a dilemma could be solved in only one way. Among the treasures in his pack was a leather-bound book wrapped in flowered silk and three hexagonal coins. He would find his answer in the system of divining known as I-ching. He had long since run out of joss sticks, but he kowtowed profoundly and fixed his mind on higher things, ignoring the quiet tears of Kai-kai huddled in a corner.
Cheng Yu threw the coins in the approved manner and was led to two trigrams. Together they formed the message the gods were sending him on this occasion. Waiting on the outskirts you should be patient. Strangers arrive. If you treat them with respect, all will be well.
It seemed a particularly clear message. Cheng Yu went outside to look again for the man who had promised to come. He found a woman who had obviously been a long time wandering in the storm and had staggered off the path and collapsed in exhaustion. When Yu stumbled over her she was near death. He knelt beside her and disarranged her many layers of woolen shawls to see if he could feel her heartbeat. There was an infant nestled in her clothing, a newborn. “Er heisst Kurt,” the woman whispered before she died.
“The child’s name is Kurt,” Yu told his wife when he returned to the hut carrying the baby. “He is starving. Give him suck.” Past experience had taught him that by now her breasts would be full, though her child had been born dead some hours before.
Kai-kai’s broad, flat face expressed both fear and wonder. Her arms ached for a child, but this was a thing of which she had never heard. “Can a barbarian infant drink the milk of a civilized woman?”
“We shall see. In any case, we must try.” Yu did not care much about the child. He was thinking of the I-ching. Strangers arrive. If you treat them with respect all will be well. The most respect they could show this small stranger was to keep him alive.
Kai-kai put Kurt to her breast. He drank her milk and he thrived.
A few hours later, while Kai-kai and Kurt slept, the man for whom Yu waited arrived. He was a Turk and he led a mule loaded with a chest. Here at last was the quarry Yu had so long pursued, the end of the quest that had driven him across Asia and much of Europe. The Turk was bringing him the first of a promised steady supply of sticky black balls of ya-p’ien. It came direct from the source and had not passed through the hands of the British or the Americans. As such it would cost considerably less than any ya-p’ien available in the Middle Kingdom. A cheap and steady source of such a treasure would make him a very rich man. He would found a dynasty and be an ancestor.
Things did not work out exactly as Cheng Yu had intended. While he lived he never did return to China, though he maintained his connections to the supply of opium from Turkey, selling it first in the ports of Genoa and Marseille and eventually in London, where he established himself and Kai-kai and the then four-year-old Kurt in a set of rooms in Soho in the heart of the West End.
There were many customers for ya-p’ien in London, and Cheng Yu cultivated the better sort, white men who had picked up the habit while in the various colonies of the Empire. It was such a one who in return for a reduced price for his opium helped get Kurt into an admittedly third-class school, but one good enough to give the boy the superficial polish of an English gentleman along with other skills useful for making his way in the West. No lessons the boy learned, however, were more important than those taught by Yu and Kai-kai. Together they made the only child they had, the one miraculously sent to them by the gods, truly a man of the ancient kingdom midway between heaven and earth which looked down on the lesser lands below.
By the time he was grown, Kurt Chambers—the surname he used in the white world—was truly, and without any chinks in what he thought of as his armor, a yellow man in a white man’s skin.
Kurt was twenty-four when Kai-kai died. Cheng Yu, recognizing the now pressing need for a female in their household, arranged for a young girl to be sent from Kwangchow. Since he was old and his jade stalk no longer worked as once it had, he decided that the girl should be of tender years and that she would belong to his son.
The one who arrived was indeed young, just fourteen, and a virgin, and quite pretty, with acceptable golden lilies. Unfortunately she was apparently barren, since she never bore Kurt any children. A few years later, when he discovered she had become addicted to opium, he had her killed. For a time he decided to put the idea of a wife out of his mind. There were plenty of whores available to meet his needs, and it was more important that he concentrate on expanding his father’s business. He did this so well that ya-p’ien became only one part of a vast trade in the things men wanted but society told them they could not or should not have. Yu, who was by then a very old man, watched all this with satisfaction until in 1846 he also died.
Kurt arranged for a temporary burial and two years later had the corpse disinterred and sent his father’s now dry and free-of-flesh bones back to Kwangchow. He had no more profound duty, and there was no greater honor he could pay to the man who had, in the most real sense, given him life.
News of the California gold strike reached London soon after that obligation had been fulfilled. It occurred to Kurt that the discovery and resulting chaos might provide him with many opportunities for profit. He entertained the idea of moving at once to San Francisco (there were rumblings of legal difficulties with some of his London enterprises) but the I-ching counseled him to wait and he obeyed. Then, a short time later, concentrating on the question of whether he should go instead to New York, he again threw the coins that determined the trigrams. Favorable result. The two worlds meet and all is well.
Within a year of arriving in New York, having used the substantial wealth he brought with him as seed money for earning more and to establish himself as a highly respected gentleman of means, he heard from one of the Chinese sailors who had been drawn into his circle of the extraordinary Mei-hua and her half-white daughter. The two worlds meet and all is well.
Chambers kept close tabs on the Cherry Street household for the next eighteen months, making it his business to learn everything about it that could be known. By the autumn of 1851 he had decided that the time was right and that he would make himself known to the women after the Christmas holidays. Perhaps in First month, February, during the festival celebrating the arrival of the year of the Wood Rooster. But before that, in Good month, November, he happened on Mei Lin in the lobby of St. Vincent’s Hospital and impulsively spoke to her.
That night when he consulted the I-ching he was told that precipitate action brings trouble. He resolved to do nothing until the signs were more auspicious. But once more, in front of Tiffany’s jewelry store of all places, the gods put the girl and her mother and the old servant in his path. He could only think that he had misinterpreted the trigrams, because it was impossible for him to follow the counsel of prudence and turn away. The tai-tai and her daughter required protection from an increasingly hostile crowd, and he had no choice but to act. After all, it was purely fortuitous that he was on the scene. H
e was there to meet Lilac Langton, alias Countess Romanov (whose use of chloroform was swiftly making her the most successful abortionist in the city) and offer her full immunity from prosecution by either the scourge of abortion, George W. Dixon, or the police. In return she would give him thirty percent of her profits. It was a scheme which she had found acceptable and which benefited them both. That Lilac Langton had turned out to know something about the tai-tai’s past he’d discovered nowhere else was a bonus, something he could see only as validation of the choices he had made. Which prompted him to speak as he had to Mei Lin that night in Delmonico’s.
Soon after that event Samuel Devrey died, and despite the fact that the I-ching continued to counsel delay, Kurt decided he must bring Mei Lin and her mother entirely under his influence. If he did not, he might lose the girl to the care of Carolina Devrey and her lover. He had by then learned that the pair felt a certain sense of responsibility for the tai-tai’s daughter. He even knew why and that Mrs. Devrey was very rich. Sufficient money made things possible that were otherwise unthinkable. His two-worlds-meeting woman, the perfect solution to his now pressing need to create a dynasty of his own so that his bones too would some day be honored by a son, preferably many sons, would be his only if he acted decisively and with boldness.
Surely he must be misinterpreting the I-ching trigrams that continued to caution against action.
When Dr. Turner requested a meeting, it seemed to Chambers to be the ideal test. He consulted the I-ching and was told: The fool does not see, but the wise man crosses the river with open eyes.
“If you have any doubts about Miss Di’s well-being, Dr. Turner, I think you must speak with her yourself. She is, of course, in mourning for her father, but I’m sure she would receive you for tea. Would you permit me to arrange such a visit?”
“She is living on Forty-eighth Street, Carolina. I am to have tea with her next week.”
And after an hour spent in Mei Lin’s company he reported, “She seems entirely in accord with the idea. They are to be married as soon as her mourning ends.”
“Mourning for Samuel,” Carolina said, a hint of bitterness still evident. “Well, I suppose everyone should have someone to mourn them.” Celinda Devrey had been dead for some years by then. The children Carolina had borne Samuel had not been informed of his death in time to participate in his funeral. There was no question that Zac would have refused, and at fifteen Ceci was too young to make such a decision. Carolina would have refused for her. “Did you see the others? The old servant, and the…the girl’s mother?”
“Mei-hua and Ah Chee, yes, I saw them.”
“And they approve of this marriage?”
“Apparently so. Certainly it seems she will want for nothing. The house is quite splendid.”
“And are they to live there after they are married? Linda and this Mr. Chambers.”
“Next door, in a matching house, the inside of which I did not see. No other neighbors. It’s quite a rural part of the city, a few blocks north of even the reservoir. But Linda didn’t seem to object to the isolation.”
“No question but that the land’s a good investment,” Carolina said brusquely. “The city is sprawling so. We’ll likely have neighbors as well.”
“Up here?” Nick asked, laughing. “On Seventy-first Street? I don’t think so. Not in our lifetimes at least.”
She smiled and didn’t argue. “Very well. We’ve done what was required. At least you have. Thank you, my dearest.”
“There’s nothing to thank me for. Actually, I quite like the child. I mustn’t call her that, must I, now she’s to be married. She can be an appealing young lady. Very serious and reserved, none of Ceci’s sparkle, but not without charm.”
“She’s had a very different life, and…Nick, she’s only sixteen, a year older than Ceci. Can you imagine Ceci getting married?”
“No, I cannot. And I do not wish to. There is, however, another wedding on my mind.”
Carolina smiled. “And on mine. I’ve found someone to officiate, dearest. Here at Sunshine Hill, as we hoped.”
“That’s splendid. I was going to speak to a patient, a judge, but if you’ve a better idea I’m all for it.”
“A minister.” Suddenly a stack of magazines on a nearby table required straightening and Carolina began attending to them. “You may have heard of him. The Reverend Henry Beecher.”
“Heard of him! Carolina, there is no one in the city of New York who has not heard of him. I rather doubt anyone in the entire nation would claim not to know his name. Here, leave that and look at me,” he said, taking both her hands in his and making her turn to face him. “You’re joking, aren’t you?”
“I am not. Reverend Beecher said he would be delighted to come and marry us. In May, as we planned. I’ve been thinking it should be towards the end of the month, darling. The roses will be starting to bloom and we can have—”
“Carolina, how in the name of all that’s holy did you come to ask the Reverend Henry Beecher to officiate at our marriage? How do you even know him?”
“Business interests, Nick. I know many people in the city. The opportunity presented itself and I asked him and he agreed.”
“And he does not object that this union is to take place here in the home we have shared for eight years? With all our children present, including the three you have borne me out of wedlock?”
Her chin came up in that defiant gesture he loved but sometimes found inordinately exasperating. “He made no such objection to me. Perhaps that’s the point, Nicholas. The Reverend Henry Beecher has sufficient fame of his own.”
“Sufficient notoriety,” he corrected. “Not to mention his sister.”
“Mrs. Stowe’s book is remarkable, Nick. I know you would agree if you’d simply take the time to read it.”
“I don’t read made-up stories, Carolina, novels. I’ve not the time.”
“But this one is using fiction to illuminate fact. Truly heartrending fact, I might add. And the word is that Harper’s has sold almost a hundred thousand copies after only a couple of months. The entire country is gripped by it. Well, the north at least.”
“Excellent. I am delighted for the authoress and her publisher. And since I think slavery detestable, I’m sure Uncle Tom’s Cabin is worthy as well as profitable. How did we get into this discussion? I thought we were talking about our wedding.”
“We are. Mr. Beecher has said he will perform the service here at Sunshine Hill. Are you agreed?”
Nick paused a moment, then took both her hands in his. “My dearest Carolina, if I can make you my wife in the only sense in which you have not been such for eight years, in the eyes of the law, then I do not care if we are to be wed by Attila the Hun. Bring him here and we will make him welcome.”
“You will find Reverend Beecher not at all Attila-like, my love. I promise.”
Mei Lin found that she could come and go exactly as she chose. She could wander the countryside, even command a coachman to bring a carriage and take her wherever she wished. On Sundays she rode into the town and attended Mass. She was nonetheless a prisoner.
Sometimes Mei-hua accompanied her daughter on drives south into the city proper or further north into the countryside. She was always fascinated by what she saw, observing everything, asking questions about what she continually referred to as the Lord Kurt’s kingdom, but she was always most gratified by the return to Forty-eighth Street. They arrived to delicious smells of Ah Chee’s food—the old woman would not join them on their outings because, she said, she must cook not just for the three of them but for Lord Kurt and the men who constantly milled about next door—and Mei-hua would take her little mincing steps into the front hall, throw open the parlor doors, and sigh with satisfaction as she made her way across a rug of woven silk to settle into a red-lacquered chair and put her tiny feet on a silk-covered footstool. “Beautiful kingdom, beautiful. And this is nicest house. Fitting for first tai-tai.”
Her mother, Mei Lin unde
rstood, had at last found what she’d expected to find when she set out on her extraordinary journey twenty years before. Even if Mei Lin had a safe place to take her and could somehow have got the money to pay for their keep (sometimes she berated herself for not explaining the entire situation to Dr. Turner when he came to see her) she could never reproduce the status and therefore the happiness Mei-hua had at last achieved. “When you are married and live next door,” Mei-hua frequently said, “and I am first tai-tai, live here all by myself with just ugly old Ah Chee, promise you don’t forget to go for carriage rides with old mother.”
“I won’t forget.” Then Mei Lin would kneel and unwrap Mei-hua’s golden lilies and rub the horny, calloused skin with the salves and potions Taste Bad sent for her, and keep her head bent so that her mother would not see her tears.
Walks taken on her own were less painful. They did not so much remind her that she must soon be the wife of a man she felt she barely knew and certainly did not love and who was not a Catholic. As February gave way to March she took to spending a part of most days over by the reservoir. It was a peaceful place: the Colored Orphan Asylum a block away at Forty-third and Fifth Avenue was the only other building in the area, and she would sometimes walk the entire perimeter of the reservoir, noting the smooth, high brick walls and marveling at the skills the construction of such a thing must have required.
She was usually alone on these tours, but sometimes she was aware of a man who seemed to follow her footsteps. She might have been alarmed but that he was obviously more interested in the reservoir than in her. He would stop frequently and step closer, sometimes running his hand along a course of bricks, then writing something in the notebook he always carried. One day she spotted him walking high above the ground along the top of the wall, and she watched, fascinated, knowing that an enormous depth of water waited for a misstep to the right and a deadly plunge to the earth if he stumbled to the left.
City of God Page 48
