In the spring of 1847, Tao Chi’en’s destiny took a sudden turn, as it had once or twice before in his life. As he lost his regular patients and the rumor spread of his downhill course as a physician, he had to concentrate more in the poorest sections of the port, where no one asked for references. The cases were routine: contusions and knife and bullet wounds. One night Tao Chi’en was called to an emergency in a tavern to stitch a sailor’s injuries following a royal free-for-all. They led him to the back of the room where a man was lying unconscious, his head split open like a watermelon. His opponent, a gigantic Norwegian, had picked up a heavy wood table and used it as a club to defend himself against his attackers, a gang of Chinese intending to beat him to a pulp. They had rushed the Norwegian and would have made mincemeat out of him had not several Scandinavian sailors drinking at the same bar come to his rescue, and what had begun as an argument among drunken gamblers turned into a racial brawl. By the time Tao Chi’en arrived, anyone who could walk had long since disappeared. The Norwegian, uninjured, was escorted to his ship by two English policemen, and the only ones left in sight were the tavern keeper, the dying victim, and the ship’s pilot, who had worked out an arrangement to send the police on their way. Had the victim been European he would have been taken to the British hospital, but since he was Asian the port authorities were not putting themselves out too much.
Tao Chi’en took one look and could see that nothing could be done for that poor devil whose skull was cracked wide open and his brains spilling out. This he explained to the pilot, a bearded, heavyset Englishman.
“Damned chink! Can’t you stop the blood and sew him up?” he demanded.
“With his head like that? Why sew him up? He has a right to die in peace.”
“He can’t die! My ship sails at dawn and I need this man onboard. He’s my cook!”
“Very regrettable,” Tao Chi’en replied with a courteous bow of his head, trying to hide his disgust at the fan wey’s insensitivity.
The pilot ordered a bottle of gin and invited Tao Chi’en to have a drink with him. If the cook was beyond consolation they might as well lift a glass in his name, he said, so his fucking ghost, a pox on him, didn’t come and pull their toes at night. They sat down a few feet from the dying man to take their time getting drunk. Occasionally Tao Chi’en bent down to take the man’s pulse, calculating that he couldn’t have more than a couple of minutes longer to live, but the man was slower to die than he’d thought. The zhong yi was oblivious to how the Englishman was pouring him drink after drink while barely downing his. Soon Tao felt so dizzy he couldn’t remember what he was doing in that place anyway. And an hour later, when his patient twice shuddered violently and actually died, Tao Chi’en missed it because he had rolled to the floor, unconscious.
He waked to the blinding light of midday, opened his eyes, squinting, and as soon as he could raise his head saw nothing but sky and water all around him. It took him quite a while to realize that he was lying faceup on a large coil of rope on the deck of a ship. The pounding of the waves against the hull beat in his head like a clanging bell. He thought he heard voices and shouting, but he wasn’t sure of anything; he could just as easily have been in hell. He struggled to his knees and crawled forward a couple of meters, but was overcome by nausea and collapsed back onto the deck. A few minutes later he felt the shock of a pail of cold water splash over his head and heard a voice speaking to him in Cantonese. He looked up and saw a beardless, sympathetic face greeting him with a wide smile from which half the teeth were missing. A second pail of seawater shook him from his stupor. The young Chinese man who had so solicitously dumped water on him squatted down beside him, laughing loudly and slapping his thighs as if Tao’s pathetic condition were irresistibly funny.
“Where am I?” Tao Chi’en managed to stammer.
“Welcome aboard the Liberty! We’re sailing west, I think.”
“But I don’t want to go anywhere. I have to get off. Immediately.”
New guffaws met this statement. When finally the man could control his hilarity, he explained to Tao that he had been “shanghaied,” just as he himself had been a couple of months earlier. Tao Chi’en felt he was going to faint. He knew what that meant. If there weren’t enough men to fill out a crew, the captain or pilot fell back on stopgap measures: getting some unwary bar patron drunk, even knocking him out and “signing him on” against his will. Life at sea was rough, and paid badly; accidents, malnutrition, and illness cut into the ranks; on each voyage one or more sailors died and their bodies ended up on the ocean floor with no one to give them another thought. Added to that, the captains tended to be despots who did not have to give an accounting to anyone and who punished the slightest offense with a lashing. In Shanghai it was so bad they’d had to reach a gentleman’s agreement among captains to put an end to kidnapping free men and stealing one another’s crew. Before the accord, every time a sailor came into port to have a few drinks he ran the risk of waking up on a different ship. The pilot of the Liberty had decided to replace his dead cook with Tao Chi’en—in his eyes all the “yellow” race were alike, one was as good as the next—so after getting Tao drunk he had him hauled aboard. Before Tao came to, the pilot had stamped his thumbprint on a contract that signed him up for two years. Slowly, the magnitude of what had happened sank into Tao Chi’en’s soggy brain. The idea of rebelling was never a consideration, that would be suicide, but he intended to desert the minute they touched land, wherever on the planet that might be.
The young Asian helped Tao get to his feet and wash his face, then led him belowdecks to where the berths and hammocks were lined up. He assigned Tao a bunk and a box to store his gear in. Tao Chi’en feared he had lost everything, but found the case containing his medical instruments on the wood planks that would be his bed. The pilot had had the good sense to save it. Lin’s portrait, however, was left behind on its altar. He realized with horror that the spirit of his wife might not be able to locate him in the middle of the ocean. The first few days at sea were torture; at times he was tempted by the thought of jumping overboard and ending his suffering once and for all. Almost as soon as he could stay on his feet he was assigned to the rudimentary galley, where the pots hung from hooks, clanging together with every toss of the waves, making a deafening racket. The fresh provisions brought aboard in Hong Kong were rapidly depleted and soon there was nothing but fish, salted meat, beans, sugar, lard, wormy flour, and biscuits so stale that sometimes they had to be hacked into pieces. Every bite of food was smothered in soy sauce. Each sailor had a pint of liquor per day to drown his sorrows and rinse out his mouth, because inflamed gums were one of the problems of life at sea. For the captain’s table, Tao Chi’en had eggs and English marmalade, which he had been directed to protect with his life. Rations were calculated to last the trip if no unusual difficulties arose—such as storms that blew them off course, or lying becalmed—complemented with fresh fish netted along the way. Great culinary skill was not expected of Tao Chi’en; his role was to dole out the food, liquor, and fresh water assigned to each man and to do battle against spoilage and rats. He also had a normal share of swabbing and sailing chores, like any other sailor.
After a week he began to enjoy the fresh air, the hard work, and the company of those men who came from the four corners of the earth, each with his stories, his nostalgia, and his skills. During breaks from work they would play instruments and tell tales of the phantoms of the waves and the exotic women in distant ports. The crew came from many places, from many tongues and customs, but they were united by something that resembled friendship. Isolation, and the knowledge that they needed one another, made comrades of men who on dry land would not have given one another a second look. Tao Chi’en began to laugh again, as he hadn’t laughed since Lin’s illness. One morning the pilot called him to introduce him to Captain John Sommers, whom Tao had seen only from a distance, on the bridge. He found himself facing a tall, darkly bearded, steely-eyed man tanned by the winds of many
latitudes. He spoke to Tao through the pilot, who knew a little Cantonese, but Tao replied in his book English, with the affected, aristocratic accent he had learned from Ebanizer Hobbs.
“Mr. Oglesby tells me that you are some kind of healer?”
“I am a zhong yi, a physician.”
“Physician? What do you mean, physician?”
“Chinese medicine is several centuries older than the English, Captain.” Tao Chi’en laughed gently, using his friend Ebanizer Hobbs’s exact words.
Captain Sommers raised his eyebrows, angered by the lowly crew member’s insolence, but was disarmed by the truth of the statement. He laughed with good nature.
“Well, we’ll see. Mr. Oglesby, pour us three glasses of brandy. We’re going to drink a toast to our doctor, here. This is a rare luxury. For the first time we’re carrying our own physician onboard!”
Tao Chi’en did not effect his plan to desert in the first port reached by the Liberty, because he didn’t know where to go. To return to his life as a miserable widower in Hong Kong made as little sense as to go on sailing. Here or there, it was all the same, and at least as a seaman he would travel and learn the ways medicine was practiced in other parts of the world. The one thing that really tormented him was that in all that wandering across the waves Lin might not be able to find him, however much he screamed her name to the winds.
In the first port, he went ashore, like the others, with a six-hour pass, but instead of spending that time in taverns, following the captain’s orders he dove into the market in search of spices and medicinal plants. Now that we have a doctor, we’ll need remedies, he’d said. He gave Tao a pouch with a specified sum of coins, and warned him that if he gave a thought to escaping or tricking him, he would hunt him down and slit his throat with his own hands, for the man hadn’t been born who could cheat him and get away with it.
“Is that clear, Chinaman?”
“It is clear, Englishman.”
“You address me as sir!”
“Yes, sir,” Tao Chi’en replied, looking down, because he was learning not to look white men in the face.
His first surprise had been to discover that China was not the absolute center of the universe. There were other cultures—more barbaric, that was true, but much more powerful. He had not suspected that the British controlled a large part of the globe, just as he had never suspected that other fan wey were masters of far-reaching colonies in distant lands spread across four continents, as Captain John Sommers went to the trouble of explaining to him the day that Tao pulled his infected tooth as they were sailing off the coast of Africa. He accomplished that operation cleanly and almost painlessly, thanks to a combination of his gold needles in the captain’s temples and a paste of cloves and eucalyptus applied to his gums. When it was over, and the relieved and grateful patient was polishing off his bottle of liquor, Tao Chi’en dared ask where they were going. It was upsetting to him to travel blindly, the blurred horizon between sea and an infinite sky the only reference.
“We’re sailing in the direction of Europe, but for us nothing changes. We are seafarers, always on water. Do you want to go back home?”
“No, sir.”
“Do you have a family somewhere?”
“No, sir.”
“Then it’s the same to you whether we’re going north or south, east or west, isn’t that true?”
“Yes, but I like to know where I am.”
“Why is that?”
“Because if I fall overboard, or the ship sinks, my spirit will need to know where it is in order to find its way back to China; if not it will wander around aimlessly. The gates to heaven are in China.”
“Where did you get that daft idea?” the captain said, laughing. “So, in order to get to paradise you have to die in China? Take a look at the map, man. Your country is the largest, that’s true, but there’s a lot of the world outside China. Here is England, it is only a small island, but if you add our colonies you will see that we are masters of more than half the globe.”
“How did you do that?”
“The same way we did it in Hong Kong: with war and deceit. Let’s say that it’s a blend of naval power, greed, and discipline. We are not superior, we’re crueler, and greedier. I am not particularly proud of being English, and after you’ve traveled as much as I have, you won’t be proud of being Chinese, either.”
During the next two years, Tao Chi’en stepped on terra firma only three times, one of which was in England. He lost himself among the huge throngs in the port, and walked through the streets of London looking at new things with the eyes of an enchanted child. The fan wey were filled with surprises; on the one hand, they lacked any touch of refinement and behaved like savages, but on the other, they were capable of amazing inventiveness. He confirmed that in their own country the English suffered the same arrogance and bad manners they exhibited in Hong Kong: they had no respect for him, and knew nothing of courtesy or etiquette. He tried to buy an ale, but they pushed him out of the inn: No yellow dogs allowed in here, they told him. Soon he joined some other Asian sailors and they found a place run by an elderly Chinese man where they could eat, drink, and smoke in peace. Listening to the stories the other men told, Tao calculated how much he still had to learn, and decided that first would be how to use his fists and his knife. Knowledge is not of much use if you can’t defend yourself: the wise acupuncture master had also forgotten to teach him that fundamental principle.
In February of 1849 the Liberty moored in Valparaíso. The next day, Captain John Sommers called Tao to his cabin and handed him a letter.
“This was given to me in the port. It’s for you and it’s from England.”
Tao Chi’en took the envelope, blushed, and a huge smile illuminated his face.
“Don’t tell me it’s a love letter,” the captain joked.
“Better than that,” Tao answered, slipping it between his shirt and his skin. The letter could only be from his friend Ebanizer Hobbs, the first he had received in the two years he had been at sea.
“You have done a good job, Chi’en.”
“I thought, sir, you did not like my cooking.” Tao Chi’en said, and smiled.
“As a cook, you’re a disaster, but you know your medicine. In two years’ time I’ve not lost a single man, and none of the crew has scurvy. Do you know what that means?”
“Good fortune.”
“Your contract is up today. I suppose I could get you drunk and make you sign an extension. I might do that to another man, but I owe you some favors and I pay my debts. Do you want to go on with me? I will raise your wages.”
“Where are you going?”
“To California. But I’m going to leave this ship; I have been offered a steamship, an opportunity I’ve been waiting a long time for. I would like you to come with me.”
Tao Chi’en had heard of steamships, and had a horror of them. The idea of enormous boilers filled with red-hot water to produce steam and power infernal machinery could have occurred only to people always in a hurry. Wasn’t it far better to travel to the rhythm of the winds and currents? Why challenge nature? He had heard rumors of boilers that exploded at sea, cooking the crew alive. Bits of human flesh, parboiled like shrimp, shooting off in all directions to become fish food while the souls of those wretches, fragmented in the force of the explosion and swirling steam, could never rejoin their ancestors. Tao Chi’en clearly remembered how his young sister had looked after the pot of hot water emptied over her, as clearly as he remembered her horrible moans of pain, and her convulsions as she died. He was not prepared to run that kind of risk. Neither was he overly tempted by the gold in California, although he had heard it lay about on the ground like rocks. He did not owe John Sommers anything. The captain was a little more tolerant than most of the fan wey, and he treated his crew with a certain even-handedness, but he was not his friend, and never would be.
“No, thank you, sir.”
“Don’t you want to see California? You can ge
t rich in a thrice, and go back to China a man of parts.”
“Yes, but on a sailing ship.”
“Why is that? Steamships are more modern, and much faster.”
Tao Chi’en did not try to explain his reasons. He stood silent, staring at the deck, cap in hand, while the captain finished drinking his whiskey.
“I can’t force you,” Sommers said finally. “I will give you a letter of recommendation to my friend Vincent Katz who captains the brigantine Emilia; she is also sailing to California in the next few days. Katz is a rather strange Dutchman, very strict and very religious, but he is a good man and a good sailor. Your trip will be slower than mine, but perhaps we will see each other in San Francisco, and if you regret your decision you can always come back to work with me.”
Captain John Sommers and Tao Chi’en shook hands for the first time.
The Voyage
Curled in her burrow in the storeroom, Eliza began to die. To the darkness and the sensation of being walled up in life was added the odor, a foul blend of the contents of bales and boxes, barrels of salted fish, and deposits of ocean extracts crusted on the old planks of the ship. Her acute sense of smell, so useful for getting through the world with closed eyes, had become an instrument of torture. Her only company was a strange tricolored cat buried, like her, in the hold and there to keep it free of rats. Tao Chi’en assured her that she would get used to the stench and to being closed up because in times of necessity the body adapts to nearly everything; he added that the voyage would be a long one and that she could not come out in the fresh air, so she would be better off not to think if she didn’t want to go mad. She would have water and food, he promised, he would take care of that when he could come down to the hold without arousing suspicion. The ship was small, but it was crowded and it would be easy to find reasons to slip down there.