Daughter of Fortune

  “What am I going to do with her,” Tao Chi’en asked himself aloud in Cantonese. His responsibility ended in San Francisco, but he didn’t feel able to abandon Eliza to her fate in this place. He was trapped, at least until she was stronger and could meet other Chileans, or find where her slippery lover had gotten to. That shouldn’t be difficult, he supposed. However chaotic San Francisco might seem, there were no secrets anywhere for the Chinese; he could afford to wait until the next day and take her to Little Chile. Darkness had turned everything into a dream world. Nearly all the shelters were canvas, and with lamps lighted inside they were as transparent and glowing as diamonds. The torches and bonfires in the streets, and the music from the gaming halls, contributed to the impression of unreality. Tao Chi’en looked for somewhere they could spend the night; he found a kind of large shed some twenty-five meters long and eight wide built of boards and tin salvaged from grounded ships and topped by the sign “Hotel.” Inside were two floors of cots, simple wooden planks where a man could curl up and sleep, along with a counter at the rear where liquor was sold. There were no windows, and the only fresh air filtered through cracks in the board walls. For a dollar you bought the right to a night’s rest, and you provided your own bedding. The first to get there claimed the cots and latecomers had to hit the floor, and although there were empty beds, they weren’t given one because they were Chinese. They stretched out on the dirt floor using a bundle of clothing for a pillow and the serape and Castile blanket for their only cover. Soon the place was filled with men of assorted races and types lying elbow to elbow in tight rows, clothed, weapons in hand. The stench of filth, tobacco, and human exhalations, plus the snoring and strange cries of those lost in nightmares, made it hard to sleep, but Eliza was so tired she blacked out the passing hours. She woke at dawn shivering with cold, huddled close to Tao Chi’en’s back, and that was when she noticed that he smelled of the sea. On the ship his scent had been indistinguishable from the immensity of the ocean around them, but that night she learned that this was the specific aroma of Tao’s body. She closed her eyes, pressed closer to him, and soon fell back asleep.

  The next morning they both set off to look for Little Chile, which she recognized immediately both by the Chilean flag fluttering boldly atop a pole and because most of the men were wearing maulinos, the typical cone-shaped hats. The settlement consisted of some eight or ten densely populated blocks, including a few women and children who had traveled with their men, all busy at some task or activity. People were living in tents or board shacks and huts set in the middle of a junkyard of tools and garbage. There were also restaurants, makeshift hotels, and brothels. Eliza and Tao estimated that there were a couple of thousand Chileans in that barrio, but no one had counted them, and, in fact, it was nothing more than a place for new arrivals to pause a while. Eliza was happy to hear the language of her country and to see a sign on a ragged tent advertising pequenes and chunchules. She went right to it and, disguising her Chilean accent, asked for a helping of the latter. Tao Chi’en stood staring at that strange food served on a piece of newspaper instead of a plate, unable to guess what the devil it was. Eliza explained that it was deep-fried hog tripe.

  “I ate your Chinese soup yesterday. Today you eat my Chilean chunchules,” she ordered.

  “How is it you two Chinese speak Spanish?” the vendor asked amiably.

  “My friend doesn’t, and I do only because I spent time in Peru,” Eliza replied.

  “And what are you looking for around here?”

  “A Chilean named Joaquín Andieta.”

  “What do you want him for?”

  “We have a message for him. Do you know him?”

  “A lot of people have passed through here in recent months. No one stays more than a few days, they’re soon off to the placers. Some come back, some don’t.”

  “And Joaquín Andieta?”

  “I don’t remember, but I’ll ask.”

  Eliza and Tao Chi’en sat down in the shade of a pine to eat. Twenty minutes later the vendor returned with a short-legged, wide-shouldered man who looked like an Indian from the north of Chile, who said that Joaquín Andieta had started off in the direction of the placers of Sacramento at least a couple of months ago, although no one kept time by calendars or kept track of other folks’ whereabouts.

  “Then we’re going to Sacramento, Tao,” Eliza decided as soon as they left Little Chile.

  “You can’t travel yet. You need to rest awhile.”

  “I will rest there, when we find him.”

  “I would rather go back to Captain Katz. California is not the place for me.”

  “What is the matter with you? Has your blood turned to water? There’s no one left on the ship, only that captain with his Bible. Everyone has gone off looking for gold and you plan to go back and work as a cook for a miserable salary?”

  “I don’t believe in easy fortune. I want a peaceful life.”

  “Well, if not gold, there must be something else that interests you.”

  “Learning.”

  “Learning what? You already know so much.”

  “I have everything to learn!”

  “Then you have come to the perfect place. You know nothing about this country. They need doctors here. How many men do you think there are in the mines? Thousands! And they all need a doctor. This is the land of opportunity, Tao. Come to Sacramento with me. Besides, if you don’t come with me, I won’t get far.”

  For a bargain price, given the lamentable condition of the vessel, Tao Chi’en and Eliza started north, sailing the entire length of San Francisco Bay. The ship was crammed with passengers with elaborate mining equipment; no one could move in that space crowded with boxes, tools, baskets, sacks of provisions, gunpowder, and weapons. The captain and his second mate were a pair of Yankee seamen sinister in appearance but good sailors and generous with the limited rations, even their bottles of liquor. Tao Chi’en negotiated the cost of Eliza’s ticket and he was given his passage in exchange for working as crew. The passengers, all with pistols in their waistbands, in addition to knives or straight razors, scarcely spoke to one another the first day except to curse some jab from an elbow or foot, inevitable in that tight space. At dawn on the second day, after a long, cold, damp night anchored close to the shore because of the impossibility of navigating in the dark, everyone felt as if he were surrounded by enemies. The scruffy beards, filth, unappetizing food, mosquitoes, opposing winds and currents all contributed to the general irritation. Tao Chi’en, the only one without plans or goals, appeared to be the only serene person aboard, and when he was not fighting the sail he was admiring the extraordinary panorama of the bay. Eliza, in contrast, was miserable in her disguise as a slow-witted deaf-mute boy. Tao Chi’en presented her as his younger brother and quickly found her a place in a corner more or less protected from the wind, where she sat, so quiet and still that after a bit no one remembered her existence. Her Castile blanket dripped water, she was shivering with cold, and her legs had fallen asleep, but she was fortified by the thought that every minute she was getting closer to Joaquín. She touched her bosom, where she was carrying his love letters, and silently recited them by memory. By the third day the passengers had lost much of their aggression and were lying sprawled in their soaking-wet clothes, half drunk and very dispirited.

  The bay was much longer than they had imagined; the distances marked on their pathetic maps had no bearing on actual miles, and just when they thought they were approaching their destination it turned out they still had to sail through a second bay, one called San Pablo. Along the shores they glimpsed a few camps and boats overflowing with people and goods, and beyond them thick woods. Even then their voyage wasn’t over; they had to maneuver a canal with swift water and sail into Suisun Bay, the third, where navigating became even slower and more difficult, and then up the deep, narrow river that led to Sacramento. At last they were near the place where the first gold had been found. That insignificant little flake the size
of a woman’s fingernail had provoked this uncontrollable invasion, changing the face of California and the soul of the North American nation, as Jacob Todd, transformed into a journalist, would write a few years later. “The United States was founded by pilgrims, pioneers, and humble immigrants with an ethic of hard work and courage in the face of adversity. Gold has brought out the worst of the American character: greed and violence.”

  The captain of their ship told them that the city of Sacramento had sprung up overnight, within the last year. The port was bustling with ships; it boasted of well-laid-out streets, wood houses and buildings, commerce, a church, and a good number of gaming houses, bars, and brothels; even so, it resembled the scene of a shipwreck, because the ground was littered with bags, harnesses, tools, and all manner of refuse left behind by miners in a hurry to get to the placers. Huge black birds swooped over garbage crawling with flies. Eliza estimated that in a couple of days she could cover the town house by house; it would not be difficult to find Joaquín Andieta. Their fellow passengers, made animated and friendly by the proximity of the port, shared the last swallows of liquor, clapped one another on the back, and sang chorus after chorus about a girl named Susanna to the confoundment of Tao Chi’en, who could not understand such a sudden transformation. He debarked with Eliza before the others because they had so little baggage, and made a beeline for the Chinese district where they found something to eat and a place to sleep in a tent of waxed canvas. Eliza could not follow the conversations in Cantonese, and all she had on her mind was finding out something about her lover, but Tao Chi’en reminded her that she was not to speak and asked her to be calm and patient. That same night the zhong yi was called on to treat a countryman’s dislocated shoulder, snapping the joint back into place and earning the immediate respect of the camp.

  The next morning Tao and Eliza went in search of Joaquín Andieta. They saw passengers from the ship already starting for the placers; some had obtained mules to carry their equipment but most were going on foot, leaving a good part of their possessions behind. Tao and his “brother” asked around the entire town without finding a trace of the person they were seeking, although some Chileans thought they remembered someone by that name who had passed through a month or two earlier. They suggested the pair head on upriver, where they might find him: it was all a matter of luck. A month was an eternity. No one kept account of who had been there the day before, and names, or where anyone else was going, meant nothing. The sole obsession was gold.

  “What shall we do now, Tao?”

  “Work. We can’t get along without money,” he replied, picking up a few pieces of canvas he found among the abandoned supplies.

  “I can’t wait. I must find Joaquín. I have a little money.”

  “Chilean reales. They won’t do you much good.”

  “And the jewels I have left? They must be worth something.”

  “Keep them. They have little value here. We’ll have to work and buy a mule. My father went from town to town as a healer. My grandfather, too. I can do the same, but here the distances are much greater. I need a mule.”

  “A mule? We already have one. You! How stubborn you are!”

  “Not as stubborn as you!”

  They collected a few poles and some odd boards, borrowed some tools, and built a shelter using the canvas pieces as a roof. It was a miserable hovel ready to collapse with the first wind, but at least it protected them from the night dew and spring rains. Word had spread of Tao Chi’en’s skills and he was soon visited by Chinese patients who gave witness to the extraordinary talent of the zhong yi, then Mexicans and Chileans, and finally a few Americans and Europeans. When they learned that Tao Chi’en was as competent as any of the three white doctors, and charged less, many people conquered their repugnance of the “celestials” and decided to test Asian science. Some days Tao Chi’en was so busy that Eliza had to help him. It fascinated her to watch his delicate, skillful hands finding pulses on arms and legs, stroking the bodies of the ill as if caressing them, inserting his needles in mysterious points that only he seemed to know. How old was he? She had asked him once, and he replied that counting all his reincarnations he had to be between seven and eight thousand years old. Looking at him, Eliza guessed about thirty, although at some moments, when he laughed, he seemed much younger than she. When he leaned over a sick patient with total concentration, however, he seemed as ancient as a turtle; it was easy then to believe that he had lived many centuries. She would watch with awe as he examined a glass of urine and by the odor and color was able to determine hidden ills, or as he studied a patient’s pupils with a magnifying glass to deduce what was lacking or overly abundant in his organism. Sometimes all he did was place his hand on the stomach or head of an ill person, close his eyes, and give the impression of being lost in a long daydream.

  “What were you doing?” Eliza once asked.

  “I was feeling his pain and passing him energy. Negative energy produces suffering and illness; positive energy can heal.”

  “And what is it like, that positive energy?”

  “Like love: warm and luminous.”

  Extracting bullets and treating knife wounds were routine procedures, and Eliza lost her horror of blood and learned to stitch human flesh as calmly as formerly she had embroidered sheets for her trousseau. Having practiced surgery beside the Englishman Ebanizer Hobbs turned out to be extremely useful to Tao Chi’en. In that land infested with venomous snakes there were more than a few snakebite victims, who arrived swollen and blue on the backs of their comrades. Polluted water democratically distributed cholera, for which no one knew a remedy, as well as other illnesses of spectacular but not always fatal symptoms. Tao Chi’en charged very little, but always in advance, because in his experience a frightened man pays without argument, while one who is cured wants to bargain. Every time he asked for money his former mentor materialized wearing an expression of reproach, but Tao refused to budge. “I cannot afford the luxury of being generous in these circumstances, master,” he mumbled. His fees did not include anesthesia; whoever wanted the comfort of drugs or the gold needles had to pay extra. He made an exception with thieves, who after a quick trial were lashed or had their ears cut off; the miners were proud of their speedy justice and no one was willing to pay for or guard a jail.

  “Why don’t you charge criminals?” Eliza asked him.

  “Because I would rather they owe me a favor,” he replied.

  Tao Chi’en seemed ready to settle in. He did not tell his friend, but he wanted to stay in one place long enough for Lin to find him. His wife had not communicated with him for several weeks. Eliza, in contrast, was counting the hours, eager to get on her way, and as the days went by she was filled with conflicting sentiments about her companion in adventure. She was grateful for his protection and the way he looked after her, dependent on him for food and shelter at night, for his herbs and needles—to strengthen her qi—he said, but she was irritated by his calm, which she mistook for a lack of action. Tao Chi’en’s serene expression and easy smile captivated her at times but at others grated on her nerves. She did not understand his absolute indifference to trying his luck in the mines while everyone around him, especially his Chinese compatriots, thought of nothing else.

  “But you are not interested in gold, either,” he replied, unruffled, when she nagged him.

  “I came for a different reason! Why did you come?”

  “Because I was a sailor. Until you asked me, I didn’t plan to stay.”

  “But you are not a sailor, you’re a physician.”

  “Here I can be a physician again, at least for a while. You were right, there is a lot to be learned in this place.”

  And that was what he was doing, learning. To find out about the medicines of the shamans he hunted out Indians, who by now had lost everything in the stampede for gold and were reduced to filthy bands of nomads in mangy coyote skins and European rags. They wandered from pillar to post, dragging their weary women and hung
ry children, using their finely woven wicker baskets to try to pan gold from the rivers, but they no sooner found a promising spot than they were chased away. When left in peace, they set up small villages of huts or tents and stayed for a while, until once more they were forced to leave. They came to know the Chinese physician, to welcome him with a show of respect because they considered him a medicine man, and were pleased to share what they knew. Eliza and Tao Chi’en would sit with them in a circle around a pit filled with hot stones where they cooked a pap of boiled acorns or roasted seeds and grasshoppers that Eliza found delicious. Then they smoked, speaking in a mixture of English, signs, and the few words of their native Indian tongue the outsiders had learned.

  During that period some Yanqui miners mysteriously disappeared, and although their bodies had not been found their buddies accused the Indians of having murdered them; in retaliation the miners had attacked an Indian village, taken forty prisoners, including women and children, and as a lesson had executed seven of the men.

  “If that’s how they treat the Indians who own this land, Tao, you can be sure they will treat anyone Chinese much worse. You need to make yourself invisible, like me,” Eliza said, terrified when she learned what had happened.

  But Tao Chi’en had no time to learn tricks of invisibility, he was busy studying plants. He made long outings, collecting samples to compare with plants he had used in China. He would hire a team of horses, or walk miles beneath a burning sun, taking Eliza along as interpreter, to the ranchos of the Mexicans who had lived in that region for generations and knew its natural world. They had only recently lost California in the war against the United States, and their huge ranches, which once had sustained hundreds of peons in a communal system, were beginning to break up. The treaties between the countries were still only paper and ink. At first the Mexicans, who were skilled miners, taught the newcomers the processes for obtaining gold, but every day more foreigners came to invade territory they felt was theirs. In practice, the Yanquis scorned them, as they scorned anyone of a different race. A relentless persecution was waged against the Hispanics; they were denied the right to work the mines because they were not Americans, although Australian convicts and European adventurers were accepted. Thousands of unemployed peons tried their luck in the mines, but when the harassment became intolerable, they moved south or turned to crime. In the rustic dwellings of the few remaining families, Eliza was able to spend time in the company of women, a rare luxury that for a brief while recalled the tranquil, happy days in Mama Fresia’s kitchen. Those were the only occasions she emerged from her enforced muteness and spoke in her own language. Those strong and generous maternal women who worked elbow to elbow with their men in the most demanding chores, hardened by work and by demands upon them, were fond of that fragile Chinese lad, awed that he spoke Spanish like one of them. They gladly shared secrets of nature that had been used for centuries to ease many ills and, in passing, delicious recipes that Eliza wrote in her notebooks, sure that sooner or later they would be valuable to her. In the meantime, the zhong yi ordered from San Francisco the Western medicines his friend Ebanizer Hobbs had taught him to use in Hong Kong. He also cleared a piece of land by their shack, fenced it to protect it from deer, and planted the basic herbs of his calling.