Portrait in Sepia

  “I will do what I can,” the zhong-yi answered.

  “And so will we, Mr. Chi’en. The Presbyterian mission will not rest until it puts an end to this perversion and saves those poor girls, even if we have to hack down the doors of those dens of evil,” they assured him.

  When Lucky Chi’en found out what his father had done, he saw bad omens on every side. He knew Chinatown much better than Tao, and he realized that his father had committed an irreparable indiscretion. Thanks to his accomplishments and good nature, Lucky had friends at all levels of the Chinese community; for years he had been engaged in lucrative business dealings and winning—with moderation, but regularly—at the fan-tan tables. Even though he was young, he had become a figure beloved and respected by all, including the tongs, which had never bothered him. For years he had helped his father rescue the Singsong Girls, with the tacit agreement that he would not get involved in a major intrigue; he knew very clearly the absolute circumspection needed to survive in Chinatown, where the golden rule was not to have anything to do with whites—the feared and despised fan-wey—and to solve all matters, particularly in the case of crime, among compatriots. Sooner or later it would be learned that his father had informed the missionaries, and they, in turn, had told the American authorities. There was no surer formula for attracting disaster, and all his good luck would not reach far enough to protect them. This is what Lucky told Tao Chi’en, and that was what happened in October 1885, the month I had my fifth birthday.

  My grandfather’s fate was sealed the memorable Tuesday on which the two young missionaries, accompanied by three husky Irish policemen and the elderly crime reporter Jacob Freemont, barged into Chinatown in broad daylight. All activity in the street stopped dead, and a crowd formed behind the party of fan-wey, a rare sight in that neighborhood, which marched resolutely to a dilapidated house with a narrow, grated door where two Singsong Girls, faces painted with rice powder and rouge, were offering themselves to clients with mewing voices and exposed, puppy-dog breasts. When they saw the white people approaching, the girls retreated inside with squeals of fear, and in their place appeared a furious old woman who responded to the police with a string of insults in her tongue. At a sign from Donaldina, an ax glinted in the hands of one of the Irish officers, and he proceeded to chop the door down before the stupor of the bystanders. The intruders burst through the narrow doorway; there were sounds of screams, running, and orders in English, and within fifteen minutes the attackers emerged herding a half-dozen terrorized girls, the old woman—dragged kicking by one of the policemen—and three men stumbling along at gunpoint. A menacing rumble rose up in the street, and a few of the curious moved forward threateningly, but stopped short when several shots echoed in the air. The fan-wey shoved the girls and others under arrest into the closed police van, and the horses trotted off with their cargo. The rest of the day everyone in Chinatown talked about nothing but what had happened. Never had the police invaded the quarter for reasons other than those having to do directly with other whites. The American authorities had a great tolerance for the “customs of the yellows,” as they classified them, and no one bothered to investigate the opium dens or gaming houses, much less the slave girls, whom they considered another of the grotesque perversions of the Celestials, like eating roast dog with soy sauce. The one person who was not surprised, but complacent, was Tao Chi’en. The illustrious zhong-yi was nearly attacked by a pair of thugs from one of the tongs in the restaurant where he always had lunch with his granddaughter, when in a voice loud enough to be heard above the uproar he had expressed his satisfaction that at last the city authorities had taken action in the matter of the Singsong Girls. Even though most of the diners at the other tables thought that in a nearly all-male population the young slave girls were an indispensable consumer item, they hurried to defend Tao Chi’en, because he was the most respected figure in the community. Had it not been for the timely intervention of the owner of the restaurant, there would have been a real row. Indignant, Tao Chi’en stormed out, holding his granddaughter by one hand and in the other his lunch wrapped in a piece of paper.

  Maybe the episode of the brothel would have had no major consequences if two days later it hadn’t been repeated in similar form on a different street: the same Presbyterian missionaries, the same newspaperman, Jacob Freemont, and the same three Irish policemen. This time, however, they brought four additional officers as backup, and two large German shepherds tugging at their chains. The operation lasted eight minutes, and Donaldina and Martha led away seventeen girls, two madams, a pair of bouncers, and several clients who came outside buttoning their trousers. Word of what this Presbyterian mission and the fan-wey’s government proposed flashed like gunpowder through Chinatown and reached even the filthy cells where the slaves barely survived. For the first time in their wretched lives there was a breath of hope. Threats to beat them if they rebelled, or chilling stories of how the white devils would carry them off and suck their blood, had no effect; from that moment the girls sought a way to reach the ears of the missionaries, and in a matter of weeks the police invasions multiplied, publicized by articles in the newspapers. This time the insidious pen of Jacob Freemont was finally put to good service, stirring the consciences of the citizens with his eloquent campaign on behalf of the horrible fate of the tiny slaves right in the heart of San Francisco. The aging journalist would die shortly after, without learning the measure of the impact of his articles; in contrast, Donaldina and Martha would see the fruit of their zeal. Eighteen years later I met them on a trip to San Francisco; they still have rosy skin and the same messianic fervor in their gaze; they still walk through Chinatown daily, ever vigilant, but no one calls them accursed fan-wey, and no one spits at them as they pass by. Now they are called lo-mo, “loving mother,” and people bow when they greet them. They have rescued thousands of souls and eliminated the brazen traffic in girls, although they have not succeeded in erasing other forms of prostitution. My grandfather Tao Chi’en would be very satisfied.

  On the second Wednesday of November, Tao Chi’en went, as he did every day, to pick up his granddaughter Lai Ming at his wife’s tea-room on Union Square. The girl stayed with her grandmother Eliza in the afternoons until the zhong-yi finished with the last patient in his office and then came to get her. It was only seven blocks from the house, but Tao Chi’en had the habit of strolling down the two principal streets in Chinatown at that hour, as the paper lanterns were being lighted in the shops and people were finishing work and shopping for food for dinner. He walked hand in hand with his granddaughter through the markets, where exotic fruits from across the sea were artistically arranged and glazed ducks hung from hooks, admiring the mushrooms, insects, shellfish, organ meats, and exotic plants that could be found nowhere but there. Since no one had time to cook at his house, Tao Chi’en carefully chose the dishes he would take home for dinner, nearly always the same because Lai Ming was very picky about eating. Her grandfather tempted her, giving her bites of delicious Cantonese dishes being sold in the street stands, but usually they ended up with the same varieties of chow mein and pork ribs. That day Tao Chi’en was wearing a new suit for the first time; it had been made by the best Chinese tailor in the city, who took only the most distinguished men as clients. Tao had followed American style for many years, but after obtaining his citizenship he tried to dress with meticulous elegance as a sign of respect for his adopted country. He looked very handsome in his perfect dark suit, shirt with stiffly starched collar and morning coat tie, overcoat of English cloth, top hat, and ivory kid gloves. Young Lai Ming’s outfit contrasted with the Western garb of her grandfather; she was wearing cutoff trousers and a quilted silk jacket in brilliant tones of yellow and blue, so thick that the little girl moved along woodenly, like a bear, her hair pulled into a tight pigtail and with a black cap embroidered in Hong Kong style. The two of them attracted attention in the ill-assorted, almost exclusively male crowd clad in typical black trousers and tunics, so universal th
e Chinese population seemed uniformed. People stopped to greet the zhong-yi, because if they weren’t his patients at least they knew him by sight and by name, and the merchants would give some little treat to the granddaughter just to ingratiate themselves with the grandfather: a phosphorescent scarab in its miniature wooden cage, a paper fan, a sweet. At dusk in Chinatown there was always a festive atmosphere, the noise of shouted conversations, haggling, and vendor’s cries; on the air were the smells of fried foods, spices, fish, and garbage, because all waste was thrown into the middle of the street. The grandfather and granddaughter visited the places where they usually did their shopping, chatting with the men on the sidewalk playing mah-jongg; they went into the dark cubby of the herbalist to pick up some medicines the zhong-yi had ordered from Shanghai and stopped briefly at a gaming house to look at the fan-tan tables from the doorway, because Tao Chi’en was fascinated with the betting but avoided it like the plague. They drank a cup of green tea in Uncle Lucky’s shop, where they admired the latest shipment of antiquities and carved furniture, and then turned around to make their peaceful way home. Out of nowhere a young boy in a state of great agitation ran up to the zhong-yi to ask him to come with him, hurry, because there had been an accident: a man had been kicked in the chest by a horse and was spitting blood. Tao Chi’en followed as quickly as he could, still holding his granddaughter’s hand, down a side alley and then another and another, plunging into narrow passageways in the demented topography of the quarter until they found themselves alone in a blind alley barely lighted by the paper lanterns glowing like fantastic fireflies in a few windows. The boy had disappeared. Tao Chi’en realized then that he had fallen into a trap, and he tried to turn back, but it was too late. From the shadows surged several men armed with clubs and surrounded him. The zhong-yi had studied martial arts in his youth and always carried a knife in the belt beneath his morning coat, but he could not defend himself without letting go of Ming’s hand. He had a few instants to ask what they wanted, what was the matter, and to hear the name of Ah Toy as the men in black pajamas, their faces covered with kerchiefs, danced around him—then came the first blow, on his back. Lai Ming felt herself being dragged away and tried to cling to her grandfather, but the beloved hand had let go. She saw the clubs rising and falling upon her grandfather’s body, saw a stream of blood spurt from his head, saw him fall facedown, saw how they kept beating him until he was nothing but a bleeding heap on the paving stones.

  “When they brought Tao on an improvised stretcher, and I saw what they had done to him, something shattered to a thousand pieces inside me, like a crystal goblet, and my capacity ever to love again all spilled out. I dried up inside. I have never been the same person since. I feel affection for you, Lai Ming, and for Lucky and his children; I was fond of Miss Rose, but love I can only feel for Tao,” my grandmother Eliza Sommers confessed to me. “Without him nothing much matters; every day I live is a day less in the long wait to be reunited with him.” She added that she had felt great sorrow for me because at five I had to witness the martyrdom of the person I loved most, but she had supposed that time would erase that trauma. She thought that my life with Paulina del Valle, far from Chinatown, would be enough to make me forget Tao Chi’en. She never imagined that the scene in the alley would live forever in my nightmares, or that the scent, the voice, and the soft touch of my grandfather’s hands would pursue me in my waking hours.

  Tao Chi’en was returned alive to his wife’s arms; eighteen hours later he regained consciousness, and after a few days he could speak. Eliza Sommers had summoned two American physicians who on several occasions had called on the zhong-yi’s knowledge. Sadly, they examined him; his spinal column had been shattered, and in the unlikely case that he lived, he would be paralyzed. There was nothing science could do for him, they said. They could only clean his wounds, set some of his broken bones, stitch his head wound, and leave him massive doses of narcotics. All that while, the granddaughter, forgotten by everyone, huddled in a corner near her grandfather’s bed, silently calling, oi goa! oi goa! not understanding why he didn’t answer, why she couldn’t go near him, why she couldn’t sleep in his arms, as she always did. Eliza Sommers administered her husband’s drugs with the same patience she tried to get him to swallow soup from a funnel. She did not allow herself to be dragged down by despair; tranquil and without tears she kept watch over her husband for days, until he could speak through swollen lips and smashed teeth. The zhong-yi knew beyond any question of doubt that under those conditions he could not, he did not want to, live. That was what he told his wife, asking her not to feed him or give him liquids. The deep love and absolute intimacy they had shared for more than thirty years allowed them to intuit each other’s thoughts; there was little need for words. If Eliza was tempted to plead with her husband to live, immobilized in bed, just so she would not be left alone in the world, she swallowed the words, because she loved him too much to ask such a sacrifice. For his part, Tao Chi’en did not have to explain anything; he knew that his wife would do what had to be done to help him die with dignity, as he would for her had things been different. He also thought it wasn’t worth the effort to insist that she take his body to China—now it did not seem very important and he didn’t want to add one more burden to the load Eliza must bear, but she had decided to do it anyway. Neither of the two had the heart to discuss what seemed obvious. Eliza simply told him that she was incapable of letting him die of hunger and thirst; that could take many days, perhaps weeks, and she couldn’t allow him to suffer such a long agony. Tao Chi’en told her how to do it. He said to go to his office, look in a certain cabinet, and bring him a blue vial. She had helped him in the clinic in the first years of their relationship and still did when his assistant couldn’t come; she knew how to read the Chinese characters on the containers and how to give an injection. Lucky came into the room to receive his father’s blessing and left immediately, shaken with sobs. “Neither Lai Ming nor you need worry, Eliza, because I will not desert you; I will always be nearby to protect you. Nothing bad can happen to either of you,” Tao Chi’en murmured. Eliza picked up her granddaughter in her arms and carried her to her grandfather to say good-bye. The child looked at that swollen face and drew back, frightened, but then she focused on the black eyes looking at her with the same eternal, unchanging love, and she recognized him. She clung to her grandfather’s neck and kissed him and called his name desperately, her warm tears dropping on him until she was pulled away by her grandmother, taken outside, and placed in her uncle Lucky’s arms. Eliza Sommers went back to the room where she had been so happy with her husband and softly closed the door behind her.