by Aimee E. Liu
Paul cleared his throat, nodding in time to the Mozart concerto playing on the Gramophone. With his legs outstretched, their host’s enormous mustard cat in his lap, and his feet propped on the chintz ottoman, he looked a picture of comfort. Hope wondered at this with some resentment. Tensions that buffeted her seemed to pass right over him, and he sometimes acted as if he didn’t care whether they ever found a place of their own!
Gingerly, so as not to disturb the cat, Paul eased a slip of paper from his jacket pocket. “Tomorrow morning, ten o’clock, you meet me at this place. If you like, we live there.”
Hope stared, dumbfounded. “But how in heaven—”
“Forget heaven,” said Mary Jane, crowding in for a look, “how on earth did you manage to find a place smack in the middle of Berkeley!”
The address was 1919 Francisco Street, just around the corner from the university and a block from the Key trolley to the ferry. It was indeed a good location, Hope thought with a glance to the newsprint still crumpled in Mary Jane’s fist. There were far more “comfortable and tasty homes” on this block of Francisco than on the Chinamen’s block of Grant.
“You’ve actually spoken with the owner?” she asked.
“Yes, yes.” Paul stroked the purring cat.
“Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, child.” Mary Jane tossed the newspaper into the fire. “If you like it, I hope it works out. If not, don’t worry. I’m going to bed. Remember to put old Methusaleh there outside to do his business before you close up for the night.”
But Hope could not let it go. She had a nose for a story, and Paul’s benign masks didn’t fool her one bit. “Tell me,” she begged when Mary Jane had left them. “What’s it like?”
“I have not seen it.”
“Not seen it!”
“Not this house for us.”
“Well, what have you seen, then?”
“This gentleman’s house.”
“What gentleman?”
“Landlord.”
“Honestly, Paul. Start at the beginning.”
He kept on with that cat, as if in a trance. Hope stamped her foot and pulled the needle from the recording. The room swelled with Methusaleh’s purring. Paul’s lids, like the cat’s, remained half closed.
“Which came first, the man or the house?”
“Man,” he murmured.
“And how did you meet this man?”
“He was crossing the street. Truck was coming. I pull him away.”
Her hands went to her hips. “You mean you saved his life.”
Paul shrugged. The cat twitched and cast him a warning glance.
“So just like that, he offered you a place to live?”
“This happen before his house. Big house, many rooms. I ask maybe he will rent to me and my wife.” Paul frowned and slid his hands under the beast, gently removed it to the floor, and they both stood, side by side, stretching. “He shaked my hand. Say he will give me cottage behind, I come see tomorrow, ten-thirty. Then he walked away and another wagon almost hit him.”
Hope pushed the cat aside with her shoe and came into her husband’s arms. “You lead a charmed life.”
“I think so,” he agreed, and kissed the tip of her nose.
Mr. Thomas Wall lived in a handsome, ivy-covered mansard, with a tall verandah, gables, and huge bay windows. “Like Shanghai,” Paul remarked as they stood looking up at it from the front gate.
“What’s like Shanghai?” Hope searched in vain for a pagoda, a golden deity, any exotic flourish.
“This style. All foreigners build like this.”
“Ah. Foreigners” She felt a pang of dismay. The contradictions of her husband’s world never seemed to cease.
They knocked four times and had almost given up when the door fell open, and there stood before them a figure of gloom for which Paul’s story had in no way prepared Hope. The man he had rescued was tall, rangy, with a beard like a bear’s and bulging bloodshot eyes. His skin was lined and unnaturally pale, and his black wool suit, far too warm for this weather, looked as if he had slept in it. He used only his shoulders to signal them in, did not invite them to sit down, did not offer refreshment, and asked no questions. Indeed, he seemed utterly indifferent to their identities or backgrounds, leading them more like a butler than master through a dingy, untended kitchen and down some steps to the yard, which sloped to a large carriage barn on one side of the property and a white clapboard cottage on the other. The latter was small and dear, with a front porch and trellis bursting with yellow roses.
“I built this,” Mr. Wall said in a deadened voice, “for my wife’s parents. Before the Quake.”
Hope tugged on the corners of her jacket, checking Paul for signs that he’d heard this before, but he seemed as mystified as she. Mr. Wall stood, silent again, arms lifeless as the stopped hands of a clock. It was not difficult to imagine him stepping, oblivious, into traffic.
“My wife,” he concluded, “and her parents are gone. The cottage is no use to me now. I am happy you are here.” Before they could answer he leaned into a turn and lumbered back to the house. Hope thought she’d never seen a man who suited the word “happy” less than Thomas Wall.
“What do you think?” asked Paul.
“I think he’s very sad. Do you suppose they were killed in the Quake?”
“Perhaps.” He eyed the cottage. “Do you wish to look?”
“I don’t see that we have any choice.”
The previous occupants must have been short, to judge by the doorways—Paul had to duck as he moved from room to room—and the kitchen and bathroom fixtures were set unusually low. But the latter feature was a boon for Hope, who had to stand on tiptoe to see into the mirrors on most people’s walls. And though the furnishings were a bit stuffy for her taste, with crocheted dust-covers and needle-pointed love songs from the nineties, she didn’t imagine Mr. Wall meant them to keep these things. The rooms were generous, full of light but cool, thanks to the steeped roof. There was a large plastered fireplace in the parlor and a wood stove in the kitchen. Paul’s Chinese scrolls and lacquered trunks would look handsome here, and with two bedrooms and an indoor flush toilet, the little house surpassed Hope’s wildest expectations.
“Look here,” Paul called from the larger bedroom.
She found him in front of a corner etagere displaying a collection of framed photographs, including one of Thomas Wall gazing deeply into the eyes of a fair-haired young woman. Behind them stood an older couple arm in arm.
Paul said, “Some believe it unwise to begin marriage in such a place.”
“Unwise?”
“If spirits are not settled, they will maybe return.”
“I thought superstition went out with the revolution.” She patted his hand. “Anyway, if these American ghosts wanted to keep their home, don’t you think they’d have helped us find another?”
“I do not know.” He scanned the room, considering, then gave her a sidelong look. He clasped his hands in front of him and bowed three times to the picture, murmuring some sort of incantation under his breath. At the end of the final bow he closed his eyes as if gathering his nerve to make some special, arduous request. Hope held still, a little embarrassed by this ceremony and at the same time awed. Paul had told her he was raised a Buddhist, had shown her the fragrant wood worry beads that he sometimes wore around his wrist, had described the ornate temples to which his mother took him as a child. Still, she had never seen him perform devotions, and her sense was that the Chinese religions were so closely tied to superstition that her revolutionary husband had disavowed them all.
At last Paul’s eyes fluttered open. He dropped his hands. Then he spun and lifted Hope by the waist. It was such an exuberant, impious motion that she burst out laughing. “You madman! Put me down!”
He beamed at her flailing above him. “Say you are happy.”
“I’m happy.”
“Loud.”
“I am happy!”
He grin
ned and set her down. “Chinese lie to fool evil spirits. Maybe American ghosts respect truth.”
June 28, 1906
Whatever race or religion our gods may be, they are certainly smiling on Paul and me. We have a home beyond my dreams for which we pay just $5 (and that to satisfy my pride only, Mr. Wall offered and Paul was ready to take it for free!). My one regret is that our good fortune is due to our landlord’s tragic loss. After nearly a week here, we have finally pieced together his sad tale.
It seems that Thomas is an architect. A few days before the Quake, he had gone down to Santa Cruz, where he was finishing a house. While he was away, his wife and her parents were visiting with friends across the Bay. The friends’ home burned to the ground the morning of the Quake, and Thomas’s family was last seen loaded down with satchels near the civic center. Moments later that whole area was incinerated in a firestorm.
I cannot imagine a greater horror than to know your loved ones perished in such a ghastly way, or a greater guilt than having been the lone member of the family to survive. Every sound that falls from Thomas’s mouth is weighted with sorrow. His entire body shows his pain. I think if Paul met such an end, I would better go after him into the flames than suffer a minute of the hell poor Thomas is enduring.
However, Paul is so full of energy and life that such a fate is inconceivable. Every morning, he is up and off at dawn to his other world across the Bay. In these two months his people have already raised a new building to replace the offices that were burned, and in another week he expects to bring his paper back to press. Afternoons he spends in class, since the university has reopened for summer, and his evenings are devoted to writing—poetry, translations, articles, volumes of correspondence in his eternal fund-raising quest for Sun Yat-sen. I, meanwhile, strain to keep myself busy making curtains and learning to steam a proper pot of Chinese rice! Money is tighter than ever, and I feel like a sloth by comparison with Paul. I will not crawl back to Collis, but I must find work. The Mason sisters, who run the Berkeley Chinese Educational Mission, have advertised for an English tutor, and I plan to call on them this week.
2
BERKELEY DAILY GAZETTE, July 13, 1906
CHINESE WEDS LOCAL WOMAN JUSTIFICATION FOR RACE PREJUDICE IN BAY AREA
Friends have learned of the recent marriage of Miss Hope Newfield, lately of Berkeley, to a Chinese student, Po-yu Liang. This pair’s elopement, with two other interracial couples from San Francisco, brings acutely to the front one of the indisputable hazards arising out of the matriculation of Oriental students at the University of California. The Orientals exercise a fascination over certain American females, and as long as they are allowed to attend U.S. colleges, studying alongside coeds and, as in this case, enjoying personal contact with female teachers, we must brace ourselves for increasing waves of mongrelization.
Although the Berkeley interracials traveled to Wyoming to escape local anti-miscegenation laws, it was inevitable that friends and colleagues would discover their act when they returned as husband and wife. This has brought social ostracism for the bride, who formerly tutored foreign university students in English. And when news of this marriage is spread beyond our city walls, more than one father and mother may worry that their daughter might acquire an Oriental husband along with an education or paycheck if she comes to the University of California to study or work. University officials take heed!
“University officials indeed!” cried Hope. “Collis planted this sewage, I’m sure of it.”
“Be still,” said Paul, trying to read over her shoulder. His insistence on finishing the article before reacting infuriated her so that she thrust the newsprint into his hands and stormed across the room.
“We should sue them for slander! He’s a vicious little toad, is what he is. Doesn’t even have the nerve to fight this out face-to-face, but goes broadcasting it to the entire city. How I despise that man!”
Paul finished the article and folded it in half, half again, then sat slapping the resulting packet against his knee and watching her over his glasses.
“Don’t give me that paternal stare! And don’t tell me this doesn’t make your blood boil, too!”
“It is odd thing,” he answered, unflappable. “Americans treat Chinese worse than dogs, but fear us like dragons.” He prodded his glasses back into place and, smiling, scanned the article again. “They object because I exercise fascination over you.”
“It’s no joke, Paul! You don’t know what these people can do. Collis is a coward and a weakling. That’s why he’s put this out to the public—so others will punish us for him.”
He laid the paper aside and came to her. She allowed him to calm her. But three mornings later they were wakened by a fusillade outside their window.
The concussions were prolonged, overlapping, and sharp as knife thrusts. Hope dove for the floor, and Paul curled his body to cover her as the room filled with black powder and smoke. After several deafening minutes the explosion withered to a few muffled pops. Then silence.
Paul slowly pulled back, turning Hope in his arms. “All right?” She nodded, but trembled as he pulled her up and they moved cautiously down the hall together, checking the other rooms. The inside of the house appeared unscathed, but outside a heavy metallic cloud draped the porch and yard. No birds sang. No squirrels chattered.
Paul left Hope at the front door and felt his way to the end of the porch. A moment later he was back, his face ashen.
“What is it?”
“No matter.” He shut the door.
“Is someone out there?”
“No.” He was blocking her deliberately.
“Let me see,” she said with more bravado than she felt, and pushed past him.
The smell made her gag. It was more than the dark, leaden Fourth of July stench of explosives. This had a thick, organic quality, piercing to the nostrils and stomach-wrenching, the smell of burnt hair and flesh. She crept forward but, halfway down the porch, stopped abruptly. The roses had changed. Their yellow and green were suddenly flecked with darkness. Bits of flesh and fur, brown and white and a deep, sickly red. She sagged back against Paul as her eyes finally, ruthlessly dropped to the source of these exploded fragments.
At the bottom of the porch steps lay the disemboweled carcasses of some twenty rats, bits of black and vermilion scattered over them, remnants of the firecrackers that had been planted among the bodies.
“Damn them! Damn them all!”
He tried to draw her back into the cottage. “They have not hurt us, Hope. They will not hurt us.” But she would neither be consoled nor moved.
“I hate them,” she kept saying, even as she stared with dreadful fascination at the tiny, shattered skulls.
“Hope, please,” he begged. “What they think does not matter. They are nothing.”
Her teeth began to chatter and she hugged herself. She wanted to take Paul’s hand and go in, slam the door and never come out. He was right, they were nothing. But what they thought controlled the world.
He brought a blanket and wound it around her shoulders.
“I knew something like this would happen,” she said.
“I tell you.” He stroked her hair. “They are afraid.”
“Yes, and so am I. But what now, Paul! What do we do now?”
He looked past her. “Thomas.”
“Oh, no.” Whatever they had brought upon themselves, Thomas Wall was innocent and too fragile to be subjected to it. He came toward them like a wakened scarecrow in that rumpled black suit, in his hands a small silver derringer.
“No problem,” Paul called. With a quick, steadying glance to Hope, he hurried from the porch, skirting the carnage. “No damage. No harm done.”
Hope clutched the blanket and followed her husband. “It was only a prank,” she said hoarsely. “Chinese firecrackers.”
They thought they could stop Thomas, turn him around, steer him back to bed, and along the way relieve him of the gun, but he would not be maneuver
ed. In fact, he became more alert and commanding with each step. At the pile of exploded flesh he stopped, sniffed, glanced back at his tenants’ bare feet. “You didn’t touch any of this?”
Hope and Paul stared at him, perplexed. “No.”
“Good. Let me clean up then. If these are plague rats, they could be as lethal dead as alive. Better soak your feet in disinfectant, just in case.”
“Plague rats?” Paul looked to Hope for translation.
“Bubonic plague’s been in the city for years.” Thomas waved them back toward his house. “They try to hush it up, ‘cause it’s carried over from Asia. Old Mayor Ruef takes so many cuts out of the Chinatown trade, he couldn’t afford having those ships turned back.” He glanced at Paul apologetically. “I did a stint on the Board of Supervisors. Long as it was only Chinese dying, they figured no oned notice. But since the Quake’s stirred things up, the rats are all over.”
“And you think—” Hope ducked Paul’s worried eyes.
“I saw what they wrote against you,” Thomas said.
Paul winced. “We have endangered you.”
Thomas ran a hand through his hair and sighed. “You two are the least of my burdens. Anyway, you’re not to blame. Now come on. Jeyes’ Liquid for both of you and some gloves and a mask for me. I’ll have to dust the yard—it’s the fleas that actually carry the disease. Anyway, by tomorrow, you’ll forget this happened.”
But they did not forget, and neither Hope nor Paul was now willing to let the attack go unanswered. Thomas Wall gave them just the ammunition they needed. Galvanized out of the stupor of his grieving, he took the remains of the rats for analysis that very morning and discovered that fully one third of them did indeed carry the plague virus. Whether the rats had been purposely brought from the city for this devious purpose, or had migrated before being captured, no one could tell, but, after conferring with Mary Jane, Hope and Paul decided to proclaim the worst.