by Lisa Mason
Mama crying, always crying, muffled sobs in the night. He shivers. In the end, all he remembers of her is her pain. How her pain grieved him, Father’s only child, a boy with the mother’s beauty, her cheekbones, her lips. Her weakness, too? A boy whose beauty his father observed with a scowl and a wary look in his eyes.
Yet pain was his mother’s natural province. He must remind himself of that. Krafft-Ebing is quite explicit.
Daniel rubs his eyes. He dwells too much on himself these days. Dwells too much on the past, which is dead and gone, never to be repeated, never to be remade. Too many memories haunt him now that he’s away from the scowling father, separated forever from the mother begging for his loyalty with her last breath. Wasn’t I good, Danny? Wasn’t I good to you?
Women want to be taken, to be subjected to force. Schopenhauer has written extensively on the subject.
She—Zhu Wong—is not a whore, but she is, by her own claim, the former mistress of a gentleman, perhaps a man like himself. And therefore tainted, not truly a lady. It follows, then, that she led him to desire her. As much as she hated it, she wanted it and knew exactly how to get it. With every glance of her strange green eyes, every languorous gesture, she spurred him on these three months. What else could one expect in such close quarters?
Inevitable, what happened this morning. Though he’s still not sure what, exactly, happened. Had he subdued her or she seduced him?
She hadn’t wept. So what he did had to be all right, then, hadn’t it? Authorities on the topic say so. Does she really hate what gives him such pleasure? Her hands unbuttoning his shirt. That’s the man’s duty, to unbutton his shirt. Quite unlike any other woman he’s ever known, indeed. Perhaps she’s something other than a woman. A sylph. A witch. A demon.
Listlessness closes over his soul like a velvet fist. Krafft-Ebing warns gentlemen against the spillage of bodily fluids. A gentleman must always protect his vitality.
“Over there,” Daniel says.
Mariah bangs the tray down on the side table. He’s glad to see that she’s brought him a cup of black coffee and the last of the brandy in a smeary decanter. Plus Miss Malone’s bottle of Scotch Oats Essence and a spoon. The auntie stands, awaiting his command. As is only proper for a servant.
For the balance of the morning after breakfast, Daniel studied “The Lady of the Tides,” the painting of the mermaid he gave to Miss Malone in trade for two months’ rent. As for the rest of Mama’s junk, he’d taken everything to Gump’s, as Jessie advised. The Gump brothers were savvy importers and formidable purveyors of art and costly trinkets to San Francisco’s rich. What a gorgeous shop they had! Gilt and crystal, jade and ivory gleamed beneath the gaslights and reflected off ample mirrors. The Gump brothers themselves, clad in immaculate black gabardine, discreetly scented with patchouli, the very picture of gentility.
Daniel had been deeply impressed. And envious. This charming enterprise survived the depression of ‘93. A worthy pursuit for a gentleman, in other words. But would Father ever entertain such a notion? No, Father had the aesthetic sensitivity of a toad. Daniel sold Mama’s junk for forty dollars. Nothing she’d collected was noteworthy, well, he expected as much. During the transaction, he described the mermaid painting to the younger Mr. Gump, who removed and carefully wiped his spectacles. The poor fellow must have been nearly blind, the lenses of his spectacles as thick as the bottom of a brandy bottle. “I’d have to see the painting myself, of course,” Mr. Gump remarked, “but I’d say, offhand, it could be worth perhaps seven thousand dollars.”
Seven thousand dollars! When Daniel informed Miss Malone of the potential value of her new acquisition, she tossed her curls scornfully. “Sure and then make it four months’ rent. And not a day more, sir.” She grinned like a minx. The biz was the biz. He had traded her fair and square.
Brilliant sun streams through the scarlet fringe edging the curtains, creating patterns of shadow and light. He spoons Scotch Oats Essence onto his tongue, savoring the medicinal bitterness. A breeze through the open window sends shadows and light shifting across the dizzying arabesques and medallions of the Persian carpets, inducing an intriguing sense of depth. An illusion of reality, like the persistence of vision creates the illusion of continuous motion.
Space and time. How the devil does one harness it?
He picks up the Zoetrope and whirls it, contemplating the persistence of vision, studying the shifting patterns. Nice effect. Kinetic, that’s the word, from the dear old Greek, kinesis—to move. He really ought to brush up on the dear old Greek. Many a gentleman drinking along the Cocktail Route is a scholar. A hotbed of cultural discourse, is the Cocktail Route.
But how could one reproduce kinetic effect in an artwork? And not some trifle like the Zoetrope. How could one produce depth and motion in, say, the mermaid? Have the tart stretch and wink and loll about, her fishtail flopping? Right up there on the wall? Such a kinetic work ought to reproduce color, as well, glorious color the way a painting does.
Daniel knows very well that the best minds in Europe have for decades pondered this very question. Monsieur Roget advanced his theory of the persistence of vision way back in 1824—that the brain retains a visual image perceived by the eye for a fraction longer than the perception itself. Thus we gaze, oblivious to the hundreds of times we blink in the course of a day. And thus we perceive space and time as a smooth continuous flow.
Then Sir John Herschel inflamed everyone when he spun a shilling, showing its head and its tail at the same time. All manner of clever devices utilized the spinning coin trick—Dr. Paris’s Thaumatrope, Plateau’s Phenakistiscope, Horner’s Zoetrope, Beale’s Choreutoscope. Toys fit for the junk heap or the gypsy trade by now. Every fancy brothel in Paris sported some flimsy imitation of Rudge’s magic lantern show. What things one could suggest in a mere seven phases of action. In the meantime, Eddie Muybridge in jolly old Californ’ proved with a rigged row of cameras that, at the height of a horse’s gallop, all four of the beast’s hooves leave the ground. Photographic proof that the horse catapults into space. Muybridge won a $25,000 wager with old man Stanford. A sturdy steed, sir, defies gravity. Defies God Himself.
But none of it, Daniel thinks, is good enough. None of it captures the mermaid, her slick skin, her chatoyant scales, her coy eyes. Nothing induces her to rise, to turn and smile. To splash across the wall and seduce another young man. By God, he wants to see it!
Scotch Oats Essence warms his head. He lights a ciggie, picks up the Zoetrope again. When you whirl the toy too fast, the images blur. Yet the trick must be to speed up the sequence, expand it somehow, make the flow continuous without sacrificing clarity. “So much to do and so little time, eh, Mariah?”
“Will that be all, sir?”
“In a hurry, are you, Mariah?”
“A young gentleman like yourself shouldn’t lie about all the day.” For a person with no discernible mind of her own, she’s awfully pesky. “Mr. Watkins, you ought to be ashamed.”
“I am ashamed, Mariah.” He grins. “Truly, you have no notion how ashamed I am.”
“Thought you got important business in town. Your daddy’s business.”
“Ah, dear old Father and his dear old business.”
Daniel had dutifully sent the eminent Jonathan D. Watkins a telegram once he’d settled in at 263 Dupont Street.
FATHER STOP ARRIVED STOP YOUR DUTIFUL SON DANIEL
Then, just to get the old man’s goat—
LOVELY LADIES STOP
Lovely ladies, indeed. This town has cast an evil spell over the ladies. Just look at ‘em. Fanny Spiggot, a pickpocket. Li’l Lucy, a sporting gal losing her charm at age nineteen. Jessie Malone, Queen of the Underworld. Even Donaldina Cameron, the elegant lady who snubbed him on the train, a Holy Roller, which may be worse than all of the above. And what about the ladies dressed in little girls’ sailor outfits or fanciful dresses who aren’t women at all? What about Zhu Wong taunting him, leading him into sin?
Mariah w
aits silently as Daniel stubs the ciggie out. “And what is Father’s dear old business? Real estate. Have you any notion what a lousy racket real estate is, Mariah?”
“I should think that a young gentleman like yourself should be grateful to have the means to enrich himself handed over to him by his family,” Mariah says. “No matter what he may think of his daddy.”
He glances up at the auntie, astonished by this speech. As usual Mariah glares at him with the face of a wooden Indian. “Damnable plague, that’s what real estate is. Interest rates and down payments, defaults and bankruptcies. Bankruptcy, Mariah, is a sin. Or it ought to be.” He plucks the crumpled note from the floor and examines it one more time.
Der Sir:
Konserning yer rekwest I tern over key to bording haus at 567 Stockton I say damm you sir is mine an I ain’t giving up nothing. Tis my haus & my borders. Yull git yer pownd of flesh when you get it. Sinseerly, Mr Ekberg
“Speaking of grateful, Mariah, Mr. Ekberg has enjoyed a year’s respite from all mortgage payments, and yet he sends me an ungrateful note like this.”
Daniel does not look forward to rousting Mr. Ekberg out of the Stockton Street boardinghouse. The crumbling Stick is a dreadful piece of work, in dire need of a new roof and a paint job. Mr. Ekberg is a Forty-niner whose modest bonanza enabled him to purchase the house in the sixties when Stockton Street was white and Portsmouth Square was a gambling haven and a dining resort. Now that Stockton Street is smack-dab in the middle of Chinatown, Mr. Ekberg’s rents from his Chinese tenants packed in like tinned fish have plummeted. Which is why he mortgaged the place in 1890 to Jonathan D. Watkins & Son. Daniel does not want to manage the place himself. Collect coins from coolies every month? No, thank you.
He crushes Mr. Ekberg’s note into a ball and flings it across the room, taking a swig of Scotch Oats Essence. Remarkable medication. He should purchase his own bottle. “Perhaps Jack London is right. Perhaps private property is no damn good.”
“Mr. Watkins,” Mariah says, “the War Between the States was fought so that my people would not remain someone else’s property. So that my people could own property of their own. Perhaps a privileged young gentleman like yourself should not be so quick to dismiss that which others have fought and died for. That which this great country of America was founded upon. Freedom, the pursuit of a free life, and owning one’s own house.”
By God, where does the auntie get her ideas? “Excellent speech, Mariah. But the numbers. In real estate, I mean. The numbers make my head ache.” At least Mr. Ekberg replied to Daniel’s notice to quit. Mr. Harvey, the other debtor who has defaulted on the shack in Sausalito, has had neither the manners nor the intelligence to reply at all. “Mortgages. Did you know that ‘mortgage’ means ‘death pledge’? It’s a deadly business, all right. Deadly boring.”
“And just how do you intend to pay Miss Malone for the rent?” Mariah asks pointedly. “Lying about all the day?”
Thank goodness he has to pay Miss Malone and not Mariah. “Do not worry your little head about that. That lady up there”—he points to the mermaid—“has paid my way around here for a while longer. Besides, that’s enough of your scolding.” He’s suddenly impatient with Mariah’s interrogation. She’s just the Negro maid. What she may think—or for that matter, what any woman, a carriage horse, or a dog may think—is not the proper subject of speculation for an educated gentleman. “My mother is in her grave. I don’t need or want another.”
Mariah stares at him. “I beg your pardon, Mr. Watkins, I forgot. You’re a-grieving.”
Daniel laughs sharply and empties the rest of the brandy bottle into his coffee. “I really should abstain from champagne at breakfast. Knocks me flat on my prat all morning. I don’t know how Miss Malone carries on so.”
“Miss Malone has got practice.”
“Thank you, Mariah. You may go.”
She turns on her heel and goes without another word. He hears her clattering across the hall to the suite she shares with Zhu Wong, riffling around in there. Is there a chance she could discover what went on in the second bedroom this morning? But no, she strides briskly out, clatters down the stairs, and bangs the front door so loudly the mirrors rattle in the smoking parlor.
Now and then he’s heard Mariah mention something about “going to a meeting” to Zhu or Jessie. He has no idea what sort of meeting a Negro maid would go to. A church meeting? Or perhaps a temperance meeting? Mariah is so sober, it makes his teeth ache. Or is there a union for house servants? Could be. There seems to be a union for nearly every occupation, avocation, and hobby. Is there a union for drunks?
Hah! There’s the ticket. He’ll start a union for drunks. The mustachioed senator and the great burly fellow who owns the bank on California Street and all the other fine gentlemen who stroll along the Cocktail Route will have themselves quite a laugh. They’ll march in the Fourth of July parade with a cask of whiskey set in a surrey. They’ll march in every damn parade the citizens of San Francisco marshal every month of the year.
He pulls himself to his feet, glances at the grandfather clock ticking in a corner of the parlor. Four o’clock in the afternoon. High time to stroll along the Cocktail Route.
He starts up the stairs to his suite when his sinuses suddenly loosen. He pulls out a handkerchief and touches it to his nostril, soiling the pristine cotton with a blotch of blood. What a puzzle. He hasn’t had a nosebleed since he was a kid in short pants.
Still, he’s feeling much better. Buzzing like a bee! In his suite, he peels off the morning jacket. Where is his shirt, his collar, his vest, his cutaway, his bowler, his boots, his tie? Where in hell is a pack of ciggies? He’s gone through the first pack today. He spills a handful of silver bits in his vest pocket, thrusts his derringer in the back of his belt, along with his Congress knife. He plucks a red carnation from the bouquet Miss Malone leaves outside his door every morning. What a pill she is. It’s quite remarkable, how she manages her sordid little empire. She told him she enjoyed Mr. Wells’s Time Machine, but the character of Little Weena reminded her too much of Li’l Lucy. A chit too trusting of strange men. Which is preposterous. Li’l Lucy is a whore, whereas Weena is a woman of the future. He tucks the red carnation in his lapel. Jessie says that a red carnation signifies, “Alas, my poor heart.”
And he’s off. He’s stepping out the door of 263 Dupont Street when a coolie barges in.
“Say, you there!” He catches the scoundrel by the wrist, reels him in. “Just where do you think you’re going?”
The coolie mumbles something and struggles to get away, but the struggle knocks his fedora halfway off his head, exposing his face.
“By God.” Daniel stares. “Miss Wong? Zhu? My angel?”
“Excuse me, Mr. Watkins,” says she—truly it is she—and moves around him, dashing for the stairwell.
He chases after, seizing her wrist again. Staring again.
Shock ripples through him like the time when he was ten and a horse threw him off. His nerves clang, his head spins. It cannot be true! He’s only just won her. Only just gained mastery over her. He sinks into a chair in the foyer. “What have you done to yourself?”
“Whatever is wrong, Mr. Watkins?” She’s smiling. Smiling!
He points at her clothes, speechless. The coolie’s costume is cut so loosely, he cannot glimpse the curve of her waist, the swell of her breasts and hips. Yet the certainty that her body lurks beneath the ample rags nearly makes him ill. Is she wearing proper undergarments?
She laughs. Laughs! “You like my new togs?” She twirls before him like a mad child. “Actually, you know, they’re quite modern. More like what I used to wear every day in my Now. Maybe I’ll start a fashion trend.” She claps her hand to her mouth. “Oops. I’m not supposed to say that. Anyway, what do you think?”
He hasn’t the slightest notion what she is raving about. “It’s illegal,” he says, scandalized.
“Illegal?”
“You’re impersonating a man.�
�
“I’m comfortable for the first time in months.”
“You could get arrested. No, don’t laugh, I really mean it. The police arrested one Miss Constance Malloy just last week for appearing in public wearing a suit jacket and trousers. And you’ve become degenerate.”
“How do you mean, ‘degenerate’?”
“Max Nordau’s treatise is quite explicit. You threaten all of human evolution with this bawdy display.”
“Bawdy display?” She stretches out her arms, glances down at herself. The blue denim hangs like a bag over her. “You see more of my bosom—what there is of it—in those dresses.”
“Nordau and the great Lombroso are both very clear. If humanity has struggled out of primal indeterminacy into true manhood, then woman must become ever more feminine, finding her refuge and her destiny within the family home. For you to dress like a coolie, for you to take on masculine qualities is to sink back into primal indeterminacy. In a word, devolution.”
“Why don’t you think for yourself instead of quoting harebrained philosophers? Surely you don’t really believe any of that drivel?”
“Belief has nothing to do with it. What’s true is true.” He smacks his brow with the palm of his hand. “Is it something I did, miss? Did I damage you so terribly this morning?”
She studies him with a bright, curious look like a bird cocking its eye at what the rain has brought up out of the muck. “Not half so much as you damage yourself, Daniel.”
Her look and her words and the throb in her voice disturb him. His hands tremble. By God, he needs a good stiff drink. Whiskey straight up. He doffs the bowler. “Don’t go temperance on me, miss. Go upstairs at once and change your clothes. I never want to see you pull this stunt again. Do you understand me? Now I’m off.”
He turns on his heel and strides out the door. But she follows him onto the street like a spaniel, dogging his heels. “Where are you going?”