The Immigrants

by Howard Fast

  And then, as the rebuilt city began to take shape, people reverted to the habits of civilization. The total destruction of Chinatown had given the Oriental population of the city a brief respite from that peculiar racial hatred that marked this city. For a matter of weeks, whites were kind to the Chinese. That came to an end. For three weeks, San Francisco was a city without saloons or prostitutes; that too came to an end, and nowhere in the city was that marvelous American aptitude for organization and construction better exhibited than in that area which had once been the Barbary Coast. Within three months after the great fire, almost a thousand saloons and whorehouses had risen phoenixlike out of the ashes. At the same time charges were brought against Abe Ruef, the city boss, and Mayor Schmitz, his friend and co-worker, that, in taking advantage of the earthquake and fire, they had granted monopolies in transportation and utilities in return for enormous bribes.

  Life had returned to normal in San Francisco. City planners had drawn up splendid projections for the rebuilding of the city, holding that never again would a city such as this have such an opportunity to rebuild from ashes. The people ignored the plans; they wanted homes, not utopia, and if they were warned against the consequences of pushing a million tons of rubble into the bay–well, where else could it go? The city mushroomed. Rebuilding became a race, and the area around Powell and Market earned the name of the “uptown Tenderloin” with an overnight, jerry-built creation of saloons, restaurants, and music halls. The cable cars were put back into service, and once again they crawled up and down the steep hills. A month after the earthquake, the Orpheum Theatre opened, a month later the Davis Theatre, on McAllister near Fillmore; and then in reasonably quick succession, the Park Theatre, the Colonial, the Novelty, the American. During the following year, there were seven strikes, the opening of six new banks, and the sentencing of Mayor Eugene Schmitz to five years in San Quentin for corruption. The city lived again.

  And with the passing of the next two years, one might walk from East Street to 20th Street, from Van Ness to Bryant Street, and see no sign or indication that this area had once encompassed the greatest civic tragedy ever to strike an American city.

  The year 1910 began with a month that saw the laying of the cornerstone of the American Music Hall Theatre, on Ellis Street between Stockton and Powell, and in the same month, four other new theaters opened their doors, causing the San Francisco Chronicle to boast that no other city except New York could rival the number or variety of San Francisco’s theaters. The newspaper did not boast that according to the most recent count, there were over two thousand saloons of one description or another and half as many whorehouses.

  Well, that too was a sign of life and vigor. Once again, the great jewel of a city sat white and gleaming upon its great hills, with the magnificent blue expanse of the bay beneath it and around it.

  For two hours, Feng Wo, a Chinese man in his midthirties, had been waiting on the wharf. He was a slender man, of medium height, and neatly dressed in an ancient black suit that had been carefully patched and repaired in a dozen places. He wore a white shirt, very dean, and a black tie, and his cracked shoes were polished until they glistened. His dark felt hat was somewhat large for his close-cropped head, but he wore it with dignity and held himself very straight. He carried a folded newspaper under his arm, and inside he was filled with a desperation that was almost like a sickness. He had not eaten for two days.

  He had stationed himself early that morning in front of a two-story shanty built of wood frame and siding and standing out from the wharf on piles. For all of its crazy-quilt construction, the shanty appeared to be in good repair, and the door of the building, polished redwood with bright brass fittings, gave it an odd distinction. During the two hours since he had arrived there, Feng Wo had studied the building until he felt that he knew every board and beam in its construction.

  Now the fishing boats were coming in and tying up and unloading their catch. Feng Wo watched them, glancing from the shanty to the boats and then back to the sign above the door, where in polished brass letters was spelled out: DANIEL LAVETTE FRESH FISH AND CRABS. During the two hours he had been there, on the busy wharf crowded with buyers and sellers and fishermen and commission men and market owners, he had spoken to no one and asked no questions. That was only common sense and reasonable caution. This was 1910 and San Francisco, and he was Chinese. He lived and breathed and walked and talked by sufferance, and there was no moment in his life when he was not alert and wary.

  Now his eye was caught by three boats coming into the dock in precise, triangular formation, sloop-rigged and under sail with their motors quiet. In the lead boat, a massive hulk of a man, standing in the bow, his black, curly hair blowing in the wind, gave the signal to drop the sails and then leaped onto the wharf with remarkable grace and agility. He was a very young man, no more than twenty-one or twenty-two, Feng Wo decided, but with a total air of authority and a sense of knowing precisely what he was about. He made no wasted motions, and as the boats tied up, he issued a few terse orders, paused to watch the beginning of the unloading of the catch, and then strode past Feng Wo to the shanty. He carried his oilskin jacket flung over one shoulder and walked with a slight, rather unself-conscious sway and swagger. He had a large head, a heavy face, a small nose, and a wide, sensual mouth–a face of contradictions, Feng Wo thought, a face which defined him at one moment thus and the next moment as something else entirely.

  At the door to the shanty, he paused and glanced at Feng Wo. Their eyes met. He studied Feng Wo carefully from head to foot, then took keys out of his pocket, opened the door, entered, and closed the door behind him.

  Feng Wo sighed deeply and thought, “No use. No use at all.” Still he had spent better than two hours here and he had no other place to go. He went to the door of the shanty, took off his hat, and knocked.

  Silence; then steps; then the door swung open and the tall man stood there, towering over Feng Wo.

  “Well?”

  “You are Mr. Daniel Lavette?”

  “Yes.”

  “Please, sir, with all humility, may I announce that my name is Feng Wo. I am thirty-four years old and in good health, and I am a bookkeeper.”

  “What the hell–”

  “Please, sir, please do not send me away without hearing my argument. Here in the News”–he held out the paper–“here I read your advertisement.”

  “The ad says four P.M.”

  “And I am Chinese.”

  “You sure as hell are,” Lavette agreed.

  “And if I appeared at four, as the advertisement says, there would be ten Caucasians here. Then who would hire a Chinese bookkeeper?”

  “Only a horse’s ass, which I am not.” He turned away, beginning the process of closing the door in Feng Wo’s face.

  “Please, Mr. Lavette, I beseech you. I have not eaten today or yesterday.” The words flooded out. “I have a wife, I have a daughter of thirteen years. Give me a chance. I am honest. I will work any hours you choose. Pay me what you will. Please, please, I beg you.”

  The door opened again, and Dan Lavette stood there, staring at him. Moments passed. Feng Wo was acutely conscious of all that his world contained, the warm sun, the salty wind from the bay, the fishermen hawking their catch and calling their prices, and the tall young man liz front of him.

  “What did you say your name was?”

  “Feng Wo, Mr. Lavette.”

  “Where did you learn to keep books?”

  “I taught myself, sir.”

  “Do you know what a ledger is?”

  “Yes, sir, I do.”

  “Do you know what double entry is? Have you ever worked with a twelve-column analysis book?”

  “I am not stupid, sir. I can learn anything you wish me to.”

  “I ought to have my head examined,” Lavette said. “I swear I ought to. All right, come on in.”

  Feng Wo followed him into the shanty, trembling now, unable to believe that it was actually happening. I
nside the door was a single large room, a rolltop desk, a kitchen table and chairs, a three-drawer wooden filing cabinet, and a rack from which hung two big sea slickers, to which Lavette added his oilskin jacket. On the walls a calendar, an enormous stuffed fish, an old-fashioned whaling harpoon, and a shelf of canned goods. A small gas stove and a coffee pot completed the furnishings. A narrow staircase led up to the second floor.

  “I live up there,” Lavette said, indicating the staircase. “This is the office.” He pulled a chair out from the table. “Sit down. What the hell do I call you?” he asked as Feng Wo seated himself. “Feng–Feng Wo?”

  “As you wish, sir.”

  “Feng–all right, Feng then.” He pulled open one of the file drawers and took out a plate and a fork and spoon and a can opener. “I don’t know what a Chink eats. How about canned beans?”

  “I am not here to eat. Please, sir, I am here to work.”

  “Bullshit,” Lavette said, as he opened a can of beans and set it to warm on the gas stove. “You’re shaking like a leaf. You ever work for a white man before?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Where did you work?”

  “I did coolie work on construction, pick and shovel. Then I got sick. I hurt my hack. I tried pick and shovel again–I can’t.”

  “I’d give you beer, but that’s no good if you’re starved. Can you drink coffee?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Lavette emptied the half-warmed can of beans into the plate and set it in front of Feng Wo. He poured him a mug of coffee, and then sat down to face him as he ate. The beans were like honey in Feng Wo’s mouth, and he fought for control, fought to eat slowly and politely, recalling with each mouthful that his wife and daughter had also not tasted food for two days.

  “So you want to be a bookkeeper,” Lavette said. “Well, screw the lot of them. Why in hell shouldn’t I hire a Chink? Let them burn their asses. But let me tell you this, Mr. Feng–I’m no soft touch. If you can’t do it, I’ll boot you out of here on your yellow backside. I may look young and innocent, but I take no horseshit from anyone. I got three boats and eleven men on my payroll, so this job is no cinch. Now I want you to shape up here at eight o’clock tomorrow morning. I’m not going out with the boats, and if you are what you say you are, we’ll spend the day trying to make some sense out of my books.”

  Feng Wo had finished eating. He rose, picking up his hat and his newspaper. “I would try to thank you, Mr. Lavette, but I don’t know what to say. I am so grateful.”

  He turned and started for the door.

  “Hold on!”

  He paused and slowly faced Lavette, who said to himself, My God, the poor bastard’s terrified. And then aloud, “Don’t you want to know what I pay?”

  “Whatever you pay will be sufficient.”

  “Twelve dollars a week to start. That’s not the best, but it’s not the worst.” He got up, reached into his pocket, and took out a wad of bills, peeling off two fives and two singles. “Here’s a week’s pay in advance. Get your kid some food. But if you don’t show here tomorrow, I’ll peel your yellow skin off, and remember that.”

  At thirty years of age, Mark Levy’s wife, Sarah, still had the appearance of an ingenuous girl of eighteen. She had flaxen hair which she wore tied in a tight bun at the back of her head and wide, pale blue eyes set far apart. She defied all the stereotypes of a Jewish woman; she was slender, small-breasted, and long-legged, and she gave the appearance of being perpetually startled. She had been born in the city of Kiev, in Russia, and brought to the East Side of New York City at the age of seven, and she still had a slight foreign accent, which her husband felt enhanced her slow throaty speech. This together with a certain vagueness in her manner gave people the impression that she was a dull and phlegmatic person, an impression that was far from the fact; and indeed her husband, who worshipped her, took a peculiar comfort in the fact that her imagination and passion were so well concealed. She was a second cousin once removed or something of that sort–Mark was never entirely clear about their family relationship–and they had come together through an arrangement between his family and her family, done in the old European manner without their ever seeing each other before they were pledged–after which Sarah was shipped across the country, three thousand miles by rail and coach, a girl of seventeen tagged and addressed for all the world like a parcel. For two months before the wedding, she had lived in his father’s house–which was four rooms behind the chandler shop on the Embarcadero–and during that time, Mark fell totally and romantically in love with her. For her part, she accepted him with the same easygoing tolerance with which she accepted all else that befell her.

  Now, married almost thirteen years, with the older Levys dead and buried, she was contentedly mistress of the chandler shop, the four rooms behind it, a son, Jacob, who was eleven years old, a daughter, Martha, who was five, and a husband who took her advice and asked her advice without ever truly understanding that either was the case. Even when she once casually suggested that he use copper rivets to reenforce the pockets of the heavy cotton trousers he sold to the seamen and the fishermen, and thereby tripled his business, he was not certain that the idea was not originally his own.

  Now, with the five-year-old Martha clinging to her skirt, she was engaged with her husband in their annual and fruitless attempt to take inventory in the shop, he calling out the items, she writing them down, when Daniel Lavette entered the store. They stopped what they were doing and stared at him.

  “I want four new nets,” Lavette said, “and I want the Massachusetts stuff and not the garbage they make out here. So if you haven’t got them, order them for me.”

  Still they stared at him.

  “What the devil–”

  “That suit doesn’t fit you, Danny,” Levy said.

  “It fits.” He unbuttoned the tight jacket of the blue serge suit he wore and pulled in his stomach. “It fits. I haven’t had it on for a year or so. Maybe I filled out.”

  “The sleeves are two inches short. The pants are short.”

  “Let him be,” Sarah said. “He’s grown.”

  “I haven’t grown. I’m twenty-one years old. You don’t grow at twenty-one.”

  “When did you buy the suit, Danny?”

  “Two years ago.”

  “Well, you’ve grown. I don’t think I ever seen you in a suit before. What’s the occasion?”

  “It doesn’t look right, does it?” he asked Sarah.

  “It’s all right.”

  “Sure, it’s fine. I’m only going to have lunch with Thomas Seldon at the Union Club–that’s all. God damn it to hell, I look like a monkey!”

  “Take off the jacket,” Sarah said gently. “I’ll lengthen the sleeves. It won’t take more than a few minutes, and I’ll press out the creases.”

  “Seldon? You mean the Thomas Seldon?”

  “That’s right.” He was staring at his cuffs.

  “Oh, take it off, Danny,” she said.

  He pulled off the jacket and handed it to her. Levy, riffling through the pages of a catalogue, said, “That Massachusetts netting is up twenty percent. It comes from Fall River. Seldon–come on.”

  “Look, Mark,” Lavette said, bristling, “to me Seldon’s another guy–that’s all.”

  “He only owns the second biggest bank in the city, that’s all.”

  Sarah, small Martha still clinging to her skirt, had taken the jacket inside. Levy motioned for Lavette to follow. “Come on, I’ll feed you a beer.”

  “I don’t want any beer on my breath. In one hour, I’m with the nabobs at the Union Club.”

  They sat around the kitchen table. Sarah cut and stitched with speed and skill. Dan Lavette, grinning like a small boy at Levy’s disbelief, told how it had come about. He had walked into the Seldon National Bank, identified himself, and asked for a loan of thirty thousand dollars. He didn’t get the loan, at least not yet, but he was introduced to Thomas Seldon himself and invited to lunch at the Union Club
to discuss it further.

  “That’s chutzpa,” Levy said admiringly, “pure, unadulterated chutzpa.”

  “What’s chutzpa?”

  “Yiddish for gall, nerve, arrogance–whatever. Anyway, what on earth do you want with thirty thousand dollars?”

  “The Oregon Queen’s for sale.”

  “So?”

  “They’re asking a hundred and fifty thousand. I can get her for a hundred, twenty thousand down and ten thousand more to put her in shape.”

  “Danny, the Oregon Queen’s an iron ship. She’s a dead-lost experiment.”

  “Like hell she is. She’s rusty and she never had a fair shake, but her hull is good and her engines are good. There’s money in the lumber trade. This city eats wood like crazy, and there’s no end in sight. I can ship enough timber in one year to pay her off, and from there on it’s pure gravy.”

  “Danny, you got three boats mortgaged to the hilt.”

  “And I’m a fishmonger and my father was a fishmonger.”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  “It stinks of fish and it stinks of the Embarcadero. We’re down here and the nabobs are up there on Nob Hill.”

  “You’re an ambitious young man,” Sarah said. “Mark isn’t. Try on the jacket.”

  “Why didn’t you go to Tony Cassala?” Mark asked him.

  “Because Tony can’t say no to me, and if I asked him for his blood, he’d give it to me. I don’t want any handouts. I’m not asking for charity. This is a risk, but it’s a risk that makes sense.” He pulled on the jacket. “How does it look?”

  “It’s better. Take it off and I’ll press the sleeves.”

  “Suppose the whole thing blows. Seldon can afford it. Tony can’t.”

  “Don’t underestimate Tony,” Mark said. “Look, loosen your belt and drop the pants. It looks better that way. And for God’s sake, if you’re moving up to Nob Hill, get yourself a decent suit of clothes.”