by Howard Fast
Cassala still sat with his eyes closed, his hands clasped in front of him. Mark looked at Dan inquiringly.
“Eat some fruit,” Dan translated. “Otherwise, Maria will be angry.”
“If he says no,” Mark whispered, “we’re finished.”
“Did I say no?” Cassala snapped. “Did I say no? So why you whisper? Eat some fruit and let me think.” He turned to his son. “You’re listening, Stephan?”
“I’m listening, papa.”
He turned to Dan. “What about the submarines?”
“The Germans haven’t sunk an American ship yet. Maybe they won’t. We can get insurance on the ship–not on the cargo but on the ship. Tony, the profits are so big we can afford to lose a ship.”
“And the ships are fast,” Mark added. “According to what Dan tells me, we can outrun any U-boat.”
“It’s a first mortgage on the ships, Tony. Cross collateral, if we lose one, you got it on the others. When the insurance pays off, you got first call, regardless of the cargo. An absolute priority.”
“And Dan and I will go on the notes to the full extent of our personal property,” Mark said.
“Why?” Cassala demanded, annoyed. “Did I ever ask such a thing?”
“Neither did we ever ask you for a million dollars.”
Cassala turned to his son. “Well, Stephan, what do you think?”
“Papa, in the fifteenth century in Genoa, five ships would set out for the East. If one of them returned with a cargo of spices and the other four were lost or sunk, the one ship that returned paid for the others and a profit too.”
“I am not asking about Genoa in the fifteenth century.”
“I’m only saying, papa, that shipping has always been a thing of great profit. If Danny and Mark say they can do it, they will do it.”
“If they say they fly to the moon, will they fly to the moon?” He took an apple and began to peel it. “Eat a piece of fruit,” he said to Mark. “Eat.” Maria came in with a platter of cheese. “Now you bring the cheese,” he said. “Why not tomorrow?”
“Tony,” Dan said, “if this is impossible–”
“Impossible is what I can’t do,” he interrupted. “You think I send you away from here without it? But we’re a small bank. I never made a loan of a million dollars. Well, first time. How soon you need it?”
“It’s a question of getting the ships before someone else moves in.”
“Three days?”
“Wonderful, Tony.”
“I don’t know how to thank you,” Mark said.
“Don’t thank me. Talk. Stephan, get a pencil and a notebook. I want to know everything, who owns the ships, who built them, what kind engines–everything, because about ships I know nothing. You don’t just buy a ship. You pay a crew. You pay rent for a berth. You buy fuel and food. You pay longshoremen. So this is what I got to know, and what kind of cash you got on hand. So we talk.”
It was past midnight when they finished, and Cassala persuaded them to stay with him overnight. Maria took Dan to his room, kissed him, and said plaintively, “Light a candle for your mama, Danny. Go to mass. My soul will rest easy. I pray for you always–always.”
Walking down the hill to Grant Street and then into Chinatown, Dan reflected that he had never actually thought of Chinese as people with homes and families; but perhaps in that he was no different from most of the population of San Francisco. In all truth, he had never, before knowing Feng Wo, seen Chinese as individuals, as human entities, as people with feeling, with pain and joy and suffering–participating in an agony that was part of mankind. A Chinese beaten did not hurt, wounded did not bleed, and dead was without meaning. In the annals of the San Francisco Police Department, a dead Chinese was statistically different from a dead Caucasian, and in the eyes of the white population, a dead Chinese was good riddance to bad rubbish.
Now, on his way alone to have dinner with Feng Wo and his family, he walked slowly, lost in his own thoughts, trying to understand how Jean felt and what were the origins of her anger, her rage at the thought of spending an evening with Chinese. Yet how could he condemn Jean, thinking back to his own first meeting with Feng Wo, his patronization of the man, his own contempt for anything Chinese? It was as much in his blood as in Jean’s. Did he have the vaguest notion of where or how Chinese lived? In Chinatown–of course–he had an address on Grant Street, where he was now bound. Chinese lived in Chinatown; like rats, they had tunnels and burrows into which they disappeared at night to emerge again in the daytime. But homes that were actually homes, families, children–when had he ever credited them with the amenities of even the poorest and most wretched Caucasians?
He found the address, a wooden building divided into apartments, not so different from the building he had lived in as a boy, not so different from a thousand other narrow, three- and four-story wooden buildings that lined the streets of San Francisco. He walked up two flights of stairs in a dimly lit hallway to a door that was marked 2F, and he knocked. Feng Wo had apparently been waiting close to the door, because it opened immediately, and there he was, nervously smiling and nodding.
“So very glad to see you, Mr. Lavette. You honor my poor home and my unworthy family.”
Dan had assumed and discarded half a dozen complex stories to account for Jean’s absence. Now he simply said, “That’s very Chinese, Feng Wo, but my wife has a sick headache and I’m sure your family is pretty damn worthy. Anyway, I’m glad to be here.”
“Please to enter,” Feng Wo said. He led the way through a short and narrow hail, and then drew aside a curtain of beaded strands for Dan to pass.
The room Dan stepped into was evidently the family room, dining room and living room combined, a black table and chairs at one side of the room, a door to the kitchen, and opposite it a tiny hallway with doors off it to the bedrooms. There was a Chinese screen, quite lovely, but constructed of cheap Chinese printed paper pasted on a frame, and there were three nondescript easy chairs. The floor was painted deep red and polished with many coats of wax, and there were framed prints on the wall, Japanese rather than Chinese, but in keeping with the rest of the room. For some reason Dan did not entirely understand, the room, a hodgepodge of so many things, came together and gave him a feeling of comfort and intimacy. It was not familiar but neither was it strange; and across the room, facing him, a young woman stood, giving the place a final touch of magic, of Oriental wonder that transformed it from a melange of the cheap and ordinary to a place of mystery and excitement.
She was not a beautiful girl, certainly no more than eighteen or nineteen at the most, very slender, wearing a straight black dress that fell from her shoulders to her ankles; her skin was ivory, her features small and regular, her mouth well formed, and on her face there was an expression of great pleasure, a slight smile, a look of eager anticipation combined with childish and worshiping innocence. Or perhaps, wondering whether any other woman had ever looked at him like that before, simply a Chinese girl, hands clasped, bowing.
“I am so happy to meet you at last, Mr. Lavette,” she said, her voice low and musical.
“My daughter, May Ling,” Feng Wo said.
“So you’re May Ling. Well I’ve certainly heard a lot about you,” Dan said awkwardly, a little less than the truth, since Feng Wo had rarely mentioned his daughter.
“And I about you, Mr. Lavette. Please sit down and make yourself comfortable.”
“Please,” Feng Wo said.
Dan dropped into one of the chairs. May Ling disappeared into the kitchen. “You must excuse my wife for the moment,” Feng Wo explained. “She knows that you are a very important guest, and therefore she felt that she must prepare an important meal. I’m afraid it requires all her attention at the moment.”
May Ling returned now with a tray that held a tea kettle and several small cups. She placed it on a small table, which was flanked by the easy chairs, and then, kneeling in front of the table, she poured green tea and handed a cup to Dan and another c
up to her father. Feng Wo sipped at it and said softly, “Peace and harmony among those we know and touch.” Dan drank the hot, acrid tea. May Ling refilled his cup.
“Do you like Chinese food, Mr. Lavette?” May Ling asked. “My mother is a fine cook.”
“No, no, indeed,” Feng Wo said hastily. “A very ordinary cook.”
“Chinese food?” Dan said. “Aside from the Western omelets your father used to cook up for me, all I know is chop suey. It’s all right. Sure, I like it.”
“Well, we shall see.” She rose, went into the kitchen, and then returned with a platter of small, steaming dumplings. “Sau mai,” she told him.
“Oh? And what does that mean?”
“It means small, steamed dumplings, Mr. Lavette. You can pick them up with your fingers or you may use chopsticks.” She made a face and shook her head. “No, don’t use chopsticks.”
“My daughter, you see,” Feng Wo said, “is a product of American civilization. She speaks when she is not spoken to. She voices opinions which are not asked of her, and she chatters in front of the men in her family.”
“There is only one man in my family,” May Ling said gently, going to her father and kissing the bald spot on top of his head. “I do chatter in front of him. He is quite right. I am entirely without graces.”
Feng Wo’s wife, who had been in the kitchen during this, called out something in Chinese.
“We must go to the table now, Mr. Lavette,” Feng Wo said. “You know, Mr. Lavette, there is a rather strange thing about the Chinese people here. I myself am the third generation in America. My grandfather was brought here in eighteen fifty-one from Kwangtung Province, yet until I was five years old I spoke only Chinese. We were actually afraid to speak in English. But my wife is a woman from the old country, from Chekiang Province, which is well to the north of Canton–and so much confusion.” He sighed. “Such very bad Chinese and she learns no English at all.”
“You sit here, Mr. Lavette,” May Ling said, indicating one end of the table. “I will join you, because after three generations in America, as my father said, we have succumbed to customs of the barbarians. But not my mother. She would die first. So I am afraid you will just have to accept the fact that she will serve us. She is a lovely lady and a marvelous cook.”
“We can wait for praise,” Feng Wo said. “We need not invite it,” he added, looking at his daughter severely; but she merely giggled and looked knowingly at Dan. “Just you wait and see,” she whispered. He was not disappointed. A small, sad-eyed Chinese woman entered from the kitchen bearing a large urn and in it a great melon. As she put it down, Feng Wo held forth in Chinese, pointing to Dan, and the sad-eyed woman nodded and smiled with pleasure, and then stood there, in front of Dan, her eyes cast down, but the expression on her face explaining that she would have embraced him and kissed him were that at all proper. Then she remembered the melon and burst into a flow of Chinese directed at her husband.
“They both speak different dialects,” May Ling said, “but somehow they understand each other. I really think my mother understands more English than she admits to.” Now So-toy, Feng Wo’s wife, was spooning fragrant soup out of the melon–pieces of the flesh of the hot melon and ham and bamboo shoots and black mushrooms. The first bowl of the steaming soup was placed by May Ling in front of Dan.
“You don’t wait,” she told him. “You taste it immediately, lick your lips, and tell my mother how delicious it is.”
He did so. “Great–best thing I ever tasted! What do you call it?”
“Tun qua nor twai ton–or winter melon soup. So you see, Mr. Lavette, it’s not all chop suey, is it?”
“Truly,” Feng Wo said, “I apologize for my daughter. That is enough, May Ling.”
“No,” Dan said, “let her instruct me. By all means. Only tell me,” he said to May Ling, “when you are not lecturing on Chinese cooking, what do you do?”
“I am a librarian,” she said. And then, getting no reaction, she asked, “Does that shock you?”
“That you’re a librarian? Oh, no.”
“But a woman with a profession? My father is not quite certain it’s proper.”
“I think,” said Feng Wo, “it is the quantity of your opinions that shocks Mr. Lavette.”
“You see Mr. Lavette every day,” she said calmly. “I have been waiting almost five years to meet him. Eat your soup, father, and you too, Mr. Lavette, because,” she told him, “you do not understand Chinese cooking. My mother is preparing five extraordinary dishes which will all be ready at the same time. How that is accomplished is a secret we guard with our lives–” She halted and began to giggle again, and Dan caught it from her, and the two of them burst out laughing, while Feng Wo stared at them in amazement, finding absolutely nothing humorous in their exchange. Dan tried to stop but could not, caught in a fit of boyish foolishness that he had never actually experienced before, and May Ling finally leaped up and bore the tureen of soup into the kitchen. Dan tried to apologize to Feng Wo. “Please, forgive me,” he said.
“For laughing?” Feng Wo asked in astonishment.
“Well, it’s a silly kind of laughing.”
Feng Wo had never seen Dan Lavette like this, relaxed, easy, laughing. Dan asked his host for permission to remove his jacket. “But you are in my house,” Feng Wo said. “Please, feel free to do anything that will make you comfortable.” Dan took off his jacket and loosened his tie.
May Ling and So-toy came back now, bearing covered dishes which they set down on the table. So-toy served the food, and May Ling said, “Now you must forget that you ever ate chop suey, Mr. Lavette, which in English is ‘beggar’s hash.’ You see, my mother is Shanghainese–”
“Not really,” Feng Wo interrupted. “She comes from a tiny village to the south of the city. My grandfather was from Canton, and not only is the language different but the cooking too. I taught her to cook Cantonese, but her best dishes are Shanghainese.”
May Ling exploded her breath. “I said nothing. It would be disrespectful if I did.”
“You are disrespectful beyond belief,” Feng Wo said. “My ancestors shrink in their graves in horror.” Then he spoke in Chinese to his wife, who was still piling food onto the plates, and she smiled and nodded.
In all the years he had worked for Dan, he had never spoken this much. “Please eat,” May Ling said to Dan. “You see, my father is a very educated man, and from his father, he learned Mandarin, otherwise he could not speak to my mother at all, since in her village they spoke Shanghainese and she would not understand a single word of Cantonese.”
“You mean they speak more than one language in China?”
“Oh, many more than one language, Mr. Lavette, except that the educated people everywhere speak Mandarin, and my father is excellently educated, and when you have left, he will lecture me for at least an hour on my unmaidenly lack of modesty. But I am liberated–not at all easy for a Chinese woman.”
“You are certainly liberated,” Feng Wo said. “To my sorrow.”
She was laughing, and again Dan found her laughter irresistible. Then Feng Wo and May Ling both began to speak in Chinese to So-toy, who covered her mouth to suppress her giggles.
“You speak Chinese,” Dan said to May Ling in amazement.
“Do you think I grew up without ever talking to my mother? I was speaking Shanghainese and Mandarin before I ever knew a word of English. But I can’t speak Cantonese very well.”
“What am I eating?” Dan asked her. “It’s delicious. I never ate anything like this before. God, it’s good!”
Feng Wo spoke to his wife, who nodded in delight and heaped more food on Dan’s plate. “That’s stewed beef with tara root, wine, and sugar,” May Ling said. “We call it hon sau yo zo, and the fish is whitefish, with tomatoes, green pepper, pineapple, ginger, green onions, and shrimp. Tan soan yo. The shredded pork is sautéed with Chinese stringbeans–that’s a peasant dish that they eat everywhere–don’t they?” she asked her father.
Dan tried to pronounce it, and So-toy giggled and covered her mouth again. “And this?” Dan asked.
“Bean curd,” Feng Wo said. “You never tasted it?”
“Never. But I like it. I thought it was some kind of custard.”
“It is, sort of,” May Ling said. “It’s made of soy beans, and they used to import them from China. But now some Chinese farmers down on the Peninsula have started to grow the beans, and they’re much cheaper. It’s very hot and peppery, a real Shanghai dish, made with tomato sauce, red pepper, and garlic.”
“Ma paw do foo,” So-toy said with pride.
“I like Mexican food,” Dan said. “It reminds me of that.”
So-toy filled a side dish with cabbage, and May Ling said, “That’s my mother’s pride and joy. Kai yan bai tzi, sautéed cabbage with sweet cream and chopped dried shrimp. So if you just keep eating it and eating it, her day will be complete.”
“May Ling!” her father said disapprovingly, and then translated for her mother, who again covered her mouth to hide her laughter. Dan emptied his plate, and So-toy filled it again. He ate without shame, great quantities of food, washing it down with cup after cup of the green tea. “Tsa foo,” he ventured, May Ling laughing at his attempt to pronounce it. “Better if you just say green tea.” When So-toy came in from the kitchen bearing a royal mold of what May Ling described as eight precious rice pudding, or ba bau fa, he threw up his hands in despair and pleaded, “No more, no, please. I’ll never walk out of here.”
“But everyone said you are so brave, Mr. Lavette, fighting the pirates and sinking them with a shotgun, and now you surrender. You know, really, this is the triumph of all. I must sound like a Chinese cookbook by now.”
“You do,” her father agreed.