by Howard Fast
“Good,” May Ling said. “Mother and I will clear and do the dishes, and that will give your stomach a chance to empty itself. Aren’t you pleased? Look at it–sweet rice, sweet red bean paste, raisins, ginger preserve, orange peel, lotus seeds, cherries, pineapple, kumquats, almond paste–oh, when you were a little boy, Mr. Lavette, did you ever eat the banana split supreme at Bundy’s ice cream parlor on Sacramento Street? I never did. I always dreamed of it, but we were much too poor then, but this is a sort of Oriental version–”
Feng Wo rose. “I have matters to discuss with your mother.” He looked at his daughter as if he had not seen her before.
“You’re a dear sweet man,” said May Ling, and then told Dan, “I am the most improper, badly bred Chinese daughter in this entire city. I manipulate my father and I avoid household duties that are the ordained lot of a woman. I am a feminist. Do you like feminists, Mr. Lavette?”
Dan nodded, grinning. “If you’re one, yes. I’m pretty ignorant, May Ling. I never went back to school after the earthquake.”
Both her mother and her father were in the kitchen now, with the door closed behind them, and May Ling leaned over to Dan and said softly, “I don’t always behave like this, Mr. Lavette. Let me explain. We never had a Caucasian in our home before. My father, poor man, was terrified. He worships the ground you walk on, and so do I, believe me, and I’m speaking quite seriously now. You are the great hero of my life, and I’ve heard stories about you for the past four years, so I feel I know you very well. My mother and father planned and discussed this evening for weeks, and I have been talking my head off to put them at ease. They both feel that I am a bona fide American product, a true barbarian, which is not true at all. You cannot grow up as a Chinese girl in San Francisco and deceive yourself into imagining that you are American. But perhaps I am more at ease with Caucasians since I work in a library. What I am trying to say is just that we all admire you and love you, and we want you to feel relaxed here and happy.”
“I don’t remember a better evening,” Dan said.
A week later, at breakfast, Mary Seldon said to her husband, “It would appear that your son-in-law has a habit of making the front page of the Chronicle.”
“He’s your son-in-law too.”
“Shipping line sold,” she read. “The firm of Levy and Lavette, local ship operators, has purchased the five cargo ships of Transoceanic Freight. The selling price is said to be upwards of three million dollars. For some months now, there have been rumors of the impending bankruptcy of Transoceanic–shall I read more?” she asked.
“No. I know all about it.”
“Where did the money come from?”
“Cassala, I expect,” Seldon said. “Of course, the cash payment must have been considerably less. You know, he came to us for the money first.”
“Did he? And you turned him down?”
“Not at all. We wanted time to consider it, but he stalked out in a high dudgeon. I think it was the sight of Grant Whittier that he couldn’t tolerate.”
“What does he have against Grant?”
“Ah. You would have to understand Dan to answer that–which you don’t.”
“But you do?”
“Somewhat, I think. I like him, but he’s a young bull and he can’t bear to be crossed. Sooner or later, he’ll stumble, I’m afraid. He has a habit of biting off more than he can chew.”
In 1906, before the earthquake and the fire struck San Francisco, literate residents of the city could boast that they possessed the finest public library west of the Rocky Mountains. If the railroad kings and the placer kings had done little reading, no one could accuse them of lacking a veneration for books. By 1878, Andrew S. Hallidie, who invented the cable car, and Henry George, the economist, got together with nine other prominent citizens and established a public library and reading room. Starting in a rented meeting hall, by 1906 the library had mushroomed out into an entire wing of city hall, one hundred and forty thousand volumes and almost thirty-two thousand library card holders. And all of it, the dreams and efforts of book lovers, went up in flames in a few hours. Undaunted, a library committee organized itself within weeks after the earthquake. Forty thousand dollars was appropriated by the city, and a frame building was constructed between Van Ness and Franklin on Hayes Street. Almost immediately, twenty-five thousand books were donated, and in the decade that followed, the temporary frame building filled to overflowing.
All of this May Ling told to Dan, making the point that to be a librarian in San Francisco was a little more than simply being a librarian.
At first he had no thought or intention of seeing her again. Fourteen hours a day were simply not enough hours to do what he had to do: put five oceangoing ships into operation. Mark took over a good deal of the work, booking cargo, dealing with the British and French trade commissions, working through the legalities of what could and could not be done as a neutral in a world at war; but that still left Dan with the problems of operation and crew and supply and loading and coaling and a thousand other details that he had neither anticipated nor provided for. He thanked God for Feng Wo, who could do almost anything, and he rose at six in the morning and stumbled into bed at ten or eleven at night–and found himself increasingly a stranger to his wife and his children.
Yet his thoughts turned more and more frequently, not to Jean, whose aloofness had become a fact of his life, but to the Chinese girl and to the single evening of laughter and joy that he had experienced with her. Then, one day at three o’clock in the afternoon, he dropped everything and walked out of the warehouse that contained their offices and shipping depot, got into his car, and drove over to Van Ness and Hayes. He sat in his car and brooded awhile, telling himself that what he intended was pointless and senseless. Then he went into the library.
A stout, friendly woman at the checkout desk looked at him with interest and informed him that May Ling Wo could be found straight back, all the way back, and then to the right. He went straight back, all the way back, picking his way through the stacks, and then to the right, and at a tiny desk hidden in a cave of books, he found her, scribbling onto a pad with an enormous open book in front of her. He waited until she looked up, asking himself, Will she be annoyed, angry, provoked?
No one of them. She looked up and smiled. “Mr. Lavette. What a pleasant surprise!”
“I got no reason to be here,” he blurted out. “I just wanted to see you again.”
“That’s a reason, isn’t it?”
“Yes, I guess so.”
“This,” she said, motioning to the limits of her little cave, “is the Oriental Reference Department. That’s such an imposing name, and I am it, and if you were wondering how the City of San Francisco became so liberal as to hire a Chinese, well, that’s the answer. They simply couldn’t find a Caucasian who could read and write Chinese. I would love to ask you to sit down, Mr. Lavette. They promised another chair weeks ago but never delivered.”
“That’s all right. I won’t stay.”
“Please. Don’t let me drive you away. If I were a proper Chinese lady I’d give you my seat. But as you know, I’m not.”
“Sure. Look, May Ling, when do you finish work?”
“At five, when we close. Why?”
“Well–look, I don’t know how to say this–”
“Just say it,” she said gently. “You want to see me after I finish work?”
“Right. I’m parked outside. It’s not much more than an hour. I’ll wait there in my car, and then maybe you’d go for a drive with me and have dinner? Only if you want to.”
“I know that.”
“I mean I want to talk to you. I just want to talk to you.”
“All right.”
“You don’t have to go home?”
“I can telephone my mother. But you don’t have to sit there for an hour. You can come back at five.”
“I’ll be there. It’s a yellow car. You can’t miss it.” Then he made his escape, so that she woul
d not have time to think about it or change her mind. He sat in the car, rehearsing in his mind what he would say to her and looking at his watch, the minutes dragging endlessly, feeling increasingly the fool, trying to understand what he was doing, what drove him; because it was not sex; he had not even thought of this slight, flat-chested girl in terms of sex; and he was not in love with her. He was in love with Jean; he never had Jean and he wanted her; nothing would change that; he kept telling himself that nothing would change that.
And then, suddenly, she was there, standing by his car in her black dress, a pink shawl around her shoulders, the oval-shaped face tilted, her dark eyes inquiring. He got out of the car and opened the door for her.
“I’m really very excited, Mr. Lavette,” she said. “I’ve never been in an automobile before.”
“It’s safe enough. You mustn’t be afraid.”
“I’m not. It’s hard to be afraid with you. You’re a very reassuring person.”
She watched with interest as he swung the crank and started the car. “We’ll drive across to the Presidio, if you like that, and there’s a place where we can park and get a good view of the ocean.”
“I would like that.”
He began the drive across town toward the ocean, groping in his mind for words, explanations, subjects, May Ling all the while sitting silently beside him, until at last he said desperately, “I’m trying to think of what I should say to you, and I can’t.”
“You don’t have to think about what to say to me. Can’t we just talk?”
“That’s it,” he muttered.
“Well then,” she said, “I shall deliver a short lecture on the birth and history of the San Francisco Public Library.” And when she finished, she said, “There, Mr. Lavette. We are not simply librarians. We inherit a tradition.”
“Will you please call me Dan!” he snapped at her.
“Are you angry at me?” she asked, puzzled.
“No, no. I’m not sore at you, I’m sore at myself. May Ling, can I talk to you, I mean, can I really talk to you? I mean I never talked to anyone–about what I feel inside–I never had to or maybe I never could, I don’t know.”
“You can talk to me, Dan. You can say anything you want to me. Anything. Because what I owe to you, I can never repay.”
“That’s bull.”
“It isn’t”
“God damn it, May Ling, I don’t want you to be grateful to me.”
“Then what do you want, Dan?”
“I don’t know,” he said miserably. “I’m married. I think I love my wife. She isn’t there.”
“I don’t understand.”
He drove on in silence for a while, and then he muttered, “I never whined about anything in my life.”
“You’re not whining, Dan.”
“I haven’t looked at another woman since I’m married.”
“Dan–will you listen to me?”
He glanced at her.
“Will you listen to me? I think you’re the finest man I ever knew. I have my own reasons for thinking so. Now I agreed to spend this evening with you. I don’t want you to apologize and I don’t want you to feel that you have to explain anything. I want you to try to feel the way you did when you came to our house for dinner. So no more explaining, because I am very happy. I am spending an evening with a man I honor and like. Now, have you ever read Charles Lamb’s ‘Dissertation on Roast Pig’?”
“May Ling, I never read anything. I’m as ignorant as the day is long.”
“Are you? Well, I know it by heart, and while you drive, I shall repeat it to you, slightly abridged, and you will understand why the Chinese are such excellent cooks.”
They reached Sutro Heights as the sun was setting, and they sat there, watching the dull red orb sink into a golden sea, the hills black and lonely in the distance.
“I liked that story,” he said.
“Thank you, Dan.”
When it was dark, she said, “The quiet of a wise man is not simply quiet, not made by him, but just as strong as he is.”
“That’s–that’s very beautiful,” he said. “I’m not sure I understand it.”
“I’m not sure either. I didn’t make it up. It was written by a Chinese philosopher whose name was Chuang Tzu. It’s my own translation, so I’m not sure it’s much good.”
“Are you hungry?”
“So much for Chinese philosophy.” She sighed. “No, not very.”
“Do you like Italian food? We can go to Lazzio’s.”
“Where you’ll be seen by your friends.”
“We’re doing nothing wrong.”
“And when your wife asks you what you were doing having dinner with a funny-looking Chinese lady, you will tell her that you were arranging to have your laundry done?”
It was the first time she had said anything that had taken him aback, and he replied indignantly, “I would never say anything like that. Anyway, you’re beautiful.”
“I must never tease you. Dan, we’re out here. Let’s eat at the Cliff House.”
“It has no class. The old place did, not now.”
“I don’t care. No one will see us. I don’t want to make trouble for you.”
That was the beginning. He saw her three times more during the next two weeks, always meeting her outside the library. He did not know what she told her parents, nor did he ask her, nor did Feng Wo’s manner toward him change in any way. He was expecting a change, looking for it, but there was none. Their relationship remained the same. When he kissed her, it was on the cheek, lightly, and there was no other physical contact. He simply knew that when he was with her, the churning, angry discontent within him disappeared. He realized that she possessed a perceptiveness and an intellect that was quite beyond him, but she never patronized him. She talked about books and philosophy and history, and he listened always with a sense of wonder that was turning into a kind of worship, frequently without understanding, yet hanging onto every word, grappling with it. She began to give him books to read, The Call of the Wild by Jack London and Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. It did not occur to him that she chose simple, readable books, and he read them, staying up half the night, not because he enjoyed reading but because he felt a desperate necessity to talk about something other than ships and the process of making money. Yet he found himself enjoying the stories.
Jean did not question his absence during the evenings he was away. Apparently, she accepted the fact that he worked long hours, and he felt that she was relieved by his absence. More and more, she was becoming a part of the Russian Hill circle of writers and artists. She gave a party–the first really large party in the new house–for Willis Polk and Bernard Maybeck, the two brilliant architects who were working on the Panama-Pacific International Exposition, scheduled to open the following year. It was an invitation that no one could refuse, and James Rolph, Jr., the mayor, long and deeply involved in shipping and navigation, was apparently the only one who noticed Dan’s absence and asked for him, telling Jean, “I am indeed disappointed. I looked forward to a talk with this young tycoon of yours.” But there were sufficient luminaries there that night, and no one else asked for Dan. Jean was rather relieved by the fact that Dan was elsewhere; she could never be sure of what he would say and whose feelings he would bruise; and her new friends were used to his absences.
It happened to be a very special night for both of the Lavettes. One evening, a week before the party, Dan said to May Ling, bluntly, which was very much a part of his approach to any subject, “You know by now that I care for you. You have become a very important part of my life.”
“But you still love Jean.”
“I don’t want to make love to Jean, if that’s what you mean. That happened being with you. I want to make love to you.”
They were sitting in a little Italian restaurant on Jones Street, near the wharf. Gino’s belonged to Gino Laurenti, who had been a friend of Dan’s father. It was a tiny place, frequented by the Italian fishermen, a place
where they were comfortably unseen and where they had come often.
May Ling looked at him thoughtfully, without replying, and he said, “You do understand me?”
“You’re a strange man, Danny. You never even kissed me on the lips.”
“That doesn’t mean I didn’t want to.”
“I don’t understand.”
“How do you feel about me?”
“Don’t you know?” she asked in amazement.
“No, I don’t.”
“You are absolutely the strangest man. Do know that if you put me into that yellow automobile of yours and informed me that we were to drive across the ocean to Hawaii, I would go. I really would.”
“That makes no sense.”
“What do you want me to say, Dan? I love you. I loved you from the moment you walked into our apartment and stood there, a little frightened, I think, in that spooky place in Chinatown, and so abashed, like an enormous little boy–”
“Why? Because I helped your father? Because I hired him?”
“Oh, you are stupid sometimes!” she cried, the first show of anger he had ever seen in her. “No! Not because you helped my father. Because you are you.”
Then he was silent, staring at his plate.
“Danny?”
He looked up at her now, still silent.
“Don’t you believe that anyone could love you?”
“I’m no good with women,” he muttered.
“Thank heavens.”
“Well, what do you mean by that?”
“I’m teasing you. I know I promised not to, so you must forgive me. Let’s finish our dinner.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Neither am I. Let’s go somewhere.”
“Where?”
“Any place you say.”
They got into his car, and he drove to a little inn in Broadmoor. He registered under the names of Mr. and Mrs. Richard Jones, and since they had no luggage, the night clerk demanded the rent in advance. He felt cheap and stupid, and he told her so, but May Ling only shook her head and smiled and said that it made no difference at all. He locked the door to the room, and then they sat on the edge of the bed, looking at each other.