To All Appearances a Lady

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To All Appearances a Lady Page 15

by Marilyn Bowering


  They glared at each other, each wishing he was somewhere else. For they both had similar thoughts to contend with.

  Such as Noah Shakespeare reading out the names of firms and individuals who had had dealings with Chinese; Noah, who had, at the last workingmen’s meeting, produced a queue, which, he had said, he had gone to great pains to obtain, and which he intended (he said, drawing laughter) to keep as an heirloom.

  “No yellow slave shall eat our children’s bread,” and “Cut out the Chinese cancer,” they had shouted. Not to mention, “Boycott the Chinese employers,” and, “They that are not with us are against us.”

  “You were on that committee!” cried McMullen, breaking the silence. For he had recalled a recent report in favour of the Association starting its own laundries to break the Chinese monopoly on that business. “You’re Robert Haack!” Both men had turned pale.

  “I guess we both know what we’re talking about,” said Robert. For, of course, they both were workingmen.

  —

  It was then, know it or not, outside in the cold and damp night air in which all the smells of poverty had combined—cooking, smoke, fatigued bodies—that Haack’s future crystallized. Yet Henry McMullen had slunk away, and it appeared that Haack had been lucky, since McMullen had his own good reasons for keeping quiet about the encounter. He was the one who had been found smoking opium, he was the one with most to lose if the news got out. And there was no hope of explaining it away.

  And, on the other hand, what could McMullen say about Robert Haack? That Haack had arrived there after him in the company of a white woman and a Chinaman? That he had stood at the doorway and listened? No, it wouldn’t do. And besides, there were other white witnesses to support Haack.

  But, despite this, something had changed in the balance of Haack’s life. Two paths, his and McMullen’s, had met to make one wide road, and there was no going back.

  The divan keeper skidded up through the snow behind the would-be rescuers as they left. He hoped, he said to Lum Kee, whom he knew, that they would forgive his poor manners. They could see that his difficulty had been with his other guests, he hadn’t wanted to speak in front of them. He thought he knew for whom they searched: he thought it was Lum Kee’s niece, who had, indeed, entered the divan some hours earlier, but had left almost at once in the company of Lum Kee’s friend, the restaurateur, Sing Yuen. No doubt if they went to the restaurant they would find her safely with him.

  Smiles and bows all around, even some shaking of hands: for all felt they had come out rather well from the outing with whatever it was that most concerned them. India, that her failure to consider her sister’s weakness when she had agreed to work at the Tai June factory had not resulted in disaster; Lum Kee, that his niece was safe with his friend; and Robert Haack, that he had passed through a nightmare unscathed.

  —

  There were twenty brothels in the city as a whole. Seven of them were at the east end of Fisgard Street at Blanchard Street, where city boundaries lost meaning in the general dissolution of town to country, and where muddy fields and rickety dwellings dispensed with the pretension to civilization.

  But at the other end of Fisgard Street, it was a different matter. Here, deep in the underpinnings of Chinatown, out of sight of the merchant and upper classes, the trade in girls was part of the fabric. Over one hundred girls, young children, most of them, and none older than twenty, who had been sold in China and brought to the land of Gold Mountain as property, spent their lives in the star houses or in slatted crates in the alleyways, none larger than twelve by fourteen feet, with five or six other children. There was a pallet, a wash basin, a mirror, and a couple of chairs for furnishings. Here the girls lived beneath the clean bright sky of the New World as the men took their turns, and shivered and coughed and starved just as they had in China. And when, after seven or eight years of service, they were worn out and were turned out into the streets, most died within six months. Or committed suicide by swallowing matches or acid or opium.

  Yet, despite the commonplaceness of it, there were men in the midst of their own desperation, the numbing effect of suffering, thousands of miles from their families in China, who, in the crowded rooms of the tenements, listened to the cries of these children with pity and sent word to the reformer, Sing Yuen, telling of some particular girl’s situation. Although there was no law to protect those who interfered, and more than once the children were returned by the law to their owners.

  In this work, which required a delicate touch, Sing Yuen was glad to have India’s help: together they turned several of the rooms in the Fisgard Street house in which Lam Fan and India lived into a shelter for young runaway women. And with this work, as well, Robert Haack gave his assistance. For where Robert Haack went obstacles disappeared: customers melted like snow in spring from out of the brothels, and arguments against removing the children were stilled. For the question was (and the problem occupied many Chinatown tongues for some time), whose side was he on, and who would one offend by offending him? It was this uncertainty that helped India’s work go well, and that kept (though he’d never have guessed it) Yong Sam’s men from pressing Haack’s debt: there were motives, contacts, forces at work beyond understanding, and in this complex net it was wise (it was thought) to tread with much caution.

  Robert Haack: a man who liked to share himself, waiting for my mother at the Tai June factory or having a coffee in Sing Yuen’s restaurant, acting as escort, friend, companion, supporting the reformer’s daughter in her vocation, talking about books, or not so much talking as listening, and offering with his obvious flaws (his vanity, his occasional drinking) material for shaping. For so it must have been that India saw in Haack a man to her liking.

  And of course there was chemistry, and of course there was the fact that he needed her, for what would become of him on his own?

  —

  “How much chemistry, Fan?” I ask my stepmother.

  She looks up from the stove where I’ve put the kettle on to boil, askance.

  “What kind of a question is that, Robert Lam?”

  It won’t be long now until we pass Kains Island and proceed up Quatsino Sound. “It is my question, Fan, I’m India’s son, I have a right to know.”

  “To know things that should be private?”

  “Well, was he my father or wasn’t he? They did get married eventually.”

  “You know he wasn’t,” she snaps. “You are only asking to be difficult.”

  “I bear his name, Fan, that must mean something.”

  She scrapes her nails absently down the window glass, for she has turned away from the stove to look where we’re going.

  “Please don’t, Fan!”

  “I was wiping away the steam!”

  “You were not!”

  “I was!”

  There is a moment’s silence while we both try to recover our dignity.

  I take a deep breath. “It is a question I think is important, Fan. I’m not asking out of curiosity, believe me. The whole thing puzzles me. There’s something missing from what you’ve been telling me. The part of the equation that would put them together, make them fit properly.”

  “They enjoyed each other’s company.”

  “Fan,” I say warningly.

  “They were near in age; they were not like others in the city. Who else lived in two worlds, white and Chinese, like they did?”

  “How much, Fan?” I ask again.

  She sighs deeply, steaming up the glass, then wipes a circle clear with her finger. “Enough,” she says.

  “Enough?”

  “For me to worry about her.”

  —

  He talked to her. He told her things about himself he hadn’t thought of since he was a boy. Colours, for example: the dead grey-green of the river in the Carmel Valley in winter, or the liquid blue of the lupins in spring; the first snow he had seen, which he had mistaken for salt on the grass; the rattlesnake that had killed his pony, and how he was
beaten for it by the man his mother told him was his father, although he had never believed it, it was so unthinkable; the stars at night as he sat out with the goats, guarding them from coyotes; that is, who he believed he was, what he thought he’d become.

  Chemistry: which removes the brakes of logic and ignores the warning signs. Which does not ask, But what about after, what did you make of what you had to start with?

  Chemistry: which puts strontium 90 in cow’s milk, which makes the atom bomb. For I know what its power is, I know what it’s like when it goes off.

  Robert Haack: continuing, despite the warnings he had given himself, to follow my mother around, advancing deeper and deeper for longer sojourns into dangerous territory, who knew that Yong Sam’s men would never give up, and that the Association, once crossed, could ruin his life. Yet all might still have been well for him, going about on this charitable business, if it hadn’t been for coincidence, which could put a man not once but twice where he wasn’t wanted. And that man turn out to be Henry McMullen, workingman.

  Haack stood behind India as she opened the door to star house number sixty-one at the top of a flight of stairs. It was as cold inside as out, and Robert blew on his hands and peered down the corridor, which was lit at its end by a droppings-encrusted skylight. This mottled radiance revealed a length of closed doors.

  “Did he say which one?” asked India. Robert, who had begun rattling doorknobs, shook his head.

  India touched his arm. “Be quiet a minute, listen.” A tuneless voice rose and fell somewhere nearby. It was halfway between crying and singing. In mid-hallway a door opened a crack, and there appeared the face of an elderly man. He wore a black silk cap, and they could see his rag-wrapped shoes.

  “Are you Ah Luie?” asked India. “Did you send Sing Yuen a note?” The old man bowed but said nothing. A shower of sleet struck the roof, making Robert Haack jump. The outside door slammed shut, pushing in cold air up to their knees.

  “It’s all right,” said India. “We come from Sing Yuen. This is my friend, Mr. Haack. He is here to help.”

  “I have seen him before,” said Ah Luie. Robert blushed and twisted a few more doorknobs.

  “Could you show us where she is?” India asked. “Then we wouldn’t have to disturb you further.”

  “It does not bother me,” he said. “I do not like to see the child in here, that is why I sent the letter. My children are in China. I have a boy and girl.” His face twitched, and he rubbed at the circles beneath his eyes. “I will go home soon, in five years maybe.”

  Answering India’s unspoken question he elaborated, “I make dresses for ladies.” He gestured at the series of closed doors. “Nobody responds to knock before lunchtime. They must sleep sometime. But the child’s owner goes out in the mornings. Her name is Tai Ho. She is a very wicked woman.”

  He led them a few doors down and stood and waited while India rapped. There was a scurrying sound, back and forth, then it stopped. India opened the door. Inside the room, below a window, a child sat on the floor. She was tied to a table leg. An empty rice bowl was set a few feet from her. She looked to be about twelve years of age. Robert went over and began untying the rope that held her.

  “You like me?” the girl asked him, and tried to stroke his hand.

  “Tai Ho beats her,” Ah Luie said from the doorway. “I hear her at night. Tai Ho beats her three or four times a day.” On the girl’s wrist, a mass of bone showed a badly healed break.

  “What is your name?” asked India, who had led the child to sit on a cot, which, besides a stove and a chair, composed the room’s furniture.

  “My name is Gook Lang,” she said. “Ah Luie is correct. Tai Ho beats me with that.” She indicated a broken broomstick, which stood in a corner. She smiled almost proudly.

  “You don’t have to stay here,” said India. “Would you like to come and live with me?”

  “Do you have much money?” Gook Lang asked. “Tai Ho paid three hundred dollars for me.”

  “I’m not going to buy you, Lang.”

  The child pouted. “I am worth much money.”

  They heard the sound of Ah Luie’s door softly closing and turned to find that he had gone. “I think that means we’d better get out of here, India,” said Robert. He went into the hallway and tapped at Ah Luie’s door. The old man whispered through it. “Tai Ho is a very bad woman. She will come back soon.”

  As if summoned, there was a clatter on the steps, and a woman, angered at once by the sight of the open door of her room, ran in spilling water from the bucket she carried.

  “What are you doing in my house!” she screamed. India drew the child close.

  “I am taking this girl with me.”

  “She is mine. She belongs to me.” Suddenly, Tai Ho, as if struck by a thought, changed tack. She arranged her mouth into a smile and began to inch towards India and the child on the cot. “I am a good woman,” she said. “I look after her for nothing.” She picked a blanket up from the floor and held it out towards the girl. “She is a sick girl. She is always cold. I take good care of her.”

  “How did she break her wrist? How did she get those bruises?”

  “She is a clumsy girl. She all the time falls down.” Suddenly Tai Ho darted forward and thrust her hand beneath the cot’s mattress. And fumbled there fruitlessly.

  “My friend, Mr. Haack, has your knife,” said India coldly, rising and manoeuvring the child ahead of her.

  There was another noise in the hallway as one of the locked doors Haack had tried opened. Robert went out to investigate.

  “Excuse me, but you’ll have to let me by,” said the man who had emerged, stopped short at sight of them, then pulled his hat over his eyes. Black stubble broke up the planes of his face so that he was at first difficult, in the grey and spotty light, to recognize.

  Robert Haack put up his hand to stop the man. “You’re not in too much of a hurry to give us your name, are you?” he asked imperiously. As they looked at each other at close quarters, there was a dual intake of breath.

  “You!” said both.

  “What are you doing?” asked Henry McMullen in genuine astonishment. “Are you having me followed?”

  “Mr. Haack is doing his job,” intervened India, to whom the appearance of Henry McMullen was a reminder of a night she would rather forget. “He has every right to be here, as I’m sure you have not.”

  “Is that so?” said McMullen, who looked from India, holding Gook Lang’s hand, to Tai Ho and back to Robert Haack.

  “There’s no need,” said Robert to India, “I’ll take care of it.”

  But India was not to be stopped.

  “This is the second time, Mr. McMullen, that you’ve been caught out in circumstances that hardly do you credit. The second time you’ve been found, I say; not the second time you’ve been where you shouldn’t.”

  “India, please,” said Robert desperately, but to no avail, for she was swept away by that unfortunate zealousness to which the reforming mind is prey.

  “And by what right are you here, if I may ask,” said Henry McMullen.

  “It’s my job to be here,” said India. “I was asked to be here. I work for Mr. Sing.”

  “Ah,” said Henry McMullen with a lift of his eyebrows. He caught Ah Luie’s eye peering through an inch of open door. “Then it’s Chinese business that brings you.”

  “Yes,” said India, ignoring Robert Haack’s signals to be quiet, “both Mr. Haack and I are here at Mr. Sing’s request.”

  “Mr. Haack, too?” asked McMullen. “You don’t mean to tell me that he works for Mr. Sing as well?”

  “Of course,” said the reformer’s daughter. “We are here by rights; we are in his employ.”

  What made it worse, as Robert Haack knew, was that India was trying to protect him, lift him out of the context that men like Henry McMullen represented. It was more than enough, however, to demolish the fragile edifice that supported Robert Haack’s life.

  “Well,”
said Henry McMullen, looking very self-satisfied, “I guess you’re right, ma’am. People like me should stay away and leave it all to people like you and Mr. Haack here, who know the Chinese mind so well. No, I couldn’t say I was as close to them as all that.”

  Too late sensing that she had made a mistake, India took heed of Haack, who had gone stiff and quiet.

  “Robert?” she asked.

  “Get out of the way, India,” he told her, gently moving her aside. “McMullen here is annoyed at losing money. He can see we’re going to stop this child from earning his keep.”

  McMullen’s skin, beneath the stumpage of whiskers, paled.

  “You get going with the girl. I’ll be right behind you,” said Robert.

  India obeyed. And although she couldn’t grasp what it was about—how could she have known?—she felt that she had stepped through a door and found, instead of dry land, a vast expanse of waters, for which she had no experience, no compass. And in that expanse, measureless between horizons, stood the stranger she had known as Robert Haack.

  Gook Lang blinked in the deluge of light outdoors. There were two thuds, one after the other, inside, then Robert Haack came running down the steps behind them. His masquerade was at an end, and on his face was a mixture of relief and panic.

  He waved at them. “I’ve got to be going,” was all he said as he left them.

  “But Robert!” cried India, in need of an explanation. But there was none forthcoming. Haack had vanished from sight.

  Although in two days’ time the whole town knew what had happened. For Robert Haack’s name, printed in red and posted on every notice board in existence, was put on the Association’s blacklist.

  SIX

  As I listened to the why and the wherefore of procedure, the line slackened, there was another flurry of flashing foam on the surface as the winch wound up the slack, and the engines of the boat turned free again. Down the whale went, and when it showed it was accompanied by another which seemed to snuggle against it for an instant or two as they sped on ahead together.

 

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