Down to a Soundless Sea

by Thomas Steinbeck

  The vision he took to his dreams was that of the girl watching him. Her white cat reclined against her quilted jacket as though the girl’s lap was its natural setting. The cat too watched Sing Fat and flicked the tip of its tail every so often as a display of applied feline disinterest. The last thing Sing Fat recalled, before a medicated sleep towed him under, was an innocent observation that hinted at a note of disquieting coincidence. The girl and the cat wore identical expressions and shared the same languorous bearing. One could almost believe that they were related by blood. With one last quizzical glance in their direction, Sing Fat surrendered to the apothecary’s potions and drifted off in a warm, safe fog.

  Sing Fat awoke the next morning with an exquisite sense of well-being, but when he discovered that he was all alone he became somewhat apprehensive. The fact that the girl and her cat were no longer watching over him brought on twinges of sadness faceted with relief.

  For a few moments Sing Fat was forced to confront the possibility that everything he had experienced in the throes of his illness might have been nothing more than a fevered dream, and yet the details of his present surroundings were as he remembered them. Now that the morning’s light, cast from a small window high in the rear of the room, illuminated more of his environment, Sing Fat realized that he must have been attended to in the workshop and storeroom of the apothecary’s establishment.

  The worktable, with its myriad instruments, little boxes, and porcelain jars, was well within sight, but the back of the room, which had remained hidden in the dark, now revealed stacks of hinged wooden boxes and large jars perched on long shelves. Each was labeled with elaborate characters, but since he had never seen such ciphers, Sing Fat could not understand what they really contained.

  As he rose from his low pallet and swung his legs to the floor, Sing Fat heard a door open to the accompaniment of a tinkling bell. He listened as two muffled voices conversed for a moment. Then the door behind him opened and a pleasant-looking old woman came in carrying a covered tray, which she placed on a low table next to Sing Fat’s bed. The old lady nodded, said that she hoped the young master was feeling better, and encouraged him to eat while the food was hot. She then bowed politely and withdrew the way she had come.

  The savory odor of the meal reached out and seduced Sing Fat at once. Setting aside all other considerations for the moment, he surrendered to his appetite. He could not remember the last time he had eaten so well. All the delightful flavors and aromas, so long excluded from camp rations, came back to greet his palate with childhood memories of bounteous kitchens and long tables of laughing people.

  It was just as he set his chopsticks across the empty bowls that the door opened again and the apothecary entered carrying a paper-wrapped parcel and a bundle of clean clothing that proved to be Sing Fat’s own.

  The apothecary introduced himself as Chow Yong Fat and was truly taken aback when his guest responded with his own surname, Sing Fat. The elder Fat smiled broadly and said that the gods must have guided the young man’s footsteps. Though there was no direct relation between the two men, the elder Fat insisted on calling the younger man “cousin” as an acknowledgment of their distant clan affiliation.

  When Sing Fat hefted the parcel he knew at once that it must be his gold. When he unwrapped the canvas belt he found all the pockets still stitched and sealed just as he had left them.

  He thanked the elder Fat for his diligence and kindness and further expressed his gratitude for the efforts expended to save his withered remains from certain death and an unmarked, roadside grave. He said that he would be honored to generously recompense the sage apothecary for all his masterful efforts.

  The elder Fat bowed his head politely and said that while under his roof payment was not necessary, but if the young man truly felt an obligation, perhaps he could honor the debt with simple answers to a few questions. Sing Fat nodded his head in turn and declared a willingness to respond to any queries his host might have.

  The elder Fat was most curious about Sing Fat’s adventures. He was impressed with the young man’s parentage and education and sympathized deeply with the story of his family’s destruction. The apothecary knew only too well of the predations inflicted by the burgeoning class of petty warlords in China. He appreciated Sing Fat’s resolution to escape the escalating bloodshed.

  The apothecary himself had suffered from the military rivalries sparked by the end of the Boxer Rebellion and had chosen to come to America to help minister to fellow countrymen laboring like ants to build the local railroads.

  But the elder Fat was most amused with the methods by which Sing Fat had amassed his little fortune. Gleaning discarded specks of gold from the waste of the placer mines required cunning, patience, and attention to detail. These qualities indicated a sense of diligence and perseverance not readily found in most young laborers.

  The older man then tactfully inquired what Sing Fat’s future course might be and, for the first time, found a degree of confusion on the part of his guest. Sing Fat shyly admitted that he was not sure what he should do. His first priority had been to escape the lethal labor of the mines. He had thought to go into business of some kind, but knowing so little of the country and the prospects available to a foreign stranger, he had set aside any contemplation on the matter until he became better informed.

  Sing Fat freely admitted that he had chosen to take on the challenges one at a time and had hoped that after he had found refuge amongst his own people, some worthy elder might be able to counsel him on the best policy to follow. He was forthright when it came to self-criticism and expressed total ignorance in the ways of Western commerce. He had been groomed, he said, to take on the responsibilities of his ancestors’ estates, and he knew little else. Now that such things were no longer possible, he would have to apprentice himself to a new profession and start all over again. He would be content with any occupation except mining, he said with a laugh. Outright slavery seemed preferable to mining in his estimation. The elder Fat chuckled knowingly in agreement.

  During the length of the informal interview, Sing Fat had been bursting to ask the apothecary about the mysterious young woman who had attended him, but he knew that etiquette and custom frowned on a stranger’s curiosity in these matters. Sing Fat had hoped that perhaps his host would incidentally mention her presence or her name, but that expectation went unfulfilled, and the prospect that he might never see the girl again tormented him to an extent he had never thought possible.

  Sing Fat had little or no experience with women, at least with those not directly related to his family. He had never been counseled about what to expect from his own emotions in these matters. In fact, as a youth, he had been scrupulously tutored to keep his sentiments about women under tight rein at all times. A man susceptible to the vicissitudes of temperament and desire was considered vulnerable and at risk to all manner of reversals in life. Sing Fat now found it almost impossible to leap this hurdle of parental guidance, particularly as it had delivered him from personal calamities in the past.

  The elder Fat mused upon what he had heard, looked up, and asked what profession seemed most appealing to the young man. Again Sing Fat shook his head and pleaded bewilderment. But any path, he said, that would lead a soul to a competent livelihood, providing ample ability to support a family, was worthy of consideration.

  He was not proud or overly ambitious, he said, and entertained no desire to return to his long-dead social status. But he was anxious to nurture any blossom, no matter how small or solitary, of his truncated ancestral tree. If he could not do so in the heart of the Middle Kingdom among his own people, then he would attempt a minor resurrection of his clan abroad. Here in the land under the Gold Mountain he would make peace with his ancestors and his fate.

  The apothecary, having taken up his place at his worktable, looked up from his concoctions and studied the young man for some moments. Then he said that perhaps the gods had indeed led the young man to his present circumstances wi
th a purpose. The elder Fat asserted that he was, at present, searching for just such a person to bring into his learned occupation.

  The work required a studious and disciplined nature to be sure, but the future might shine brightly for a young man who understood the importance of such a meaningful undertaking. The people had great need for masters of the healing arts. He had hoped to draw upon the talents of his sons one day, but that day would never come. This last statement obviously pained the elder Fat, and it took a moment for him to regain his composure.

  Chow Yong Fat said his beloved children had passed into the shadow world to join their venerable ancestors eight years past. They had died of an exotic malady contracted from the whites. Sadly the illness had proven unassailable and immune to all his medical skills. His poor wife had died of protracted anguish, grief, and shame a year later.

  All his love, talent, and medicine had shown itself even less effectual in that instance. When her two beautiful sons died, the apothecary’s despondent wife had abandoned the will to live. She expired under the darkest of all human veils, he said: self-recrimination, remorse, and illusions of culpability.

  Since then he had carried on alone. Sing Fat could see these confidences distressed the elder Fat, but he chose not to interrupt with formal condolences until his host had concluded his story.

  Chow Yong Fat had a few distant relations, he continued, but they lived to the north in Santa Cruz. After laboring on the Monterey and Salinas Valley railroad, they had taken to the fishing trade with only marginal success. Abandoning that vocation as too dangerous and unprofitable, some had taken on an even more perilous occupation laboring for the California Powder Works on the shores of the San Lorenzo River, while others worked as lime packers for the Henry Cowell Lime and Cement Company.

  Unfortunately their endeavors had a marked tendency to narrow their focus to the health of their purses. They knew, or wanted to know, little else. Their children, he confessed, enjoyed scant education and seemed content, as did their elders, to make their living in the same traditional ways.

  The apothecary said that he had welcomed several hopeful youths into the mysteries of his profession over the years, but in general they had shown themselves helplessly thin-witted and exhibited only a shallow inclination to improve their lot. They had all eventually returned to their nets or their beet fields.

  It had saddened the old man, of course, but he ascribed their reasoning to an exile’s mentality. It was as though life among the unsympathetic barbarians had weathered all the intellectual vigor and spiritual resolution from their souls. He did not fault them, however. He well knew what anguish and suffering his race had endured in the West. He understood that rudimentary survival was challenge enough for such creatures.

  Perhaps in a future age they would find themselves and return to the path, but for the present, the apothecary was still in need of a suitable young man to bring into the profession. There was more work than time, and eligible candidates were as rare as flying teapots. The elder Fat began to shred dried gotakola leaves into a brass bowl as though he had said nothing of any real consequence.

  Sing Fat was taken aback by the apothecary’s informal proposition. While working the mines, he had hardly hoped to dream beyond the proprietorship of a laundry or a small-town market. Honest endeavors to be sure, but hardly the kind of occupation to animate the intellect or establish a venerable social standing to pass on to his children. To be of real service to his own people also suggested intrinsic rewards not found in lesser occupations.

  If the apothecary’s suggestion were to be credited, and Sing Fat saw no reason why it should not, there might also be a likelihood that he would see the comely and enigmatic young woman once again. That prospect alone ameliorated any lingering reservations he might have entertained. Though he would openly express concerns about his faculty to undertake such a singular enterprise, the prospect enticed him to savor the possibilities.

  Returning from fanciful sparks of supposition, Sing Fat assumed a solemn expression and inquired if his host was seriously suggesting that a refugee and fugitive miner would make a suitable apprentice for such a lofty calling as medicine. Aside from his earlier education and an innate affection for mathematics, he had little to recommend him for such a scrupulous calling. Of course, Sing Fat was always willing to study and apply himself diligently to every task set before him. Such conduct was second nature to one raised a patrician, but that time was long ago and counted for little.

  Sing Fat was polite but candid in asserting that if their positions were reversed, he would be far more circumspect about such an important decision. He said that his father and numerous uncles had been meticulous about social, political, and professional credentials.

  Perhaps he must fault his own strict upbringing, but Sing Fat conceded that he was baffled by his host’s brisk appraisal of a newcomer’s aptitude for such a position. Especially an outsider whose only noteworthy qualification seemed to be that he had collapsed unconscious at his benefactor’s doorstep. Sing Fat smiled and said he had never heard of a doctor asking a patient to assume the mantle of the arts by which he was cured.

  This seemed to amuse the elder Fat. He said the question was worth scrutiny, but that necessity was the author of spontaneous decisions and he preferred to trust his own intuition in such matters.

  Their congenial and tactful banter continued in this manner for some time, with tea offered as a pleasant intermission, but at the conclusion, Sing Fat found himself engaged as fulltime apprentice and chartered student of the most estimable of professions. Sing Fat became slightly giddy with the realization and momentarily thought perhaps he was still hallucinating from weariness. The singular sequence of events, beginning with his escape from the mines, appeared to have been determined by the gods with some considered purpose. He would be worse than a fool to set himself against the rationale of heaven. As far as he was concerned, the seal was set. He was gratified and honored by the arrangement.

  Months of complex and arduous work followed Sing Fat’s decision to take up medicine as a trade. The apothecary insisted that the young man keep detailed journals on every item and subject discussed. He said the annotations would serve his protégé admirably in the years to come. It always helped the visual memory to write things down in their minutest particulars.

  The elder Fat found a modest accommodation for his new apprentice with a boardinghouse owner named Yee Get who operated an establishment near the corner of East Lake and Soledad Streets. It was a neighborhood known as new Chinatown, the older enclave having burned down in 1893. He also saw to it that Sing Fat banked his gold wisely with a venerated elder of the Quang Sang Company. That company’s association with the prestigious Ning Yeung Association of San Francisco guaranteed the security of his funds and also allowed him the convenience of drawing against his deposit in American greenbacks.

  The elder Fat also arranged for the barber Fong Kee to look after his apprentice’s appearance, and the merchant Sam Wah supplied Sing Fat with new clothes at reasonable prices. Within a few months, Sing Fat had become a noted fixture in the neighborhood and was known for his cheerful, thoughtful, and modest demeanor.

  When he judged his apprentice competent enough to understand such things, the apothecary began to take Sing Fat on his collecting rounds. Many medicinal ingredients could be acquired locally or from Monterey, but others could be had only from Chinese brokers like the ancient Ham Git or Ham Tung of the Wing Sing Company in Santa Cruz.

  Myriad exotic herbs, pickled sea snakes and salt-cured turtle eggs, six varieties of dried sea horses, Asian blood toad skins, powdered Persian deer horn, tiger bones, tinctures of medicinal opium, and hundreds of other necessary ingredients could be obtained exclusively from licensed importers who shipped them in from Asia.

  Since the elder Fat treated mostly the working poor, he could not, by any stretch, be confused with a wealthy man. He regularly found it necessary to barter with the venerable Ham Git in order to
replenish his modest inventory of medicines. This was not as difficult as it might seem as Sing Fat’s teacher had local access to any number of medicinal compounds that were difficult to come by, even in China, and trades were often arranged.

  The apothecary knew where to unearth all manner of valuable substances locally, but the concentrated effort required to select and grade these items with assurance was by no means a task for the uninitiated. Sometimes it took days to gather, sort, grade, and value just a few bushels of tiny rock mushrooms, dried blue barnacles, or black mustard seed. The quality and potency of such goods were very much a condition of trade, and men like Ham Yin or Ham Git knew their business every bit as well as the elder Fat.

  With his apprentice to help with these labors, the apothecary now toured the Salinas and Monterey countryside in his cart to gather, purchase, or barter for trade items. He had also contracted several Chinese farmers to cultivate specialty items like purple-foot sorrel, licorice root, black tiger weed, lemongrass, and leopard snails. In Point Alones or Pescadero Village he would sometimes barter his skills for deepwater shark livers and dried fins. The apothecary was always in the market for various marine specimens necessary to his practice. Other singular ingredients could be gathered only among the hills and along the rocky shores of the Big Sur. These goods therefore carried greater market value because of their rarity.

  Sing Fat totally enjoyed these working adventures. He was learning wonderful things at an amazing rate. Every day brought forth new mysteries and amazing secrets. Because the apothecary was known and respected for his arts, Sing Fat also found many opportunities to meet influential people in the Chinese enclaves of Watsonville, Santa Cruz, Castroville, and Monterey.

  The elder Fat always encouraged his pupil to write down the names of these men and their professions. Many times he would ask Sing Fat, strictly as an exercise, to record observations he might have about their general health.