East Goes West

by Younghill Kang

  It’s an odd triangular quarter, centering at Doyer Street and issuing off Chatham Square . . . lying in Mott, Bayard and Pell streets. The section itself is so small that you can borrow a spoon in one end of the town to eat porridge with in the other, without your porridge growing cold. Yet it never increases nor decreases. A few years before my arrival, such a flood of strangers moved in that you would have expected to see Chinatown swamped, overwhelmed, obliterated, but there was no change to the outward eye. Later on, after the immigration laws, no more Chinese could enter, and many returned to the old country. But this section did not change. If there are more Chinese to live there, then people become more thick. If there are less, it is just the same, and people have more room. Yes, the whole quarter could be made into one big modern apartment house. But houses are mostly old, as American houses go, and in that harmonize best with the Chinese; an old race in old buildings does not look bad. Most of the buildings are three or four stories, with dormered attics. The stairs one enters from the street are black and warped, with uncarpeted, crooked, narrow treads.

  As I walked along, I would gaze in the little shops. In the windows was the oddest mingling, beautiful flowery garments for women and men, together with American felt hats. Here were corsets, suspenders and a woman’s Chinese fan. All sizes of gorgeous embroidered shoes were ranged side by side with old-fashioned long-sleeved American underwear. And the Chinese characters everywhere inside these windows were written not upright, but across the goods in Western style.

  In the midst of a junk-heap of things for sale, I saw a few real Himalayan jades, as green as greenest sea. They might even be the most expensive kind, as rare as the Egyptian pearl. I looked at them and fell into a revery lasting many minutes. Time could not wrinkle nor stain such pieces and on them was always to be seen the dead jade carver’s pains, intense as lovers’ pains. Only an old, old culture could have produced such gems. After seeing them, I spun around as if my thoughts were being pronounced on air. What strange spell, what haunting little tune was that coming out of the window on a New York top floor? It seemed the flute had a touch of magic sound, recalling memories of long ago, some ancient Cheung Chow night, some distant idyll, in a landscape weirdly different from that I saw before me now, a world of nature, green and gray harmonies, houses irregular and ever curved—not straight—a world where human feelings were patterned otherwise, the human heart more shy, Pan-toned, and clear. Was it another existence that I lived? In retrospect, my past and future blended (at least within one book, within ten years), it seems to me at that moment I sought in the past for a brother, a future friend, who was to go with me through these pages, who was always to shadow for me old realms of thought even as he guided me into the new . . . that here for the first time I sensed one as exiled as that tune, carved by the Asian centuries as intricately as that gem, my friend, my dear friend, Kim. . . . I even walked up that clifflike stairway, three flights in pursuit. But the ghost was gone. I found only a room in the Hip-Sing society, some silent images about, a smell of incense, and Chinese ink permeating all, a Chinese record going on the Westem victrola—and two young Chinese men discussing football.

  9

  The house I slept in was as dingy and as dark as those in Chinatown, but unlike the half-familiar feel of Chinatown, it was wholly strange to me. It had a back stairway where no light ever came, and where there was no lamplight either. I sometimes passed people who looked rather frightful going in and coming out. For instance, the big flushed swarthy man on the second floor, who ran a pool room just outside of Chinatown, had a very rough look. He never wore a collar or a tie but only a shirt with handkerchief around the neck; yet he was kind to me, going out of the way to be friendly—particularly when drunk. At such times he often came into my room of his own accord to talk. His Italian name was Machelozzi, he said. He first shortened this name to Michael and then to Mike—these were its evolutions over thirteen years of living in New York. I could not gather much from his conversation except that Dante was the greatest poet, Italy the most beautiful land. He still hoped to go back to Italy and resume the Machelozzi again when he had made enough money to afford it.

  The Italian section was also colorful. Unlike the Chinese, all the Italians seemed to be on the streets day and night, quarrelling or laughing or singing at all hours. Even their business was conducted mostly on the street. There were bright-colored markets everywhere and tropical fruit wagons. Yes, the Italians were as voluble and perpetually excited as the Chinese were noiseless and impassive. My landlady often opened the window on the second floor where she lived and talked to the woman on the fourth of the house across the street, using both the tongue and the language of gesticulation. And then she would grow enraged like winds and storms and slam the window down hard enough to break the glass.

  The days I spent in this unpaid-for room seemed endless, though I think in reality they were not more than ten. But ten days is a long time to go on five cents in New York. Early I had found a place where my five cents would buy two loaves of stale, hard bread. On this I lived, soaking first in water the bits I hacked off with my knife, going into the Chinese restaurant only every other day, so as not to run my bill too high. My bread was almost gone. I had known the famines of poor rice years in Korea. Now, in utter solitude with a chilling heart, I feared pavement famine, with plenty all around but in the end not even grass to chew. While in the shadow of New York’s skyline, sunny hours were few, evenings seemed to be cold, dreary, long. In my unheated room during the cold night hours, I spent some monstrous intervals in studying Shakespeare. But it was hard to concentrate. Even in the midst of Hamlet’s subtlest soliloquies, I could think of nothing but food. I often passed that charitable soup kitchen, but it, too, wore a closed and alien look and I shrank from passing myself off in there. My only hope was George Jum. Almost every day I walked up to his house. There was no news.

  BOOK TWO

  1

  THE NEXT PERIOD of my life must properly be dedicated to George Jum. He attempted to be my teacher in things American, and certainly he had left all Asian culture behind as a thing of nought. If I am not a very shining example of his precepts, the faults must be laid to me and not to him.

  Yes, even that first endless and helpless period of mine had a help and came to an end . . . for Jum appeared at last. The evening before my rescue, in a restless misery I could not bring myself to re-enter my dreary little room. I had eaten well in the Chinese restaurant and this food had revitalized me with a nervous energy. All night I prowled on tireless padded feet, like a creature caged. Central Park I reached at 59th Street, just as the sun was stealing up and the dews slipped down. The patient trees of winter spread their arms more hopefully, as the sun washed off the night dirt, showing the dust crystals in the blue and violet light. The homeless bum sat up on the bench. Another day had begun. Milk wagons, street-cleaners, policemen. . . . And now the sun, well-risen, was splashing the façade of George Jum’s house with a strong, cheerful light. It was half-past eight, no longer too early to call and inquire once more.

  What a change in the Hungarian fat lady! She was all warm personal interest and smiles now.

  “He expects you. Go right up—Mr. Jum came home.”

  Through the warm, steam-heated house hovered a morning incense of American breakfast bacon and a Korean or Hungarian odor of garlic, too. (Probably Hungarian, for George disliked garlic now, he was so sophisticated.)

  “He’s on the third floor. You’ll see his name on the door. Go right up, Mr. Han.”

  And she encouraged me with many nods and waves of her pudgy hands, before disappearing through a long curtain in the hall below.

  Before I had finished the first knock, George Jum jumped out. “Han? Chungpa? Son-of-a-gun! Why didn’t you write you were coming? Then I would be here,” he exclaimed jovially in English. “How long have you been in New York? How are you? Come straight in. What is the news from the homeland?”
r />   George Jum looked very Americanized in his red leather slippers and a bathrobe of heavy striped black-and-gray necktie silk. Even now when he had just risen from bed, with hair not combed or parted, but all streaked down, he had a fresh, debonair appearance. His forehead was smooth and marble-white without a scratch, his eyes were a light black and always dancing with a smile, his nose was round, well-shaped: only being too round it looked better in profile. He had a demure, impudent grin. His figure was neat, his movements rapid as those of a cat after a mouse. And as he pushed me into the room before him, he was very cordial, and seemed to have known me always, not just by mail.

  “This is my room. You’re welcome here. Not bad? Large enough to have a small dancing party in. It is all yours. This house is practically private, except for the black kitten which is very seldom seen. But the lady—Mrs. Flo—is seen once in a while. She has very good whisky when I have a cold. There is the couch and this is the bed. Choose which you will have. This door leads to the closet,” and he opened it to show me. It was neatly filled up with shoes, hats, suits, overcoats.

  “They all belong to you?” I asked incredulously.

  “Oh, yes, but nothing unusual. When I start work again, I will buy more. . . . This door leads to the bathroom. Perhaps you will want to wash up. Where have you been staying these last few days when I wasn’t in New York to show you how to do things?”

  “Oh, you have a bathtub, too! Luxurious!” I exclaimed, too busy looking to reply. (My landlady in Little Italy had no bathtub.)

  “Sure!” said George. “That is nothing. In New York it is necessity, not luxury—where dirt is common property.”

  He came in after me and said he would instruct me how to do things—how to use things.

  I looked at George’s bathroom shelf. I had never in my life before seen so many things to put on the human body—the hair, the teeth, the face. “What’s this—and this—” I marveled.

  George shaved and I watched him do it—so I would know how, he said. He washed hands and face first. Then he rubbed his shaving paste with the shaving brush, making a lather. Then he put his brush to his face, was for a minute lost in foam. After that he shaved in rapid strokes up and down.

  “It’s a good razor, the kind that never cuts. Unless you have a pimple or some kind of extra pointed-out flesh.”

  “Yes, sharp!”

  “But it does not matter if it cuts, because I have a pencil.”

  He showed it to me.

  “It’s a white pencil that can’t write.”

  “Then what’s it for?”

  “To use in place of sea-glue, of course.”

  “You mean it stops bleeding?”

  “Yes,” said George, and he purposely cut down a small pimple to make it bleed and held up the pencil. “You see? This is the way. . . .”

  Later he put some perfumed water, smelling like spring flowers, on his face, and last, some cream-colored powder out of a round box with a black-haired gentleman’s head on it.

  “Powder on face!”

  George grinned.

  “Ladies have to grease it first. Which I don’t.”

  He took out a clean white shirt and freshly-pressed pants. A fast worker he was, I noted. In a minute he was fully dressed, while, fascinated, I still prepared to take a bath at George’s instruction. George came in just then to comb his hair. I turned the bathtub on and the shower ran down over everything.

  “For God’s sake, turn that off!”

  I meant to turn it off, but it came on more vigorously.

  “I don’t know how!”

  George turned off the shower, and unloosened a rosy-colored bath curtain looking beautifully fresh and new; he told me to get in there. When I got in, he closed the curtains.

  “Now you can turn the water.”

  It was marvellous, like being inside a flower. Water came down as if it were harnessed rain, a tropical rain. But I could make it as cold as I wished. George said . . . either polar or tropical. Down it ran, over my hair, face, body.

  “That was wonderful!” I exclaimed, coming out. “Never a bath again! Only a shower.”

  But poor George! I had made him all wet. He had taken off his pants, and was examining them. “These will have to be pressed. Hell to it!” He saw my worried look and reassured me. “That’s easy. I have an electric iron. Anyhow, it is better to cook without the pants.”

  He gave me the American dressing gown and he himself tied the girdle around my waist. He pointed out to me the red leather slippers. “Wear these.” Then he said, “Now we shall have breakfast. Wait. It flows too much. It moves.” He was referring to the long wide shirt in which he was still clothed, although without the pants, “The reason I put this on.” And he put on his vest, leaving his neat compact legs bare, down to his garters and socks. “Now I will show you the American breakfast.”

  The kitchen was a big cabinet in George’s bedroom. When open, it was a little alcove, very complete, with small electric ice-box, gas stove, dish cupboard, etc. When you got through, as George explained, everything folded back and you closed the doors. He took down a loaf of bread.

  “Grandmother’s,” said George with a wink, in reference to the wrapper around the bread. George winked slowly. It was the only thing he did slowly. But winking is difficult for a Korean unless he practises it very much in youth.

  George cut the slices very thick, trimmed off all the crust, and prepared to make toast. He balanced himself, this way and that, watching everything without appearing to do so. When he took cups and saucers down, he made the cups turn a somersault, catching them in mid-air. The knife he juggled, whirling it three times round, before cutting the grapefruit with one stroke; then taking out all seeds at once with one motion of the grapefruit jack, he poured in powdered sugar quickly. He buttered the toast, smoking hot, until each piece was soft clear through. . . . Coffee, too, was ready by this time.

  “Be seated,” said George with a bow.

  Over the breakfast, I told George my troubles since arriving in New York. How he pitied me! Especially because I had walked up to his house so many times.

  “Good Lord, I wouldn’t do that for anything. Unless a beautiful girl accompanied me or I got paid for it!”

  I said it was good training. I would have to know New York if I mean to live here and find a job. All my optimism and assurance had come back, with George.

  ‘Well, don’t worry about not having any money,” advised George. “Not in New York, which is wealthier than all Asia. Tonight we will go to Chinatown and pull out some lottery. Later I will teach you to cook. As a cook, I can boast myself an artist. The wages of a good cook are $50 a week with board, room and laundry. Better than a bank clerk or college instructor, you will find. And it’s much better money than when I was an ambassador for the Korean government in Washington, D.C.”

  “But I don’t know the spoken language very well yet. You must speak only English with me so I can learn.”

  “Sure,” said George genially. “I like to speak English. I myself know how to employ the idiom.”

  Now I lay back on George’s bed, comfortably stretching in the sun-filled room. The luxury of being here was almost too much. I loved the effect of space, after narrow, tortuous, dark Chinatown. Two double windows opened toward Central Park and there was besides a smaller window in a side wall. White net muted the light. There was some kind of artificial Persian rug on the floor. Two cheap Western pictures were hung—one with three Shepherd dogs’ heads with tongues hanging out, another, a Maxfield Parrish print of a girl with bare legs sitting against a romantic blue.

  My eyes traveled from the big desk with three drawers at the bottom and a row of books at the top, all brand-new bindings, to a dressing table very neatly kept. On it were George’s father’s and mother’s and brother’s pictures, and another in an ornate silver frame, of a blonde Western
girl. George had shut up the kitchen and was busy with his pants and a big steel cake. He pressed a button, as he explained, and electricity made it hot enough to press the pants which were laid across a cloth wrapped board held up by two chairs. George put a wet cloth over the pants and pressed hard.

  “Better than the stick our mothers used, huh? This line has got to be exactly straight. You see? That is it. Girls don’t like it, if it is not.”

  I asked George if he was thinking of getting married, that he took such pains.

  “I am thinking of love, not of marriage,” said George. “Marriage from love is vinegar from wine, as the poet says. I have done a lot of thinking on this subject. Marriage as an institution here is a failure because it is a law-abiding. Anything that law commands in the form of thou shalt not, that thing man wants more. That is the symbol of this Western civilization. Man makes laws. And laws make his wants more complicated. If the law says you should have one wife, then you want more than one. If the law says live with the same woman, then you want to try different ones. Isn’t that funny? That’s human nature. Just like the wild ducks. They are monogamous in their wild nature and become polygamous as soon as domesticated. The guinea fowl does the same. That is, civilization depraves the birds and the animals as well as man. But then civilization is a good thing. We enjoy motor cars and bathtubs. And who would not enjoy having more than one wife? I would rather choose civilization and more than one woman than go back to wild life and marry one woman for life. Let us never forget, we owe all this pleasure to the progress of civilization. It is because nude women are prohibited on the streets that the beautiful half-naked women dancing on the gymnasium floor under deep-colored lights of soft evening are beautiful, or the three-fourths naked women by the seashore under a glowing summer sky. Man makes laws and sometimes law does help psychologically.”