East Goes West

by Younghill Kang

  “Like Poe,” I suggested.

  “Oh, but that was romantic misery,” said Trip. “There was some satisfaction in that. Yes, everybody seems rather unhappy and lost, in America, just now. You’ve felt that? But no, it isn’t like Poe. It’s more Chaplinesque.”

  “Chaplinesque?”

  “Charlie Chaplin, you know. No dignity.”

  “Oh, yes! the fellow of laughs. Don’t you like to laugh?”

  “I resent being funny. I haven’t much humor, I guess.”

  “Oh, but I’m sure you have. I like to laugh. More than to cry.”

  But my mind was suddenly on a paper I had written on Poe. It would be better to leave some costly jade behind, as if forgotten. Then she would have to communicate with me again. But I had no costly jade. I had only a paper on Poe.

  “I want to send you a paper I wrote on Poe,” I said.

  “All right.”

  “And then I want to ask your advice?”

  “My advice?” Trip laughed.

  “Should I get out of Boshnack Brothers?”

  “I shouldn’t think you would be happy with them ever. A sensitive Oriental in America must surely find that hell. You were happier as a student, weren’t you?”

  “That, too, was a tiresome life. But I will get out of Boshnack’s if you say so.”

  “Otherwise, when are you to write your best seller?” exclaimed Trip, dismissing the economics of my problem airily.

  “When you are ready to help me.”

  But she immediately said she would rather write about America, and realism was the thing. And I forebore to mention that a tenuous life on paper was neither American nor realistic, for I sensed that consistency bothered Trip no more than economics.

  Having prolonged our Chinese dishes, and tea, as long as possible, we went out. It had stopped raining.

  We came to some posters not far from the restaurant, in brilliant colors, orange, yellow, black, cerise, and strong green. Trip stopped to look, I to read the Chinese. I told her it was news.

  “And is it colorful? I should expect it to be,” said she.

  “My, it’s very exciting. Tong war.”

  “What! Going on here now?”

  “But you needn’t be frightened. There are more police around than usual, and there are always a lot.” I suggested that we walk around some and see what was going on, though Trip wasn’t so keen. So we walked those curved and intricate lanes, all with their flaming posters lit by dim street lights, for always at night Chinatown seems inky—it is no Broadway. I drew her with me into a small shop, and I bought some Chinese tea and some preserved fruits for her, the kind she had liked at our dinner. I wanted to buy her more things to sample, but she said hastily, no, we couldn’t carry any more.

  “Then I’ll get some Chinese wine. . . .”

  “What is that like?”

  “You will see. It is very strong, you know, like gin or whisky. I’ll try here. Pardon me. Just walk along slowly by yourself. If you went down, they would not sell.”

  She seemed about to clutch my sleeve, then thought better of it. “Oh, we’d better go home!” But I was already moving off, in the direction of the cellar. “Just walk very slowly on. I’ll be back in a minute.” When I came out with the bottle inside my coat, she was having an angry conversation with a man. I saw something was the matter, and stepped quickly up. “Oh, Mr. Han!” she left me to do the talking. I spoke up very indignantly, though he had just drawn back his coat and shown his plain-service badge. He was apologizing now. He said to Trip he was a detective and had to protect American girls in Chinatown.

  “Actually, he asked my age and my address and if my parents knew I was here!” exclaimed Trip, laughing incredulously, as we walked off together. “Marvellous! detectives! danger! Just what you always expect from Chinatown, and never get. I never saw a detective before in my life. But I wish you’d taken me into that dive with you, Mr. Han. The steps you went down were pitch-black, and very sinister.” And I could tell she was merry and delighted with life once more, and the detective had done me a good turn, making Chinatown so interesting.

  We took a taxi and got back to the apartment. Trip began to laugh as soon as we got in downstairs. “I hear Trip’s giggle,” I heard Van say gaily as she opened the door. And she welcomed her with open arms. There were two others in the room, another girl and a man. A babble of voices mixed together.

  “Welcome sistah,” said the tall pencil-slim girl with blue eyes and chestnut braids around her head, coronet style. She had a strong Southern accent. “Hey! What have you?” And Marietta, the third roommate, began grabbing things out of my arms, and examining them pertly, while Van, making a pretense of ferocity, choked Trip’s laughter, and said, “Stop it—stop it—at once. Or tell what you’re laughing at.”

  “Well, I’ve had a wonderful time,” exclaimed Trip, throwing off her things and sinking down on one of the couches. “And Mr. Han is going to give us all a party now. Look! Chinese wine, whatever that may be!”

  “Goody, goody!” cried Marietta, rubbing her hands together, and rolling her eyes. “Provisions, no end!” she winked. “And trust Trip for the wine. Good work, good work!”

  “Libel, isn’t it Trip?” said Van.

  “Chinese tea. The very best!” exclaimed Trip, springing up to check them over. “Chinese ginger. Chinese fruits. I had them for dinner. All different kinds of mysterious things, and there is one thing—a little black ugly thing—when you break it between your teeth—you taste a marigold’s smell—not at first, but slowly and gradually.”

  “Oh, Mr. Han, why didn’t you take me along?—And what were you giggling about, please?” demanded Marietta imperiously.

  “The girl always giggles!” said Van, with a mock-scowl. “It’s the easiest thing in the world to make Trip giggle. Over nothing. Positively nothing. Isn’t it nothing, devil?”

  “No, it’s something. Wait till you hear. While Mr. Han was bargaining for the wine, I got stopped on the street by a man.”

  “What, accosted!”

  “What? For the wine!”

  “No! For being in Chinatown with Mr. Han!” Trip leaned back weakly against the cushions laughing. “But you see, a tong was going on. . . .”

  “What’s a tong?” cried Marietta.

  “I don’t know. Something murderous. Mr. Han was explaining. A war in Chinatown. Policemen were all around. And on top of that, this plain-clothes man stopped me for loitering. Mr. Han had told me to walk slowly on, then slowly back again, while he was in that nefarious place where they sell Chinese gin. . . . That’s when I got stopped for loitering. I became very respectable and haughty. And then the man displayed his badge. I was almost taken in. He should have got Mr. Han, who had the wine under his coat. But Mr. Han actually seemed to intimidate him. And he apologized very respectfully to him.”

  “Tut! tut!” Marietta held up a warning finger. “These loose ways! They’ll come home to you in the end. Trip, you must look like a loose woman!”

  “But suppose you had been along . . .”

  “And she lost her naiyme again!” Van jumped up from the couch beside Trip, and with indescribable contortions of face and limb, she sang the song, the others joining in. Then Marietta ran for glasses. The tall gaunt ex-serviceman who was Marietta’s cousin opened the bottle. Marietta handed drinks around. “Quaff, then.”

  Which Van did deeply—in milk. With a glass of milk in her hand, Van sang, “My name is Yon Yonson, I come from Wisconsin,” taking deep draughts of milk, sighing huskily and wiping her mouth beerily with the side of her hand. (For she hated alcohol of all kinds.) She had a strong soprano voice, yet delicate and sweet, irresistibly lilting and droll. Released from the tension of hard study and grind, Van had become like some radiant natural phenomenon. The whole party rode the waves of her high animal spirits, and she seemed as exhilara
ted on her milk as any there. We melted into hysterics not only at her broad comedy, but at her delicate wit, turning this way and that like a bird in flight, suggesting deeper things in ridiculous foolery. Never had I seen a more bizarre American woman, or one more fitted to represent American woman’s freedom (almost indeed to the point of caricature, including the tall skyscraper height that many of them reach). But no one could doubt the tender core of her womanliness, seeing her so unmasked and free like this, spontaneous as a little child. Her tenderness in particular guarded Trip, toward whom she always showed a special indulgence and protectiveness. She was not like Trip, resenting to be funny. (Van was more like me. At least I never objected very much to being funny. That didn’t bother me.) I wished that George could see her. In Hollywood, I thought, she would have been a great success. For she was funnier than Charlotte Greenwood. And she hated what was too serious in thought. But she was very sensitive toward Trip and her desire for dignity.

  The talk and the gaiety and laughter enchanted me. And Marietta and I drank most of the wine. I began to feel that Van was taking too much of the stage. Trip also must see me. I stood up before the old marble mantelpiece as on the lecture platform, a glass in hand—not of water but of wine—and Keats, Shelley, Browning, Tennyson, Ruskin, Carlyle, and Shakespeare rolled out in pages and sheets, all that had imprinted itself word for word on the retentive Oriental memory of one classically trained. The others now listened. They gave me the applause of clapped hands and laughter. I could not read the expression on Trip’s face, which seemed to me trembling with the shake of water, water which held the nymph of youth, fountain of the eternal laughter. Finally she got out of sight. She was hiding behind Van’s shoulder. Van sat at the head of the couch. Trip let her long bobbed hair fall down over her face, and I thought she held the handkerchief to her lips. I began to give them a Chinese poem in the old-fashioned singing, and I craned to catch Trip’s eye. “Trip, you’re choking! Hey! Something go the wrong way?” And Marietta clapped Trip on the back, meeting the hidden one’s glance, her own face crimsoned with laughter.

  Marietta’s cousin got up to go. He showed Trip some book he had brought. I knew I had to go, too. That evening had passed into the realm of the lost evenings. Besides, I must catch my train back to Philadelphia, and greet Miss Stein with excuses on Tuesday morning. Still upon me the flush of the wine, and the joy of arriving in such a sweet world of eternal beauty and youth and delightful fellowship, I said good-bye to Van and Marietta. Van was kind but casual; still, past offenses seemed wiped out, old scores forgotten. Marietta was most free and cordial. I waited for Trip. Trip, her face still pink and shaken, eyes darkly moist, tossing back her dark hair with impatient gesture, gave me good-bye with a warmth somewhere in between that of Marietta’s and Van’s. But “Come again! Come again!” they all said. “It was a marvelous party.”

  The door of Paradise closed behind me. Marietta’s cousin said a short good night and walked off. Still I lingered in the street below. Through the open windows, I heard Marietta’s high staccato laughter, and Trip’s in response as if she were shaken off her feet by mirth, held shaking and helpless, by an enormous God of laughter. I moved off, hardly knowing where, tears in my eyes, tears for the immortal kiss that had not been given or taken! Nor did I once think, in the innocence of my birth that day, ah, individualism! it is a lonesome world. Love, too, is lonesome.

  By the middle of June, I had wound up my affairs in Philadelphia. And I severed all connection with Boshnack’s forever. Afterwards, as a free but somewhat poor man, I went to New York to call on Trip again. True, I had not heard from her, though I had written. . . . It was just a polite letter, saying how much I enjoyed that day in New York with her. And soon after, too, I forwarded my paper on Poe. But I never received any answer. When I approached that apartment again with high mounting hope, already warmed by the thought of its informal welcome, I found it had become vacant, and neither Trip nor Van nor Marietta was anywhere to be reached. Their landlady could tell me nothing, except that they had rented there that past winter by the month. All three had vanished like the fox ladies in Chinese fairy tales, leaving no trace behind.

  I wrote to Laura James. I asked her cautiously of Trip. Trip, she wrote back, had gone home. And she sent me Trip’s address, which was South, amid Southern mountains. I wrote Trip again. Oh, with what care I had chosen my paper, remembering the counsels of George! With what care I had penned those pale meager words! And nothing came of that either. Trip seemed a dream, or if real, hidden now by all the obstacles of fate, time, space and the world. But I did not forget her. Nor what I had come to America to find. I set out now inspired to seek the romance of America. And spurning Boshnack’s and the mean security it had offered me, I took the immemorial gypsy’s trail. I became the man who must hunt and hunt for the spiritual home.

  BOOK THREE

  1

  I COME TO a period in which I was literally a wandering student, a steady occupant of libraries, leading actually a hobo’s life, but with the outward leisure of gentleman and scholar. I supported myself by small jobs of free-lancing or other efforts of the brain, and what I lived on is all but incredible. I met many people, but I made few ties. I may seem to have been derelict, but such was not the case, not so much as when I was working up to be a buyer for Boshnack’s. I was waiting and watching constantly for some opening, that I might become a part of American intellectual life. When I got tired of one library, I packed my brief case and took up the hitchhiker’s station along the road. All things I could not carry in that brief case, I left with George. To travel I found was very easy. And food in the South was cheap. The Library of Congress held me up for a long time, for I was much interested in its Oriental department. (Following Kim’s advice, I was trying to specialize in Orientalia as from a Western viewpoint.) From Washington I went up to Johns Hopkins. These adventures I have now to tell found me in Baltimore.

  On that day when I was to meet one of the strangest figures I had yet encountered in America, I had been to the Jewish Students’ Home, where they served me with some kind of drink. It was strong. When I came out, I was so dizzy I could not work. I had been worrying over financial problems and the big opportunity that never turned up, so that under the influence of the drink I walked and walked, my mind eagerly searching the horizon for some future. In Baltimore I was made much of by this little group of Jewish students. They procured small lectures for me, and gave me many invitations. Their minds were keen and forceful and they savored my position in the West with true appreciation. But even with their help my funds were almost gone. I wondered when I would hear from my last free-lancing paper.

  Having walked all afternoon, from one end of Baltimore to another, I found myself toward evening coming out of Druid Hill Park into the Negro section. It was a warm day in late October. At that very moment I was the witness to an unusual drama. An elegant light-colored gentleman was forcibly ejecting a large, coarse woman from a little tailoring shop. “You nigger, take your hands off me!” the woman screamed, clutching and kicking. Her dress seemed half unfastened. The immaculate gentleman threw out after her a woman’s patent-leather belt, a purse and a hat. “Woman,” he said impressively, “The Lord bids you—Git!” As the woman picked up her belongings, cursing and muttering, another man sidled out from the shop, a rough-looking oily-faced Jew in shirt sleeves. The Jew, behind the back of the Spanish-looking gentleman, was forming words with his mouth and making gestures as if for a future assignation, but the woman heartily cursed them both and made off. I lingered curiously, to hear the conversation of the two remaining actors.

  “Brother Ginsburg, you done fallen into the quagmire. I caught you, Brother Ginsburg. What you guess the Lord’s thinking now?”

  “Well, Elder,” whined the other doggedly, “I told you I couldn’t hold out. You and the Saints is asking too much.”

  The dark gentleman, having wiped the sins of the world from his hands with a larg
e, snowy, linen handkerchief, hand-hemstitched and monogrammed, stopped now to apply the same handkerchief to his well-polished shoes. Over his shoulder he glanced at me standing and watching. From that moment he seemed to be very much aware of me, even while saying in a richly moving voice to the other, “That’s what you and me is going to pray about, Brother Ginsburg. The Lord done told me to help my poor lost brethren, black or white or yellow—all peoples.” Again he glanced my way. “So I ain’t going to leave you to no devil, even though he might deserve to git you. But let us pray,” he said abruptly. (Then he paused as if about to ask me to join them, but I made no move.) “There ain’t no time like the present for repentance, Brother Ginsburg,” he took up the same thread with passionate voice, “while sins of the world still burn as crimson and as hot as all hell-fire. Let us never be afraid to kneel down and put our troubles in the Lord’s hands wherever we be, and rise up innocent and cleansed in Jesus’ name, let us pray, Brother Ginsburg.” He himself kneeled right down on the pavement in front of Ginsburg’s tailoring shop, and his convert sheepishly followed suit just over the threshold. Since it was prayer, I took off my hat—a move which the Elder seemed to note with satisfaction. He made that prayer awfully short now, for he was in great haste to scramble to his feet again and take eager steps toward me. “Perhaps I could help out,” he said courteously. “Are you a stranger to this city? Are you lost by any chance?” His dark rolling eyes moved eagerly over my face.

  I thought I would play up to him, so I asked the way back to Johns Hopkins University, and admitted that I was a stranger to Baltimore. The Elder seemed in no hurry to answer my question. He said eagerly, “Just come over here and sit down, Brother—Brother” he groped for my name.

  “Han,” I supplied. “Chungpa Han.”

  “Ah, yes, Brother Han,” he said it sonorously with satisfaction. “And then I’ll explain your whereabouts to you.” He ordered a chair brought out from Ginsburg’s shop, wiped it with his great white linen handkerchief, and waved for me to sit down, in elaborate ceremony. He stood over me, his hand resting persuasively on the back of the chair, giving long involved directions in an emotional voice and always in the biggest words possible.