The Gilded Age Part 11

"Jar me, missy," Jessie said, furrowing her brow. "We gotta make a profit."

Now Zhu inspects the large immaculate kitchen. Chong's sideboard is stacked with zucchini and yellow squash, Roma tomatoes, sacks of every kind of dried noodle known to North Beach, casks of olive oil, salmon and crabs dripping with bay water, a saddle of veal, a side of beef, fat garlic bulbs, bunches of scallions, bouquets of oregano and basil fresh from the farms in Cow Hollow, wheels of Parmesan cheese. Chong can cook anything, French or otherwise. He'd be a celebrity chef in Zhu's Now.

She goes to the parlor, dreading what she'll see. She hears tinny chords from the calliope, but everything else is still and deserted. Not much business this time of day. Stale tobacco smoke clogs the room. She wrinkles her nose at the stink of spilled booze mingled with the animal scent of sweat and s.e.m.e.n. The spittoons are spattered and slick, the ashtrays overflowing.

Another busy night, apparently, and no one has freshened the place up. This is definitely not acceptable. Zhu storms down the hall to the bedroom where the parlor maid sleeps. The biz is the biz, as Jessie says. Zhu raps sharply on the door. "Myrtle." Silence. "Myrtle?"

She tries the door, swings it open. A rustle of bedclothes, soft laughter. Myrtle is a black woman who trained for service at the Palace Hotel, but she's much younger and wilder than Mariah. Zhu peers in. Myrtle is trying to hide another body on the bed beside her. Zhu doesn't want to know and doesn't much care.

"You'd better attend to the parlor before Miss Malone shows up," Zhu says. "She'll tan your hide."

She doesn't wait for Myrtle's answer and returns to the parlor, fuming. Red velvet curtains are drawn over the windows, s.h.i.+elding all but a sliver of suns.h.i.+ne. The lamp with the scarlet shade is turned down low. The city has forbidden red lights over the doors of sporting houses, so Jessie-and every other madam in town-has resorted to placing the table lamp with its scarlet shade by the window and tossing lacy undergarments over the telegraph wires outside. The parlor has a tired, overused air, but at night it transforms itself into an opulent, dark scarlet cave. Gaslight is so much more flattering than suns.h.i.+ne or electricity.

"Hey, Miss Zhu," says Li'l Lucy. She hunches at the calliope, staring at the keys as they automatically depress and spring back. Her fingers curl around jigger of whiskey. She raises the gla.s.s to her lips. "Drink?"

Zhu shakes her head. "You're stinking, Li'l Lucy."

She pouts. "Some Sn.o.b Hill gorilla slugged me."

"It's barely past noon, kid."

"Day and night don't mean nothin' to me, Miss Zhu."

"Where is Daphne?"

"h.e.l.l if I know, Miss Zhu."

Daphne is the door maid for this s.h.i.+ft. She's supposed to manage the biz in Jessie's absence-screen men, serve drinks, collect money, monitor the girls. Jessie will be furious.

Now Li'l Lucy's personal maid, Pichetta, drifts in. "There you are," Pichetta says coldly, eyeing Li'l Lucy with barely concealed contempt. Pichetta is a swarthy young Peruvian with the hint of a mustache over her lip. Her black and white maid's uniform crackles with starch. "You need to get some sleep, Lucy."

"Ain't tired yet, Pichetta," Li'l Lucy drawls.

"Hmph." Pichetta surveys the parlor with disgust and commences emptying ashtrays, though that isn't her job. Now Myrtle rushes into the parlor. "Hmph," Pichetta says again when she sees Myrtle. Together the maids lift and carry the Persian carpets to the patio to be beaten free of ashes.

Li'l Lucy giggles. "You gonna tattle-tale on me to Miss Malone?"

"I don't have to," Zhu says, raising her eyebrows at Pichetta's retreating back.

"Ooh, you think she's a rat?" Li'l Lucy stands unsteadily and stretches, finds the bottle and pours herself another round. She wears a thin, low-cut silk slip over her corset and garters. Large dark bruises stain her flabby thigh, her drooping arm, her thick neck. Dark circles underscore her pouchy eyes. Even with her golden blond hair gleaming in the semidarkness, Li'l Lucy doesn't look good at nineteen years old.

"I don't think so, I know so," Zhu says.

"h.e.l.ls bells, that can't be. I gotta pay her wage outta my draw."

Zhu shrugs. "She's hired to rat on you."

"Says who?"

"Says no one."

Zhu finds a silk fan, flips it open, circulates the stale air in front of her face. She ought to know, she's Jessie's bookkeeper. That's the standard arrangement-each girl pays Jessie a flat fee per day, scaled to her marketability, to stay at the Parisian Mansion for the stipulated term of her contract. Each pays extra for clothing and personal effects and must take what Jessie purchases for her. Such items are of the best quality and taste, and Jessie gets a discount for purchasing in bulk. Still the wardrobe is expensive. Jessie pays six thousand dollars a month for dresses, undergarments, stockings, and fans. Jessie demands the best, demands that everything is fresh and new. Each girl also pays for a personal maid, who is required to groom her and dress her properly and-surprise--Jessie pays the maids extra for information. The maids don't have it so bad. Pichetta is probably thrilled that Li'l Lucy has turned out to be such a mess.

Well. Zhu knows that Jessie is considered one of the fairest madams in town. A girl's fees and tips are all hers after expenses are paid. But Jessie does not tolerate deadbeats or drunks or drug addicts. She does not tolerate slovenliness or bad behavior. She does not tolerate any girl who doesn't earn out a pro rata amount of her expenses each night. The biz is the biz.

Zhu says no more. Li'l Lucy is heading for trouble.

"Why in the blue blazes," Li'l Lucy says, swallowing the shot and pouring out another, "would Pichetta rat on me when I pay her? Huh? That don't make no sense, Miss Zhu."

"Take care of yourself, kid," Zhu says. "Just take care of yourself." Under Tenet Three of the Grandmother Principle, she's not allowed to help Li'l Lucy, but that's not the worst of it. In truth, she doesn't know what she can do to help Li'l Lucy even if she could. "Did anything come for me by post?"

"Why, yes." Li'l Lucy stumbles to the foyer. There, behind an umbrella stand, is a package wrapped in string and brown paper. She picks it up. "You mean this?"

"That's it!" At last, the package Zhu has been waiting for. Muse was right, it's here!

Li'l Lucy shakes the package, listening for telltale sounds. "Is it from a gentleman?"

"No. Give that to me!"

Zhu lunges, and Li'l Lucy holds the package high over her head, ducking away, giggling. She darts across the parlor, trying to read the label. Li'l Lucy hasn't had more than a third-grade education. "Go. . . .gold. See? I know 'gold!' Tray. . . .tray. . . ."

"It says Lucky Gold Trading Company. Now hand it over."

"Why, that's in dirty ol' Chinatown. Did you order somethin' from a Chinaman's store? Oh, I bet I know. You got yourself some of them pink silk bloomers everybody's talkin' about. Can I see? Oh, please, please?"

"It's not, but would you like pink silk bloomers?"

"Oh, yes, and Miss Malone keeps promisin', but you know what a skinflint she can be."

"Give me my package, and I'll buy you pink silk bloomers."

"You would do that for me?" Tears start in Li'l Lucy's eyes. "You really would?"

"Of course." Zhu looks away, embarra.s.sed. Li'l Lucy is like a beaten animal. The slightest kindness overwhelms her. "Is your bedroom empty?"

"Help yourself."

Zhu runs upstairs with her package, finds Li'l Lucy's room, and locks the door behind her. She dared not request delivery at the boardinghouse. If Jessie intercepted the package-and Jessie has to know everything that goes on at her private residence-she would never understand. Instead, Zhu told the clerk at Lucky Gold Trading Company to deliver the order in her name to the Mansion for a manservant employed there. Now she tears at the string, rips the package open.

There, in the crisp brown wrapping paper, is a pair of loose trousers made of soft blue denim and a long matching tunic, specially cut nice and loose to her measurements. It's called a sahm, the customary garb the men of Chinatown wear. There is a pair of cloth slippers with straw soles, too. She tears off her hat and veil, the cloak, the s.h.i.+rtwaist, the strangling collar, the skirt, the underskirt, the slip, the bloomers, the garters, the stockings. She unlaces the corset and tears it off, breathing gratefully.

"You must maintain authenticity, Z. Wong," Muse says sternly.

"Buzz off, Muse. I don't need a corset in a sahm."

She slips everything on. What freedom! Is this really the freedom she so casually took for granted three long months ago before she stepped onto the bridge in the j.a.panese Tea Garden? Yes! Everything feels so loose and easy. The sleeves of her new tunic hang inches below her fingertips, concealing her feminine hands. She unwinds her braid from around her head and lets it hang down her back like a queue. She rummages in the package. Joy! The clerk didn't fail her. She takes out the soft, charcoal-gray felt fedora with a high crown and a broad brim. A Western-style hat like many men in Chinatown wear. She pulls the brim down low, concealing her brow and her eyes. She rummages in the package again. Ah-ha! The final touch. Spectacles with round lenses tinted a beautiful watery shade of sea green. She pushes the spectacles up her nose. Between the hat and the gla.s.ses, she conceals nearly half her face. Conceals her gene-tweaked eyes.

She stands before Li'l Lucy's mirror, slouching her shoulders, lowering her chin. She looks crude and common, just like a slim Chinese man. She could pa.s.s for any one of the tens of thousands of bachelors who crowd Chinatown. She looks anonymous.

Excellent. Exactly what she wants.

Zhu hides her clothes in a corner of Li'l Lucy's closet, then silently pads downstairs. Her slippers whisper on the Persian carpets. Li'l Lucy sits again at the calliope, the half-empty whiskey bottle on the bench beside her. Between Myrtle and Pichetta, the parlor is tidy again and fragrant with fresh roses and lilac water.

Daphne the door maid, a robust German woman with a harelip, has materialized at last. She heaves herself onto the couch and gulps a mug of beer.

The doorbell rings. Li'l Lucy leaps up, adjusts her slip, checks her face in a gilt-framed mirror, and smooths away tears from her eyes.

"Company, girls!" Daphne yells and slaps Li'l Lucy's sagging b.u.t.t as she ambles to the door.

Two women stumble out of their bedrooms and down the stairs, cursing, pulling on silk chemises, hands fluttering at their hair.

"I ain't had more'n four hours of sleep today."

"I ain't had more'n four hours of sleep this year."

They laugh and groan, striding past her. Someone bites into a clove, releasing spicy scent. Zhu bends to examine a bra.s.s spittoon. The women pa.s.s her without a single glance.

As if she were invisible.

Very excellent.

Zhu treks down Dupont Street to a completely different neighborhood along this thoroughfare. From a block away, she spies the tumbledown Stick-Eastlake town houses huddled on the narrow streets, the exotic jury-rigged rooftops. A pall hangs before the intersection at Dupont and Post like an invisible curtain. Invisible, but very real. The boundaries of the neighborhood are so well marked-California Street to Broadway, Kearney Street to Powell-that when a tong war rages or bubonic plague breaks out, the police simply barricade all those intersections. The street sweepers never venture here with their Studebaker wagons. The shadowed cobblestones are always slick with mud, butcher shop blood, fish juice, and spittle.

Zhu steps across that intersection into Chinatown. What people call the "City of the People of Tan"--Tangrenbu.

She enters a peculiar silence. The sounds of downtown-horses trotting, bootheels clattering-are suddenly hushed. Somber men stride by in denim sahms, straw slippers, queues wrapped tightly around their heads or trailing down their backs. They wear felt fedoras like Zhu's, brimless embroidered caps, or the peasant's broad-brimmed straw cone.

She is overwhelmed by a distinctive stench: raw sewage infused with the scent of sandalwood, the spice of ginger, cloying incense. A sickly sweet smell mingles with scents of roast pork and frying peanut oil-the odor of opium. Opium is legally imported by those willing to pay the tariff and illegally smuggled by those who would rather keep the extra twelve dollars a pound for themselves. Nowhere else and nowhen else has Zhu ever smelled such a unique blend of olfactory stimulation. The essence of Tangrenbu.

Zhu steels herself. She knows the history-Muse has filled her in on many a long sleepless night.

Chinatowns are scattered through the West, but only San Francisco's Chinatown is known as Tangrenbu. For decades, Tangrenbu has been the primary port of entry for immigrants from the Far East. The bachelors who fled the war-torn, drought-ridden homeland in the 1850s came to California-Gum Saan or Gold Mountain-seeking their fortunes. They panned streams in the Sierras, seeking out rich veins hidden behind shafts deserted by less patient Forty-niners, only to be terrorized, robbed of their findings, or murdered by gangs of mountain men. They planted vegetables, coaxing lettuce, onions, and celery from soil abandoned by less diligent farmers. They set up small factories-dubbed sweatshops because they worked long hours for little pay-producing boots, trousers, or cigars. They willingly performed women's work---cooking and cleaning-and opened restaurants or laundries of such skill that the fine gentlemen of the West Coast no longer sent their s.h.i.+rts to Hong Kong by steams.h.i.+p for proper was.h.i.+ng, starching, and ironing, but patronized the local laundries. The bachelors toiled sixteen hours a day laying track for Mr. Huntington's transcontinental railroad, taking half the wage-a dollar-fifty a day-other workmen demanded. And when the Golden Spike was driven and the great task completed, opening up the West to the rest of America, they returned to their port of entry, to their home away from the homeland, to the only place they could go. They returned to Tangrenbu.

To those with a poetic bent, the enigmatic industrious aliens-young men who came without their families, wives, or children-were called the Celestials. To American politicians and American laborers--fearful of the possible immigration of half a billion workers in a stuttering economy-they were called the Yellow Peril.

Few Americans were feeling poetic in 1873 when Jay Cooke, who financed the Union army, squandered $15 million on five hundred miles of Northern Pacific track and failed to float a bond issue of $100 million to complete the job. Mr. Cooke announced that his bank could not pay depositors on demand. The subsequent bank panic caused a stock market crash. Debtors defaulted on loans, business owners slashed payrolls. Bankruptcy and unemployment ran rampant. The ensuing depression lasted a grueling five years and, in its wake, arose militant sandlot movements, angry mobs, and violent gangs who roamed the cities seeking loot and revenge. There were riots, hangings, stonings, burnings. British and Irish and German and Italian immigrants seeking a better life in America welcomed no one new in an increasingly compet.i.tive job market.

How much the world has changed, Zhu thinks, striding down Dupont Street into Chinatown. And how much the world has stayed the same. Now she joins the throng of silent men. Men everywhere, but no Chinese women or children.

During the past three months when Zhu wandered through Chinatown in her Western lady's clothes, a shopping basket on her arm, she was a barely tolerated intruder in Tangrenbu. Yet, veil drawn over her face, pa.s.sing for Caucasian, she never feared for her safety, either. Neither wh.o.r.e nor slave, she was untouchable, and the bachelors gave her a wide berth.

But as a Western lady, she couldn't venture down the alleys where Wing Sing could be held captive. The bachelors would always turn her away, block her path, or unceremoniously escort her clear out of Tangrenbu. When she asked about a girl in apple-green silk, all she got was a blank stare or a frown.

Now, as an anonymous bachelor, Zhu can go anywhere. No one turns her away from any place in Tangrenbu. Now hands beckon, shadowed doors swing open, secret smiles greet her as she hikes down the sloping block.

"Well done, Z. Wong," Muse whispers. "Your disguise is working."

Yes! For the first time in three months, she doesn't have to hurry through Tangrenbu, searching in vain for Wing Sing. She saunters at her leisure. She belongs. She ducks out of the pedestrian traffic, pauses on a street corner. She takes off the tinted spectacles and looks around.

A certain splendor adorns Tangrenbu. From the plain facades of the Stick houses jut elaborate balconies painted yellow or green. Vermilion paper bulletins punctuated with ebony calligraphy cover every available wall, announcing local and international news. Gilt signs and flowered lanterns hang in doorways. Gleaming bra.s.s plaques of the T'ai Chi tacked on lintels bring good luck. Silk streamers tied to railings drift in the wind amid tinkling wind chimes made of abalone sh.e.l.l. Potted geraniums, stunted fuchsia, cineraria, and starry lilies seek sun in stray nooks and corners.

Elaborate gingerbread, a curving roof, and gilt balconies adorn a joss house-one of the multidenominational shrines in which those who wors.h.i.+p any number of deities may stop, rest, and contemplate the divine. Zhu peeks in, sees a shrine in the back tucked amid candles, smoking incense burners, and glimmering offerings.

She moves on, pa.s.sing a few fancy shops amid the vegetable stalls, fishmongers, and butcher shops. She pauses. A shop window displays brocades and embroideries, jade and ivory carvings, painted porcelains, jewelry of pearls and coral. She examines a rack of brooches. Is that the flash of multicolored gla.s.s on golden wings, the golden curves of a tiny woman's body?

Her breath catches.

Oh! Is it the aurelia?

But no. Her eyes have deceived her. It's only a tiny dragon wrought of jade and gold. Lovely, but not the aurelia. Not what she's searching for. She pushes the fedora back and rubs her forehead, frustrated.

She presses on, turning off Dupont, and striding freely through a labyrinth of alleys previously denied her. She sees a wizened fortune-teller in his black skullcap and denim sahm crouching on the sidewalk with his low table and a basket of bark, an oracular tome. He had summarily dismissed the Western lady. Now the fortune-teller looks up at the anonymous bachelor and grins, his mouth a black slash. He waves her on. This is the place Muse identified in the Archives as a probable location where Wing Sing could be held captive-Spofford Alley.

Now Zhu hears reedy voices, birdlike but ominously monotone, "Two bittee lookee, flo bittee feelee, six bittee doee." Tiny clapboard shacks line the alley, two or three cribs per shack. Each crib is six feet wide and set with a st.u.r.dy narrow door, relieved only by a small barred window. Girls in black silk blouses stand at each window, beckoning and murmuring, "Two bittee lookee, flo bittee feelee, six bittee doee."

A skinny arm snakes out between the bars and seizes Zhu's sleeve. "China girl nice," the girl says. She pulls her blouse up to her shoulder, and Zhu glimpses slack little b.r.e.a.s.t.s, a ribcage. Her front teeth are missing, her cheek bruised blue. Even white face powder can't conceal the deep, dark circles beneath the slits of her eyes. Tuberculosis, probably. An old woman materializes out of nowhere and smacks the girl's arm with a stick. The girl whimpers, jerks her arm back inside the crib. She whispers to Zhu, "China girl nice. Five bittee doee, okay?"

Zhu recoils, her blood boiling. Why was she sent here? Why was she sent here if she can't right this wrong? She reaches in her pocket, rolls the mollie knife in her fingers. How she longs to rip open these cribs, lead these young women to safety, to refuge, to freedom, to the light. To the Presbyterian Mission where she was supposed to have taken Wing Sing.

"Sorry, Z. Wong," whispers Muse and posts the Tenets in her peripheral vision. "Please review Tenet Three of the Grandmother Principle."

Tenet Three. Right. Under Tenet Three, she can't affect any person in the past, and that includes aiding, coercing, deceiving, deterring, killing, or saving that person except as authorized by the project directors. She can't take out her mollie knife, can't tear down these bars, can't free these girls from their loathsome slavery. Like Li'l Lucy, they're on their own.

Zhu snorts, disgusted. There's one person, and one person only, she's authorized-ordered to help in 1895. And that's Wing Sing. She tours the alley, examining every prisoner at every barred window.

"Wing Sing?" she murmurs. "Is Wing Sing here?"

"I Wing Sing."

Zhu studies the swarthy, broad-cheeked girl. She must be Mongolian. Definitely not the girl she met in Golden Gate Park three months ago. Zhu was certain she'd recognize Wing Sing again but now, with every strange new face, her confidence falters.

Another voice, "I Wing Sing!"

And another, "I Wing Sing!"

"I'm sorry," she whispers. "No. No."

She flees Spofford Alley. The fortune-teller gives her a reproving look, then shrugs. She trudges on to Bartlett Alley, to Brooklyn Alley, to Stout. Always the same shacks, the barred windows, the grim little faces posed behind those bars reciting fee scales in a birdlike monotone.

So many slave girls. But Wing Sing is nowhere in sight.

Zhu rejoins the shuffling throng on Dupont, her heart heavy. Maybe Wing Sing is dead. Maybe three months of a life like this has killed her.

"Careful, Z. Wong," Muse whispers.

With a start she sees them before she registers Muse's warning, her intuition sounding off alarm bells. They shoulder their way through the crowd, striding directly toward her, the wiry fellow, the fat man, and the eyepatch. Hatchet men. Their hands purposefully shoved in their jacket pockets as they march behind an elderly gentleman in a gold-embroidered cap and an air of self-importance. The Big Boss, he's got to be. The other men on the street yield to their entourage.