City of God (54 page)

Mei-hua closed the old woman’s eyes, then she took the incense out of her hand and carried it to the altar of Zao Shen and performed a solemn kowtow and completed the offering Ah Chee had intended. “You make very happy everything for her. Wonderful old woman. Wonderful good to me and my little bud.”

Next she threw open the kitchen window so the men who were always around the place would hear her when she began the ritual wailing and come to see what had happened.

They buried Ah Chee two days later in Mei-hua’s garden in a grave next to that of the Lord Samuel. “Very much happy funeral for her,” Mei-hua told a sobbing Mei Lin. “Red funeral. Lots of everything. She will be pleased. The Lord Kurt tell me after two years we can dig up bones, send them to Middle Kingdom. Ah Chee be buried with her ancestors. Very much too kind lord,” she added. “Everything all right, yes? You do everything I tell you in bed part?” She had not thought it appropriate to ask the question until Ah Chee was in the ground.

Mei Lin took a deep breath. Before the wailing began that would keep Ah Chee’s soul from becoming lost until her body was buried, she had been thinking that she must find some way to explain to the old woman that this was a very bad place and they were in the clutches of a very bad man who spoke without hesitation of murder. Ah Chee, she was convinced, would understand, though her mother never would. It had also been in her mind to send Ah Chee to meet with Fritz. She
would give Ah Chee two notes, one for Dr. Turner and one asking Fritz to deliver the other to the Crosby Street office.

All the plans that had seemed foolproof before the wailing began were impossible after it. How could she take her mother away from this place now that even Ah Chee was gone? How would they manage? She would grit her teeth and bear it, she decided. Maybe, after all, she was making a hasty judgment.

A few months after the funeral, however, Mei Lin knew she would have to try and get them away from Forty-eighth Street. She had overheard her husband discussing shipments of
ya-p’ien,
and she was now convinced that much of his wealth came from things that were illegal. Moreover, when the fourth month after the wedding came and it was apparent she still had not conceived, he had beaten her so badly she did not let her mother see her for two weeks. Even then Mei-hua had looked at her with eyes that seemed to see through Mei Lin’s clothes, and she had touched the fading remains of a bruise on her daughter’s cheek. “So, so,” she whispered. “Not so good. Not the kind of beating I tell you about. On your behind part only, meant to get your lord more excited. Maybe you, too.”

Mei Lin shook her head. “Not. Not,” she confessed.

They didn’t talk more about it, but Mei Lin knew she had to get help. She was still driven once a week to Mass in the town (it suited Kurt to have a wife who was Catholic because it deflected any questions about his own religious beliefs) but the driver waited for her outside and always immediately drove her home. In fact, she was in every way less free these days than she had been before the wedding. In addition to the men who now cooked and cleaned for Mei-hua, there was one, a wall-eyed fellow called Both Way Eyes, who simply sat in the hall of the first
tai-tai
’s house and watched everything that happened.

There were watchers too in the house Mei Lin shared with Kurt Chambers, but she was young and clever. One afternoon, after her husband had gone into the town on business, she managed to slip away and hurry to the reservoir. Fritz Heinz wasn’t there. After
twenty minutes, he still had not arrived. Then, just when she had made up her mind to go back to the house and wait for another opportunity to come and find her friend, Chambers stepped out of the woods.

That night he beat her so badly she was not able to walk for a week. When she had healed enough to join him for dinner as he commanded, he waited until the end of the excellent meal to tell her what he called his decision. “I expect that in the matter of the Bavarian, beating will not be enough to teach you the kind of obedience I expect. Therefore I am giving you fair warning. If you ever again try to see him, I shall not beat you. I will beat your mother. Then I will have your friend killed.”

I
T SEEMED TO
Manon there was always more sickness when times were hard. The poor might be poor whatever the condition of business in New York, but in this summer of ’57, when financial panic gripped the city, the charitable activities of Manon and her Sisters were in ever greater demand. That was a circumstance for which Manon felt more than ordinary responsibility. Three months before, she had been elected Mother Superior, a role that was added to the one she’d held for over a year, that of administrator of St. Vincent’s Hospital.

There was, nonetheless, little she could do to influence the economic situation. A bumper crop of wheat in Europe meant less demand for wheat produced here in America. Farmers in Ohio and Indiana and Illinois and the other outlying states and territories telegraphed to the insurance companies in New York, requesting immediate return of the spare cash they had invested when times were better. While it did sometimes seem that the instant transport of news Mr. Morse’s invention provided was as much a curse as a blessing, the problem would be just as real had the demands taken longer to arrive. The need to pay out so much money at one time resulted in dozens of New York insurance companies being forced into bankruptcy.

“But why should insurance companies failing have such a disastrous effect on all the rest?”

Manon had asked the question of a few of the clever men of business who served on St. Vincent’s board of trustees. Given all her responsibilities and the fact that shortly before, in ’56, St. Vincent’s Hospital had moved to larger quarters on Seventh Avenue and Eleventh Street, where their overheads were of necessity much higher, she felt she must understand such things.

“In a word, Sister Manon, unreasoning panic.” So said the always polite and pleasant Mr. Chambers, whom she still thought of as the English gentleman, though he’d been in New York half a dozen years. “People become alarmed and rush to the banks and demand specie—gold—rather than paper money. Soon enough the gold runs out and the bank must close its doors. When enough banks do that, there is an uproar. It has, I’m afraid, happened many times before.”

Indeed, the panic that had started in New York in August soon spread to London and Paris and even Berlin. “The world,” Cousin Nicholas told her, sitting across her desk on a frosty November afternoon, “is going to hell in a handbasket. But it’s hard to worry about anywhere else when what we have here at home is so catastrophic.”

One thing that did not decline was the cost of food. The thousands who lived from hand to mouth in the best of times were now destitute. Unable to find even the most menial jobs, they could not pay their rent and were summarily evicted and left to starve in the streets. In the face of such disaster, the efforts that had been made to help the poor rise into the working class, even those schemes directed to the youngest and most malleable, looked to be a joke.

The apprentice system, which whatever its abuses gave a boy room and board and taught him a trade, had long since disappeared in the glut of cheap labor provided by endless numbers of immigrants. As a result, fully a third of those now homeless and out of work were children. One scheme, from an organization known as the Children’s Aid Society located in a fine building near the Opera House in Astor Place, undertook to ship them west, where, it was said, workers were
needed. It was also said—indeed, promised—that they would be lodged in kind Christian homes. “Of some kind,” Manon was heard to say the first time someone brought her the society’s circular. “But certainly not a Catholic kind.”

Small wonder that the Irish and Italians who made up such a large percentage of New York’s poor were unwilling to hand over their young to the Children’s Aid Society. The Irish were known to instead train up their offspring to be pickpockets, while the Italians schooled theirs to become organ grinders. The street concerts of the latter attracted a few coins but also served as a fine distraction benefiting the former, the pickpockets, who flitted among the crowds of listeners and lightened their purses. Street urchins busy with such endeavors who were caught by the coppers were shipped to a House of Refuge on Randall’s Island and set to work making socks—sixty pairs a day was considered a decent output—which were then sold in the shops, undermining the jobs of such textile workers as still had them.

Those who took the longer view, mostly Evangelical reformers, continued to believe education the answer to poverty. These days it was thought that more than the basic three R’s should be offered. There was a free academy of higher learning on Twenty-third Street and what was now called Lexington Avenue, and in Astor Place Peter Cooper set up the Cooper Union where night classes were offered in all manner of skills and arts, and uplifting speakers were invited to inform and edify the masses.

Archbishop John Hughes was not to be outdone in this matter of education, nor would he stand by and let fervent New Evangelicals steal his nominally Catholic young. There were now thirty-one free schools associated with as many Catholic parishes, and twelve select schools run by various religious sisters for the education of the more affluent members of the faith. All, it was said, were the imitators but not the equals of the Madams of the Sacred Heart.

“I am certainly no denigrator of education, Cousin Nicholas. We have our own Sisters of Charity working in half a dozen parochial schools. But the sick poor will die of illness and starvation whether or not they can read and write.”

“If we can at least educate them to the use of strong soap and water, dearest Manon, perhaps not quite so frequently.”

“Germs, Nicholas, germs! I am sick and tired of hearing about germs.” She nonetheless followed his advice and had all her Sisters pin white aprons over their black habits when they served on the wards. White, Nick said, was better because at least it showed the dirt and prompted change when too badly soiled. Manon also spent as much of the hospital’s budget as she could afford on chlorinated lime and carbolic. The latter was a new weapon Nicholas had added to his arsenal, a disinfecting liquid said to be particularly useful for ridding surfaces of the omnipresent germs. Manon was not, however, satisfied with such apparently theoretical approaches to a disaster of such magnitude. “Can you believe that in the middle of all this they are talking about building a park? A park! I ask you. I want to hear about nourishing food and warm clothing and proper medical care.”

“According to its supporters, this Central Park will uplift the poorer classes by giving them views of greenery and pretty vistas and fresh air. God knows, what’s up in that part of town now is as ugly and depressing as any landscape can be. It’s not even proper wilderness any longer, simply a string of shantytowns. As for the medical care, it’s certainly better here at St. Vincent’s than most places.”

“Not good enough, nonetheless.” Manon could not resign herself to the limitations of care New York’s private hospitals offered. The proposed Jews’ Hospital wasn’t yet open, but the Archbishop and the Mother General insisted that, like New York Hospital, St. Vincent’s must not admit anyone known to be suffering from contagious or fatal diseases. They must go to Bellevue or die in the street. “I’m told Dr. Chance had more than five thousand admissions last year,” she added, her tone subdued by the enormity of that number.

Nicholas nodded. “Yes, that’s the figure I’ve heard as well. And despite the new wing, Bellevue still has only twelve hundred beds.” Neither he nor Manon was surprised that though Tobias Grant had been dead for six years, Monty Chance remained Senior Medical Attendant. That the post had served him well could be judged by his fine house near Hudson
Square and his elevated place in New York society. “I hear there’s a veritable plague of children blinded by ophthalmia in Bellevue, and God knows how many post-parturient women dying of puerperal fever. Both are infections, Manon. Both must come from germs and are therefore preventable. If only we took proper precautions—”

Manon put her hands over her ears. “As Almighty God is my judge, Nicholas, if I hear any more about these mysterious germs, I shall—”

A quick knock interrupted her words. The door was, in any case, ajar. A Sister of Charity, even one with as much authority as Mother Marie Manon and with her reputation for discretion and good sense, did not speak with a man alone behind a closed door.

“Forgive me, Reverend Mother, there is a lady just arrived who is asking for you by name. I’m afraid she’s very badly injured, but she will let no one treat her unless you come.”

“Reverend Mother Manon, do you remember me?”

“Of course I do, Mrs. Chambers.” Manon laid her hand gently over those of the young woman, and leaned over the narrow bed in the admissions room. Linda Chambers’s hands seemed to be the only visible part of her that was unmarked. One eye was swollen shut, the other half closed. Both were surrounded by bruises. Her face was covered with crusted blood and what looked to Manon’s experienced eye like old black and blue marks. The Sister who had come to get her had already told her that the patient had a broken arm and that the angle of the other elbow did not appear quite right. “I shall send for your husband immediately,” Manon said. “Meanwhile we will—”

“No! No! Please, I beg you, that is exactly what you must not do. Please, I will—”

“Shush, calm yourself. We shall do nothing you do not authorize us to do. I promise. But you must allow us to treat your injuries.”

“Yes, but first…” Her voice weakened. Manon tried to get her to take a few sips of water, but Mei Lin turned away. “Not yet…Please, I believe you know Dr. Turner. I must see him, he’s the only one who—”

“Hush, you must conserve your strength. I do know Dr. Turner, and as it happens he’s here now.” She turned to the young Sister who had summoned her and who still hovered by the door. “Go back to my office, see if Dr. Turner is still there. If he is, bring him at once. Hurry.”

The young nun had been taught that Sisters of Charity moved always with dignity and modest grace, eyes cast down, hands folded and tucked beneath the habit’s short black cape. The woman in the bed, however, had been beaten to within an inch of her life and this, the nun was sure, was a different sort of occasion from any the old novice mistress might have imagined. She ran down the corridor, black skirts and wooden rosary beads flying in the breeze of her passage.

“Dr. Turner, Reverend Mother says—”

The office was empty. There was a note propped up where it was easily seen.
Getting late. Had to leave. Will call again soon.

The front door was only steps away. The nun dashed to it and pulled it open. A man was just disappearing around the corner onto Seventh Avenue. She had five brothers, all older than she, who when she was a child took delight in teaching her tricks of the most unladylike kind. Sister put two fingers into her mouth and brought forth a whistle shrill enough to be heard six blocks away. “Dr. Turner!” she called, both hands cupped around her mouth and shouting at the top of her sturdy young lungs, “Come back at once! Reverend Mother says you must!”

“Hello, Mei Lin. I am sorry to find you so, but we’ll soon have you well.”

“Dr. Turner, my mother…Please, you must go and get her. Ah Chee is dead and you are the only other person she knows in the city who is not one of my husband’s people. She will come with you. Otherwise…” Her voice weakened again. Nick, who already had his stethoscope in hand, started to examine her. Mei Lin struggled to sit up, grabbing the front of his coat as she did so. “My mother. Please. If you do not go, something terrible will happen to her.”

The burst of words seemed to sap the last of her strength and she fell
back on the bed. Nick and Manon looked at each other. “She begged me not to send for her husband,” Manon said softly. “She said that was the last thing I must do.”

“You’re saying…” Nick had difficulty taking in the notion. “You’re saying you think Kurt Chambers is the cause of all this? That he’s a threat to her mother? It seems impossible. He’s a gentleman, respected and…”

“Remember Tobias Grant,” Manon said. “He seemed entirely respectable as well if you only met him outside Bellevue.”

Nick nodded. “I shall go at once. That broken arm must be set, however, and the sooner the better.”

“I will see to it.” Manon stepped forward and began cutting away the young woman’s frock. The very best silk, she noted, and the latest fashion. Once upon a time, in another life, she’d had a keen eye for such things, and even now she was not immune. Mr. Chambers had brought his exotic young wife to a number of the hospital’s charity functions, the sort attended by the ever growing Catholic upper class. Indeed, Manon had quite admired how proud he seemed of her, how if they heard the whispers, neither of them let on.
Educated by the Madams, they say. A Catholic, I know, but some sort of mixed blood. Well yes, quite pretty in her way, but still…
Mr. Chambers ignored the gossips and paraded his wife on his arm, showing off her beautiful gowns and jewels. Covering what, Manon wondered now. “Go at once, Cousin Nicholas. I suspect there is little time to waste.”

“Yes, just one thing. When I get Mei-hua, may I bring her here? I don’t know where else—”

“Of course. Now, hurry.”

Nick did not question the need for speed. Someone had beaten Mei Lin very badly, and on the evidence of his own eyes, not for the first time. She’d all but said that someone was her husband, Kurt Chambers. And she had indicated he was capable of worse. Since that night in the Rotunda Bar at the Astor, he’d known Chambers to be a man of considerable resources. If indeed he beat his wife and threatened his mother-in-law,
those vices were probably not the extent of his propensity for evil. While haste was indeed required, Nick did not go directly to Forty-eighth Street and Fifth Avenue.