Daughter of Fortune (18 page)

“What has become of our good friend?” inquired Paulina, who would never forget the eccentric Englishman's intervention in her love affair with Feliciano.

“I haven't heard anything from him in some time,” the captain informed her. “He went to England with me a couple of years ago. He was terribly depressed, but the sea air did him good and by the time he got off the ship he had recovered his good humor. The last I knew, he was thinking of forming a Utopian colony.”

“A what?” Paulina and Miss Rose exclaimed in unison.

“A group to live outside society, with their own laws and government guided by principles of equality, free love, and communal labor, as I remember. At least that was how he explained it a thousand times during the voyage.”

“He is even madder than we thought,” Miss Rose concluded, feeling a touch of sadness for her loyal suitor.

“People with original ideas always end up being considered mad,” Paulina noted. “Now, to come to the point. I have an idea I would like to discuss with you, Captain Sommers. You know the
Fortuna
. How long would it take to steam between Valparaíso and the Golfo de Penas?”

“Golfo de Penas? But that's to the south! And it's not called the Gulf of Sorrows for nothing.”

“Yes, it's farther south than Puerto Aysén.”

“And what will I do there? There's nothing but islands, forest, and rain, señora.”

“Do you know those waters?”

“Yes, but I thought we were talking about going to San Francisco.”

“Try these little pastries, they are delicious,” she offered, petting the dog.

While John and Rose Sommers were talking with Paulina in the salon of the Hotel Inglés, Eliza was roaming through El Almendral with Mama Fresia. It was near the time when students and guests were beginning to gather for the Academy dancing class, and, most untypically, Miss Rose had let Eliza go for a couple of hours with her nana as chaperone. Usually she did not let her protégée go near the Academy without her, but the dancing master did not serve alcoholic beverages until after sunset, which kept the more troublesome youths away during the early evening. Eliza decided to seize the unique opportunity of getting out of the house without Miss Rose, and convinced Mama Fresia to help her in her plans.

“Give me your blessing, Mamita,” she asked. “I have to go to California to look for Joaquín.”

“How can you do that, alone and pregnant!” Mama Fresia exclaimed with horror.

“If you don't help me, I'll do it alone.”

“I am going to tell Miss Rose everything!”

“If you do, I'll kill myself. And then I will come and haunt you for the rest of your days. I swear I will,” the girl returned with fierce determination.

The day before, she had seen a group of women in the port negotiating for a ticket. Because they looked so different from the women she normally saw in the street, heads covered winter or summer beneath their black mantles, she assumed these were the girls her Uncle John partied with. “They are worse than dogs,
niña;
they go to bed for money and have their big toes in hell,” Mama Fresia had told her once. Eliza had overheard some things the captain told Jeremy Sommers about the Chilean and Peruvian women on their way to California with plans to relieve the miners of their gold, but she couldn't imagine how they were going to do that. If those women could make the voyage alone, and survive without help, she could do it, too, she resolved. She walked quickly, her heart thudding and her face half hidden behind her fan, sweating in the December heat. She had brought her little velvet bag with the jewels of her trousseau. Her new ankle boots were acute torture and her corset squeezed her waist; the stench of the open sewers that drained all the city's waste increased her nausea, but she walked erect as she had learned in years of balancing a book on her head and of playing the piano with a metal rod strapped to her back. Mama Fresia, moaning and muttering prayers in her tongue and slowed by varicose veins, and her pounds, could barely keep up with her. Where are we going, child?
Por Dios. . . .
But Eliza couldn't answer because she didn't know. She was sure of one thing: there was no question of pawning her jewels and buying a ticket to California, because there was no way to do it without her uncle John learning. Even though dozens of ships came and went every day, Valparaíso was a small city, and everyone in the port knew Captain John Sommers. She had no identification papers, and no chance at all of obtaining a passport, because the United States legation in Chile had been closed due to a frustrated love affair between some North American diplomat and a Chilean lady. Eliza concluded that the only way she could follow Joaquín Andieta to California would be to stow away. Her uncle John had told her that sometimes voyagers were sneaked onto a ship with the help of a crew member. Sometimes they managed to stay hidden the whole trip, other times they died and their bodies went into the sea without anyone's ever knowing, but if they were discovered both the stowaway and the ones who had helped him were punished. That was one of the times, he said, when he exercised his unquestionable authority as captain with the greatest rigor: on the high seas there was no law or justice but his.

Most of the illegal transactions in the port, according to her uncle, were carried out in the bars. Eliza had never been inside such a place, but when she saw a female figure heading for a nearby doorway she recognized her as one of the women who had been on the dock the day before looking for a way to get on one of the ships. She looked very young; she was short, broad-hipped, full-busted, had two black braids down her back, and was wearing a cotton skirt, embroidered blouse, and a shawl around her shoulders. Without a second thought, Eliza followed her, while Mama Fresia stood in the street voicing her warnings. “No one goes in there but bad women,
niña
, it's a mortal sin!” Eliza pushed the door open and took several seconds to adjust to the darkness and the blast of tobacco and rancid beer that struck her in the face. The place was crowded with men, and all eyes turned to look at the two women. For an instant, there was an expectant silence, followed immediately by a chorus of whistles and vulgarities. The other woman, a veteran of these scenes, marched toward a table at the rear of the room, slapping away right and left at hands trying to touch her, but Eliza stepped back blindly, horrified, not really understanding what was happening or why those men were shouting at her. As she backed toward the door she crashed into a customer coming in. This individual grunted something in another language and caught her when she slipped. He was shocked when he saw who it was. Eliza, all virginal dress and fan, was completely out of place. She in turn immediately recognized the Chinese cook her uncle had spoken to the day before.

“Tao Chi'en?” she asked, grateful for her good memory.

The man greeted her by joining his hands before his face and bowing over and over as the whistling continued from the bar. Two sailors got to their feet and stumbled toward them. Tao Chi'en pointed toward the door and they both left.

“Miss Sommers?” he asked once they were outside.

She nodded, but had no opportunity to say more because they were interrupted by the two sailors from the bar, who loomed in the doorway, pretty clearly drunk and looking for trouble.

“You dare to bother this pretty little lady, you stinking Chink?” they threatened.

Tao Chi'en ducked his head, half-turned, and made a move to leave, but one of the men stopped him short by grabbing his braid and tugging on it while his buddy exhaled his winey breath in Eliza's face, mumbling propositions. Tao Chi'en turned with the reflexes of a cat and faced the aggressor. His outsized knife was in his hand, the blade gleaming like a mirror in the summer sun. Mama Fresia grunted and without even thinking shouldered the nearer sailor like a plow horse, grabbed Eliza's arm, and raced off down the street with an agility unsuspected in anyone of her pounds. The two women ran several blocks, putting distance between them and the red-light district, not stopping until they reached San Agustín plaza, where Mama Fresia collapsed, trembling, onto the first bench in sight.

“Ay,
niña
! If my
patrona
ever finds out, she will kill me. Let's go straight home.”

“I haven't done what I came to do, Mamita. I have to go back to that bar.”

Mama Fresia crossed her arms, stoutly refusing to budge, while Eliza strode back and forth trying to organize a plan in the midst of her confusion. There wasn't much time. Miss Rose's instructions had been very clear: at exactly six o'clock the coach would be in front of the dance academy to take them back home. She had to act quickly, she knew she would not have a second chance. This was their standoff when Eliza saw Tao Chi'en walking serenely in their direction with his hesitant step and imperturbable smile. He repeated the usual ritual of his greeting and then spoke to Eliza in good English to ask whether the honorable daughter of Captain John Sommers needed assistance. Eliza clarified that she was Sommers' niece, not his daughter, and with a rush of sudden confidence, or desperation, confessed that in fact she did need his help, but that it was an extremely private matter.

“Something the captain cannot know?”

“No one can know.”

Tao Chi'en begged her pardon. The captain was a good man, he said; it was true that his employer had been underhanded when he shanghaied him for his crew, but he had treated him well and Tao could not think of betraying him. Crushed, Eliza sank down on the bench with her face in her hands, while Mama Fresia watched them, not understanding a word of their English but guessing the drift. Finally, she leaned over to Eliza and tugged a few times on the velvet pouch that held the jewels.

“Do you think that anyone does anything for free in this world,
niña?”
she asked.

Eliza got the point. She dried her tears and, indicating a place beside her on the bench, invited the man to sit down. She dug into the pouch and pulled out the pearl necklace her uncle John had given her the day before and laid it on Tao Chi'en's knees.

“Can you hide me in a ship? I have to go to California,” she explained.

“Why? That's no place for women, only bandits.”

“I'm looking for something.”

“Gold?”

“Something more valuable than gold.”

The man stared, openmouthed, because he had never seen a woman capable of such extremes in real life, only in classic novels in which the heroines always died at the end.

“With this necklace you can buy your passage. You don't have to hide,” said Tao Chi'en, who was not inclined to complicate his life by breaking the law.

“No captain will take me without notifying my family.”

Tao Chi'en's initial surprise turned into frank amazement. This woman was actually planning to dishonor her family and was expecting him to help her! A devil had gotten into her body, no doubt of it. Again Eliza reached into the pouch; she took out a gold brooch set with turquoises and set it beside the necklace.

“Have you ever loved anyone more than life itself, señor?” she asked.

Tao Chi'en looked into the girl's eyes for the first time since they had met, and he must have seen something in them because he picked up the necklace and hid it beneath his shirt, then handed the brooch back to Eliza. He stood up, adjusted his cotton pants and the butcher knife in his sash, and again bowed ceremoniously.

“I no longer work for Captain Sommers. Tomorrow the brigantine
Emilia
sails for California. Come tonight at ten and I will get you on board.”

“How?”

“I do not know. We shall see.”

Tao Chi'en proffered another courteous farewell and walked away so silently and quickly that he seemed to have vanished like smoke. Eliza and Mama Fresia arrived at the dance academy just in time to meet the coachman, who had killed a half-hour wait while drinking from his flask.

The
Emilia
was a ship of French registry, once svelte and swift, but she had plowed through many seas, and centuries before had lost the impetus of youth. She was crisscrossed with ancient marine scars, she carried a crust of mollusks on her matronly hips, her exhausted joints moaned in the pounding seas, and her stained and repatched sail looked like a petticoat ready for the ragbag. She sailed from Valparaíso on the radiant morning of February 18,1849, carrying eighty-seven passengers of the male sex, five women, six cows, eight hogs, three cats, eighteen sailors, a Dutch captain, a Chilean pilot, and a Chinese cook. Eliza was also aboard, but the only person who knew of her existence was Tao Chi'en.

The first-class passengers were crowded into staterooms on the forward deck, without much privacy but considerably more comfortable than those in tiny cabins with four bunks each, or out on the open deck after casting lots to see where to stow their bundles. One cabin below the waterline was assigned to the five Chilean women who were off to test their luck in California. In the port of Callao, two Peruvians came aboard and were unceremoniously shoved in with them, two to a bunk. Captain Vincent Katz instructed his crew, as well as the passengers, that they were not to have the least social contact with the females, for he was not about to allow indecent congress on his ship, and in his eyes it was obvious that those women were not the most virtuous—although, inevitably, his orders were violated over and over during the voyage. The men greatly missed female companionship, and the humble bawds off on an adventure hadn't a peso in their pockets. The cows and hogs, well secured in small pens on the second deck, were to provide fresh milk and meat for the passengers, whose diet would consist primarily of beans, hardtack, salted meat, and whatever fish they could catch. To compensate for such monotony, the more affluent passengers brought some of their own provisions, especially wine and cigars, but most on board endured their hunger. Two of the cats were set loose to hold down the rats, which otherwise would have reproduced uncontrollably during the two months of the voyage. The third traveled with Eliza.