Daughter of Fortune (26 page)

Tao Chi'en lay prostrate on the floor for a long time, struggling to recapture his reason, until his crazed heart stopped galloping and the faint scent of Lin had evaporated from the hold. “Don't go, don't go,” he repeated a thousand times, sick with love. Finally he was able to get to his feet, open the hatch, and go out to the fresh air.

It was a warm night. The Pacific Ocean was gleaming like silver in the moonlight and a light breeze bellied the worn sails of the
Emilia
. Many passengers had already gone to bed or were playing cards in their cabins; others had hung their hammocks to pass the night amid the chaos of machines, harnesses, and boxes that covered the decks, and some were amusing themselves at the stern, watching the playful dolphins in the foam of the wake. Tao Chi'en looked up toward the enormous dome of the sky with gratitude. For the first time since her death, Lin had visited him openly. Before beginning his life as a sailor he had seen her nearby from time to time, especially when he was deep in meditation, but then it had been easy to confuse the tentative presence of her spirit with his widower's longing. Lin tended to touch him lightly with her fine fingers as she passed, but he would be left with the doubt of whether it was really she or just a figment of his tormented soul. Moments earlier in the hold, however, he had had no doubts: Lin's face had been as radiant and clear as the moon over that sea. He felt her with him, and was content, as in those long ago nights when she nestled in his arms after they made love.

Tao Chi'en went to the crew's quarters where he had a narrow wood bunk far from what little ventilation filtered through the hatch. It was impossible to sleep there in the thick air and funk from the sleeping men, but he hadn't had to do that since leaving Valparaíso because the summer weather allowed him to stretch out on the deck. He looked for his trunk, nailed to the floor to secure it in the tossing of the ship, removed the key from around his neck, opened the padlock, and took out a vial of laudanum. Then he quietly drew a double ration of freshwater and went to get rags from the kitchen, which would do for lack of something better.

He was on his way back to the hold when he was stopped by a hand on his arm. He turned in surprise and saw one of the Chilean women who, defying the captain's explicit order to stay out of sight after sunset, had come out to entice clients. He recognized her immediately. Of all the women on board, Azucena Placeres was the most sympathetic and most outgoing. During the first days she was the only one willing to help seasick passengers and had also dutifully nursed a young sailor who had fallen from the mast and broken his arm. She had won the respect even of the stern Captain Katz, who, from that time, had looked the other way when she broke the rules. Azucena offered her services as a nurse for free, but if anyone made so bold as to lay a hand on her firm flesh he had to pay in coin of the realm, because, as she said, there was no reason to confuse a good heart with stupidity. This is my only capital, she would say, jauntily slapping herself on the buttocks, and if I'm not careful with it, I'll screw up for real. Azucena Placeres spoke to Tao in four words that can be understood in any language: chocolate, coffee, tobacco, and brandy. As always when she met him, she expressed in graphic sign language her wish to exchange any of those luxuries for her favors, but the
zhong yi
pushed her aside and kept on his way.

For a good part of the night Tao Chi'en sat beside the feverish Eliza. He worked over her weakened body with the limited resources of his bag, his long experience, and a wavering tenderness until she expelled a bloody little mollusk. Tao Chi'en examined it in the lamplight and determined that without the slightest doubt it was a five- or six-week fetus, and was whole. To clean out her womb, he inserted his needles in the girl's arms and legs, provoking strong contractions. When he was sure of the results, he sighed with relief: all that remained was to ask Lin to do her part to prevent infection. Until that night he had thought of Eliza as a business arrangement, and he had the pearl necklace in the bottom of his trunk to prove it. She was just a stranger, a girl for whom he had no particular feelings, a
fan wey
with big feet and an aggressive temperament who hadn't had any luck in getting a husband since, it was easy to see, she had no inclination to please or serve a man. Now, with the misfortune of this miscarriage, she would never marry. Not even her lover, who had already abandoned her once anyway, would want her for a wife—in the unlikely event that she ever found him. He had to admit that for a foreigner Eliza was not all that ugly, at least there was a slightly Oriental air about her almond eyes and her hair, as long, black, and shiny as the proud tail of an imperial horse. If she had had that diabolical yellow or red hair, like so many women he had seen since leaving China, he might never have gone near her; however, neither her looks nor her strong character would help her now; her bad luck was cast, there was no hope for her: she would end up walking the streets in California. He had been with many such women in Canton and Hong Kong. He owed a large part of his medical knowledge to the years he had practiced on the bodies of those luckless girls abused by beatings, sickness, and drugs. Several times during that long night he asked himself whether it wouldn't be more noble to let her die, despite Lin's instructions, and save her from a horrible fate, but she had paid him in advance and he should carry out his part of the deal, he told himself. No, that wasn't the only reason, he concluded, since from the beginning he had questioned his own motives for helping this girl stow away. The risk was enormous, he wasn't sure he had committed such a foolish act merely for the value of the pearls. Something in Eliza's valiant determination had moved him, something about the fragility of her body and the bold love she professed for her lover reminded him of Lin.

Finally, near dawn, Eliza stopped bleeding. She was delirious with fever and shivering despite the unbearable heat of the hold, but her pulse was steadier and she was breathing calmly in her sleep. She was not, however, out of danger. Tao Chi'en wanted to stay with her and watch her, but he calculated that soon the bell would sound to summon him to his watch. He dragged himself up the companionway, fell facedown on the planks of the deck, and slept like a baby until a friendly shove from the foot of another sailor woke him to his duties. He plunged his head into a pail of seawater to wash the sleep from his eyes and, still in a stupor, went to the kitchen to boil the oatmeal that constituted breakfast. Everyone ate it without comment, even the sober Captain Katz—except for the Chileans, who chorused a protest despite being better provided for than anyone, having been the latest to come aboard. Other passengers had polished off their provisions of tobacco, alcohol, and sweets in insufferable months at sea before reaching Valparaíso. Word had spread that some of the Chileans were aristocrats and that was why they didn't know how to wash their own underdrawers or boil water for tea. The ones traveling in first class had brought servants who would work for them in the gold mines, because the concept of dirtying their hands personally had never crossed their minds. Others paid the sailors to wait on them, since the women, in a block, refused: they could earn ten times the price by welcoming their countrymen for ten minutes in the privacy of the women's room, so there was no reason to spend two hours washing dirty laundry. The crew and the rest of the passengers mocked those spoiled sissies but never to their faces. The Chileans had good manners, they seemed timid enough and made a great show of courtesy and gentlemanliness, but it took only the tiniest spark to inflame their arrogance. Tao Chi'en tried to avoid them. They did not mask their scorn for him or for the two Negro passengers who boarded the ship in Brazil; they had paid for their passage but they were the only ones who were not given a cabin or allowed to eat at table with the others. Tao preferred the five humble Chilean women, with their solid practical sense, their unflagging good humor, and the maternal feelings that flowered in times of emergency.

He finished his watch like a sleepwalker, his thoughts on Eliza, but couldn't find a free minute to see her until that night. At mid-morning the sailors had caught an enormous shark, which died on deck, thrashing wickedly in its death throes while no one dared go near enough to club it. It fell to Tao Chi'en, in his role as cook, to supervise the task of skinning it, chopping it into pieces, cooking part of the meat and salting the rest, while the sailors washed the blood from the deck and the passengers celebrated the horrific spectacle with the last remaining bottles of champagne, anticipating a feast at dinner. Tao kept the heart for Eliza's soup and the fins to dry: they would be worth a fortune in the aphrodisiac market. As the hours went by in the chores involving the shark, Tao Chi'en imagined Eliza dead in the heart of the ship. He felt a surge of happiness when at last he went down and found that she was still alive and looking better. The hemorrhaging had stopped, the jug of water was empty, and everything indicated that there had been moments of lucidity during that long day. Briefly, he thanked Lin for her help. The girl struggled to open her eyes; her lips were dry and her face flushed with fever. He helped her to her feet and fed her a strong broth of
tangkuei
to build up her blood. When he was sure she would keep it in her stomach, he gave her a few sips of fresh milk, which she drank avidly. Invigorated, she announced that she was hungry and asked for more. The cows they were carrying onboard, unused to the sea, were producing very little; nothing but bones, there was already talk of slaughtering them. Tao Chi'en found the idea of drinking milk repulsive but his friend Ebanizer Hobbs had advised him of its properties for replenishing lost blood. If Hobbs recommended it in the diet of someone gravely wounded, it should have the same effect in this instance, Tao decided.

“Am I going to die, Tao?”

“Not yet.” He smiled and patted Eliza's head.

“How long before we reach California?”

“A long time. Don't think about that. Now you must urinate.”

“No, please!” she protested.

“Why not? You must!”

“In front of you?”

“I am a
zhong yi
. You cannot feel embarrassed with me. I have seen everything there is to see of your body.”

“I can't move, I can't survive this voyage, Tao, I would rather die,” Eliza sobbed, steadying herself on him as she sat on the pot.

“Be brave, girl. Lin says you have much
qi
and you have not come this far to die in midjourney.”

“Who says that?”

“Not important.”

That night Tao Chi'en realized that he could not care for Eliza alone, he needed help. The next morning, as soon as the women came out of their cabin and went to the stern, as they always did to wash their clothes and braid their hair, and to mend the feathers and bugle beads of their professional attire, he beckoned Azucena Placeres to come talk to him. During the voyage none of the women had worn their whoring clothes but dressed in heavy, dark skirts, plain blouses, and house slippers; they wrapped themselves in their mantles, combed their hair into two braids down their backs, and skipped their makeup. They looked like a group of simple housewives busy at domestic chores. Azucena gave a happy wink to her partners in crime and followed Tao into the kitchen. There he handed her a large piece of chocolate that he had stolen from the stores for the captain's table and tried to explain his problem, but she didn't understand a word of English and he began to lose patience. Azucena Placeres smelled the chocolate and a childlike smile illuminated her round Indian face. She took the cook's hand and placed it on her breast, pointing toward the women's cabin, empty at that hour, but he pulled away his hand, took hers, and led her to the hatchway to the hold. Azucena, half surprised, half curious, held back a little but he did not give her a chance to refuse, he opened the hatch and pushed her down the ladder, constantly smiling to calm her. For a few instants they were in darkness, until he found the lamp hanging from a beam and lighted it. Azucena giggled; finally this strange Chinese man had understood the terms of the bargain. She had never done it with an Asian and she was very curious to know if their equipment was like other men's, but the cook showed no sign of profiting from their privacy; instead he pulled on her arm, dragging her through the labyrinths of the cargo. She was afraid he was a little unhinged and began to tug and try to get loose, but he held on, forcing her to follow him until the lamplight fell onto the hole where Eliza lay.

“
Jesús, María, y José
!” Azucena yelled, crossing herself in terror when she saw Eliza.

“Ask her to help us,” Tao Chi'en told Eliza in English, shaking her awake.

It took Eliza a good quarter of an hour to stammer out the simple instructions from Tao Chi'en, who had taken the turquoise brooch from Eliza's bag of jewels and was brandishing it before the eyes of the trembling Azucena. The deal, he told her, as Eliza translated, was to come down twice a day to bathe and feed Eliza, without anyone's knowing. If she did that, he would give her the brooch in San Francisco, but if she said a single word to anyone, he would slit her throat. He had taken the knife from his sash and was waving it under her nose; in the other hand he held the brooch so the message would be very clear.

“You understand?”

“Tell this crazy Chinaman I understand and to put that knife away, because he could kill me, mean to or not.”

For a time that seemed endless, Eliza fought her way through delirium, tended by Tao Chi'en at night and Azucena Placeres by day. Early in the morning and at siesta time, when most of the passengers were drowsing, Azucena would slip down to the kitchen and get the key from Tao Chi'en. At first she was shaking with fear when she went down to the hold, but soon her natural good nature, and the brooch, overcame her fright. She would begin by rubbing Eliza with a soapy rag until she had removed the sweat of her agony, then force her to eat some oatmeal and chicken broth fortified with the
tangkuei
Tao Chi'en prepared. She gave Eliza herbs, according to his directions, and on her own initiative brewed her a daily cup of borage tea. She blindly trusted in that remedy to flush a pregnancy from a womb: borage and an image of the Virgin of Carmen were the first things she and her companions-in-adventure had tucked into their travel trunks, because without those protections the roads of California could be very hard to travel. Eliza was lost in the land of death until the morning they anchored in the port of Guayaquil, not much more than a small community overrun by exuberant Ecuadorian vegetation; few ships anchored there except to negotiate for tropical fruit or coffee, but Captain Katz had promised to deliver some letters to a family of Dutch missionaries. He had had that correspondence with him for six months and he was not a man to fail on a promise. The previous night, in heat like a bonfire, Eliza had sweated out the last drop of temperature and dreamt that she was climbing barefoot up the side of an erupting volcano; she awakened sopping wet but lucid and with a clear brow. All the passengers, including the women and a good part of the crew, disembarked for a few hours to stretch their legs, bathe in the river, and stuff themselves with fresh fruit, but Tao Chi'en stayed onboard to teach Eliza to light and smoke the pipe he had in his trunk. He had doubts about the girl's treatment; that was one time he would have given anything to have the counsel of his wise master. He understood the need to keep her calm and help pass the time in the prison of the hold, but she had lost a lot of blood and he was afraid the drug would thin what little she had left. He made his decision hesitantly, after entreating Lin to watch over Eliza's sleep.