Autumn Bridge (19 page)

She was about to remove her hood, the day being rather warm, when she saw that not all the guests had departed. One still remained, sitting quietly by himself in the central garden, a young man, unusually handsome, with very bright eyes and long, almost girlish eyelashes. His mustache fortunately saved him from an appearance of excessive prettiness. He was well dressed in the latest Western fashion, a black felt plantation hat on his head, a gray silk vest beneath his black, double-breasted woolen jacket, and dark gray woolen trousers. Only his footwear — boots of the kind worn by horsemen rather than city dwellers — seemed out of place. She bowed her head and put her hands together in the Buddhist gesture of
gassho
and made as if to continue past, but the man spoke to her before she could go on.

“Our guide gave an account of the famous battle,” he said.

His pronunciation was a little odd, as if he were somewhat out of practice. Perhaps he had recently spent time abroad speaking a foreign language, and his tongue had not yet readjusted to Japanese.

“The purpose is cautionary,” the Abbess said. “That such violence occurred in a holy place serves to remind us that serenity and chaos are not as far apart as we would like to think. I hope it did not disturb you too much.”

“It didn’t,” he said, though he did in fact seem disturbed. “It’s just that I’ve heard a different version of the story.”

The way his lips formed a slight, almost mocking smile reminded her of someone she could not immediately place.

“The guide said Lord Taro led the rescue with the famous cavalrymen of Akaoka Domain,” he said. “But Taro was not a lord then, and he was trapped along with Lord Genji and the others. The rescue was led by Lord Mukai, who brought his own retainers with him from the north.”

“Is that so?” the Abbess said. She was surprised by the young man’s knowledge. The battle had actually happened the way he said, and not the way it was told to visitors. The official story gave Taro the role played by Mukai partly to rehabilitate the former’s reputation, and partly to obscure the latter. Taro had eventually come to a bad end, while unfortunate rumors about Mukai’s social habits made any association potentially embarrassing to Genji. Twenty years of repetition had given the lie the weight of historical fact. There was even an altar dedicated to Lord Taro in one of the smaller temples of the abbey. Over the years, he had steadily gained popularity as a bodhisattva of rescue. Since no relics were associated with him, the Abbess did not encourage his cult. She said, “The real point of the story is not in the details of who did what. We are better served by focusing on the uncertainty of life, and the gratitude and attention each moment deserves.”

“I suppose so.”

He seemed very disappointed, as if it had some personal meaning for him.

“Do you have a special interest in the battle?” she asked.

“Only in the truth of it,” he said. He was still smiling, and the smile still had a slight mocking quality, but now it seemed directed at himself. “I am hoping something of what I have been told is true. Anything.”

“Where did you hear your version?” the Abbess asked.

“From my parents. They were there. Or so they told me.”

The Abbess knew every village child who had been with her that day, watching from their hiding place in the woods. She knew everyone who had lived to become an adult, every child born to them, and every grandchild, and this young man was certainly not among them. Only eleven people on Lord Genji’s side had survived the battle, four women and seven men. Three pairs of these had subsequently united in marriage, no doubt believing that fate had brought them together and caused them to survive for just that purpose. (How we loved to imbue our insignificant existences with unwarranted importance. The Abbess silently thanked Buddha for protecting her from that delusion.) The young man’s parents had told him the truth about the battle but had lied to him about being there. It wasn’t much of a lie, as lies go. Still, it obviously had an effect on him.

“And who are your parents?” the Abbess said.

The man then did a completely unexpected thing.

He laughed.

“That’s a good question,” he said, “a very good question indeed.”

Nothing in this life or the next will bring you more pain than love. If anyone tells you otherwise, they are liars.
Or they are still inexperienced in such matters.
Or they have been exquisitely fortunate in their choice of lovers.
So far.
AKI-NO-HASHI
(1311)

Matthew Stark paused outside the Chinese laundry at the corner of Washington and Dupont. He took a deep breath. Some people of his acquaintance liked to talk about the stench of Chinatown, as if it were the emanation of some kind of festering wound. Stark himself was comforted by the mélange of odors, not by their quantity or any particular one of them, but by the generality, the fecundity, the suggestion of vigor. It always raised hope in his heart of better things to come, no matter that he knew from experience that worse was at least as likely as better. Somehow, it also reminded him of the eventful year he had spent in Japan, now twenty years past, though there was nothing similar in the scents. Perhaps it was simply the Oriental quality of the fragrances.

Dressed as he was in a modern double-breasted wool frock coat, black with black velvet trim and fabric-covered buttons, a dark red silk brocade vest over a white silk shirt, wool trousers, and polished cotton suspenders, a felt planter’s hat, a black silk cravat in a loose bow, the longish but neatly trimmed hair at his temples streaked with silver, Stark looked like any prosperous gentleman of the burgeoning city of San Francisco, except for the slight bulging of his coat at his right hip and left chest, where holsters held two .38-caliber revolvers, with five-inch and two-inch barrels respectively, the former for accuracy and the latter for compactness. These he checked before continuing on across the square in the direction of the Jade Lotus, the premier entertainment establishment in this part of the city.

Stark didn’t expect any trouble, certainly not of a kind requiring the use of two firearms. But old habits were hard to break. When he was seventeen, and a runaway from an Ohio orphanage trying to be a cowboy in west Texas, Stark was almost killed by a gambler he’d caught cheating at cards. The only reason he shot the gambler instead of the other way around was because the gambler’s ammunition had caused a misfire. The incident encouraged Stark to make it a habit to carry a backup himself, just in case. Since then, he’d had four occasions to fire two guns in the same encounter, all during that year in Japan. Three of those times, he was saving his own life and that of his friends. The other didn’t exactly involve necessity. Stark had unloaded a .44 Colt and a .32 Smith & Wesson into a helpless man he’d already mortally wounded. It was for him the greatest irony that love can so easily drive a man to hatred, and that the resulting hatred can make a man do unreasonable things without a moment’s hesitation.

Stark was going to see Wu Chun Hing, one of the richest men in San Francisco. By virtue of being Chinese, he was privileged to live in the twelve-block area around Portsmouth Square, along with some twenty thousand of his fellow Chinese, and was prudent enough not to flaunt his wealth in any way noticeable to the American residents of the city. Stark had heard that Wu was born into an influential family in China, had come to the United States as a young man to further his education, and had been marooned here when his family was annihilated during one of the rebellions that seemed to sweep through that country with tragic regularity. Whatever the truth about his past, Wu’s present was as proprietor of a multitude of restaurants, bordellos, gambling houses, and opium dens. Since Stark was in entirely different lines of business, and did not avail himself of the goods and services offered by Wu, with the exception of cuisine, the two had never had any serious dealings or conflicts. He had no idea why Wu had requested the meeting.

“Please forgive me for asking you to come here,” Wu said.

Stark had been led to a sitting room on the second floor. It was furnished like the small personal library one might find in the home of a college professor, complete with an abundance of books. There was nothing to suggest it belonged to anyone other than a prosperous American intellectual. This impression was completed by Wu’s clothing, which resembled his guest’s in taste and quality. There was not a hint of anything Oriental anywhere in sight, except in Wu’s face. His hair was neatly trimmed. There was, of course, no pigtail.

“Conditions at present are such that it would not be prudent for me to venture out of my own district.”

“Because of the Chinatown Bandit,” Stark said.

“Yes,” Wu said, looking genuinely aggrieved, “though he is not from Chinatown.”

Stark said, “The newspapers say he is.”

“The papers.” Wu made a spitting sound. “They have two purposes only. To sell more papers, and to serve the interests of their greedy masters. Thanks to the papers, we have a Chinese Cubic Air Tax, a Chinese Miner’s Tax, a Chinese Police Tax. Is this fair? There is no Mexican Cubic Air Tax, no German Miner’s Tax, no Irish Police Tax, is there? And now, thanks to the hubbub about a ‘Chinatown Bandit,’ feelings against us are inflamed once again.”

“Unfortunate, but not incomprehensible,” Stark said. “All some people need is an excuse, and the Bandit’s giving it to them. I would have thought you’d have put a stop to it long before now.”

“I would have, if he were Chinese, because if he were Chinese, there is no way he would have remained unknown to me.”

“I don’t mean to be rude, Mr. Wu, but every eyewitness describes him as Chinese. They can’t all be mistaken.”

“They could if—” Wu began to say, then, apparently thinking better of it, began again. “This criminal accosts wealthy couples in their own neighborhoods, threatens them with a gun and a knife—”

“A meat cleaver,” Stark said, “of the kind commonly found in Chinese restaurants.”

“Yes. That is a fiendishly deceptive accessory. He brandishes a gun and a meat cleaver, and proceeds to take a single piece of jewelry from the woman. If the man resists, he screams out something, supposedly in Chinese, and knocks him down with a kick, or bludgeons him with the flat side of the cleaver.” Wu grimaced. “Anti-Chinese sentiment grows worse by the day. I thought the looting and burning four years ago was the bottom of the pit, but the bottom is farther down than I thought, so far down I’m not sure I can see it. It was bad enough when the city and state governments passed punitive laws. Now the United States Congress is getting set to pass a Chinese Exclusion Act, and if it does, what will happen to us then? Will we be expelled? Imprisoned? Will our few poor possessions be taken from us? In this terrible situation, no Chinese would dare to worsen it by committing such crimes.”

“No sane Chinese would,” Stark said. “The man may not be sane.”

Wu shook his head. “He is not Chinese.”

Stark shrugged. “I’ll take your word for it, and hope, along with you, that he is stopped before things get out of hand. Now, if you would, perhaps we can move on to the purpose of this meeting.”

Wu looked quietly at Stark for a few moments before continuing. “We have been doing so, Mr. Stark.”

Stark frowned. “I’m not sure I understand.”

“Because of the nature of my various businesses,” Wu said, “I have working relationships with a number of city police officers. From the beginning, they have sought my help, and in so doing, have shared information with me. Here are some curious facts. The Bandit knows the names of his victims. He knows where they live, and goes so far as to describe interior rooms, including, in one case, a master bedroom, suggesting he has been in the victims’ houses at some point before robbing them on the street. The victims are terrified, and outraged. So far, the police have kept this from the press. If it gets out, it will not be long before a murderous mob descends on Chinatown and we have a repeat of the atrocities of ’77.”

“I still don’t follow,” Stark said. “What can I do about any of this?”

“Please permit me to continue, Mr. Stark. This is a difficult matter, requiring careful thought. So, what do we have so far? A man capable of entering houses without being detected, and without leaving any sign that he has been there. Remember, too, he commits his robberies in the very hearts of the best neighborhoods — lily-white neighborhoods, it goes without saying — yet no one has ever seen him, though because of his race he should stand out like the proverbial sore thumb.”

“He may disguise himself.”

“If so, we must add that ability to his formidable list of talents. And he grows ever more remarkable, because he does not steal anything from the houses he enters, though he could easily do so. This strongly suggests that he is not motivated by material gain, a very curious characteristic in a housebreaker and armed robber, is it not? The fact that he takes only a single piece of jewelry during his robberies tends to support this point.”

“Let’s assume you are correct,” Stark said. “It still leads to no useful conclusion.”

“There’s more,” Wu said. “My police contacts have also provided me with detailed descriptions of the jewelry taken during the robberies. From Mr. and Mrs. Dobson, a platinum brooch, six inches in diameter, containing twenty-seven diamonds with an aggregate weight of thirteen and one-half carats, thirteen sapphires with a weight of nine and three-quarter carats, and a central sapphire weighing five carats.” Wu placed a brooch matching the description he had just given on his desk.

“From Mr. and Mrs. Merrill, a ring of eighteen-karat gold, with an emerald-cut diamond solitaire of three and one-half karats.” He placed the ring next to the brooch.

“From Mr. and Mrs. Hart, a necklace, twenty-four inches in length, with twin chains of twenty-one-karat gold and sterling silver entwined around pearls ranging in diameter from one-quarter inch to one inch.” The necklace joined the brooch and ring.