Daughter of Fortune (25 page)

“How did you do that?”

“The same way we did it in Hong Kong: with war and deceit. Let's say that it's a blend of naval power, greed, and discipline. We are not superior, we're crueler, and greedier. I am not particularly proud of being English, and after you've traveled as much as I have, you won't be proud of being Chinese, either.”

During the next two years, Tao Chi'en stepped on terra firma only three times, one of which was in England. He lost himself among the huge throngs in the port, and walked through the streets of London looking at new things with the eyes of an enchanted child. The
fan wey
were filled with surprises; on the one hand, they lacked any touch of refinement and behaved like savages, but on the other, they were capable of amazing inventiveness. He confirmed that in their own country the English suffered the same arrogance and bad manners they exhibited in Hong Kong: they had no respect for him, and knew nothing of courtesy or etiquette. He tried to buy an ale, but they pushed him out of the inn: No yellow dogs allowed in here, they told him. Soon he joined some other Asian sailors and they found a place run by an elderly Chinese man where they could eat, drink, and smoke in peace. Listening to the stories the other men told, Tao calculated how much he still had to learn, and decided that first would be how to use his fists and his knife. Knowledge is not of much use if you can't defend yourself: the wise acupuncture master had also forgotten to teach him that fundamental principle.

In February of 1849 the
Liberty
moored in Valparaíso. The next day, Captain John Sommers called Tao to his cabin and handed him a letter.

“This was given to me in the port. It's for you and it's from England.”

Tao Chi'en took the envelope, blushed, and a huge smile illuminated his face.

“Don't tell me it's a love letter,” the captain joked.

“Better than that,” Tao answered, slipping it between his shirt and his skin. The letter could only be from his friend Ebanizer Hobbs, the first he had received in the two years he had been at sea.

“You have done a good job, Chi'en.”

“I thought, sir, you did not like my cooking.” Tao Chi'en said, and smiled.

“As a cook, you're a disaster, but you know your medicine. In two years' time I've not lost a single man, and none of the crew has scurvy. Do you know what that means?”

“Good fortune.”

“Your contract is up today. I suppose I could get you drunk and make you sign an extension. I might do that to another man, but I owe you some favors and I pay my debts. Do you want to go on with me? I will raise your wages.”

“Where are you going?”

“To California. But I'm going to leave this ship; I have been offered a steamship, an opportunity I've been waiting a long time for. I would like you to come with me.”

Tao Chi'en had heard of steamships, and had a horror of them. The idea of enormous boilers filled with red-hot water to produce steam and power infernal machinery could have occurred only to people always in a hurry. Wasn't it far better to travel to the rhythm of the winds and currents? Why challenge nature? He had heard rumors of boilers that exploded at sea, cooking the crew alive. Bits of human flesh, parboiled like shrimp, shooting off in all directions to become fish food while the souls of those wretches, fragmented in the force of the explosion and swirling steam, could never rejoin their ancestors. Tao Chi'en clearly remembered how his young sister had looked after the pot of hot water emptied over her, as clearly as he remembered her horrible moans of pain, and her convulsions as she died. He was not prepared to run that kind of risk. Neither was he overly tempted by the gold in California, although he had heard it lay about on the ground like rocks. He did not owe John Sommers anything. The captain was a little more tolerant than most of the
fan wey
, and he treated his crew with a certain even-handedness, but he was not his friend, and never would be.

“No, thank you, sir.”

“Don't you want to see California? You can get rich in a thrice, and go back to China a man of parts.”

“Yes, but on a sailing ship.”

“Why is that? Steamships are more modern, and much faster.”

Tao Chi'en did not try to explain his reasons. He stood silent, staring at the deck, cap in hand, while the captain finished drinking his whiskey.

“I can't force you,” Sommers said finally. “I will give you a letter of recommendation to my friend Vincent Katz who captains the brigantine
Emilia
; she is also sailing to California in the next few days. Katz is a rather strange Dutchman, very strict and very religious, but he is a good man and a good sailor. Your trip will be slower than mine, but perhaps we will see each other in San Francisco, and if you regret your decision you can always come back to work with me.”

Captain John Sommers and Tao Chi'en shook hands for the first time.

C
urled in her burrow in the storeroom, Eliza began to die. To the darkness and the sensation of being walled up in life was added the odor, a foul blend of the contents of bales and boxes, barrels of salted fish, and deposits of ocean extracts crusted on the old planks of the ship. Her acute sense of smell, so useful for getting through the world with closed eyes, had become an instrument of torture. Her only company was a strange tricolored cat buried, like her, in the hold and there to keep it free of rats. Tao Chi'en assured her that she would get used to the stench and to being closed up because in times of necessity the body adapts to nearly everything; he added that the voyage would be a long one and that she could not come out in the fresh air, so she would be better off not to think if she didn't want to go mad. She would have water and food, he promised, he would take care of that when he could come down to the hold without arousing suspicion. The ship was small, but it was crowded and it would be easy to find reasons to slip down there.

“Thank you. When we reach California I will give you the turquoise brooch.”

“Keep it, you already paid me. You will need it. Why are you going to California?”

“To be married. My sweetheart's name is Joaquín. He was infected by gold fever and went off to make his fortune. He said he would be back, but I can't wait for that.”

Almost as soon as the ship left the bay of Valparaíso and was in open water Eliza began to rave. For hours she lay in darkness in her own filth, like an animal, so ill that she didn't remember where she was, or why; finally the door of the wooden hatch opened and Tao Chi'en appeared, lighted by the flame of a candle stub and carrying a plate of food. He needed only one look to realize that the girl would not be able to get anything down. He gave the meal to the cat and went back to look for a pail of water so he could clean her up. He began by giving her strong ginger tea to drink and inserting a dozen of his golden needles until her stomach was settled. Eliza paid little attention when he removed all her clothing, washed her delicately with seawater, rinsed her with a cup of freshwater, and massaged her from head to foot with the balm recommended for malarial fevers. Minutes later she was asleep, wrapped in her Castile mantle with the cat at her feet, while Tao Chi'en was up on deck washing her clothes in the sea, trying not to call attention, although the sailors were resting at that hour. The new passengers were as seasick as Eliza, to the indifference of those from Europe who had been traveling for three months and had passed that test.

In the following days, while the new passengers on the
Emilia
grew accustomed to the battering of the waves and established the routines they would follow for the rest of the journey, Eliza was growing steadily sicker in the depths of the ship. Tao Chi'en went down as often as he could to take her water and try to calm her nausea, surprised that, instead of diminishing, her discomfort was increasing by the hour. He tried to give her relief with the known treatments for such cases and with others he improvised, but Eliza could keep almost nothing in her stomach and was getting dehydrated. He prepared water with salt and sugar, and with infinite patience gave it to her by spoonfuls, but two weeks went by without any apparent improvement and the moment came when the girl's skin hung as loose as strips of parchment and she could no longer get up to do the exercises Tao insisted on. “If you don't move, your body will swell and your mind will grow dark,” he kept telling her. The ship called briefly in the ports of Coquimbo, Caldera, Antofagasta, Iquique, and Arica, and in each he tried to convince Eliza to get off and find a way to go back home, because he could see her growing weaker and weaker and he was afraid.

They had left the port of Callao behind them when Eliza's condition took a lethal turn. In the market Tao Chi'en had found a supply of coca leaves, whose medicinal properties he knew well, and three live hens he intended to hide and kill one by one, for the sick girl needed something more appetizing than their meager ship's rations. He cooked the first hen in a broth rich with fresh ginger and went below ready to feed Eliza the soup if he had to force it down her throat. He lighted a whale-oil lamp, picked his way through the cargo, and approached the rat hole of his patient, who was lying with her eyes closed and did not seem to know he was there. Beneath her spread a large pool of blood. The
zhong yi
grunted and bent over her, fearing that the pitiful creature had found a way to commit suicide. He couldn't blame her, in similar circumstances he would have done the same he thought. He lifted her nightdress, but saw no visible wound, and when he touched her he realized she was still alive. He shook her until her eyes opened.

“I am pregnant,” she admitted finally in a thread of a voice.

Tao Chi'en clapped his hands to his head, lost in a litany of laments in the dialect of his native village, a tongue he had not spoken in fifteen years: had he known, he would never have helped her, what was she thinking to leave for California pregnant?, she was crazy, just what he needed, a miscarriage, if she died he was lost, what kind of mess had he gotten himself into?, was he stupid?, why hadn't he guessed the reason for her haste in leaving Chile? He added a few oaths and curses in English, but she was again unconscious and far beyond any reproach. He held her in his arms, rocking her as he would a child as his rage melted into overwhelming compassion. For an instant it occurred to him to go to Captain Katz and confess the whole matter, but he could not predict his reaction. That Dutch Lutheran, who treated the women on board as if they were carriers of the plague, would undoubtedly be furious when he learned that he had another woman aboard, this one a stowaway, and pregnant, and half dead in the bargain. And what punishment would he save for Tao Chi'en? No, he couldn't say a word to anyone. His only salvation would be to wait until Eliza passed on, if that was her karma, and then throw her body overboard along with the bags of garbage from the kitchen. The most he could do for her, if he saw her suffering too much, would be to help her die with dignity.

He was just leaving when he sensed a strange presence on his skin. Frightened, he lifted the lamp and with absolute clarity saw in the circle of the trembling flame his adored Lin watching him from a short distance away, and, on her translucid face that teasing expression that was her greatest charm. She was wearing her green silk dress with the gold embroidery, the one she saved for great occasions, and her hair was pulled back into a simple bun secured with ivory picks and with a fresh peony over each ear. That was how he had seen her for the last time, when the neighbor women had dressed her for the funeral ceremony. So real was the apparition of his wife there in the hold that he was thrown into a panic: spirits, however good in life, tended to treat mortals very cruelly. He rushed toward the ladder, but Lin blocked the way. Tao Chi'en fell to his knees, trembling, clutching the lamp, his one tie with reality. He attempted a prayer to exorcise devils, in case they had taken Lin's form to confuse him, but he could not remember the words and only a long moan of love for her and nostalgia for the past came from his lips. Then Lin bent down to him with her unforgettable delicacy, so close that had he dared he could have kissed her, and whispered that she had not come so far to frighten him but to remind him of the duties of an honorable physician. She herself had nearly bled to death after the birth of her daughter, and he had been able to save her. Why did he not do the same for this young woman? What had happened to her beloved Tao? Had he perhaps lost his kind heart and turned into a cockroach? A premature death was not Eliza's karma, she assured him. If a woman is prepared to travel the world buried in a nightmarish hole in order to find her man, it is because she has much
qi
.

“You must help her, Tao, if she dies without seeing her lover she will never be at peace and her ghost will pursue you forever,” Lin warned him before she faded away.

“Wait!” Tao begged, reaching out to stop her, but his fingers closed on air.