Fortune is a Woman (21 page)

"The boy is an orphan," Francie explained. "Lai Tsin found him wandering in the street and now we are looking after him."

"And what's his name?" Annie gave his queue a friendly tug and he glanced shyly up at her and giggled.

Francie looked surprised, she had never thought about his name before. "Lai Tsin just calls him 'Little Son.' "

"Everybody is entitled to a name," Annie exclaimed indignantly. "What about Philip? That's a good Christian name for a little heathen like this one. And who is Lai Tsin anyway?"

"Lai Tsin is my Chinese friend," Francie said proudly, "and they are not heathens, Miss Aysgarth. Besides, Lai Tsin is a gentleman. He helped me after the earthquake."

Annie nodded. "Well, now I'm here to help—you were Josh's girl and he would have expected it." She sniffed back the threatening tears as she thought of her brother. "I'd best save my crying for my pillow," she added bravely. "And now at least I can write to our dad and tell him Josh was buried along with a hundred other San Franciscans. After all, it won't exactly be a lie, will it? I know it's not consecrated ground, but at least it saved our honor." Then she added quickly, "Josh did tell you, didn't he, lass? Why he ran away? Of course, it wasn't true and if it weren't for Sammy Morris he would have been home where he belonged and I know his name would have been cleared."

Francie had not thought of Sammy once since Josh had died; he had just gone from her head like he never existed. Now she said his name with a shiver of fear.

"Aye. Sammy Morris," Annie repeated bitterly. "Josh's friend, if you can call someone like that a friend." She shifted the child's weight from one hip to the other. "I'll check the 'missing' lists again tomorrow," she said, adding, "No doubt he'll turn up—just like a bad penny."

She straightened her russet-plumed hat, taking in Francie's shabbiness, her worn skirt and old gray shawl and her clumsy old boots, and she said briskly, "We can't have you walking around looking like this. You'll want some new clothes. But first we'll take young Philip back to your Chinaman." She threw her arm affectionately around her shoulders as they walked slowly down the street. "They say God alius sends something to compensate you in your sorrow," she said feelingly, "and now he has sent me you. Josh's chosen lass."

Lai Tsin was bent over the little charcoal stove, cooking vegetables in a round tin wok. He bowed respectfully to the small, pretty-faced woman with Francie and she called, approvingly, "Good morning, Mr. Lai Tsin. Francie told me how you helped her. She said you were a gentleman and I can see she was right." She sat on the orange crate, catching her breath, and said, "We've given the little orphan a good English name, Philip, though I expect his last name will have to be Chinese?"

Lai Tsin stared at her as she slipped off her jacket and rolled up the sleeves of her white cotton blouse and said, "My, it's a bit hot for top-grade eight-ounce Yorkshire woolens. What's that you're cooking, Mr. Lai Tsin? It smells good, though it's like nothing I've ever smelled before."

He was still thinking about the boy's name and remembering his little brother and he said, "Chen."

"Chen?"

"Little Son's other name is now Chen. It was my brother's name."

"Oh I see. Philip Chen. Mmm, yes, that's a good solid name, I like that. It's a very good choice, Mr. Lai Tsin. Now. Francie tells me you helped her, and I'm very grateful to you for that. She was my brother Josh's fiancee, you see. We just met each other by chance in the street where" —she bit her lip and then went on quickly—"at the Barbary Saloon. Francie told me she didn't intend to go there today but somehow she found herself there. I reckon it was fate, don't you? And since Francie would have been my brother's wife, now I will help her." Opening her purse she took out a sheaf of bills and said, "I expect you lost everything, too, Mr. Lai Tsin, and I daresay a bit of extra cash wouldn't go amiss."

Lai Tsin stared expressionlessly at the money. Francie recognized that blank-faced look and she knew he had lost face. She said quickly, "You don't understand. Lai Tsin and I have been through everything together. Now he and Little Son are my family. Thank you for your offer to help, Miss Aysgarth, but I will stay here with them."

Annie's jaw dropped in astonishment. She had never imagined the girl would want to stay with the Chinaman, but she surely admired her for it. She wished she had had as much spirit when she was eighteen and imagined how different her life might have been. She thought of her dreary routine, chained to Ivy Cottage, a slave to her father and quickly decided that she was never going back. Didn't they say it was never too late to start over?

She said briskly, "Well, if that's the case then I suppose I'd better just join you. Because I'm alone, too, now that Josh has gone. Oh yes, there's our dad and my brothers back in Yorkshire, but they've outgrown me long ago. All I was was a workhorse, the maiden aunt with no bairns of her own to tend. I spent my life looking after our dad and now it's somebody else's turn." She looked pleadingly at Francie. "Josh was like my own boy. I've got nothing left without him. At least here with you and the Chinaman and the Little Son there'd be a purpose to things. It's thanks to poor Josh that I'm here. And here I want to stay. With you."

Little Son suddenly ran toward her. He climbed onto her lap and she hugged him, smiling anxiously at them.

"Our home is the streets," Francie warned her. "We have no money, we eat what the relief kitchens give us. You don't know half my troubles, and you certainly don't know Lai Tsin's. He's Chinese, he has no papers, he lives outside the law. I must stay with him and help him the way he helped me. Together we will cheat our fate."

Annie nodded. They had each other, they didn't need her. She stood up and forlornly dusted off her skirt. "Mebbe that's what I've always wanted too," she said, putting on her hat. "To cheat my fate."

Her eyes met Francie's and there was a flicker of recognition, as though they sensed each other's bitter struggle to escape their pasts, and Francie smiled. "Then why don't you stay?" she said.

CHAPTER 17

Lai Tsin stood at the back of a small room in a narrow little alley in Chinatown, watching the gambling. The mah-jongg tiles crackled like gunfire, the players shouted and screamed excitedly and the languorous, sickly sweet smell of opium stole from the curtained-off back room. The place was a ruin, the crumbling walls were shored up with beams and the ceiling was a dangerous spiderweb of cracks, but games of chance had been going on there for years and not even an earthquake could put Chinese off their gambling.

He fingered the money in his pocket, counting it mentally: there was the twenty dollars won from Chung Wu along with the worthless paper for the land in Hong Kong, and ten dollars left from the sum he had started out with, because it was his rule never to gamble down to his last cent, and almost five dollars in nickles and dimes scrimped and saved and stashed away in his straw pannier for a rainy day, which would have to be a monsoon because every day was a "rainy" one.

He stared at the men at the tables, despising them. They were gambling because they had the fever, not because they were clever like he was. His brain flew like a bird, chasing figures and permutations through his mind so fast, he could almost predict the outcome before it happened. The only trouble was the men he gambled with were as poor as he was, so he could never win enough money to join the really big games. It was, he thought sorrowfully, a case of the chicken or the egg. But tonight, because of the scarcity of gambling halls due to the earthquake, there were men playing he had only heard about, legendary gamblers whose skills were equal to his.

He thought of this thirty-five dollars and his new responsibilities. By rights, he should return to work in the fields, picking apples and plums or tending the crops, but that had barely fed him and certainly would not feed his new family. And he knew he had to make money for them or lose face. He must take his chances with the poorest gamblers.

He waited patiently until finally an old bearded man pushed back his chair with a curse of disgust at his bad joss, and then he quietly took his place. The worn bone tiles inscribed with red and green and white dragons, the east, south, and north winds, the flowers and the seasons, bamboos, circles, characters and numbers, were set out and the dice thrown, and he smiled with satisfaction as his "wall" was quickly built. Within five minutes his ten-dollar stake had become sixty, half an hour later it was three hundred, and with much angry shouting the other men abandoned his table.

Pocketing his winnings Lai Tsin wandered over to the table near the glassless window. An embroidered scarlet shawl was draped over the opening, protecting them from the gaze of passersby, and its deep fringes swung to and fro in the night breeze. Six men were playing a Chinese card game of immense complexity by the light of a guttering candle and the smoke from their pipes mingled with the opium fumes, filling the room with a blue haze.

He leaned against the wall, his face expressionless as he watched them. He knew the game, it called for a quick brain as well as skill and lightning responses, but he rarely had an opportunity to play it because his usual gambling partners were too slow and ignorant. He glanced discreetly at the faces of the players—they were solemn and hard-eyed and the amount of dollar bills lying on the table took his breath away. These were the notorious big gamblers from Toishan, but he reminded himself again that all the omens had been good that day. He thought of the money in his secret pocket and knew it was a chance in a lifetime, and when the next man dropped out he took his place.

His heart jumped when he picked up his first cards, double sixes and double eights, both fortuitous numbers, but he kept his eyes as blank as the glassless window and his face as still as a stagnant pool. His hand did not tremble as he placed his two hundred dollars on the table, though his stomach churned with tension and excitement. Numbers flashed through his brain as the cards were laid out and within seconds he had assessed the other men's hands, and thirty seconds later he was scooping up his winnings.

His face remained expressionless as he let his winnings ride on the next game, though inside he was seething with excitement, and his eyes glittered as he saw his next hand with three cards of number nine and two aces. They were the luckiest numbers of all, for "nine" was the largest number and signified fullness, and "one" meant "a beginning." All the omens had been good that day. Nothing could go wrong for him.

The gamblers who had inspected his poor clothing with sly eyes when he had first sat at the table looked at him with new respect when he won another hand. And then another. And all the time he let his winnings ride. The gods were with him and who was he to go against their wishes?

The other men gathered around,
oohing
and
aieeing
as they saw the amount of money on the table, gasping as time and again Lai Tsin tested his fate and played his hand and won, leaving all those dollars on the table, multiplying into thousands. "Joss will surely go against him," they muttered. "Lai Tsin is tempting fortune with so much money."

After an hour the other gamblers glanced at each other and pushed back their chairs. Lai Tsin stood up, bowing respectfully to them as they congratulated him on his good fortune, but their eyes were steely and he knew they were angry. Scooping up his winnings he sought out the poor men from whom he had won his first three hundred dollars and gave them back their money. "You brought me good joss," he explained. "Without you I could not have played."

He was a changed man as he walked from that room; for the first time in his life he saw respect in the eyes of the men watching him. He stood taller, holding himself with dignity, and he told himself that when fortune smiled a man surely knew he had been blessed by the gods. He had started the day a poor man and now he was rich.

It was almost dawn when he returned to the shack, and Francie and Little Son were sound asleep. As the first gray light stole through the curtain that served as their door Lai Tsin counted his winnings, gasping as he realized the amount. Almost twelve thousand dollars. He touched the pile of money, awestruck, and then he folded his arms and leaned back against the wooden boards, thinking.

He thought about his life, about the hardships, the beatings, the terror and the poverty, about the lack of education that had forced him into the servitude of a peasant when inside he knew he was different. He had worked hard all his life. As a child he had walked behind the water buffalo, dragging his bare feet through the cold mud of the rice fields and he had known there must be something more than just this. He had watched the poor white ducks squabbling endlessly in the village pond, understanding that, like his, their fate was sealed before they were even born. He had felt like a changeling, a prince among the paupers, a scholar among the ignorant. He had no words to describe it but he knew it was all there inside him. And now, with those American dollars won from the men from Toishan, at last he had his chance to become somebody. And he would never gamble again.

He waited impatiently for Francie to wake, wishing there were some magic that would take away the frown from between her brows and the sighs that, even as she slept, escaped her lips. He knew that her troubles were deep and there was gladness in his heart because now he knew he could help her.

When she finally began to stir he went outside and blew on the little charcoal stove until it glowed scarlet. He collected water from the standpipe at the end of the street and put it on to boil. Then he took the little blue-and-white pot with the wicker handle, spooned fragrant jasmine-scented leaves inside it and poured on the boiling water. When he finally went back inside she was sitting up, rubbing her eyes in astonishment at the pile of dollars. "Lai Tsin," she gasped, "what did you do? Rob a bank?"

He poured the tea and offered it to her. "I had good fortune last night," he said. "I beat the Toishan gamblers. I let my winnings ride until they had had enough and when I counted them, I had twelve thousand American dollars. It is a fortune, Francie. We are rich."