Imperial (76 page)

“IF I KNEW, I WOULD INVITE YOU!”

Mr. Auyón’s niece was standing in the courtyard as we departed the world-renowned author of
El Dragón en el Desierto.
She was very innocent and beautiful. Her name was Jasmine Brambilla Auyón. I requested an appointment. The next day, Lupe and I were in an old taxi which groaned down into the Río Nuevo gorge and across the freeway which pressed down the stinking waters, then up into the
colonias,
turning south now past broken walls, concrete houses, a fire station, a tiny truck with a red shrimp painted on the back; next came the church, at which point the young driver crossed himself; after the Internet Club and
SUPER CARNES
,
we entered a zone of fancier houses behind white walls; this was Colonia Vía Fontana. The rows of white-limed palm trees reminded me of what the center of Mexicali used to look like in the 1920s.

I rang the bell. Like the fashionable young lady that she was, Jasmine proved to be almost on time.

The interview was conducted in the immaculate living room, with Coca-Colas brought us on a tray, and the mother listening behind the railing, sometimes calling out the right answers. Everything was white-tiled, and the phone continually rang for the mother, who wore heavy eyeliner and a leopard-skin-patterned chemise which didn’t quite reach down to her pretty belly button.

Jasmine was third-generation part-Chinese, she said. Her great-great-grandmother could speak a few words of Chinese. Smiling, she sat perfectly still. She’d once been chosen as Queen of the Chinese Association. Everything about her expressed the same elegance as the gilded fan upon the mantelpiece.

I asked her what was unique about Mexicali and she replied: The people here in Mexicali are more simple, more kind, more loving.

Do Mexicanos and Chinos have good relations here?

My friends are Mexican and my relatives are Chinese.

Lupe gazed uncomfortably down at his shabby boots on the white-tiled floor. He sat beside me, worried, so he later told me, that he might be getting the sofa dirty.

Jasmine thought that there might be a tunnel under the Nuevo Mandarin restaurant.—I don’t know, she remarked, but I have heard rumors also.

The mother was silent. I could see her in the gilt-edged mirror which hung over the fireplace—a fireplace in Mexicali! Why not air-conditioning in the Arctic? I almost felt that I was back in Northside.

What else have you heard about the tunnels, Jasmine?

Since the Chinese came here first, they made the tunnels to protect themselves. I’ve also heard about casino tunnels, but I don’t know. If I knew, I would invite you! she cried out with a sweet smile in which I believed.

I proposed to take her out for lunch at one of the oldest Chinese restaurants in
centro,
paying her for her time; perhaps she could sweet-talk the owner into letting us see the underworld. The girl excitedly asked her mother for permission, which was granted. They both thought that the restaurant Jing Tung near the Hotel Cecil might be a good candidate. (I remember a photograph of the Hotel Cecil from the Archivo Histórico; the caption said 1948. It dominated all businesses on its left and right, thanks to its third storey; it was not only the Hotel Cecil, it was the Edificio Fernando J. Chee; its neighbors were the Cantina Los Angeles Bar and the restaurant Mexicali on the right, the Tienda Mexico and the Casa something-or-other-blurry on the left; one’s gaze went right to the Cecil.) Then the girl and her mother went into the other room to confer some more, while Lupe stared at his boots and I inspected the white-necked, brass-winged swan which was built into the white sofa. The arrangement was confirmed. The girl was to meet us tomorrow at twelve-thirty. We stood up to thank her.

It would be very beautiful if we could find out that the tunnels are still there, the mother remarked. I don’t think that they are there. We in the third generation have always had that doubt, and that curiosity.

She was a widow who had taken on her husband’s used car business. Both of her grandfathers had been Chinese.—Chinese blood is strong, she said to us. It tends to disappear, but sometimes my kids come out looking Chinese.
¹²⁸
I have a brother whose daughter is a Chinese original.

Do you feel Chinese when Mexicans look at you?

When people look at me, they know that I’m a mestiza. People are very observant. They know that we are Auyóns and that we have lived in the United States, in Los Angeles, in San Diego! she said proudly. My father, all his life he worked for the government here and also for the FBI. My Dad was dealing cars, so I learned from him. My grandfather was treated badly by the Communist government, so we came here. His house was confiscated. They made it a military base. Now it’s a museum. It’s European style.

Can you speak Chinese?

I can speak words that my parents taught me: the colors, the numbers, minimum.

Do you feel at home here?

Mexicali is my home forever. It’s very tranquil here, so you can do anything.

Lupe gazed at her in admiration.
¹²⁹
Later that night he kept saying: A rich lady like that, to take us into her house and be so nice! And such a beautiful lady . . .

We said goodbye. The Chinese girl offered her cheek to be kissed.

At twelve-fifteen the next day we arrived at the Chinese restaurant. Then we waited and waited. Lupe grew sullen. I sent him to the telephone. When he came back, he was more bitter than ever, and he said: The señora says her daughter has no time to meet with us today. The señora suggests that if we want more information there’s a guy who knows everything and he’s our friend, in other words that goddamned Auyón. They’re all a bunch of goddamned gooks.

YOLANDA SÁNCHEZ OGÁS

So it went. I could tell you about my interview with the taxi driver who knew for a fact that a tunnel had once led from the Chinesca right across the border, but they closed it; I shouldn’t detain you with the tale of Leonardo, the “tour guide” from Tijuana who was down on his luck, so he followed me from the street at midnight, trying to interest me in young girls. Did I want fifteen-year-olds? But I didn’t, not just then. Well, so, he could get me twelve-year-olds. He could deliver ’em right to me if I went to the Hotel México. He had a hatchet-shaped, smooth little face and he was little and vicious. Since he could do anything (he’d already told me the story of how he’d obtained excellent false papers for
pollos
in TJ), I told him to take me into the Chinese tunnels, about which he’d never heard. So he did research. It took him a day. He found me an underground casino which would be possible to visit before opening time, but I had to promise not to talk to anyone and he couldn’t guarantee that I could take photographs. When he saw that I really wanted to take photographs he said that he could work it out. Leonardo was the man, all right. Why shouldn’t it be true? There’d been gaming-houses in Mexicali since 1909. He described so well how it would be that I could almost see it. Soon a note was waiting for me at the Hotel Chinesca:
Bill Hey it’s me Leo the guy you met
yesterday I have your ticket for to day at 7.30 p.m. I will be back at 7.00 p.m. Your friend, Leonardo. The tour would cost me fifty dollars, and I had to pay in advance. I paid; oh, yes, I did; I have never been cheated out of a dollar in my life. Leonardo went first to give the password; he’d be back in two minutes. At least Terrie the Mormon girl got a thrill out of it as we stood in the pitch dark alley on the edge of the Río Nuevo; the moon resembled an orange darkly pitted by cyanide fumigation injury, and we waited and waited for admission to that splendid underground world which Leonardo had promised us.

What else should I relate? I definitely ought to assure you that zealous José López from Jalisco continued to troll the streets for me; his latest progress report (twenty dollars cash) went like this:

Finally I see this half-breed; I mean his color was not so yellow; and he was just standing there same as I, so I said to him, excuse me, I don’t mean to offend you, but you don’t look a hundred percent Chinese, and he told me he was third-generation Chinese. So I said, hey, you know what? I read about some opium dens and some tunnels have been busted by police, and was it true? He said, yeah, it was true; there were special places where you went and smoked opium. There were several here in the Chinesca, he said, from his grandfather. But it was mainly Chinese who went there. It was the time of Prohibition. Some Mexicans went to the opium den, but Mexicans were more into drinking. There was a fee, he said, but I don’t think it was that much and it was an old tradition. And I said to him, I said. . .

To my rescue now came Professor Yolanda Sánchez Ogás, lifelong resident of Mexicali (born in 1940), historian, anthropologist, and author of
Bajo el Sol de Mexicali
and
A La Orilla del Río Colorado: Los Cucapá,
both of which she sold me out of the closet of her house. Yolanda is my Mexican wife, and I adore her; I am faithful and loyal to her, thereby rendering amends for my gringo blood; in other words, I pay for dinner. She in turn is endlessly patient with me, considering me a somewhat ill-mannered but by no means hopeless young puppy. The first time I asked about Chinese tunnels, she said that she didn’t know anything about them but would find out. The next time I saw her she calmly said: I went into the tunnels. That entire area under La Chinesca has a subterranean level. As for the casino, I know there
was
one, but right now I don’t think so. But under the volleyball court many Chinos live.

Have you seen them living there?

No, but I have heard. And someone told me that under the Restaurante———
¹³⁰
there is a tunnel where they get together. I met an old man who lived all his life under Restaurante Ocho.

Will you take me into the tunnels?

Why not?

When do you have time?

Tomorrow.

Yolanda, you are the little heart of my little heart!

I will tell you that tomorrow where we’re going it’s very ugly and it smells very bad.

WHERE THEY TAKE OUT THE TRASH

Next morning in Callejón Chinesca the proprietors of the watch stores and clothing stores were already rolling up their gratings. I had with me my brave, discreet and intelligent interpreter, Terrie, who has already been introduced to you and who spoke excellent Spanish thanks to her missionary year in Spain. She was better liked by Yolanda than poor Lupe had been, and, moreover, less likely to yell out:
Goddamned gook!
as we walked down Reforma Street; that was where we were going. It was right around here that the Restaurant Jing Tung was supposed to be; that was the one that Mr. Auyón’s niece and her mother had thought so promising. Nobody in the street had ever heard of it. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t there. As the other José López would have said, why not believe in it?

Yolanda led us to the Hotel Cecil, which I’m told was the labor of love of a Chinese named Cecil Chin. We went upstairs. Yolanda said that there had once been a tunnel with bars, casinos and a restaurant.

This is all new, said the manager, gesturing around him. When they constructed this hotel in 1947, the tunnel was already there. There used to be an entrance on the first floor.

Can we go into the tunnel? I asked.

The manager wearily spread his hands.—It’s closed, he said. He didn’t care to nourish any myths.

Across the street from the Cecil, in another roofed passageway called Pasajes Prendes, there was an ancient barber shop whose owner’s white hair resembled his ribbed and whitewashed concrete ceiling, and he said: No, you walked in from the street and the restaurant was on the left by the bar and it had really big chairs and a piano, and there was a man who played the piano. They took the piano away many years ago. In the tunnel there was a store and right here in front there was a butcher shop aboveground. The hotel was finished in April of ’47 and there was nothing here before, he said, beaming through his round glasses. Oh, he was happy, smiling, talking about the past.

So what are in the tunnels now? I asked.

Pure trash.

His single customer, who was tub-shaped, chimed in: And rats!

Yolanda said nothing. I knew that she hated rats.

I went down there, said the customer, and it’s all trash. Rats, cockroaches, because of the humidity . . .

Yolanda said: But the other day we went down and there weren’t any rats.

A woman over here had a store, said the barber. There is still an entrance over there and it’s full of water. There was a cantina below. Cecil Chin owned the cantina. The whole building, there’s tunnels all over the place. Anyone could go in. It was public property.

Where were the casinos below?

No, there were never any casinos.

I thought there was a casino under the Callejo.

There could have been, said the barber happily. There was a barber shop, a shoe store, a bowling alley, pool tables . . .

I think there are some places where people get together to play cards, said Yolanda.

The tubby man, who was a foreman, shrugged and said: There are tunnels all through here, and also on Juárez and Reforma. It’s like a labyrinth.

As the fan slowly rotated along the edge of the mirror, they talked happily about the old days of
the big problem when they were all killing each other.
It sounds as if they missed the excitement of the Tong wars.

Around ’46 a lot of this was burned, said the barber.—Slowly he reached up to turn on the auxilliary ceiling fan.—The first of these buildings caught on fire, in ’45 and ’46, a lot of Chinese died. The second fire, nobody was inside. That was in ’91. That second fire was so big that they came from Calexico and El Centro to put it out. And by the way, it seems to me that there used to be a tunnel under the Hotel Imperial. There used to be a cantina . . .