The Gilded Age, a Time Travel (24 page)

Mama
crying, always crying, muffled sobs in the night.
He
shivers. In the end, all he remembers of her is her pain. How her pain grieved
him, Father’s only child, a boy with the mother’s beauty, her cheekbones, her
lips. Her weakness, too? A boy whose beauty his father observed with a scowl
and a wary look in his eyes.

Yet
pain was his mother’s natural province. He must remind himself of that.
Krafft-Ebing is quite explicit.

Daniel
rubs his eyes. He dwells too much on himself these days. Dwells too much on the
past, which is dead and gone, never to be repeated, never to be remade. Too
many memories haunt him now that he’s away from the scowling father, separated
forever from the mother begging for his loyalty with her last breath.
Wasn’t
I good, Danny? Wasn’t I good to you?

Women
want to be taken, to be subjected to force. Schopenhauer has written
extensively on the subject.

She—Zhu
Wong—is not a whore, but she is, by her own claim, the former mistress of a
gentleman, perhaps a man like himself. And therefore tainted, not truly a lady.
It follows, then, that she led him to desire her. As much as she hated it, she
wanted it and knew exactly how to get it. With every glance of her strange
green eyes, every languorous gesture, she spurred him on these three months.
What else could one expect in such close quarters?

Inevitable,
what happened this morning. Though he’s still not sure what, exactly, happened.
Had he subdued her or she seduced him?

She
hadn’t wept. So what he did had to be all right, then, hadn’t it? Authorities
on the topic say so. Does she really hate what gives him such pleasure? Her
hands unbuttoning his shirt. That’s the man’s duty, to unbutton his shirt. Quite
unlike any other woman he’s ever known, indeed. Perhaps she’s something other
than a woman. A sylph. A witch. A demon.

Listlessness
closes over his soul like a velvet fist. Krafft-Ebing warns gentlemen against
the spillage of bodily fluids. A gentleman must always protect his vitality.

“Over
there,” Daniel says.

Mariah
bangs the tray down on the side table. He’s glad to see that she’s brought him
a cup of black coffee and the last of the brandy in a smeary decanter. Plus
Miss Malone’s bottle of Scotch Oats Essence and a spoon. The auntie stands,
awaiting his command. As is only proper for a servant.

For
the balance of the morning after breakfast, Daniel studied “The Lady of the
Tides,” the painting of the mermaid he gave to Miss Malone in trade for two
months’ rent. As for the rest of Mama’s junk, he’d taken everything to Gump’s,
as Jessie advised. The Gump brothers were savvy importers and formidable
purveyors of art and costly trinkets to San Francisco’s rich. What a gorgeous
shop they had! Gilt and crystal, jade and ivory gleamed beneath the gaslights
and reflected off ample mirrors. The Gump brothers themselves, clad in
immaculate black gabardine, discreetly scented with patchouli, the very picture
of gentility.

Daniel
had been deeply impressed. And envious. This charming enterprise survived the
depression of ‘93. A worthy pursuit for a gentleman, in other words. But would
Father ever entertain such a notion? No, Father had the aesthetic sensitivity
of a toad. Daniel sold Mama’s junk for forty dollars. Nothing she’d collected
was noteworthy, well, he expected as much. During the transaction, he described
the mermaid painting to the younger Mr. Gump, who removed and carefully wiped
his spectacles. The poor fellow must have been nearly blind, the lenses of his
spectacles as thick as the bottom of a brandy bottle. “I’d have to see the
painting myself, of course,” Mr. Gump remarked, “but I’d say, offhand, it could
be worth perhaps seven thousand dollars.”

Seven
thousand dollars! When Daniel informed Miss Malone of the potential value of
her new acquisition, she tossed her curls scornfully. “Sure and then make it
four months’ rent. And not a day more, sir.” She grinned like a minx. The biz
was the biz. He had traded her fair and square.

Brilliant
sun streams through the scarlet fringe edging the curtains, creating patterns
of shadow and light. He spoons Scotch Oats Essence onto his tongue, savoring
the medicinal bitterness. A breeze through the open window sends shadows and
light shifting across the dizzying arabesques and medallions of the Persian
carpets, inducing an intriguing sense of depth. An illusion of reality, like
the persistence of vision creates the illusion of continuous motion.

Space
and time. How the devil does one harness it?

He
picks up the Zoetrope and whirls it, contemplating the persistence of vision,
studying the shifting patterns. Nice effect. Kinetic, that’s the word, from the
dear old Greek,
kinesis
--to move. He really ought to brush up on the
dear old Greek. Many a gentleman drinking along the Cocktail Route is a
scholar. A hotbed of cultural discourse, is the Cocktail Route.

But
how could one reproduce kinetic effect in an artwork? And not some trifle like
the Zoetrope. How could one produce depth and motion in, say, the mermaid? Have
the tart stretch and wink and loll about, her fishtail flopping? Right up there
on the wall? Such a kinetic work ought to reproduce color, as well, glorious
color the way a painting does.

Daniel
knows very well that the best minds in Europe have for decades pondered this
very question. Monsieur Roget advanced his theory of the persistence of vision
way back in 1824—that the brain retains a visual image perceived by the eye for
a fraction longer than the perception itself. Thus we gaze, oblivious to the hundreds
of times we blink in the course of a day. And thus we perceive space and time
as a smooth continuous flow.

Then
Sir John Herschel inflamed everyone when he spun a shilling, showing its head
and its tail at the same time. All manner of clever devices utilized the
spinning coin trick--Dr. Paris’s Thaumatrope, Plateau’s Phenakistiscope,
Horner’s Zoetrope, Beale’s Choreutoscope. Toys fit for the junk heap or the
gypsy trade by now. Every fancy brothel in Paris sported some flimsy imitation
of Rudge’s magic lantern show. What things one could suggest in a mere seven
phases of action. In the meantime, Eddie Muybridge in jolly old Californ’
proved with a rigged row of cameras that, at the height of a horse’s gallop,
all four of the beast’s hooves leave the ground. Photographic proof that the
horse catapults into space. Muybridge won a $25,000 wager with old man Stanford.
A sturdy steed, sir, defies gravity. Defies God Himself.

But
none of it, Daniel thinks, is good enough. None of it captures the mermaid, her
slick skin, her chatoyant scales, her coy eyes. Nothing induces her to rise, to
turn and smile. To splash across the wall and seduce another young man. By God,
he wants to
see
it!

Scotch
Oats Essence warms his head. He lights a ciggie, picks up the Zoetrope again.
When you whirl the toy too fast, the images blur. Yet the trick must be to
speed up the sequence, expand it somehow, make the flow continuous without
sacrificing clarity. “So much to do and so little time, eh, Mariah?”

“Will
that be all, sir?”

“In
a hurry, are you, Mariah?”

“A
young gentleman like yourself shouldn’t lie about all the day.” For a person
with no discernible mind of her own, she’s awfully pesky. “Mr. Watkins, you
ought to be ashamed.”

“I
am ashamed, Mariah.” He grins. “Truly, you have no notion how ashamed I am.”

“Thought
you got important business in town. Your daddy’s business.”

“Ah,
dear old Father and his dear old business.”

Daniel
had dutifully sent the eminent Jonathan D. Watkins a telegram once he’d settled
in at 263 Dupont Street.

FATHER 
STOP  ARRIVED  STOP  YOUR DUTIFUL SON DANIEL

Then,
just to get the old man’s goat--

LOVELY
LADIES  STOP

Lovely
ladies, indeed. This town has cast an evil spell over the ladies. Just look at
‘em. Fanny Spiggot, a pickpocket. Li’l Lucy, a sporting gal losing her charm at
age nineteen. Jessie Malone, Queen of the Underworld. Even Donaldina Cameron,
the elegant lady who snubbed him on the train, a Holy Roller, which may be
worse than all of the above. And what about the ladies dressed in little girls’
sailor outfits or fanciful dresses who aren’t women at all? What about Zhu Wong
taunting him, leading him into sin?

Mariah
waits silently as Daniel stubs the ciggie out. “And what is Father’s dear old
business? Real estate. Have you any notion what a lousy racket real estate is,
Mariah?”

“I
should think that a young gentleman like yourself should be grateful to have
the means to enrich himself handed over to him by his family,” Mariah says. “No
matter what he may think of his daddy.”

He
glances up at the auntie, astonished by this speech. As usual Mariah glares at
him with the face of a wooden Indian. “Damnable plague, that’s what real estate
is. Interest rates and down payments, defaults and bankruptcies. Bankruptcy,
Mariah, is a sin. Or it ought to be.” He plucks the crumpled note from the
floor and examines it one more time.

Der
Sir:

Konserning yer
rekwest I tern over key to bording haus at 567 Stockton I say damm you sir is
mine an I ain’t giving up nothing. Tis my haus & my borders. Yull git yer
pownd of flesh when you get it. Sinseerly, Mr Ekberg

“Speaking
of grateful, Mariah, Mr. Ekberg has enjoyed a year’s respite from all mortgage
payments, and yet he sends me an ungrateful note like this.”

Daniel
does not look forward to rousting Mr. Ekberg out of the Stockton Street
boardinghouse. The crumbling Stick is a dreadful piece of work, in dire need of
a new roof and a paint job. Mr. Ekberg is a Forty-niner whose modest bonanza
enabled him to purchase the house in the sixties when Stockton Street was white
and Portsmouth Square was a gambling haven and a dining resort. Now that
Stockton Street is smack-dab in the middle of Chinatown, Mr. Ekberg’s rents
from his Chinese tenants packed in like tinned fish have plummeted. Which is
why he mortgaged the place in 1890 to Jonathan D. Watkins & Son. Daniel
does not want to manage the place himself. Collect coins from coolies every
month? No, thank you.

He
crushes Mr. Ekberg’s note into a ball and flings it across the room, taking a
swig of Scotch Oats Essence. Remarkable medication. He should purchase his own
bottle. “Perhaps Jack London is right. Perhaps private property is no damn
good.”

“Mr.
Watkins,” Mariah says, “the War Between the States was fought so that my people
would not remain someone else’s property. So that my people could own property
of their own. Perhaps a privileged young gentleman like yourself should not be
so quick to dismiss that which others have fought and died for. That which this
great country of America was founded upon. Freedom, the pursuit of a free life,
and owning one’s own house.”

By
God, where does the auntie get her ideas? “Excellent speech, Mariah. But the
numbers. In real estate, I mean. The numbers make my head ache.” At least Mr.
Ekberg replied to Daniel’s notice to quit. Mr. Harvey, the other debtor who has
defaulted on the shack in Sausalito, has had neither the manners nor the
intelligence to reply at all. “Mortgages. Did you know that ‘mortgage’ means
‘death pledge’? It’s a deadly business, all right. Deadly boring.”

“And
just how do you intend to pay Miss Malone for the rent?” Mariah asks pointedly.
“Lying about all the day?”

Thank
goodness he has to pay Miss Malone and not Mariah. “Do not worry your little
head about that. That lady up there”—he points to the mermaid—“has paid my way
around here for a while longer. Besides, that’s enough of your scolding.” He’s
suddenly impatient with Mariah’s interrogation. She’s just the Negro maid. What
she may
think
—or for that matter, what any woman, a carriage horse, or a
dog may
think
—is not the proper subject of speculation for an educated
gentleman. “My mother is in her grave. I don’t need or want another.”

Mariah
stares at him. “I beg your pardon, Mr. Watkins, I forgot. You’re a-grieving.”

Daniel
laughs sharply and empties the rest of the brandy bottle into his coffee. “I
really should abstain from champagne at breakfast. Knocks me flat on my prat
all morning. I don’t know how Miss Malone carries on so.”

“Miss
Malone has got practice.”

“Thank
you, Mariah. You may go.”

She
turns on her heel and goes without another word. He hears her clattering across
the hall to the suite she shares with Zhu Wong, riffling around in there. Is
there a chance she could discover what went on in the second bedroom this
morning? But no, she strides briskly out, clatters down the stairs, and bangs
the front door so loudly the mirrors rattle in the smoking parlor.

Now
and then he’s heard Mariah mention something about “going to a meeting” to Zhu
or Jessie. He has no idea what sort of meeting a Negro maid would go to. A
church meeting? Or perhaps a temperance meeting? Mariah is so sober, it makes
his teeth ache. Or is there a union for house servants? Could be. There seems
to be a union for nearly every occupation, avocation, and hobby. Is there a
union for drunks?