The Immigrants (19 page)

“You don’t have to think about what to say to me. Can’t we just talk?”

“That’s it,” he muttered.

“Well then,” she said, “I shall deliver a short lecture on the birth and history of the San Francisco Public Li brary.” And when she finished, she said, “There, Mr. Lavette. We are not simply librarians. We inherit a tra dition.”

1 4 6

H o w a r d F a s t

“Will you please call me Dan!” he snapped at her.

“Are you angry at me?” she asked, puzzled.

“No, no. I’m not sore at you, I’m sore at myself. May Ling, can I talk to you, I mean, can I really talk to you? I mean I never talked to anyone—about what I feel in side—I never had to or maybe I never could, I don’t know.”

“You can talk to me, Dan. You can say anything you want to me.

Anything. Because what I owe to you, I can never repay.”

“That’s bull.”

“It isn’t.”

“God damn it, May Ling, I don’t want you to be grateful to me.”

“Then what do you want, Dan?”

“I don’t know,” he said miserably. “I’m married. I think I love my wife. She isn’t there.”

“I don’t understand.”

He drove on in silence for a while, and then he mut tered, “I never whined about anything in my life.”

“You’re not whining, Dan.”

“I haven’t looked at another woman since I’m mar ried.”

“Dan—will you listen to me?”

He glanced at her.

“Will you listen to me? I think you’re the finest man I ever knew.

I have my own reasons for thinking so. Now I agreed to spend this evening with you. I don’t want you to apologize and I don’t want you to feel that you have to explain anything. I want you to try to feel the way you did when you came to our house for din ner. So no more explaining, because I am very happy. I am spending an evening with a man I honor and like. Now, have you ever read Charles Lamb’s ‘Dissertation on Roast Pig’?”

“May Ling, I never read anything. I’m as ignorant as the day is long.”

“Are you? Well, I know it by heart, and while you drive, I shall

t H e I m m I g r a n t s

1 4 7

repeat it to you, slightly abridged, and you will understand why the Chinese are such excellent cooks.”

They reached Sutro Heights as the sun was setting, and they sat there, watching the dull red orb sink into a golden sea, the hills black and lonely in the distance.

“I liked that story,” he said.

“Thank you, Dan.”

When it was dark, she said, “The quiet of a wise man is not simply quiet, not made by him, but just as strong as he is.”

“That’s—that’s very beautiful,” he said. “I’m not sure I understand it.”

“I’m not sure either. I didn’t make it up. It was writ ten by a Chinese philosopher whose name was Chuang Tzu. It’s my own translation, so I’m not sure it’s much good.”

“Are you hungry?”

“So much for Chinese philosophy.” She sighed. “No, not very.”

“Do you like Italian food? We can go to Lazzio’s.”

“Where you’ll be seen by your friends.”

“We’re doing nothing wrong.”

“And when your wife asks you what you were doing having dinner with a funny-looking Chinese lady, you will tell her that you were arranging to have your laun dry done?”

It was the first time she had said anything that had taken him aback, and he replied indignantly, “I would never say anything like that. Anyway, you’re beautiful.”

“I must never tease you. Dan, we’re out here. Let’s eat at the Cliff House.”

“It has no class. The old place did, not now.”

“I don’t care. No one will see us. I don’t want to make trouble for you.”

That was the beginning. He saw her three times more during the next two weeks, always meeting her outside the library. He did not

1 4 8

H o w a r d F a s t

know what she told her parents, nor did he ask her, nor did Feng Wo’s manner toward him change in any way. He was expecting a change, looking for it, but there was none. Their relationship remained the same. When he kissed her, it was on the cheek, lightly, and there was no other physical contact. He simply knew that when he was with her, the churn ing, angry discontent within him disappeared. He real ized that she possessed a perceptiveness and an intellect that was quite beyond him, but she never patronized him. She talked about books and philosophy and his tory, and he listened always with a sense of wonder that was turning into a kind of worship, frequently without understanding, yet hanging onto every word, grappling with it. She began to give him books to read,
The Call of the Wild
by Jack London and
Huckleberry Finn
by Mark Twain. It did not occur to him that she chose simple, read-able books, and he read them, staying up half the night, not because he enjoyed reading, but be cause he felt a desperate necessity to talk about some thing other than ships and the process of making money. Yet he found himself enjoying the stories.

Jean did not question his absence during the evenings he was away. Apparently, she accepted the fact that he worked long hours, and he felt that she was relieved by his absence. More and more, she was becoming a part of the Russian Hill circle of writers and artists.

She gave a party—the first really large party in the new house—for Willis Polk and Bernard Maybeck, the two brilliant architects who were working on the Panama-Pacific In ternational Exposition, scheduled to open the following year. It was an invitation that no one could refuse, and James Rolph, Jr, the mayor, long and deeply involved in shipping and navigation, was apparently the only one who noticed Dan’s absence and asked for him, telling Jean, “I am indeed disappointed. I looked forward to a talk with this young tycoon of yours.” But there were sufficient luminaries there that night, and no one else asked for Dan. Jean was rather relieved by

t H e I m m I g r a n t s

1 4 9

the fact that Dan was elsewhere; she could never be sure of what he would say and whose feelings he would bruise; and her new friends were used to his absences.

It happened to be a very special night for both of the Lavettes.

One evening, a week before the party, Dan said to May Ling, bluntly, which was very much a part of his approach to any subject, “You know by now that I care for you. You have become a very important part of my life.”

“But you still love Jean.”

“I don’t want to make love to Jean, if that’s what you mean. That happened being with you. I want to make love to you.”

They were sitting in a little Italian restaurant on Jones Street, near the wharf. Gino’s belonged to Gino Laurenti, who had been a friend of Dan’s father. It was a tiny place, frequented by the Italian fishermen, a place where they were comfortably unseen and where they had come often.

May Ling looked at him thoughtfully, without reply ing, and he said, “You do understand me?”

“You’re a strange man, Danny. You never even kissed me on the lips.”

“That’s doesn’t mean I didn’t want to.”

“I don’t understand.”

“How do you feel about me?”

“Don’t you know?” she asked in amazement.

“No, I don’t.”

“You are absolutely the strangest man. Do you know that if you put me into that yellow automobile of yours and informed me that we were to drive across the ocean to Hawaii, I would go.

I really would.”

“That makes no sense.”

“What do you want me to say, Dan? I love you. I loved you from the moment you walked into our apart ment and stood there,

1 5 0

H o w a r d F a s t

a little frightened, I think, in that spooky place in Chinatown, and so abashed, like an enormous little boy—”

“Why? Because I helped your father? Because I hired him?”

”Oh, you are stupid sometimes!” she cried, the first show of anger he had ever seen in her. “No! Not be cause you helped my father.

Because you are you.”

Then he was silent, staring at his plate.

“Danny?”

He looked up at her now, still silent.

“Don’t you believe that anyone could love you?”

“I’m no good with women,” he muttered.

“Thank heavens.”

“Well, what do you mean by that?”

“I’m teasing you. I know I promised not to, so you must forgive me. Let’s finish our dinner.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Neither am I. Let’s go somewhere.”

“Where?”

“Any place you say.”

They got into his car, and he drove to a little inn in Broadmoor.

He registered under the names of Mr. and Mrs. Richard Jones, and since they had no luggage, the night clerk demanded the rent in advance. He felt cheap and stupid, and he told her so, but May Ling only shook her head and smiled and said that it made no difference at all. He locked the door to the room, and then they sat on the edge of the bed, looking at each other.

“Do you know, Danny,” she said to him, “I have never been with a man before, so this is going to be much harder for you than for me.

But it’s also going to be beautiful. I know that because I know you.

You still haven’t kissed me truly. Don’t you think you ought to?”

He took her in his arms and kissed her, and then they stretched out on the bed, and he kissed her again and again, her lips parted,

t H e I m m I g r a n t s

1 5 1

welcoming him. He lay there, looking at her, touching her face, her arms, her tiny breasts.

“We’ll undress, Danny,” she whispered. “We’ll be na ked.”

It took only moments for her to slip out of her dress and her underthings, and while he struggled with his clothes, she took the spread off the bed and turned back the sheets. Then she let down her hair, and it fell to her waist in a great black flood. Dan could not take his eyes off her. Her figure was slender and firm, her belly al most flat, her breasts small and firm, the nipples like budding roses in nests of old ivory. Naked like that, out of the straight, shapeless dresses she always wore, she appeared to Dan as the loveliest creature he had ever seen, not as another woman as his wife was a woman, but something out of another world and another time and place—an almost unreal person.

She walked over and stood before him, tiny against his huge, muscular bulk, and he clasped her in his arms, pressing her to him.

Then he lifted her and carried her to the bed.

“Good God,” he said, “what do you weigh?”

“A hundred and five pounds. That’s enough, isn’t it?”

“I’m two hundred.”

“Good. You’re a proper man.”

He lay down next to her and cradled her in his arms, and she pressed up against him, smiling with delight.

“It doesn’t bother you that I’m married?”

“No, but I don’t want you to talk about it. I just want you to make love to me.”

It was two o’clock in the morning when they closed the door behind them and walked downstairs. Dan tossed the key onto the desk and said to the clerk, “We decided not to stay, buster.”

May Ling curled up against him as they drove back to the city. They were silent for a while, relaxed, con tent, connected, and then May Ling asked him, “Do you still think you’re no good with women?”

1 5 2

H o w a r d F a s t

“Maybe.”

“You were terribly good with me, and I’m just a skinny little virgin. I mean I was a virgin. Not now. You deflowered me, Dan Lavette.”

“You are the goddamndest girl.”

“Why?”

“The things you say. Anyway, you’re not skinny. You’re the way you are, and that’s right.”

“Thank you.”

“Weren’t you afraid?” he asked her.

“Should I have been?”

“That’s what they say.”

“I was once.”

“When was that?”

“When we walked into the place. I half expected the clerk to say that they don’t take Chinks.” She touched his cheek. “If he had, Danny, what would you have done?”

“I would have killed the sonofabitch.”

“You’re still a roughneck, aren’t you?”

He thought about it for a while before he answered. “No, I’m learning. I read books. I don’t say
ain’t
much anymore, and I’m learning how to make love to a woman.”

Quite simply, Sarah Levy adopted Clair Harvey. It came about without prior planning or arrangement. Dan and Mark both liked and trusted Jack Harvey, who had been with them since they purchased the
Oregon Queen
; he had his captain’s papers; he was a good sailor and fiercely loyal; and when finally the
Oceanic
, the first of the new fleet of ships that Lavette and Levy had acquired, took off under their house flag, Harvey was in command. There was only

t H e I m m I g r a n t s

1 5 3

one problem—what to do with Clair, and Sarah solved it by asking the girl whether she would like to stay with them at Sausalito. The ship was on a Western passage that would take it in due time entirely around the world, and it would be months before her father returned. Her strange child hood existence as a schooner brat on the coasters had come to an end; she could not live alone; and aside from her father she had no relative in the world. For all that she was amazingly independent and capable, and she was still only fifteen years old. Harvey put the prob lem to Sarah, who replied indignantly that she had never questioned the matter. Still, it had to have Clair’s agreement, and Jack Harvey had vaguely discussed the alternative of a girls’ boarding school.

Clair had stayed with the Levys for three weeks after her father’s enormous bender, and then she had re turned with him to their apartment in San Francisco when the school term began.

One Saturday, Sarah took the ferry to town, and she and Clair had a long lunch eon, just the two of them being very posh and ladylike at the Fairmont. Sarah saw herself in the long-legged, freckled, redheaded girl—the same fierce indepen dence, the same kind of calm and certainty, withal a great pity for someone so totally alone in the world. Bit by bit, she drew out the story of Clair’s life, the shabby rooming houses between the voyages on the redwood lumber schooners, the intermittent schooling, the long waits at night for her father’s return. Finally, she made her proposal.