Daughter of Fortune (28 page)

Azucena Placeres did not hear the Yankees' news because Tao Chi'en took her down to the hold as soon as he learned of the presence of the customs agent. They weren't going to be able to sneak Eliza ashore in a sack over a stevedore's shoulder, as she had come aboard, because it appeared that all goods were going to be checked. Eliza was surprised when she saw them; both were unrecognizable. Tao was wearing a freshly laundered smock and trousers; his tightly braided hair gleamed as if it had been oiled, and he had carefully shaved the last hair from his foreskull and face, while Azucena Placeres had changed from country garb into full battle dress and was wearing a blue gown with feathers trimming the décolletage; her upswept hair was crowned by a hat, and her cheeks and lips were rouged.

“The journey's over and you're still alive, girl,” she trumpeted gaily.

Her plan was to lend Eliza one of her most splendid outfits and smuggle her off the ship as just another of their band—not far off the mark, she told Eliza, since that was going to be her only choice of career once on land.

“I have come to marry my sweetheart,” Eliza replied, for the hundredth time.

“No sweetheart is going to do you any good. If in order to eat you have to hustle your ass, you'll hustle your ass. You can't be choosy at this point, girl.”

Tao Chi'en interrupted them. If for two months there had been seven women on the ship, they couldn't take eight off, he reasoned. He had noticed the band of Mexicans and Chinese who had come aboard to unload the ship and who were waiting on deck to hear the captain's and the custom agent's orders. Tao instructed Azucena to braid Eliza's long hair in a queue like his own while he went to look for a set of his clothes. They dressed the girl in cut-off pants, a smock tied at the waist with a cord, and a straw hat like a Japanese parasol. In those two months of slogging through the desert sands of hell, Eliza had lost weight and looked as thin and pale as rice paper. In Tao Chien's too large clothes she looked like a sad, undernourished, little Chinese boy. Azucena Placeres wrapped her in her robust laundress's arms and planted an emotional kiss on her forehead. She had grown fond of Eliza, and in the depths of her heart was happy that she had a sweetheart waiting for her, because she could not imagine Eliza subjected to the brutalities of the life she herself led.

“You look like a lizard.” Azucena Placeres laughed aloud.

“What if they discover me?”

“What's the worst that can happen? That Katz will make you pay for your passage? You can pay for it with your jewels, isn't that what they're for?”

“No one must know you are here,” said Tao Chi'en. “That way, Captain Sommers won't be looking for you in California.”

“If he finds me, he will take me back to Chile with him.”

“Why would he do that?” Azucena interjected. “Your reputation is already ruined, and that is something rich people cannot tolerate. Your family must be very happy that you disappeared, it saves them having to throw you out.”

“Only throw you out? In China they would kill you for what you have done.”

“Well, Chino, we are not in your country. Don't frighten the little thing. You can go with an easy heart, Eliza. No one will notice you. All eyes will be on me,” Azucena Placeres assured her, making her exit in a whirlwind of blue feathers, the turquoise brooch pinned to her bosom.

And so it went. The five Chileans and two Peruvians, in their most exuberant sporting attire, were the spectacle of the day. They climbed down to the boats by way of a rope ladder—preceded by seven fortunate sailors who had drawn straws for the privilege of bearing the weight of those buttocks on their heads—in the midst of a chorus of whistles and applause from the hundreds of spectators crowded into the port to welcome them. No one paid the least attention to the Mexicans and Chinese who, like a line of ants, were passing bundles from hand to hand. Eliza went on one of the last boats, beside Tao Chi'en, who told his compatriots that the boy was a deaf mute and a little slow, so there was no point in trying to communicate with him.

T
ao Chi'en's and Eliza Sommers' feet first touched the soil of San Francisco on a Tuesday in April of 1849, at two o'clock in the afternoon. By then thousands of adventurers had briefly passed through on their way to the placers. A persistent wind made walking difficult, but the day was clear and they could appreciate the panorama of the bay in all its splendid beauty. Tao Chi'en cut a bizarre figure with his doctor's case, which he was never without, his seabag, his straw hat, and a multicolored wool serape he had bought from one of the Mexican stevedores. It didn't matter, really; looks weren't what counted in that town. Eliza's legs were trembling; she hadn't used them in two months, and she felt as landsick as she had before at sea, but the man's clothing gave her an unfamiliar freedom; she had never felt so invisible. Once she got over the feeling that she was naked, she could enjoy the breeze blowing up her sleeves and pants legs. Accustomed to the prison of her petticoats, she could now breathe deeply. She was struggling to carry her small suitcase filled with the exquisite dresses Miss Rose had packed with the best intentions, and when he noticed her difficulty Tao Chi'en took it from her and slung it over his shoulder. The Castile wool blanket rolled up beneath her arm weighed as much as the suitcase, but she realized she couldn't leave it, it would be her most precious possession at night. Eyes to the ground, hidden beneath her straw hat, she stumbled along through the awesome anarchy of the port. The village of Yerba Buena, founded in 1769 by a Spanish expedition, had fewer than fifteen hundred inhabitants, but the adventurers had begun to flock in with the first news of gold. Within a few months, that innocent little village awakened with the name San Francisco and a fame that had reached the farthest points of the globe. More than a true city, it was an enormous camp for men on the move.

Gold fever left no one unaffected: smiths, carpenters, teachers, doctors, soldiers, fugitives from the law, preachers, bakers, revolutionaries, and harmless madmen of various stripes who had left family and possessions behind to traverse half the world in search of adventure. “They look for gold, and along the way lose their souls,” Captain Katz had repeated tirelessly in the brief religious services he imposed every Sunday on the passengers and crew of the
Emilia
, but no one paid any attention, blinded by dreams of the sudden riches that would change their lives. For the first time in history, gold lay scattered on the ground, unclaimed, free, and plentiful, within the reach of anyone with the will to go after it. Argonauts came from distant shores: Europeans fleeing wars, plagues, and tyrannies; Americans, ambitious and short-tempered; blacks pursuing freedom; Oregonians and Russians dressed in deerskin, like Indians; Mexicans, Chileans, and Peruvians; Australian bandits; starving Chinese peasants who were risking their necks by violating the imperial order against leaving their country. All races flowed together in the muddy alleyways of San Francisco.

The main streets, laid out as broad semicircles touching the beach at both ends, were intersected by other, straight, streets descending from the steep hills to end at the dock, some so abrupt and deep in mud that not even mules could climb them. Suddenly a storm would blow in, raising whirlwinds of sand along the shore, but soon the air would be calm again and the sky blue. There were already several solid buildings and dozens under construction, including some announcing themselves as future luxury hotels, but everything else was a shambles of temporary dwellings, barracks, shacks of sheet metal, wood, or cardboard, canvas tents, and straw roofs. The recent rains of winter had turned the dock into a swamp; any vehicle that had ventured there sank hub-deep in mire, and planks were laid across ditches deep in garbage, thousands of broken bottles, and other refuse. There were no drains or sewers, and the wells were contaminated; cholera and dysentery reaped scores of lives—except among the Chinese, who by custom drank tea, and the Chileans, who had been raised on polluted water and were therefore immune to lesser bacteria. The heterogeneous throng pulsed with frenzied activity, pushing, bumping into building materials, barrels, boxes, burros, and carts. Chinese porters balanced their loads on each end of a long pole, indifferent to whom they struck as they went by; strong and patient Mexicans swung bundles equal to their own weight onto their backs and trotted off up the hills; Malaysians and Hawaiians seized any pretext to start a fight; Americans charged into temporary businesses on horseback, bowling over anyone in their way; native-born Californians strutted around in handsome embroidered jackets, silver spurs, and slit pants legs trimmed with a double row of gold buttons from belt to boot tops. Shouts from fights and accidents added to the din of hammers, saws, and picks. Shots rang out with terrifying frequency, but no one was affected by one more dead man; on the other hand, the theft of a box of nails immediately drew a crowd of indignant citizens ready to mete out justice with their own hands. Property was much more valuable than life; any robbery over a hundred dollars was paid for on the gallows. There were scores of gaming houses, bars, and saloons decorated with images of naked women in lieu of the real article. Everything imaginable—especially liquor and weapons—was sold at exorbitant prices because no one had time to bargain. Customers nearly always paid in gold, not even stopping to wipe up the dust clinging to the scales. Tao Chi'en decided that the famous Gum San, the Golden Mountain he had heard so much about, was a hell, and calculated that at these prices his savings would not go very far. Eliza's little bag of jewels would be worthless, because the only acceptable tender was pure gold.

Eliza made her way through the crowd as best she could, close behind Tao Chi'en and grateful to be wearing men's clothing because she saw no sign of a woman anywhere. The
Emilia
's seven female passengers had been carried off to one of the many saloons, where undoubtedly they had already begun earning the two hundred seventy dollars they owed Captain Vincent Katz for their passage. Tao Chi'en had found out from the stevedores that the town was divided into sectors and that every nationality had its neighborhood. He was warned not to go near the Australian roughnecks, who might waylay a passerby for pure fun, and then was pointed the way to a cluster of tents and shacks where the Chinese lived. And that was the direction in which they started walking.

“How am I going to find Joaquín in all this uproar?” Eliza asked, feeling lost and helpless.

“If there is a Chinese barrio, there must be a Chilean one. Look for it.”

“I'm not planning to leave you, Tao.”

“Tonight,” he warned, “I'm going back to the ship.”

“Why? Aren't you interested in gold?” races

Tao Chi'en walked faster, and she adjusted her pace to his in order not to lose sight of him. Soon they came to the Chinese sector—Little Canton, it was called—a couple of unwholesome streets where Tao immediately felt at home because not a single
fan wey
was to be seen; on the air floated delicious odors of the food of his country and he heard several Chinese dialects, mainly Cantonese. To Eliza, in contrast, it was like being transported to another planet; she did not understand a single word, and it seemed to her that everyone was furious because they were all yelling and waving their arms. Again she did not see any women, but Tao pointed to a couple of barred windows at which she saw despondent faces. Tao had been two months without a woman and those at the window called to him but he knew the ravages of venereal diseases too well to run that risk. These were peasant girls bought for a few coins and brought here from the most remote provinces of China. He thought of his sister, sold by his father, and was bent double by a wave of nausea.

“What's the matter, Tao?”

“Bad memories. Those girls are slaves.”

“I thought there weren't any slaves in California.”

They went into a restaurant, identified by the traditional yellow streamers. There was a large table crowded with men sitting elbow to elbow and wolfing down food. The sound of lively conversation and chopsticks clattering against tin plates was music to Tao Chi'en's ears. They stood in a double line until they could sit down. It wasn't a matter of choosing what to eat but of grabbing anything that came within arm's reach. It took skill to catch a plate on the fly before someone more enterprising intercepted it, but Tao Chi'en got one for Eliza and another for himself. She eyed with suspicion a dubious green liquid in which pale threads and gelatinous mollusks were floating. She prided herself on knowing any ingredient by its smell, but what sat before her did not look edible, it reminded her of swamp water swarming with polliwogs; it did, however, have the advantage of not requiring chopsticks, she could drink it directly from the bowl. Hunger overcame skepticism and she dared take a taste, while behind her a line of impatient customers yelled at her to hurry. The dish was delicious and she would happily have eaten more, but she was denied the opportunity by Tao Chi'en, who took her by one arm and led her outside. She followed him, first, from shop to shop to replace the medicinal supplies for his kit and to talk with the two Chinese herbalists in the town, and then to a gambling den, one of the many on every corner. This was a wooden building with a pretense of luxury and decorated with paintings of voluptuous, half-clad women. Gold dust was weighed to exchange for coins at the rate of sixteen dollars per ounce, or sometimes the whole pouch was laid on the table. Americans, French, and Mexicans made up the majority of the customers but there were also adventurers from Hawaii, Chile, Australia, and Russia. The most popular games were the monte that had originated in Mexico,
lasquenet
, and twenty-one. Since the Chinese preferred fan-tan, and wagered only a few cents, they were not welcome at the high-rolling tables. There were no blacks gambling, although some were providing music or waiting tables; Eliza and Tao later learned that if they went into a bar or gambling hall they would be given one free drink but would then have to leave or be thrown out. There were three women in the saloon, two young Mexican girls with large sparkling eyes, dressed in white and smoking cigarette after cigarette, and a pretty, rather mature Frenchwoman wearing a tight corset and heavy makeup. They made the rounds of the tables, urging the men to bet and drink, and often disappeared with some customer behind a heavy drapery of red brocade. Tao Chi'en was told that they charged an ounce of gold for an hour of their company in the bar and several hundred dollars to spend the night with a lonely man, although the Frenchwoman was more costly, and she had no truck with Chinese or blacks.