Deep Purple (26 page)

In addition to her visits with Dan to the opium den, Jessie now escaped once or twice a week on her own. Ling Chuey politely took the bills she passed him at the door and escorted her to the small chamber. She knew she was safe through the morning’s early hours with those strange people—that come noon Ling Chuey would gently remove the pipe from her lax fingers and send her on her way to the boardinghouse.

The fresh air and the bright sunlight would restore some clarity to her head on the walk back to the Russ House, and she slept off the last of the drowsy effects before going to work in the evenings. Now the steps that dogged hers no longer
frightened her, for she was sure they were a product of the heavenly opium.

Miss Cashman never mentioned her late-afternoon arrivals, but a frown of concern would crease the New Englander
’s long face. ‘‘You feeling all right, Flora?” she sometimes shouted, and Jessie would have to shout back into the woman’s ear trumpet, for everyone in the boardinghouse to hear, that she had never felt better.

After a while Jessie sensed that even Dan seemed concerned for her. One evening he called her to his office after
she had gone on break. “Ling Chuey tells me you often go alone, Flora. Perhaps too often.”

She arched one brow.
‘‘I can take care of myself. Besides, I might point out you haven’t cut down on your visits.”

“
Ahh, but I know exactly where to stop,” he said, exhaling on his cheroot in much the same manner he did on the opium pipe. “I know how much my body will take.”

"Why do you smoke it
—the opium?” She tilted her head to one side. “What are you running from, Daniel O’Rourke?”

He puffed quietly on the cheroot, and for a moment she thought he was not going to answer her. Then he said, “
From myself. You see, Flora, the golden smoke makes me forget the desire I have for men . . . an unnatural desire, my provincial parents thought. Are you shocked? No, I thought not. In some ways the opium elucidates . . . makes you see things as they really are—oneself included.”

In spite of Dan
’s words of caution, she continued to visit the opium den. She realized she was courting danger, but she cared not. Sometimes she even wondered if she did not actually enjoy the duel she played. Over a period of time she came to know more about the mysterious operations of Hop Town.

Behind the facades of the Chinese restaurants, Soo Sin
’s Parlor & Games of Chance, the laundries, the bakeries, there existed a darker underworld of child slavery, prostitution, and, of course, the forbidden opium dens. Now she knew why Dan disappeared for days at a time—and where his diamond pin went.

Through the opium den's underg
round doorways she occasionally overheard the rattle of the dice and the triumphant exclamations of the Chinese gamblers. Occasionally she would glimpse a small child, stooped with the burden of the trays of food she carried, scurrying down the darkened halls like a mine rat. Dan explained that in order to feed all the hungry mouths in the household the impoverished Chinese were sometimes forced to sell a child to the Westerners who trafficked in child slavery.

Walking through the town
—seeing the thin, yellow faces of the children, the bent shuffling figures of the women with their bound feet, the hopelessness that stared out of the eyes of the men—she would cry out inside at the injustice, the injustice of one race to another, of one human to another.

And t
hen she would think of Elizabeth Godwin—and Brig— and she would hurry on to the House of the Golden Dreams to find her oblivion.

CHAPTER 35

T
aro Shima bowed low before Ling Chuey, who made the same traditional greeting, then straightened. He had to look down at the wily Chinese who in effect actually controlled the lives of Hop Town’s inhabitants.

“
You are most welcome to my humble establishment, Taro Shima,” Ling Chuey said, speaking in English.

Taro inclined his head in acknowledgment. His
stone-carved face never once betrayed surprise that Ling Chuey knew who he was. Ling Chuey knew everything and everyone, or soon would, who rode in and departed from Tombstone. “I seek to enjoy a game of mah-jongg,” he responded, likewise in English.

“
So good, Shima-san,” Ling answered politely, his slit eyes probing behind Taro’s smooth facade. “The white man’s poker and the Mexican’s monte do not offer the challenge of the Oriental game.”

Taro followed the man along the long hall and down the wooden steps
into the tunnel. He ignored the bodies sprawled in drowsy abandon as he passed through the main stope to another smaller room bathed in a yellow light from a filigreed oil lamp suspended from the ceiling by a gold chain. Around a low, square black table, a
kotaku
, sat three men, all middle-aged though they appeared eons older.

Like virtually all the men of their race living in the United States
’ Western territories, they had signed on in China as youths to work in the Land of the Golden Mountain, as America was known there. Soon they were disillusioned, realizing that the wages they had hoped to send back home were needed entirely for survival. They were outcasts, spit on and reviled by the round eyes. But there in the mah-jongg parlors, in the opium dens, and in the cribs of prostitution they were the great lords they had hoped to be.

The three men rose and bowed, palms on knees, as the stranger entered with Ling Chuey. A foreigner, they knew, but obviously not of the round-eyes.

Taro crossed the tatami floor mat and took a place on one of the
zebuton
cushions. The mah-jongg tiles of bone were distributed among the players, and within minutes a Chinese girl dressed in a white cotton jacket and black trousers slip-stepped into the room to set china cups of pungent tea before the men. After the expected pleasantries were exchanged, the game commenced, and Taro concentrated on the complicated scoring system so that he was able to vanquish his opponents within the hour.

As if Ling Chuey knew the exact moment of t
he game’s termination, he rejoined the men. New cups were placed on the
kotaku
, this time filled with rice whiskey, sake. One by one the other three men departed, being sure to politely leave a small amount of sake in the cup. Now there were only Ling Chuey and Taro Shima left to face each other.

The two men began to speak, keeping to light subjects
—the price of tea in the territory, the problems of growing the mulberry trees for a silkworm industry, the lack of respect the young people of the round-eyes displayed toward their elders. “There is no
enryo
—modesty—in the presence of one’s superior,” Ling announced with a heavy sigh.

Taro nodded, politely agreeing with his host. He knew he would have to be patient. Ling Chuey no doubt correctly suspected why he
had come and in time would broach the subject. At last, when the cups were refilled with sake a third time, Ling said, “It is so sad that the
ha-ku-jins
, the round-eyes, do not know how to enjoy the worldly pleasures with moderation. The bars of Tombstone are an excellent example, are they not? The men have no self-will—cannot put aside their glasses at the right moment. The same holds true for the poppy. Even now a young woman, a round-eye, who has visited my establishment for many months lies drifting in another room on the poppy’s vapors.”

“
That is too bad, Ling Chuey. The Westerners have no sense of decorum. How long has the girl been dreaming?”

Ling paused, as if counting. “
Three days this time. Maybe four. She no longer returns to her place. And there is no money left to pay for the poppy.” He shrugged his shoulders elaborately. “Such is the life of a businessman. He takes chances. Now, for my generosity to this woman, I must lose.”

“
What will happen to this round-eye?” Taro asked with apparent indifference.

“
Most likely I will have to bear the burden of her keep. If I keep her supplied with the poppy, I can use her as a concubine. The bachelors who have contracted marriages back in the old land would take her to bed for relief. But, of course, after a while the poppy will render her useless. And then . . .” He sighed fatalistically. “We all die . . . but such a painful death in the throes of the poppy. Yes, it is such a shame the woman could not have used more good sense. Such a waste.”

“
Does no one miss the foolish woman?”

“
Ahh, yes, Taro Shima. There is her employer. He, likewise, enjoys the poppy dreams. He has seen her. Yesterday, I believe. He realizes the woman is an addict—too far gone for him to help her. No, the best I can do for the unworthy woman is to let her have her dreams to ease the way to death. The bachelors will be grateful and kind to her.”

Her employer. Taro knew of him. Understood him and his kind far too well. The innate sensitivity, the appreciation
of beautiful things that Taro’s race had refined to such a high degree, could be sensed, though at a much lower level, in Daniel O’Rourke. Like O’Rourke, Taro could find pleasure in the beauty of every living creature . . . the male sex as well as the female. But for Taro that appreciation had come to be in most cases something remote, an appreciation through the inner senses. An appreciation that he found more often those days through meditation.

But the round-eye woman
’s extraordinary beauty had captivated him. To experience her gift of love, the gift he knew she was capable of giving, was something that few human beings ever experienced. For that kind of gift he would dedicate his life.

Slowly Taro swallowed all but the last dregs of the sake. “
Such a shame,” he agreed at last. “For you especially. As you have pointed out, she will not last long on the poppy dreams— and you, Ling Chuey, will not recoup your loss.”

“
I could perhaps auction her off, but none of the men who frequent the House of the Golden Dreams has the kind of money it would take to make up for what I have spent to keep her.”

‘‘
You could, of course, use the round-eye as a wager in a game of fan-tan,” Taro said, setting down his cup. Did his voice sound too anxious, betray too much his concern?

“
Ahhh, yes. But, likewise, who could equal such a stake?”

‘‘
The round-eye is not worth a high stake,” Taro pointed out. “A woman, an addict—who would want her? Still, in honor of my host, I would offer a wager that would not insult you . . . the claim to the Lotus Land Mine.”

Ling Chuey nodded sagely.
‘‘It is said the Lotus Land Mine has been a moderately successful enterprise.”

“
People's words give it too much credit,” Taro said modestly.

“
But the evaluation scales at the Assayer’s Office do not lie. Some silver has poured forth from your mine, Shima-san.”

Taro was not surprised that Ling Chuey knew of the mine
’s productivity, no doubt to the exact dollar the silver yielded each month—though it was not as much as it could have been because of the primitive methods to which he was forced to resort.

Ling Chuey poured out more sake, an indifferent look in the black lacquered eyes. His whole demeanor as he sipped the whiskey bespoke a man giving casual consideration to a matter that did not interest him grea
tly. But Taro knew Ling Chuey’s reputation and knew men like Ling Chuey in Japan. Greedy, avaricious men. He knew the man who controlled Hop Town would like to add the Lotus Land Mine to his holdings. And so Taro did not partake further of the sake but sat cross-legged, focusing his energies inward, as if Ling Chuey’s decision to stake the white woman was of no consequence to him.

And yet it was of great consequence to this aesthetically oriented male. When he had first seen her at the Crystal Palace, she h
ad riveted his attention. She was unlike any woman he had ever known—not the helpless and meek, submissive Japanese females nor even the other white women with whom he had come in contact since landing in San Francisco four years earlier. She was neither the painted harlot of the saloons nor the pale fish-belly woman of the frontier who soon withered like the sage.

There was her extraordinary coloring . . . the sun-spun hair that actually curled of its own volition, giving the illusion of a separate entity.
And then there was the vibrancy beneath the dusky gold skin. An aliveness that sheared the breath, like a quick sweep of the samurai sword, despite the dullness of the jade eyes . . . stones that needed polishing to restore their original beauty, he had often thought.

Only the wistful curve of the lips gave any indication there existed a vulnerability to the willful woman, a vulnerability that could endanger her
—and, as he had feared, trailing her as he had those many nights, had endangered her.

Ling Chuey
set his cup aside. Instantly the Chinese girl was there to refill it, but at the almost imperceptible shake of his head she lifted the tray and was gone, leaving the two men alone. “I have thought much on your offer, Taro Shima, and am highly honored. I feel much embarrassment that I have nothing of greater value to place as a stake except the worthless female, but if you will accept such a wager I would be more than delighted to participate in a game of chance with you. It has been such a long while that I had a challenging opponent. As the host, I will defer to your choice of games.”

Taro nodded. “
Perhaps fan-tan. The round-eyes seem to like it well enough.”

And he had become quite proficient himself in playing it at the Crystal Palace. He had rarely gone
into town, preferring the isolation of his mountain fastness, but sometimes the overwhelming need for human contact drove him down to the dens of civilization—drove him into the empty arms of a Chinese slave girl or the more devouring ones of the round-eyes, dance-hall girls who seemed to find him diverting, different from the bleary-eyed, unshaven souls who lumbered to the beds of paid-for passions.

He smiled thinly when he thought of the Western males who never took time to show their partner the many pl
easant diversions of the sexual act. Perhaps that was why the dance-hall girls had ceased to charge him after the first of his occasional visits.

The game began with each player intent on ridding himself of the cards in his hand. It was a tedious game to t
he onlooker, as tedious as chess, with many decisions to be carefully thought through and plotted. Taro never once let it cross his impassive face that he held all four nines and three of the fours, unlucky numbers for the Oriental, indicating death or misfortune.

But then he had left behind in Japan the superstitious lore of his people when he signed on to work in the pineapple plantations of Hawaii. He had been chosen, along with ninety-three others, because of his strength and willingness to work. The ot
her Japanese men who had come over in the stinking hold of the steamer had reluctantly left their famine-stricken land only temporarily in hopes of sending their wages back to starving families and of returning themselves one day to their homeland.

Not so
Taro. His parents and his younger brother had yielded to starvation’s scythe. He had no reason to return, no land to claim, since his father had leased the earth they plowed. Lately, though, that desire for immortality that at one time or another teases every man had caused Taro to ponder making a marriage contract, a
miai-kekkon
, with some young woman back in Japan. He had enough made to send for a Japanese bride now. But curiously the idea receded, ebbing and waning like the tide moved by the moon . . . like a man moved by the sight of one certain woman.

He shook himself from his thoughts. It was not wise to dwell on the round-eye now. He would need all of his concentration to overcome the
hazard of chance—and Ling Chuey’s own skillfulness with the cards. He never permitted himself to consider the possibility of what it would mean to lose the mine—that it meant more than just the wealth the mine promised. It was the land itself. Having grown up in a country where land was scarce, reserved for the war lords and the samurai warrior class, owning his own land had become paramount for him, something akin to the religious fervor of a Buddhist priest.

One by one he rid himself of the unlucky nines
and fours until all he held was a three of clubs. His turn came, and with an inner sigh he placed it on the tableau.

Ling Chuey's sigh was more audible. With a bland face, the host clapped the flats of his hands against his knees. “
So, Shima-san! You are a most worthy opponent! I wonder if you will find the stake you have won as worthy as your skill at playing?”