The Man Game (66 page)

GM Sproat rose from his chair on stage and bowed and shook Pitt's hand with enthusiasm. The clapping was sustained, and Sproat used the time to talk into Pitt's ear.

I can't hear you, said Pitt.

No, you shithead, said Sproat, I'm just killing time. Now shove off, you fucking cowboy. Sproat swooped in on the podium as if it were a rabbit and began to speak to his audience in a low growl that grew to a hyperventilating rage that could be heard down on New Westminster Street and that rained down heavily on the first row inside.

John Chinaman. The heathen Chinee. Who'm I talking aboot? Your neighbour? I don't think you want him as
your
neighbour. Oh, but these are such fine-featured folk. These almond-eyed sons a the flowery kingdom. Yes, they almost look like women, don't they? Ha ha, that's right. Show a hands who agrees with me. Okay, I see I'm talking your language. You agree them Mongols aren't built to withstand the brutality a this land? No. No. For as long as they been a race, the
Chinaman has got to compensate for his physical inferiority with cunning and deceit. Thank you. Underhandedness, my brothers. Yes. Simple as that. Give that man in the back another drink, ha ha. The heathen Chinee has no morality. That's right. They come from a garbage society. You heard me. A garbage society. Greed outstrips fraternity where they're from. Am I right or am I right? I'm right. Yes. Fucking right I'm right. They been known to commit
infanticide
in the Orient. That means murdering their own childs. Insanity, absolute barbaric insanity. Their intellects are perverse. That's right. They don't care aboot education or unionization. They work so bleakly. Little flesh drones. Thank you. I tell you, I know from personal experience, the Chinaman is an alien creature, beyond our capacity to control or change them to the image a God. Their lowliness prevents them ever becoming Canadian. For us to allow them
more
entry into Canada, well, means we risk getting overrun with the Orientals and
their
way a life, which is crude, filthy, and irrational. China's just a vast reservoir a helotry. They developed as a race a slaves, or at any rate, a lowly animal existence. Thank you, and God Bless.

During the roaring, seething applause that followed Sproat's soliloquy, he stepped back from the podium thrusting his fists in the air while another man ran out from backstage and shook Sproat's hand as they passed.

The new speaker saluted the crowd of men, took the lectern and waved down the noise and said: Hey, hey, Sproat's right. The Orientals are inherently leprous people. Hi, I'm BJ Cockburn. I'm a member a the Knights a Labour. I been with them from way back. That's right, folks. The Chinaman are a bacterial race. Innately unhygienic. Are you wanting your linens spit upon by leprous mouths? No, sir, I for one do not, said the
wise
man. Ha ha. And then you touch it? Hell, no. And that story's true Sproat told. All your guys' dreams a someday starting a life here? Forget it. You count fourscore Chinamen sleeping in a
single
room, what're you supposed to think, eh? This the way you want to live? They got a few coarse enjoyments like gambling and whoring. That's right. They're obdurate.
Thank you. They all got fixed persistent staring little eyes and rot gut. You heard me. Who hasn't shrank from the Chinaman's foul breath? He stinks a a gull's regurgitations. He brings with him pestilences. Thank you, yes. He got smallpox to cholera and leprosy. Crabs. That's right. Thank you. Woo. That's right. Yeehaw. I seen the lepers among them. Syphilis, you know it. Are we afraid a them sleeping in our laundry? We should be. My brothers, join me in a crusade to rid our society a this threat to public
health
. Fuck the Chinaman, thank you.

There was dry-mouthed silence at the end of Cockburn's speech, and RD Pitt came running back on stage and yelled out: Who's taking all our jobs?

The Chinamen, replied the crowd, a few swinging their fists to regain momentum.

He cupped a hand to his ear. What's that?

The Chinamen, they hollered louder.

Are we going to disinfect ourselves a this pestilence once and for all?

Aye, we are, said a man, standing.

All in favour a rounding up the Chinamen tonight say Aye.

Aye, said all, and with unruly applause they rose off the benches to their feet and waited impatiently in line to storm out the double doors and congregate on Westminster Street with the rest.

To Chinatown, exclaimed Pitt from atop a milk crate on the curb. The men on the street broke out into a great swelling cheer, three for Pitt and three against the Chinaman. The more men who gathered, the more there seemed to be no turning back. Tonight they would do it. With the speeches over, Toronto briefly spotted HO Alexander and his younger brother TK as they ran north up the sidewalk, surely towards Hastings Mill where they would tell their father that men in town were setting to riot.

RH took the news with a blankening of expression, as though the thoughts on his table had been swept to the floor.

Mrs. Alexander was holding a saucer in her lap and a teacup in her fingers. She laid down both on the desk, trying not to upset the tea, and said: W-we must stop them at once. We must put an end. Dear—, she said. She put a hand to her chest and took a deep breath. She stood up. Dear, she said, the Chinaman from San Francisco … whatever shall we do?

His sons watched their father. HO, behind a history book. TK, mouth-breathing as usual.

The veins in RH's nose and cheeks faded and his neck slackened. He slumped back in his leather chair and dropped his arms. He gurgled. His sons regarded him wasting away with excited disillusionment. They were still young and stupid enough to feel powerful at the sight of a God turning into a mortal.

Leave the room, boys, he said.

But, Da—

Leave the room, he barked.

After they were gone, his wife whispered: If you don't stop the men, he'll kill you.

He said: If I try to stop them, my own m
e
n kill me. My own m
e
n. They despise me. When I hired the Indians, they said nothing. When I hired Kanakas, they stirred. When I hired Chinamen, they revolt. It's too late. I misread them. My fate is to be the interloper, sigh, not the boss.

Don't lose your resolve, dear. Need I remind you that we are
all
Chinamen in Vancouver?

Please, he wept, covering his eyes, don't remind me.

She grabbed the cowardly hand and shook it furiously. You poor old man, she said. The bones beneath the slackened glove of his skin rattled in her grip. I may've taken you for granted at times, but not now. Now I want you to
spring
to life, show courage—

He said: You don't understand what it is like to be a man. If what a man wants is revenge, then it shall be so. One requires force to subdue a mob; nothing else works. And I am not a violent man. When a war erupts in my life, it's over a table, over
a piece a paper. I am inclined to debate, politic, manoeuvre, and backstab. I am a tactician, not a field commander. And today, said RH, I'm a fallen general.

Enough a your grandiloquence. This is not the time. What are you to
do
? Our lives are at stake.

Nothing, he screamed. Absolute nothing left. My fate has been ransacked. I'm doomed.

You've gone mad. You're a mad dope fiend. That's what it is, isn't it? Oh, it's true. She stepped back and rested a hand on the desk while she caught her breath. You're not my husband anymore, she said. Where's your strength? Where have you gone? She began to cry. I thought you were made a stronger stuff. Apparently not, eh. It's sapped you a your will to live. I slept to ignore it. Oh, RH, this is a terrible city. Look what it has done to our souls. Wake up. Wake up to that fact and we might be saved yet. Yes, that's what we'll do, we'll leave tonight. We'll never come back. It won't be so hard. Quickly, let's run and pack.

The mill …

The mill is being pulled out from underneath your feet as we speak. We've nary a moment to waste. Come, we must go now.

I can't, he said, resisting her embrace, paler and paler, and that, inexplicable to her, was final.

The men back at City Hall didn't have far to walk. A block away was Pender Street, Chinatown. Trundling down the sidewalk two or three men deep, rolling up their sleeves and
whourking
as they went, it wasn't like a parade. Toronto glided among the agitators without expression, dodging expectoration and ducking confrontation. He responded to any question with: Yes, sir—; shook hands, and though he found it hard to look Whitemans in the eye, he tried to do so today in hopes of better fitting in. He hid under a sho' card for a chop suey house and waited there as a group of three grunting sulphur miners with exceptionally gold-toothed underbites ran by kicking sticks out of their way on the packed-dirt road,
nudging out stones and booting them against the walls of the Guan Wong laundry, the last building on the street built over dry land. They continued west followed by the mob, but no Chinaman was around.

A man said: Where's the Chinamen?

Round up every one you find, said Pitt.

Yeah, but where are they?

Clicking their eyes along the woodslat buildings on stilts over False Creek's high tide, they spotted no signs of the d
es
p
ic
ab
le
race. Not in any window or doorway, not on the boardwalk or anywhere else. Aside from a lone vegetable cart covered by a deerhide tarp, the street ahead lay empty in the night haze. It felt like a trick, a case of Indian skookum. The Chinese silk merchants weren't in their shop, nor were the lottery boys of the Chee Kung tong making their usual frenzied rounds on the sidewalk. The Wah Chong laundry, whose heavyset old owner invariably sat on a wood crate at the steaming entrance, was closed tight. Across every bay window in every apartment above the street the shades were drawn and the lights out. There wasn't a Chinaman anywhere to be seen. Water was the only sound, splashing against the dike.

They must all be at the fucking man game, said BJ Cockburn under his breath to Pitt.

How could all a them be? said Pitt, looking around in vain through the inky, vacant road, seeing only the red lanterns of the Dupont Street bordellos pulsing red and swaying back and forth in the slight breeze. Another distraction Pitt had to be sure his supporters avoided.

What are we going to do? Should we go over to Hastings Mill, round them up from the man game? We can still take them to the docks.

We can't do that, said Pitt. How can we do that? Propose we pick them out one by one from the crowd?

'Sides, said Sproat, I saw men leave for the man game straight after the speeches. How many more'd we lose if we collided?

We did this all for shit?

Not so long's we can find some here, said Pitt, rubbing the residual tingle off his squared fingernails. He said: Tomorrow we'll come back early and get the rest. This'll be enough proof to the men we can make it happen. Tonight we leave an impression.

Pitt weighed a rock and handed it to a young boy, no older than nine, who'd followed along in search of adventure. He told the child to throw the rock as hard as he could at the windows of Ho Ho Curios. Make it break real loud, Pitt said.

After the last shard dropped off its frame and sprinkled itself in the moonlight, the men inhaled one final moment of silence and then turned rowdy. Glass instantly looked scarce. Everyone wanted a shot. Fuck you, Chinaman. Where are you? Come oot a there, come oot a there, you yellow cowards. Ha ha. Singing: Chin-a-men, China-men. They paired off and made bets who'd hit a pane first. Grids were emptied one by one almost as fast as they could throw. Over here. Pass me that there. Follow me now, boys. They crossed the planks over the dike and spread out on the sidewalk, their footfalls spitting water through the slats as the sea lapped under their soles. Heave-ho, they sent lumber through the main-floor windows of a laundry and broke everything at once … and:

Ching Chong Chinaman