In the Shadow of the Cypress (10 page)

“But what about the villagers and their homes?”

“That was also seen to. In preparation for the impending destruction, the tong arranged to take an extended lease on some property over on McAbee Beach in Monterey. The fishermen were back on the bay three days after the fire, and the villagers will soon replace everything they lost, thanks to the prompt attention of the Southern Pacific Insurance Company, which under the circumstances could find no reason to disavow the claim. They were mired in their own machinations with nowhere to turn. They will drag their feet, no doubt, but they’ll pay up in the end unless they wish to see their Chinese labor force go on strike. It was all very well thought out, I assure you.”

Here I found a chink in the doctor’s reasoning. “But, if
secrecy was so paramount, why have you told me all this? What prevents me from taking what information I have to the authorities?”

“Because, Professor, you are an honest and empathetic man, and were once a friend of our Mr. O’Flynn. You also know about the seal and the stone. But you are also a highly intelligent man and aware, I’m sure, that without absolute proof, your hearsay testimony would be scorned as improbable, if not altogether ridiculous. And I’m quite sure you’ll agree that neither the Pacific Improvement Company nor the Southern Pacific Railroad will acknowledge that any such plot to burn us out ever existed. But if, however, you did choose to take such an action, the tong would vehemently deny all knowledge of Mr. O’Flynn, of you, and this meeting, to say nothing of the artifacts you claim to have examined and copied. For I assure you, Professor, no American will ever lay eyes on those treasures again.”

I left the village at Point Alones feeling quite giddy. It was almost as though the whole situation had been conjured in a murky dream and, as such, perched beyond explanation. Even to those of my contemporaries who might be willing to give me the benefit of the doubt, the lack of all corroboration would mark me as a crank or, worse still, the victim of an elaborate hoax perpetrated by a disgruntled employee.

I slowly realized that Dr. Lao-Hong was right. Anything I might publicly say on the matter would most likely be ridiculed as pure invention or, at the very least, idle speculation. For it’s certain that the white population hereabouts would never acknowledge or believe that these supposedly ignorant and lowly Chinese could have so deftly arranged matters for their own benefit, or so thoroughly hoodwinked those who had planned their destruction.

Though I’m now sure that the chain of events will live on only in my journal, and probably go no further, I’m left with a very intriguing source of speculation. What would history have been like if that famous Chinese admiral and his great fleet, armed as they were with highly developed technology and political expertise, had stayed behind in California to protect their claims of discovery? After all, Columbus managed to make a sizable impact on history with far fewer resources and much less intelligence. But of one thing I’m now quite sure. If those medieval Spanish conquistadors, lacking as they did all enlightened self-interest, should have come upon a thoroughly entrenched Chinese presence in California, they wouldn’t have stood the remotest chance at conquest, much less trade. It’s my studied opinion that men of violence rarely indulge in honest commerce.

—Dr. Charles Gilbert

THE THORNS OF WISDOM

“No man needs more than one blade to cut his own throat.”

—
CHINESE PROVERB

T
HE IDES OF
J
UNE FOUND
Dr. Lao-Hong in his San Francisco study writing a long letter to an old college friend in Boston. Indeed, the doctor had received a number of concerned letters from old colleagues and friends asking after his well-being since the disastrous earthquake two months earlier, but he was only now finding the time to respond. But in doing so he discovered that the very act of setting down recent events from his own perspective led him to sort out and scrutinize all his thoughts and reflections for the first time in months. He made no attempt to write down everything, of course, but he pondered everything in as dispassionate a manner as he could muster. His one discomforting obstacle rested in the knowledge that he was, to some degree, little more than a yarn ball in the cat’s paw of fortune. For in truth there were really two diametrically opposed experiences inextricably knotted together in his thoughts; one was but the shadow manifestation of the other. But he could only share one part of the story, the rest he would have to take to his grave, and at age thirty-seven he believed that was a long time to keep a secret, but he would do it. Betrayal was out of the question.

The doctor’s letters were gracious. He was sincerely gratified by the solicitude of his friends, but he only felt comfortable writing about the basic facts as he viewed them, and for the most part he recomposed general news and personal
observations. The outline remained principally the same for each letter.

Dr. Lao-Hong wrote that 1906 had been a most distressing and disagreeable year for a great number of people in northern California. The range of deadly earthquakes and their aftermath meant that most everyone except undertakers suffered serious financial loss in one form or another. A destroyed business, of whatever size and importance, meant no employment. But it was all the same, as there were no customers, and there were no patrons because there were no accessible funds for them to spend. Credit was all but impossible to get because many banks, along with their records, had been severely damaged in the earthquakes, or subsequently destroyed by fire. Hard cash money had dried up almost overnight because the price of every conceivable commodity, from goat’s milk to buggy whips, became shockingly exorbitant. Prices for the simplest staples rose astronomically, and good whiskey and other spirits became so rare and costly that even a number of gambling dens, dance halls, and back-alley saloons went belly-up. But by far, the worst scandals were perpetrated by the blackguards who manipulated the trade in essential medications and medical supplies. Their dealings were nothing if not blatant and merciless criminal extortion. And though it was probably only a slight exaggeration, it was wildly rumored that in some parts of San Francisco, a badly injured person needed gold to enjoy the privilege of staying alive.

The consequences of this series of events rippled out in all directions, substantially affecting all strata of society. Leaving himself till last, Dr. Lao-Hong was pleased to report to his friends that his family was safe and well, and presently staying with relatives in Oakland. He was grateful that his own dwelling suffered only moderate structural damage, though its contents
had been liberally thrown about. Anything that could be broken had been.

On a more sanguine note, the doctor went on to observe, perhaps with some pride, that there was one group of people who seemed to have endured the recent calamity with the least amount of devastation, disruption, or corruption, and that was the local Chinese community.

It was said by some people that the Chinese lost the least because they had the least to lose, but this was only evidence of their blind ignorance. The truth is that they lost the least because they took better precautions to preserve what they had. The doctor wrote that a long history of similar disasters in China had long since encouraged the development of methods to secure both personal and financial survival. Centuries of experience had made the Chinese familiar with such implacable catastrophes. But somehow, in spite of long wars, bloody revolutions, and devastating natural disasters, the pulse of banking, commerce, and trade never really ceases. Their fiscal system operates under a purely pragmatic tenet of extended accountability. If a man carries debt, his whole family must shoulder the burden until the obligation is resolved. It’s simple and it works. And to that end every commercial transaction floats on a “tranquil pond” of extended credit. Unless otherwise stipulated, official repayment of debt is ceremoniously transacted twice a year, sometimes only on New Year’s Day.

Dr. Lao-Hong was pleased to make note that, unlike most people in the city, the local Chinese were essentially self-sustaining in respect to food, clothing, shelter, and especially medical care.

Suddenly the doctor stopped writing in midsentence and put up his pen. With a deep sigh born of frustration, he set
aside his letters on the desk. Upon reflection it disturbed him to realize that in spite of the serious subject matter, everything he’d written sounded awkward, superficial, and distracted.

And there was no doubt about it. The doctor was seriously distracted, almost painfully preoccupied with the discomforting realization that the other story, the one he could never document in any form, kept encroaching on his thoughts at all hours of the day and night. He was often reflectively engaged to such a degree that all else, including the present turmoil, became little more than a monochromatic background. But whether he wished to or not, it was very likely that Dr. Lao-Hong would once again surrender his thoughts to the recent past, and again try to envisage and qualify the inscrutable machinations of destiny, a fate that had goaded him onto the course he was now committed to follow with eternal fidelity.

Dr. Lao-Hong had known from the very first that the discovery of Admiral Zhou Man’s stone testament, and the accompanying imperial seal, would cause widespread controversy within the higher echelons of the Chinese tongs in northern California. But that aside, he hoped to resolve the issue in an equitable manner. Nonetheless, the young doctor, having been born, raised, and educated in America, and espousing as he did a semi-Western sensibility, knew quite well that he was now embroiled in a thorny situation that could easily erupt into perilous tong rivalries.

Dr. Lao-Hong’s predicament was hardly new. In truth, he had been dealing with variations of the same dilemma all his adult life. Simply stated, it centered on the fact that immigrant Chinese, despite the fact that Dr. Lao-Hong spoke flawless Mandarin and Cantonese, perceived him as being too American, while white Americans, of course, treated him like they
did all Chinese, no matter how well he spoke English, or how advanced his education.

This fish-nor-fowl quandary had required Dr. Lao-Hong to walk a very narrow path in both worlds, and though his loyalties had always sided with his Chinese brethren, his intellectual sensibilities were Western in the main, and herein lay another ungainly dilemma. Though the Chinese had considered themselves fully literate for many centuries, the truth was at odds with that presumption, at least for those Chinese who had come into the shadow of the Gold Mountain as poor laborers, with little or no formal education of any kind. Sadly, most were illiterate in all but the simplest Chinese characters. In many cases these people arrived in San Francisco from different parts of China and could hardly communicate with one another, much less their white employers. Even Lao-Hong found he sometimes experienced great difficulty comprehending the least bit of the various local dialects. In some instances he found his poorer interlocutors spoke a local patois of Chinese that was totally incomprehensible even to their neighbors in the next province. It was like the difference between French and Norwegian.

The doctor had long been aware that blistering ignorance invariably walked hand in hand with blind superstition, but that was true of all mankind and hardly unique to his own race. However, this tradition did cause some conflict within the Chinese communities themselves. Those who were raised in conservative and better-educated Mandarin societies brought their ancient prejudices east, and so looked down on those fellow countrymen who spoke Cantonese, or any other dialect for that matter. On the other hand, those Chinese who spoke various forms of Cantonese traditionally suspected the high-handed
motives and cultural vanities of those who spoke Mandarin, and herein lay one of the problems he was about to confront.

The various tongs represented the cultural tastes and inclinations of their elders and constituents, and in the past their competing interests had sometimes led to outright warfare between them. This was by no means a local novelty. Such conflicts had been going on in China for centuries. Dr. Lao-Hong was reminded of something his esteemed father had told him: “The Chinese Empire had only one all-powerful enemy in the world, and it was the Chinese themselves.”