“Thank you. When we reach California I will give you the turquoise brooch.”
“Keep it, you already paid me. You will need it. Why are you going to California?”
“To be married. My sweetheart’s name is Joaquín. He was infected by gold fever and went off to make his fortune. He said he would be back, but I can’t wait for that.”
Almost as soon as the ship left the bay of Valparaíso and was in open water Eliza began to rave. For hours she lay in darkness in her own filth, like an animal, so ill that she didn’t remember where she was, or why; finally the door of the wooden hatch opened and Tao Chi’en appeared, lighted by the flame of a candle stub and carrying a plate of food. He needed only one look to realize that the girl would not be able to get anything down. He gave the meal to the cat and went back to look for a pail of water so he could clean her up. He began by giving her strong ginger tea to drink and inserting a dozen of his golden needles until her stomach was settled. Eliza paid little attention when he removed all her clothing, washed her delicately with seawater, rinsed her with a cup of freshwater, and massaged her from head to foot with the balm recommended for malarial fevers. Minutes later she was asleep, wrapped in her Castile mantle with the cat at her feet, while Tao Chi’en was up on deck washing her clothes in the sea, trying not to call attention, although the sailors were resting at that hour. The new passengers were as seasick as Eliza, to the indifference of those from Europe who had been traveling for three months and had passed that test.
In the following days, while the new passengers on the Emilia grew accustomed to the battering of the waves and established the routines they would follow for the rest of the journey, Eliza was growing steadily sicker in the depths of the ship. Tao Chi’en went down as often as he could to take her water and try to calm her nausea, surprised that, instead of diminishing, her discomfort was increasing by the hour. He tried to give her relief with the known treatments for such cases and with others he improvised, but Eliza could keep almost nothing in her stomach and was getting dehydrated. He prepared water with salt and sugar, and with infinite patience gave it to her by spoonfuls, but two weeks went by without any apparent improvement and the moment came when the girl’s skin hung as loose as strips of parchment and she could no longer get up to do the exercises Tao insisted on. “If you don’t move, your body will swell and your mind will grow dark,” he kept telling her. The ship called briefly in the ports of Coquimbo, Caldera, Antofagasta, Iquique, and Arica, and in each he tried to convince Eliza to get off and find a way to go back home, because he could see her growing weaker and weaker and he was afraid.
They had left the port of Callao behind them when Eliza’s condition took a lethal turn. In the market Tao Chi’en had found a supply of coca leaves, whose medicinal properties he knew well, and three live hens he intended to hide and kill one by one, for the sick girl needed something more appetizing than their meager ship’s rations. He cooked the first hen in a broth rich with fresh ginger and went below ready to feed Eliza the soup if he had to force it down her throat. He lighted a whale-oil lamp, picked his way through the cargo, and approached the rat hole of his patient, who was lying with her eyes closed and did not seem to know he was there. Beneath her spread a large pool of blood. The zhong yi grunted and bent over her, fearing that the pitiful creature had found a way to commit suicide. He couldn’t blame her, in similar circumstances he would have done the same he thought. He lifted her nightdress, but saw no visible wound, and when he touched her he realized she was still alive. He shook her until her eyes opened.
“I am pregnant,” she admitted finally in a thread of a voice.
Tao Chi’en clapped his hands to his head, lost in a litany of laments in the dialect of his native village, a tongue he had not spoken in fifteen years: had he known, he would never have helped her, what was she thinking to leave for California pregnant?, she was crazy, just what he needed, a miscarriage, if she died he was lost, what kind of mess had he gotten himself into?, was he stupid?, why hadn’t he guessed the reason for her haste in leaving Chile? He added a few oaths and curses in English, but she was again unconscious and far beyond any reproach. He held her in his arms, rocking her as he would a child as his rage melted into overwhelming compassion. For an instant it occurred to him to go to Captain Katz and confess the whole matter, but he could not predict his reaction. That Dutch Lutheran, who treated the women on board as if they were carriers of the plague, would undoubtedly be furious when he learned that he had another woman aboard, this one a stowaway, and pregnant, and half dead in the bargain. And what punishment would he save for Tao Chi’en? No, he couldn’t say a word to anyone. His only salvation would be to wait until Eliza passed on, if that was her karma, and then throw her body overboard along with the bags of garbage from the kitchen. The most he could do for her, if he saw her suffering too much, would be to help her die with dignity.
He was just leaving when he sensed a strange presence on his skin. Frightened, he lifted the lamp and with absolute clarity saw in the circle of the trembling flame his adored Lin watching him from a short distance away, and, on her translucid face that teasing expression that was her greatest charm. She was wearing her green silk dress with the gold embroidery, the one she saved for great occasions, and her hair was pulled back into a simple bun secured with ivory picks and with a fresh peony over each ear. That was how he had seen her for the last time, when the neighbor women had dressed her for the funeral ceremony. So real was the apparition of his wife there in the hold that he was thrown into a panic: spirits, however good in life, tended to treat mortals very cruelly. He rushed toward the ladder, but Lin blocked the way. Tao Chi’en fell to his knees, trembling, clutching the lamp, his one tie with reality. He attempted a prayer to exorcise devils, in case they had taken Lin’s form to confuse him, but he could not remember the words and only a long moan of love for her and nostalgia for the past came from his lips. Then Lin bent down to him with her unforgettable delicacy, so close that had he dared he could have kissed her, and whispered that she had not come so far to frighten him but to remind him of the duties of an honorable physician. She herself had nearly bled to death after the birth of her daughter, and he had been able to save her. Why did he not do the same for this young woman? What had happened to her beloved Tao? Had he perhaps lost his kind heart and turned into a cockroach? A premature death was not Eliza’s karma, she assured him. If a woman is prepared to travel the world buried in a nightmarish hole in order to find her man, it is because she has much qi.
“You must help her, Tao, if she dies without seeing her lover she will never be at peace and her ghost will pursue you forever,” Lin warned him before she faded away.
“Wait!” Tao begged, reaching out to stop her, but his fingers closed on air.
Tao Chi’en lay prostrate on the floor for a long time, struggling to recapture his reason, until his crazed heart stopped galloping and the faint scent of Lin had evaporated from the hold. “Don’t go, don’t go,” he repeated a thousand times, sick with love. Finally he was able to get to his feet, open the hatch, and go out to the fresh air.
It was a warm night. The Pacific Ocean was gleaming like silver in the moonlight and a light breeze bellied the worn sails of the Emilia. Many passengers had already gone to bed or were playing cards in their cabins; others had hung their hammocks to pass the night amid the chaos of machines, harnesses, and boxes that covered the decks, and some were amusing themselves at the stern, watching the playful dolphins in the foam of the wake. Tao Chi’en looked up toward the enormous dome of the sky with gratitude. For the first time since her death, Lin had visited him openly. Before beginning his life as a sailor he had seen her nearby from time to time, especially when he was deep in meditation, but then it had been easy to confuse the tentative presence of her spirit with his widower’s longing. Lin tended to touch him lightly with her fine fingers as she passed, but he would be left with the doubt of whether it was really she or just a figment of his tormen
ted soul. Moments earlier in the hold, however, he had had no doubts: Lin’s face had been as radiant and clear as the moon over that sea. He felt her with him, and was content, as in those long ago nights when she nestled in his arms after they made love.
Tao Chi’en went to the crew’s quarters where he had a narrow wood bunk far from what little ventilation filtered through the hatch. It was impossible to sleep there in the thick air and funk from the sleeping men, but he hadn’t had to do that since leaving Valparaíso because the summer weather allowed him to stretch out on the deck. He looked for his trunk, nailed to the floor to secure it in the tossing of the ship, removed the key from around his neck, opened the padlock, and took out a vial of laudanum. Then he quietly drew a double ration of freshwater and went to get rags from the kitchen, which would do for lack of something better.
He was on his way back to the hold when he was stopped by a hand on his arm. He turned in surprise and saw one of the Chilean women who, defying the captain’s explicit order to stay out of sight after sunset, had come out to entice clients. He recognized her immediately. Of all the women on board, Azucena Placeres was the most sympathetic and most outgoing. During the first days she was the only one willing to help seasick passengers and had also dutifully nursed a young sailor who had fallen from the mast and broken his arm. She had won the respect even of the stern Captain Katz, who, from that time, had looked the other way when she broke the rules. Azucena offered her services as a nurse for free, but if anyone made so bold as to lay a hand on her firm flesh he had to pay in coin of the realm, because, as she said, there was no reason to confuse a good heart with stupidity. This is my only capital, she would say, jauntily slapping herself on the buttocks, and if I’m not careful with it, I’ll screw up for real. Azucena Placeres spoke to Tao in four words that can be understood in any language: chocolate, coffee, tobacco, and brandy. As always when she met him, she expressed in graphic sign language her wish to exchange any of those luxuries for her favors, but the zhong yi pushed her aside and kept on his way.
For a good part of the night Tao Chi’en sat beside the feverish Eliza. He worked over her weakened body with the limited resources of his bag, his long experience, and a wavering tenderness until she expelled a bloody little mollusk. Tao Chi’en examined it in the lamplight and determined that without the slightest doubt it was a five- or six-week fetus, and was whole. To clean out her womb, he inserted his needles in the girl’s arms and legs, provoking strong contractions. When he was sure of the results, he sighed with relief: all that remained was to ask Lin to do her part to prevent infection. Until that night he had thought of Eliza as a business arrangement, and he had the pearl necklace in the bottom of his trunk to prove it. She was just a stranger, a girl for whom he had no particular feelings, a fan wey with big feet and an aggressive temperament who hadn’t had any luck in getting a husband since, it was easy to see, she had no inclination to please or serve a man. Now, with the misfortune of this miscarriage, she would never marry. Not even her lover, who had already abandoned her once anyway, would want her for a wife—in the unlikely event that she ever found him. He had to admit that for a foreigner Eliza was not all that ugly, at least there was a slightly Oriental air about her almond eyes and her hair, as long, black, and shiny as the proud tail of an imperial horse. If she had had that diabolical yellow or red hair, like so many women he had seen since leaving China, he might never have gone near her; however, neither her looks nor her strong character would help her now; her bad luck was cast, there was no hope for her: she would end up walking the streets in California. He had been with many such women in Canton and Hong Kong. He owed a large part of his medical knowledge to the years he had practiced on the bodies of those luckless girls abused by beatings, sickness, and drugs. Several times during that long night he asked himself whether it wouldn’t be more noble to let her die, despite Lin’s instructions, and save her from a horrible fate, but she had paid him in advance and he should carry out his part of the deal, he told himself. No, that wasn’t the only reason, he concluded, since from the beginning he had questioned his own motives for helping this girl stow away. The risk was enormous, he wasn’t sure he had committed such a foolish act merely for the value of the pearls. Something in Eliza’s valiant determination had moved him, something about the fragility of her body and the bold love she professed for her lover reminded him of Lin.
Finally, near dawn, Eliza stopped bleeding. She was delirious with fever and shivering despite the unbearable heat of the hold, but her pulse was steadier and she was breathing calmly in her sleep. She was not, however, out of danger. Tao Chi’en wanted to stay with her and watch her, but he calculated that soon the bell would sound to summon him to his watch. He dragged himself up the companionway, fell facedown on the planks of the deck, and slept like a baby until a friendly shove from the foot of another sailor woke him to his duties. He plunged his head into a pail of seawater to wash the sleep from his eyes and, still in a stupor, went to the kitchen to boil the oatmeal that constituted breakfast. Everyone ate it without comment, even the sober Captain Katz—except for the Chileans, who chorused a protest despite being better provided for than anyone, having been the latest to come aboard. Other passengers had polished off their provisions of tobacco, alcohol, and sweets in insufferable months at sea before reaching Valparaíso. Word had spread that some of the Chileans were aristocrats and that was why they didn’t know how to wash their own underdrawers or boil water for tea. The ones traveling in first class had brought servants who would work for them in the gold mines, because the concept of dirtying their hands personally had never crossed their minds. Others paid the sailors to wait on them, since the women, in a block, refused: they could earn ten times the price by welcoming their countrymen for ten minutes in the privacy of the women’s room, so there was no reason to spend two hours washing dirty laundry. The crew and the rest of the passengers mocked those spoiled sissies but never to their faces. The Chileans had good manners, they seemed timid enough and made a great show of courtesy and gentlemanliness, but it took only the tiniest spark to inflame their arrogance. Tao Chi’en tried to avoid them. They did not mask their scorn for him or for the two Negro passengers who boarded the ship in Brazil; they had paid for their passage but they were the only ones who were not given a cabin or allowed to eat at table with the others. Tao preferred the five humble Chilean women, with their solid practical sense, their unflagging good humor, and the maternal feelings that flowered in times of emergency.
He finished his watch like a sleepwalker, his thoughts on Eliza, but couldn’t find a free minute to see her until that night. At mid-morning the sailors had caught an enormous shark, which died on deck, thrashing wickedly in its death throes while no one dared go near enough to club it. It fell to Tao Chi’en, in his role as cook, to supervise the task of skinning it, chopping it into pieces, cooking part of the meat and salting the rest, while the sailors washed the blood from the deck and the passengers celebrated the horrific spectacle with the last remaining bottles of champagne, anticipating a feast at dinner. Tao kept the heart for Eliza’s soup and the fins to dry: they would be worth a fortune in the aphrodisiac market. As the hours went by in the chores involving the shark, Tao Chi’en imagined Eliza dead in the heart of the ship. He felt a surge of happiness when at last he went down and found that she was still alive and looking better. The hemorrhaging had stopped, the jug of water was empty, and everything indicated that there had been moments of lucidity during that long day. Briefly, he thanked Lin for her help. The girl struggled to open her eyes; her lips were dry and her face flushed with fever. He helped her to her feet and fed her a strong broth of tangkuei to build up her blood. When he was sure she would keep it in her stomach, he gave her a few sips of fresh milk, which she drank avidly. Invigorated, she announced that she was hungry and asked for more. The cows they were carrying onboard, unused to the sea, were producing very little; nothing but bones, there was already talk of slaughtering them. Tao Chi’
en found the idea of drinking milk repulsive but his friend Ebanizer Hobbs had advised him of its properties for replenishing lost blood. If Hobbs recommended it in the diet of someone gravely wounded, it should have the same effect in this instance, Tao decided.
“Am I going to die, Tao?”
“Not yet.” He smiled and patted Eliza’s head.
“How long before we reach California?”
“A long time. Don’t think about that. Now you must urinate.”
“No, please!” she protested.
“Why not? You must!”
“In front of you?”
“I am a zhong yi. You cannot feel embarrassed with me. I have seen everything there is to see of your body.”
“I can’t move, I can’t survive this voyage, Tao, I would rather die,” Eliza sobbed, steadying herself on him as she sat on the pot.
“Be brave, girl. Lin says you have much qi and you have not come this far to die in midjourney.”
“Who says that?”
“Not important.”
That night Tao Chi’en realized that he could not care for Eliza alone, he needed help. The next morning, as soon as the women came out of their cabin and went to the stern, as they always did to wash their clothes and braid their hair, and to mend the feathers and bugle beads of their professional attire, he beckoned Azucena Placeres to come talk to him. During the voyage none of the women had worn their whoring clothes but dressed in heavy, dark skirts, plain blouses, and house slippers; they wrapped themselves in their mantles, combed their hair into two braids down their backs, and skipped their makeup. They looked like a group of simple housewives busy at domestic chores. Azucena gave a happy wink to her partners in crime and followed Tao into the kitchen. There he handed her a large piece of chocolate that he had stolen from the stores for the captain’s table and tried to explain his problem, but she didn’t understand a word of English and he began to lose patience. Azucena Placeres smelled the chocolate and a childlike smile illuminated her round Indian face. She took the cook’s hand and placed it on her breast, pointing toward the women’s cabin, empty at that hour, but he pulled away his hand, took hers, and led her to the hatchway to the hold. Azucena, half surprised, half curious, held back a little but he did not give her a chance to refuse, he opened the hatch and pushed her down the ladder, constantly smiling to calm her. For a few instants they were in darkness, until he found the lamp hanging from a beam and lighted it. Azucena giggled; finally this strange Chinese man had understood the terms of the bargain. She had never done it with an Asian and she was very curious to know if their equipment was like other men’s, but the cook showed no sign of profiting from their privacy; instead he pulled on her arm, dragging her through the labyrinths of the cargo. She was afraid he was a little unhinged and began to tug and try to get loose, but he held on, forcing her to follow him until the lamplight fell onto the hole where Eliza lay.