The madam started at the end of the line, resting a proprietary claw on the last prostitute, a plump woman with a lavish bosom hidden behind the clutched-closed top of her pink robe. The madam smacked her hand away, and the robe parted, revealing a soft swell of flesh from which Lannie averted his eyes. The madam spoke a long torrent of Chinese—Lannie was at a loss to know what dialect—and Richard Derby, laughing, said, “Well, fellows, you need me to translate that, or have you pretty well got it?”
The group bellowed their appreciation, and one of the sailors whooped, bounded forward, and grabbed the curvy woman around her waist, hoisting her into the air and jostling her like a child. She squealed in surprise, one curl of hair tossed loose, and her squeal morphed into simulated laughter. The sailor slung her over his shoulder and carried her to the stairs, ignoring the madam, who followed beside them like a clucking chicken.
“Right, then!” Tom leered, jabbing his elbow into Lannie’s flank.
Lannie recoiled at the rough gesture but fixed a game smile to his face. The older sailor rubbed his hands together, as if approaching a vast banquet. The madam was still following their crewmate up the stairs under his heavy burden of squirming woman, and so Tom, half-toothed mouth grinning, elbowed forward and caught the wrist of the first girl, the young one with the downcast eyes. She gasped in protest, twisting her arm to free herself, but the sailor took this for play and held on tighter.
“Aw, she’s feistier than she looks, eh?” He laughed. The girl’s struggle intensified as Tom started to drag her, first with subtle insistence, then with impatience, toward the stairs. The girl’s eyes widened, and she called out, trying to summon the madam. Lannie frowned. Out of the corner of his eye he spotted one of the anonymous men at the bar swivel in his seat, placing his glass down.
“Just because you’re in the yichang doesn’t mean you can act like an animal,” the man said.
Yi was a word that had been banned in Shanghai, at least in reference to white people. It meant “barbarian.” Yichang meant “barbarian quarter,” and Lannie understood that the man had just issued the most mortal insult to Tom at his disposal.
“What?” said Tom, pausing. The girl struggled, but he held fast to her with no more effort than if he were dangling a line for trout.
A space cleared as the group of sailors withdrew, sensing the shift in the room. Lannie glanced at the speaker and was surprised to find that he was Chinese, for his voice had a slight British inflection. He was young, in his early twenties, dressed in the plain tunic and pantaloons of a scholar, with a long queue down his back. His body, though shorter than the Western men, was muscular, and his cheeks were pitted from pox, giving him the appearance of being able to back up his words with more than his intellect.
“You have made a mistake,” the man by the bar said, his hands relaxed by his sides.
“What in God’s name is he talking about?” Tom laughed, addressing himself to his shipmates. Silence passed from one to the next, born of tension and watchfulness.
“You are treating her as a yao’er,” the scholar continued, unfazed by the sudden quiet. With quiet came stillness. The other men at the bar had new bands of tension running up their backs. “Like someone unworthy of respect.”
“Why, I believe the Chinky bastard might be talking to me,” Tom said, mirth draining out of his voice, his eyes narrowing.
At that moment the madam reappeared. She leaned over the banister and called out to the young girl, her curls trembling. The girl started to respond, voice high. The scholar cut in, barking something to the madam, and she hurried downstairs, coming to a stop near the bar.
“I will explain, so that you may apologize,” the scholar continued, still betraying no sign of anxiety, his voice steady and calm. Friendly, almost. “She is a shuyu, from Suzhou, where the women are uncommonly beautiful. An artist. She tells stories. She plays marvelous music. Her voice is like water pouring over stones. And she has excellent conversation.”
Tom’s face contorted in confusion, and he tightened his grip on the girl’s wrist. “You talk pretty good English for a Chinaman,” he snarled. “But that doesn’t mean I’ve gotta listen.”
The scholar smiled, a thin, frosty smile, and continued as though Tom had not spoken. “It is a simple mistake to make. She must be courted. Her attentions must be won, at great length and with effort, and then only if you are to her liking, or very fortunate. You have taken her for a saltwater sister, because you are a sailor, and you have money in your pocket. This is understandable, but it is most offensive. Of course, uncivilized people cannot always be expected to understand. But now that you have been told of your mistake, I must insist that you release her. And apologize for your error.”
Tom looked around in growing disbelief. Then a slow smile dawned across his face, and he released the young girl’s arm. She scurried back to the line of women, resuming her place, eyes downcast. The sailor, meantime, started rolling up his shirtsleeves.
“I see,” he said, drawing the words out, taking his time with the sleeve rolling. “A mistake’s been made. An apology should follow. That right?”
“That’s correct,” the scholar affirmed. He pressed the knuckles of one hand into the palm of the other. Through the silent room Lannie distinctly heard the young man’s knuckles crack.
“Well, all right,” Tom said. The room froze, all attention focused on the humming space between the burly, half-toothed American sailor and the compact Chinese youth.
“Tom, don’t!” Lannie started to cry out, too late, for the older man had lunged, swinging a fist that grazed off the younger man’s shoulder.
The scholar pounced, landing three blows in quick succession, bursting the sailor’s nose. Tom let out a furious roar, blood streaming into his mouth, and without thinking Lannie dove between them.
“Stop, Tom, stop!” Lannie bellowed, his voice deepening, hands warding the sailor off, but his words fell on deaf ears as Tom’s fists barreled forward, landing first on the scholar’s trunk with the dull thwack of a hammer hitting a side of beef. Then there was an abrupt explosion of white light and dancing stars and a cracking sound, like a snapping tree branch, and the floor was suddenly rushing up to meet Lannie, smacking him in the face.
A gasp rose from the group of sailors, a flurry of boots rushing across the floor, the floor that was now pressing against his face, the boots tracking through a spreading pool of something sticky and red. Shouting, cursing, and across his narrowing field of vision Lannie saw the thrashing form of Tom being subdued by Richard Derby and three others.
“God dammit, Greenie!” Tom hollered, veins in his neck standing out.
Lannie blinked, dazed, felt strong hands take hold of his shoulders, and the floor pulled away as someone rolled him up to a seated position. For a second every figure in the room split into two, vibrating and blurring before snapping back into their regular shapes, and he brought a hand up to his head. His skull seemed intact. His fingers hunted through the sandy mop of hair, searching for blood. Nothing.
“Aw,” a voice by his ear laughed, and under his lowered lashes Lannie observed the smiling face of the Chinese scholar, squatting down to inspect him. “That’s going to smart.”
He gestured to Lannie’s face, and Lannie brought his fingertips up to his jaw. The light pressure of his fingers caused his eyes to squeeze closed in pain.
Lannie’s tongue probed his cheek, tasting copper and salt. He discovered an object in his mouth, like a boot button, rolled it onto the tip of his tongue, and spat it out. The object hit the floor with a clack, bouncing once, twice, then skittering to a rest against the toe of Tom’s boot.
It was a tooth.
“Christ almighty, Tom!” he slurred through the blood pooling in his mouth.
“Serves you right, you little rich bastard,” Tom spat, still enmeshed in the restraining hands of the crew. He lurched, and was subdued. Richard Derby peeled away from the knot of men, coming to kneel at Lannie’s other side.
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“Lannie,” he said, voice low. “Look, I know what you were trying to do. And I admire it. You’ve got sand. But perhaps . . . look, why don’t you light out for a bit? Meet up with us later? Tomorrow, maybe.” Dick rested a hand on Lannie’s shoulder, giving it a reassuring squeeze. “Let it blow over.”
Lannie looked into Dick’s face, then glanced over the Salem man’s shoulder to Tom, surrounded by the other sailors. Their murmurs obscured what was being said.
“C’mon,” Dick said, hoisting him to his feet. “It’ll be all right. You’ll see. Happens all the time, first night in port. Men get twitchety. Doesn’t mean anything.”
Lannie’s eyes slid to Dick’s face, testing to see if his friend was speaking the truth. He couldn’t be sure. If Dick was telling him to leave, though, he’d best make himself scarce.
“You heard the man,” the scholar said, clapping a hand on Lannie’s other shoulder. “Let’s leave this sink of iniquity.”
He took Lannie’s elbow, tossed a fistful of yuan onto the bar, and steered him to the door. The madam bustled up, thrusting a cold compress into Lannie’s hand.
He started to slur a “thank you,” but the scholar spoke over him, shooing the woman away.
The door swung open, and they plunged into the humid night.
Chapter Six
Harvard Square
Cambridge, Massachusetts
April 16, 1915
The cab wove through the student throng of Harvard Square, dodging two dinging trolleys, a hod-carrier pulled by a flea-bitten horse, and half a dozen boys on bicycles, their coattails flapping. Sibyl gripped the hard leather seat with both hands, terrified that some new threat would appear out of the mist just in time to be pulled under the wheels of the car. The cabbie, a sallow man with bristly gray whiskers and a low hat, seemed unperturbed. He spun the steering wheel this way and that, depressing brakes, leaning on the horn. Sibyl despaired of ever learning to drive herself.
“To know another’s mind,” Benton had said before she left his office. “Some question whether that’s even possible.”
Sibyl looked up at him, cross and impatient. “What good is it, then?” she said, pulling free of his grip. She pressed her lips together in mingled annoyance and shame at her own worthlessness to those in actual need. Her mind roved a catalogue of balls attended, new dresses worn, reworked, and discarded, all for the betterment of those less fortunate, or so the invitations always stated.
Oddly, Benton hadn’t seemed offended. “Professor James—he was my mentor, before he died—said that facts only become true insofar as they are useful to an understanding of our place in the world. But I agree with Doctor Freud—the human mind is like a machine, assembled by circumstances in childhood, which can be tweaked with attention and care. We can change ourselves, Sibyl. I believe it.”
She had gazed up into Benton’s face, his pale eyes softening against the blow of what he was implying about Harlan. Sibyl had reached down to take Benton’s hand and squeezed it, smiling a grateful, yet sad, smile up at him, and then turned to go.
Now she stared out the cab window at the gray world outside, her mind shuffling through different options to solve the problem of Harlan. Well, if they’d had him leave school for some reason, she supposed they could just accept him back, couldn’t they? And if he owed money to some of his friends, well, her father would have a solution in mind. Harley’d known all those fellows since boyhood. He’d be able to set it right. If it was just a question of money, she supposed her brother could borrow the necessary sum from her father, against his share in the estate. Or could take up some sort of job in Lan Allston’s shipping company.
He could find an answer.
He could.
If he came home.
The spoiled sot.
The thought burst behind Sibyl’s eyes, anger flooding her chest and mind and mouth. She thrust her ungloved fist up to her mouth, pressing her teeth into the groove between her knuckles, keeping a scream of rage locked inside. What excuse could Harley possibly have, for gambling so recklessly? For worrying her? For drawing trouble to himself like this? Where was he?
Without warning the cab bounced over a hole of missing bricks in the road, rattling Sibyl in the backseat. The jolt caused her skin to tear on her teeth, and a coppery taste of blood touched her tongue. She scrambled to keep upright, hands hunting for purchase on the slick leather.
“Sorry, miss,” said the driver in the front seat, the cab’s progress smoothing.
Sibyl sagged against the backrest in the cab. She knew the strain was just from worry, rather than any physical exertion, but her energy drained away anyway, as though someone had opened a tap in one of her toes. The blood ebbed from her face, and the oily black haze rolled into the far corners of her vision again. Her mouth went dry, and Sibyl pressed a hand to her cheek to maintain consciousness.
“Excuse me,” she managed to say, voice thick with effort.
“Yes, miss?” drawled the driver, cocking an ear over his shoulder to catch her instructions.
“I’m afraid I’ve given you the wrong address,” Sibyl said, pronouncing each word with care. The man nodded as she gave him a new house number, and then she reached up, unpinned her hat, and allowed her head to loll back against the seat, her eyes closed against the darkness.
The cab rolled up to the house on Beacon Hill, and the cabbie leaped out, leaving the engine running, to open the car door. Sibyl looked up at him, wan and grateful, and he helped her out of the car with surprising gentleness. She stood, unsteady, fingertips touching the roof of the car for balance.
“All right, then?” he asked, his face furrowing with concern. Sibyl was taken aback by this stranger’s noticing of her, his interest and concern. What was she, to him, beyond another anonymous face attached to a pocketbook?
“How kind of you,” Sibyl said, a phrase that fell often from her mouth, usually without much meaning behind it. Today, however, was different. “I’m perfectly well. Thank you.”
The man accepted his fare without another word, but tipped his hat as he withdrew.
Sibyl mounted the stairs of the town house where she had been—was it really only a day earlier? Impossible, but true. The door already stood open, the same butler standing motionless in the entry, as though carved out of wood and cunningly painted to imitate life.
Sibyl’s father found the keeping of a butler to be pretentious. Stinks of New Yorkism, he had remarked to her once. Sibyl wasn’t so sure; in a way, she thought it lent the house a certain continental panache. Helen certainly thought so. More than once Sibyl’s mother lobbied Lan that they should have a man to open the door.
“It’s so much nicer,” Helen insisted, in her usual opening salvo in the drawing room after supper. The last time Sibyl remembered them discussing it was the November before Helen’s fatal voyage with Eulah. The house in those days was seized by a months-long festival of preparation for Eulah’s debut, a heady blur of dress fittings, decoration, redecoration, calls paid and repaid. At night Sibyl more than once came across her little sister brushing her teeth in their shared lavatory, her feet moving automatically through the dance steps that were likely to be called at her cotillion, head nodding to imaginary music. Sibyl hadn’t practiced half so much, as Helen rarely failed to point out.
“Nicer than what?” Lan grumbled.
“Oh, you know,” Helen simpered, looking at her husband from under her lashes as her busy hands worked at their needlepoint. “It says something. About one’s standing.”
“I can stand just fine on my own, thank you very much.” At that point, Lan rose from his armchair by the fire and strode without another word to the inner drawing room. As he went, leaving behind his chuckling wife, her head shaking with resignation, he dug in his pocket for some crumbs to tempt Baiji, perched like a blue gnome on his hat rack. Sibyl had never known a man who could end conversations like her father.
Full of hope and trepidation, she looked up into the graven face
of Mrs. Dee’s butler, whose name she still did not know, and wondered if he would admit her. These were not usual visiting hours, and she was not expected. Her card was already in her hand, ready to substitute for an audience with the medium if necessary. The butler’s eyes traveled down his nose and rested on Sibyl’s upturned, taut face. Without a word he stepped into the shadows of the entry hall, holding the door ajar.
Relieved of her coat and hat, Sibyl was shown into Mrs. Dee’s receiving room, where she held her Spiritualist meetings. It looked much the same, with its stuffed birds frozen in flight, their dead eyes watching. Sibyl moved, restless, knowing she should sit and wait with some composure, but helpless to keep still. The air was cloying, from years of incense seeping into the upholstery. Sibyl traced an idle finger along the sideboard, testing the texture of a pheasant wing, traveling through the dust on the walnut cabinet, creeping around delicate heaps of loose crystals. It stopped at the edge of a small box, open, lined with black velvet. The box cradled an opalescent orb of polished quartz, gleaming in the low light. Its smoothness invited Sibyl to pick it up.
“I’m not surprised you would be drawn to that,” a woman’s voice said from the parlor door, and Sibyl turned with a start.
There, her arms extended with hands resting on the doorjamb in an unusually sumptuous posture, stood Mrs. Dee, as small and stout as ever, clothed in a tapestry robe lined in ermine. A winter dressing gown, unseasonable and unfashionable, fastened all the way up to her round little chin. The medium brought her hands to toy with the fur at her throat as she moved into the room and seated herself in her Gothic throne.
Sibyl gawked before recovering herself. “I am so sorry to burst in on you like this,” she began, flustered by the woman’s taking her deliberately by surprise.
“It’s no trouble, for I knew you were coming,” Mrs. Dee interjected, raising her eyebrows with implied meaning. “I foresaw it.”
Pausing by the sideboard, Sibyl frowned against a glimmer of doubt. But Mrs. Dee looked so authoritative as she sat on her elevated armchair, hands folded in her lap.