The ghost of Christine Brahe for the third and last time walked through the dining hall. The Count and Malte’s father raised their heavy wineglasses “to the left of the huge silver swan filled with narcissus,” Rilke’s ancestral tale came to a close, and the bus came to the place for Wittman to get off. He walked through the Stockton Street tunnel—beneath the Tunnel Top Bar on Bush and Burill, where Sam Spade’s partner, Miles Archer, was done in by Brigid O’Shaughnessy—and emerged in Chinatown. At a payphone—this was not the phone booth with the chinky-chinaman corny horny roof—he thought about whether he needed to make any calls. He had a couple more dimes. What the hell. He dropped one into the slot and dialed information for the number of the most ungettable girl of his acquaintance.
So, that very afternoon it happened that: It was September again, which used to be the beginning of the year, and Wittman Ah Sing, though not a student anymore, nevertheless was having cappuccino in North Beach with a new pretty girl. The utter last of summer’s air lifted the Cinzano scallops of the table umbrella, and sun kept hitting beautiful Nanci Lee in the hair and eyes. In shade, Wittman leaned back and glowered at her. He sucked shallow on his cigarette and the smoke clouded out thick over his face, made his eyes squint. He also had the advantage of the backlighting, his hair all haloed, any zits and pores shadowed. She, on her side, got to watch the sun go down. A summer and a year had gone by since graduation from Berkeley. Somebody’s favorite tune was “Moscow Nights,” and balalaikas kept trembling out of the jukebox.
“You,” he said. “You’re from L.A., aren’t you? Why didn’t you go back there?” Well, the place that a Chinese holds among other Chinese—in a community somewhere—matters. It was a very personal question he was asking her. It would pain a true Chinese to admit that he or she did not have a community, or belonged at the bottom or the margin.
People who have gone to college—people their age with their at-tee-tood—well, there are reasons—people who wear black turtleneck sweaters have no place. You don’t easily come home, come back to Chinatown, where they give you stink-eye and call you a saang-hsü lo, a whisker-growing man, Beatnik.
Nanci brought her coffee cup up to her mouth, bouging to catch the rim, and looked warily, he hoped, at him over it. Beautiful and shy, what a turn-on she is. She took a cigarette out of her purse, and held it in front of that mouth until he lit it. “Yes, I’m from Los Angeles,” she said, answering one of his questions. Pause. Take a beat. “I’m going back down there soon. To audition. I’m on my way.” Pause yet another beat or two. “Why don’t you go back to Sacramento?”
Unfair. No fair. L.A. is wide, flat, new. Go through the flashing arch, and there you are: Chinatownland. Nothing to going back to L.A. Cecil B. DeMille rebuilds it new ahead of you as you approach it and approach it on the freeway, whether 101 or over the grapevine. But, say, you stake a claim to San Francisco as your home place.…
“Golden Gate Park was wild today. I fought my way out. Lucky.” He blew smoke hard between clenched teeth. “The paint-heads were cutting loose out of their minds, and messing with my head. Through the pines and eucalyptus, I could smell the natural-history museum. They may have let those trees grow to hide the funeral-parlor smell, which seeps through the sealant. You got claustro, you got fear of the dark, you keep out of museums of natural history; every kind of phobia lets you have it. It’s too quiet, the ursus horribilus propped up on its hind legs; his maw is open but no roar. I don’t like walking in the dark with fake suns glowing on the ‘scenes.’ Pairs of cat-eye marbles look at you from bobcat heads and coyote heads. Freak me out. The male animals are set in hunting poses, and the female ones in nursing poses. Dead babies. There’s a lizard coming out of a dinosaur’s tail. Stiffs. Dead behind glass forever. Stuffed birds stuffed inside pried-open mouths. ‘Taxidermy’ means the ordering of skin. Skin arrangements. If you’re at my bedside when I die, Nanci, please, don’t embalm me. I don’t want some mortician who’s never met me to push my face into a serene smile. They try to make the buffaloes and deer more natural by balding a patch of hair, omitting a toenail, breaking a horn. I paid my way out of the park. I saw the pattern: twice, there were people refashioning and selling castoffs. Flotsam and jetsam selling flotsam and jetsam. I bought this insert from last Sunday’s paper.”
Nanci took the paper from him, and folded it into a hat. She put it on Wittman’s head. She was not squeamish to touch what a dirty stranger had touched, nor to touch this hairy head before her. He was at a party. He took off the hat, and with a few changes of folds, origamied it into a popgun. He whopped it through the air, it popped good.
“In Sacramento, I don’t belong. Don’t you wonder how I have information about you and L.A., your town? And how come you have information about me? You have committed to memory that I have family in Sacramento.” And, yes, a wondering—a wonderfulness—did play in her eyes and on her face. Two invisible star points dinted her cheeks with dimples; an invisible kung fu knight was poking her cheeks with the points of a silver shuriken. “And I bet you know what I studied. And whether I’m rich boy or poor boy. What my family is—Lodi grocery or Watsonville farmer, Castroville artichoke or Oakland restaurant or L.A. rich.” Smart was what he was. Scholarship smart.
“No,” she said. “I don’t know much about you.”
No, she wouldn’t. She was no China Man the way he was China Man. A good-looking chick like her floats above it all. He, out of it, knows ugly and knows Black, and also knows fat, and funny-looking. Yeah, he knows fat too, though he’s tall and skinny. She’s maybe only part Chinese—Lee could be Black or white Southern, Korean, Scotsman, anything—and also rich. Nanci Lee and her highborn kin, rich Chinese-Americans of Orange County, where the most Chinese thing they do is throw the headdress ball. No, he hadn’t exactly captured her fancy and broken her heart. When the rest of them shot the shit about him, she hadn’t paid attention. Though she should have; he was more interesting than most, stood out, tall for one thing, long hair for another, dressed in Hamlet’s night colors for another. Sly-eyed, he checked himself out in the plate-glass window. The ends of his moustache fell below his bearded jawbone. He had tied his hair back, braided loose, almost a queue but not a slave queue, very hip, like a samurai whose hair has gotten slightly undone in battle. Like Kyuzu, terse swordsman in Seven Samurai. A head of his time, ha ha. He was combat-ready, a sayonara soldier sitting on his red carpet beside the palace moat and digging the cherry blossoms in their significant short bloom.
“You must not have been in on the Chinese gossip,” he said, counting on what would hurt her, that at school she had been left out by the main Chinese. (They left everybody out.)
“Let me tell you about where I was born,” he said. She was, in a way, asking for the story of his life, wasn’t she? Yeah, she was picking up okay.
“Chinatown?” she guessed. Is that a sneer on her face? In her voice? Is she stereotypecasting him? Is she showing him the interest of an anthropologist, or a tourist? No, guess not.
“Yes. Yes, wherever I appear, there, there it’s Chinatown. But not that Chinatown.” He chinned in its direction. “I was born backstage in vaudeville. Yeah, I really was. No kidding. They kept me in an actual theatrical trunk—wallpaper lining, greasepaint, and mothball smells, paste smell. The lid they braced with a cane. My mother was a Flora Dora girl. To this day, they call her Ruby Long Legs, all alliteration the way they say it.”
Yes, when she came near the trunk, a rubescence had filled the light and air, and he’d tasted strawberry jam and smelled and seen clouds of cotton candy. Wittman really does have show business in his blood. He wasn’t lying to impress Nanci. He was taking credit for the circumstances of his birth, such as his parents. Parents are gifts; they’re part of the life-which-happens-to-one. He hadn’t yet done enough of the life-which-one-has-to-make. Commit more experience, Wittman. It is true you were an actor’s child, and when your people played they wanted to be seen.…
“She did the blackbottom a
nd the Charleston in this act, Doctor Ng and the Flora Dora Girls. Only, after a couple of cities, Doctor Ng changed it to Doctor Woo and the Chinese Flora Dora Girls so that the low fawn gwai would have no problem reading the flyers. ‘Woo’ easier in the Caucasian mouth. Not broke the mouth, grunting and gutturating and hitting the tones. ‘Woo’ sounds more classy anyway, the dialect of a better-class village. ‘Woo’ good for white ear. A class act. You know?” Of course, she did not know; he rubbed it in, how much she did not know about her own. “Doctor Woo’s Chinese Flora Dora Jitter and June Bug Girls were boogie-woogying and saluting right through World War II. Yeah, within our lifetimes.”
“What was the blackbottom?” she asked.
For her, he danced his forefingers like little legs across the tabletop. (Like Charlie Chaplin doing the Oceana Roll with dinner rolls on forks in The Gold Rush.) “ ‘Hop down front and then you doodle back. Mooch to your left and then you mooch to your right. Hands on your hips and do the mess around. Break a leg and buckle near the ground. Now that’s the Old Black Bottom.’ ” She laughed to see one finger-leg buckle and kick, buckle and kick, then straighten up, and the other finger-leg buckle and kick all the way across and off the table. Knuckle-knees.
O Someday Girl, find him and admire him for his interests. And dig his allusions. And laugh sincerely at his jokes. And were he to take up dandy ways, for example, why, remark on his comeliness in a cravat. Say “He’s beau,” without his having to point out the cravat.
But at the moment, this Nanci was smiling one of those Anne Bancroft-Tuesday Weld sneer-smiles, and he went on talking. In case she turns out to be the one he ends up with, he better tell her his life from the beginning. “You have to imagine Doctor Woo in white tie, top hat, tails—his Dignity. He called that outfit his Dignity. ‘What shall I wear? I shall wear my Dignity,’ he used to say, and put on his tux. ‘I’m attending that affair dressed in my Dignity.’ ‘My Dignity is at the cleaner’s.’ ‘My Dignity will see me out,’ which means he’ll be buried in it. Doctor Woo did sleight of hand, and he did patter song. He also did an oriental turn. Do you want to hear a Doctor Woo joke? No, wait. Wait. Never mind. Some other time. Later. It’d bring you down. He rip-rapped about sweet-and-sour eyes and chop-suey dis and dat, and white people all alikee. Yeah, old Doc Woo did a racist turn.” (What Wittman wanted to say was, “Old Doc Woo milked the tit of stereotype,” but he went shy.) “The audience loved it. Not one showgirl caught him up on it.” Wittman made lemon eyes, and quince mouth, and Nanci laughed. He scooped up shreds of nervous paper napkins, his and hers, wadded them into a ball—held it like a delicate egg between thumb and forefinger—palm empty—see?—and out of the fist, he tugged and pulled a clean, whole napkin—opened the hand, no scraps. Come quick, your majesty. Simple Simon is making the princess laugh; she will have to marry him. “During intermissions and after the show, we sold Doctor Woo’s Wishes Come True Medicine. The old healing-powers-and-aphrodisiacs-of-the-East scam. I’m dressed as a monkey. I’m running around in the crowd handing up jars and bottles and taking in the money. Overhead Doc Woo is giving the pitch and jam: ‘You hurt? You tired? Ah, tuckered out? Where you ache? This medicine for you. Ease you sprain, ease you pain. What you wish? You earn enough prosperity? Rub over here. Tired be gone. Hurt no more. Guarantee! Also protect against accidental bodily harm. And the Law. Smell. Breathe in deep. Free whiff. Drop three drops—four too muchee, I warn you—into you lady’s goblet, and she be you own lady. Make who you love love you back. Hold you true love true to you. Guarantee! Guarantee!’ We sold a line of products: those pretty silver beebees—remember them?—for when you have a tummy ache?—and Tiger Balm, which he bought in Chinatown and sold at a markup—cheaper for Chinese customers, of course. The Deet Dah Jow, we mixed ourselves. I use it quite often.” “Deet Dah Jow” means “Fall Down and Beaten Up Alcohol.” Medicine for the Fallen Down and Beaten Up. Felled and Beaten.
“When I smell Mahn Gum Yow,” said Nanci, saying “Ten Thousand Gold Pieces Oil” very prettily, high-noting “gum,” “I remember being sick in bed with the t.v. on. I got to play treasure trove with the red tins. I liked having a collection of gold tigers—they used to be raised, embossed—they’re flat now—with emerald eyes and red tongues. I thought Tiger Balm was like Little Black Sambo’s tiger butter. That in India the tigers chase around the palm tree until they churn into butter. And here they churn into ointment.”
May this time be the first and only time she charms with this tale, and he its inspiration. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah. Yeah.”
He continued. Onward. “Backstage old Doc Woo used to peptalk the Flora Dora girls about how they weren’t just entertaining but doing public service like Ng Poon Chew and Wellington Koo, credits to our race. Show the bok gwai that Chinese-Ah-mei-li-cans are human jess likee anybody elsoo, dancing, dressed civilized, telling jokes, getting boffo laffs. We got rhythm. We got humor.” Oh, god, he was so glad. He had not lost it, then—the mouth—to send the day high.
Nanci said, “You aren’t making this up, are you?”
“Hey, you don’t believe me? I haven’t given you anything but facts. So I don’t have an imagination. It’s some kind of retardation. So I am incapable of making things up. My mother’s name is Ruby, and my father is Zeppelin Ah Sing. He was a Stagedoor Johnny, then a backstage electrician, then emcee on stage. To get Mom to marry him, he bought out the front row of seats for entire runs. He loved her the best when she was on stage as Ruby Long Legs; and she loved him best leading his Army buddies in applause. They got married in Carson City, which is open for weddings twenty-four hours a day.
“To this day, whenever they go gambling at State Line, they start divorce proceedings. To keep up the romance. My parents are free spirits—I’m a descendant of free spirits. He left her and me for World War II. My aunties, the showgirls, said I was a mad baby from the start. Yeah. Mad baby and mad man.” Come on, Nanci. The stars in a white girl’s eyes would be glittering and popping by now.
“Uh-huh. Uh-huh,” she said. “Uh-huh.”
“You should have seen me in my Baby Uncle Sam outfit. The striped pants had an open seam in the back, so if I could grow a tail, it would come out of there. Sure, the costume came off of a circus monkey or a street-dancing monkey. You want details? I can impart details to you.” She wasn’t bored out of her mind anyway. Please be patient. Are you the one I can tell my whole life to? From the beginning to this moment? Using words that one reads and thinks but never gets to hear and say? “Think back as far as you can,” he said. “First it’s dark, right? But a warm, close dark, not a cold outer-space dark.” A stupid girl would think he knew her personal mind. “Then you made out a slit of light, and another, and another—a zoetrope—faster and faster, until all the lights combined. And you had: consciousness. Most people’s lights turn on by degrees like that. (When you come across ‘lights’ in books, like the Donner Party ate lights, do you think ‘lights’ means the eyes or the brains?) I got zapped all at once. That may account for why I’m uncommon. I saw: all of a sudden, curtains that rose and rose, and on the other side of them, lights, footlights and overheads, and behind them, the dark, but different from the previous dark. Rows of lights, like teeth, uppers and lowers, and the mouth wide open laughing—and either I was inside it standing on the tongue, or I was outside, looking into a mouth, and inside the mouth were many, many strangers. All looking at me. For a while they looked at me, wondering at my littleness. And pointing at me and saying, ‘Aaah.’ Which is my name, do you see? Then one big light blasted me. It was a spotlight or a floodlight, and I thought that it had dissolved me into light, but it hadn’t, of course. I made out people breathing—expecting something. They wanted an important thing to happen. If I opened my mouth, whatever it was that was pouring into my ears and eyes and my skin would shout out of my mouth. I opened my mouth for it to happen. But somebody swooped me up—arms caught me—and carried me back into the wings. Sheepcrooked m’act.” … a door had swung open be
fore you, and now you were among the alembics in the firelight.… Your theater came into being.
Yes, this flight, this rush, the oncoming high. He had talked his way—here—once more. Good and bad, the world was exactly as it should be. The sidewalk trees were afire in leaf-flames. And the most beyond girl in the world was listening to him. The air which contained all this pleasure was as clear as mescaline and he was straight. The sun was out which shines golden like this but three times a San Francisco autumn.